No community should botch its deaths. Mircea Eliade wrote those words and they’re a warning: if we do not properly celebrate the life of someone who has left us, we do an injustice to that person and cheat ourselves of some of the gift that he or she left behind. With this in mind, I

On the morning of June 6, while Theresa May, President Macron, and elderly veterans attended the unveiling of the new British Normandy Memorial in the little village of Ver-sur-Mer, I was 20 or so miles away in the depths of the French countryside on my own – long overdue – D-Day pilgrimage. This was to

Herbert W Armstrong (1892-1986) was an American prophet, in the mould of Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy – though his doctrines were far removed from theirs. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, to a Quaker family, he married a distant cousin, Loma Dillon, in 1917. The newlyweds moved to Chicago. Early in their marriage, Mrs

Cryptic across 5 Main tour planned is a beast in ancient Crete (8) 7 Kick from the spirit of the age I get, I sadly miss (4) 9 Transport range introduced, chap foretold (6) 10 Abandoned hysteria’s uncommon in African capital (6) 11 When is, after cancelling chap, the hour lady, shy, nervous, fixed to

Ordinary Form Divine Office Week III Sunday, June 16: Most Holy Trinity Prv 8:22-31; Ps 8; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15 Monday, June 17: Weekday in Ordinary Time 2 Cor 6:1-10; Ps 98; Mt 5:38-42 Tuesday, June 18: Weekday in Ordinary Time 2 Cor 8:1-9; Ps 146; Mt 5:43-48 Wednesday, June 19: Weekday in Ordinary Time

“The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is because of the centrality of this teaching that a person enters the Church through baptism and faith in the “name of the Father, the Son and the

I returned from leading a retreat in Walsingham with the sensation of being filled, rather than emptied spiritually by the experience. Fullness was everywhere in the natural world: the horse chestnut trees laden with candles, the poppies spattering the hillsides and the cow parsley decking the hedgerows with lace. In the spiritual realm it was

If you are challenged to explain the Trinity, consider this. From all eternity, before material creation and time, God desired a communion of love. He therefore expressed Himself in a perfect Word. The Word God uttered beyond and outside of time was and remains His perfect self-expression, containing all that God is, perfectly possessing every

Trinity Sunday Prov 8:22-31; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15 (Year C) As creatures, we can never penetrate the mystery of the one God revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At the same time, precisely because we are created in the image and likeness of this triune God, we are instinctively drawn into communion with the

Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps By Ursula Buchan, Bloomsbury, 492pp, £25/$28 John Buchan (1875-1940) has proved more enduring than most of his contemporaries. His books, especially The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, are literary heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next. He has been lucky in his biographers, as he was in most things with

Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America By Chris Arnade Sentinel, 304pp, £25/$18 Books featuring battles between the shift manager at a McDonald’s and people attempting to get free ice and soda from the machine on a hot day are rare. At first, reading about it is charming – behold the indomitable human spirit, devising

Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Catholic Church from Within By Taylor Marshall Crisis Publications 224pp, £19.75/$24.95 In 1846, Pope Pius IX condemned schemes aiming at the destruction of the Papal States by Freemasons. In 1851, Mélanie Calvat, the seer of La Salette, sent an account of her visions to the pope, including the prediction