The Narthex

Does charity begin at home? The short answer to the question is yes, it surely does. But the answer is controversial. In part, that’s because a short answer often calls for a careful explanation and we don’t provide it. Sometimes we’ve filed it where we can’t find it. That’s alright,…

Wittgenstein, in his early Tractatus, concludes his remarks with the proposition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Many took him to mean that we can only speak of that for which there is empirical evidence or that which is simply tautological. If that were so, could we…

The more we know, the more we don’t know. It takes a lot of living to recognize our peculiar predicament. Even so, there are dissenters. Skeptics say that we don’t know what we think we do. Ideologues insist that they know what they don’t know. But why is it that…

How much does logic matter? It matters greatly if we are to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind. But does logic matter to God? Rene Descartes was skeptical. In replying to critics, he contended that “God could have brought it about … that…

A colleague claims that time spent playing chess is time wasted. Nay, sir, I respond, “Chess is an art disguised as a game.” Golly, I’ve been playing chess since middle school. Game or art, it can be a source of delight and dismay. In recent days, I’ve been following the…

If memory serves, and it sometimes does, the first bit of philosophy that I read was as a callow youth in a cushioned chair at the local library. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s elegant little essay “Gifts.” A Unitarian turned transcendentalist, Emerson (1803-1882) championed the American Genius, especially in literature.…

Making our list? Yes, and checking it twice! This year we splurged on an extra-postage Christmas card, and our working list is from 2021. What a difference three years makes. As expected, some folks have just moved. Some, sadly, have died. We mark RIP on the list and say a…

Have you ever been to a Town Hall gathering? Not I. City Hall, yes, and there to fight its folly. But now, lo and behold, I’ve been invited to a Town Hall event and even asked to contribute. Here on the Left Coast, where California Dreamin’ is always in play,…

Rumor has it that the annual Diocesan Priest Retreat features a lottery. The winner, and only the winner, is allowed to discuss his physical maladies. Such a limitation is not the case for late-septuagenarian bloggers. But I’ll not regale you, gentle reader, with physical maladies. Instead, I beg your indulgence…

Do you remember being nine? As it happens, I don’t much remember being nine. But ten was a big year for me. Golly, I had a Schwinn bike. I weighed 76 pounds. We put up a basketball hoop. The downside of that year was coming down, precociously, with “mono.” Cuidado,…

A respected, and now suspected, newspaper once pledged to give subscribers “All the news that’s fit to print.” Today, that same paper violates its pledge both by commission and omission. Time for a new slogan? Here’s a suggestion: “All the propaganda that will fit.” And yet I read the rag,…

Hannah Arendt contended, and controversially, that the source of what she called “the banality of evil” is that people simply don’t, and won’t, think. The resultant evil is endemic under totalitarian and autocratic regimes. It’s only commonplace under liberal and quasi-democratic and bureaucrat institutions! But this sorry state of affairs…

Though I’d seen billboards for tattoo conventions, I’d never been to one. Then, of a sudden, I was in the middle of one. There it was, in the lobby of the hotel where the American Maritain Association was holding its annual conference. Every day we’re all seeing more tattoos. Pew…

If I were to run the Big City Standard Zoo, it would become a whole lot smaller. Snakes and turtles, birds and bugs would stay. But there’d be no mammals except for “rescues,” and they’d be temporary guests only. Pleased with my zoological reform, I’m emboldened to think big. What…

Some of my best friends are grumpy old men. So the question arises: Can they be saints? Let’s hope so. Keep in mind, gentle reader, that not so long ago a concerned lady, a scholar of note, asked me whether the NOR itself had fallen into the hands of grumpy…