The Narthex

Timothy Reichert’s “Christian Ownership Maximalism” is an original article (linked below) in the December 2025 issue of First Things. It deserves wide readership, thorough debate, and I’d argue adoption in Catholic circles. Christendom as we have known it -- whether the religiously suffused culture of medieval Europe or the ethnic…

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent U.S. scientific body within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that provides official recommendations on vaccine use, decided by an 8-3 vote to end the general recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated against hepatitis B within the first hours…

Every December 8th, Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Most reflections highlight Mary’s unique grace and her call to become the Mother of Christ. The doctrine is beautiful, and the celebration often stops there. In doing so, we risk missing the deeper invitation hidden within it. The medieval…

Fresh off last week’s discovery that "People, Look East" might be coded propaganda for a clandestine versus orientem revival, I approached this Sunday’s liturgy with heightened vigilance. Imagine my dismay when the next hymn announced itself: the venerable "On Jordan’s Bank" -- that paragon of Advent piety which, upon scrutiny,…

Recent years have seen a “war on Christmas.” It takes the form of turning Christmas into a holiday in the closet, daring not to speak its name. Instead, we say “happy holidays,” while kids get “winter break” from school. Those who contend there’s a war on Christmas argue that its…

As I wrote previously, the EU's liberticidal Chat Control law seemed to have been definitively shelved in October. Strong opposition from Germany and other member states led to the belief that Brussels' Orwellian project had finally foundered. But anyone familiar with the mechanisms of the European Union knows well that…

Advent comes with a repertoire of hymnody unique to the season, such as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Among traditional Advent hymns now sung in English-speaking Catholic churches is Englishwoman Eleanor Farjeon’s “People, Look East,” which was sung in my parish last Sunday. I had to wonder whether some dioceses…

What’s happened to the cheap, sensational booklets called “penny dreadfuls,” and to detective fiction? Penny dreadfuls, for a start, have evolved, big time. How so? G. K. Chesterton, we recall, champions them. His “In Defence of Penny Dreadfuls” (1901) calls them “The center of a million flaming imaginations.” He presents…

I recently read a profile of Duncan Stroik, professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame. What caught my eye was the description the professor gave of one of two key moments in his path to becoming an architect who would design sacred architecture. When he was in graduate…

“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…

On November 23, Slovenia said no to euthanasia. With 53% of voters voting against and 46% in favor, Slovenians rejected a law that would have allowed terminally ill patients to receive assistance in ending their lives. This was not a narrow margin due to abstentions: Turnout reached nearly 41%, with…

Three international experts, interviewed for La Verità (Nov. 24) by journalist Francesco Borgonovo, denounced surrogacy as a form of violence against women and children. From the United Nations to clinical psychology, a unanimous chorus is speaking out against a practice that normalizes the commodification of bodies and selects life according…

Time magazine fulminated this month about the rise of the trillionaires. In October, the Brookings Institute deep-dived into the rise of stablecoins. The Economist gave us their thoughts on the rise of singlehood. Straight Arrow News had a think piece on the rise of “Kirkifying” in the wake of the…

In vitro fertilization (IVF) has always benefitted from certain strange coincidences redounding to its benefit. The first IVF baby was born in 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion-on-demand in the U.S. People who fought abortion because they said it took the life of an unborn baby vacillated…

Some Western European clerics are again singing the praises of secularization. The latest, according to Stefano Fontana, is Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Italy. (His November 17 opening address to the bishops’ meeting in Assisi is linked below.) That song, however, is hardly…