Articles

Guidelines for the Long Haul - Revisited

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote a column entitled, Guidelines for the Long Haul. Revisiting it recently, I was encouraged that my principles haven't swayed during the past quarter-century, only taken on more nuance. I still recommend those same commandments, nostalgically revisited, somewhat redacted, but fully re-endorsed:

Struggling With Secularity

 We live in a highly secularized culture. Generally this draws one of three reactions from Christians struggling to live out faith in this context: First, a growing number of Christians of all denominations see secularity more as an enemy of faith and the churches than as an ally.

We're still only beginning to see the lethal unintended consequences of Thatcher's legacy

When Mrs Thatcher came to power I was a local politician, a member of Sheffield City Council. David Blunkett became leader and I was his deputy and chair of the finance committee. It was a bleak time for northern cities like Sheffield. On the one hand, the economic base of the city was collapsing. 

Lee Halpin's tragic story shows the terrible plight of the homeless - but does anybody care?

Right opposite Harrods last Saturday, an old woman sat on the pavement moaning for money. In her many tattered layers and hoods, she looked like a big, swaddled baby. Click, click, click went the heels around her. Louis Vuitton and Harvey Nichols bags swept past her face and nobody could be bothered to stop, take out a coin, bend down and hand it to her. By now someone will have swept her off that space – such an eyesore for tourists. 

The Passion of Christ and the Cross

The symbol of the Cross is ubiquitous in our society. It is printed on bumper stickers and tattooed on forearms; it is spray-painted on concrete walls and stitched onto denim jackets. Will this symbol continue to devolve into a mere fashion statement, a cultural icon, or a religious trademark? There is a need to reclaim the true meaning of the cross and understand that it is something much more

Praying in a Crisis

How do we lift our darkest, most depressed, most lonely moments up to God? How can we pray when we are most deeply alone, helpless, and our whole world seems to be collapsing?

How Diana’s funeral marked a return to “Catholic” England

The outpouring of public grief over the death of Diana Princess of Wales marked the moment England returned to its Roman Catholic roots almost 500 years after the reformation, according to the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

A new Pope, a new Primate and a new life for Christianity

Women and the Church

« God, grant us a Pope who is holy, wise, competent, and strong". La Stampa has collected some comments from influential women on the conclave, and on what they’d like to see during the new papacy.

What Pope Benedict XVI will do.

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation - the first by a Pope for more than 600 years - is forcing the Vatican to consider some unusual questions. Here are 10 answers.

'The Encyclical Not Written By Benedict XVI'

The power and fruitfulness of humility. The following is our translation of the French article that appeared in  the “Figaro Magazine”  on 15 February 2013, entitled “The Encyclical Not Written By Benedict XVI”.

The resignation

 “Should it happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns from his office, it is required for validity that the resignation be freely made & properly manifested, but it is not necessary that it be accepted by anyone.” (Canon 332, §2)

Pope’s Retreat Master Compares Benedict’s Role to That of Moses

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, 70, began the spiritual reflections Feb. 17 by describing Pope Benedict’s future role in the Church after his resignation as being a presence “like that of Moses, who climbs the hill to pray for the people of Israel.”

What Does It Mean to Focus Our Attention on God?

Perhaps God is mature enough to not ask for, or want, our conscious attention most of the time. Perhaps God wants us to enjoy our time here, to enjoy the experience of love and friendship, of family and friends, of eating and drinking, and of (at least occasionally) seeing our favorite teams win a championship. 

The Marriage Debate: the nature of things

A proposal to change this truth about marriage in civil law is less a threat to religion than it is an affront to human reason and the common good of society. It means we are all to pretend to accept something we know is physically impossible. The Legislature might just as well repeal the law of gravity.” 

Encounter, Illumination, and Conversion: On the Road to Damascus

 In celebrating the lives of her saints, rarely does the Church bestow more than one feast day on the same person. Even more rarely does she celebrate specific events in the lives of those saints other than the day of their birth into eternal life (the die natale). Therefore, today's celebration – the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle – is one that deserves our contemplation.

The Ineffability of God

Nicholas Lash, in a deeply insightful essay on God and unbelief, suggests that the God that atheists reject is often simply an idol of their own imaginations. God is ineffable, unimaginable, and beyond conception and language.

Jesus, His Church and “the uns”

 I praised God for the Church’s lookout for the uns — the un-documented, un-employed, un-housed, un-fed, un-healthy, un-born, un-wanted, misunderstood, un-justly treated — and prayed that our beloved country might work for a culture where that dreaded prefix — un — might be no longer.

Christians need to find some old-time zeal

We are no longer the voice of a presumed majority, but rather the voice of one minority among many. Our right to practise what we believe is, understandably, being weighed up against the rights of those who don’t agree with us – with a slight bias towards the latter. It’s Christianity versus modernity, and modernity is winning.

Prayer As Keeping Us Outside the Great March

In virtually all of his novels, Milan Kundera, manifests a strong impatience with every kind of ideology, hype, or fad that makes for group-think or crowd-hysteria. He is suspicious of slogans, demonstrations, and marches of all kinds, no matter the cause. He calls all these the great march and, to his mind, they invariably lead to violence, all of them.