By Clare Foges in THE TIMES, 30 December 2019 The Roaring Twenties, the Warring Forties, the Swinging Sixties; what is the essence of the decade that ends tomorrow? When we think of decades gone — whether we lived in them or not — they have distinctive moods, colours: the sepia-tinted Seventies, the brash Eighties. This…
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Sparkling service? Forget it if you’re elderly
By Edward Lucas in THE TIMES, 30 December 2019 I offer a new year’s resolution for anyone who provides a product or service to old people. Before designing anything, try it yourself. But not with your youthful or prime-of-life limbs, senses and reflexes. Wear thick, uncomfortable (preferably painful) gloves to mimic the effect of weak,…
Homily, Christmas 2019
At this time here in the northern hemisphere the earth is furthest from the sun and we are enduring the shortest and coldest days of the year. For thousands of years our pagan ancestors used these winter days to celebrate and look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight. For them the end…
After Boris gets Brexit done, what’s next for Britain?
by Austen Ivereigh in AMERICA, The Jesuit Review, 20 December 20 Combining an appetite for power with ideological vagueness and counterintuitive alliances, the world’s most successful election-winning machine has done it again. Just as the Tory squires in the 19th century made common cause with angry workers against the rising middle class and their new-fangled…
The scriptural case for women deacons
By Micah D. Kiel in AMERICA, The Jesuit Review, 18 December 2019 The synod on the Pan-Amazonian region re-opened the question of whether women can be deacons in the church. But we can return to the beginning as we contemplate the future. The New Testament not only gives us women deacons, but we know one…
Homily, Third Sunday of Advent (A) 2019
There is a question, I think, that most of us have to ask ourselves at some stage in life and how we answer it shapes our lives. It is: “Is Jesus Christ who He says He is?” Most people respond with either Yes, He is, or No, he is not. However, for some of us…
Marie-Elsa Bragg – Bound in grief
by Peter Stanford in THE TABLET, 7 December 2019 The writer – and daughter of a high-profile father – says that the tragedy of her mother’s suicide has been the making of her as an Anglican priest Marie-Elsa Bragg “If I wasn’t a priest,” reflects Marie-Elsa Bragg, “I wouldn’t be publishing this book.” On the…
Second Sunday of Advent: Change from the ground up
From Mary M. McGlone in the National Catholic Reporter (USA), 7 December 2019 What's not to love about John the Baptist? Frankly, just about everything if you happen to be the object of his acidic critiques. But John was a big hit among certain folks. Matthew tells us, "Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region…
The familiar voters’ refrain that ‘they are all the same’ will not resonate this time
by Peter Hennessy in THE TABLET, 4 December 2019 Are we living through the most heavily freighted general election of modern times? Brexit alone would make it so. But merely to list some of the other questions in play tells a significant story. In the United Kingdom we are deeply familiar with Left/Right politics. It…
Europe’s free market outshines America
By Gerard Baker in THE TIMES, 5 December 2019 Love it or hate it, most Americans would probably agree that their economy is a model of capitalism. Competition, choice, free markets; for good or ill, these seem to define the way America works. By contrast, fans and critics alike look across the Atlantic and see…
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