Fr Timothy Radcliffe, OP:
My New Year’s resolution is to listen to more music, especially classical music. Beauty has its own authority, offering us “the light we cannot see” as in the marvellous novel by Anthony Doerr. It gives us a glimpse beyond the veil, of the peace and homeland for which we long. Anyway, I am still, even at my advanced age, much too busy and I need to pause and listen.
Rowan Williams, emeritus Archbishop of Canterbury:
I’m not a great fan of New Year resolutions, but I know it’s time for two things to come into focus a bit more effectively that they have for a while. Very practically, I need to be proactive about the diary: too much overloading and double-booking, resulting from never stopping to look at the overall shape of the week or month. And connected with this, high time to be tougher with myself about time in the day for silence – not just the early morning routine, but a pause later in the day too.
Fra’ Max Rumney, Order of Malta:
I would like to think that I don’t save change for once per year. My friends know me better. However, Monsignor Michael Nazir Ali kindly gave a provoking Advent Recollection to the Order of Malta where he encouraged us to embrace the unexpected. Our Lady is the exemplar of this – be it unto me according to Thy word. So, in 2024, I shall endeavour to follow her example – accept the unexpected; love my neighbour; and listen for the “still small voice” (despite the tumult of London around me).
Fr Nicholas King SJ:
This is a tricky request from the Catholic Herald; on the whole I feel thoroughly uncomfortable in speaking of my ascetic practices, such as they might be. I do not make (and do not really believe in) New Year’s resolutions. I do recall, however, being at a family New Year’s Eve party one year, and the intense disappointment on the face of one of my former pupils, when he realised that I was smoking all the way through the midnight time, as we sang “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot”.
Fr Richard Ounsworth OP:
I have always found it odd that Catholics should make New Year’s resolutions. Or rather, that the First of January should be a particular date for making the kinds of resolutions that we ought to be making throughout the year. It’s the Feast of Mary, Mother of God, and of course we hope she will support us in our constant efforts to amend our lives, but I imagine Our Lady of all people never had cause to make such a resolution herself, since she made that one firm and permanent one, “Be it done to me…” The advice I often give in the Confessional, and which I certainly ought to be taking myself, is that whenever we ponder on our sins we should make very practical decisions about how to do it differently next time, be very concrete in determining what we will say instead of the lie, the cruel jibe, the unkind gossip, the sharp retort; what we will do instead of succumbing to whatever temptation may come. We must make such decisions every day, not every year, and strive to stick at them until it becomes habitual to do so. So here is my resolution, made new every day: today I will live as the saint that God has destined me to be.
James LeFanu, Author of Why Us?
This year’s resolution is a poem a week, both old and new – rediscovering those once known but now a bit rusty, while also expanding the repertoire. As a significant birthday approaches, I hope this might allow for fruitful reminiscences on my past while averting (further) cognitive decline.
Fr Robert Verill OP:
A few years ago, I tried to read Fr Bernhard Lonergan’s book Insight which was required reading for an MA course titled 20th Century Thomism. I have to admit that back then, I made little headway with this dense work on human intelligence. But since then, several people have urged me to give Lonergan a second go. So this year, I’m going to attempt to read Insight again. It’s only 785 pages – should be manageable within a year.
Edward Stourton, journalist:
I’ll be doing what I am told by doctors – both my knees are being replaced and I am warned of dire consequences if I don’t obey. This resolution is obviously utilitarian, but it has a virtuous ambition too; if all goes well I shall run out of excuses to avoid unpleasant tasks such walking the dog in the rain.
William Cash, Catholic Herald editor in chief:
The other day my wife and I went to a friend’s house on a Sunday where a Tridentine Latin Mass was celebrated in an upstairs landing and small private chapel. As we knelt on rugs and prayed we felt as if black-cloaked 16th pursuivants were about to knock on the door any moment and arrest us. What troubled me more, however, was that I did not know the liturgy of the Latin Mass or the main prayers off by heart. In the absence of any Order of Service, I sat numb beside others who were Latin Mass, Credo and Pater Noster fluent. So my New Year’s Resolution is to “learn” the traditional Latin Mass, along with Marian hymn Salve Regina, with help from a friendly 80-year-old priest who has agreed to be our “instructor”. He has just sent us a package of books for “prep” that include Lex Orandi Lex Credendi: An examination of the Ethos of the Tridentine Mass and that of the Novus Ordo of Pope Paul VI (by John Wetherell); The Mass in Slow Motion by Ronnie Knox and the Latin-English Booklet Missal. So plenty of January reading.
Flora Watkins, Catholic Herald contributor:
At this time of year I wonder what T.S. Eliot can have been thinking. April isn’t the cruellest month, it’s January. January with its leaden, dustbin-lid skies, self-loathing and resolutions that fizzle out as quickly as the last dusty Alka-Seltzer at the bottom of the medicine cabinet on New Year’s Day. Mine always feel so feeble: be less shouty, don’t look at my ‘phone in front of the children, don’t waste hours doom-scrolling social media, get to Mass regularly. And yet, and yet…Resolutions are hopeless, I feel, unless they are the sort of vague platitudes favoured by New Labour — “Forwards, not backwards!”, “Up not down!”, etc.
In this vein, I resolve to be less hard on myself this year and to take pleasure in the small things: the flames leaping in the log burner, sloe gin swirling in the glass (don’t even think about Dry January — have you clocked how early Lent starts this year?), the spring bulbs I planted around my statue of Our Lady in the far corner of the garden, which, thanks to the vagaries of climate change, are already poking through the turf.
Piers Paul Read, novelist:
I try to avoid celebrating New Year, and make no New Year’s resolution.
Photo: A view along the Way of St. James near Belorado, in the province of La Rioja, Spain, 25 October 2020. Known collectively as the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James is a network of ancient pilgrim routes stretch across Europe and converge at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Campostela in northwest Spain. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Getty Images.)
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