The Narthex

Chris Arnade is a photographer and writer whose bestseller Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America (2019) shone a light on the people left behind by globalist technocrats, on the people "who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class." Back Row Americans…

To my mind the greatest challenge of human education is the building and maintaining of historical awareness. How can we have even an inkling of where we stand and where we’re heading if our grasp of the past is feeble or non-existent? Human memory is so short, and deliberate bias…

On September 30, 2021, the United States Senate confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning as the new director of the Bureau of Land Management (WashingtonTimes.com, Sept. 30). Choosing someone to fill the Bureau of Land Management director position is not normally cause for a national furor, but this time was different. In a…

I received a phone call from my 91-year-old friend Lou, who had asked me for advice on several occasions. I had just awakened from a nap, but my grogginess vanished on hearing the urgent tone of his voice. Lately his health had been failing from a hiatal hernia that caused…

Check out this headline: "Transgender students 'unknowingly' admitted to Catholic seminaries, archbishop warns" (Catholic News Agency, Sept. 29). CNA reports on a recent memo sent from chairman of the USCCB’s canonical affairs committee, Milwaukee archbishop Jerome Listecki, to members of the full USCCB. A link to the full story is…

Passion is trending! There’s nary a resumé in which the applicant doesn’t tell us “my passion is…” nor an author’s bio-sketch that doesn’t confide that “______ is my passion.” A precedent: David Hume admitted that literary fame, not philosophy, was his ruling passion. Whatever the passion be, a promise comes…

Review of: Mere Marriage: Sexual Difference and Christian Doctrine. By Andrew D. Cannon, Ph.D. Alphonsus Publishing, available at MereMarriage.com. 215 pages. $24.95.   George Weigel devoted eleven pages of his 1999 biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, to the saint-pope’s Theology of the Body. He concluded that…

Houdini was the master of illusion in the 1920s. Like today’s David Copperfield -- the highest paid solo performer in history -- Houdini mystified rapt audiences with incredible death-defying acts. As a youth he worked his card tricks and vanishing acts in dime circuses. After training as a locksmith he…

I have now had both vaccine doses; I’m neither an “anti-vaxxer” nor a conspiracy theorist. But I have good, intelligent, well-informed, and rational friends who strongly oppose the vaccine, and I do not like to see them punished by the infliction of civil disabilities or verbal abuse. Some Christians and…

Living as I do in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is impossible to keep up with all the neologisms that have been concocted to promote inclusion. Recently I was at a local liquor store browsing the selection of Double IPAs for a friend’s birthday. After grabbing a few,…

In our everyday decisions we use hearsay reputations to decide, say, for or against a dentist or doctor. Reliable references from former patients are helpful, and as social animals we are inclined to run with the herd to survive. Hearsay statements are used to prove truth or falsehood but are…

Transparency is important. Interested in the latest batch of election returns? In California, the Secretary of State posts them in real time. Concerned about what Rome’s doing with the yearly Peter’s Pence collection? An audit is in order, isn’t it? Wondering about what Corporate is concocting? Try lobbying for more…

Have you noticed how the liberal mainstream media has become awfully pro-war? This is a change from a generation ago. The Quincy Institute's Responsible Statecraft website now features "Day of reckoning for the media handmaidens of war" by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos. In it she recaps the change in the American…

I looked at the wall clock in our kitchen and saw both a large and small hand pointing straight up at an odd symbol. At five years old, I had an idea it meant food when the hands overlapped there. Whenever that happened, Mom would tell me it’s lunchtime. Now,…

Few today may remember the American actor and comedian George Burns. He died in 1996, at the age of exactly 100, a venerable doyen of the Vaudeville era. Never on stage without his signature cigar, he delighted generations with his arched eyebrow, gravelly voice, and pessimistic Jewish humor. My favorite…