The Narthex

David French is one of a particular species of pundit, one who likes to trade on the gases of his erstwhile conservative credentials while reliably ending up where good liberals are expected to be. It was that imitation of the Colossus of Rhodes’ straddle that initially led to his famous…

“Sleek barbarians” is a term and concept articulated by contemporary Polish philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski which I have tried to popularize and disseminate in the English-speaking world. I do so because the concept seems to have even broader application here than in Poland (though Poland does not lack for its own…

The patria potestas was a legal power held by fathers in the Roman Empire. If you think that Tiberius was just dad in a toga, think again. In Roman law, a father had rights over his family, including the right of who could bear his name. If, therefore, a child…

Sunday’s readings said a lot about trees and their growth. The First Reading spoke about God, who fosters some trees and withers others. The Gospel spoke of the tiny mustard seed that produces a large tree. The Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer wrote a poem, “Trees,” that was once standard fare in…

We’re told that it’s for “religious reasons” that someone opposes abortion. And it’s for “religious reasons” that someone opposes euthanasia. So we read in, for example, newspapers of record like the L.A. Times. What we don’t read, of course, is that someone opposes the policy of nuclear deterrence for religious…

Classical Education is a fast-growing movement. Its emphasis has shifted from a close attention to linguistics to a broad focus on those subjects that particularly distinguish humanity from the beasts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The ancients called these the Trivium. The fact that our word trivial comes from that says…

Scientists tell us that 2024 is a unique year. Every so often, Americans in different regions experience the emergence of cicadas, insects that burrow underground until their new brood hatches and then announce their arrival with uproarious noise. What makes 2024 special is that two different broods -- one that…

Rumer Godden is perhaps best known for her 1969 bestseller In This House of Brede, the story of a woman who enters an English Benedictine convent. It was published a year after Godden converted to Catholicism. Religion, however, permeated Godden’s books from very early on, like Black Narcissus, her 1939…

The Blaine Amendment of 1875 sought to add the following language to the federal Constitution: “No money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any…

Today is the Solemnity of the Visitation, commemorating when Mary -- in her first trimester -- made a 90-mile trip from Nazareth in Galilee to Ein Karem in Judea to tend to her “kinswoman” Elizabeth, in her third trimester. We will celebrate the birth of John the Baptist next month,…

In the old Catholic catechism, four sins were identified as “crying to heaven for vengeance” – murder, sodomy, defrauding workers of their wages, and oppression of the widow and orphan. Outrage, rightly understood, is a moral thing. To be outraged at injustice, especially when it is tolerated or even pronounced…

Paul Benjamin Linton is author of the magisterial Abortion under State Constitutions -- which has gone through three editions -- and the recognized pro-life authority on that subject. While Roe v. Wade held abortion policy hostage to an imagined federal “right,” Linton reminded us that every state has its own…

Fidelity (in Hebrew, hesed) is one of the Lord’s great attributes. The history of salvation is the history of hesed. Because God's revelation to man is so anchored in fidelity, hesed is an extraordinarily rich Biblical concept. Adam sinned, yet “even when he lost Your friendship, You did not abandon…

Jerome R. Daly was the most decorated helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. After retiring from the Army in 1982, he became a Catholic priest. Vietnam was a war in which combat helicopters played a pre-eminent role. According to a 2018 report by Gary Roush of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots…

“Diversity” is a mantra very much in contemporary vogue, although arguably one whose end-goal is often unclear. Any group needs some principle of unity; even the poster children of diversity have to have something that unites one diverse group vis-à-vis others. Otherwise, they’d not be a group but simply a…