The Narthex
The Unity of the Moral Life
The social order is not insulated from the Law of God
By John M. Grondelski | September 4th 2024 11:26 AMLast Sunday’s readings focused on the unity of the moral life, the common thread connecting the readings. Because some clergy might have been inclined to focus on the “heart,” on the intention of the moral agent, let’s take a step back and see all the readings in one big picture.…
READ FULL BLOG POSTSt. Maximilian Kolbe: A New Kind of Martyr
Before him, martyrdom traditionally involved the element of 'in odium fidei'
By John M. Grondelski | August 14th 2024 12:18 PMAugust 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In…
READ FULL BLOG POSTVirginity in the Modern World
Do modern people understand, much less value, virginity?
By John M. Grondelski | August 12th 2024 12:45 PMVatican II talked about the Church in dialogue with the modern world. Some of us have wondered whether that dialogue has been largely one-sided, i.e., modernity talking and the Church listening. One hopes the dialogue also would proceed in the other direction, to a world largely convinced of its rightness…
READ FULL BLOG POSTA New St. Dominic?
The first generation of Dominicans managed to turn France around and defeat heresy
By John M. Grondelski | August 8th 2024 11:57 AMAlasdair MacIntyre, in his important book After Virtue, suggests what the world needs today is “another -- doubtless very different -- Saint Benedict.” Some might argue that Pope Benedict XVI was that new “Benedict” speaking to the modern world. I’d like to suggest what the world needs today is a…
READ FULL BLOG POSTTransfiguration Is What Christian Life Is All About
The Transfiguration points towards the Resurrection and the Last Day
By John M. Grondelski | August 6th 2024 11:49 AMToday is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Celebrated in the midst of summer, it perhaps gets short shrift from many Catholics. Catholics more regularly are reminded of the Transfiguration each year on the Second Sunday of Lent, when we read of it in one of the three Synoptic Gospels. It’s…
READ FULL BLOG POSTMetal Theft & Moral Rust
Parts of U.S. cities are going dark because thieves are stealing copper wire from lamps
By John M. Grondelski | July 30th 2024 12:30 PMDescribing the “den of infamous resort” where Old Joe, Mrs. Dilber, and others haggled over things pilfered from the possessions of Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens called that “beetling shop” a place where “iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps…
READ FULL BLOG POSTCaptive Nations Week
Freedom still needs to come to places like China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba
By John M. Grondelski | July 26th 2024 11:53 AMJuly 21-27 is Captive Nations Week. Congress designated in 1959 the third week of July as Captive Nations Week and asked the President to proclaim it annually. (Congress initially designated Captive Nations Week by itself in 1953). Joe Biden issued an executive proclamation on July 19. Captive Nations Week commemorates…
READ FULL BLOG POSTJust War Is Still Vital
The Church fails in its teaching duty if its advice is 'hoping & praying' that war goes away
By John M. Grondelski | July 25th 2024 12:22 PMJust 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…
READ FULL BLOG POSTInterreligious Suffering
Jews and Christians were united as victims of godless atheists
By John M. Grondelski | July 24th 2024 11:37 AMJuly 22 used to be a state holiday in Communist Poland marking the day that the traitors imported by the Soviet Army installed themselves in Lublin in 1944 as the “Provisional Government of National Unity” and would proceed, for the next 45 years, to torture Poland with their pretensions to…
READ FULL BLOG POSTTen Forbidden Words
Why shouldn't Louisiana be free to speak the words of the Ten Commandments?
By John M. Grondelski | July 11th 2024 11:54 AMMost Supreme Court cases go by their official names. Some get nicknames. The nickname for Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation is the “Seven Dirty Words Case.” It upheld the right of the FCC to regulate indecent language on the public airwaves. (Yes, in theory the FCC can turn off…
READ FULL BLOG POSTOur Marie Antoinette Elites
Labor must have priority over capital; both the Left and the Right get this wrong
By John M. Grondelski | July 8th 2024 2:00 PMRare is the New York Times op-ed to which I refer readers and encourage them to read it. But I do so wholeheartedly as regards “This Is What Elite Failure Looks Like” by Oren Cass (July 6; linked below). Cass pulls no punches. Eighty-three thousand Americans died of opioid overdoses…
READ FULL BLOG POSTSleek Barbarians
Behind the West's civilizational crisis is a bait and switch cultural appropriation -- and we fall for it
By John M. Grondelski | June 19th 2024 9:12 PM“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…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Faithful Dog
If only human fidelity were imbued with the same constancy as the dog's
By John M. Grondelski | June 3rd 2024 11:32 AMRumer Godden is perhaps best known for her 1969 bestseller In This House of Brede, the story of a woman who enters an English Benedictine convent. It was published a year after Godden converted to Catholicism. Religion, however, permeated Godden’s books from very early on, like Black Narcissus, her 1939…
READ FULL BLOG POSTβρέφος
Luke uses the same word for the newborn Jesus and the unborn John
By John M. Grondelski | May 31st 2024 3:10 PMToday 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,…
READ FULL BLOG POSTThe Difference between Moral Obligation & Self-Will
The 'right to define meaning & the universe' only works if you make yourself author & lord of that universe
By John M. Grondelski | April 30th 2024 12:06 PMOver 65 years ago Karol Wojtyła wrote on “The Significance of Obligation.” In that text, Wojtyła probed the universal human experience of obligation -- “I ought to do X” -- asking what it tells us about itself. That experience teaches us three things: about obligation itself, about responsibility, and about…
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