The Narthex
The Earliest Christians Were Not Proto-Socialists
Acts 4 was not a people's republic with some holy water added
By John M. Grondelski | April 8th 2024 11:50 AMActs 4:32-35 speaks of the spiritual and temporal unity of the early Christian Church, exemplified in the common holding of property. The text no doubt makes visions of socialist sugar plums dance in some “social justice-plus” types' heads. I hate to wake them up from their dreams. The Church in…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Three Stages of Thanksgiving
Giving thanks to God for all His blessings was the holiday's origin
By John M. Grondelski | November 20th 2023 3:23 PMStage One: The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in Plymouth Colony in 1621. The Pilgrims set out for North America in September 1620. Storms put them off-course during their Atlantic crossing, to land farther north -- off present-day Massachusetts -- than they planned. Finding themselves in a wilderness at the start…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMere Corpse Disposal
Alkaline hydrolysis has a new name, to make dissolving bodies palatable
By John M. Grondelski | July 19th 2023 2:14 PMCremation is a practice against which I regularly rail. I maintain that the Vatican’s 1963 relaxation of the ban on cremation by Catholics, as long as they didn’t resort to it to deny the resurrection of the body, was wrongheaded. Today’s Catholic cremator may not even think about “the resurrection…
READ FULL BLOG POSTSent Away Empty
Christ's teaching on riches explains the social decay in Japan
By Barbara Rose | February 20th 2023 6:46 PMThe demise of a nation at the hand of its enemy is comprehensible. The demise of a nation by the aggregated poor choices of its own prosperous people is strange indeed. Christ warns of the pitfalls of wealth, of hearts set on money and not God. He says, in the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTGender Reveal
Is going bonkers on Facebook how one should accept a blessing from the Almighty?
By Jason Morgan | January 10th 2023 2:53 PMSome ten years ago I was invited to what was billed as a “gender reveal.” It was a dinner at a local Italian restaurant, complete with dessert in the form of an iced cake, the pink or blue inside of which would reveal the sex of the host couple's unborn…
READ FULL BLOG POST'Mediocrity is Excellence'
Archbishop Sheen described one factor now dragging down the West
By Richard DellOrfano | March 1st 2022 3:48 PMI learned in engineering economics that quantity diminishes quality when constrained by limited resources. Manufacturers, farmers, engineers, and artists are subject to that reality. It applies to all human endeavors. Examples of this are found in the produce aisle of your grocery store. Commercially-grown, gas-ripened fruits like apricots are bland…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCaveat Emptor?
A behind-the-scenes reflection on surprises in the NOR mail bag
By Magdalena Moreno | January 24th 2022 1:18 PMAt the NOR, few times are as exciting as when responses from a direct mail campaign start rolling in. It takes a while for the responses to start coming, but when they do the office staff knows we’re in for a wild ride. As most readers know, print magazines are…
READ FULL BLOG POSTGone to the Dogs
Total U.S. consumer spending on pets has reached $109 billion per year
By Richard DellOrfano | January 20th 2022 9:47 PMThe pet industry is reaping billions from modern man's spiritual desolation -- that sense of emptiness and disquiet that aches for remedy. As workaholism and an ever-higher cost of living moves people to delay or forego marriage and children, pets fill the void in their lives. It’s a sign of…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPet Idolatry
Many have swapped affection for other human beings with devotion to their dogs
By Richard DellOrfano | January 13th 2022 10:09 PMI was a candidate for the Trappist monastery, back in 1968. Personal pets were not allowed—an ancient discipline to enhance the inner companionship of God. Though written rules about pets were unlikely before the 13th century, Ancrene Wisse (Rule for Anchoresses) made it clear that a religious recluse should avoid…
READ FULL BLOG POSTNanny State
Secular authorities aim for paradise on earth via micromanagement of citizens
By Richard DellOrfano | July 20th 2021 3:43 PMCalifornia bureaucrats are aiming for more and more control over our lives—with no end in sight. A San Diego county government agency is proposing various options for a mileage tax, anticipating that more electric vehicles will reduce overall gas tax revenues -- currently 51 cents per gallon— by far the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTElegy on a Rodent
American throw-away culture extends even to pet ownership
By Magdalena Moreno | July 16th 2021 2:09 PMI was raised in a household that had few pets: a fish that lasted about a year, a cat that wound up moving in with the neighbors, and another cat that I insisted on adopting and then promptly left when I moved away for college six months later. Ours…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPursuing Illusions
We are tempted to spend much time and treasure following spiritual dead-ends
By Richard DellOrfano | July 13th 2021 2:08 PMThe summer of 1969, an itinerant Hatha Yoga instructor gave me a ride to Guadalajara, Mexico. Fred was in his seventies but amazingly agile at performing difficult yoga postures for awestruck audiences of retired seniors. We were traveling south on I-25 through New Mexico, a few miles west of the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Last Shakers
A visit to a Shaker village farm in Maine -- the last of 21 communities in their 200-year history
By Richard DellOrfano | June 24th 2021 8:21 PMIn the late sixties, I stayed a weekend at a Bruderhof and then hoped to experience the Shaker version of Heaven on Earth that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Ralph Waldo Emerson had much admired. But I was late by about 100 years, for in 1968 their numbers had dwindled…
READ FULL BLOG POSTBehavior Modification Lesson
Manipulative techniques push us to buy, vote, or behave in certain ways
By Richard DellOrfano | February 24th 2021 3:10 PMDecades ago I took a community college class in basic psychology. Other than the 40-something teacher, I was the oldest one there at age 30, sitting among younger adults in their late teens and early twenties. Here I was about to learn a painful lesson in human manipulation. The topic…
READ FULL BLOG POSTWall Street Sharks and D.C. Remoras
The U.S. financial system is grounded in a desire to convert suffering into cash
By Jason Morgan | February 3rd 2021 1:32 PMWhen I first saw news about the Occupy Wall Street movement in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan ten years ago, my reaction was a common one: “Get a job, you hippies.” A raucous mob of hooligans destroying public property and vandalizing police cars remained my abiding impression for several years. I’m…
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