The Narthex

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…

The latest group to protest faceless and heartless technocratic control is Dutch farmers. According to Joe Barnes at The Age (July 10), huge protests are sweeping the Netherlands "triggered by the introduction of laws designed to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by up to 95 percent" in the agricultural sector.…

Opinions abound about the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. Here in California, highly publicized protests feature women carrying signs that read, “Abortion on Demand, without Apology.” Nothing new, only more frantic and furious. On my view, Dobbs is a decent first step. But its own reasoning doesn’t allow for the next…

Many saints, performers of wondrous deeds, fortified themselves with silent, prayerful contemplation of infinite Truth -- all in their small, simple cells. Researchers and scientists like the famous inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla also embraced privation, risk, and sacrifice. Much like the saints, they demonstrated the great faith that…

Recently the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies hosted Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian newspaper, who spoke to a capacity crowd on Christianity's Contribution to Western Civilization. Greg is a good friend to the Dawson Centre; he has visited on earlier occasions and always deservedly draws a large audience,…

As of today, thirteen U.S. states have banned or widely restricted abortion after the Supreme Court's ruling on Dobbs. Tennessee, the thirteenth, has a six-week "heartbeat" ban and next month may see a trigger-law ban go into effect that protects the unborn starting at conception. LifeNews.com's Steven Ertelt offers a…

What to do about one’s pet peeves? As a peevish person, it’s a question I often face. Maybe I’m too peeved to pursue my current culprits. I have two of them. Consider the now ubiquitous “inappropriate.” Does coach swear a blue streak? That’s inappropriate, says the principal. Do Mike and…

Even the so-called best of our modern schools offer suboptimal conditions for boys. Warren Farrell and John Gray's The Boy Crisis (2019) substantially treats the topic, as does the older War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers (2015). We all experience manifestations of the boy crisis in our daily lives…

In the early church, reports of Christians healing the sick and raising the dead by prayer were accepted without skepticism or disbelief. In his five-volume series Against the Heresies, St. Irenaeus (c.130-220), Bishop of Lyons, writes, “Some persons that were dead have been raised again and have continued among us…

Former confidants of Hitler did not get out of Germany alive, but Hermann Rauschning did. He later published verbatim private conversations with Hitler between 1932 and 1935, revealing a strategy to gain control of America that would have astonished the Allies. The author’s intimate revelations of Hitler’s personality, describing his…

Another school shooting, but the same old debate follows. The blood of the slain and wounded children is not yet dry in the classrooms before pundits start to parrot the usual lines.

“It’s the guns!” cries the Left.

“It’s mental illness!” cries the Right.

I submit it’s the public schools.…

One of William Wordsworth's best poems is an ode with the somewhat daunting title Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. It's a reflection on the progress of human life from infancy to maturity. He thinks of children as natural believers, born with an inherent sense of awe at…

The press is repeating Bishop (and now Cardinal-elect) Robert McElroy’s charge that excluding Catholic politicians from Communion is wrongheaded. “It will bring tremendously destructive consequences” he writes, and politics is to blame. “The Eucharist is being weaponized and deployed as a tool in political warfare.” McElroy also points to the…

The need for sacrifice exists in every theater of nature. Life cannot exist and persist without some sacrifice of its components. Stars explode in supernovas to provide gaseous dust and minerals for newborn stars and their offspring in planetary systems. A forest's fallen timbers donate their substance to newly sprouting…

Edmund Burke described society as “a partnership... between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Conservatives feel this keenly, believing they have obligations to generations past and to come. Enemies of conservatism, often driven by deep resentment of traditional values, prefer to…