October 2021 Archives - Page 4 of 5

October 2021

October 07, 2021

You might think poets make natural martyrs. Passionate, idealistic, enraptured by visions of artistic immortality; throughout history, barricades and prisons have been crammed full of poetic talent. But the best poets are, by necessity, listeners and observers, detached from the action where martyrs are found. When they strive for heroic death, more often than not

Helping to lift burdens

October 03, 2021

As we grow closer to the poor, little by little we gain their confidence and can advise them in the most terrible moments of this earthly pilgrimage. We can give them the comforting words of faith and we often succeed, not by our own merit, in putting on the right path people who have strayed

Lifeline to heaven

October 03, 2021

How many millions of miles rosary beads have travelled through troubled fingers only God and his Mother know. How many miracles of grace it has worked in the lives of those who were faithful to this devotion, it must keep the angels busy to record. How many times it has pulled back from the gates

A readable yarn but none too credible

October 02, 2021

Matrix by Lauren Groff William Heinemann, £16.99, 272 pages __________ The 12th-century poet we know as Marie de France was, scholars argue, the greatest writer of short fiction before Boccaccio and Chaucer. Her lais – tantalisingly short romances written in octosyllabic couplets – are thought to rival the best that those great men had to

Following St Francis

October 02, 2021

On 4 October 2003, the Feast Day of Saint Francis, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela, having completed the Camino Frances, the pilgrimage route which crosses northern Spain from the Pyrenees. After queuing for our certificates of completion, my walking companions and I hurried to the midday pilgrims’ Mass at the magnificent Gothic cathedral. It

Saints and Saleability

October 01, 2021

Religious relics and devotional merchandise can be macabre, thought-provoking, whimsical and, in some cases, downright entertaining. In Italy, one can visit reliquaries housing the mummified head of St Catherine of Siena or the uncorrupted tongue of St Anthony of Padua before buying blue plastic keyrings of the pierced St Sebastian – what my cheeky godson

The Synod Needs You

October 01, 2021

A synod on synodality may seem like an oxymoron but that is what is beginning this month. Pope Francis wants to rethink how the Church is run, and a synod – an assembly of the Church – is one way he hopes to address the issue of greater lay involvement in decision-making. The synod was

The Thin End of the Wedge

October 01, 2021

The spectre of so-called “assisted dying” is rearing its head again, as the British Medical Association controversially changes its stance to “neutral” and Baroness Meacher’s private member’s bill is soon to have its second reading. The sad case of Alta Fixsler, a brain-damaged Hasidic Jewish girl, reveals not only that euthanasia without consent is already