The Narthex

This past weekend marked the semiquincentennial of the Boston Tea Party. Two hundred and fifty years ago, on December 16, 1773, assorted colonials in Boston dumped chests of the British East India Company’s tea into Boston Harbor. One could clearly see how much the Americans had lost their British roots:…

It’s a recognized conundrum in what’s called “social decision theory”: believe it or not, in a series of straight up or down votes (as with referenda), the majority can be in the minority in a majority of cases. Check out Anscombe’s Paradox. Here’s another conundrum. In a state-wide or national…

In a recent post here, I reminisced about the “Committee of Ten Million,” Gil Durand’s 1973 lay initiative to amass ten million petition signatures to be delivered publicly to Congress demanding a Human Life Amendment. Ten million signatures in 1973 would have been about five percent of the U.S. population,…

If you are reading this on Friday, December 1, you have until midnight to act on a pro-life matter. On October 2, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to change regulations on what can be funded under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)…

I grasped my keys in my coat pocket. Good thing I bought a Honda: their ignition key is nice and long. Among moves that I learned in self-defense was that keys held between one’s index and middle finger can be effectively jabbed into somebody’s eyes, usually long enough to stop…

Even in her nineties Rena Poulos, Inglewood’s restauranteur of renown, would ask paper-reading patrons, “Any good news yet?” These days would she even bother to ask? For my part, as a mid-septuagenarian, I’m attuned to the folly of youth. My own daughter hasn’t registered to vote, even though she could…

David Hackney is a Cleveland medical professor who is pushing Issue 1, the proposed Ohio state constitutional amendment to legalize abortion through birth, on the ballot tomorrow, November 7. He penned an article in the November 5 New York Times defending the amendment. He claims the State of Ohio is promoting…

The November issue of Commentary, a monthly magazine of conservative Jewish thought, features a great essay, “Psalms They Have, But They Know Not.” Rabbi Meir Soloveichik ponders American Biblical ignorance, especially among its “educated,” and its implications. The immediate impetus for his article was an incident last summer on the…

Consider the following reflection on the true purpose and goal of human civilization: "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58). This stunning statement assures us, with crystal clarity, that God's dwelling place is beyond and outside time. It's true that Scripture often tries to explain eternity by analogy with time…

In the wake of California Senator Dianne Feinstein's burial, op-ed writers have been scribbling away on why America’s leadership class is so dominated by octogenarians (with a few septuagenarians as junior officers). Writing in The New York Times (Oct. 8), David French picked up Ross Douthat’s most recent hobby horse:…

The new Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum is a follow-up document to Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si’. Michael Dominic Taylor, in "Consider the lilies and CO2" (at Catholic World Report, Oct. 8), explains how Laudate Deum fails to build on the solid teaching in Laudato Si’ and instead runs in a mistaken…

The words disinformation and misinformation have been around for many years but have recently risen to prominence as the Australian parliament debates a bill which would ban false or misleading information in the media. The two terms are not interchangeable. The proposed law defines misinformation as “online content that is…

Last week Ukrainian President Zelensky visited the U.S. and Canada seeking more money and weapons. As reported by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos at Responsible Statecraft (Sept. 22), the Biden administration agreed to give Ukraine long-range missiles in the “upcoming weeks.” The warheads in question, called ATACMs, were previously considered to be…

In a surprise development, nominal Catholic California Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed legislation that instructed California courts to take a parent’s “gender affirming” views into account when making custody or visitation decisions. No one should think, however, that the Governor has concluded that the chemical castration and/or physical genital mutilation…

The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies is tasked with “advancing the good name of the Catholic intellectual tradition.” At the outset it was made clear that it was to operate at arm's length from the Church and enjoy a high degree of independence, for its brief was not so…