The Narthex

Joyce hears the thunderous drone of German bombers flying overhead, so dense that they blot out the sun like a dark storm cloud. At seven years old, she’s experiencing The Battle of Britain. Citizens must stay at home with black-out conditions at night. While trying to fall asleep, she hears…

Chris Arnade’s Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America recounts his four years of accompanying, and listening to, Americans who have been left behind. The book comes with striking photographs of the people to whom he introduces us. Many he meets at the local McDonald’s or a storefront church. Arnade…

About 20 years ago, the children of tenants renting my house pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on the master bedroom ceiling for their parents. When I moved in, I noticed the virtual galaxy the children created. Lying on my bed, I turned off the lamp and looked at the ceiling, surprised and…

If you ask people what they think was the most important thing that ever happened in the world, they’ll come up with some fascinating answers. Some will tell you it was the invention of the wheel. Others will plump for the telephone. Others perhaps the discovery of anesthetics. Few will…

The ancient use of herbs for medicinal purposes is well known. Coca leaves are still chewed by Peruvian natives in the High Andes to prevent altitude sickness. Poppy flowers yield opiates for pain relief. Curcumin research has shown it can shrink cancerous tumors even in the brain. Coca-cola capitalized on…

Anyone who has ever been a teacher will recall conversations with students that went something like this: “Do you believe in God?” “No, not really. I believe in Science, so I haven’t got much time for religion.” Once young people have got it into their heads that there is a…

Chinese parents impose excessive scholastic demands on their children, who become obsessed to the point of suicide if they fail to pass a course of study. In China, suicide is the fifth leading cause of death and accounts for over 25% of all suicides worldwide. Christians are only 2% of…

We need to remind ourselves sometimes that Christianity is a very materialistic and earthly religion. In our faith there is no necessary conflict between body and spirit; they were not created to be at odds with each other. G.K. Chesterton put it like this:

There are no bad…

In the early 1970s, I joined a singles’ mixer that took a charter bus to a hotel in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. About fifty of us worked on suntans around the pool enclave shielded from offshore winds by a glass barrier. Laughter, mixed with nonstop chatter, filled the air as alert…

We visited the Hawaiian Islands in 1987 and took a tour of Lahaina, the former royal capital on Maui. In that small town, the activity was along Front Street lined with stores and restaurants, and packed with tourists. In the middle of the historic district, Banyan Court Park featured an…

Though using a wide variety of clever devices daily, few of us know how they work. Our roles in society are so specialized, and our cars and computers so sophisticated that most of us do not understand how they operate and can not fix them. All that matters to us…

I once wrote an article claiming that the Incarnation of Christ had been the central and pivotal event in world history. A good friend, a professor of mathematics and certainly no fool, thought my view “curious” but said that he would prefer to award the title to the Invention of…

Ten years ago the excellent teacher Pope Benedict XVI preached on Advent. At the homily's outset he explains that the meaning of the Latin adventus, from which the term Advent derives, can be rendered with presence, arrival, or coming. He continues, "In the language of the ancient world it was a…

The Pew Research Center has recently issued new data on the decline of Christianity in the U.S., a decline they say "continues at a rapid pace." Below is a link to the Pew survey results. A few highlights: - 65% of American adults now describe themselves as Christians, while those…

Decades ago, to avoid social isolation, I took up ballroom dancing and within a month met an attractive woman who was my age. She could dance well and had a compatible personality, so we hit it off. We entered dance contests and won prizes. We dined out every week and…