Is it right to fear God? What is the difference between a destructive fear and a “holy trepidation”? An Advent homily by Fr Stephen Wang: Look around you at the chapel walls. Look at the […]
Lifestyle
To love someone is to set them free
There are many times when we discover ourselves in another’s gaze. It happens when we come across someone who seems to know us better than we know ourselves. Someone who thinks we can achieve something, […]
Opening “a liturgical Pandora’s box”? A parish priest reflects on the “family Mass”
By 9.30 am on a Sunday morning our car park is jam-packed, as hundreds of people fill Brentwood Cathedral for Mass. The whole building hums with prayerful expectation before Mass begins. Drawn together by Christ, […]
Realising that our lives are not about us
Father Robert Barron has a brilliant article responding to the recent Time cover story, “The Childfree Life”. While Time empathises with women who feel “sidelined” and “scolded” by “a culture that often equates womanhood with motherhood”, Fr […]
Suggestions for parents at Mass with babies, toddlers or children
The parish of Brentwood Cathedral has just posted some ideas for parents who are bringing their babies, toddlers and children to Mass each Sunday. Some of these ideas were tested in the blogosphere a couple […]
Leadership and a sacred heart
Earlier in the summer, The Times newspaper carried a photo of the Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, carrying a pile of books. His holiday reading. One of the books was Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the […]
The downside of living together before you get married
It seems so obvious: you love someone, marriage is a possibility, you are not 100% sure or 100% ready, so you move in together to test the water and test each other. It will help […]
Friendship and marriage
Two friends got married recently. For the first reading, they chose this passage about friendship from Ecclesiasticus (6:14-17): Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond […]
On getting out of your head and learning to be unserious for a while
Henry Porter writes a lovely reflection about the importance of being unserious every now and then. There is no case of seriousness in the adult male that cannot be treated by a fortnight with a magnifying glass, […]
Social networking aside, how many close friends do you have?
Another article about the nature of friendship, this time by Zoe Williams. She looks at a study from twenty-five years ago by Time Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) that defined friends as close confidantes, […]
Pope Francis calls for just wage, deplores ‘slave labour’
A society that “does not pay a just wage”, that “does not give work” to people and that “only looks to its balance books, that only seeks profit” is unjust and goes against God, Pope […]
Ten Top Tips for Managing Your Class
OK, readers. These come from someone who has zero training as a teacher. But they are what I have picked up and learned (often the hard way) from giving catechesis myself. It is hard to […]
40 Days for Life London: Is it a good thing to pray outside an abortion clinic?
I was at the 40 Days for Life vigil in central London during Lent. People gather outside the BPAS abortion clinic in Bedford Square, between Tottenham Court Road station and the British Museum. They pray. They witness […]
What children want. What children need. What children get.
You may not have seen the recent Unicef report about the way materialism has come to dominate family life in Britain. What children really want, says the report, is to spend time with family and friends, to […]
