Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

July 17, 2020

Sunday’s Collect: When life’s reckoning arrives, where will you find yourself?

July 17, 2020

Last year I wrote about the Collect for the Novus Ordo’s 16th Ordinary Sunday. But this time I have a little more room and, after all, repetita iuvant. Our prayer has an antecedent in a 9th century manuscript, the Sacramentarium Bergomense. Hence, this oration probably has its roots in the forerunners of the Ambrosian Rite of Milan:

Pope Francis sends condolences after death of Cardinal Grocholewski

July 17, 2020

Polish Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, former prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, died aged 80

Catholic faith is the answer to sorcery-related violence in Papua New Guinea, says bishop

July 17, 2020

On Easter Sunday in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, three innocent women were burned and tortured while local Catholics were at Mass

Catholic boarding school goes into administration amidst pandemic

July 17, 2020

St Mary’s school in Shaftesbury has closed permanently with immediate effect

Christ statue beheaded in new Catholic statue attacks

July 17, 2020

The recent series of attacks on church buildings and property continues

‘It helps if your ethics are based on something’: Life as a Catholic actuary

July 17, 2020

Britons were perhaps surprisingly under-represented in the crowd that thronged St Peter’s Square for the canonisation of St John Henry Newman last October. Yet among the sea of Brazilian and Indian flags that occupied the foremost section of the congregation a solitary St George’s Cross stood out as it waved and fluttered from an extendable

More than a hundred US Catholic schools are closing – and it could get worse

July 17, 2020

The global coronavirus pandemic has imposed an unprecedented stress test on all our institutions – and US Catholic schools have been hit especially hard. More than a hundred have said that they will close by the start of the next school year because of the financial toll of the pandemic, with many more closures expected

Under pressure to conform, Catholic schools must defend Church teaching in full

July 17, 2020

As someone who spent a career teaching RE at Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Glasgow, I always wanted to share fully the Church’s teaching and the Gospel with my pupils. Catholic schools made this possible for people like me because of their distinct character and duty. The economic and political constraints on Catholic education

We need to understand China. This book is a good place to start

July 17, 2020

The Colour of the Sky After Rain By Tessa Keswick Head of Zeus, £30 For most of my life I had no interest in China. It wasn’t corona that got me interested – it was seeing Chinese mansions spring up in Jamaica, or driving into the Ethiopian bush on Chinese-built highways (they need the fertile

Letters: How Britain’s Marian statues ended up in Europe

July 17, 2020

The curious travels of Marian shrines We are truly privileged to have so many and such evocative shrines to Our Lady in our country. The Reformation wrought havoc on Marian devotion, so that ancient statues such as Our Lady of Ipswich could end up at an Italian coastal resort (John Whitehead, Catholic Herald, June). May

Our Christian lives are to be measured by an unfettered willingness to forgive

July 17, 2020

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year Wisdom 12: 13 & 16-19; Romans 8: 26-27; Matthew 13: 24-43 “There is no god, other than You, who cares for everything…. You govern us with great lenience. By acting thus you have taught a lesson to your people, how the virtuous man must be kindly to his fellow men. You

At the lowest point of my life, a novena changed everything

July 17, 2020

‘I left university feeling I was searching for something – I didn’t even know what – so I went travelling. At the time, during the hippy movement, that was what you did. “In Spain I saw a sunset and I knew that God existed. That was 1973. I finished my travels and a search began