Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

March 03, 2023

Philokalia: Volume 5, reviewed by Mark Jenkins

March 03, 2023

Philokalia: Volume 5 Ed. Kallistos Ware Faber & Faber, £30, 324 pages The much-anticipated fifth volume of an English translation of the Philokalia (more fully known as “The Philokalia of the Neptic Saints gathered from our Holy Theophanic Father through which, by means of the Philosophy of Ascetic Practice and Contemplation, the Intellect is Purified,

EXCLUSIVE interview: Bishop Barron, the face of the modern Church?

March 03, 2023

Bishop Robert Barron reaches a huge online audience with his Word on Fire ministry. What’s his secret, asks Melanie McDonagh There aren’t, frankly, many Catholic bishops who have to field questions about how it is they’re so brilliant at reaching young people, but that’s Bishop Robert Barron for you. He’s known as the Bishop for

Never forget the bloody horrors of the English Reformation

March 03, 2023

Martin Luther was a theologian. If you read the Ninety-Five Theses he reputedly tacked up on the door of Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche in October 1517, it is clear his interest lay in the nature of sin, repentance, absolution, penance and salvation. Whatever else his wider agenda was – or became – his initial arguments were presented

Letter from the Editor: Crisis in the Church and growth for the Herald

March 03, 2023

I enjoyed reading Peter Frankopan’s Diary for this issue, in which he admits that writing a book is a “very spiritual experience”. After his bestselling The Silk Roads, the Professor of Global History at Oxford University has now turned to an unfinished history of the environment with The Earth Transformed. With the passing of Catholic

“More roast muskrat, Your Grace?” Fasting and abstinence comes in all shapes and sizes

March 03, 2023

The Church’s tradition of abstinence reaches back much further than the 1960s, of course. A homily of Pope Gregory the Great is amongst the first sources for the current discipline. This in turn got bound into the earliest collections of the Church’s laws, ended up in the Corpus Iuris Canonici,and later found its way (by means of a reference, at least) into the 1917 and 1983 codes. But with the expansion of the Church’s mission field well beyond the familiar territories (and cuisines) of Europe, the definition of what is and what is not included in abstinence has shifted over time.

Episode 39: The Latin Mass Life Raft with Dr Joseph Shaw

March 03, 2023

The guest for this 39th episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for The Catholic Herald, is Dr Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society and a former member of the Philosophy faculty at Oxford University. He tells Dr Gavin Ashenden that the reasons offered for the ongoing suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass just