The Narthex

Everybody has heard of Socrates, the Greek philosopher who was put to death by his own people in 399 BC. The charge against him was that he had “corrupted the youth,” but in reality it was his profound intellectual humility that killed him. He was as honest a man as…

The New York Times vacillates in its effect on readers. Often enough it induces nausea. But sometimes it gives us food for thought. A recent obituary, “Joel Kupperman, Scarred by Success as a Precocious ‘Quiz Kid,’ Dies at 83” (May 15, page A24) is surely food for thought. So what’s…

When I was working as a city engineer in my senior years, I found occasion to advise younger coworkers about some curious issues. When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, the Church was in the midst of electing a papal successor. Because I was known among my fellow workers…

A saint is someone who lets the light shine in -- the light of Christ, Lumen Christi. And the light can become a blaze. The joyous Easter Exsultet announces, “This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.” For now, of course, contradictions abound…

Joyce hears the thunderous drone of German bombers flying overhead, so dense that they blot out the sun like a dark storm cloud. At seven years old, she’s experiencing The Battle of Britain. Citizens must stay at home with black-out conditions at night. While trying to fall asleep, she hears…

In the early 1980s, while walking through an enclosed shopping mall I decided to visit a gaming arcade. The place was buzzing with youth decked out in spiked purple hairdos, dragon tattoos, riveted leathers blazoned with gang symbols, and long drooping chains from hip pockets. The din of silicon pings…

On April 25 we celebrated ANZAC Day, the annual commemoration of Australia’s and New Zealand’s participation in the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. The campaign failed in its objectives and our troops withdrew having suffered terrible losses over several bitter months of struggle. There can’t be many countries whose…

Chris Arnade’s Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America recounts his four years of accompanying, and listening to, Americans who have been left behind. The book comes with striking photographs of the people to whom he introduces us. Many he meets at the local McDonald’s or a storefront church. Arnade…

About 20 years ago, the children of tenants renting my house pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on the master bedroom ceiling for their parents. When I moved in, I noticed the virtual galaxy the children created. Lying on my bed, I turned off the lamp and looked at the ceiling, surprised and…

In the mid-1960s, I could be seen on the Boston Common dressed in surplus military fatigues, complete with jacket and boots, sporting a chestnut brown beard. I wasn’t aware at the time that all us hippie rebels were enacting a spectacular resurgence of utopian socialism. Our rebel cause was to…

When the coronavirus pandemic subsides, and if we keep our wits about us, we’ll begin to reboot our economy. Even now, it’s high time to rethink our economy. I’d like to suggest two proposals for this project. One proposal is modest enough. The other, admittedly, is entirely and flagrantly immodest.…

Recently I read this news clip: “The Andromeda galaxy ate our sister galaxy, and now it’s coming for us.” An astrophysicist used poetic license to describe that star-studded dinner event but it got me thinking. Maybe I need to expand my narrow definition of living things. My biology textbook made…

If you ask people what they think was the most important thing that ever happened in the world, they’ll come up with some fascinating answers. Some will tell you it was the invention of the wheel. Others will plump for the telephone. Others perhaps the discovery of anesthetics. Few will…

Sometimes I feel like Rip van Winkle waking from a 20-year sleep to find drastic changes, not only social but technological as well. Our standard of living has improved more in the last 100 years than in all recorded history. Such rapid innovation is startling and wondrous. But it’s also…

Common sense is often in short supply. Far too many people go about their daily routines paying little attention to the role that social distancing plays in saving lives, including their own. That said, the pandemic also calls for “clarification of thought,” as Peter Maurin liked to say, about three…