The Narthex

Stephen Doran’s new book, To Die Well: A Catholic Neurosurgeon’s Guide to the End of Life, is a gem that pulls off several achievements simultaneously. It’s readable while tackling the major issues of bioethics around death and dying while situating the whole discussion in a spiritual context, recognizing that death…

The readings for the Feast of the Holy Family seem, by some contemporary standards, to be a bit quaint and dated. That’s because they put a lot of emphasis on obedience. Obedience correlates with other concepts, including authority and even hierarchy. Those are words at which our “democratic” world (and…

The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, is poorly understood by contemporary Catholics. It doesn’t, in that regard, differ from many of our other holydays of obligation, the significance of only one of which -- Christmas -- is arguably at least somewhat well grasped. Consider the others. There are still…

Tomorrow, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs. I make that explicit because in the past few years there has been something like an ecclesiastical version of bait-and-switch in some quarters to change the focus of the feast. Today’s feast is about children: baby boys aged two…

Thanks to the Catholic Bishops of the United States’ Complementary Norms, January 1, 2024 -- the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God -- will not be a holyday of obligation. That’s because, under those Norms, certain holydays cease being holydays of obligation if they fall on Saturdays or Mondays. The…

Catholics in Ukraine mark their second Christmas, and third winter, under Russian attack. Instead of awaiting the first star on Christmas Eve to mark the beginning of the Christmas supper, Ukrainian children will watch for incoming Russian missile fire. Instead of angels singing over the winter fields, the sound of…

This past weekend marked the semiquincentennial of the Boston Tea Party. Two hundred and fifty years ago, on December 16, 1773, assorted colonials in Boston dumped chests of the British East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor. One could clearly see how much the Americans had lost their British roots:…

Regular readers know I am a harsh critic of cremation and of the Church’s misconceived 1963 decision to tolerate it. I have repeatedly argued that that 1963 rescission of the prohibition on cremation allowed the camel to poke its nose under the tent, upending the latter. The most cursory survey…

Rabbi David Ellenson died December 7 in New York. I read about it in The New York Times. I’ll admit to knowing nothing about the man before I read his obituary. The phenomenon of reading obituaries kicks in at a certain age. As a child, I was always puzzled by the…

Ideas for essays are sometimes like grace: they come from the most unexpected places. Today’s comes from Facebook, in a post by Scott Hahn about failure. Hahn posted a passage from St. Josemaría Escrivà’s rich book of spiritual aphorisms, The Way. The excerpt (no. 405) deals specifically with failure. “So you…

As we mark the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, I present two thoughts on why Our Lady under the title of the “Immaculate Conception” is the fitting patroness for the United States. First, we Americans continue to fail to reckon with the reality of “conception.” Notwithstanding the reversal of Roe…

In a recent post here, I reminisced about the “Committee of Ten Million,” Gil Durand’s 1973 lay initiative to amass ten million petition signatures to be delivered publicly to Congress demanding a Human Life Amendment. Ten million signatures in 1973 would have been about five percent of the U.S. population,…

If you are reading this on Friday, December 1, you have until midnight to act on a pro-life matter. On October 2, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to change regulations on what can be funded under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)…

I grasped my keys in my coat pocket. Good thing I bought a Honda: their ignition key is nice and long. Among moves that I learned in self-defense was that keys held between one’s index and middle finger can be effectively jabbed into somebody’s eyes, usually long enough to stop…

Last Sunday’s Gospel for the Solemnity of Christ the King is Matthew’s Last Judgment account. I have to admit I’m partial to that text because, prior to the 1969 Calendar Reform that inserted Christ the King as the last Sunday of the liturgical year, there was a kind of eschatological…