‘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 [...]
One of the most common things I hear in the confessional is people confessing impatience and anger. But are impatience and anger a sin? We often confess things that make us feel unhappy about ourselves--things that mar our self image. Some of these failures are sins, but not all of them. For it to be a [...]
On Sunday, as always on the Second Sunday in Lent, we were given the gospel account of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and in Matthew's version it is clear that the disciples experienced a mystical vision. So what exactly happened? What did they see, how did they see it and by what process did they see [...]
The fourth in my series on the Deadly Sins for Lent 2026 Four of the seven deadly sins are sins of the flesh: Greed, Gluttony, Sloth and Lust. Three are sins of the mind and heart: Envy, Pride and Wrath. We feel most guilty and ashamed of the sins of the flesh because they involve a [...]
The third in my Lent 2026 series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Of all the seven deadly sins Gluttony is at once the grossest and the(apparently) least serious. It's so easy to both be disgusted by gluttony and amused by it. On the one hand we think of the typical glutton as the obese pig with [...]