The Narthex

“Philosophy begins in wonder.” So says Aristotle in his Metaphysics. Reflecting on this text, St. Thomas teaches that a goal of metaphysics is to establish the truth about the first and universal causes of things. If we achieve this goal, he writes, “there should be no wonder because the causes…

I’ve explained in the past that I keep a subscription to The New York Times primarily because it is a source par excellence for the insane musings of the Left. But even I could not believe the number of such inanities the Old Gray Lady managed to publish in just…

I sometimes wonder if the problem with liberals is that they have extraordinarily guilty consciences but lack a confessional to unburden themselves in. Well, that is not wholly true; they have the op-ed pages of liberal newspapers, which alternate among confessional, psychotherapy couch, and street corner (where one signals one's…

Your Catholic SAT Although many colleges have moved away from standardized tests like the SAT, in the name of “equity” and abandonment of academic standards, I believe they have value. One of the components of the SAT used to be a reading comprehension test. It tests for how closely one…

One morning this spring, I noticed my backyard lawn had an esker, a row of fresh dirt mounds. Each pile had a horseshoe shape, and I soon learned how they came to be. A gopher was tunneling underground. This rascal was pushing dirt to the surface from its nesting constructs.…

In the last scene of one of Shakespeare’s grimmest tragedies, King Lear, by now an old and broken man, weeps for his dead daughter Cordelia:

No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou'lt come…

Misguided "opinion leaders" have induced such panic in our youth that one in five British children reported having nightmares about climate change (Reuters, March 2, 2020). Certain "green" spokesmen and non-profit groups have admitted to their overheated rhetoric but justify it on grounds that only a widespread sense of panic…

Down the road from my house is a nursery that cultivates sunflowers. I stopped nearby to ponder the hundreds of them, all aligned with the 3:00pm sun in the western sky. They stood like monks at their afternoon psalms, all transfixed by that scintillating altar monstrance representing the Son of…

In 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…

In California, where bad things often begin, the papers tell us that we are facing a climate apocalypse. The fires are, indeed, horrific. But there’s no turning back from a true apocalypse. Something closer to a true apocalypse awaits us, and we are currently planning to hasten its arrival. Our…

Giant mutant ants from atomic weapons-testing in the desert are multiplying faster than we can kill them. They will annihilate our doomed human race within a year. That’s the scenario of the 1950s movie Them! After re-watching this classic film with fascination and horror, I freaked out this morning when…

A portrait artist and I were strolling arm in arm at a farmers’ market, when she stopped us to view a display of landscape paintings in a shop window. She knew this local artist and wanted to say hello, so we entered to the tinkling sound of a door bell.…

About 20 years ago, the children of tenants renting my house pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on the master bedroom ceiling for their parents. When I moved in, I noticed the virtual galaxy the children created. Lying on my bed, I turned off the lamp and looked at the ceiling, surprised and…

Recently I read this news clip: “The Andromeda galaxy ate our sister galaxy, and now it’s coming for us.” An astrophysicist used poetic license to describe that star-studded dinner event but it got me thinking. Maybe I need to expand my narrow definition of living things. My biology textbook made…

We need to remind ourselves sometimes that Christianity is a very materialistic and earthly religion. In our faith there is no necessary conflict between body and spirit; they were not created to be at odds with each other. G.K. Chesterton put it like this:

There are no bad…