If you have never been on a pilgrimage you need to plan one now. I used to be cynical about pilgrimages thinking they were simply expensive holidays for pious people. After I went on my first pilgrimage, however, I realized that there are special graces unlocked when you go on pilgrimage. You travel with fellow Catholics. You live together for a few days, share stories and fellowship, share meals, laughter, worship and prayers. You learn an immense amount about your... Read more

The world leaders are meeting in Paris for two weeks to come up with a plan to halt the “catastrophic threat” of global warming. This eye opening article in today’s Daily Telegraph punctures the hot air balloon of climate change fear mongering. For 30 years we have been told how, thanks to the dramatic rise in CO2, temperatures have been soaring to unprecedented levels. This is causing polar ice to melt, sea-levels to rise and has brought a dangerous increase... Read more

For those who are interested in the development of the so called Anglican Ordinariate (properly known as the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter) the best summary of what is going on is here. The first inkling that there was anything afoot at the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter came Tuesday morning when an email popped up stating: “Pope Francis Names First Bishop to Lead Catholics Nurtured in the Anglican Tradition.” The surprising missive also noted... Read more

St Andrew is my favorite apostle. Here’s why: I love the story of him at the feeding of the 5000. The disciples are disturbed by the hungry crowd and ask Jesus to do something about it. Jesus tells them to do something about it. They grumble that there’s not enough money to buy food for all the crowd. Meanwhile Andrew finds this boy with five loaves and two fish, and takes it to Jesus. Now this just gets me. In the midst... Read more

I gave a talk to our parish men’s group, the Fellowship of St Joseph on the relationship between Christ and culture yesterday. It was loosely based on the classic text by Reformed theologian H Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. However, I always found Niebuhr’s analysis to be weak, subjective and vague. It also was not completely coherent with Catholic history. Therefore I modified it somewhat to come up with a Catholic version which also connects with the stages of Catholic history. 1. Christ... Read more

I have started a series of articles called Angels of Advent over at Aleteia. The first is an overview of St Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on angels. While St. Thomas says the angels can assume a physical body it would be more precise to say they appear to be in physical form. Rather than the angel taking an actual, physical body it is more likely that they manipulate a human’s powers of perception so that the person sees and interacts with the... Read more

The film Of Gods and Men is an intense experience of some Trappist monks’ interaction with violent Muslim extremists. My comments on the film are my latest article for The Imaginative Conservative website. “What can man do against such reckless hate?” asks the trapped and helpless Theoden King in Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers. He speaks for us all when faced with the orcs of ISIS rising in the East. Another film struggles with the same question. In Of Gods and Men nine Trappist... Read more

I was going to write a blog post criticizing what I call “faux Franciscanism”–that is the problem in the church in which poverty is praised for its own sake. We should be clear. Poverty is not a virtue on its own. The  poor are not blessed because they are poor. We should remember that poor people can also be greedy, selfish, violent and bitter in their poverty. “Faux Franciscanism” nurtures the mistaken idea that being poor is virtuous for its... Read more

Long time readers of my blog may remember one of my alter egos named The Rev’d Humphrey Blytherington–a lovable but doddery Church of England country vicar. In this post from 2009 Humph was dealing with the outrageous subject of Christian nudism. The trendy female vicar from the next parish named Lavinia had been advocating the Ancient Order of Adamites “It’s a serious matter.” Lavinia replied. “It’s perfectly natural to enjoy being naked, and naturists are discriminated against simply because they... Read more

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