For the past six weeks or so and on every Sunday until the end of November, we are reading at Sunday Mass the unfolding story of the public life of Jesus as presented in St Mark’s Gospel. This is the first of the four Gospels to be written and is dated some 35-45 years after…
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The sourdough won’t fit the toaster! Oh do give the middle classes a break
From Carol Midgley in THE TIMES, 1 July 2021 I hesitate to raise this since we’ve suffered enough lately, but there is bad news on the artisan bread front. Sourdough is too big for conventional toasters. Basic. Nightmare. The slices are too long, wide and thick to fit a conventional-sized slot. And no, that wasn’t…
Homily, 14th Sunday of the Year (B) 2021
Today’s Second Reading (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) is part of a somewhat tearful letter from St Paul written at a time of controversy, if not crisis, in his life. Other teachers had followed him into Corinth and were undermining what Paul had taught the church members there. These preachers were more charismatic than Paul in their…
Homily, 13th Sunday of the Year (B) 2021
If you are old enough to remember The Two Ronnies, the BBC light entertainment programme (1971-1987), you may recall how Ronnie Corbett, the smaller one, had a spot in the show where he sat in a Mastermind-like chair to tell a funny story, only to keep deviating several time to tell other stories along the…
Don’t put laws before people
From THE TABLET, 12 June 2021 Jesus was invariably welcoming, forgiving and generous to those whose messy, complicated lives put them at odds with religious laws. He saved his condemnation for religious leaders when they acted as if those laws were more important than people. He described all this as hypocrisy: a kind of falsehood…
Homily, 12th Sunday of the Year (B) 2021
In last Sunday’s Mass we heard Jesus comparing the birth of his new community – ‘kingdom’ – to a tiny mustard seed growing into a huge tree. Today’s text – Mark 4:35-41 - describes an event which, 40 or so years after it occurred, was recorded by St Mark to encourage people belonging to that…
Is there a way out of the marriage maze?
The marriage of twice-divorced Boris Johnson in Westminster Cathedral made the Church look to many ridiculous at best, cruel at worst. A priest who has spent a lifetime wrestling with the Church’s marriage laws suggests that an opening to the East may help unpick some of the anomalies from THE TABLET, 12 June 2021 In…
Homily, 11th Sunday of the Year (B) 2021
At this time of year our gardens, allotments and the countryside are awash with colour. Of particular delight for me at the moment are the blooming rhododendrons are grouped together by the presbytery kitchen window in an otherwise dark and poorly growing area. However, for all its beauty at this time of year, the plant…
Homily, Fourth Sunday of Easter (B) 2021
Now that we have the opportunity to gather outdoors once more and go walking in the countryside with friends, one of the delightful sights to greet us at this time of year is lambs gambolling in the fields while their mother ewes keep close by. However, I suspect that many of you, like me, cannot…
Pastoral practice on gay couples ‘has overtaken church teaching’
by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt in THE TABLET, 20 April 2021 The head of the German bishops’ conference has said that the Church must “face” gay couples’ wishes for a church blessing. “The partners in homosexual partnerships want the Church’s blessing and they don’t want to receive it clandestinely. They want the Church to consider their lives worthy…
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