The Narthex

Get Ready Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation. From today until Christmas is exactly nine months (for those of you who like to get "holiday" preparations underway early!). Today Jesus' Life began. Over the next several months, I'd like to remind readers on the 25th of just how Our…

Below is the Catholic Church’s first litany for lawyers and government officials. It has been ecclesiastically approved for private devotion. (Seven approved litanies exist for public devotion and dozens for private devotion.) I composed it for those who work, as I did, in the field of law as lawyers, legislators,…

Let’s Get the Calendar Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar was on social media March 19, proclaiming it as “Medicaid Day of Action.” I expected that shortly thereafter, 46 other blue Senators would repeat the same talking points. Can I ask some mole to please get us the calendar of Democratic…

The Holy Spirit will be our Comforter, our Healer, hovering over a cauldron of people in purgatory who are seething with anger, bubbling with resentment. In their heart of hearts, they love God, but they can’t help their feelings. Their anger and their love rise and fall like a heart’s…

“If memory serves,” I sometimes say, which puts my wife on alert. Is my selective amnesia (from the Greek ἀ-  "without" and μνήσις "memory") about to kick in? Maybe, but even so I’m the family archivist. Blimey! Who gets assigned to foraging in our archives, fittingly located in the shed…

As observed at the beginning of this essay, the “after” picture vis-à-vis purgatory is that there are no more tears. Consider the soothing words of Eucharistic Prayer No. 3: “There [in Your kingdom] we hope to enjoy forever the fullness of Your glory, when You will wipe away every tear…

Let us continue our query of what causes anguish for those in purgatory, starting with losses or lost opportunities and then the wounds inflicted by others. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”[1] In this…

As we settle into Lent, let me recommend a good film about sin worth watching: Sven Nykvist’s 1991 film The Ox. The film is set in 1867 Sweden. Mid-19th century Sweden was not like wealthy, 21st-century Sweden. There is a reason Minnesota and North Dakota have as many Swedes and…

We continue our query of what happens in purgatory and what causes anguish for those in purgatory. Tears Over Our Sins While in purgatory, what will we remember exactly? Will we be given the ability to remember everything, both good and bad?[1] St. Augustine thought so. We may…

Five years having passed since the COVID lockdowns, I do hope that some of the worst practices that emerged in conjunction with the flight from human contact might be finally put to rest. Seeing, however, how bad ideas tend to acquire a life of their own, I offer a few…

I suggest we know something of purgatory because we experience purgatory beginning in this life. Father Paul O’Callaghan, a theology professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, has said that “the purifying process, which will take place in a definitive way after death, is already taking…

Some of what I write in this series is the hardest I have ever written. It evokes deep emotion in me and I assume it will in you. But that will come later. I begin with this: What happens in purgatory? How does God help people change in purgatory? As…

Dressing to the Zeroes Once upon a time, being “dressed to the nines” meant being dressed to perfection, with distinction. It was expected in public, including many places today’s Americans would no longer expect. When I went to college in the late 1970s, my primary way home was by airplane:…

The Opening Prayer (Collect) for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) implores, “O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you.” Let us examine…

Wittgenstein, in his early Tractatus, concludes his remarks with the proposition "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Many took him to mean that we can only speak of that for which there is empirical evidence or that which is simply tautological. If that were so, could we…