The Narthex

In the last week or so I’ve had two friends ask me the same hard question about evangelizing, though in different ways. What follows is how I answered them. If nothing else, I got some practice in answering questions that Catholics, as strangers in a strange land, need to address.…

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will top news headlines for days to come. As a supplement to those articles I offer two links containing perspectives not easily found in our mainstream media. The first is "As America’s Imperial Ambitions Collapse, Washington Should Ask: Who Lost Afghanistan?" by Doug Bandow (Antiwar.com,…

Employer mandates appear to be the next big thing in the pandemic-response saga. My 62-year-old sister, a registered nurse, had to have the jab to keep her job. She had no underlying illnesses, but within two months after getting vaxed she contracted near-death pericarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). The…

Being conservative has very little to do with the political left or the political right. We at the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies are not right-wingers. Though some of our views might be characterized as right-wing, we hold many opinions that would commonly be regarded as more typical of…

In Matthew 19:12 Christ suggests His male disciples may want to make themselves (figurative) eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. In Orthodox Jewish culture, men are expected to obey God’s directive to reproduce and sire offspring; Jewish women still judge barrenness a stigma. Why would Christ incur…

Loose lips sink ships! When Nazi submarines preyed on Atlantic convoys, security measures took on new urgency. Gossip could lead to disaster. Today loose language, though not an impending disaster, is a debilitating phenomenon. I suggest that we “call it out.” When it comes to monitoring language, there is an…

Pope Francis recently placed excessive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) with a motu proprio called Traditionis Custodes. TLM communities were shocked, to say the least. The traditionalist website OnePeterFive now features a three-part series by Peter Kwasniewski -- many of whose books have been reviewed in our pages…

Hope and optimism are often confused. An American wit, whose name I can’t recall, once defined a pessimist as “an optimist with the facts.” I must admit I love that kind of pithy, cynical humor that Americans do so well. Such cracks work well because there’s at least a grain…

Self-anointed prophets have often attempted to pinpoint doomsday. They were obviously wrong. But now, the prophets of scientism are speculating that Earth is due for its Seventh Mass Extinction. A controversial MIT study from 1972 claims we are right on track for a global collapse of civilization by 2040. Historical…

A year and a half of COVID-time has passed, so it's time for a data update. All along some medical professionals have warned that the virus will be with us for a long time -- this much holds true. Putting aside the endless debates over lockdowns and masks, one cannot…

David, now a seminary professor and the father of a large family, was among the very best of my students. He introduced our family to what Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI would later term the Extraordinary Rite. My wife and I were already receptive. We had grown up with the Latin…

In order to appreciate what's at stake in the current Church-wide controversy surrounding restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass (TLM), data on Latin Mass attendees is key. A post at LitugyGuy.com, a blog by Fr. Donald Kloster of Norwalk, Connecticut, shows results of a unique national survey of Latin Mass-goers…

California bureaucrats are aiming for more and more control over our lives—with no end in sight. A San Diego county government agency is proposing various options for a mileage tax, anticipating that more electric vehicles will reduce overall gas tax revenues -- currently 51 cents per gallon— by far the…

Today, crazy notions spread like wild fire and become wilder as they spread, often claiming the authority of science, and using the muscle of popular mass culture to cower most people into acquiescence, if not belief. We are indeed in the midst of a pandemic, but it’s much bigger than…

I was raised in a household that had few pets: a fish that lasted about a year, a cat that wound up moving in with the neighbors, and another cat that I insisted on adopting and then promptly left when I moved away for college six months later. Ours…