By Ed Conway in THE TIMES, 8 January 2021 You can’t put a price on human life. The phrase trips off the tongue and how desperately we would love it to be true. How awful it would be to live in a world where the most precious of all commodities was expressed in pounds and…
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Homily, the Baptism of Jesus 2021
In this past week there’s been an enjoyable TV series on BBC4 of people going on winter walks in the Yorkshire Dales. Each programme lasts 30 minutes and features a variety of well-known personalities filming themselves with a 360 degrees camera as they walk unaccompanied for about six miles, delighting in the scenery and conversing…
Homily, Second Sunday of Christmas 2020
In the small rural community in Ireland where I grew up, life was dominated by people’s relationship with the Church. Our community in County Laois, like most of the country, was overwhelmingly Catholic and for the majority of people religion was life and life was religion. The social calendar of people’s lives revolved around the…
Homily, Christmas 2020
At this time of year, here in the northern hemisphere, we are enduring the shortest and coldest days of the year. For thousands of years our pagan ancestors used these short winter days to celebrate and look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight. For them the end of December was a perfect…
Homily, Fourth Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
(The source for this homily is ‘The Cultural World of Jesus’ by John J Pilch) The intention of this homily is to look at the human aspects of the story of the Annunciation to Mary that we have just heard. This will help us to have a better understanding and appreciation of what this remarkable…
Homily, Third Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
Jesus’ public ministry began when he was invited at the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth to select and preach on a text of his choice from the Jewish Bible (our Old Testament). He chose the opening verses of our First Reading from the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2A). When he finished reading it, he went…
Homily, 2nd Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
The person speaking in today’s First Reading (Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11) does so with remarkable confidence and hope. In truth, however, there were no obvious grounds for optimism at that time. The hope of a new leader to emerge from the family or House of King David seemed to be shattered when the Babylonians invaded the…
Have journalists finally learnt how to challenge political lies?
By Simon Kuper in The Financial Times, 21 November 2020 “Well, we’re interrupting this because what the president of the United States is saying, in large part, is absolutely untrue,” said CNBC anchor Shepard Smith as his network pulled away from Donald Trump making baseless post-election claims about illegal voting. As did other networks. Journalism’s…
Homily, First Sunday of Advent (B) 2020
We are about to enter the last month of the calendar year and the ninth month of the financial year, which began in April. It’s also the fourth month of the academic year, which began in September. And now, today, it’s the beginning of a new Church Liturgical Year and the beginning of the season…
Ban on women priests ‘abuse of power’, says theologian
by Sarah Mac Donald in THE TABLET, 24 November 2020 A French theologian who last May put her name forward as a candidate for the position of Archbishop of Lyon has described the Church’s ban on women priests, deacons and bishops as “an abuse of power”. In an online address to reform group ‘We Are Church…
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