The Narthex

The first phase of the synod on synodality aims to collect input from the Church's peripheries. It's hard to imagine what kind of feedback Church leaders expect from a global-scale project like this. If bishops and cardinals want perspectives from pew-sitters and Catholics on the margins, then perhaps they should…

What’s wrong with the world? Chesterton famously asked this and also confessed that he himself was a major part of the problem. In light of his meeting with President Biden, I ask myself what’s wrong with Pope Francis? I’ve asked that question before with regard to his muddled treatment of…

I recently returned from a visit to Perth. Western Australia and Tasmania are COVID-free “bubbles” and one is able to travel fairly freely between them (freely, that is to say, if you except the necessity of obtaining what amounts to a visa to pass from one state of the Commonwealth…

About 40 fathers at a high school in Shreveport, Louisiana, have done something simple, effective, and mostly untried at school: They are using their presence to combat violence that recently led to 23 students arrested in three days. "Dads on Duty" group founder Michael LaFitte says, "“We decided the best…

Recently New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan, in discussing the synodal process, spoke of seven “non negotiables.” Jesus, he said, intends each of them. One is that "mercy, love, invitation, humility, joy, selfless generous service, and good example are our only tools, never harshness, condemnation, or pride.” Sadly, we sometimes obscure…

On Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's Life is Worth Living show of February 2, 1953 -- the episode entitled "The Death of Stalin" -- Sheen enacted Mark Antony’s eulogy for Julius Caesar, substituting Malenkov and Stalin as the two characters. “And now Malenkov speaks: ‘Friends, Soviets, countrymen, lend me your ears;…

When I was twelve and going to Mass daily, my Masonic father slammed his hand on our kitchen table one evening and asked, “What’s this about daily Mass? No more of it.” I suppose my "excessive" religiosity was from watching Bishop Fulton Sheen on TV every week. Perhaps because my…

Pope Francis meets and greets Nancy Pelosi. So it went last week. Then followed a practiced exchange of smiles. Since the devil is no respecter of persons, he was doubtless there as well. But our angels love us far more than the devil hates us, so we can hope that…

My globetrotting has currently landed me in the Northern Italian city of Bologna for about a half year. A large university town with a vibrant social scene, Bologna also happens to be the location of the famous Basilica San Domenico (St. Dominic, 13th-century Catholic priest and founder of the Dominican…

Chris Arnade is a photographer and writer whose bestseller Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America (2019) shone a light on the people left behind by globalist technocrats, on the people "who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class." Back Row Americans…

To my mind the greatest challenge of human education is the building and maintaining of historical awareness. How can we have even an inkling of where we stand and where we’re heading if our grasp of the past is feeble or non-existent? Human memory is so short, and deliberate bias…

On September 30, 2021, the United States Senate confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning as the new director of the Bureau of Land Management (WashingtonTimes.com, Sept. 30). Choosing someone to fill the Bureau of Land Management director position is not normally cause for a national furor, but this time was different. In a…

I received a phone call from my 91-year-old friend Lou, who had asked me for advice on several occasions. I had just awakened from a nap, but my grogginess vanished on hearing the urgent tone of his voice. Lately his health had been failing from a hiatal hernia that caused…

Check out this headline: "Transgender students 'unknowingly' admitted to Catholic seminaries, archbishop warns" (Catholic News Agency, Sept. 29). CNA reports on a recent memo sent from chairman of the USCCB’s canonical affairs committee, Milwaukee archbishop Jerome Listecki, to members of the full USCCB. A link to the full story is…

Passion is trending! There’s nary a resumé in which the applicant doesn’t tell us “my passion is…” nor an author’s bio-sketch that doesn’t confide that “______ is my passion.” A precedent: David Hume admitted that literary fame, not philosophy, was his ruling passion. Whatever the passion be, a promise comes…