The Narthex

Last Sunday’s readings focused on the unity of the moral life, the common thread connecting the readings. Because some clergy might have been inclined to focus on the “heart,” on the intention of the moral agent, let’s take a step back and see all the readings in one big picture.…

In Part 1, linked below, I looked at the Catholic Church’s criteria for just war and just conduct of war. Here I turn to the loss of civilian lives and physical destruction, and address the issue of Israel’s conduct of the war. Hamas alleges a large number of deaths among…

Freedom Versus Self-Will Continuing my way through Roman Brandstaetter's superb literary corpus, I ran into a collection of short meditations he penned, inspired by his positive encounter with Franciscanism. He spoke of a writer, sitting at his desk, who noticed a bee walking along his window pane. Caringly, he opened…

The number of killed, injured, and displaced people among two million Gazans has been large and is growing. I hope my words here will contribute to a conversation on assessing the morality of Israel’s actions. The social teaching of the Catholic Church appeals to human reason, not only to the…

“Accompaniment” is a buzzword in the Francis papacy. It’s striking, then, that it appeared in the Gospel last Sunday, though not exactly in the manner to which current ecclesiastics have grown accustomed. Sunday’s Gospel wrapped up the Eucharistic teaching of Jesus we have been reading from John 6 these last…

Some of my best friends are grumpy old men. So the question arises: Can they be saints? Let’s hope so. Keep in mind, gentle reader, that not so long ago a concerned lady, a scholar of note, asked me whether the NOR itself had fallen into the hands of grumpy…

In the middle of summer in Year II of the weekday lectionary, the Church’s First Reading includes excerpts from the major prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel wrote during and after the Exile. To situate the story: For those who remember their grade school world history, Israel was at the western end of…

Minouche Shafik has quit as President of Columbia. After some posturing before a House committee on how Columbia “protects” its Jewish students from the pro-Hamas mob -- which, like a virus, occasionally manifests a more virulent outbreak -- Shafik showed herself incapable of handling vandals who interfered with student access…

Twenty years ago, as rector of Sydney University's St. John's College, I interviewed a young woman for admission. In those days it was still acceptable for a Catholic educational body to expect in its students a certain sympathy, at least, for the Christian faith, so I asked her about her…

As the Solemnity of the Assumption once more fades away for another year, some parting thoughts on the significance of the feast: One: It's a Pro-life Holy Day Three unborn children appear in the readings for the Solemnity, one in the First Reading, two in the Gospel. The child in…

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when she was taken body and soul to heaven, might seem to have affinities to the Resurrection and Ascension. Let’s examine them. First of all, the Assumption is not a resurrection. In proclaiming the dogma of the Assumption, Pope Pius XII took pains…

August 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In…

Vatican II talked about the Church in dialogue with the modern world. Some of us have wondered whether that dialogue has been largely one-sided, i.e., modernity talking and the Church listening. One hopes the dialogue also would proceed in the other direction, to a world largely convinced of its rightness…

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr. St. Lawrence is probably best known popularly for being martyred alive on a gridiron and for his remark about being “well-done on this side, turn me over!” The jocularity tends to obscure just how barbaric a death Lawrence died during…

My parish owes heartfelt thanks to visiting priests from Africa. Not long ago, my pastor visited two of them in their home diocese in Uganda. While he was there, a controversy flared up. From what I could tell by parsing the news report, a government official there was levying a…