The Narthex

In Part 1, linked below, I looked at the Catholic Church’s criteria for just war and just conduct of war. Here I turn to the loss of civilian lives and physical destruction, and address the issue of Israel’s conduct of the war. Hamas alleges a large number of deaths among…

Freedom Versus Self-Will Continuing my way through Roman Brandstaetter's superb literary corpus, I ran into a collection of short meditations he penned, inspired by his positive encounter with Franciscanism. He spoke of a writer, sitting at his desk, who noticed a bee walking along his window pane. Caringly, he opened…

The number of killed, injured, and displaced people among two million Gazans has been large and is growing. I hope my words here will contribute to a conversation on assessing the morality of Israel’s actions. The social teaching of the Catholic Church appeals to human reason, not only to the…

Just war theory remains vital because -- naïve thinking aside -- war is not going away as long as men are sinners. As long as men are sinners, some will try to do injustice to others by force. As long as some are victims of injustice, they have a right…

David French is one of a particular species of pundit, one who likes to trade on the gases of his erstwhile conservative credentials while reliably ending up where good liberals are expected to be. It was that imitation of the Colossus of Rhodes’ straddle that initially led to his famous…

“Sleek barbarians” is a term and concept articulated by contemporary Polish philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski which I have tried to popularize and disseminate in the English-speaking world. I do so because the concept seems to have even broader application here than in Poland (though Poland does not lack for its own…

The patria potestas was a legal power held by fathers in the Roman Empire. If you think that Tiberius was just dad in a toga, think again. In Roman law, a father had rights over his family, including the right of who could bear his name. If, therefore, a child…

Sunday’s readings said a lot about trees and their growth. The First Reading spoke about God, who fosters some trees and withers others. The Gospel spoke of the tiny mustard seed that produces a large tree. The Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer wrote a poem, “Trees,” that was once standard fare in…

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…