The Narthex

On April 16, the Wall Street Journal reported that five large book publishers have joined the case filed by a sixth large publisher to prevent the State of Iowa from restricting the purchase or use of certain books for school libraries and classrooms (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Major Publishers Join Iowa…

You may remember having an adult read to you, or you reading to a child, The Giving Tree (1964), written and illustrated by the late Shel Silverstein (1930-1999). This book was the subject of a sophisticated symposium in the January 1995 issue of First Things, a magazine edited by the…

Some time ago, my wife and I were visiting my elderly, widowed father in his home in suburban Chicago. We remarked to him that, in his 25 years in this home, his gardening had achieved outstanding results, due not only to his efforts but to superbly fecund loam. Since all…

The term “shock and awe” entered our lexicon during the 1990-91 Gulf War when the American-led coalition sought to eject Iraq after the latter’s invasion of Kuwait. “Shock and awe” referred to the coalition’s aerial bombardment prior to a tank and infantry assault. It was meant to demoralize the Iraqi…

I was sitting in church waiting for Sunday Mass to begin. My church has a large crucifix with a corpus above and behind the altar. With the image of the crucified Christ in my eyes, I spoke to Him about all the troubles of our current times. Then I implored…

A big lie is that Catholics oppress women by, for example, not allowing them to be ordained priests or deacons, by not giving them (enough) positions of power in the Vatican, by keeping them “barefoot and pregnant” by opposing contraception and abortion, and by holding marriage up as a realizable…

The story of the three Magi from the East following the star to Jerusalem is told during the Christmas season (Matt. 2:1-18). It is not like the heart-warming aspects of Christ’s birth, with an angel speaking to shepherds and angels singing. Rather, it is a story that ends with weeping…

February 12 is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. It is not by coincidence that Lincoln’s Birthday falls within Black History Month. Since President Ford’s proclamation in 1976, every February has been proclaimed Black History Month. The Month evolved from Black History Week, which had been first promoted in 1926 by eminent scholar Dr.…

I was amazed the first time I heard it. President Trump apparently was too. People started chanting “We love you!” at his 2020 rallies, and this has continued into the current election cycle. Perhaps you haven’t known about this. For your sake, then, I found a few instances online: Nov.…

In 2013, Pope Francis suspended Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg, Germany, a diocese which includes Frankfurt, who renovated his residence and other church-owned buildings to the tune of over $41 million. The projects included "luxuries like a $20,000 bathtub, a $1.1 million landscaped garden and plans for an 800-square-foot…

In the middle of the Gulf War of 1991, the commanding general, the late General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. (“Stormin’ Norman”), complained publicly that he was receiving intelligence reports filled with so many caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes, that it was as though, he said, the reports had been written by lawyers.…

We see occasional reports that attempt to quantify the number of species that have become extinct over a certain period of years or centuries or millennia. And we see occasional reports identifying various species at risk of extinction. We go to great lengths to save species. Think of the bald…

Fr. Gilligan was a wily American priest who served in the Vatican Diplomatic Corps and saved many lives during the Communist takeover in China. As mentioned previously in this blog series, I must here reply to claims made by Ms. Bibiani Yee-Wing Wong in a past issue of U.S. Catholic…

Readers will recall that in Part 1 of this series I quoted from Msgr. Breslin’s funeral eulogy for Father Gilligan, telling two short stories about this wily priest-diplomat. His first story concerned foreign missionaries, as related in Part 2. His second story concerned native Chinese. During the Communist takeover of…

Ms. Wong disparages the credibility of Msgr. Breslin’s accounts in his funeral eulogy for Father Gilligan since Breslin did not hear of these events from Gilligan himself when he was living with him.[1] But Msgr. Breslin stated that, for both stories, he relied on multiple sources, “a stream”…