TRADITIONALLY in this country we keep the Friday of the first full week of Lent as Family Fast day. Our dedicated team of CAFOD volunteers will be speaking at all Masses this weekend about CAFOD’s work and the ways in which the money you generously give to our Catholic aid
Continue readingA SURE SIGN of a society, or indeed a person, losing any real moral compass, or a real sense of right and wrong, is the use of the phrase ‘dogooder’ in a pejorative or negative sense. It’s always a snide and nasty expression, reflecting not only moral ignorance but of
Continue readingMANY of the centenaries we have been marking in recent years have been pretty grim, often centred on the terrible events of the First World War. But this last week the country commemorated a positive and ground-breaking event – the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which
Continue readingLAST WEEKEND, along with Racial Justice Sunday, we also celebrated on the Saturday our second International Day, with a special Mass at 12 noon and a very lavish party afterwards in the hall (shown here). In our last newsletter we reproduced a special Biblical reflection for the Sunday produced by
Continue readingTODAY IS RACIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY. In our parish we marked this particularly by this Saturday’s special International Mass and Celebration (many thanks to Sandy Misquitta for organising this) and we also have a special collection for CARJ, the Catholic Association for Racial Justice, together with our regular collection of items
Continue readingSOME of you may remember the teaching document which our bishops published at the end of 1996, shortly before the 1997 General Election, called The Common Good. Designed to guide Catholics in the election campaign, it gave a good and accessible introduction to the branch of Catholic theology known as
Continue readingEVERY YEAR the worldwide Catholic Church keeps New Year’s day as a Day of Prayer for peace in the world, a custom begun by Blessed Paul VI fifty years ago this month. In this country we shift the observance to a Sunday later in January. We mark it in our
Continue readingTHE TABLET is by far the best of the weekly Catholic newspapers, and always worth reading. In the double Christmas issue there is a very powerful meditation by Pope Francis dating from when he was a priest in Argentina in the early 80s; there is also a hard-hitting column by
Continue readingImagine for a moment praying the Lord’s Prayer and saying the words, “Our daddy who art in heaven” instead of what we are accustomed and comfortable with, “Our Father who art in heaven”. To use the word ‘daddy’ when praying in private is one thing but to publicly proclaim it
Continue reading‘In a consumerist culture, the quest for happiness becomes a tyrannical force which makes us believe we must have it all. Having it all is what joy demands of us’. This is a quotation from a book by Professor Tina Beattie of Roehampton University. When I was reading it earlier
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