In St Luke’s Gospel, eating with others is a notable characteristic of Jesus’ ministry. He has Jesus eating with others about twice as frequently as in the other Gospels of Mark, Matthew and John. In today’s reading (Lk 14:7-11) Jesus is a guest at the home of a leading Jewish official. At first it looks…
Blog
Homily, 22nd Sunday C 2022
The eight panels under the half dome in the sanctuary at Holy Name bear images of saints popular when this church was built in 1929. The second one on the left is an image of St Thomas More. Born in 1478, he was an English lawyer who was councillor to King Henry VIII and Lord High Chancellor of…
A Case Crying Out For Reform
Archie Battersbee THE TABLET, 13 August 2022 The tragic story of Archie Battersbee has again highlighted the potential for an excruciating conflict between judges and doctors, on the one hand, and loving and determined parents, on the other. This is in nobody’s interests, and the legal situation cries out for reform. Archie suffered irreversible brain…
Homily, 19th Sunday of the Year C 2022
In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the Russian novelist Feodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a guardian angel who wept before God because the woman in his charge had been so wicked in life that she was stuck in hell. When God asked if she had ever done anything good, the angel said she had once…
Homily 17th Sunday of the Year C 2022
Two Conservative members of Parliament are now travelling around the country and appearing in various media outlets appealing to fellow party members to make them the next Prime Minister. These some 180,000 party members will choose who is to be in charge of the UK’s population of about 67.2m people. Whoever is chosen, will this…
Homily 16th Sunday of the Year C 2022
In an open letter published last year, Maria Zervino, president of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations, encouraged Pope Francis to expand roles for women's leadership in the church's predominantly all-male institutional structures. "As a woman I feel that something is due to us," she wrote in March last year. "I think that not enough has…
Homily, 15th Sunday of the Year (C) 2022
The story we have just heard is one of the most famous in the Bible. It shocked its hearers when Jesus told it and fully understood it should do the same to us. It originated with Jesus being questioned by a scholar of the Jewish Law, the spiritual, moral and social code that governed Jewish…
Out Now
The PM must not remain in Downing Street until the autumn. He should leave immediately and make way for an interim leader The Times Leading Article, Thursday 7 July 07 2022 At lunchtime on Thursday, Boris Johnson finally bowed to the inevitable and announced his intention to resign as prime minister once a new leader…
The informed integrity of our discussions rarely finds a way into public Catholic discourse
By Tina Beattie in THE TABLET, 29 June 2022 After the Supreme Court’s ruling to remove the constitutional right to abortion, the US Catholic theologian Jessica Coblentz tweeted: “I know many Catholic women; I’ve been in communication with several today. Not one – not one – is ‘welcoming’ or ‘celebrating’ the overturning of Roe. And…
Homily, 14th Sunday of the Year C 2022
How many countries are there in the world? Thanks to Google, I can tell you there are 193 that are member states of the United Nations, and a further two that are non-member observer states: the Holy See and the State of Palestine. So the answer is, roughly, 195 in all. In first century Palestine,…
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 