The Narthex

“Hell night” is what some New Jersey kids call October 30 because, from the 1950s forward, it became a “mischief night” wherein some people’s trees get draped with toilet paper or their windshields covered with shaving cream. Sometimes these pranks have degenerated into wanton acts of destruction. “Hell week” is…

In my previous post I discussed one way Jesus' statement about the rich man may have overwhelmed His audience. There is a second way. Jesus did not say (in Matt. 19:24, Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25) how much property makes one so rich that he is like the camel. We all…

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 19:24). Our Lord delighted His listeners with His rhetoric. These days the word rhetoric is used pejoratively, or derisively, to refer to language lacking…

What we Christians think of as spiritual realities have never been harder to grasp by ordinary people, in a world so richly endowed by thrilling material blessings yet also plagued by all kinds of miseries. The comforts and the dangers of our lives often almost overwhelm us. A wise friend…

Disappointing election results may prompt Catholics to retreat to the Church for reminders that the world hasn't gone completely mad. But, then again, certain worldly attempts to solve spiritual problems within the Church -- the global Synod, for example -- give the impression that the world's worst excesses have invaded…

Lorenzo B. (for Brewster) Shepard was a prominent lawyer and politician in his time. He had a meteoric rise before he died suddenly at age 35 in 1856. For example, he was appointed by the president in 1849, at only age 27, to be the U.S. Attorney for the Southern…

Highlights of Ulf and Birgitta Ekman's conversion story were described in Part 1 (linked below). In telling their story they identified this long list of books as among the many they read: Peter Hocken’s The Glory and the Shame, on the historical churches and new movements. Ulf arranged for Word…

I promised some friends to read a book by two prominent Swedish Protestant charismatics, Ulf and Birgitta Ekman, about their conversion Catholicism to see if the book could be helpful to mutual friends who had left the Church for non-mainline Protestant churches. I believe The Great Discovery: Our Journey to…

In 1873, Damien’s bishop invited Father Damien, and many of the priests on the Islands, to Maui for the dedication of a new church. After the ceremony, the bishop addressed his priests about the new rules by the Board of Health concerning the leper colony that had been established on…

With the scene of Father Damien collapsed after a strenuous hike, I have stopped the camera, so to speak, and three images come to my mind. The first is that of Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. After 16 days in an open boat on the high seas, including one day…

On October 6 and 8, the Ironman Triathlon will take place in Hawaii. In a contest that tests human endurance, the athletes, without taking breaks, will swim 2.4 miles in the open ocean, bike 112 miles, and run a marathon (26 miles). It has been held annually since 1978. I…

John Newton began his career as a slave trader. He abandoned the non-conformist Christian faith of his childhood, but the dying embers of his conscience eventually burst into flame again, fanned by the horrors of the trade, so that he turned his back on his past and became a leading…

Handsome and adventurous, John F. Kennedy Jr. fell into the self-destructive behavior of other men in the Kennedy clan. Fame and fortune have a way of corrupting the soul. In his late 30s, JFK Jr. decided to fulfill his persistent childhood wish to fly a plane. His mother begged him…

The part played by Christianity has been neither ancillary nor supplementary but literally essential, for western civilization has been Christian in its very essence. Those who would understand the West cannot sift the Christianity out of it. The honest unbeliever who is a serious student of history and culture will…

A read of the German synod documents reminds me that revisionists are keener on erasing than on building. But no one invited me. I did get invited to a mini-synod session by classmates from the minor seminary that I attended for six years. What led to the mini-synod was an…