The past few years have witnessed in these United States an orgy of something once thought confined to revolutionary dictatorships: the mass removal of all statues deemed ideologically offensive to the regime. In our country, it began with the ongoing removal of Confederate statues and monuments – heedless of the fact that their erection had

Gene Wolfe, who died last week at the age of 87, imagined vast, strange worlds in his fiction – and revealed them in flickering glimpses. His stories were slow revelations, indirect and incomplete. Readers learned the significance of their accumulating hints per speculum in aenigmate: through a glass, darkly. Wolfe, a veteran of the Korean

Yet another city’s Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down last week, this time in Pennsylvania, where a federal judge ruled that the City of Philadelphia can end its relationship with Catholic Social Services due to its refusal to place foster children with same-sex couples. The Philadelphia ruling follows a settlement in Michigan last

Cryptic across 6 How the angel appeared to end Maria’s torment? (2,1,5) 8 Staggering move to gain influence (4) 9 Close, and familiar with Khrushchev’s comeback, it gets the sack (4) 10 Rate one that’s downloaded and recruit (8) 11 In rash poet’s a sane aphorist? One or the other! (12) 14 Chose in atlas,

“I’m a practising mystic.” A woman said that in one of my classes some years ago and it raised lots of eyebrows. I was teaching a class in mysticism and asked the students why the topic of mysticism interested them. Their responses varied. Some were simply intrigued by the concept; others were spiritual directors who

I went last weekend to the inaugural Buckingham History Festival. It was held by the University of Buckingham, under the aegis of its vice-chancellor, Sir Anthony Seldon, and Professor John Adamson, director of the Humanities Research Institute, across its campus in the town. How unlike most modern universities this exemplary institution looks. Rather than the

John Knox (c 1512-1572) was born sometime between 1505 and 1515 in Haddington, Scotland. He is thought to have studied at either the University of St Andrews or Edinburgh, and was ordained a Catholic priest on Holy Saturday, 1536. This was a difficult time for Scotland. King James V was killed in battle against the

Ordinary Form Divine Office Week III Sunday, May 5: The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 5:27-32, 40B-41; Ps 30; Rev 5:11-14; Jn 21:1-19 Monday, May 6: Weekday of Easter Acts 6:8-15; Ps 119; Jn 6:22-29 Tuesday, May 7: Weekday of Easter Acts 7:51 – 8:1A; Ps 31; Jn 6:30-35 Wednesday, May 8: Weekday of Easter

Pope St John Paul II noted in an address in 2004 that “a man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man”. Human dignity, in other words, is permanent and it belongs to the dying and healthy alike. There is no justification for

As the Masses of Easter Octave come to an end, so do the daily Gospel proclamations of Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearances. For some reason this year I was struck as though for the first time by an apparent incongruity. Why does the first Gospel announcement of Resurrection centre on the empty tomb? Why on Easter Sunday

Last week, I was inspired by both the Exsultet, sung by the deacon during the Vigil of Easter with its imagery of bees, and the survival of the beehives atop the roof of the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s sacristy. These orderly little creatures, which have sparked the imaginations of Holy Church’s best writers through the centuries, supply

The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 5:27-32 & 40-41; Rev 5:11-14; Jn 21:1-19 (Year C) Christ is alive! He is our hope, and in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world. The very first words, then, that I would say to every young Christian are these: Christ is alive and he wants you