A few weeks ago I made a little pilgrimage with my brother to Flannery O'Connor's home in North Georgia. While convalescing I have been reading her letters collected in The Habit of Being. The letters reveal her sparkling wit, sharp intelligence and deep Catholic faith. Exiled to the family farm in her early twenties when she [...]
Some of my readers will have picked up from Twitter and from a blog post yesterday that at the end of January I suffered a slight stroke. My left side was weakened and my typing skills are inhibited . However, I have learned that my laptop has a Dictation facility, and I am learning to use [...]
I apologize for being absent from this blog for so long, but at the end of January I experienced a slight stroke and my typing abilities have been impaired. I am learning to use the dictation facility on my computer, so I hope that will help. Thank you for your patience and your prayers!
As a convert you come across some unusual practices within the Catholic faith (said he, making the understatement of the year) One of them for me was to find that there was a feast day for a chair. What was I–poor Bob Jones graduate that I was–to make of such an odd celebration? There it 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. In the course I am teaching at Avila Institute on How St Benedict Changed the World we [...]
Today's memorial for Sts Timothy and Titus is a lesson in apostolic succession. St Paul ordains the next generation and hands his apostolic authority on to Timothy and Titus. This should remind us of the astonishing fact of the continued existence of the Catholic Church. Apart from the survival of the Jews, the survival of the [...]
Whenever times are uncertain--when the atmosphere is thick with lies and propaganda--it's natural to look for certainty. We want truth, clarity and honesty. This makes us fall for conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory offers us a grid that helps us understand what is going on. It gives us a structure and belief system into which everything [...]
Addicted as I am to alliteration, the title of Karl Keating's new book was an attraction, but more attractive was the prospect of reading about his hike along the Cammino di San Benedetto--one of the long distance footpaths in Europe. This path--starting in Norcia, the birthplace of St Benedict and ending at the great monastery of [...]
There is a silly notion that a prophet is someone, like Madame Sosostris-the famous clairvoyant, who has supernatural powers to foretell the future. This has come down to us, no doubt, from generations of Biblical teachers who showed how the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus. This is a superstitious understanding of prophecy.While it is [...]
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 [...]