By Rachel Sylvester in THE TIMES, 13 November 2018 It’s the children who stick most vividly in my mind. There was ten-year-old Daniel, who calmly described how he had been homeless. It was frightening, he said, and he was often hungry because the only food he got was at school. Luke was 16 and studying…
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32nd Sunday (B) 2018 ~ Remembrance Sunday
One hundred years ago to the day, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, church bells were rung throughout the land to mark the end of the First World War. Back then, the bells pealed to celebrate victory. One hundred years later, in all the former combatant countries, bells are…
Bill Gates: from software to toilets
By Simon Kuper in the FT Weekend Magazine, 10 November 2018: Whenever Bill Gates visits a slum, an unasked question goes around his mind. “Do you mention to each other that it doesn’t smell good, and I wouldn’t like to live here, or is that just inappropriate?” he told me in a phone interview. “We…
What it means to be a Catholic feminist and why the church must embrace it
By Kaya Oakes in 'America, The Jesuit Review' For over a decade, I have taught a writing class on the intersection between music and social movements at the University of California, Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement was born. On the first day of class, we talk about the history of protest music, and I…
Homily, 31st Sunday (B) 2018
31st Sunday (B) 2018 It was common in Jesus’ time for Rabbis to question if there was one commandment in the Torah, the Jewish Law, that outweighed all others, one that might be regarded as the basic principle on which life should be grounded. Judaism had over 600 rules or ‘commandments’ in the Law which…
Standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ community is a pro-life issue
By Maureen K. Day in The National Catholic Reporter (USA), 2 November 2018 Being a Catholic is usually pretty easy for me. While I have positions I'm passionate about and particular elements of church teaching that I hold especially close, I've always been grateful for, what Michele Dillon calls in her book Postsecular Catholicism, the "interpretive diversity"…
all the things I wish I’d done
By Melanie Reid in THE TIMES, 3 November 2018 There is a wonderful old Gardeners’ Question Time joke – “When’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago” – which is really a universal truth in disguise. When you get to the point in life of pausing to look back over your shoulder, you suddenly…
Catholic peer says Church may soon welcome women priests
From THE TABLET, 1 November 2018 CATHOLIC peer Baroness (Nuala) O’Loan has said she believes there will be women priests in the Catholic Church, and that the Church will change faster on this than many expect. Giving the keynote address at a conference on women and the Catholic Church hosted by the Notre Dame –…
Homily, 30th Sunday (B) 2018
With the clocks having gone back an hour this morning, many of us will have taken advantage of the change and enjoyed a ‘lie in’ before the alarm clock roused us from sleep. Interestingly, according to the John Lewis Retail Report published last week, sales of traditional alarm clocks are falling because people are abandoning…
Advice for mothers with sons
By Melanie Reid in THE TIMES, 27 October 2018 Every time I have the notion to contact my son, an alert sounds in my head. A kind of recorded safety procedure, like on ferries and planes, telling you about lifebelts and muster stations. My drill goes like this: when did he and I last speak?…
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 