The Narthex

Opinions abound about the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. Here in California, highly publicized protests feature women carrying signs that read, “Abortion on Demand, without Apology.” Nothing new, only more frantic and furious. On my view, Dobbs is a decent first step. But its own reasoning doesn’t allow for the next…

Last week I visited a homeless encampment. Ted Hayes, a veteran advocate for the homeless in Los Angeles, gave me a friendly walk-through tour. Located close to Venice Beach, the camp was clean and orderly. Ted had invited candidates in California’s upcoming primary election to speak briefly to the question…

The widely read internet outlet CalMatters presents itself as a nonprofit and independent news source. Its mission, supposedly, is to explain California policy and politics. To that end, it offers a “compare and contrast” lesson on the gubernatorial candidates in the June 7th California Primary election. Several candidates have their…

The first serious truce between warring parties in Yemen took effect earlier this month. The Yemen conflict has continued for six years and killed 400,000 people, has led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and involved the U.S., but American media gave it scant coverage compared to the invasion of…

Anybody who writes the odd opinion piece, whether spurred on by momentary outrage at some public or private folly, or just obligated to do so in going about his lawful occasions, runs dry from time to time. Or rather wonders whether there is any point in expressing views at all,…

The practice of bloody sacrifice reaches far back in human history. For instance, archeologists recently dug up the bones of defective infants killed in Denmark 5,000 years ago. Perhaps the sacrifice was a primitive stab at eugenics; perhaps there is more to the story. To keep its vast empire intact,…

Hypocrisy is the offence that Christians are most often charged with. It is a powerful and effective cudgel to beat them over the head because it appears to be self-evidently true: everyone can give you examples of Christians behaving badly, now and throughout history. The charge is immediately persuasive to…

In the last scene of one of Shakespeare’s grimmest tragedies, King Lear, by now an old and broken man, weeps for his dead daughter Cordelia:

No, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou'lt come…

As we enter the third year of pandemic-driven fear, we need to take stock of the whole range of its consequences: deaths and hospitalizations certainly, but also lives broken by business failures, the cruelty of forcing isolation on dying people, abuse of authority, absurd and scientifically unfounded regulations, the craven…

Tennis Australia celebrated January 24th this year as Gay Pride Day. Australia has changed a lot in the past couple of generations; few now challenge the freedom of LBGT people to celebrate their diversity, and many warmly applaud them and defend their right to do so. But the official sponsor…

Betrayal is a part of human nature. If someone determines he may benefit by snitching on a friend, he may indeed give the Judas Kiss, an act appearing as one of friendship but which is harmful to the recipient. Judas is the model betrayer: weak-willed and full of selfish interest…

In my last post Alasdair MacIntyre, a Marxist turned Thomist, had my full attention. Of late he’s argued that anything human dignity can do, justice can do better. I’m not persuaded, since it’s dignity that decides membership in the moral community, that is, the community of all those to whom…

In the year’s most discussed philosophical lecture, Alasdair MacIntyre—at Notre Dame, no less—argued that appeals to dignity don’t work very well and can even be dangerous. On MacIntyre’s view, dignity can be lost. Hitler shows us just how. Moreover, recognizing that dignity is incompatible with slavery is of little worth…

Ten days ago a student group, Women in Politics, hosted a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of America. Loyola Marymount University (LMU) provided the venue. The University did so despite a nationwide protest and Los Angeles Archbishop Gomez’s expression of deep disappointment. In the sponsoring group’s estimation, the event—a semi-formal party…

To my mind the greatest challenge of human education is the building and maintaining of historical awareness. How can we have even an inkling of where we stand and where we’re heading if our grasp of the past is feeble or non-existent? Human memory is so short, and deliberate bias…