Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

January 23, 2020

‘Farewell great painter…’ Why my favourite epitaph is in a Chiswick churchyard

January 23, 2020

Graveyards are, for those of a sombre bent, a useful way of reflecting on mortality. And the older they are, the better, though there’s an awful melancholy in the number of little graves of children in these places: “died young”, they say with heartbreaking brevity on gravestones in my home cemetery. But being buried in

Heretic of the week: Lorenzo Dow

January 23, 2020

Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834) was the forerunner of that archetype of American frontier lore, the wandering preacher. Born in Connecticut, his early years were plagued by religious controversy, but by 1798 he had joined the Methodists. He started out as a lay preacher in New England, but broke with the Methodist Episcopal Church to go to

Prize crossword 0628

January 23, 2020

Cryptic across 5 Cutting hair first, we become Carmelites (11) 7 Is muse of magic lionized? (4) 8 Book airline to Hawaii in front of thousands of queuing British (8) 9 Jacob’s a king, on reflection (6) 11 Aircraft changes heading to see Henry working in the garden, perhaps (6) 12 Clique in Eastern Europe

Mass readings

January 23, 2020

Ordinary Form Divine Office Week III Sunday, January 26: The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 8:23–9:3; Ps 27; 1 Cor 1:10-13, 17; Mt 4:12-23 or 4:12-17 Monday, January 27: Weekday in Ordinary Time or St Angela Merici 2 Sm 5:1-7, 10; Ps 89; Mk 3:22-30 Tuesday, January 28: St Thomas Aquinas 2 Sm 6:12B-15,

How to… Prepare for marriage

January 23, 2020

There is no relationship this side of eternity quite like sacramental marriage. As Cardinal Robert Sarah reminds us in his new book on the priesthood, Christian marriage involves the continuous and complete self-giving in love of one person to another, a mirror perhaps of the love of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. It is

Mind, body and spirit: why integrity matters in the spiritual life

January 23, 2020

It was only recently that I realised I apparently get easier and richer insights while in the shower than when sitting at a desk or even praying. This ought not to be surprising. It makes perfect sense if one accepts that while there are different parts to the human person, they are all animated by

God treasures each of us, so be not afraid

January 23, 2020

Our Collect for the 3rd Ordinary Sunday in the Novus Ordo was in the 1962 Missale Romanum and the 8th-century Liber sacramentorum Engolismensis for Sunday in the Octave of Christmas. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, dirige actus nostros in beneplacito tuo, ut in nomine dilecti Filii tui mereamur bonis operibus abundare. Beneplacitum means “good pleasure, gracious purpose”.

Every life is a living out of Israel’s journey into light

January 23, 2020

“In the days past the Lord humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the days to come he will confer glory on the Way of the Sea on the far side of Jordan.” This brief description from the prophet Isaiah summarised the disaster that virtually obliterated Israel’s northern kingdom in

A sculptor whose masterful art united Spain and Tuscany

January 23, 2020

Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain By CD Dickerson III Yale, 244pp, £40/$55 Given Alonso Berruguete’s artistic education in Italy at the height of the Renaissance and his subsequent influence in his native Spain, it would not be surprising if this book was merely another tribute to the style and international impact of the

The Benedictine who provoked vampire hysteria

January 23, 2020

Shapeshifters: A History By John B Kachuba Reaktion Books, 200pp, £16/$22.50 The myth of the vampire is among the most popular in international folklore, inspiring nearly 400 films and television productions over the past century. The most recent of these was Dracula, the joint BBC-Netflix mini-series broadcast from New Year’s Day and which, in the

From Brideshead to Hogwarts: a strange architectural tour

January 23, 2020

Novel Houses By Christina Hardyment Bodleian Library, 240pp, £25/$40 American screenwriters are fond of the term “precinct” to refer to the location where most of the action takes place. It comes from cop shows, but can also be used to refer to coffee shops, offices, even a house. But when novelists set their stories in

Even in Polynesia, Gauguin couldn’t escape his Catholic roots

January 23, 2020

When Gauguin Portraits ends its run at the National Gallery this month, the artist will have emerged as a serious portraitist as well as a Primitivist, Symbolist and Synthetist. What might have been overlooked along the way is Gauguin the man of God. Gauguin’s fascination with the traditional beliefs of French Polynesia is well known.