The Narthex

I recently noted a Washington bus stop where the “public service” announcement that asked about “cheating” recommended one get tested for venereal diseases. Looking at what’s being hawked in your neighborhood tells a lot about what Pope Benedict XVI called the “human ecology” of a given environment. The neighborhood in…

On October 19, Leo XIV appointed Claudia Leal Luna to the International Theological Commission. A Chilean lay theologian, professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, and a consultor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Leal is among the 24 new…

Walking in downtown Washington recently, I came upon one of those “public service” announcements that are plastered or projected on the side of bus stops. It had a one-word question: “Cheating?” If you silently answered yes, its advice: get yourself checked for a venereal disease! My one-word answer to the…

On September 27, Pope Leo XIV addressed pilgrims consisting of the sick and their caregivers at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes on the subject of assisted suicide, speaking of it as false compassion. In the wake of that event, I bring to your attention two women of our…

Saturday, September 19, is the feast of Our Lady of LaSalette. The Blessed Mother appeared 180 years ago, in 1846, to two children in the French Alps. Her message was simple, which is perhaps what I find most attractive about it. She lamented three things: that people didn’t pray, that…

Faced with the escalating public debate on end-of-life care, the Catholic Church in Italy is undergoing one of the most dramatic theological and political reversals in its recent history. This is no longer a silent retreat or passive tolerance in the face of secularization, but a veritable genetic mutation. Led…

Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, discussed the law on assisted suicide approved last Wednesday by the Veneto Regional Council in an interview published in Avvenire on September 6. A native of Padua, Pegoraro follows the matter with particular personal engagement, offering an analysis that intertwines…

In last Sunday’s First Reading, God tells the prophet Ezekiel that he is to be “watchman” of Israel. He is to watch and warn Israel of moral dangers: “If I tell the wicked, ‘O wicked one, you shall surely die’ and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked…

Sunday’s First Reading was Solomon’s prayer for wisdom and God’s generous response, pleased at what the young king had asked for. Wisdom in the Biblical tradition is not about knowledge or erudition; Solomon was not asking to be an Einstein. Wisdom is about how to live rightly, which in Israel’s…

Here in California, where there’s a good bit of dreaming, some dreams are nightmares. They feature earthquakes. The ill-starred San Andreas fault is likely to host the next mega-quake, the “big one.” As it happens, my family lives along the Inglewood-Newport Beach fault. The predictions for folks like us are…

Piety is both a moral virtue and a gift of the Holy Spirit. Piety allows one to recognize relationships and where one fits in those relationships. With regard to God, it enables the person to recognize that God is Creator and he is a creature or, to put it bluntly,…

In Persian Gulf countries, missiles, drones, and cluster bombs are falling from the sky in wave after wave. Innocent people huddle in basements and apartment buildings, praying they will not be blown up. Reciprocal murder spirals out of control, and now there is talk of sending in American ground forces…

When millions of pages of documents and photographs were released revealing who among the world’s so-called “elite” had been cavorting with sex-trafficking pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, many of those whose names and faces appeared in the caches scrambled to control the damage. Lawrence Summers, for example, who once swayed world economic…

I grew up in a New Jersey Rust Belt town which has lost its factories and is now somewhat economically depressed: Perth Amboy. Its name is unusual, a blend of cultures.  “Perth” comes from the Earl of Perth in Scotland, who was one of the backers of the city's 17th…

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…