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Showing posts with the label Catholic Herald

Catholic Herald Papal Visit Reception

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The Catholic Herald invited me to a Reception at the Friary in Westminster yesterday lunchtime to celebrate the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. I was keen to catch up with Luke Coppen, the Editor, as well as the other people on the paper. I did get to have a brief chat with Luke (above) as well as several of the other writers. It was a change to have a photo with someone who is the same height as myself! It was also a great pleasure to catch up with Anna Arco, the chief feature writer for the Herald, and to meet her father: I was a little unprepared for what turned out to be a major Catholic social event. What made it such an electric occasion was that the Herald managed to get together people of such widely differing views to bump into each other over champagne and a finger buffet. Just to give you some flavour, this was the party at which Daphne McLeod met Oona Stannard while Princess Michael of Kent was nearby, graceful and charming, and Archbishop Nichols was meeting and greetin...
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Herald has a new website

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The Catholic Herald, Britain's leading Catholic newspaper, has a newly designed website with easy access to all the important articles. The Herald also has a Facebook page so if you use FB, you might like to go over there and click "Like".
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Anna Arco's in Malta

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The Holy Father is off to Malta tomorrow afternoon for a short visit which will include a pilgrimage to the catacombs of St Paul at Rabat. The Vatican website has a page with official details of the visit . Thousands of Maltese have been unable to get there for the visit and many dignitaries intending to go have been stranded at Brussels. However, the intrepid Chief Feature Writer of the Catholic Herald, Anna Arco is out there already, posting background on her blog and sending updates via Twitter ( @AnnaArco ). The Catholic Herald also has a dedicated page for the Apostolic visit to Malta . Just by the way; I have been reading various online articles in The Times of Malta and have found it most edifying to see how polite, intelligent and reasonable most of the comments are. This does not surprise me, having made two very enjoyable visits there.
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Thanks to the Catholic Herald

Many thanks to the Catholic Herald which has spoken very kindly about me in the leader article of this week's paper. May I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the list of blogs by priests and religious in the sidebar. They represent a wide variety of styles and interests within orthodox Catholicism. As soon as this post is published, I will add to that list a new blog: Let the Welkin Ring , which is written by Fr Wilfrid Elkin of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle.
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Fr Z in the Herald

Annoyingly, my parish did not get its copies of the Catholic Herald this week. thank goodness the Herald now has an excellent new look website - an excellent development with permanent links to articles. As the online editor says, That means you can now link to any Catholic Herald article from your blog, website, Facebook profile or MySpace page and not worry about it disappearing a week later when the new edition of the paper comes out. So I was able to read Why everyone logs on to ‘Father Z’ , feature by Anna Arco about Fr John Zuhlsdorf of What does the prayer really say?
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Popular posts from this blog

Saint Gabriel

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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
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Our Easter Faith: Not a Pious Crème Fraiche

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In public life, some basically well-meaning figures have the graciousness to wish us well at Easter and to recognise the importance of the Christian feast day. Perhaps they might assure us that their thoughts are with us at this time. That is kind of them and in Christian charity we should thank them for their kindness, but Easter should be a great deal more than that for us. We must believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, in the flesh, and lives for eternity. We cannot treat Easter as a jolly holiday that heralds spring, or the remembrance of a significant event from the past. It must change us today and every day, change who we are and what we do. The Christian faith cannot be a mild custard or blancmange of religiosity. (I am showing my age. Nowadays, I should say that it cannot be reduced to a pious crème fraiche .) We bow down and adore the King of Kings, risen from the tomb, who, “[…] continues for ever,...
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Blessing of the New Painting of St Bede at Clapham Park

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This morning, the parish priest at Clapham Park, Fr Marcus Holden, blessed a new picture of the parish's patron, Saint Bede, painted by James Tildsley. It is sited over a recently installed side altar near the rear of the Church. The altar itself was acquired from Antique Church Furnishings . The website gives the information that the altar was built and carved by a nun in a convent near Liverpool. It is a beautiful piece of work and it is always a joy when such works of art find a suitable and dignified home. The inscription on the gradine is AMANS AMATUS AMOR. The sellers translate this as “Loving is the object of love” which is a reasonable stab at “dynamic equivalence”. Today the parish's relic of St Bede was exposed for veneration in its distinctive brightly-coloured reliquary. After the blessing, there was High Mass with Fr Holden as celebrant, Fr Littleton deacon, and myself subdeacon. That gave me the enjoyable task of chant...
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Plenary indulgences not impossible

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions: The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence Pope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina . Norm 7 states: To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.” It is worth reading the other norms bec...
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Portiuncula indulgence tomorrow (and indulgences generally)

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Tomorrow, 2 August, you can gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions ( see below ) by visiting a parish Church and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . This is called the Portiuncula indulgence and goes back to St Francis of Assisi. Fr Z has the details . Don't forget that you can also gain a plenary indulgence by visiting a Church on the day of the titular feast, and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . I made a list of other indulgences: please see the post Plenary indulgences for particular days which has a link to the list. The post has some background information which you may find helpful since indulgences are not well understood today - which is not surprising since indulgences are not included in most Catholic education curricula, and most priests never preach about them. Therefore many Catholics are left with whatever silly, half-baked, ill-informed nonsense about indulgences happens to be current. If you want to understand the theology...
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