Joseph Pearce, Author at Catholic Herald

Joseph Pearce

‘Such is the power of charity!’ Manzoni’s novel of the plague

April 02, 2020

“In times of pandemic,” Pope Francis said on March 15, “[priests] mustn’t be the Don Abbondio of the situation.” The Pope’s words will probably mean very little to anybody except Italians because they refer to a character in Alessandro Manzoni’s novel, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), which is scandalously neglected beyond the Italian-speaking world. The

Chesterton’s Christmas poems were mediocre – but his prose dazzles

December 19, 2019

The author most associated with the joy and glow of Christmas is obviously Charles Dickens. Apart from the perennially popular Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote several other Christmas-themed novellas, most notably The Chimes and The Cricket and the Hearth. In his book on Dickens, in a chapter entitled “Dickens and Christmas”, GK Chesterton lauded “Dickens’s great

How America embraced Newman

September 19, 2019

The recent news that the Bishop of Northampton has declined to move forward with the cause for the canonisation of GK Chesterton was not well received in the United States. At this year’s annual conference of the American Chesterton Society in Kansas City, the news was met with disappointment by the 500 Chestertonians in attendance.

Pride is the enemy of great art

July 11, 2019

And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness … And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them – Genesis 1:26-27 What does it mean to be made in God’s image and likeness? In what way does the

Look closely and you can find the saints in Shakespeare

May 09, 2019

When most of us think of Shakespeare we don’t immediately connect him with the saints. We might think of the play Sir Thomas More, on which he collaborated with other playwrights and which was banned during his lifetime for its volatile pro-Catholic perspective. We might connect him with the positive portrayal of Edward the Confessor

Catholicism: the religion of ‘stuff’

February 22, 2018

A History of the Church in 100 Objects by Mike and Grace Aquilina, Ave Maria Press, 256pp, £20 Mike Aquilina is a force to be reckoned with. He is indefatigable and indomitable. Since the publication of his first book almost 20 years ago he has published more than 50 titles, most of which fall within

From misfit to martyr: the trials of John Bradburne

September 14, 2017

John Bradburne: the Vagabond of God by Didier Rance, DLT, £14.99 There’s something a little unsettling about saints. They’re weird. They make us feel uncomfortable. They’re eccentric and on the fringe of things. They put us on edge because they’re edgy. The same can be said of mystics. Mystics are misfits. They don’t fit in.

The Domino’s effect

April 06, 2017

Although few people in Britain will know the name of Tom Monaghan, there are fewer still who will not know the name of Domino’s Pizza, the global restaurant chain which he founded. And yet the story of Tom Monaghan’s life and faith is astonishing, almost beggaring belief. He was born on March 25, 1937, the

A Christian response to Europe’s crisis

May 19, 2016

In the 1980s I was a leading member of the racist National Front. Catholicism brought me out of the darkness – it can do the same for Europe

A Christian response to Europe’s crisis

May 19, 2016

These are troubling times. Europe is apparently on the verge of meltdown. Unable to withstand the heat caused by the growing friction between the European Union and its member states, especially as the former tries to force an open-door immigration policy on its member nations, there are fears that the melting pot might be melting.

Escape from a puritan ‘wasteland’

April 14, 2016

“There was something sinister in the very word Catholic,” said George Mackay Brown of his “anti-papist” upbringing. Brown was raised in a lukewarm Presbyterian family, where “all the words that clustered about [Catholicism] – rosary, pope, confession, relics, purgatory, monks, penance – had the same sinister connotations”. Yet Brown, a great and underrated Scottish poet

Escape from a puritan ‘wasteland’

April 14, 2016

George Mackay Brown rejected his anti-papist upbringing to write works of rare beauty which reflected ‘the majesty and mystery’ of his adopted faith

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