The Hermeneutic of Continuity

St Agatha, from Catania in Sicily, was martyred in 251 during the brief but ferocious persecution of Decius. At that time, everyone was ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods by a certain day determined by the local authorities. When you had done so, you got a certificate (a libellus ). Some Christians were able to bribe an official or knew someone who could get a libellus – they were referred to as libellatici and were considered as having betrayed the faith; though not as seriously as those who had offered sacrifice to the Roman gods. St Agatha’s martyrdom is a classic example of the combination of two virtues, chastity and fortitude even in the face of torture and death. The Virgin Martyrs are sometimes despised in the world today by those who are particularly outraged by chastity and the readiness to quit this earthly life for heaven. St Agatha’s passion began when she rejected the amorous advances of a prefect Quintianus. He gave her to Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel wh...

Sandro Magister reports on a new catechism for young people: A Book in the Backpack. With the Pope's Autograph . He also gives an English translation of the preface to "You Cat" written by Pope Benedict. He says to young people: This supplement to the catechism does not flatter you; it does not offer easy solutions; it demands a new life on your part; it presents you with the message of the Gospel like the "pearl of great price" (Matthew 13:45) for which everything must be given. And so I ask you: study the catechism with passion and perseverance! Sacrifice your time for this! Study it in the silence of your room, read it with someone else, if you are friends, form groups and study networks, exchange ideas on the internet. In whatever way, remain in dialogue on your faith! To be honest, the title "You Cat" could be off-putting to some serious young people but I hope that the content will dispel any initial impressions that it might be a dumbed-down yo...

... just a different layout. I was dithering about, wondering how to get everything exactly right and then had a "crash and burn" moment and decided just to get on with it. So you have your sans-serif font for easier reading, a new and enhanced blogroll and a nice big picture of St Peter's Square. You have even got a special mobile version for your portable telephone. As you can see, there are now two sidebars. The new "Template designer" lost a lot of stuff from the old sidebar but that is no great worry. I might even find it somewhere. There will be some "pages" at the top in due course. Update : just done one to try it out. There will probably be quite a bit of tweaking to do over the next few days and weeks so if you find any problems or anything not working, do feel free to let me know. Don't worry - I'll do something about the orange link text. Update : actually I had to do that straight away. It was too gruesome to leave overnight. ...

Family and Youth Concern have publicised new evidence from the United States which supports their own report Broken Homes and Battered Children which can be ordered from their publications page . Often, when people talk about child abuse, they repeat the "party line" that most abuse happens in the home. Sometimes they say "in families." What Broken Homes and Battered Children showed was that families where two natural parents are living with their own children are comparatively safe environments and that marriage is a protective factor in and of itself. the most dangerous environment in terms of incidence of child abuse was found to be homes where a single parent was living with a partner who was not the natural parent of the child(ren). Recently the US Department of Health and Human Services received the Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect . One of the members of the Research Advisory Group for this study was Dr Patrick Fagan, Director...

Rt Rev Dominique Rey, Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, France, has announced a major International Conference on Eucharistic Adoration to take place in Rome from 20-24 June 2011. the Conference will be organised by the Missionaries of the Most Holy Eucharist, one of the many new communities that Bishop Rey has allowed to flourish in his diocese. He is also generous in welcoming those attached to the traditional liturgy, accepting seminarians for the diocese who wish to celebrate the Liturgy in the usus antiquior . Adoratio 2011 will include fourteen conferences, Mass in both newer and older forms, all night adoration and the divine office. It will conclude with participants joining Pope Benedict in the celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and the Eucharistic procession to the Basilica of St Mary Major. For further details, see Adoratio 2011 . The line-up of speakers is impressive. The list includes: Cardinal Francis Arinze, Emeritus Prefect ...

