The Narthex

I’ve lived in my lower class neighborhood since 1973 when I bought a four-bedroom house and rented rooms to other youths hoping to start a commune. California’s Prop 13 keeps my property tax low, whereas new buyers nowadays pay eight times as much. Sometimes it pays to be old. But…

After facilitating a Tuesday senior writing group in the San Marcos County Library, I attended a chess club session held in the same conference room. Four game boards were set up on card tables and eight competitors were playing chess across from each other. At the far end a young…

This time I kept my sign. Heck, I could have been the model for it. On one side there’s a silhouette of a “senior” wearing what looks like my cap. His cane is like one we keep handy at home. On the other side, there’s a Gospel truth: Toda Vida…

Since its promulgation in 1995, St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae has become like a pro-life manifesto.  It is often cited not just for its eloquence but for its passionate defense of the great dignity of human life.  The saintly pontiff is quick to point out not just the…

Always and everywhere we have high hopes, and they reflect the Birth of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! In our time and place we have particular hopes because of special people -- ordinary people doing ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Last week I met one of them, thanks to…

Most crimes are petty. Shop lifting, for instance, spikes over the holiday season. Maybe crimes of passion do so as well. They’re the result of “affairs,” formerly spoken of as adultery and fornication. Some crimes are heinous, and they make the front page. Last week a serial killer confessed to…

In his prescient dystopic novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley foretells a time when children are mass produced in a laboratory using what he calls the Bokanovsky Process.  This process ensures the stability of Huxley’s World State because it genetically conditions the children into each of five social castes.  While…

The archetypical image of the forbidden fruit in Genesis is the apple. Neither a Delicious nor a Gala nor a Fuji―just a plain apple. East Indians see the forbidden fruit as a banana. What actually hangs from The Tree of Life is the temptation to partake of delicious pleasure without…

In a 2014 address to representatives of the International Association of Penal Law, Pope Francis announced his crusade for abolishing capital punishment world-wide. His march would continue until August of this year when he ordered a revision to Catechism paragraph 2267 deeming the death penalty “inadmissible.” While a change to…

When I die, I’ll have plenty to say. But, gentle reader, you’ll not hear it. Friends, neighbors, and writers of obituaries will, no doubt, have something to say. Fortunately, with my not being an old soldier, no one will comment that “he just faded away.” Most of us, it seems,…

A lesbian couple in Texas has become the first such couple to give birth to a baby that they both carried.  Using a technique dubbed Reciprocal Effortless IVF, one of the women had several of her eggs fertilized while she acted as an incubator using a device called INVOCell.  After…

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, met with Mahatma Gandhi to gain his support for her promotion of birth control devices versus using self-control of sexual desire. She was sorely disappointed, as he predicted rampant licentiousness would result from widespread use of such devices. In 1934, an Indian…

In a presentation at the Gates Foundation's “Goalkeepers” last month, French President Emmanuel Macron made comments that appeared to be critical of large families: “One of the critical issues of African demography is that this is not chosen fertility... I always say: ‘Present me the woman who decided, being perfectly…

When Margaret Sanger attempted to attack the Church’s opposition to contraception, she did so mainly through anecdotal evidence of the thousands of mothers suffering under the burden of too many children.  She even went so far as to collect the stories of these women and bind them in a book…