The Narthex

Get Ready Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation. From today until Christmas is exactly nine months (for those of you who like to get "holiday" preparations underway early!). Today Jesus' Life began. Over the next several months, I'd like to remind readers on the 25th of just how Our…

Below is the Catholic Church’s first litany for lawyers and government officials. It has been ecclesiastically approved for private devotion. (Seven approved litanies exist for public devotion and dozens for private devotion.) I composed it for those who work, as I did, in the field of law as lawyers, legislators,…

Let’s Get the Calendar Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar was on social media March 19, proclaiming it as “Medicaid Day of Action.” I expected that shortly thereafter, 46 other blue Senators would repeat the same talking points. Can I ask some mole to please get us the calendar of Democratic…

Much of Pope Francis’s February 10 letter to the Catholic bishops in the United States centered on its subject: immigration. I focused on that in my first take, which addressed how to define “dignity,” what were the letter’s potential long-term implications, and how ordo amoris could be understood in ways…

The Senate’s confirmation of Robert Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) concludes a particularly contentious nomination. He will be the Secretary of HHS, whether one likes it or not. So, I’d like to do something somewhat out-of-character in today’s Washington: call a truce. Perhaps we Catholics…

Pohutsky’s Pregnancy Problem Laurie Pohutsky is a “bisexual” Michigan Democratic State Representative from northern Wayne County (the county where Detroit sits). You’d probably never hear about a member of the Wolverine State’s legislature -- even the chair of the “Progressive Women’s Caucus" -- except for the fact that Pohutsky took…

If you own a home, how many guests do you have to welcome? Most normal people would say, “As many or as few a I want. There is no obligation to have guests.” If you asked those people, “And how many of those guests should be allowed to move in…

Yesterday Washington Episcopal “Bishop” Mariann Edgar Budde’s "lectored" a captive Donald Trump and J.D. Vance during her National Cathedral sermon ("lectored" is my neologism: "lecture" plus "hector"). Budde pressed the President and Vice President to show “mercy” to “LGBT” children and immigrants who “pick our crops and clean our buildings.”…

Watching the Carter state funeral at National Cathedral, I couldn’t help but notice how much attention was focused on the five Presidents. One of the few times Americans see all their living former, current, and -- at Carter’s funeral -- future presidents in one place is when one of them…

With the new year comes a new session of the Virginia Legislature, and job one of the Democrat-dominated chambers this week is writing a pro-abortion amendment into the state constitution. H.J. Res. 1 and S.J. Res. 247 will likely hit the floor in at least the lower chamber this week;…

“The dogma lives loudly in you” was the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s 2017 summary of now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith when she was nominated for a Court of Appeals position. Feinstein was rightly criticized at the time for what sounded like -- and was -- anti-Catholic…

On November 5, the American people decisively elected Donald Trump as president. They put the Senate in Republican control and left the House of Representatives in Republican hands. The message of the election was an end to “business as usual.” Did that message reach Congressional Democrats? No. In the past…

The Human Shield Dilemma I’ve long argued that the Church, and particularly the current pontificate, are derelict in not conducting serious discussions about just war theory and contemporary warfare (including the use of human shields and urban warfare). Failure to address these issues suggests what George Weigel has highlighted: a…

Have you ever been to a Town Hall gathering? Not I. City Hall, yes, and there to fight its folly. But now, lo and behold, I’ve been invited to a Town Hall event and even asked to contribute. Here on the Left Coast, where California Dreamin’ is always in play,…

Things sometimes appear in social media seemingly out of nowhere, though one suspects they surface as “click-bait” created to generate readers’ reactions. That’s what I thought on Sunday when my X.com feed resurfaced a talk by National Public Radio chief executive Katherine Maher (her talk is linked below). The video…