Launch of "A Pure Heart Create for Me"

"A Pure Heart Create for Me", published by Family Publications is a collection of articles, mainly based on lectures given last year at St Patrick's Soho Square to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. Authors include Fr Stephen Langridge (Southwark Vocations), Fr Richard Aladics (Friends with Christ), and Nicole Parker of the Central London Fertility Care Centre and myself (on Humanae Vitae as a challenge to the culture).

Tonight saw the launch of the book at St Patrick's. Fr Anthony Doe spoke of how the eternal Word's divesting himself of glory in the incarnation and the crucifixion, was the model for human love and its fruitfulness. Fr Philip Egan spoke of the authority of the encyclical in a tightly argued talk that concluded that the teaching was proclaimed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium. (Fr Philip Egan's has recently written a book called "Philosophy and Catholic Theology: A Primer." (See Amazon link below.)

It was a bit of an English College reunion. I overlapped at the College at least for some time not only with Frs Doe and Egan, but also with other priests there: Fr Paschal Ryan, Fr Stephen Langridge, Mgr Keith Barltrop and Fr Alexander Sherbrooke, the parish priest. There were many other good friends there, including Joanna Bogle. A star guest was Bishop Peter Elliott, Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, whom I first met many years ago in Rome when he was working on his doctorate which resulted in the readable and accessible work of scholarship "What God has Joined. The Sacramentality of Marriage." The book is especially useful in providing an alternative to several of the positions adopted by Schillebeeckx. Bishop Elliott was on fine form and it was great to hear of some of the initiatives he has been involved with in Melbourne.

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