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 […]
Relationships
The radical call to love without limits
Most of our relationships have some kind of calculation involved: with colleagues, with friends, even within a family. There is a give and take; an agreement – implicit or explicit – that I will be […]
‘Please God, find me a husband!’ A graphic novel about life, love and faith (and searching for a husband!) by Simone Lia
I can’t say I have read many graphic novels, but this is an extraordinary book. It tells the tale, as you would expect from the title, of Simone Lia’s search for a husband, and her […]
St Valentine: true love always requires sacrifice
History has it that Valentine was a priest in Rome around the time of the third Century. Along with his friend St Marius and his family he assisted the martyrs who were being persecuted under […]
Loneliness, Part 2: reflection
Why do most of us have such a problem with the idea of being alone? Is solitude always a bad thing? Following on from yesterday’s statistical look at loneliness in the lives of the elderly, […]
Loneliness, Part 1: statistics
Two posts about loneliness. The first, the results of a ‘Loneliness Research’ project from the Campaign to End Loneliness. There is a growing evidence base around the complex challenge of loneliness, and the Campaign to […]
When you don’t live in the same world
Two cities overlap. One house, for example, belongs to one city; the neighboring house belongs to another city. But the citizens of one city are not allowed to notice what is going on in the other […]
Marriage enrichment weekends coming up
Take a look at the SmartLoving website for details of some marriage enrichment weekends that are taking place over the next few months. Couples who stay successfully and happily married have made marriage their mission. […]
Marriage isn’t for you – it’s for the other person
Thought-provoking thoughts about marriage and love from Seth Adam Smith: Having been married only a year and a half, I’ve recently come to the conclusion that marriage isn’t for me. Now before you start making […]
Communion for the remarried: clarification and speculation from Archbishop Gerhard Müller at the CDF
An important statement by the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, the CDF, has reaffirmed existing church teaching on not admitting to the Eucharist Catholics who have remarried without first annulling their marriage. But in […]
The search for genuine friendship and love in today’s youth culture: Pure in Heart
Pure in Heart is a group of 18-35 year olds who seek to live out the Catholic Church’s teaching on chastity by means of prayer, friendship, study and mission. Pure in Heart started in Ireland following […]
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, […]
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 […]
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, […]
