The Narthex

The top three questions New Oxford Review gets from our subscribers are 1) "Why can't I access online articles?"; 2) "How can I add online access to my print subscription?"; and 3) "Why does the website say my subscription is 'inactive'?" If you've ever asked yourself one of these, read…

Pop quiz: Which major ecclesial body recently described itself as a “trans” church? Need a hint? This ecclesial body is a former state church, and with 5.9 million members is the largest denomination in that nation. Stumped? We’re talking about the Church of Sweden, an Evangelical Lutheran body and the…

Catholics and other Christians have had enormous influence on the life of the mind and the creative arts of poetry, art, and music. Poetry has always been a strong ally of our Faith and our civilization. The tricky thing, though, is that it’s hard to define; not everything that rhymes…

The celebrated Dorothy Parker, on hearing the phone ring, liked to ask, “What fresh hell is this?” Of late we might say the same on reading the morning paper or catching the evening news. But not on this blog post, not today. Let’s consider, instead, the promise and peril of…

During a homily, the priest lifted our bored faces by boldly declaring, "So not everyone’s going to heaven.” A matronly woman sitting next to me looked up for a moment from thumbing her cell phone. Somehow assured that her Judgment Day was not imminent, she then returned to marking the…

There are home truths that few politicians acknowledge. Occasionally, though, a politician throws caution to the wind. In his “American malaise speech” broadcast on national television in the summer of 1979, Jimmy Carter told the country that “All the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America.” That’s…

Some years ago I visited the Fleet Space Theatre in Balboa Park where an exhibit in its science museum seemed to fascinate a crowd of onlookers. I drew close to read a placard claiming this intriguing treasure was from some Oriental dynasty, thousands of years old.  It was a simple…

3:15 PM, Thursday, April 14, Chicago, IL  On Amtrak, Craig, the eco-engineer I met earlier, and I arrive at Union Station, Chicago. Since we are both traveling to D.C. and have a three hour layover, we decide to walk down Wacker Drive and eat at a restaurant. Craig and I…

In the 1960s I made a penniless pilgrimage cross country from Boston to California. In 2011 I went in the other direction, this time aboard an Amtrak train. Join me as my train leaves southern California into northern Arizona. I have selected a few poignant episodes to illustrate what occurred…

Are we made for fun or folly? I’d vote for fun over folly, and it would be folly to so sharply limit our options. Why not allow for both? Let me begin with fun. Penning a clerihew is fun. What’s a clerihew, you ask? Its inventor, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a…

My sixth grade teacher picked me to sing a solo of “O Danny Boy,” his favorite Irish ditty. He must have liked my voice. Maybe he figured I had the Italian genes of soloists like Frank Sinatra or Perry Como. At eleven years old, my voice had not yet "broken."…

Mother Jones magazine recently published a U.S. Mass Shootings Database for the years 1982-2019, which is available as a downloadable spreadsheet. (Google the magazine name and the name of the database; you can't miss it.) The spreadsheet includes dates, locations, number of dead and wounded, as well as details of…

Remember the U.S. Army’s old advertising slogan, “Freedom Isn’t Free”? Now we know that sexual freedom isn’t free either. According to a USA Today report (Feb. 27), since July 1, 2016, when President Obama lifted the transgender ban in the armed forces, the Pentagon has spent nearly $8 million treating…

San Francisco was recently dubbed the "Poop Capital of America" due to the high number of poop complaints reported in 2017. Local channel KRON reports that while dogs play a part, at issue is the number of homeless people defecating in streets and parks. Could "privy demons" be a reason why down-and-outers…

What is the aim of our clicking and reading? It is not to say, "Whatever!" The aim is thinking. And when we think, we form judgments. We think, for example, that G. K. Chesterton was a journalist, that gin merits tonic, that the Babylon Bee has great satire. When we think we…