Yesterday I took up my friend Gavin Ashenden's invitation to visit his delightful property in Normandy. He and his wife Helen live part of the time in a restored and renovated 18th century mill. It is a perfect little riverside retreat just a half hour from Mont St Michel. As I traveled across Southern England, then [...]
Thomas Williams reports here on newly appointed Brazilian cardinal Leonardo Steiner who believes gay sex between non-Catholics isn't wrong. He thinks non-Catholics are not bound to Catholic moral teaching. This is certainly true when it comes to adherence to Catholic doctrine and discipline--for example belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary or obligations [...]
When I was in England in June I had to return early due to being hit with COVID. This meant a visit to my Mother in Law in Sussex had to be missed. Therefore when Alison said she was coming to England for her mom's eighty fifth birthday I said I'd tag along. So I have [...]
When you analyze them closely you soon come to realize that all of the seven deadly sins are called such because they are well, deadly. They bring violence and murder. Not just spiritual and eternal death in the next world, but they bring about death in this realm as well. If you want to think this through further [...]
I have written before about the rise of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and how mainstream Western Christianity (including most of Catholicism) has been swamped by this Arianism of our day, but consider further the attraction of this false Christianity. First a definition: Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism is the reduction of the Christian religion to moralism: that is rules [...]
Today's feast is the Passion of St John the Baptist and I am remembering our visit to Jordan during my recent sabbatical. One of the sites we visited was the city of Madaba and the church of the Beheading of John the Baptist. In the lower crypt level is a shrine dedicated to the event which took [...]
I see from my profile that I have been a member of Twitter since 2014. That's eight years of tweeting. I pulled back from Facebook two years ago and now I am at the point of pulling back from Twitter. Here's why: First of all, I value twitter because it is a brilliant idea. I like [...]
Humility is that slippery virtue: As soon as you think you've got it, you're guilty of pride. One of my favorite saints, St Therese of Lisieux has been accused of pride because she said, "I believe I am humble." What her critics do not realize is that she uttered those words in the final days of [...]
From my hotel room in Highlands Ranch, Colorado I have a view of the distant mountains. I am here to speak at St Mark's parish for the weekend, and one of my talks is "The Relevance of Reverence". The parish priest here is a fan of my book Letters on Liturgy and is using it as a [...]
One of Flannery O'Connor's most famous quotes is "tenderness leads to the gas chambers". It was borrowed by Walker Percy in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome, but what did O'Connor mean by the thought and why did Percy pick up on it? Percy's novel could well be interpreted as a commentary on O'Connor's quote. The plot of [...]