The Narthex

For many reasons I am grateful God gave me the grace of being Catholic. One reason is the Catholic funeral liturgy. Watching the funeral of Jimmy Carter, I realized the profound difference between the Catholic understanding of what we do at a funeral and Protestant/civil religion/secular funerals. I don’t want…

Roman Brandstaetter, the twentieth-century Polish author born into a highly observant Jewish family, always spoke of becoming Catholic not as a “conversion” but as a “fulfillment.” That perspective illumined his many religious writings, including his novella about the prophet Jonah. Brandstaetter’s Jonah was not the stiff-necked and somewhat simple man…

Did you realize the liturgy on New Year’s Day does not officially countenance the civil new year? New Year is traditionally a day when people reckon with the passage of time. That’s particularly true when it also marks the closure of a quarter century. (Yes, I know, some folks want…

Making New Year's resolutions is a venerable custom at this time of year. For the past year I've written at the beginning of each quarter -- in April, July, and October -- to remind people of what they resolved to do at the beginning of the year. I also aimed…

The New York Times’ “Ethicist” column is an anti-gift that just keeps on giving. On December 20, it discussed “family planning in uncertain times” (a link is below). The gist of the correspondent’s question is whether, at a time when the climate is changing and the bogeyman of “overpopulation” still…

“The Ethicist” is one of my favorite New York Times columns because it is insight into the “mind” of the woke. It is also the product of an “ethics” that is essentially relativistic at heart, save for occasional feints towards “consent” and “tolerance” (whatever that means). I know that, in…

My cousin John M. Frier, Jr. (1931-2016) was a 1953 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He and his wife Shirley, who died this past August, had four daughters and eight grandchildren. John and Shirley were devout Catholics. From 1960, they made their home in Los Altos, California. After…

Church and State in Paris If you followed the news, you’d have the impression that the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was primarily a backdrop for a political event at which President-Elect Donald Trump reconnected with world leaders. And you might not be wrong. The Archdiocese of Paris…

The Second Sunday of Advent’s Second Reading makes an observation all too often lost (since homilists rarely preach on the Second Reading) about the Divine-human dynamic in the good men do. In the text, St. Paul expresses confidence “that the one who began a good work in you will continue…

As I've recently noted, Advent Preface I speaks of Christ’s Second Coming -- the first focus of Advent -- as a time “when all at last is made manifest.” I'll add another reason why the Second Coming involves full disclosure: because it is the end of faith. Faith is “the…

Making our list? Yes, and checking it twice! This year we splurged on an extra-postage Christmas card, and our working list is from 2021. What a difference three years makes. As expected, some folks have just moved. Some, sadly, have died. We mark RIP on the list and say a…

Last week, the Opening Prayer for the First Sunday of Advent told us to “run forth to meet Your Christ with righteous deeds!” Our focus should be on running forth "to meet Your Christ” -- not expressing interest, not thinking about it, not even strolling over, but running forth --…

From October 19, 2020, to April 14, 2021, this blog featured my essay -- split into a 35-part series -- on the recognition of holiness in laypeople (Part I is linked below). At the end of Part V, I made three recommendations that would aid "all of us -- bishops,…

During Advent, the Church uses two different Prefaces at Mass: one for most of Advent, the other for Advent’s last nine days. We have two because their foci are different: Advent Preface I looks forward to Christ’s Second Coming at the end of history, while Advent Preface II shifts back,…

The Opening Prayer/Collect for Mass on the First Sunday of Advent abounds with powerful words: “resolve,” “run forth,” “righteous,” “worthy.” It reads: “Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right…