Church historian says sex abuse poses biggest threat to church in 500 years

By Robert McCabe in The National Catholic Reporter, 25 January 2017:   Villanova church historian Massimo Faggioli at a recent talk in Hampton, Virginia   HAMPTON, VA. — A month before the start of a global summit in Rome on the sex abuse crisis, a prominent church historian and theologian said last week that the issue…

Welby says it is ‘wonderful’ to convert to Catholicism

  From Ruth Gledhill in THE TABLET, 24 January 2019 The Archbishop of Canterbury has said he is perfectly happy if members of the Church of England convert to Catholicism, and that it can even be "wonderful". In an interview with Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, the Most Rev Justin Welby says he does not mind…

Don’t trust Daily Mail website, Microsoft browser warns users

From THE Guardian, 23 January 2019: Microsoft’s internet browser is warning users not to trust the Daily Mail’s journalism as part of its new feature designed to fight fake news. Visitors to Mail Online who use the Microsoft Edge browser can now see a statement asserting that “this website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy…

Homily, Epiphany 2019

This is the 12th and final day of the season of Christmas. While in the Roman Church it closes the season of Christmas, Epiphany in the Eastern Orthodox Church it is their Christmas Day. Epiphany means ‘revelation’ and the feast celebrates God’s first public revelation of Jesus.  It is symbolically enacted in the crib before…

Santa Cause

A Leading Article in THE TIMES, 26 December 2018 Are you still a believer in Santa?” This question was posed in the White House on Christmas Eve by President Trump as he answered a phone call from a boy named Coleman, aged seven. Coleman was seeking information about the progress of Santa’s journey across the…

Homily, Christmas 2018

On this very night, Christmas Eve, two hundred years the carol ‘Silent Night’ was first sung in a little Catholic church in Austria. It was composed during a turbulent time in Europe when the continent was reeling in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. These were a series of major conflicts lasting 12 years, from 1803 to…