The Narthex

In the middle of the Gulf War of 1991, the commanding general, the late General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. (“Stormin’ Norman”), complained publicly that he was receiving intelligence reports filled with so many caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes, that it was as though, he said, the reports had been written by lawyers.…

Calendar Conundrums Has it ever troubled our liturgically befuddled bishops, who have made a goulash of six holydays of obligation (transferring some while making others obligatory depending on their day in the week) that, in our modern world, if you say “January 6,” more people think of “insurrection” than “Epiphany?”…

Among the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance is oppression of the widow and orphan. The Bible saw exploitation of widows and orphans as the epitome of moral turpitude because both groups were, by their very status, vulnerable. In today’s parlance, they are “on the peripheries.” In Judaism,…

Stephen Doran’s new book, To Die Well: A Catholic Neurosurgeon’s Guide to the End of Life, is a gem that pulls off several achievements simultaneously. It’s readable while tackling the major issues of bioethics around death and dying while situating the whole discussion in a spiritual context, recognizing that death…

Within the Octave of Christmas, a Feast of Life, a New York Times (A1, Dec. 28) headline read, “Assisted Death for the Mentally Ill Divides Canada.” This March will bring the Government’s decision. No mention in the Times, of course, of killing. Instead the piece speaks of a “practice,” a…

The readings for the Feast of the Holy Family seem, by some contemporary standards, to be a bit quaint and dated. That’s because they put a lot of emphasis on obedience. Obedience correlates with other concepts, including authority and even hierarchy. Those are words at which our “democratic” world (and…

The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, is poorly understood by contemporary Catholics. It doesn’t, in that regard, differ from many of our other holydays of obligation, the significance of only one of which -- Christmas -- is arguably at least somewhat well grasped. Consider the others. There are still…

Tomorrow, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs. I make that explicit because in the past few years there has been something like an ecclesiastical version of bait-and-switch in some quarters to change the focus of the feast. Today’s feast is about children: baby boys aged two…

Thanks to the Catholic Bishops of the United States’ Complementary Norms, January 1, 2024 -- the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God -- will not be a holyday of obligation. That’s because, under those Norms, certain holydays cease being holydays of obligation if they fall on Saturdays or Mondays. The…

Catholics in Ukraine mark their second Christmas, and third winter, under Russian attack. Instead of awaiting the first star on Christmas Eve to mark the beginning of the Christmas supper, Ukrainian children will watch for incoming Russian missile fire. Instead of angels singing over the winter fields, the sound of…

The Declaration Fiducia Supplicans, signed by Pope Francis, calls for our close attention. Its overarching context is the Church’s wealth of blessings, each a gift of God’s love, and their place in the economy of grace. The most frequent, and liturgically grounded, blessing comes at the conclusion of the Mass.…

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:…

Regular readers know I am a harsh critic of cremation and of the Church’s misconceived 1963 decision to tolerate it. I have repeatedly argued that that 1963 rescission of the prohibition on cremation allowed the camel to poke its nose under the tent, upending the latter. The most cursory survey…

Rabbi David Ellenson died December 7 in New York. I read about it in The New York Times. I’ll admit to knowing nothing about the man before I read his obituary. The phenomenon of reading obituaries kicks in at a certain age. As a child, I was always puzzled by the…

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…