Echoes of Ronald Knox and C.S. Lewis

Some years ago I wrote rather a long winded play, Shaw vs Chesterton, an imaginary debate between two great friends, G.K. Chesterton and Bernard...

Third Sunday: Purifying the House of the Father

‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace! (Jn. 2:16). The cleansing of the Temple speaks to the nature and...

True Christian Tolerance

In Lent we pledge ourselves to acquire virtue. The one, perhaps the only, virtue universally honoured today is tolerance. It is a useful Lenten...

Lent’s Little Lights

One of the most beautiful uplifting things that helps me stay focused on Lent is the theme of light. In his Angelus address of Sunday 28 February 2021,...

Almsgiving in the Twenty-first Century

“Grace builds on nature.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas) This statement from Saint Thomas’s Summa expresses in succinct form the theological insight that creation and redemption are...

When I Die, Do I Want to Be a…Tree?

This phrase recently appeared in the Ottawa Citizen in an article on the greening of death, a quote from Susan Koswan, a Waterloo writer...

A Brief History of Eminent Atheists

Here is a sober thought. Let us suppose we might be looking for the first atheists in the history of the world. My candidates...

The Feast of the Chair of Peter

On Monday February 22 we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St Peter. What do we mean by the Chair of Peter and...
Pope St. John Paul II

John Paul II and Cathedra Petri

EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS HOMILY OF JOHN PAUL II Thursday, 22 February 2001 Feast of Saint Peter's Chair 1. "'Who do you say that I am?'. Simon...

How Busy People Pray

“Pray always.” (1 Thessalonians 5.17) If we are to take Saint Paul’s words seriously, we see that there must be different forms of prayer; we...