The Narthex

The devil is in the details -- and in definitions. For such details we might reflect on the new Vatican-Beijing accords, already in jeopardy, and the not-so-new nuclear weapons treaties now publicly flaunted. How about definitions? Let’s consider, as a trial run, humanism. As always, context counts. The French Revolution,…

The city built a small neighborhood park around the corner from me. Half-a-dozen homeless people congregate there. I seem to be one of their kind with my close-cut beard, Goodwill clothing, and droopy shade hat. They’ve been waving and greeting me with “Como esta?” “Muy bien,” I respond with a…

One is tempted to view feast days of the Church with a certain abstract detachment.  The events they mark seem relegated to the past and thus lack a certain realness to them.  But the Solemnity of the Assumption keeps us from succumbing to this temptation.  Among the many Marian feast…

“During a carnival, men put masks over their masks.” -- Xavier Forneret   Masks have been in use all over the world since before recorded history. In Central Africa, masks developed with a wide diversity and conveyed spiritual and religious meaning to ritual dances and ceremonies. In ancient Egypt, they…

Domestic terrorism. Religious persecution, both secular and professedly religious. The posturing of pro-abortion extremists. Assaults on democracy. Economic wars. Some weeks it’s crushingly obvious: we live in a valley of tears. Psalm 84:6-8 speaks of such a valley. So does the Marian anthem, “Hail, Holy Queen,” which so many recite…

Mother Jones magazine recently published a U.S. Mass Shootings Database for the years 1982-2019, which is available as a downloadable spreadsheet. (Google the magazine name and the name of the database; you can't miss it.) The spreadsheet includes dates, locations, number of dead and wounded, as well as details of…

The philosopher Simone Weil’s Waiting on God (1950) is a haunting reflection on the distance between “the everyday” and the transcendent. A year earlier the playwright Samuel Beckett finished his Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s “Godot” is a fantasist’s inkblot: interpret him as you please. Not so the God to whom…

Earlier this month, under pressure from LGBT groups, Amazon stopped selling books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.  Dr. Nicolosi was well known for reparative therapy that helped many people overcome the temptation to same-sex attraction.  Of course, the fact that Dr. Nicolosi wanted to free people from both disordered inclinations and…

A faithful member of my writing critique group was moving out of state, so we threw her a goodbye party. I sat at the end of a foldout table on a spacious patio, talking with a newer member, a man in his eighties writing a novel based on his experiences…

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki obviously resulted in widespread civil chaos from which there was no rapid recovery. Fast-forward to 1960, when scientists unleashed another kind of bomb, The Pill. Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood funded the research leading to its commercial development. One…

When Christ gave to His followers freedom from the law, He was, in essence, promising them freedom from reliance on loopholes.  No longer bound toes to a line, our feet were unshackled to roam the fields of freedom.  The problem is that reliance on loopholes has…

Parish life begins in the parking lot. My wife saw her first, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Well, yes, politicians come and fortunately they go. But our current representative has yet to go, and we are in possession of a letter from her with the bland assurance that partial birth abortion is…

The last decade has seen incredible growth in the number of people who regularly practice yoga. Despite its popularity, most practitioners are woefully ignorant of its roots and meaning.  Many Catholics can be counted among this group.  In fact, some parishes even going so far as to host “Mommy’s Morning…

Last year the state of Washington began requiring all health plans that cover maternity care to cover abortion procedures also. This year the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Cedar Park Church challenging the statute as unconstitutional on religious-freedom grounds. No doubt the lawsuit will run…

A cousin emailed me a news clip about the latest research on reviving dead pig brains. Yale’s BrainEx experiments offer the possibility of keeping much of the brain alive separate from the body. That drastic procedure performed on humans ― which no scientific review board would currently approve ― is…