The Narthex

As the Solemnity of the Assumption once more fades away for another year, some parting thoughts on the significance of the feast: One: It's a Pro-life Holy Day Three unborn children appear in the readings for the Solemnity, one in the First Reading, two in the Gospel. The child in…

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when she was taken body and soul to heaven, might seem to have affinities to the Resurrection and Ascension. Let’s examine them. First of all, the Assumption is not a resurrection. In proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption, Pope Pius XII took pains…

August 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In…

Vatican II talked about the Church in dialogue with the modern world. Some of us have wondered whether that dialogue has been largely one-sided, i.e., modernity talking and the Church listening. One hopes the dialogue also would proceed in the other direction, to a world largely convinced of its rightness…

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr. St. Lawrence is probably best known popularly for being martyred alive on a gridiron and for his remark about being “well-done on this side, turn me over!” The jocularity tends to obscure just how barbaric a death Lawrence died during…

My parish owes heartfelt thanks to visiting priests from Africa. Not long ago, my pastor visited two of them in their home diocese in Uganda. While he was there, a controversy flared up. From what I could tell by parsing the news report, a government official there was levying a…

Alasdair MacIntyre, in his important book After Virtue, suggests what the world needs today is “another -- doubtless very different -- Saint Benedict.” Some might argue that Pope Benedict XVI was that new “Benedict” speaking to the modern world. I’d like to suggest what the world needs today is a…

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Celebrated in the midst of summer, it perhaps gets short shrift from many Catholics. Catholics more regularly are reminded of the Transfiguration each year on the Second Sunday of Lent, when we read of it in one of the three Synoptic Gospels. It’s…

Describing the “den of infamous resort” where Old Joe, Mrs. Dilber, and others haggled over things pilfered from the possessions of Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens called that “beetling shop” a place where “iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps…

Last week I had an epistolary exchange with Thomas Aquinas College. It was instructive. It was not, however, inspiring. First came a phone call. I chatted with Mary Block, the Executive Assistant to the Dean, John Goyette. I explained that Peter Sonski, the American Solidarity Party’s presidential candidate, would like…

July 21-27 is Captive Nations Week. Congress designated in 1959 the third week of July as Captive Nations Week and asked the President to proclaim it annually. (Congress initially designated Captive Nations Week by itself in 1953). Joe Biden issued an executive proclamation on July 19. Captive Nations Week commemorates…

Just war theory remains vital because -- naïve thinking aside -- war is not going away as long as men are sinners. As long as men are sinners, some will try to do injustice to others by force. As long as some are victims of injustice, they have a right…

July 22 used to be a state holiday in Communist Poland marking the day that the traitors imported by the Soviet Army installed themselves in Lublin in 1944 as the “Provisional Government of National Unity” and would proceed, for the next 45 years, to torture Poland with their pretensions to…

The Church along with her leadership has three munera, three offices and duties: teaching, governing, and sanctifying. These three responsibilities are prominent in last Sunday’s readings. The munus docendi (the office of teaching), on which I’ll focus, is prominent in the Gospel. The details of Jesus’ arrival on the other…

Michael Novak’s The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (1972) generated an ethnic pride movement in the 1970s. Americans of Eastern and Southern European ancestry, Latinos, and others came out of the WASP shadows to acknowledge that their heritage remained -- and legitimately remained -- part of their American identity. I…