Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

February 04, 2016

European Parliament recognises ISIS killing of Christians as genocide

February 04, 2016

'Historic' vote by MEPs comes as the House of Commons prepares to debate the issue

To save Catholic education, do we need to give up some of our Catholic schools?

February 04, 2016

The danger is that schools will become Catholic in name only

Why the Year of Mercy might fail

February 04, 2016

Even practising Catholics have lost a sense of sin

Cover

February 04, 2016

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Catholic Dilemmas

February 04, 2016

My children nag me to allow them to watch 15- or 18-rated films which their school friends have seen. I am inclined to say no, but do not want to be seen as too strict. Our Lord asks what father would give his son a scorpion if he asked for an egg (Lk 11:12). When

Mary Kenny: A noble stand against pyjama parents

February 04, 2016

When the social history of our time is written, I think the episode of the School Gate Pyjamas could well figure as an illumination of contemporary attitudes to authority. It was made widely known that the head teacher at a primary school in Darlington, Kate Chisholm, issued a request to parents not to arrive at

A self-deluded monster

February 04, 2016

How would King Henry VIII react to the news that Cardinal Vincent Nichols will preside at Catholic Vespers in the Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace on February 9? Not just by turning in his grave (which anyway might be difficult since it is possible, if not probable, that his daughter Mary, when she became

Sacred masterpiece or conjuring trick?

February 04, 2016

In the 1950s the idea of commissioning Le Corbusier to design a chapel at Ronchamp in eastern France provoked many misgivings. This was partly because of the architect’s reputation as the theoretician and builder of a radical new kind of architecture and urbanism and partly because his best-known works included none of the spaces and forms

How the Church can tackle Zika

February 04, 2016

As the Zika virus erupted across the Americas last week, and the World Health Organisation declared it a “public health emergency”, secularists reached for a ready scapegoat: the Catholic Church. Simon Jenkins, writing in The Guardian, said Zika’s “greatest ally” was human intransigence – specifically, the Church’s refusal to support artificial birth control and abortion.

Why the Year of Mercy might fail

February 04, 2016

Truth be told, I sometimes feel a bit sorry for sin. All this fuss about mercy, what with its Year and Doors and oddly Zaphod Beeblebrox-like logo. But what about the thing that makes it all possible? In fact, the same goes for the entirety of the Christian message: repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption, salvation. None

In brief

February 04, 2016

Kenya’s bishops pray for terrorist victims Kenya’s bishops have offered prayers and condolences to military families after an attack by the Islamist group al-Shabaab left hundreds of soldiers dead. “Let the blood that our soldiers shed in Somalia bind us together as a nation,” they said. ‘Invite Catholics to Orthodox synod’ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has

My ‘badass’ heroines

February 04, 2016

I first realised that saints aren’t timid, passive people forever poised in prayer when I read a news item about the opening of the Cause of Sister Blandina Segale. Here was a woman who had taken on the Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid. She was a true “badass”. There was a time when I didn’t