The Narthex

The “jurisprudence” of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was the subject of an extended essay by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. It’s worth reading (link below). Brown Jackson has repeatedly denounced her colleagues -- including fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor…

“What? Curiosity is a sin”? I waited quietly. “Nonsense,” says my dear wife. “I won’t bother reading any more of this blather.” My response: “Well, don’t you wonder why the op-ed guy claims it is?” Privately, I lamented her reigned-in curiosity. But my curiosity was piqued, so I decided to…

What to do with a pet peeve? “Own” it. It’s a peeve, and no more. Take care not to become peevish. On rare occasion, however, a peeve merits pursuit and, once pinned down, even theological examination. Here’s a candidate: the weaselly abuse of “appropriate” and “inappropriate” and “appropriately” and “inappropriately.”…

In the leadup to the recent conclave, certain voices, amplified by the New York Times, advised us to beware of those seeking “unity.” Even though the goal seemed legitimate, it was a rhetorical device of those who wanted to roll back the initiatives of Pope Francis. Now comes Pope Leo…

“Awesome!” So say the young, and so often that the adults in the room join in. I like to add, “Totally,” which sometimes elicits a smile. Rarely if ever, though, are we really in awe of the supposedly awesome. But, truth be told, we rarely take to be a wonder…

“What a difference a day makes,” sang Dinah Washington. And why? Because “24 little hours / Brought the sun and the flowers / Where there used to be rain.” But sometimes, we know, it just keeps raining. So, it depends on the day, doesn’t it? What about a word? What…

“If memory serves,” I sometimes say, which puts my wife on alert. Is my selective amnesia (from the Greek ἀ-  "without" and μνήσις "memory") about to kick in? Maybe, but even so I’m the family archivist. Blimey! Who gets assigned to foraging in our archives, fittingly located in the shed…

Last week a gang of thieves shot and killed a fellow parishioner. The thugs were stripping the catalytic converter from a car, and he’d tried to stop them. At Sunday’s liturgy, our pastor spoke about the terrible loss and grief of the victim’s family. Many people in the congregation had…

Does charity begin at home? The short answer to the question is yes, it surely does. But the answer is controversial. In part, that’s because a short answer often calls for a careful explanation and we don’t provide it. Sometimes we’ve filed it where we can’t find it. That’s alright,…

Wittgenstein, in his early Tractatus, concludes his remarks with the proposition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Many took him to mean that we can only speak of that for which there is empirical evidence or that which is simply tautological. If that were so, could we…

The more we know, the more we don’t know. It takes a lot of living to recognize our peculiar predicament. Even so, there are dissenters. Skeptics say that we don’t know what we think we do. Ideologues insist that they know what they don’t know. But why is it that…

How much does logic matter? It matters greatly if we are to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind. But does logic matter to God? Rene Descartes was skeptical. In replying to critics, he contended that “God could have brought it about … that…

A colleague claims that time spent playing chess is time wasted. Nay, sir, I respond, “Chess is an art disguised as a game.” Golly, I’ve been playing chess since middle school. Game or art, it can be a source of delight and dismay. In recent days, I’ve been following the…

Things sometimes appear in social media seemingly out of nowhere, though one suspects they surface as “click-bait” created to generate readers’ reactions. That’s what I thought on Sunday when my X.com feed resurfaced a talk by National Public Radio chief executive Katherine Maher (her talk is linked below). The video…

November is the month dedicated to prayer for the faithful departed. Many Catholics visit cemeteries during November. For that reason I want to share Father Józef Tischner’s reflections on cemeteries, found in the just-released translation of one of his seminal works, The Philosophy of Drama. Tischner is most known as…