The Narthex

September 30 was the fiftieth anniversary of Congress first approving the “Hyde Amendment,” a budget provision subsequently adopted every year for the past half century limiting federal funds for Medicaid abortions. For those too young to remember its first enactment, it’s worth recalling the Constitutional issues that plagued its adoption…

The highest court of the European Union is currently considering a Belgian case where the petitioner is asking the EU to order a Catholic diocese to expunge his record of baptism from the baptismal books under the Union’s “right of erasure” rules. In the name of continent-wide harmonized data protection…

"Joe Biden is perhaps on par with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as one of the most pro-abortion presidents in U.S. history," writes LifeNews. Biden's radical abortion agenda apparently met with approval from Planned Parenthood, as America's largest abortion organization presented Biden with an award at a luxury gala in…

Two weeks ago, I shared a heartfelt lament with my editor: “Woe to me if I do not philosophize.” Feeling my pain, she replied, “Just do it,” or words to that effect. And so, gentle reader, you now find me still contending with “the great chain of being.” It’s the…

I continue with my suggestions for improving the recent pastoral letter on immigration by the Archbishop of San Antonio, the Most Rev. Gustavo García-Siller, MSpS. Racism of Enforcement? The Archbishop maintains that there are “patterns of racial disparity in [immigration] enforcement against Hispanics, Latinos, and other people of color” (Para.…

On August 3, the archbishop of San Antonio, the Most Rev. Gustavo García-Siller, MSpS (Missionaries of the Holy Spirit), marked the centennial of the elevation of San Antonio to a metropolitan archdiocese by publishing a pastoral letter on immigration. I thank the archbishop for his thoughtful, prayerful, and emotionally powerful…

A sociologist named Jason Arday died August 14, 2026, in his London home. It appears that the cause of his death was suicide. But to any event there are circumstances, and those surrounding Dr. Arday’s death seem to shift much of the responsibility for his untimely passing onto those who…

It would be great if women who wanted to play basketball had a league of their own. They don’t, though. Instead, they have the WNBA, which is a political action committee doing layups and free throws. The difference between a women’s basketball league and the WNBA is, well, difference. A…

Hear ye, hear ye! President Trump opines that he is the most powerful person to ever live (“The YOLO Presidency,” The Atlantic, April 29, 2026). There are compelling reasons to dispute his claim. Even so, many of our politicians insist that the United States is the greatest country on earth.…

For years during the early Twenties we heard about the “Biden Crime Family.” Shady dealings in Ukraine. Board memberships that reeked of pay-to-play implications. Personal enrichment for a scofflaw scion. Special treatment from the so-called Department of Justice. Another example of two-tiered courts in the USA. Right on to all…

Many readers may be familiar with the term Anthropocene. It denotes an epoch of geological time during which human influence on the environment has become pronounced. Geologists, who apparently like to work as slowly as the processes they study, have, after laborious deliberation, largely rejected the use of Anthropocene as…

Freedom fails when citizens demand the benefits of ordered liberty while refusing the virtue that gives liberty its moral spine. Our present disorder should surprise only those who believed a republic could survive after the home stopped forming conscience, the school stopped teaching wisdom, and the church was politely invited…

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…

On March 6, 1981, Walter Cronkite concluded his final broadcast as anchor of CBS Evening News, and with that quiet farewell a chapter of American media culture gently closed. For nearly two decades, his voice entered millions of living rooms every evening with calm pacing, measured language, and disciplined restraint…

Bombs are falling on Iran. In this act of naked aggression many see the contours of another murderous rampage: the invasion of Iraq 23 years ago, which like the Iran adventure was also unwarranted chaos predicated on a tissue of lies. Here we go again, the war-weary American public groans.…