The Narthex
New Oxford Blog

No Judge Is above the Law
No state may exempt itself or its officials from federal authority
By John M. Grondelski | August 28th 2025 11:00 AMHannah 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…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA Virginia School Facilitated Abortions
Will it turn the governor's race?
By John M. Grondelski | August 27th 2025 9:53 PMA 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…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA Vow Gone Wrong
Aquinas teaches that what is a sin ought never be the subject of a vow
By James Hanink | August 26th 2025 11:24 AMJust last week we celebrated the Feast of Pope St. Pius X. Even as children, we cradle Catholics learned that Pius X had opened the reception of the eucharist to young people like us. But the day’s liturgy, it turns out, presents us with a dark reading from the Book…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Judicial Philosophy of Ketanji Brown Jackson
She does not even attempt to mask her activism
By John M. Grondelski | August 26th 2025 11:17 AMThe “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…
READ FULL BLOG POSTWhy is 'Basic Patriotism' Demonized?
A look at the reasons behind antipathy to the flags of England and the USA
By John M. Grondelski | August 25th 2025 12:37 PMRod Dreher, of Benedict Option fame, opined on X that countries where “basic patriotism is demonized” are “on the brink of civil conflict.” He made his observation in response to a post by a British man in Devonshire whose display of the Union Jack in his garden elicited a note…
READ FULL BLOG POSTEverybody Is above the Law
None of the powerful in Washington D.C. has ever stood trial for his real criminality
By Jason Morgan | August 25th 2025 11:10 AMOn August 22, 2025, FBI agents raided the home of John Bolton, national security advisor during the first Trump administration and, later, trenchant critic of his former boss. The feds were apparently on a mission to protect classified documents, the same mission the FBI claimed to be carrying out when…
READ FULL BLOG POSTDads' Views & Summer Jobs
Paternal approaches to reality and experiences of hard work shape kids' political perspectives
By John M. Grondelski | August 22nd 2025 10:40 AMA recent TikTok video posted to X is ostensibly the work of a white mother explaining to her 10-year-old the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. The woman claims that her child asked what differentiated the two and that she explained it by using an analogy involving the homeless.…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOn Black History
Glenn Loury's memoir reveals he doesn’t have the luxury of being 'post-racial'
By Jason Morgan | August 21st 2025 11:59 AMI’ve been thinking a lot lately about Glenn Loury. Many readers may remember his rise in the 1980s as a “black conservative,” a brilliant economist whose free-market arguments about race issues were music to Reagan Republicans' ears. Others may know him from his more recent appearances with John McWhorter of…
READ FULL BLOG POSTReligion: A Matter of Faith or Feelings?
Insipid hymns reveal a trade-in of a Catholicism built on faith and reason for one of emotions
By John M. Grondelski | August 20th 2025 12:33 PMAnthony Esolen has spilled no small amount of ink challenging the doctrinal and other issues that plague contemporary Catholic hymnody. Demonstrating how today’s “Catholic” ditties upend the traditional liturgical principle lex orandi, lex credendi (how we pray expresses what we believe) has almost become a cottage industry online. Recently, Trent…
READ FULL BLOG POSTUnimaginable Things, Love of God, Restless Hearts
Man has a limitless desire for more, which should lead us to our Highest Good
By John M. Grondelski | August 19th 2025 11:08 AMO God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire. Through…
READ FULL BLOG POSTHow Many Murders Make an 'Emergency'?
Real love for the poor is ensuring their neighborhoods are safe, not a murder every 46 hours
By John M. Grondelski | August 18th 2025 11:33 AMThe danger with a status quo is that it “normalizes” the prevailing situation. It makes one think the abnormal is somehow "normal." That’s particularly problematic when the status quo is the result of decades of “defining deviancy down,” as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed over 30 years ago…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA 'News' Outlet that Holds You in Low Regard
Fox News Digital, running almost daily pics of women in bikinis, looks ever more like a tabloid
By James Thunder | August 15th 2025 9:02 PMOn this Feast of the Assumption, we need to continue to deliver news to the world about how we should treat women -- both as subjects of articles and as readers. Fox News Digital (foxnews.com), most unfortunately, has been running almost daily columns with pictures of women in bikinis and…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Significance of the Assumption
Mary shows the more noble status to which humanity has been elevated by Redemption in Christ
By John M. Grondelski | August 15th 2025 11:50 AMThe Solemnity of the Assumption is these days an underappreciated and undervalued holy day. Indeed, next year it won’t even be a feast of precept (a holy day of obligation) because of the American bishops’ “Saturday-or-Monday-get-out-of-Church-free-on-certain-holy-days” rule. The Assumption stands in a straight line from Easter to the Ascension (another…
READ FULL BLOG POSTStreets Are Thoroughfares, Not Beds
A brief for Catholic realism on homelessness and public order
By John M. Grondelski | August 14th 2025 11:08 AMTwo days ago, alongside President Trump’s announcement to federalize law enforcement in Washington, D.C., which could include dismantling homeless encampments, I tweeted “streets are thoroughfares, not beds.” In my follow-up on this site, I also identified the local Catholic Church as a possible critic, especially if “law enforcement includes cleaning…
READ FULL BLOG POSTRemembering Dr. Thaddeus 'Ted' Gromada
He was the heart and soul of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America
By John M. Grondelski | August 13th 2025 12:01 PMDr. Thaddeus 'Ted' Gromada, a beloved figure in the Polish American scholarly world, died on August 10 at the age of 96. For decades he was the spiritus movens of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) in New York -- the role in which…
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