The Narthex

Fr. Gilligan was a wily American priest who served in the Vatican Diplomatic Corps and saved many lives during the Communist takeover in China. As mentioned previously in this blog series, I must here reply to claims made by Ms. Bibiani Yee-Wing Wong in a past issue of U.S. Catholic…

Readers will recall that in Part 1 of this series I quoted from Msgr. Breslin’s funeral eulogy for Father Gilligan, telling two short stories about this wily priest-diplomat. His first story concerned foreign missionaries, as related in Part 2. His second story concerned native Chinese. During the Communist takeover of…

Thanksgiving is, for most Americans, a long weekend. Almost all children get out of school on Wednesday and don't return until Monday. Most institutions other than stores and commercial enterprises all take the long weekend. At some point Thanksgiving became something of a segue into the "Christmas season" and --…

It all started in mid-2013 when the archbishop-elect of Hobart, Julian Porteous, asked me if I would help him “raise the profile of the Catholic intellectual tradition” in his new diocese. The cynic might say that raising the profile of something that was below the radar of public awareness wasn’t…

Ms. Wong disparages the credibility of Msgr. Breslin’s accounts in his funeral eulogy for Father Gilligan since Breslin did not hear of these events from Gilligan himself when he was living with him.[1] But Msgr. Breslin stated that, for both stories, he relied on multiple sources, “a stream”…

In 2017, I published online a comprehensive biographical essay of an American priest, in which I highlighted his time as a Vatican diplomat in Hong Kong, entitled “Martin T. Gilligan: An American Hero Neglected—Until Today: Saving Lives During the Communist Takeover in China, 1946-1952.” That essay is no longer accessible,…

This morning I left for work a little after the sun had risen -- not unusual with days shorter and clocks turned back one hour. As I walked across my parking lot, a couple of squirrels were busy on the old oak tree, about whose acorns pelting my window pane…

Nat King Cole sang about “the falling leaves [that] drift by the window/the autumn leaves of red and gold.” Drifting autumn leaves suggest a quiet, peaceful sweep outside one’s casement. Last weekend was anything but. Fall was at its peak in Virginia and Saturday was a gloriously sunny day. As…

Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).   One hundred and sixty years ago this November 19, Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg about hallowed ground.…

Saturday, October 28 is the second full moon of autumn which, by tradition, has in the United States been called “Hunter’s Moon.” (The first full moon is called “Harvest Moon”). The name comes from the fact that, in earlier times when food was found in field and forest, hunters would…

The November issue of Commentary, a monthly magazine of conservative Jewish thought, features a great essay, “Psalms They Have, But They Know Not.” Rabbi Meir Soloveichik ponders American Biblical ignorance, especially among its “educated,” and its implications. The immediate impetus for his article was an incident last summer on the…

Fr. William Ryan is a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who, since 2006, has served as a missionary in Togo, a country the size of Maryland, in western Africa. Ryan’s love affair with Togo dates back to the early 1970s when, before he studied for the priesthood, he joined…

Today is the memorial of St. Isaac Jogues and Companions -- the 17th century Jesuit North American Martyrs -- slain in upper New York State. So far, they haven’t been cancelled as have Franciscan Junipero Serra or Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet. I feared they might, especially after Pope Francis’s 2022…

Imagine a protest in which activists chant, “What do we want? Free publicity! When do we want it? Now!” Easy enough, right? Isn’t it already the subtext of many demonstrations? Or imagine a political campaign soliciting money chiefly in order to solicit more money. Again, easy enough. Isn’t it the…

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a 2002 movie about a Greek-American woman navigating life in America between the expectations of her immigrant family and assimilationist impulses in the United States. Rife with stereotypes, it traces Toula Portokalos’s life as a kid growing up with parents that run a diner,…