The Narthex

The celebrated Dorothy Parker, on hearing the phone ring, liked to ask, “What fresh hell is this?” Of late we might say the same on reading the morning paper or catching the evening news. But not on this blog post, not today. Let’s consider, instead, the promise and peril of…

What’s the right “build” or “profile” for a non-martyred lay saint? It’s fair to say that we don't live our lives aspiring to be canonized saints. But we do aspire to be saints. French novelist Léon Bloy wrote, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy…

When you strive to defend the achievements of Christian civilization you encounter an awful lot of kickback, a lot of angry hostility towards Christian culture. It can be dispiriting. But Christmas is a time for absolute and entirely positive joyfulness. It is not the chief Christian festival, for that honor is reserved to Easter, the…

One prominent member of the hierarchy who readily recognized holiness in the laypeople whom he knew personally was Pope St. John Paul II. Part X of this blog series mentioned one layman whose holiness he recognized: Jan Tyranowski. John Paul II declared him a Servant of God on April 28,…

Let’s recap: During the 40 years from 1978 to October 2018, fifteen to twenty laypersons were canonized, including a few to whom Our Lady appeared, two who took vows of chastity, and a stigmatist, leaving only a handful of men and women who married and had children. Pope Francis has…

The dilemma we Catholics face in every election is having to decide which flawed candidate to vote for. Few Catholics in politics have the courage to buck their party’s platform and speak up for traditional moral tenets. The Catholic Voter Guide says one may not vote for an enemy of…

Let us continue with our systematic, chronological look at the sainthood “pipeline” and decisions made by Pope Francis in late 2018, 2019, and January through May 2020 with respect to the recognition of martyrdom, miracles, and heroic virtues. Nov. 8, 2018: 24 people, 11 of whom were martyrs. Of the…

Pope Francis advanced more souls along the “pipeline” to canonization in 2017 and 2018. Let's continue our systematic, chronological look at them: Feb. 27, 2017: 8 people, including one martyr. Of the non-martyrs: four were priests (one of them a diocesan-founder) or religious, three of whom were founders. The two…

Taking 25 years as an average human generation, a quick calculation shows that each of you has had 4,096 ancestors in the 300 years since 1720. This fact is obscured by our obsession with patrilinear reckoning, which counts only the male line. Not only is that sexist, but it conceals…

Sr. Ardeth Platte, OP, was my first, and best, academic boss. I was teaching part-time at St. Joseph Elementary School in Saginaw, Michigan. (Have you heard the song about Saginaw?) My wife Elizabeth and I were living Saginaw’s public housing project, across from a railroad switching yard. As a conscientious…

Before we turn to recent years, I'll add one more lay Blessed to the last blog’s “Lay Saints 'In the Pipeline'": Frédéric Ozanam (1813-1853) was a lawyer who founded the lay St. Vincent de Paul Society. He had 13 siblings but only two of them survived to adulthood. He was…

When I was a high school sophomore in 1956, my ambitious father accompanied me to an interview at the plush home of a Phillips Andover Academy board trustee. At the time, the school adhered to a code of "WASP Ascendancy," breeding a ruling class where only sons of the upper…

Monuments to St. Junípero Serra have been destroyed throughout California. His statues were toppled in Golden Gate Park (San Francisco), Capitol Park (Sacramento), and Serra Park (Los Angeles). Meanwhile, cities and school districts have rebranded buildings named after him and removed his statues from their grounds in an attempt to…

Let us take a look at the laypersons who are in the pipeline to be canonized. I have not researched all of the hundreds of Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God. In 2006, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, who headed the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said there were more…

A great man has died. Dr. Hasuda Taiji (1936-2020) passed away in late October, leaving behind many iterations around the world of the thing for which he will always be remembered: a hole in the wall. Dr. Hasuda was an ob-gyn at the Jikei Byōin (“Mercy Hospital”) in Kumamoto, Japan.…