Sydney seems to have a hotter summer than I remember from my youth. There were hot days then of course, but it seems more unrelentingly hot now. Global warming? Or has absence disacclimatized me? This trip to Sydney was planned in haste, a result […]
Category: Church life
The Sorrowful Mother Today
As a sequel to the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross the Church keeps the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, whose heart was pierced by the nails that pierced Christ’s hands and feet, and the lance that pierced the Lord’s side. One […]
Death in question
The mild Sydney winter seems to help me get my rant on. Ranting via a tablet, however, leads to many a typo. Swings and roundabouts I guess… The last 24 hours we’ve been hearing about the change to the text to the Catechism of […]
Collegiality, collusion, collectivity and clericalism
Back from the dead! It has been a busy time. I am about to fly to Australia (in a few hours actually) to sneak in some holiday before taking up a new role in the monastery, that of bursar. If the new job does […]
Brainstorming by Social Media
What do you call brainstorming by the means of the social media? Is there a name or do we have to make one up? Suggestions are welcome. Anyway, to the point, which is a rather uncomfortable piece of what you might think, not unreasonably, […]
A Triduum Post Not About the Triduum
These are the busiest few days of the Church’s year, liturgically at any rate. Yet it would be a dangerous sort of monastic life that did not often a sacristan and cantor time for reading and reflection, however brief. There will be many excellent […]
When yes means yes
It really has been a turbulent time for sexual politics this past six months. Weinstein is but the tip of the iceberg. We have the #MeToo movement, and a growing list of prominent people accused of various degrees of sexual misconduct, though it is […]
Matrimony: a conference
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
