The Narthex

Mother Jones magazine recently published a U.S. Mass Shootings Database for the years 1982-2019, which is available as a downloadable spreadsheet. (Google the magazine name and the name of the database; you can't miss it.) The spreadsheet includes dates, locations, number of dead and wounded, as well as details of…

The philosopher Simone Weil’s Waiting on God (1950) is a haunting reflection on the distance between “the everyday” and the transcendent. A year earlier the playwright Samuel Beckett finished his Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s “Godot” is a fantasist’s inkblot: interpret him as you please. Not so the God to whom…

Earlier this month, under pressure from LGBT groups, Amazon stopped selling books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi.  Dr. Nicolosi was well known for reparative therapy that helped many people overcome the temptation to same-sex attraction.  Of course, the fact that Dr. Nicolosi wanted to free people from both disordered inclinations and…

A faithful member of my writing critique group was moving out of state, so we threw her a goodbye party. I sat at the end of a foldout table on a spacious patio, talking with a newer member, a man in his eighties writing a novel based on his experiences…

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki obviously resulted in widespread civil chaos from which there was no rapid recovery. Fast-forward to 1960, when scientists unleashed another kind of bomb, The Pill. Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood funded the research leading to its commercial development. One…

When Christ gave to His followers freedom from the law, He was, in essence, promising them freedom from reliance on loopholes.  No longer bound toes to a line, our feet were unshackled to roam the fields of freedom.  The problem is that reliance on loopholes has…

Parish life begins in the parking lot. My wife saw her first, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Well, yes, politicians come and fortunately they go. But our current representative has yet to go, and we are in possession of a letter from her with the bland assurance that partial birth abortion is…

The last decade has seen incredible growth in the number of people who regularly practice yoga. Despite its popularity, most practitioners are woefully ignorant of its roots and meaning.  Many Catholics can be counted among this group.  In fact, some parishes even going so far as to host “Mommy’s Morning…

Last year the state of Washington began requiring all health plans that cover maternity care to cover abortion procedures also. This year the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Cedar Park Church challenging the statute as unconstitutional on religious-freedom grounds. No doubt the lawsuit will run…

A cousin emailed me a news clip about the latest research on reviving dead pig brains. Yale’s BrainEx experiments offer the possibility of keeping much of the brain alive separate from the body. That drastic procedure performed on humans ― which no scientific review board would currently approve ― is…

Professors Heather Erb and Steve Bertucci, tutors at Angelicum Academy, are engaging and persuasive exponents of “Great Books Education.” And just what is a Great Book? It is one of enduring significance and a lever, as it were, for the human enterprise. It is a tool that helps take us…

After a prolonged campaign against smoking, the culture at large mostly agrees that cigarette smoking is evil.  Setting aside whether that is true or not, at no time during the debate did anyone accuse other people of being tobaccophobic or call them haters.  That was because it was quite clear…

As an electrical engineer for the City of San Diego, one day my job took me to Mission Bay Senior High School in Pacific Beach, California. A traffic signal there had to be modified, so I met with one of my technical assistants, Joe, a graying African-American.

We had been working into the…

Here’s a snappy reality check: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.” But reality isn’t always easy to check. For a start, if my opinion is ill-formed, I’m not really entitled to it. There’s a duty to think carefully about our opinions. Of course, today’s political slugfest…

There is only one Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Redeemer of the World. This is what the Catholic Church has always taught, since the first century AD, and still teaches -- you can look it up. Being God, He does not NEED anything. He does not NEED His…