John Paul Meenan currently teaches Theology at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College, with a particular interest in the relationship between faith and reason, and how the principles of our faith should impact and shape the human person and modern culture.
We could do with more leaders such as Saint Henry (+1024, 'Emperor of the Romans' and 'King of the Italians', the last of the 'Ottonian' line - descended from the Emperor of the recently...
July the 12th is ‘Orange’ Day, celebrated still with fervour in Northern Ireland, commemorating the defeat of the rightful Catholic king of the Stuart line, James II of England and Ireland (and VII of...
Upon arriving in Zurich from Vienna, I had an hour or so before I caught a connecting train down to Knonau and the convent. So thought I would take a stroll through the ‘old...
A blessed feast of Saint Benedict (+543), as we commemorate the monk credited with saving what we know as 'civilization'. As a student in the decadence of sixth century fin de siècle Rome, Benedict...
Through the centuries there have been untold thousands of martyrs in China, and July 9th is chosen as the day to commemorate them, for it was on this day in 1900 that the Chinese...
I decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, prompted by the Jubilee year, and walking through the Holy Doors. But I couldn’t just show up in Rome, so to make a pilgrimage of it,...
It was a day much like today, a hot, humid and sweltering July 6th in the year of our Lord 1902, one hundred and twenty three years ago, in a small farming town in...
Saint Anthony Zaccaria (+1539), from noble lineage in late-renaissance Italy, was born in Rome in 1502, on the cusp of the Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church. But the mayhem at this point was mostly...