The Narthex

Your Catholic SAT Although many colleges have moved away from standardized tests like the SAT, in the name of “equity” and abandonment of academic standards, I believe they have value. One of the components of the SAT used to be a reading comprehension test. It tests for how closely one…

Cremation is a practice against which I regularly rail. I maintain that the Vatican’s 1963 relaxation of the ban on cremation by Catholics, as long as they didn’t resort to it to deny the resurrection of the body, was wrongheaded. Today’s Catholic cremator may not even think about “the resurrection…

There's a trope out there that orthodox Catholics write out of anger. That's unfair. I offer a short apologia for what usually motivates me to write. Take a piece I just published, on the murder of a 20-something Kentucky school teacher in Washington. The killing took place in broad daylight…

Arizona Governor Undermines Law Enforcement  The New York Times reports that Arizona Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs apparently doesn’t feel any obligation to abide by her constitutional oath faithfully to execute Arizona’s laws. In the wake of Dobbs, Arizona’s legislature enacted protective pro-life legislation that mirrors the Mississippi law upheld in…

Jesus once asked His Apostles whether any of them would hand a stone to a child seeking bread (Mt 7:9). I’m worried some of their successors might hand the child neither stone nor bread. In a July 6 interview on Portuguese State Television, cardinal-designate Americo Aguiar, organizer of World Youth…

“You are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.” -- Romans 8:9 Before we forget Sunday’s readings, some reflections on the Second. A reform and, arguably, achievement of Vatican II was an expanded Lectionary, including the…

Once upon a time, people distinguished between morals and manners. One shouldn’t offend either, but violating the former is a lot more serious than infringing on the latter. People instinctively recognize sleeping with your neighbor’s wife is in a qualitatively different ethical league than eating your main course with a…

In the wake of the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, partisans of abortion-on-demand continue to assert their “right to privacy” and trot out numerous other bogeymen of what an “out-of-control Supreme Court” might yet do to “human rights.” In light of this obsession with protecting…

Five years have passed since The New York Times broke the story that former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick had been found credibly guilty of sexual assault on a teenage altar boy in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, in connection with Christmas Midnight Mass. Read that sentence again. …

The significance of the outcome of the Fourth Global Anglican Future Convention (GAFCON IV) held last April in Kigali, Rwanda, is coming into ever sharper relief. That an overwhelming portion of Anglicanism, especially in the “Global South,” has been pushed to the point that it no longer recognizes its communion…

The Psalmist sings of praise and wisdom from an unexpected source: “out of the mouth of children and of babes” (8:2). Occasionally one can find another source: in advertisements. An ad seen this morning in the Washington Metro was headlined “Childhood Passes Faster Than a Weekend.” Don’t it? Perhaps I’m…

Once upon a time, not too long ago, June used to be associated with marriage. People spoke of “June weddings.” But while Stevie Wonder might have just been calling to say “I love you,” there was something prescient in his lyric about “no wedding Saturday within the month of June.”…

Princeton Professor Robert George has launched a new initiative that declares June “Fidelity Month” [see here]. He started the effort with a June 1 webinar, featuring a religiously diverse panel, discussing the importance of fidelity as social glue in three areas: marriage, local community, and national patriotism. George has…

My eldest son, John Zygmunt, graduated college last month with a double major. I’m proud of him and happily joined his commencement exercises at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. GMU, one of the largest public universities in the Commonwealth, proudly boasted that this year’s 11,000 undergrad and grad…

On Thursday, May 25, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an important decision in the case of Tyler v. Hennepin County, Minnesota et al. Bottom line up front: a unanimous Supreme Court swatted down Hennepin County’s property tax collecting policy. I’m commenting on it because there are aspects of the…