Fr Dominic Allain, Author at Catholic Herald

Fr Dominic Allain

What Maria Montessori can teach the Church about catechesis

November 07, 2019

A recent survey of US Catholics concluded that two thirds do not believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. In a Church not short of bad news, this statistic doesn’t appear to have caused much reaction. Perhaps that’s because to anyone working in a pastoral setting it is hardly a surprise.

The Amazon synod reminds me of Marxism’s post-war heyday

October 31, 2019

Ecclesiology was so important during my seminary formation that it was one of only two courses that ran for two semesters. The name of our lecturer was ‘‘Anton-Henn”. Only once it began did we discover that Anton-Henn was supposed to be a double-act. Fr Anton was a Jesuit who theoretically taught part one, but the

It’s taken me a lifetime to understand Thomas à Kempis

October 24, 2019

It has long been a theory of mine that, like film classifications, books could carry a kind of age-appropriate rating. This wouldn’t be to classify books as potentially damaging to the sensibilities, but rather to stipulate the age needed to obtain optimum sensibility for appreciating the wisdom of the book. I have long thought it

Newman was no prophet of doctrinal ‘paradigm shifts’

October 17, 2019

Everyone agrees it’s a great thing both for the Church in this country and for the Universal Church that John Henry Newman is now a saint. If the interest in his life and works generated by canonisation leads to a genuine engagement with his thought and a recovery of its riches that will be wonderful.

How to pray when you don’t feel like it

October 10, 2019

I remember a faithful, prayerful person telling me that late in her life she had realised that whenever she began to pray, in her imagination she saw the garden of her childhood home. The beautiful image had long been so familiar as to be hidden, as it were, by the absence of any other experience

In the spiritual battle, what banner do we rally to?

October 03, 2019

There are cyclamen growing wild beneath the trees and the canopy of the forest begins to turn from deep green to burnished red and gold. It is misty in the morning and at twilight, when a parliament of owls begins to hoot. Of the real Parliament and the busy world, I am blissfully ignorant. I

A ‘post-human priesthood’? What a counsel of despair

September 26, 2019

The theologian Josef Pieper says that one of the most common errors afflicting Christians is to treat God as though he were “a something” rather than “a Someone”. The more I reflect on my own experience, the more I see the truth in it. And it follows that the more one treats God as a

What the Amazon synod document gets wrong about Creation

September 19, 2019

The summer afforded me several opportunities to see the sea. Two new Grief to Grace sites, in Perth and on the Côte d’Azur, were near the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean respectively, and I managed some moments of great peace in the midst of intense work. It was soothing and conducive to prayer to walk

The man who was the English-speaking world’s gateway to the popes

September 12, 2019

To the question, “How many people actually work in the Vatican?”, Pope John XXIII supposedly replied, “About half.” It has become part of Catholic folklore that the Curia is staffed by careerists distinguished by their incompetence and laziness, and that a sclerotic, self-serving caste deliberately frustrates the Church’s progress. All bureaucracies reflect the society from

The Amazon fires are a good metaphor for today’s Church

September 05, 2019

The media is full of apocalyptic news of fires in the “lungs” of the world and discussion of the bleak future we face if this unprecedented crisis is not tackled. The Pope, governments and celebrities have all added their voices to the anxiety over what this means for the planet. Despite the pictures posted by

Our mental health services are vital – but they have their limitations

July 25, 2019

It is often said that we take our health for granted until something happens to it. I think this is never more the case than with mental health. We operate on the premise that we can tell the difference between what is real and what is the product of a mind diseased. If we can’t, then

The hardest thing about my last 20 years as a priest

July 18, 2019

In the days before there were memes, Evangelical churches used to display catchy posters on their noticeboards. They included “Ch —ch. What’s missing? UR” and “If it were illegal to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Of course, it was once illegal in England to believe that Jesus Christ is

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