The Narthex

Our neighborhood still has mail -- mostly ads -- hand-delivered by a robust man in his sixties with whom I occasionally chat. He’s an intelligent man whose astute and informative perspective makes for lively conversations. For three weeks, someone had replaced him. Yesterday, I was glad to see Joe was…

“Karl Meyer On the Road Again” read a recent ad in The Catholic Worker. At 84 he was planning a cross country peace mission. I first met Karl in 1966 when he ran St. Stephen House of Hospitality in Chicago. I was an undergraduate, for a semester, at Loyola University…

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…

About 40 fathers at a high school in Shreveport, Louisiana, have done something simple, effective, and mostly untried at school: They are using their presence to combat violence that recently led to 23 students arrested in three days. "Dads on Duty" group founder Michael LaFitte says, "“We decided the best…

Chris Arnade is a photographer and writer whose bestseller Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America (2019) shone a light on the people left behind by globalist technocrats, on the people "who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class." Back Row Americans…

Living as I do in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is impossible to keep up with all the neologisms that have been concocted to promote inclusion. Recently I was at a local liquor store browsing the selection of Double IPAs for a friend’s birthday. After grabbing a few,…

In the late sixties, I stayed a weekend at a Bruderhof and then hoped to experience the Shaker version of Heaven on Earth that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Ralph Waldo Emerson had much admired. But I was late by about 100 years, for in 1968 their numbers had dwindled…

Nineteen Sixty-four is a research blog for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University. The blog periodically posts research findings which are often accompanied by helpful graphs and charts. A pre-COVID post at Nineteen Sixty-four offers data on U.S. Catholic parish closures and openings, and…

According to the meaning of the term woke, I better wake up to my ingrained pride and prejudice. Maybe I’m unaware of my racism and misogyny because I’m a senior and an Italian Catholic. As a thoroughbred descendent of the Roman Empire, I believe there are only two kinds of…

On the first warm day of spring, some vagrants came out of their nooks and hideaways to congregate in the local park for fellowship. Several men, old and young, sat together at a stone picnic table, chatting, eating, and drinking beer or cheap wine early in the day. During the…

The U.S. Census Bureau has released data from what it calls an "experimental" Household Pulse Survey on the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates. The survey shows a "substantial increase" from spring of 2020 to the start of the current school year. The survey-makers made sure their questioning was clear…

I started working at the NEW OXFORD REVIEW in October 2020. Well, that’s not true. I started before I can remember. I read galleys in high school and college. I folded renewals and endorsed checks all throughout middle school. I opened mail in elementary school; granted, early on it…

Vatican Council II counsels us to search out “the signs of the times.” The Latin, “signa perscrutandi” suggests the keen scrutiny this involves. One sign of our calamitous times is the invasion of the slogans of the day. What’s the difference between a sign and a slogan? A sign points,…

Some billionaires have asked to be taxed more, and that is about to happen. Golden State legislators are pushing a first-in-the-nation net wealth tax bill, called AB-2088, that would affect some 300 Californians with a net worth of $30 million or more. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has $118 billion…

I often visited a retirement complex to see my friend, Della. She would serve me cinnamon tea while we talked about religion and current events. An oil painting of a yellow canary hung on her living room wall. As I admired several other works, she said, “I painted them all.…