By Matt Dickinson in THE TIMES, 3 March 2022 “Roman Abramovich has parked his Russian tank in our front garden and is firing £50 notes at us.” So said David Dein, the Arsenal director, in 2003 to herald the influence of the billionaire who transformed not only Chelsea but English and European football with personal…
Author: Fr Michael Campion
Homily, Eighth Sunday of the Year C 2022
At Friday’s Requiem Mass for the late Mary Burke – a longstanding and devoted member of this parish – her family chose a reading from Scripture (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) that is popular for funeral services. Its author says that there's a season for everything, and he gives a list of seven pairs of opposing things, saying…
Religious roots of Ukraine crisis
Putin’s strategy THE TABLET Editorial, 26 February 2022 Has Vladimir Putin gone mad? It is a question hinted at when the British Prime Minister accused him of behaving “irrationally” towards Ukraine. But the understanding of Putin’s motives seems to stop there, an implicit attempt to shame him into acting rationally. But in another reality, populated…
Homily, Seventh Sunday of the Year C 2022
Any comment that I might make on the Gospel we are about to hear – S t Luke 6:27-38 - would only serve to take away from its stark demand. Our Lord sets before us, in quite stark terms, the Christian standard of how we are to behave towards others. He teaches that those who…
Reform of Seminaries
THE TABLET COMMENT, 12 February 2022 Clericalism is a virus in the Catholic Church that will be hard to eliminate. Its latest manifestation is the reported emergence from Catholic seminaries of a type of newly ordained priest who seems to be in love with the idea of being “special”. Their ideal of Catholicism stems from…
Homily, Sixth Sunday of the Year © 2022
When Jesus says: ‘blessed are you who are poor’, and ‘blessed are you who are hungry,’ and ‘blessed are you who weep’, as he does in today’s Gospel, what exactly does he mean? Would any poor person or those starving and weeping with hunger in Afghanistan believe him? What’s ‘blessed’ about being poverty stricken when,…
Homily, Fifth Sunday of the Year (C) 2022
We have just heard of Jesus inviting fishermen to leave their business and follow him. They were Peter and his brother, Andrew, who were in a fishing partnership with another pair of brothers, James and John. Between them they owned at least two boats and we are told that they ‘left everything’ to follow Jesus.…
Homily, Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C) 2022
One of the major themes running through St Luke’s Gospel, which we are following every Sunday this year except in Lent and Eastertide, is to be found in what the old man Simeon said to the parents of Jesus’ when they took him as an eight day old baby to the Temple. ‘This child’, he…
Editorial: In penance for mishandled abuse cases, Benedict needs to give up ‘pope emeritus’
From the National Catholic Reporter (USA), 27 January 2022 In some ways, last week's news was not particularly new: another independent report about sex abuse in the Catholic Church. We've had them from Pennsylvania, from France, and now from Germany's Archdiocese of Munich-Freising, the latest with details of nearly 500 victims over 74 years. But this one…
Boris Johnson’s leadership crisis: New depths of incompetence and hypocrisy
By Julia Langdon in THE TABLET, 26 January 2022 And so it turns out that Michael Gove was right all along. Five long years ago, two weeks after the Brexit referendum, he announced, somewhat portentously: “I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task…
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