The Narthex

What happens when the decision to kill is no longer made by a soldier, but by a machine? Yesterday I attended an excellent pair of expert talks on Artificial Intelligence and Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), organized by students in the Politics Department at The Catholic University of America. LAWS…

Recently I wrote about what I call “food gentrification,” the displacement by grocers of staples for “foodie” treats, and its adverse impact on prices. My comments centered on a New York Times story lauding the “comeback” of bakeries offering niche (and premium-priced) novelties, one baker touting the fact that he…

I recently wrote about how what were once considered food waste products have increasingly hit the grocery market. My inspiration was last Sunday’s First Reading, in which the prophet Amos excoriated the commercial cheats of ancient Israel, specifically, his comment about selling “the refuse of the wheat” as food. But…

“Please, I don’t want to listen to any arguments.” Heard it before? I have. But maybe it’s high time to “listen up” and hear some arguments. Especially sound arguments, that is, the ones that are valid in form and have only true premises. After all, the glory of such arguments…

“Our democracy” is in peril, we are told, endlessly, by pundits and politicians. A Supreme Court justice, talking heads, politicians, and academics have come out as worriers about the state of democratic politics. Even a former pope did so. In the United States, histrionics about “our democracy” have reached a pitch…

The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 12 on a college campus in Utah, supposedly by a 22-year-old named Tyler Robinson who shot him in a single shot with a sniper rifle from approximately 200 meters, is not just the tragic end of a 31-year-old conservative activist, husband, and father…

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…

Catholic moral theology, including just war theory, always included the concept of self-defense. A victim of aggression has the right to repel that aggression, whether it be a thief breaking into your home or a king marching with his 20,000 troops against your kingdom with 10,000. Nobody questioned that right.…

A recent tempest in the social-media teapot concerns intersections. Not the kind that over-credentialed academics spin dissertations about in the name of “critical racial theory,” but the literal ones you walk across: crosswalks. Some jurisdictions decided to “celebrate Pride” by painting pedestrian crossings in rainbow colors. The Trump Transportation Department…

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Pope Leo XIV took advantage of his August 28 audience with a delegation of politicians from the Diocese of Créteil, France, to reaffirm the principles of the Church's sound doctrine, unchanged over time. Pope Leo XIV's speech, extraordinarily beautiful, is disarmingly clear. He…

President Trump issued an Executive Order declaring the U.S. Government should conduct its business in English. That order elicited the usual complaints from the secular accompaniment chorus, who thought it exclusionary and impeding peoples’ access to services. As we’ve seen in pictures from a deportation, it’s not infrequent that family…

Leftists are the progressive people. They have moved on from hateful Biblical morality and old-fashioned notions of sin and redemption. They believe in liberation, more and more of it. People are basically good, just insufficiently liberated. Fallen creatures may need weapons to defend themselves from those who would do evil,…

Hannah Dugan, the Wisconsin circuit court judge who last April berated ICE agents in the Milwaukee courthouse and smuggled a wanted illegal alien out a back door, learned this week that wearing a black robe does not place one above the law. A federal judge ruled that her judicial status…

A controversy roiling in northern Virginia (NoVA) illustrates the dirty, clandestine alliance between abortionists, the political jurisdictions they’ve bought, and the use of societal infrastructure to advance pre-natal killing. Fairfax County, Virginia, is adjacent to Washington, DC. Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) operates all schools in the county. All members…

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…