The Narthex

In California, where bad things often begin, the papers tell us that we are facing a climate apocalypse. The fires are, indeed, horrific. But there’s no turning back from a true apocalypse. Something closer to a true apocalypse awaits us, and we are currently planning to hasten its arrival. Our…

Are we about to vote for the soul of the nation? Well, maybe. The political figures who say so are keener than ever to get out the vote, as are the “thought leaders” now popping up everywhere. The first order of business for those who insist that political figures really…

For many years, when urged to vote for a US president, I’d push back hard. My favorite riposte? “Don’t vote; it just encourages them.” Still, there’s a season for (almost) everything. And who says that a bloke can’t change after he turns 39? Not I, and here’s why. Note: As…

In sorting through the L.A. Times the other day, I came upon an eight-page supplement titled CHINA WATCH. The insert promises “ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW.” Caveat Lector: this publication is a product of China Daily, a news vehicle of China’s Communist Party. Indeed, cards on the table, at the…

Last week a friend with ties to Africa sent me a picture of some local nuns in Tanzania. Their ministry is to shelter at-risk children. Commenting on the picture, he noted that “All the ‘white’ children are albinos. Nine albinos, none of these pictured here, were killed in 2019 for…

The gravestone of former New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal reads, “He kept the paper straight.” Last month, A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, disavowed “hiding behind” old standards. Sulzberger went on to say, “We’re not retreating from the principles of independence and objectivity. We don’t…

We are urged to have serious conversations about race, and we should. In this post, gentle reader, I push a bit to make them more serious. Let’s bypass the cant of the major political parties. And let’s be on watch both for numbing inertia and for hijacked populism. Objectivity helps,…

Context, like character, counts. Allow me to offer a context for the two weeks of protest marches in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. A blogpost has limits but is far preferable to a slogan or a meme. For a start, the murder took place in an ethos…

The New York Times vacillates in its effect on readers. Often enough it induces nausea. But sometimes it gives us food for thought. A recent obituary, “Joel Kupperman, Scarred by Success as a Precocious ‘Quiz Kid,’ Dies at 83” (May 15, page A24) is surely food for thought. So what’s…

A saint is someone who lets the light shine in -- the light of Christ, Lumen Christi. And the light can become a blaze. The joyous Easter Exsultet announces, “This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.” For now, of course, contradictions abound…

Chris Arnade’s Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America recounts his four years of accompanying, and listening to, Americans who have been left behind. The book comes with striking photographs of the people to whom he introduces us. Many he meets at the local McDonald’s or a storefront church. Arnade…

When the coronavirus pandemic subsides, and if we keep our wits about us, we’ll begin to reboot our economy. Even now, it’s high time to rethink our economy. I’d like to suggest two proposals for this project. One proposal is modest enough. The other, admittedly, is entirely and flagrantly immodest.…

Common sense is often in short supply. Far too many people go about their daily routines paying little attention to the role that social distancing plays in saving lives, including their own. That said, the pandemic also calls for “clarification of thought,” as Peter Maurin liked to say, about three…

Of late we’ve heard much about caution—indeed, an abundance of caution, and rightly so. My caveat about caution is this: that we keep it in context. The context is the virtue of prudence. And what is prudence? Above all it is right reason in acting. We shouldn’t confuse it with…

There are home truths that few politicians acknowledge. Occasionally, though, a politician throws caution to the wind. In his “American malaise speech” broadcast on national television in the summer of 1979, Jimmy Carter told the country that “All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America.” That’s…