A memorial to the poet, literary scholar and novelist C S Lewis (1898-1963) is to be placed in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey next November, 50 years after his death. He joins a select group of poets, playwrights and writers to have been buried or commemorated there, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. I would argue Read more
Michael Deacon watches David Cameron give his views on women bishops in the Church of England at Prime Minister’s Questions. And on the eighth day God created Prime Minister’s Question Time. And pretty swiftly He regretted it, for He saw that it was not good, especially when they did all that silly shouting and artificial Read more
Politicians, pundits, and even a few dissenting Catholic clerics are calling upon Catholic priests to break the confessional seal in sex-abuse cases. Australian Federal Attorney General Nicola Roxon said that a federal commission investigating sexual abuse would take up the question of whether priests should be required to disclose information from sacramental confessions. Prime Minister Read more
Mothers who go back to work before their baby is six months old become “warmer” parents, a surprising study shows. The Australian research, published in the international Journal of Family Studies, challenges the conventional wisdom that stay-at-home mums bond better with their babies. The findings suggest mothers who miss their babies or feel guilty about Read more
Fr Oliver Brennan will never forget the morning of August 14, 2010. It was to the beginning of a personal hell that saw him uprooted from the parish community he loved and feeling alienated and unable to exercise his priestly ministry. After decades in the priesthood he now stood accused of abuse. It is a harrowing Read more
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s, decision to establish a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has received overwhelmingly public support. We know, on the available evidence, that the wide-ranging and expensive inquiry will focus on past crimes and whether people in authority, in Gillard’s terminology, ”averted their eyes” with respect to abusers. Read more
The scenario is familiar to everyone working in parish ministry–8th Grade religious education apathy. When they’re young, they are so full of natural desire for religion. In 3rd Grade, their eyes light up when talking about God. Even by 6th Grade, you can still see that spark. However, in 7th Grade it starts to wane, Read more
Mike Schramm has just released a game for the iPhone, iPad mini and iPad, to the iTunes app store. It’s free and it’s called Benediction. In his own life lately, Schram says he has been dealing with some heavy stuff, that caused him to wonder what it would be like to have the powers of Read more
A new website Catholic Link catalogues videos and other resources useful for ministry and evangelization, aspiring to proclaim the gospel with “creativity and ingenuity.” “We are deeply convinced that our Catholic Faith in the Lord Jesus is the answer today, for all people, of all ages,” said Garrett Johnson, the manager of Catholic Link’s new Read more
The Catholic Church has just started a “year of faith” and launched a program for re-evangelising countries where the fire of Christianity seems to have burnt itself out. But is it possible to make a comeback? To assess the chances of reChristianising the West, MercatorNet interviewed Mike Aquilina, an expert in the early history of Read more