The Narthex

As undergraduates at St. Mary’s College in Orchard Lake, Michigan, we were required as part of our core curriculum to take a course in art and/or music, and “Introduction to Humanities” fulfilled the requirement. I’ll admit that, as a 19-year-old, I wasn’t excited about the class and it didn’t help…

In announcing that non-bishops would be able to vote in this fall’s Synod on Synodality, Rome tried simultaneously to hype and downplay the news. Channeling its inner Leslie Neilsen, the synodal website blandly headlined the change as “Some News for the October 2023 Assembly.” General Relator Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich gave…

After delivering a muddled set of remarks about assisted suicide which now the Pontifical Academy for Life claims do not mean what most people think they mean, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia wants us really to believe that he was merely engaging in a thought experiment about how Italian civil law should…

The Octave Day of Easter—the Sunday following Easter—has gone by several names, including Divine Mercy Sunday and the Second Sunday of Easter. One of its oldest names is Dominica in albis, “Sunday in white,” because this was the day that those newly baptized at the Easter Vigil historically took off…

Let us familiarize ourselves with the titles accorded these Cappadocian bishops we have studied: Basil, Gregory, and Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory of Nyssa is considered the philosopher and mystic; he wrote less than the other two but perhaps more deeply. An ecumenical council in 787 pronounced him “Father of…

Following the council of 381, Gregory returned to Nazianzus. For Lent, he gave up speaking! (Newman, Historical Sketches, p. 86) In his autobiographical poem, Gregory used some harsh words to describe his relationship with Basil. Yet, at the same time that he wrote the poem, he delivered a funeral oration…

Until Gregory’s father’s death in 374, Gregory stayed in Nazianzus. Despite the rupture between Gregory and Basil, Basil attended Gregory’s father’s funeral. (Gregory’s father had always supported making Basil a bishop; see Funeral Orations, p. 154.) Gregory, his father’s auxiliary bishop, did not want to succeed his father. Because nothing…

Gregory refused to go to the appointed town in Basil’s jurisdiction, becoming, in his words, “a fugitive.” At first, Gregory’s father tried to persuade him to be an active bishop of Sasima, then, when the father’s health declined, the father, himself a bishop, asked Gregory to become his auxiliary (Concerning…

The reason Gregory had left Basil after his visit to Basil’s monastery was related to Gregory’s family. Gregory’s father, now in his 80’s, had become ill and had asked his son to return home. During Christmastime, 362, Gregory was ordained a priest. Immediately Gregory thought he’d made a mistake and…

Basil either returned directly home from Athens and then toured the principal monasteries of the Eastern Roman Empire in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria or toured the monasteries before coming home (it’s unclear from my review of sources). At some point in these travels Basil’s older sister, St. Macrina, upbraided Basil…

In my last post I related how Gregory spared Basil "hazing" on beginning school in Athens. The second thing Gregory did for Basil when they were students was as follows: Some of their childhood friends now at the school asked Basil questions. At first, Gregory joined in the discussion hoping…

The Church annually celebrates the feast days of St. Basil of Caesarea and St. Gregory of Nazianzus on January 1 in the East and January 2 in the West. Their story of great affection, and estrangement, follows below. But first let me say that Pope St. John Paul II often…

The press is repeating Bishop (and now Cardinal-elect) Robert McElroy’s charge that excluding Catholic politicians from Communion is wrongheaded. “It will bring tremendously destructive consequences” he writes, and politics is to blame. “The Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare.” McElroy also points to the…

The first phase of the synod on synodality aims to collect input from the Church's peripheries. It's hard to imagine what kind of feedback Church leaders expect from a global-scale project like this. If bishops and cardinals want perspectives from pew-sitters and Catholics on the margins, then perhaps they should…

Pope Francis meets and greets Nancy Pelosi. So it went last week. Then followed a practiced exchange of smiles. Since the devil is no respecter of persons, he was doubtless there as well. But our angels love us far more than the devil hates us, so we can hope that…