The Narthex

A suburban New York county has banned all unvaccinated minors from public places in hopes of staving off a recent measles outbreak in the area. This comes on the heels of a Northern Kentucky Health Department decision to ban unvaccinated students from school after a chickenpox outbreak there. Parents cite…

As I stood in the entry of an Assisted Living dining hall, hoping to join my friend after lunch, I overheard this comment: “She’s no angel. I heard she shacked up with George last night.” The speaker nodded toward another woman two tables over with coiffed hair and Fifth Avenue…

A group of fearless movie-makers is about to release Unplanned, a film based on Abby Johnson's story of going from being manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic to becoming a highly effective pro-life activist. You can bet that the entertainment industry is dead-set against this film. Check out these quotes…

It is the Ides of March. I’m at the San Marcos Cemetery. Its flat headstones, aligned between scraggly trees on acres of fresh-cut green grass, can’t compete with cemeteries back east. Richmond, Virginia, has historic statues 20 feet tall and Romanesque tombs inscribed with inspirational poetry and sculpted battle scenes.…

The Vatican News website recently printed an interview with a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life discussing the current standard of care for pubescent age children suffering from gender dysphoria.  During the course of the questioning, the member, Dr. Laura Palazzani, said that in order to “accompany” children battling…

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,…