The Narthex

Portions of the U.S. have become like the “wild west,” and in many ways even worse than that. A CNN headline from earlier this year reads, “More US school-age children die from guns than on-duty US police or global military fatalities, study finds.” This blog post is not about being…

Societies in wealthier nations for several decades have been discussing the replacement of workers by robots and machines. It now seems quaint to recall, from perhaps 15 years ago, the shock expressed at those grocery chains who first adopted use of "self-checkouts." My local supermarket has recently installed another cluster…

The Pew Research Center has recently issued new data on the decline of Christianity in the U.S., a decline they say "continues at a rapid pace." Below is a link to the Pew survey results. A few highlights: - 65% of American adults now describe themselves as Christians, while those…

A Convention of the Right met in Paris a few weekends ago. In France as in much of the EU, conservative and traditional beliefs are called extreme by the media. So, you can bet journalists assigned to the convention had their ears out for trouble -- and did they get…

Global arms sales are booming, despite a multilateral Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) officially adopted in 2013. As of last month, 105 countries have ratified the ATT, including half the world’s top ten arms producers. The U.S. signed the treaty in 2013 but never ratified it. Critics of the treaty see…

Vos estis lux mundi (or Vos estis for short) is Pope Francis’s recent motu proprio establishing bishop accountability. Two U.S. bishops are feeling the heat of Vos estis. One is Bishop Michael Hoeppner of Crookston, Minnesota, who will be investigated by Minneapolis archbishop Bernard Hebda, on charges of abuse cover-up.…

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…

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 group of fearless movie-makers is about to release Unplanned, a film based on Abby Johnson's story of going from being manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic to becoming a highly effective pro-life activist. You can bet that the entertainment industry is dead-set against this film. Check out these quotes…

In the March 1 installment of our “Daily News” feed, we linked to an article on the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (which is Australia's state-owned and funded national public radio and TV-broadcaster) by Fr. James Alison called “Welcome to my world: Notes on the reception of Frédéric Martel's…

NOR readers who follow our daily news links are no doubt up-to-the-minute on the clerical sex abuse crisis. But for anyone who needs a one-article summary of said crisis, I recommend Emma Green’s “Why Does the Catholic Church Keep Failing on Sexual Abuse?” in The Atlantic (Feb. 14). Besides a…

Pope Francis has repeatedly voiced support for hearing more from women in the Church. According to Crux (Jan. 31) this week he and the Vatican were offered advice from prominent survivor of clerical sexual abuse Marie Collins. In fact the sturdy Irishwoman, who was appointed by Pope Francis to the…

You may recall New Oxford Review’s story of a Providence College student named Michael Smalanskas, who bravely confronted politically-correct college administrators over his display about traditional Church teaching on marriage (see “The New Hate Speech: Catholic Teaching at a Catholic College,” May 2018; link here: https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/the-new-hate-speech-catholic-teaching-at-a-catholic-college/). Now it’s another…

Does the Synod of Bishops on Young People, running this month in Rome, strike anyone else as same-old same-old? The Church continues to come across as bureaucratic and uninspiring. Aside from some free trips to Rome for some motivated young people, it's hard to see how a train of meetings…

Many a cardinal and bishop has praised lay involvement in the Church. One wonders if involvement by ex-FBI agents is what some didn't have in mind? A group of American laymen called Better Church Governance (BCG) is launching a new initiative to assess cardinals’ records on combatting abuse and corruption,…