Collected here are articles and reviews that have appeared in print, as well as a presentation of my books. There are a few interviews and some sound material, notably my reading of the Gospels in Greek, a project that remains work in progress.
There has, alas, been no shortage within living memory of bishops and priests bringing shame on the ordained ministry. Their legacy calls for justice, conversion, and tears - let us not for a moment, though, think, that an unworthy steward can sabotage God’s design.
Continue reading If I incline to judge certain people, or categories of people, harshly, it is very possibly because, at some subliminal level, I find myself standing accused: my prompt judgment may well be an act of self-defence by means of attack.
Continue reading I was asked - Is it possible to speak of chastity today? It would seem that it is.
Continue reading Perhaps I cannot change, doomed to remain forever in settled patterns of dysfunction and sin? Some of us will know such thoughts from experience.
Continue reading If we just talk and talk and talk, we end up repeating ourselves, peddling banalities, just saying what people have heard already. We bore ourselves, and we bore other people even more.
Continue reading Since Christ died for all, and since the ultimate vocation of human beings is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every person the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery. Such is the mystery of man, and it is a great one.
Continue reading The Fathers would rather be disdained than idealised. We find the same concern alive in modern saints, a test of authenticity.
Continue reading To speak of high ideals is delightful. It is easy to assume that by talking of virtues I acquire them, rather the way we might think that by purchasing a book we have read it.
Continue reading If there is one thing that strikes us to the point of nausea when we consider famous, once highly esteemed spiritual teachers and founders who, within living memory, have come tumbling down from their pedestals, is it not precisely the lurid nature of their betrayals?
Continue reading Our Lord’s command of charity obliges us, as Catholics, to work for a good and just society.
Continue reading The monk seems to embody the very type of a pacified human being, whose inward order is outwardly reflected in a grave demeanour and measured movement. What image might such a person use in order to provide a simile apt to render the secret of his consecrated life?
Continue reading The Lord who calls us is free to choose whatever means he deems effective to open our hearts, bodies, and minds to this great gift. An infirmity or injury, a serious diagnosis, that may at first make us feel as if we were struck down by destiny can turn out to be, in fact, a provision made by a kind yet nonetheless cross-shaped providence.
Continue reading Xenophobia is fear of people who are not locals. Xeniteia is at heart a neutral term indicating the state of living abroad, be it as a trafficked worker or as a wealthy retiree in a comfortable flat on the Costa del Sol.
Continue reading The enclosure of philosophy within a narrow framework of technical terms and assumptions was a notable feature of intellectual life in the twentieth century. As a result many women and men take it for granted, now, that philosophy has nothing to say to them - ‘philosophical’ has come to spell ‘useless’.
Continue reading Having stood firm through spectacular temptations that had racked him in spirit, body, and mind, Antony was exposed to one last trial utterly concrete and mundane, that of filling his pockets with wonga.
Continue reading ‘Your heart’, says the Lord, ‘is where your treasure is.’ It can be mortifying to discover that our treasure, and so our heart, is no longer where we thought it was.
Continue reading It happens often enough that people who generally do not cling to material things or comforts, people who do not much mind, are furiously tied to their books.
Continue reading It is not the Apostles, it turns out, who are sozzled; it is the world, wearily drunk on its self-sufficiency, pragmatic pleasure-seeking, thrills, and aimless meandering.
Continue reading Once again, Jamie and I gather to address questions raised by people who follow the series, questions that impress us by their insight and sincerity.
Continue reading Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters where familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places - is our virtue then reliable and firm?
Continue reading God’s concern is not to keep us comfortably undisturbed. His concern is that we should know the truth, which alone sets us free.
Continue reading At once dispassionately lucid and shrewd, the Fathers teach us to discern. That is why they could give counsels both sublime and practical.
Continue reading Eric Schüldt, who makes wonderful programmes on Swedish radio, has always been convinced of the existential stakes of literature, unconvinced by those who would draw too sharp distinctions between literature and 'reality'.
Continue reading There’s a sense of honesty about Augustine – a sane realism - regarding the human condition, in its sublime and its deplorable aspects. He understood the importance of friends, of not being self-sufficient; he took the science of theology extremely seriously; he had a capacity for joy.
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