Thousands of Catholics venerate relics of Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin
Thousands of Catholics across southern England are venerating the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux’s parents during a week-long tour. Bishop Mark O’Toole welcomed the relics of Blessed Louis and Zélie...
View Article‘The right to die is somebody else’s duty to kill,’ says Cardinal Nichols
Cardinal Vincent Nichols has strongly re-iterated the Church’s opposition to the legalisation of assisted suicide, saying that “it is a great lie to try and convince people that life lived with serious...
View ArticleBiblical names proving popular in England and Wales, statistics show
Data from the Office for National Statistics has revealed a number of biblical names have made it onto the 2014 list of the Top 100 most popular baby boys’ names in England and Wales The...
View ArticleEnglish Catholics have forgotten their history
As an American college student, I was afflicted with a very serious and incurable disease: Anglophilia. I had been reading CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and TS Eliot. So when I turned up at Oxford in 1979 and...
View ArticleWhat English Catholicism will look like in 2115
An English Catholic in 1615 lived an entirely different life from one in the early 1700s, 1800s, 1900s or 2000s. The changing backdrops of the Elizabethan persecutions, the Jacobite revolutions, the...
View ArticleCatholic and Anglican bishops visit Calais migrant camp
Catholic and Anglican bishops from Britain and France have joined together to ask their countries to be more generous in response to the migrant crisis at Calais. Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark,...
View ArticleWill Christianity find a place in Corbyn’s Labour Party?
It was an enormous shock to Westminster watchers when veteran MP Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party. Few people could have been more shocked than the new leader himself, who had...
View ArticleWhy can’t we win the World Cup?
A blog has to fulfil three requirements: it needs to be topical, brief and suitable for its target audience. In the case of this one it ought, therefore, to have some vague connection with religion....
View ArticleIs it wrong to see a spiritual dimension in the unfolding drama of the Ashes?
Am I being foolish; or is there a real moral, even a spiritual dimension, to be discerned in our reactions to the present success of the England cricket team in Australia? For those who know and care...
View ArticleCardinal O’Brien is surely right about Scottish independence from England:...
I don’t know if there is any link between the current controversy over Scottish independence and the views of Scottish Catholics. To put it another way; what proportion of Scottish Catholics support...
View ArticleHe might not have stepped foot in England, but don’t denigrate St George
Today is the feast day – or in England the Solemnity – of one of the most popular Christian saints, St George. He is the patron of England and numerous other countries, in fact he seems to have more...
View ArticleSt George: the soldier-saint of which little is known for sure
St George is patron saint not merely of England, but of Aragon, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Russia. It is just a shame that nothing certain is known about...
View ArticleThe servant-saint who was held up as an example by her masters
You can see St Zita in the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca, lying in a glass case. Her face is blackened and her skin paper-frail, yet she seems remarkably well-preserved for someone who died – what?...
View ArticleCricket Australia is still very lofty about ‘The Spirit of Cricket’. After...
Last summer, I discovered the joys of test cricket, demonstrating (to myself at least) that old age can be a time of life in which new experiences are not necessarily a thing of the past. Some of my...
View ArticleCardinal Pell: Ashes revenge is sweet
An Australian cardinal has said that “revenge is sweet” following Australia’s Ashes victory over England. Writing in the Catholic Weekly, Cardinal George Pell said: “Revenge is sweet. So runs the 16th...
View Article16,500 respond to survey on family ahead of Extraordinary Synod
The Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) has received 16,500 responses to their survey on ‘Pastoral Challenges in the Family,’ but a spokesman for the Conference said that details...
View ArticleHail, glorious St Patrick!
On St Patrick’s Day my thoughts turn to my first trip to Ireland; it was in August 1988, and I was in my twenties. Two things were happening in the world at that time: one was aftermath of the...
View ArticleThis is still a Christian culture: but the Law Society is now encouraging...
What does it mean to say that this is a Christian country? Historically and culturally, of course, it is undeniable that that is what we are: but what, for such a culture, are the implications of the...
View ArticleWe should bring the Courtyard of the Gentiles to England
The Courtyard of the Gentiles will shortly be arriving in Washington DC. This idea was one of the initiatives pioneered in the papacy of Benedict XVI, and it aims to promote dialogue between believers...
View ArticlePope blesses Vatican cricket team ahead of tour
Pope Francis has blessed the Vatican’s cricket club ahead of the team’s first ever tour of England. According to the Daily Telegraph, the Pope signed a cricket bat that the St Peter’s Cricket Club...
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