The Narthex

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,…

Stephen Doran’s new book, To Die Well: A Catholic Neurosurgeon’s Guide to the End of Life, is a gem that pulls off several achievements simultaneously. It’s readable while tackling the major issues of bioethics around death and dying while situating the whole discussion in a spiritual context, recognizing that death…

Within the Octave of Christmas, a Feast of Life, a New York Times (A1, Dec. 28) headline read, “Assisted Death for the Mentally Ill Divides Canada.” This March will bring the Government’s decision. No mention in the Times, of course, of killing. Instead the piece speaks of a “practice,” a…

Tomorrow, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs. I make that explicit because in the past few years there has been something like an ecclesiastical version of bait-and-switch in some quarters to change the focus of the feast. Today’s feast is about children: baby boys aged two…

Regular readers know I am a harsh critic of cremation and of the Church’s misconceived 1963 decision to tolerate it. I have repeatedly argued that that 1963 rescission of the prohibition on cremation allowed the camel to poke its nose under the tent, upending the latter. The most cursory survey…

As we mark the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, I present two thoughts on why Our Lady under the title of the “Immaculate Conception” is the fitting patroness for the United States. First, we Americans continue to fail to reckon with the reality of “conception.” Notwithstanding the reversal of Roe…

In a recent post here, I reminisced about the “Committee of Ten Million,” Gil Durand’s 1973 lay initiative to amass ten million petition signatures to be delivered publicly to Congress demanding a Human Life Amendment. Ten million signatures in 1973 would have been about five percent of the U.S. population,…

If you are reading this on Friday, December 1, you have until midnight to act on a pro-life matter. On October 2, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to change regulations on what can be funded under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)…

As we marked Thanksgiving last week, my memories reached back 50 years to Thanksgiving 1973. I remember the day well: sunny but chilly. The memory is an opportunity for me to salute a man I never met, Gil Durand. (I think it’s Durand. It might be Durant. He doesn’t come…

As Buckeyes head to the polls Tuesday to vote on Issue 1, an extreme amendment to the State Constitution that would -- among other things like surrogacy, artificial reproduction, and state subsidy of abortion -- ensconce abortion-on-demand through birth, they might want to remember Kermit Gosnell. Kermit Gosnell is somebody…

David Hackney is a Cleveland medical professor who is pushing Issue 1, the proposed Ohio state constitutional amendment to legalize abortion through birth, on the ballot tomorrow, November 7. He penned an article in the November 5 New York Times defending the amendment. He claims the State of Ohio is promoting…