The Narthex

Jack, a member of our writing group, invited us to an appetizer party one afternoon after Christmas. On arriving, I rang the doorbell but heard no sound and saw only one car parked outside. I rang the bell again, then phoned to ask if I had the wrong time and…

Though using a wide variety of clever devices daily, few of us know how they work. Our roles in society are so specialized, and our cars and computers so sophisticated that most of us do not understand how they operate and can not fix them. All that matters to us…

Last week I went picketing, again. I say “again” because my picketing and protesting began, no fooling, at the Alamo during the Vietnam War. Last week the venue had shifted. The protest, in a duly authorized “Free Speech Zone,” was at Loyola Marymount University. The Democratic candidates for the presidency…

Every generation complains about the shortcomings of its successors. Grievances about the state of “the world today” have filled the thoughts of the grumpy (aged and ageing) since time began. But there’s never been a time when all was well. Dickens said it so nicely: “It was the best of…

At 9:00 on Saturday morning, cars are not jammed in the parking lot and only a few customers cruise the aisles of employee-owned WinCo's supermarket. At that early hour, it takes me about 30 minutes to finish my usual shopping list, with an average bill of $50 a week for…

1:00 PM, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, Friday, April 15, 2011 Jason, Craig, Joe, and I sit together in the train's lounge. We are absorbed in the luscious scenery where Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland conjoin with the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. The Appalachian Trail runs through here. We are entering…

I once wrote an article claiming that the Incarnation of Christ had been the central and pivotal event in world history. A good friend, a professor of mathematics and certainly no fool, thought my view “curious” but said that he would prefer to award the title to the Invention of…

Ever run out of time to answer your children’s questions? (It’s not that we don’t have the answers, right?) Well, there’s always the handy reply “Just because!” But suppose it’s we who have the questions, and we don’t have the answers? What then? We could always ask someone, maybe a…

Slow-release pills are nothing new, but within a few years a once-a-month birth control pill will hit the market. An article at Wired magazine (Dec. 4) explains how it works. Birth control developers, pushers, and users have long recognized that user error is the Achilles heel of the reigning daily-pill…

On an Amtrak train approaching Maryland, Friday, April 15, 2011 Craig invites Jason, a young genius in his late twenties, to join us. He is a non-degreed application technician devoted to robots as chief artist and scientist in the employ of Mechanimal in Pittsburgh, PA. He is traveling to D.C.…

Berea College, in rural Kentucky, was founded in 1855 by a Christian minister. The private liberal arts work college is known, at least regionally, for providing free education to students and for having been the first college in the South to be co-ed and racially integrated. Since its beginning, Berea…

3:15 PM, Thursday, April 14, Chicago, IL  On Amtrak, Craig, the eco-engineer I met earlier, and I arrive at Union Station, Chicago. Since we are both traveling to D.C. and have a three hour layover, we decide to walk down Wacker Drive and eat at a restaurant. Craig and I…

Ten years ago the excellent teacher Pope Benedict XVI preached on Advent. At the homily's outset he explains that the meaning of the Latin adventus, from which the term Advent derives, can be rendered with presence, arrival, or coming. He continues, "In the language of the ancient world it was a…

Most speeches, happily, are over when they are over. Once over, they get ignored. Not so Senator Marco Rubio’s recent “Common Good Capitalism.” The Senator chose The Catholic University of America as his venue, and he makes a decent effort to draw on Catholic Social Teaching. At its center, as…

Daniel Larison, over at The American Conservative, writes on the last 20 years of America’s wars of choice. In “The Costs Of Forever War: 335,000 Dead Civilians And $6.4 Trillion” he cites a recent study on post-9/11 wars and military action in the Middle East and Asia, published by the…