The Narthex

From time to time, I’ve told people that outrage is the proper response to the outrageous. After all, ignoring the outrageous would be an outrage, wouldn’t? And it’s outrageous that we so often ignore the outrages of the day. Sounds plausible, or at least it did to me. But I…

Archbishop Cordileone’s May 1st letter, "Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You: A Pastoral Letter on the Human Dignity of the Unborn, Holy Communion, and Catholics in Public Life" (https://sfarchdiocese.org/inthewomb), is pastoral in the truest sense of the word: the archbishop is tending his flock,…

Frank Sheed, of Sheed & Ward, was a publisher, theologian, and Hyde Park Catholic apologist. When critics debated with him, citing the wrongs of the Inquisition, he would reply, “It was worse than that.” Then he would fill in the gaps. The Church was and is the home of sinners…

In the late 1940s, when I was a kid living in predominantly Irish and Italian East Boston, people practiced silence on Good Friday from noon to 3pm, respecting the three hours that Christ hung dying on the Cross. Business traffic slowed way down and cobblestone streets were silent of auto…

The mainstream media are overwhelmingly liberal; this is well known. Their all-out effort to portray Joe Biden as simply a good-natured older man -- the nation's Uncle Joe -- is obvious and predictable. Still, there are corners of the liberal media where one can find solid reporting that rejects simple…

When the FDA recently paused rollout of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine, several articles in the mainstream press compared the risk of blood clots from the J&J shot to the clot risk from taking birth-control pills. The comparison was driven by the fact that all six vaccine clotting cases,…

On my usual walk around the neighborhood park I saw two young guys sitting and chatting on the grass. It was mid-day, sun shining, the first warm day we’ve had in a while. At night I would have shied away, but I headed straight for them. As I passed by,…

Pope Francis calls for the wide use and distribution of the new anti-COVID vaccines, as do our bishops. They do so in the name of the common good. But they do not teach that everyone has an obligation to use the vaccines. Much less do they argue against ongoing reflection…

On February 9th Australia’s SBS TV News ran a short segment that purported to allay some people’s concerns about the COVID vaccine.  I cannot find a recording of the broadcast, but an SBS News article called "The most common myths about the coronavirus vaccine - and why they aren’t true"…

A COVID vaccine soon will be available to me, as I’m nearly 79. My married brother and I recently discussed this. He is 77, has grandkids, and must business travel on commercial airplanes, so he would have to get the shot. I live like a hermit, and the only traveling…

In December, a U.S. abortion clinic employee tweeted a photo of his Christmas tree, topped not with a Christmas star but with a pair of forceps used to extract dismembered babies from the womb during abortion procedures. A week or so later, The Satanic Temple revealed its billboards in Texas…

Sr. Ardeth Platte, OP, was my first, and best, academic boss. I was teaching part-time at St. Joseph Elementary School in Saginaw, Michigan. (Have you heard the song about Saginaw?) My wife Elizabeth and I were living Saginaw’s public housing project, across from a railroad switching yard. As a conscientious…

A great man has died. Dr. Hasuda Taiji (1936-2020) passed away in late October, leaving behind many iterations around the world of the thing for which he will always be remembered: a hole in the wall. Dr. Hasuda was an ob-gyn at the Jikei Byōin (“Mercy Hospital”) in Kumamoto, Japan.…

The Swedish government's approach to coronavirus has been criticized all along by the media of other Western nations hell-bent on justifying their own economy- and job-killing overreactions. Although we need to wait and see what winter brings in the northern hemisphere, we can at least give an update on Sweden's…

In medieval times, jokers -- also called court fools or jesters -- had the dangerous role of counseling a monarch, with the tacit understanding that the joker’s life was sacrosanct and would not be forfeited for honestly doing his job. He could say anything to belittle the king, who believed…