The Narthex

In Persian Gulf countries, missiles, drones, and cluster bombs are falling from the sky in wave after wave. Innocent people huddle in basements and apartment buildings, praying they will not be blown up. Reciprocal murder spirals out of control, and now there is talk of sending in American ground forces…

St. Francis Xavier is a figure whose legacy deserves far greater attention than it receives. The West often treats missionaries as peripheral figures who offered spiritual encouragement alongside colonial expansion, although this assumption reflects a failure to grasp the seismic anthropological impact Christian missionaries delivered in regions shaped by radically…

On March 4, 1933, a new presidential administration began during a severe economic collapse that had shaken every layer of American life. Banks had failed in waves. Industrial production had fallen dramatically. Unemployment approached 25 percent. Breadlines stretched through urban streets, and rural families faced relentless foreclosures that dismantled generational…

“Been waiting for the bus?” I ask. “Too long,” answers Mrs. Kowalski, one of the regulars. “Late again, is it? Guess I’ll try for the afternoon run.” “Smart,” she answers, “but I’ve been sitting here too long to leave now.” Is she, gentle reader, throwing good money after bad? Sometimes…

People who march in protest of one or another alleged abuse of the natural world often carry signs reading “There Is No Planet B.” What they mean is that this is the only planet we’ve got, and so we’d better take care of it. Fair enough, I guess. Turning off…

I write this short biographical essay for folks who haven’t seen biographical films such as Patrick: The Patron Saint of Ireland (2020), St. Patrick: Apostle of Ireland (2004), and St. Patrick: The Irish Legend (2000), or haven't read books such as Roy Flechner's Saint Patrick Retold (2019) and Thomas O’Loughlin's…

Part 3 provided one piece of shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. The second piece of shockingly good news is the number of Notre Dame students studying theology. When I was researching the state of the Catholic Faith at Notre Dame, I ran across the following article stating…

In Parts 1 and 2, I promised to describe the shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. Before I get to the shockingly good news, let me describe the simply good news for those readers not familiar with the campus or with its history (aside from football). For those…

When millions of pages of documents and photographs were released revealing who among the world’s so-called “elite” had been cavorting with sex-trafficking pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, many of those whose names and faces appeared in the caches scrambled to control the damage. Lawrence Summers, for example, who once swayed world economic…

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.…

In Part 1, linked below, I described the shockingly bad news coming out of Notre Dame. I promised that in Part 2 I would describe the shockingly good news. Instead, in this Part 2, I provide an update on the bad news described in Part 1. The good news will…

“Ivan Ilych has died,” an acquaintance reads from the announcement of a formal obituary. Having followed earlier reports of Ivan’s mysterious illness, his colleagues in the judiciary are not surprised. In his classic story “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Tolstoy recounts how they mourn in keeping with the hardness of…

At Mass for Wednesday in the First Week of Lent, the First Reading focuses on Jonah’s successful conversion of the Ninevites. Threatening them with God’s destruction should they not mend their ways, “the people of Ninevah believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put…

Folks, the good news out of the University of Notre Dame is shockingly good. The bad news out of Notre Dame is shockingly bad. I’ll start with the bad. On January 8, 2026, Notre Dame announced that a professor, Susan Ostermann, is being appointed, effective July 1, as director of…

President’s Day arrives every February with historical aura but then gets swallowed by appliance discounts and mattress commercials, as though civic memory can be replaced by a coupon code. The holiday has become a soft cultural placeholder, a day people “enjoy” while forgetting what it was meant to teach. The…