The Narthex

We’re told that it’s for “religious reasons” that someone opposes abortion. And it’s for “religious reasons” that someone opposes euthanasia. So we read in, for example, newspapers of record like the L.A. Times. What we don’t read, of course, is that someone opposes the policy of nuclear deterrence for religious…

Scientists tell us that 2024 is a unique year. Every so often, Americans in different regions experience the emergence of cicadas, insects that burrow underground until their new brood hatches and then announce their arrival with uproarious noise. What makes 2024 special is that two different broods -- one that…

Today is the Solemnity of the Visitation, commemorating when Mary -- in her first trimester -- made a 90-mile trip from Nazareth in Galilee to Ein Karem in Judea to tend to her “kinswoman” Elizabeth, in her third trimester. We will celebrate the birth of John the Baptist next month,…

Paul Benjamin Linton is author of the magisterial Abortion under State Constitutions -- which has gone through three editions -- and the recognized pro-life authority on that subject. While Roe v. Wade held abortion policy hostage to an imagined federal “right,” Linton reminded us that every state has its own…

On several occasions at the end of WWII, army commanders who liberated German concentration camps forced local people to file through, under guard, meet some of the prisoners, and witness for themselves the horror of it all. For most of those people the experience must have been deeply traumatic, and…

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth followed the Arizona Supreme Court's recent upholding of the state’s 1864 abortion act. The wailers' false narrative asks: How can we be governed by a 160-year-old law? If  you listen to abortionists, they will try to spin a fake history of abortion law, originally…

I spent Saturday, while waiting for the accountant to do my taxes, reading Stephanie Gray Connors’s new book My Body for You: A Pro-Life Message for a Post-Roe World  (link below). It’s a very readable and worthwhile presentation of pro-life arguments, especially in hard cases, which are becoming the stock-in-trade of…

Today at 1:20 a.m., a container ship struck the finest bridge in all Baltimore, causing its collapse and leaving seven vehicles to drop into the bay below. The bridge was on the ring road around Baltimore and tens of thousands of people passed over it every day. It had been…

Spring is a time of life and hope. That’s apparent in nature. It’s also apparent in the liturgical year, as the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Annunciation on March 25. People begin going outdoors and, sometimes, baby carriages appear more prominent. But, in the midst of that life and…

The mainstream media have had much to say about the recent constitutional change in France, and they have done so for the most part with little detail, but much euphoric delight. My thanks to Fr. Pius Noonan for finding the actual words for me, which are as follows: “La loi…

I recently argued that “National School Choice Week” should be renamed “National Parental Choice Week” (link below). I did so because I want to recast the educational debate. School choice is not primarily about schools but about students. Schools are secondary. They are the tools by which students are educated.…

January 19 marks the 50th anniversary of the March for Life. The late Nellie Gray, then a Washington attorney, was determined not to let pass the first anniversary of Roe v. Wade without a protest. Since that first effort, pro-lifers have trudged to Washington -- rain, shine, snow, or frigid…

An Indiana state judge dismissed Notre Dame sociology professor Tamara Kay’s defamation suit against a Notre Dame student newspaper for exposing her abortion advocacy, including her seeming facilitation of abortions by providing students information where they could obtain abortifacients. Kay wanted to exact punitive damages from the paper for exposing…

Calendar Conundrums Has it ever troubled our liturgically befuddled bishops, who have made a goulash of six holydays of obligation (transferring some while making others obligatory depending on their day in the week) that, in our modern world, if you say “January 6,” more people think of “insurrection” than “Epiphany?”…

Among the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance is oppression of the widow and orphan. The Bible saw exploitation of widows and orphans as the epitome of moral turpitude because both groups were, by their very status, vulnerable. In today’s parlance, they are “on the peripheries.” In Judaism,…