The Narthex

I recently noted a Washington bus stop where the “public service” announcement that asked about “cheating” recommended one get tested for venereal diseases. Looking at what’s being hawked in your neighborhood tells a lot about what Pope Benedict XVI called the “human ecology” of a given environment. The neighborhood in…

Walking in downtown Washington recently, I came upon one of those “public service” announcements that are plastered or projected on the side of bus stops. It had a one-word question: “Cheating?” If you silently answered yes, its advice: get yourself checked for a venereal disease! My one-word answer to the…

September 30 was the fiftieth anniversary of Congress first approving the “Hyde Amendment,” a budget provision subsequently adopted every year for the past half century limiting federal funds for Medicaid abortions. For those too young to remember its first enactment, it’s worth recalling the Constitutional issues that plagued its adoption…

This coming Monday is Columbus Day. It also happens to be the date traditionally associated with Christopher Columbus’s landfall in the Americas: October 12, 1492. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 moved the federal observance away from the historical anniversary and onto the second Monday in October. Columbus Day…

The highest court of the European Union is currently considering a Belgian case where the petitioner is asking the EU to order a Catholic diocese to expunge his record of baptism from the baptismal books under the Union’s “right of erasure” rules. In the name of continent-wide harmonized data protection…

“My Three Sons” was a 1960s hit sitcom about a widower raising three boys. I suspect many Catholics who heard Sunday’s Gospel would have preferred a parable about the man’s three sons. But Jesus gave us only two. In Christ’s parable, the first son is told to go work in…

I recently penned an essay on the threats imperiling the existence of Catholic colleges. I identified four: demographics, costs, people’s perceptions of the need for college degrees, and AI. Not all of them carry the same weight. For example, how AI may affect college graduates (especially in terms of entry-level…

Saturday, September 19, is the feast of Our Lady of LaSalette. The Blessed Mother appeared 180 years ago, in 1846, to two children in the French Alps. Her message was simple, which is perhaps what I find most attractive about it. She lamented three things: that people didn’t pray, that…

A recent New York Times article was one of those pieces that make you think -- not necessarily because its conclusions are profound but because its questions are. The author of “The Most Promising Worlds Beyond Our Solar System” writes about research documenting the existence of planets orbiting other stars…

In last Sunday’s First Reading, God tells the prophet Ezekiel that he is to be “watchman” of Israel. He is to watch and warn Israel of moral dangers: “If I tell the wicked, ‘O wicked one, you shall surely die’ and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked…

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was laid to rest with a funeral July 28 at the Washington National Cathedral. Recently, some Catholic bishops have issued new regulations for funerals in their dioceses. This post isn’t a critique of Graham's funeral. Rather, it affords some interesting insights into the theology of…

It is a principle of Catholic liturgical theology that Mass is always offered in communion with the Pope and the local bishop. It’s why both are mentioned in the liturgy. It’s also why public celebration of the Mass is regulated by the bishop, who can restrict faculties. It’s why the…

The Opening Prayer for the Eighteenth Sunday (A) in Ordinary Time asks that the Lord “may restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored.” Let’s focus on the verb “restore.” "Restore” suggests something has lost some original characteristic, whose restoration recovers something valuable about that thing.…

Sunday’s First Reading was Solomon’s prayer for wisdom and God’s generous response, pleased at what the young king had asked for. Wisdom in the Biblical tradition is not about knowledge or erudition; Solomon was not asking to be an Einstein. Wisdom is about how to live rightly, which in Israel’s…

The New York Times likes occasionally to run articles about “gray divorce,” i.e., the phenomenon of people 50+ splitting up. Case in point: its approving commentary on June 22, “Older Adults Are No Longer Staying in ‘Empty-Shell’ Marriages” (linked below). It reads, "[N]early 40 percent of divorces today occur between…