The Narthex

Why are Prisoners in Prison? On December 14, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the “Jubilee of Prisoners.” His homily is replete with “hope.” Sometimes it almost suggests the Parousia is about to arrive, immanently. Leo says we must build a “society established on new criteria, and ultimately on charity…”…

Another Example of Inverted Pneumatology I’ve criticized a distorted theology of the Holy Spirit I’ve called “inverted pneumatology,” which pretends that today the Holy Spirit primarily speaks not to the world from the Church but rather teaches the Church from a secularized world. Writing in the National Catholic Reporter (I…

Timothy Reichert’s “Christian Ownership Maximalism” is an original article (linked below) in the December 2025 issue of First Things. It deserves wide readership, thorough debate, and I’d argue adoption in Catholic circles. Christendom as we have known it -- whether the religiously suffused culture of medieval Europe or the ethnic…

Fresh off last week’s discovery that "People, Look East" might be coded propaganda for a clandestine versus orientem revival, I approached this Sunday’s liturgy with heightened vigilance. Imagine my dismay when the next hymn announced itself: the venerable "On Jordan’s Bank" -- that paragon of Advent piety which, upon scrutiny,…

Recent years have seen a “war on Christmas.” It takes the form of turning Christmas into a holiday in the closet, daring not to speak its name. Instead, we say “happy holidays,” while kids get “winter break” from school. Those who contend there’s a war on Christmas argue that its…

Advent comes with a repertoire of hymnody unique to the season, such as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Among traditional Advent hymns now sung in English-speaking Catholic churches is Englishwoman Eleanor Farjeon’s “People, Look East,” which was sung in my parish last Sunday. I had to wonder whether some dioceses…

“Textualism” and “originalism” emerged as approaches to interpreting the Constitution in order to reconnect American judicial decisions with the document they were supposedly applying. The “living Constitution,” so in vogue from roughly the 1950s through 2000 (though not really firmly buried until Anthony Kennedy finally left the Supreme Court), unfettered…

In vitro fertilization (IVF) has always benefitted from certain strange coincidences redounding to its benefit. The first IVF baby was born in 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion-on-demand in the U.S. People who fought abortion because they said it took the life of an unborn baby vacillated…

Some Western European clerics are again singing the praises of secularization. The latest, according to Stefano Fontana, is Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Italy. (His November 17 opening address to the bishops’ meeting in Assisi is linked below.) That song, however, is hardly…

Catholics have traditionally dedicated November to prayer for the souls in Purgatory, especially on All Souls' Day. To encourage efficacious prayer for the departed, the Church grants a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, to Catholics who visit a cemetery from November 1-8 and pray for the dead. The indulgence…

Reports, officially unconfirmed, are circulating that some dioceses in the United States have prohibited celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae (NO) with a versus orientem posture. I offer some theological reflections: Since introduction of the NO in 1969, the usual posture for celebration of Mass has been versus populum, “towards…

 For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the children of the light. – Luke 16:8

SNAP Shutdown The continuing shutdown of the federal government has interrupted SNAP payments. SNAP is a federal program to provide food money to the poor. There are currently more than 41 million SNAP recipients. This seems to be one of those areas where the priority of the poor comes into…

In a recent essay, I quoted approvingly Oren Cass’s observation that employment, labor, and immigration law form a coherent legal whole that protects both national security and domestic workers. Summarizing Cass, immigration law determines who can work; employment law fixes “baseline” criteria for the employer-employee relationship; and labor law protects…

Today is the feast of Ss. Simon and Jude. They are two of the lesser known apostles, although in the American Church in the 20th century, there was a popular devotion to St. Jude Thaddeus. Many parishes conducted novenas to him as patron of impossible causes and things despaired of.…