SPIRITED THINKING SINCE 1888
May 30, 2019
The family that could save Europe
May 30, 2019
A little over a hundred years ago, Emperor Karl of Austria, his wife Zita and their small children were forced to leave their last refuge in Austria for Swiss exile. Two abortive attempts to regain the Austrian throne led to their exile and his death in Madeira. Over the following decades the imperial exiles made
Jean Vanier (1928-2019)
May 30, 2019
Our differences are not a threat but a treasure. Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, who died in Paris on May 7, wrote those words; but their truth is far from self-evident. One might question whether those words are simply nice-sounding poetics or whether they contain an actual truth. Our differences, in fact, are often
A Catholic childhood in Sri Lanka
May 30, 2019
The attack on local Christians and Western tourists in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday grieved all people of good will, but especially Catholics around the world on the day we celebrated Jesus’s conquering death and darkness. The tragedy calls us to enter more deeply into the mystery of Eastertide, to reflect on what it means
Heretic of the week: Guy Ballard
May 30, 2019
Guy Ballard (1878-1939) was a true American original. Born in Newton, Kansas, he became a mining engineer and moved to Chicago. There he met Edna Anne Wheeler (1886-1971), a professional harpist and native of Burlington, Iowa. The couple had a strong mutual interest in various esoteric doctrines – especially theosophy. From this latter body of
Prize crossword 0595
May 30, 2019
Cryptic across 5 Point to one of 2 being confused, Mary being uniformly good? (5,4) 8 One of a devilish disposition: it’s Santa – not (8) 9 Hate both sides coming out with bad language (4) 10 Musical groups in church love to tax people in America (6) 11 Syrian city drink’s sickly pop (6)
Mass readings
May 30, 2019
Ordinary Form Divine Office Week III Sunday, June 2: The Seventh Sunday of Easter Acts 7:55-60; Ps 97; Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; Jn 17:20-26 Monday, June 3: Ss Charles Lwanga and Companions Acts 19:1-8; Ps 68; Jn 16:29-33 Tuesday, June 4: Weekday of Easter Acts 20:17-27; Ps 68; Jn 17:1-11A Wednesday, June 5: St Boniface
How to… Climb the Holy Stairs
May 30, 2019
There is really only one way to climb the Scala Santa – or Holy Stairs – in Rome, and that is on your knees. Tradition holds that the white marble staircase, located opposite the Basilica of St John Lateran in Rome, led to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate and was ascended by Our Lord himself
Discovering my rebellious spirit was a shock
May 30, 2019
St Philip Neri, whose feast day was on May 26, had many pithy maxims about the spiritual life. One of them was that you can measure a man’s holiness in the width of three fingers. He would tap his forehead, meaning to signify the extent to which a person’s will – his sense that he
The absurdity of ‘Ascension Thursday Sunday’
May 30, 2019
On this complicated Sunday people in many churches will observe in the Ordinary Form what we might call, for its absurdity, Ascension Thursday Sunday, the transferral of the biblically attested moment, 40 days after the Resurrection, of the Lord’s transit to heaven on a Thursday, with our humanity in an indestructible bond with His divinity.
Our darkness can become Christ’s light
May 30, 2019
The stoning of Stephen, the Church’s first martyr, reminds us that the Cross is not simply the precursor of the Resurrection. The Cross is, and becomes in every generation, the revelation of Christ’s risen life. Stephen glimpsed this at the very moment of his death. “Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and
A Catholic poet unskilled in the art of living
May 30, 2019
Elizabeth Jennings: The Inward War By Dana Greene OUP, 288pp, £25/$35 Dana Greene has written a sympathetic and perceptive study of the life of Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001). In under 300 pages, she handles the major themes of Jennings’s poetry, relating them to stages of the poet’s life, and deals insightfully with the “inward war” that
Should we stop calling millennials ‘snowflakes’?
May 30, 2019
Generation Left By Keir Milburn Polity Press, 140pp, £9.99/$15 Young people don’t get a good press these days. Sure, “the youth of today” is a grumble as old as mankind, but the millennials of the early 21st century are mocked and denounced to an unprecedented degree. If not demonised as hypersensitive “snowflakes” who seek to
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