The Narthex

“Thought blockers,” I call them. Right, left, conservative, reactionary, and progressive, they get in the way of the real discussion of real issues. They are elastic terms that could mean just about anything or almost nothing. Still, my caveat is prudential rather than absolute. So, I’m going into the deep…

The L.A. Times, a newspaper that I love to lambaste, seems to have a crack in its “wokeness wall.” A fresh editorial headline announces that “Students lose when colleges trade humanities for STEM” (Nov. 26). But wait! Science, tech, engineering, and math programs (STEM) now rule the academic roost. Is…

Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky recently captured a headline in the Los Angeles Times. “Humans lack free will, says Stanford scientist” (10-22-2023, B1). The subtitle drives home the point: “Decades of study lead to claim that virtually all behavior is beyond our conscious control.” So contends Sapolsky, the winner of a MacArthur…

Imagine a protest in which activists chant, “What do we want? Free publicity! When do we want it? Now!” Easy enough, right? Isn’t it already the subtext of many demonstrations? Or imagine a political campaign soliciting money chiefly in order to solicit more money. Again, easy enough. Isn’t it the…

“Philosophy begins in wonder.” So says Aristotle in his Metaphysics. Reflecting on this text, St. Thomas teaches that a goal of metaphysics is to establish the truth about the first and universal causes of things. If we achieve this goal, he writes, “there should be no wonder because the causes…

Eyes (and Minds) Voting with Feet Most mornings I have a 20 minute wait at my bus stop. The shelter has one of those electronic ad boards, so I get to see a limited loop of what advertisers want to sell. It’s often a telling commentary on the world today,…

Recently Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Letter on the French thinker Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It comes on the Fourth Centenary of his birth. Francis chose a haunting title: On the Sublimity and Misery of Man (Sublimitas et Miseria Hominis). Most of Francis’s discussion centers on Pascal’s Pensées. Don’t expect to…

Princeton Professor Robert George has launched a new initiative that declares June “Fidelity Month” [see here]. He started the effort with a June 1 webinar, featuring a religiously diverse panel, discussing the importance of fidelity as social glue in three areas: marriage, local community, and national patriotism. George has…

We moderns hear a lot about miracles. Modern medicine is a miracle, we’re told. Landing rovers on Mars, or on distant asteroids, requires a miraculous degree of technological sophistication. Marvels—miracles’ kid brothers—are a dime a dozen in 2023. Video phones, space telescopes, ChatGPT. Wow. Aren’t we human beings special. Miraculous,…

Does democracy need prophets? Yes, especially in a democracy like ours, because ours is in crisis. Distorted by a duopoly lusting for power, our political discourse has become a concatenation of cliches. And most of us seem to sleep through the affairs of state. The prophets we need, to be…

With Mother’s Day in the rear view mirror and fresh events crowding the daily “news” cycle, the controversy some retailers generated this year by offering women an “opt out” of Mother’s Day mailings and specials will likely soon be forgotten -- until it returns next year. I’ve tried to showcase…

As a moral theologian, I am interested in just war theory. Just war theory, which governs whether a country can go to war (jus ad bellum) and what it can do in war (jus in bello), is essentially a nation’s right to self-defense. That’s why I reject the arguments that…

Life is a mystery to live, not a problem to solve. And metaphysics is rich in mystery! Here’s a contrast. Science often advances by resolution and replacement. For example, Galileo resolves Ptolemy’s puzzles, and heliocentrism emerges. Einstein resolves Newton’s puzzles, and the theory of relativity replaces classical physics. Closer to…

A friend just authored an important paper on why religious freedom is a human right. I agree that it is, and I applaud the range and rigor of his analysis. He’ll catch a lot of flak, though. Not everyone thinks that religion is for the good, much less that it…

Felix, my youngest grandson, has aged out of Sesame Street. Since leaving, though, he calls himself “The Count.” Of late he’s busy counting his Legos. Trump, keen to remain POTUS, wanted more votes to count. No luck. Of late he’s counting the legal actions he faces. For better or worse,…