By Edward Kendall in THE TABLET, 14 September 2018: Jean Vanier, the Canadian philosopher and theologian and the founder of L'Arche communities, turned ninety this week. To commemorate the occasion he released a YouTube video laying out his “ten rules for life to become more human” by sharing his thoughts on life and on growing older. He…
Author: Fr. Michael Campion
Catholic editor criticises Church beatification of rape victim
By Edward Kendall in THE TABLET, 18 September 2018 A senior editor of Catholic magazine Commonweal has criticised the tendency of the Church to make saints out of rape victims. Mollie Wilson O’Reilly, an editor at large and columnist at the USA-based Commonweal, was writing about the recent beatification of Anna Kolesárová, a sixteen-year old…
New measure of poverty is not perfect but it is the least imperfect one we have
By Paul Johnson in THE TIMES, 17 September 2018: How many people in the UK live in poverty? Well, it all depends what you mean by poverty. That’s a question which has been debated down the ages. To be poor, it has been accepted at least since the time of Adam Smith, does not simply…
Why I Stay Catholic – James Martin SJ
A stocktaking of my life
By Melanie Reid in THE TIMES, Saturday 15 September 2018: Friends are gloriously random things, like road signs, stopping you at forks in the road and suggesting which way to go. Depending on your mates and where you met them, your life is shaped. Inspirational, goodie goodie, funny, naughty – or just a lesson in…
Homily, 24th Sunday (B)
Today we reach a turning point in our weekly Sunday reading of St Mark’s Gospel. We find Jesus and his disciples in a town 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Every Sunday from here we will find him and his disciples travelling in stages to Jerusalem, the place of his arrest and execution.…
I was once linked with Boris Johnson. Today I stand beside Carrie Symonds
By Anna Fazackerley in THE GUARDIAN, 14 September 2018: On Wednesday evening my eight-year-old daughter shouted to me that there was a strange man staring at her through the living-room window. A Daily Mail reporter had tracked me down, and was prowling round the back of my home in the countryside. I am a journalist and…
We all are ‘priests’: Laypeople, not ordained, hold church’s power
By Bill Tammeus in The National Catholic Reporter (USA), 11 September 2018: A core principle of Protestantism from the beginning of the Reformation has been the idea that "all who believe in Christ are 'priests,' " as the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 says. We call this idea found in the document written by the early reformer…
Wipe away the hidden dangers of the high life
From (the always entertaining) Carol Midgley in THE TIMES, 10 September 2018: Opening my handbag to put it on the tray for airport scanning machines I often get a laugh from the security guards over my antibacterial kitchen wipes, which I consider an absolute travel must-have. The moment I sit down on a plane I…
Homily, 23rd Sunday of the Year (B)
The basis of this homily is from a reflection by ‘a Dominican nun’ (no name given) published in the periodical ‘Scripture in Church’. One of the great social changes in our time is how people can communicate with each other without ever meeting one another. People now have ‘friends’ without them ever actually meeting each…
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 