The Narthex

An excellent article on U.S. involvement in Ukraine -- one that provides more background and analysis than a hundred mainstream pieces -- is offered by Christopher Caldwell at the Claremont Review website. A link to "Why Are We in Ukraine?" (Summer 2022) can be found below. To sample Caldwell's valuable…

Every act of faith, including prayer, terminates not in a proposition or an abstract concept but in the living God. We pray to Him. (In contrast, recall how in the secular realm we often hear, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” or we are exhorted to give thanks on…

Until a couple years ago, Dan Lipinski settled for being a decent politician. Lipinski, a Democrat, was an eight-term congressman from Illinois’ 3rd district. Plus, he was a political scientist with a doctorate from Duke. Then a pro-abortion candidate defeated him in the Democrat 2020 primary. Money mattered and Lipinski’s…

Today Arizona governor Doug Ducey is signing a universal school-choice law that gives parents $7,000 per child per year to spend at any educational institution of their choice, including private schools and religious schools. Catholic schools in Arizona will be among the many beneficiaries of this innovation. In City Journal…

In July, a grisly video made the evening news. The video—apparently real—shows a Ukrainian prisoner of war being tortured by Chechen soldiers fighting for the Russian military. The Chechens castrate the Ukrainian prisoner with a box cutter and then shoot him dead. People in modern societies comfort themselves with the…

The City of New York recently released a 90-second public service announcement (PSA) on "Nuclear Preparedness." The Emergency Management department's video is so odd, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that people may put their trust in it. Imagine, the video's narrator says, that…

“That was rude.” So said the love of my life and not for the first time. She was addressing me! It was, sad to say, a fairly familiar accusation. And yet we should hold fast to the legal maxim that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. As is a…

In 2008, while I waited in traffic, I heard a horn beep and looked to see a "thumbs up" by a young driver. She was praising the sticker posted on my rear window: One Man, One Woman for Life. That was when Proposition 8, banning all homosexual marriages, was approved…

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh recently spoke at a local pro-life fundraising event, and afterward he was criticized in the usual quarters. But instead of retreating from the subject of abortion, he decided to elaborate on his stance in an interview with ESPN. In the interview he says he tells…

The Dawson Centre’s recent Colloquium, the big event of our year, lived up to our expectations and indeed soared beyond: all presentations were well and evenly matched in their force and relevance. One of our guests said, "Just the one day was more stimulating than my entire undergraduate degree!" Putting…

The number seven seems to have special status, as seen in mathematics, engineering science, natural history, psychology, and elsewhere. Our civilization counts seven continents, seven seas, seven wonders of the ancient world, and seven heavens. Western musical scales are composed of seven distinct notes that Pythagoras (c. 500 BC) studied…

Perhaps you heard the Church of England is mulling its definition of woman. A leading figure in the C of E, Rt. Rev. Robert Innes, reports that “There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as…

Among global leaders, only the Pope has repeatedly called for de-escalation in Ukraine. A quick scan of the front pages of major American news websites -- Fox News, CNN, MSNBC -- today shows almost no mention at all of the ongoing conflict (only CNN has a link to "live updates"…

The 13th-century invention of the mechanical clock dramatically changed the pace of civilization. "There are few greater revolutions in human experience," historian Daniel Boorstin writes, "than this movement from the seasonal or 'temporary' hour to the equal hour. Here was man's declaration of independence from the sun, a new proof…

I had recently finished reading Father Ian Ker’s biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (who was beatified in 2010 and canonized in 2019) when a review in the Wall Street Journal of a book on the existence and nature of God by a professor of law at Yale caught my…