The Narthex

On August 9, 1943, Franz Jaegerstaetter was beheaded for refusing to serve in the German army. The March 2009 edition of New Oxford Review contains my article “Pope Benedict’s Surprise” -- the surprise being that Franz had been declared a martyr (on June 1, 2007) when the Nazis were not…

Even before the thrilling movie 300 (2006), many Westerners were familiar with the even more thrilling history of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). At the “hot gates,” the historical record tells us, Spartan king Leonidas I led his fellow Greeks against a much bigger invading force under “King of…

“I want to make history” is something heard at least from the ambitious. Yet it seems those who succeed are few and far between. Go check out an encyclopedia and pick any “historical” figure at random. I’ll bet that, with very few exceptions, if their life gets to fill half…

On March 4, 1933, a new presidential administration began during a severe economic collapse that had shaken every layer of American life. Banks had failed in waves. Industrial production had fallen dramatically. Unemployment approached 25 percent. Breadlines stretched through urban streets, and rural families faced relentless foreclosures that dismantled generational…

President’s Day arrives every February with historical aura but then gets swallowed by appliance discounts and mattress commercials, as though civic memory can be replaced by a coupon code. The holiday has become a soft cultural placeholder, a day people “enjoy” while forgetting what it was meant to teach. The…

Amazon has produced a docudrama on the First Lady, Melania. You might love it or hate it (or, like me, haven't seen it) but promotion of an incumbent First Lady is not uncommon. If you doubt it, ask how many times Vogue featured Jill Biden on its front cover --…

Modern Christians consume historical narratives the way they consume streaming services: with restless impatience and very little context. Every crisis arrives framed by pundits, platforms, and political tribes. The result is a kind of spiritual vertigo. Many believers feel disoriented by the pace of events yet still interpret those events…

A vicious controversy has just erupted in Poland over the “Round Table.” The “Round Table” refers both to the literal circular table and the historic discussions held around it in early 1989, when some parts of the Polish opposition met with the ruling Communists to discuss the country’s future. Out…

“Textualism” and “originalism” emerged as approaches to interpreting the Constitution in order to reconnect American judicial decisions with the document they were supposedly applying. The “living Constitution,” so in vogue from roughly the 1950s through 2000 (though not really firmly buried until Anthony Kennedy finally left the Supreme Court), unfettered…

“Migration” features, albeit in limited fashion, in Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi Te. Of the three paragraphs that mention it, two are historical. I am not a professional historian but I think I know enough to ask some questions about what those two paragraphs really support versus what some…

Back-to-School Guide for Parents Family Policy Alliance (FPA) is the brainchild of the recently deceased James Dobson. It monitors legislative and regulatory developments with a direct impact on parental rights which, in many ways, is ground zero in the contemporary assault on the family. Make no mistake about it: When…

Writing in the Chicago Catholic (Sept. 3, linked below), Cardinal Blase Cupich tries to distinguish between “tradition” and “traditionalism,” invoking Ss. Vincent of Lérins and John Henry Newman on development of doctrine to make his case for Vatican II’s reform of the liturgy. He’s concerned that “traditionalism” is obscuring the Council’s…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Glenn Loury. Many readers may remember his rise in the 1980s as a “black conservative,” a brilliant economist whose free-market arguments about race issues were music to Reagan Republicans' ears. Others may know him from his more recent appearances with John McWhorter of…

Dr. Thaddeus 'Ted' Gromada, a beloved figure in the Polish American scholarly world, died on August 10 at the age of 96. For decades he was the spiritus movens of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) in New York -- the role in which…

The pilgrimages across Poland have begun. Every year in early August, from every corner of Poland, people set out on walking pilgrimages across the country to converge on Czestochowa, Mary's national shrine, on August 15. It's a multi-generational tradition. Parishes and local communities assemble and walk, usually 12-15 miles per…