What a beautiful soul St John Bosco was! It was while I was serving as a high school chaplain that I came across St John Bosco's philosophy of child discipline. He would advise his brothers that the boys in their orphanages should be treated with gentleness and kindness because, he observed, God had planted in the [...]
I will tell you a vision I once had. I hesitate to call it a vision because it makes me sound like some sort of Marian mystic. Probably better to call it a "mental image" or a "dream image". Anyway, it came to me in that in between state when I was not sure if I [...]
Guest blogger, The Rev’d Humphrey Blytherington is retired Vicar of St Hilda’s, Little Snoring with All Saints, Great Snoring. He is a graduate of Plymouth University. He completed his studies for the ministry at Latimer Hall, Durham. He is married to Daphne and in his retirement still enjoys home brewing, model railroading and is an avid [...]
In internet Christian discussions one of the most common Protestant protests is "But where is THAT in the Bible? Huh??" To understand how to read the Bible it is worth first disposing of several different approaches to the Bible which (while not totally wrong) are faulty on their own. These are very typical ways of reading [...]
A day late, but here are some thoughts on the Conversion of St Paul. I had in mind to write a post about not only his conversion, but the conversion of the world through him. Reading his epistles how can one not be totally astounded by the genius of the man? I believe he is one [...]
Sola Scriptura is the foundation of the Evangelical Bible Christian religion. The Bible Christian says he believes only what is in the Bible and he eschews "man made traditions." However, when it comes to the Christmas story, the typical Bible Christian actually believes lots of man made traditions, and St Matthew's story of the Magi visiting [...]
In Prince Caspian Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy are drawn from a country railway station in England, to a Narnia that is thousands of years older than when they were there last. (Narnian time, they discover, runs differently than our time) They soon learn of Prince Caspian’s plight and set out across an unfamiliar Narnian landscape to [...]
The author of many short stories and two novels, Flannery O’Connor was a bright, witty and controversial writer. One of her most famous and shocking quotes is “tenderness leads to the gas chambers”. The quip was borrowed by fellow Southern novelist Walker Percy in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome, but what did O’Connor mean by the thought [...]
There are some Catholic liturgical purists who reject the use of hymns in the liturgy. I understand their argument. The liturgy stand alone without the need of extra hymns. The psalms, chant, antiphons etc are full and adequate. Then there is the other point that some traditionalist make with their noses in their..."Hymns are Protestant!" they sniff. [...]
A recent report from the St Barnabas Society in England gives the numbers of Anglican clergy who have gone over to the Catholic Church since the early 1990s. At present nearly one third of Catholic priests in England are former Anglicans. I was one of the Church of England priests who left and was received into [...]