We’ve just heard the very first words spoken by Jesus in St John’s Gospel. When two followers of John the Baptist approach Jesus to ask ‘where are you staying’, Jesus asks them “What are you looking for?” St John says nothing about Jesus’ birth or infancy, as Matthew and Luke do. So why, of all…
Author: Fr Michael Campion
It’s time we thought more about procreation
By Ed Conway in THE TIMES, 15 January 2021 We’ve spent so much time talking about deaths recently that we’ve forgotten to talk about births. But something striking has been happening to fertility in this country: it is falling faster than anyone had expected. In 2012, the fertility rate in England and Wales — the…
How Catholics got conned by Donald Trump – A psychological analysis of the President and his supporters
by Fran Ferder and John Heagle in The National Catholic Reporter (USA), 14 January 2021 It was never about "pro-life." Many Americans, including Catholics, voted for Donald Trump because they believed he was "pro-life." Those who did were conned by the con artist himself. Others knew but did not care that his recently claimed "pro-life" stance and his revolving…
The Price of a Human Life
By Ed Conway in THE TIMES, 8 January 2021 You can’t put a price on human life. The phrase trips off the tongue and how desperately we would love it to be true. How awful it would be to live in a world where the most precious of all commodities was expressed in pounds and…
Homily, the Baptism of Jesus 2021
In this past week there’s been an enjoyable TV series on BBC4 of people going on winter walks in the Yorkshire Dales. Each programme lasts 30 minutes and features a variety of well-known personalities filming themselves with a 360 degrees camera as they walk unaccompanied for about six miles, delighting in the scenery and conversing…
Homily, Second Sunday of Christmas 2020
In the small rural community in Ireland where I grew up, life was dominated by people’s relationship with the Church. Our community in County Laois, like most of the country, was overwhelmingly Catholic and for the majority of people religion was life and life was religion. The social calendar of people’s lives revolved around the…
Homily, Christmas 2020
At this time of year, here in the northern hemisphere, we are enduring the shortest and coldest days of the year. For thousands of years our pagan ancestors used these short winter days to celebrate and look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight. For them the end of December was a perfect…
Homily, Fourth Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
(The source for this homily is ‘The Cultural World of Jesus’ by John J Pilch) The intention of this homily is to look at the human aspects of the story of the Annunciation to Mary that we have just heard. This will help us to have a better understanding and appreciation of what this remarkable…
Homily, Third Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
Jesus’ public ministry began when he was invited at the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth to select and preach on a text of his choice from the Jewish Bible (our Old Testament). He chose the opening verses of our First Reading from the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2A). When he finished reading it, he went…
Homily, 2nd Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
The person speaking in today’s First Reading (Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11) does so with remarkable confidence and hope. In truth, however, there were no obvious grounds for optimism at that time. The hope of a new leader to emerge from the family or House of King David seemed to be shattered when the Babylonians invaded the…
