Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

May 05, 2016

Podcast: Is the UK Government about to introduce a major threat to the existence of Down’s babies?

May 05, 2016

Madeleine Teahan talks to Peter D Williams of Right to Life about a new screening test that would pave the way for more abortions

Priest in Aleppo: ‘Never has the war been as terrible as it is now’

May 05, 2016

Fr Alsabagh says all but the poorest have escaped the city and an 'eerie silence, like a cemetery', fills the streets

Catholics and Anglicans are to pray together for the conversion of the nation

May 05, 2016

Bishops are to ask Catholics to join an Anglican week of prayer

What’s inside this week’s magazine?

May 05, 2016

Take a look inside this week's magazine

Mary Kenny: When free speech is unacceptable

May 05, 2016

The Vatican once had a list of proscribed publications – known as the Index – which Catholics were urged to shun, these being a danger to their faith. Karl Marx and Jean-Paul Sartre both featured in this famous Index, which was, to some extent, an encouragement to rebellious youth to read such authors. Censorship, we

From mill workers to Oxford students

May 05, 2016

“On an October evening in 1921, one of the last of Oxford’s Hansom cabs clattered down the High, crossed Magdalen Bridge and stopped at 223, Iffley Road. From it emerged Fr Leo O’Hea, mill-worker Tom Leyland and Jack Shaw, a sheet-metal worker from Bamber Bridge. When they were joined by Bill Smith, a Newport engine-driver,

Why Catholics thrive in the CIA

May 05, 2016

Just a few days before Christmas 1988, terrorists blew up Pan American Flight 103 as it passed over Lockerbie, not long after leaving Heathrow. One of the 259 murdered onboard was Matthew Gannon. The eighth child of devout Catholic parents, Gannon had joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1977, becoming a skilled operations officer and

St Dominic’s 800-year-old stroke of genius

May 05, 2016

In 1216 St Dominic travelled to Rome seeking confirmation from the Holy Father of a new and bold plan: he proposed to form the band of enthusiastic and energetic young men that had gathered around him in Toulouse into an “Order of Preachers” dedicated to the study and proclamation of the Word of God on

Cooking taught me the meaning of love

May 05, 2016

The distant noise of heavy saucepan lids clashing; the delicious smells of ragù; my grandparents’ petty arguments about how big the panzerotti (potato croquettes) should be … These reassuring, familiar noises from the cucina (kitchen) that I would wake up to every Sunday morning are among my most precious memories of growing up in Naples.

Time to take a stand on pornography

May 05, 2016

Whether out of fatigue with the culture wars, or a reluctance to attack something which has become so normal, or in obedience to St Paul’s warning that impurity should not even be talked about – whatever the reason, a Catholic witness against pornography has often been lacking. But elsewhere, a backlash has begun. Last month,

In brief

May 05, 2016

Pope to receive 6,000 homeless in November Six thousand homeless people from all over Europe are to converge on Rome in November for a festival marking the end of the Year of Mercy. The pilgrimage, from November 11 to 13, is being organised by Fratello, an alliance of charities. Cardinal: encyclical on ‘just war’ is plausible

SSPX may create ‘healthy turmoil’

May 05, 2016

Fr Franz Schmidberger, the former superior general of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), has told members of the society that, if it gains official status within the Church, it will create a “healthy turmoil” in which “the good would be encouraged, the malevolent will suffer a defeat”. Fr Schmidberger, currently rector of the