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January 24, 2019

No community should botch its deaths. The renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade suggested this, and its truth applies to communities at every level. No family should send off a member without proper reflection, ritual and blessings. On December 26, 2018, the family of art and the family of faith lost a cherished member. Sister Wendy Beckett,

Does travel narrow the mind?

January 24, 2019

“I feel European,” says Jeremy Clarkson, the presenter of Amazon’s The Grand Tour, in an interview with the Daily Beast website a few days ago. “When I go to America and people ask where I’m from, I say I’m from Europe.” Most people will surely understand what he means – even if not all will

Heretic of the week: Mary Baker Eddy

January 24, 2019

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) was born in Bow, New Hampshire, and raised in a Calvinist household. The nascent intellectual in Mary rebelled against the concept of radical predestination. Early on her parents attempted to break her strong will; the combination of punishments and repeated bouts of ill health reduced her to near invalidism. She married

Prize crossword 0577

January 24, 2019

Cryptic across 5 Pharisee’s into fish and birds (9) 8 House inside diocese is brown all-over (6) 9 Official paper subdued those learning to act when about five (6) 10 Those uneducated – totally – make approach to Buckingham Palace! (3,4) 12 Lord, is it about time to name a disciple? (5) 14 No control

Mass readings

January 24, 2019

Ordinary Form Divine Office Week III Sunday, January 27: Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Neh 8:2-4A, 5-6, 8-10; Ps 19; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21 Monday, January 28: St Thomas Aquinas Heb 9:15, 24-28; Ps 98; Mk 3:22-30 Tuesday, January 29: Weekday in Ordinary Time Heb 10:1-10; Ps 40; Mk 3:31-35 Wednesday, January 30:

How to… Say the rosary

January 24, 2019

Finding a rosary is easily done, since they are on sale at churches and online, and the cheapest plastic ones can be very cheap. It’s worth getting a priest to bless it, too. The prayers are also simple: five “decades”, each of which consists of an Our Father, 10 Hail Marys and a Glory Be.

Why I’ve invested in a travelling altar

January 24, 2019

A large and heavy parcel arrives swathed in layers of packing and customs forms. I know exactly what it is because it is a present. In a sense, it is a gift from myself, since I actually commissioned and ordered it, but in reality it is the gift of my late friend Gerry. He left

Even in Japan, the Traditional Mass was reassuringly familiar

January 24, 2019

It was an age of the great charity which impelled missionaries to cross both endless seas and narrow channels. They bore in their hands the greatest tool for evangelisation Holy Church has ever wielded, the Roman Missal. St Pius V issued it in 1570 at the behest of the Council of Trent, and great saints

The Word this Week

January 24, 2019

Third Sunday of the Year Neh 8:2-6 & 8-10; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Lk 1:1-4 & 4:14-21 (Year C) ‘The Law of the Lord is perfect, it revives the soul. The precepts of the Lord are right, they gladden the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, it gives light to the eyes.” The responsorial

Why the Soviet Union couldn’t replace Christianity

January 24, 2019

A Sacred Space is Never Empty By Victoria Smolkin Princeton, 360pp, £35/$40 This book’s title comes from a Russian proverb – as such it provides an aptly ironic leitmotif to its theme and subtitle: A History of Soviet Atheism. Whatever the later, fraught history of Russia after the Communist Party was dissolved in 1991, we

Did Shakespeare hide subversive messages in his poems?

January 24, 2019

Shakespeare and the Resistance by Clare Asquith, Public Affairs Books, 256pp, £21.99/$28 Not since picking up The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the seminal crime thriller by George V Higgins, some decades ago, can I recall having read a book in a single sitting. I certainly didn’t expect to do that with Shakespeare and the Resistance,

Why Kaiser Wilhelm was never put on trial

January 24, 2019

The Trial of the Kaiser By William Schabas OUP, 412pp, £25/$35 “We’re going to hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” sang Yankee soldiers. But though the president of the Confederacy was put in leg-irons and imprisoned, he wasn’t put on trial, let alone hanged. Nor was Kaiser Wilhelm II, despite the British election call