The Narthex

Wearing a wire was a staple of the old crime shows on television. A ne’er-do-well who had turned state’s witness would agree to have a recording device taped to his chest or secreted in his clothes. Then he would meet some other bad guys in a cheap hotel room, recording…

The New York Times likes occasionally to run articles about “gray divorce,” i.e., the phenomenon of people 50+ splitting up. Case in point: its approving commentary on June 22, “Older Adults Are No Longer Staying in ‘Empty-Shell’ Marriages” (linked below). It reads, "[N]early 40 percent of divorces today occur between…

The grand narrative of human space flight to the planet Mars stretches across my entire life, woven together by a bizarre chain of historical and personal milestones. As a child, I loved munching on the original Mars candy bars. They were wrapped in glittering foil that caught the sunlight like…

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." -- St. Augustine of Hippo

At 96 I sometimes view time as an enemy, not a friend. So…

I continue my discussion of Pugin’s Contrasts. The operative word in the full title of Contrasts is noble. Pugin showed his readers illustrations of medieval buildings designed to comport with the nobility, the dignity, of the human beings who resided in them and worked in them. But he did not…

“Even all the hairs of your head are counted” (Mt 10:30). The above verse about the divine follicle census appeared in Sunday’s Gospel. It shows up in the middle of a larger passage about proper perspectives on fear. Human beings are often afraid and, in many cases, they should be.…

The burial service of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer speaks of the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” John Henry Newman was, of course, deeply familiar with this language. Perhaps it prompted him to write his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. It’s…

In Part 1, I described the evidence of the importance of the Sacred Heart to the University of Notre Dame from its founding in 1842. Turning to recent times: What was the situation on campus in 2021 and what was the situation this year regarding the commemoration of the Solemnity…

When graduates of New York University booed Jonathan Haidt at Yankee Stadium on May 14, and a smaller group walked out during his commencement address, they offered a rather generous public demonstration of the exact civic immaturity he has spent years describing. Reporting from Forbes described the above actions, and…

In February and March I wrote at length about the University of Notre Dame and the shockingly bad and shockingly good news from that campus on the subject of its Catholic identity (see the link below). This essay continues in this vein with a narrow focus: the university’s treatment of…

This essay is the latest of several I have written on what I call “faith-based land use planning,”[i] planning that integrates love of God and love of neighbor by including places of worship and places of service. My focus here is on the Victorian Gothic Revivalist Augustus Welby…

Baptisms and funerals -- and how I wish there were more of the first and fewer of the second! -- underscore our historical character. Consider, as well, how we mark an historic event by asking, for example, “Where were you when Leo XIV stepped forth as the first American pope?”…

In 1776 it was a stockade against the coming Redcoats; in the 1950s, a fallout shelter against Soviet missiles. The form changes, but the psychology does not. Both respond to the same ancient fear: How do I protect myself from uncertainty, loss, suffering, and death? In 1953, when I was…

In 753 B.C., Rome rose in the imagination of the ancient world with the story of two brothers with lives marked by violence, destiny, and divine intrigue. From that narrative emerged a civilization whose influence continues to shape the Church, the West, and the very structure of human thought. According…

At sixteen years old in 1958, I worked in an East Boston shipyard. It was an environment of high-stakes, industrial-grade labor. I stood on the deck of a new hull with multi-ton overhead steel plates swinging into place, dodging the blinding glare of arc welding and the constant hiss of…