This is for American friends, especially those who are in or able to get to the City of Brotherly Love. On 21 April there will be a one-day conference, Matrimony: Rediscovering Its Truth, to be held at Philadelphia’s Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul […]
Author: Hugh Somerville Knapman
Contemplatio, consideratio & caritas
A triverberate (!) of Latin words does not make for good “clickbait”, but this is for the serious reader not the passing internet surfer. All will soon be clear enough. Today the Order of St Benedict keeps the feast of Scholastica, the sister of […]
A Late-Night Counsel to the Bold and the Beautiful
In the past 24 hours a previous post here, Vale Vatican II from last September, has received some attention on two very worthwhile, tradition-minded websites: Liturgy Guy and 1 Peter 5. I am grateful and gratified because these are sites which hold clear views directly […]
Of Dom and Chant: Benedictine Flashbacks
At present I am putting together the next edition of the monastery’s annual magazine. For this I needed to scan some images from the bound volume containing past magazines from 1924. In my skim-search for the images two little articles came into my ken. […]
Conservative: You’re Using It Wrong (Probably)
Yesterday’s radicals are today’s old farts. This is a loose quotation of something I read somewhere recently. It was to do with la bise, the French tradition of kissing each other on the cheek as a greeting. In the 1960s the student protestors promoted […]
A Papal Clarification
A recent exchange on another’s Facebook page made me think. The exchange, centring on an article on the Patheos site, saw both the author and the some commenters admonishing those who took umbrage at the recent papal pronouncements on the Lord’s Prayer (and others), […]
Paternostergate
Yet again the pope has captured the headlines of the mainstream secular press, both in the UK and the USA, as elsewhere. The coverage is generally laudatory, with +Francis presented as courageously facing sacred cows that have had their day, or never should have […]
Confronting the non-binary fallacy
Above is a depressing little advisory from the current edition of The Week. It reads like something from a fantastically dystopian novel about the future from the 1950s or 60s. It is the sort of thing at which we would have cackled in derision on […]
A Patron Saint
Before there was St George, there was St Edmund, King, Virgin and Martyr, whose feast falls today. St George was a soldier saint from the region we now call Syria (what little of it remains intact notwithstanding). He was a decent chap and a […]
L’Affaire Weinandy: A Watershed?
In yesterday’s post the subject was Fr Thomas Weinandy OFMCap’s letter to Pope Francis of 31 July, seemingly still unanswered; the release of this letter has been afforded a reception which is gaining momentum. This is for a very good reason: one who was approved […]
Here I stand; I can do no other.
Whether or not Martin Luther actually uttered the words attributed to him and found in the title of this post, it certainly had become the principal rallying cry for the claims of conscience, equalled only by (the oft-decontextualized use of) Newman’s “I shall drink to […]
A Prophet for Today
Yesterday at Matins the reading was taken from chapter 23 of the book of the prophet Jeremiah. As we read it in 2017 it seems very apposite:
The Adulterous Theologian
Thanks to The Catholic Herald, an article about the long-term adultery with his assistant of the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, came on screen. It is worth reading, not least for its implications in assessing his corpus of theology. The author, […]
L’Affaire Weinstein: Two Questions
The Harvey Weinstein scandal has been a nauseating fixture in the news over the last week or two, inescapable and distasteful. Nauseating and distasteful in the details of the accusations against him, of sexual misbehaviour and abuse of power on an industrial scale. Yet […]
