The Narthex

Frank Sinatra encouraged “Luck” to “be a lady tonight.” The lady in question had not always been so. Even perfect “strangers in the night,” wondering as they do “what were the chances” of “sharing love,” might well fare better. Johnny Mathis, he of the honeyed throat, was more upbeat. “Guess…

Reflecting on the West’s strategy of nuclear deterrence, Winston Churchill expressed the hope that “safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” Can such a hope be reasonable? Some argue that however odious it is, nuclear deterrence, in light of world realities, is…

Are we about to vote for the soul of the nation? Well, maybe. The political figures who say so are keener than ever to get out the vote, as are the “thought leaders” now popping up everywhere. The first order of business for those who insist that political figures really…

For many years, when urged to vote for a US president, I’d push back hard. My favorite riposte? “Don’t vote; it just encourages them.” Still, there’s a season for (almost) everything. And who says that a bloke can’t change after he turns 39? Not I, and here’s why. Note: As…

The gravestone of former New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal reads, “He kept the paper straight.” Last month, A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, disavowed “hiding behind” old standards. Sulzberger went on to say, “We’re not retreating from the principles of independence and objectivity. We don’t…

Everybody has heard of Socrates, the Greek philosopher who was put to death by his own people in 399 BC. The charge against him was that he had “corrupted the youth,” but in reality it was his profound intellectual humility that killed him. He was as honest a man as…

The New York Times vacillates in its effect on readers. Often enough it induces nausea. But sometimes it gives us food for thought. A recent obituary, “Joel Kupperman, Scarred by Success as a Precocious ‘Quiz Kid,’ Dies at 83” (May 15, page A24) is surely food for thought. So what’s…

Ready for a trip down memory lane? Even if you aren’t, a birthday can send you on your way! If it’s a septuagenarian birthday, count on it. Still, regardless of your generation, you can do some  philosophical packing before you head out—or get pushed. For a start, it’s worth noting…

Ah, the things we ask! When we’re running late, as often we are, we ask what time it is. When something goes missing, as it often does, we ask where it is. Or suppose we have a tough decision to make. Then we ask how to weigh the contending pros…

Ever run out of time to answer your children’s questions? (It’s not that we don’t have the answers, right?) Well, there’s always the handy reply “Just because!” But suppose it’s we who have the questions, and we don’t have the answers? What then? We could always ask someone, maybe a…

Hugo Rahner, SJ, is the author of a classic work Man at Play. The central and staggering insight of Man at Play is that God is at play! How so? Proverbs 8:27-31 gives us a starting point. From the beginning, Rahner points out, Divine Wisdom (Hochmah) has been “playing before…

The devil is in the details -- and in definitions. For such details we might reflect on the new Vatican-Beijing accords, already in jeopardy, and the not-so-new nuclear weapons treaties now publicly flaunted. How about definitions? Let’s consider, as a trial run, humanism. As always, context counts. The French Revolution,…

The philosopher Simone Weil’s Waiting on God (1950) is a haunting reflection on the distance between “the everyday” and the transcendent. A year earlier the playwright Samuel Beckett finished his Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s “Godot” is a fantasist’s inkblot: interpret him as you please. Not so the God to whom…

Here’s a snappy reality check: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.” But reality isn’t always easy to check. For a start, if my opinion is ill-formed, I’m not really entitled to it. There’s a duty to think carefully about our opinions. Of course, today’s political slugfest…

Know anyone who’s outspoken, opinionated, who calls a spade a spade? I surely knew my father, to whom I owe more than I can ever repay. When the family was planning his funeral, my mother told the pastor “John was outspoken…too outspoken for most people.” Right. Some of us liked…