From The Tablet, 19 February 2018: Poland's most senior nun has been banned from further media contact after condemning the sexual abuse of religious sisters by Catholic priests in her country, and welcoming the Pope's recent highlighting of the issue. A church source told The Tablet "urgent internal enquiries" were underway to establish how the…
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How Gay is the Vatican?
By Timothy Radcliffe OP in THE TABLET, 14 February 2019: An explosive book will be published next week claiming to expose the double lives of priests and cardinals and the deceit of the Church’s condemnations of homosexuality. A former Master of the Dominicans wonders if this crisis could be experienced as a moment of grace.…
Newman to be made a saint
By Christopher Lamb in THE TABLET, 13 February 2019 The Vatican has announced that John Henry Newman will be declared a saint after Pope Francis approved a second miracle attributed to the English cardinal’s intercession. The ruling means that Newman will be canonised, a decision that comes nine years after his beatification by Benedict…
The life-changing magic of letting your hair go white
By Amy Morris-Yong in The National Catholic Reporter, 7 February 2019 Last week, I did something life-changing. That is, I changed something that has become my new normal for the rest of my life. I started the week looking to all the world like a brunette. By the end of the week, my husband Dan's…
Piazza and Lighting Appeal 2019
This year we are marking the 90th anniversary of the opening of this church with a variety of celebrations. They began on HMS Calliope on the River Tyne last year and will conclude in November with a sung Requiem Mass for all the Holy Name’s parishioners who have gone to God before us. Because we…
Homily, Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)
One of the major themes running through St Luke’s Gospel 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 said, ‘is destined for the fall and the rising of many.’ (Luke 3:34)…
Coming home too soon – Daniel O’Leary
From THE TABLET by Daniel O’Leary A few weeks before he died, the much-loved priest and spiritual writer, agreed to write a last piece for The Tablet, where so many of his articles had first appeared. In it he speaks directly to his friends and his many admirers of his struggle to make his peace with…
Better to smash the class ceiling than rage at it
By Clare Foges in THE TIMES, 28 January 2019 Do you have supper or tea? Do you turn up the heating or stick on another woolly jumper? Do you talk about property prices more than is healthy? Brown sauce or ketchup? Nan or Granny? Toilet or loo? All these little signals that, taken together, lead…
Homily, Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (C) 2019
Sometime in the 50s AD St Paul wrote two Letters or Epistles to the Church in Corinth, which he had founded. In the passage we are reading today, Paul responds to the problem of divisions that had arisen there between the community members. Paul tackles the issue by comparing the Christian community there with a…
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…
