Posts By Date - Catholic Herald

January 06, 2024

There came from the East: Learning of the wisdom of the Magi from Matthew’s account

January 06, 2024

No nativity play would be complete without the three kings, central characters in the tale of Christ’s birth. Almost as well known as the characters themselves is the fact that “the three kings” is a misnomer: there might have been three of them, but then again there might have been any number, because Matthew’s Gospel

On The Record: listening choices for Epiphany to stir the heart and soul

January 06, 2024

British composer Judith Bingham typically uses imaginative and poetic performance directions in her scores. For the anthem “Epiphany”, the entire text is her own. The Magi are transposed into the deepest, darkest British winter, where in the “black hours [they] begin their journeyings”. In their 2023 recording, No Small Wonder (Acis), the choir of Saint

Like Waugh after the new liturgy, am I finding it hard to get through the door at Mass?

January 06, 2024

I was once told that Evelyn Waugh bought Combe Florey, his house in Somerset, because it was sufficiently far from a Catholic church for him to be excused attending the post-Vatican II Mass he so despised. Sadly, I fear this anecdote may be, as we journalists say, too good to check. Whilst the “buggering up

Strings attached: Bradley Cooper’s take on Leonard Bernstein is a success

January 06, 2024

Julia Hamilton loves Bradley Cooper’s take on Leonard Bernstein. This is not just any old biopic. This is Bradley Cooper’s stunning take on the towering cultural figure of Leonard Bernstein – co-written and directed by Cooper, to boot. Maestro covers miles of chronological ground, beginning with an aged, white-haired Lenny armed with two indispensable items,

Notes from the Holy Land: Epiphany in Bethlehem with the Franciscans (Part 1)

January 06, 2024

Fr Luke Gregory OFM is a Franciscan friar based in Rhodes who journeys frequently to the Holy Land and is a director of the charity Pro Terra Sancta, which assists Christians and others in the region. Here is the first instalment of reflections from his diary of his time in Bethlehem for the Epiphany of

Pope urges Catholics to “abandon ecclesial ideologies” in wake of recent controversies

January 06, 2024

ROME – On today’s Solemnity of the Epiphany the Holy Father lamented that the Church is often split into groups based on various interpretations of the faith and stressed the importance of communion, saying God must be at the centre of faith, rather than one’s own ideas about it. Pope Francis’s comments came amid a

How the Magi found truth in the Messiah, not astrology

January 06, 2024

Looking to the skies. Today, astrology is big business. Yet despite its popularity, I don’t expect governments to start depicting astrological events on their coins and banknotes anytime soon. But around the time of Jesus’s birth, such depictions on the currency of the Roman Empire were commonplace. It is this historical fact that led the