When I was a priest in the Church of England I served as the Vicar of Brading on the Isle of Wight. A favorite part of the island was St Boniface Down--a lovely hillside overlooking the sea where breezy hikes and picnic spots were abundant. It stood above St Boniface parish--where a suitable Neo-gothic church was [...]
Heresies are like weeds. They keep coming back. The thing is, they come back in different guises. In the fourth century Arianism was part of the great debate over the divinity of Christ and therefore the definition of the Holy Trinity. Arianism developed into not just a theological problem, but a major schism. The Arians had [...]
In the wake of the controversial enthronement of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, conservative Catholics on social media bubbled over with indignation. When Pope Leo sent a letter of congratulations the grumblings and rumblings grew louder. The pope was "affirming heresy"! The pope was condoning women's ordination! He should have corrected her, [...]
‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ Tolkien admitted that he wrote these words absentmindedly on the back of an exam paper he was marking. Such spontaneous inspiration suggests the work of the subconscious mind, and if the subconscious mind, then a more mysterious source of inspiration may well be at work. [...]
Julian of Norwich was an anchoress in the fourteenth century in the city of Norwich in England. An anchoress is a female hermit. Julian's anchorage was a small room around 15'X 30' attached to the church of St Julian in Norwich (and she took her name from the church where she was immured) Her cell did [...]
The last of the seven deadly sins is pride--or perhaps I should say the FIRST of the deadly sins is pride because pride is at the root of all the others. We often misdiagnose bragging and arrogance and vanity as pride. Bragging, arrogance and vanity are symptoms of pride, but pride is much deeper. In my [...]
Scott Hahn's wife Kimberly was once asked what three things were the biggest obstacles to her conversion to Catholicism and she reportedly replied, "Mary, Mary and Mary." Other converts have said, "Once I got over the authority question Maty wasn't a problem. If this was a crucial part of the Catholic faith, then I'm good." I [...]
Living as we do in the Bible Belt--forsooth yea verily in the buckle of the Bible Belt--we are accustomed to various unusual Christian novelties. By "Christian novelties" I mean versions of Christianity that are novel. They are new. They have never been thought of before. They are the creation of entrepreneurial spiritual leaders with one eye on [...]
Envy doesn't seem so deadly does it? It's natural to feel a bit of envy isn't it, when somebody has something better than you? Why is that such a big deal? The French literary critic and philosopher Rene Girard writes about something he calls mimetic desire which is that desire at the root of our existence that [...]
As a boy I attended a church that was founded in 1962. It grew from a group of Christians meeting together in their homes for Bible study. They were disenchanted with the liberal drift of the mainstream Protestant denominations and decided to get back to basics. They did not believe they were doing anything new. Instead [...]