I had to rush a little bit to get away today after our Year 6 School Mass to get over to Wickenden Manor for the Opus Dei Day of Recollection for clergy. I was glad that I did, though; it was an oasis of calm with sound content, good liturgy and good company. Later, in the parish, we had an Evening ...

An amusing element of browsing through old papers is to see the advertisements carried. This one from June 1968 helps to give an idea of what happened to the Liturgy at that time. (click to enlarge) From Geoffrey Chapman, it offers the Book of Collects and the Sacramentary from the Roman Missal. The...

I am not referring to the continued assault on my lovely parish: an embarrassingly obsessive campaign that has generated a reaction of incredulity and dismay from many Catholic priests and laity who have no particular view on the usus antiquior. I refer rather to the policy of dissent from Papal tea...

Knine is a Christian rapper who has produced this video where "The Passion of Christ meets Hip Hop." It has scenes from "The Passion of the Christ" with a rap commentary. I'm not personally a great fan of Christian rap and the tastes of young people nowadays are varied so that this is not going to a...

On Thursday 27 February, Pope Benedict met with priests of the Rome diocese and engaged in a Pope's Question and Answer session in the Vatican’s Hall of Blessings. One of the priests asked about work with young people. (In this quotation from the Holy Father's reply, bear in mind that in Italy, yo...

A teacher once told me that at a parents' evening, she suggested that a particular child might think of pursuing a career as a teacher. The parent replied "I hope she can do much better than that!" Not terribly encouraging for the teacher - and indeed it is hard to think of a more worthwhile way to ...

Gotcha! You all thought I was going to say earnestly that Lent is not about giving things up but about doing something positive. I'm glad to say that this mantra is now becoming part of the recognisably tired corpus of the "reform that has to be reformed." Every year on Ash Wednesday I try to work t...

Please remember Guy Hawley in your prayers. Aged 55, he died suddenly and I celebrated his funeral Mass today, followed by the burial at Sidcup Cemetery. Please remember his wife and children in your prayers too. While waiting around afterwards for a lift back in Udens undertakers' Rolls Royce, I sa...

One of my favourite devotions is to make the Stations of the Cross. I even have a set of meditations on the Stations on my mobile phone so that if I am away anywhere and do not have any book of meditations, I can always use them. The saints who wrote on the spiritual life tell us that the passion of...

Many thanks to Damian for his humorous post on Holy Smoke today featuring the above video. I thought it would do well as a header for this post in which I want to thank all those who have written about the article in the current issue of the Tablet which I responded to yesterday. So many very kind ...