The Maryvale Institute has recently introduced a new MA in Marriage and Family . Now don't be silly - they are not saying you need an MA to get married! The course is for priests, religious, teachers and others involved in pastoral ministry related to marriage and the family. The aims are: to deepen student knowledge and understanding of the Catholic vision for marriage and family particularly as informed by the teaching of Pope John Paul II; to enable students to reflect critically on how to apply this knowledge and understanding in response to the needs and enrichment of marriage and family life within their own vocational and professional settings. The list of modules looks good as well. There is more information at the link above. There is also a short report on Stephen Milne's blog Witness to Love which is another new addition to the blogroll.

The renewal of the blogroll has been very useful since it has alerted me to a number of blogs that for one reason or another (usually just having too many things to do at once) never got on before. Google Reader does make it much easier for me to add blogs so feel free to make a request. As well as  putting a link in the combox , it would be helpful if you would let me know if your blog is a) British, b) by a priest or religious, c) by a journalist or d) none of the above. Saves me scrolling down the sidebar of your blog to find your personal statement and then go to your profile to check whether you have said where you come from etc. I may put in some other categories in due course. While I'm on the subject of changing things on the blog, I must say that I am increasingly tempted to give the whole template a makeover. I heavily "modded" the present one quite a while back but I think it is time for [ whisper ] a change. I rather like the new blogger template that all...

The Latin Mass Society has arranged for Mass to be celebrated according to the usus antiquior at St George's Cathedral (Archdiocese of Southwark) on Friday 11 February, the feast of the Apparition of the Immaculate Virgin Mary at Lourdes, at 6pm. This will be a Low Mass, celebrated by Fr Anthony Logan, a priest of the Archdiocese. (Fr Logan taught an adolescent Tim Finigan physics many years ago!) St George's Cathedral is often thought of as rather a "poor relation" to the grandiose edifice over the river at Westminster. Sadly, the magnificent Pugin Church took a direct hit during the blitz. On 16 April 1941 an incendiary bomb blew the roof off and caused major damage to the interior: Understandably, it did not quite recover architecturally. However, it has a dignified simplicity and it is good that Mass is celebrated there according to the usus antiquior . Each year there is a High Mass around the time of the feast of the Immaculate Conception - next Friday...

Apologies for the blogroll being out of action for a few weeks. Bloglines was taken over by someone else and the promised seamless import all the subscriptions fell quite a bit below "satisfactory". One or two people have said that they used my list of blogs as a jumping-off point so I'm in the process of adding lots of blogs to a new blogroll powered by Google Reader. I use this service to follow other blogs but I am in the process of adding various blogs to different labels for use in the sidebar here. In the process, I have been doing a bit of weeding. A (fairly arbitrary) criterion that I have set is that if a blog has had no posts for six months, I click "unsubscribe". If, on the other hand I have missed your blog, feel free to post a comment here. It would be a great help if you could post it with a proper clickable link. (Here are some instructions .)

There has been some discussion recently on the question of Confirmation, first Holy Communion, and the recently announced decision by the Archbishop of Liverpool to have all he children of the Archdiocese confirmed by the parish priest before their first Holy Communion. Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes , raised the question and has been followed up by Valle Adurni , and Fr Ray Blake's Blog . Something of a consensus has been forged on some of the main points under discussion so let me try to summarise. The original order of the sacraments of initiation was Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion, the Chrismation being carried out by the Bishop. In the East, the link between Baptism and Confirmation has been retained, both being administered at the same time by the priest (unless there is a Bishop at hand.) In the West, with the development of the vast agrarian areas of Christendom, the link with the Bishop was retained and people brought children to him to be anointed whenev...

Anonymous Us carries some personal stories that flesh out the moral teaching of Donum Vitae . That 1987 document, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has the full title "Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. Replies to Certain Questions of the Day." Catholics who are reasonably well informed know that one of the grave moral problems with IVF is the destruction of human embryos that is often a part of the process. However, Donum Vitae give another important reason why IVF is ethically unacceptable, namely that the child should be conceived as a result of the marriage act. This is true even in the case of homologous IVF (where the gametes are both from the spouses). In the case where one of the gametes is from a stranger, most commonly through sperm donation, there is a further evil; as Donum Vitae puts it: Heterologous artificial fertilization violates the rights of the child; it deprives him of his filia...