By Garrison Keillor I skipped the news today and clicked on Zoom where my church held Morning Prayer for Holy Week and there we all were in little boxes on the screen, like pastries on the grocery shelf, and we prayed for forgiveness — though in self-isolation, there’s not much lust or anger, just gluttony…
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Pope Francis – in first Interview for a UK Publication -says pandemic can be a ‘place of conversion’
By Austin Ivereigh in THE TABLET, In an exclusive interview recorded for The Tablet – his first for a UK publication – Pope Francis says that this extraordinary Lent and Eastertide could be a moment of creativity and conversion for the Church, for the world, and for the whole of creation. • Towards the end…
Is there a Christian way of facing the Covid-19 crisis?
By Fr Kieran O Mahony OSA, a Biblical scholar based in Dublin The first is the move from “I” to “we”. This is a frightening situation that we face together. The common good — the good of us all — must be given first place. That is a very Christian, even a very Catholic virtue. The…
Papacies in Lockdown
By Massimo Faggioli in Commonweal Magazine (USA), 31 March, 2020 Governments around the world are comparing the fight against the pandemic to war, and whether or not you agree with the metaphor, Pope Francis and the Vatican do face a “warlike” situation. Italy is in lockdown, the rites of Holy Week and the Easter liturgy…
Churches Should Be Open
By Melanie McDonagh in THE TIMES, 3 April 2020 Off-licences, allotments, churches. Which is the odd one out? Easy. Churches must remain closed on account of the pandemic. The first two are essential; the second, apparently, non-essential. Which is weird when we’re coming up for Holy Week, high point of the Christian year, when Christians…
Grace will conquer hopelessness
By Nicole Trahan in The National Catholic Reporter (USA), 3 April 2020 I'm not going to lie. My levels of worry and stress are fairly high these days. As I sit to write this article, the state in which I live is entering week three of most people working from home and students not being…
The Prophet’s Call
by Pat Marrin in The National Catholic Reporter (USA) “And many began to believe in him” (John 10:42). Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 18; St John 10:31-42 Among the steady flood of news stories about the pandemic was this unsettling report, that security has been assigned to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the straight-talking expert on contagious diseases serving on the…
Living in Isolation
By Timothy Radcliffe O.P. in Commonweal Magazine (USA), 27 March 2020 Christ, too, felt isolated in the days before his death. (Painting by Arkhip Kuindzhi A few days ago, waiting to go through security in Tel Aviv airport, I watched the maneuverings of the young man before me in the queue. As we shuffled forward,…
Like Nothing We’ve Known
By Matt Ridley in THE SPECTATOR, 21 March 2020 On Sunday, lonely as a cloud, I wandered across a windswept moor in County Durham and passed a solitary sandstone rock with a small, round hollow in the top, an old penny glued to the base of the hollow. It is called the Butter Stone and…
Surviving lockdown and staying positive
By Caitlin Moran in THE TIMES MAGAZINE, 28 March 2020 The kitchen shelves have neatly stacked supplies. Each sink and basin has a pile of soap next to it. The elderly in-laws have been settled into social isolation – guided, on the phone, on how to access the “From the Archive” section of the BBC’s…
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