Each year, I write a column sharing with readers the title and a brief synopsis of the 10 books that touched me most that year. Occasionally, however, I judge a book to be exceptional enough to merit its own column. Robert Ellsberg’s new book, A Living Gospel – Reading God’s Story in Holy Lives, is

Catholic piety is far too wide a topic for me to say anything particularly useful about it in general. In any case, my experience of it in suburban America has been that, if anything, it is decorous and restrained. And so I was struck by a passage in Ronald Chapman’s biography of Fr Frederick William

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is considered by many today – particularly those of a New Age bent – to be something of a prophet. Certainly, his views on comparative mythology and religion have affected millions. This is not least because of his being championed by Bill Moyers on PBS with his The Power of Myth interviews.

Cryptic across 5 City of Macedonia in Amos Philip rebuilt (10) 7 Jerahmeel’s significant other one sailor’s taken to hospital (6) 8 Mix-up sodium in lead for the Ammonite king (6) 9 Reportedly caught by police is a sect member (4) 11 I am the Spanish waiter in Messiah! (8) 13 Rigs include revolutionary new

Ordinary Form Divine Office Week II Sunday, July 7: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 66:10-14C; Ps 66; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12, 17-20 Monday, July 8: Weekday in Ordinary Time Gn 28:10-22A; Ps 91; Mt 9:18-26 Tuesday, July 9: Weekday in Ordinary Time or Ss Augustine Zhao Rong and companions Gn 32:23-33; Ps 17; Mt 9:32-38 Wednesday, July

The five categories of papal knighthood are, in descending rank, the Supreme Order of Christ, the Order of the Golden Spur, the Order of Pius IX, the Order of St Gregory the Great, and the Order of St Sylvester Pope and Martyr. The first is conferred directly by the Holy Father but extremely rarely (its

On the feast of Ss Peter and Paul I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my ordination to the Sacred Priesthood. Not a huge milestone perhaps, but it feels like a significant one. A time not for self-congratulation but for a self-examination entirely consistent with the sentiment with which St Paul can say: “By the grace

In our traditional Roman liturgical calendar, July 2 (the conclusion of the long-suppressed Octave of John the Baptist) is the feast of the Visitation. In the Novus Ordo calendar, the Visitation falls on May 31, between the Annunciation and the Nativity of St John the Baptist. We reflect on the visit of the Blessed Virgin

Fourteenth Sunday of the Year Is 66:10-14; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12 & 17-20 (Year C) “Rejoice for Jerusalem. Rejoice for her, all you who mourned her. For thus says the Lord: like a son comforted by his mother will I comfort you, and by Jerusalem you will be comforted. At the sight your heart will

Waugh on Wine By Auberon Waugh Quartet, 180pp, £10/$13 Though Auberon Waugh (Bron to his friends) sometimes remarked that journalism was to be read and thrown away, his own endures 18 years after his death, aged 61, in 2001. The proof of this has been shown this year in two books, both published by Quartet.

The Idol of Our Age By Daniel J Mahoney Encounter Books, 184pp, £17.99/$15.90 One of the most famous passages in modern literature is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”, a poem within his epic 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov. It is recited by Ivan Karamazov, an intellectual atheist, and it represents what Dostoyevsky views as the

In his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force – they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.” From the mind of writer