may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young and may myself do nothing usefully and love yourself so more than truly there’s never been quite... Read more

Damian Thompson, who I usually think is too acerbic for his own good, has this moving story about a saintly priest, Mgr. William Kerr. Here’s the bit I liked, about how praying the rosary stopped the terrible serial killer Ted Bundy. Kerr got the call from the police in the middle of the night to rush out to the sorority house. When he arrived he was told that all but one of the girls in the house were dead or... Read more

Now that summer weather is here I am still contemplating the purchase of a motorcycle, but before I do I am reading a book on motorcycle proficiency. I want to learn what causes accidents and how to avoid them. Now one of the most intriguing things about motorcycle accidents is that the car driver who has just creamed some poor guy on a bike will invariably say, “Gee! I just didn’t see you.!” While this sounds like a lame excuse,... Read more

This article reports the rise in pregnancies among unwed women. This report should be met with mixed emotions. On the one hand, more pregnancies among unwed women mean fewer women chose abortion as the way out of an ‘untraditional’ pregnancy. That’s good news: fewer murdered unborn babies. The report also indicates support for conservative Catholic views in a quirky and paradoxical way: that is to say, more unwed pregnancies gives more evidence that artificial contraception and the ‘let’s just help the... Read more

From the comment box: It is all very well to say that without God there is no real morality. But even introducing God does not solve the problem entirely. Are things good because God commands them? Or does God command them because they are good? Either option throws up problems for the traditional Christian understanding of God.  There are a couple of problems with this analysis: Last one first– the author does not explain what he means by ‘the traditional Christian... Read more

A former student, living in England, wrote to me recently. She is studying for her PhD in English literature at Oxford, so she’s no dummy. She said she had returned to her childhood Catholic faith and had taken the trouble to read Dawkins and the other new atheists and found their arguments shallow, aggressive, close minded and stupid. She was surprised at the ignorance of otherwise smart people and dismayed by their aggressive tone. It made me wonder whether atheists... Read more

Fr Ray has good coverage of Pope Benedict’s visit to the Middle East Read more

When you take a vow the spiritual benefits will overtake you. What do I mean?  Well, when you take a vow, to become a Catholic, or to be married, or to be a monk, or to be a religious sister, and when you take it for life, and when you promise to stick to it through thick or thin no matter what, then what you are really doing is, at a very profound level of your life, submitting yourself to... Read more