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.
The chief task of an Episcopal Vicar for Synodality is thus to help the bishop ensure that everything that happens in the Prelature, in administration and pastoral care, is focused on the Lord Jesus Christ and his Gospel, our source of new life.
Continue reading As you know, the Holy See has appointed me Apostolic Administrator of the Prelature of Tromsø. I am faced with a logistic challenge: the combined surface area of the prelatures of Trondheim and Tromsø exceeds that of Great Britain!
Continue reading It is curious: our intensely body-conscious society in fact takes the body lightly, refusing to see it as significant of identity, supposing that the only selfhood of consequence is the one produced by subjective self-perception, as we construct ourselves in our own image.
Continue reading At Mass we take part in Christ’s saving sacrifice; we witness the influx of eternity in time; we touch the foundation of the daring prayer the priest prays on our behalf when, in the chalice, he mixes water with wine: ‘May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.’
Continue reading The law proposal comes across as a wrestling match with a shadow. Notwithstanding its repeated use of words such as 'protect', 'help, and 'support', it appears peculiarly technocratic and inhuman.
Continue reading ‘Anthropocentrism kills the Church and its life’. These are hard words, but words we need to hear, for we live in a self-centred world.
Continue reading We have been saddened by recent statements from certain quarters of the Russian Church, which present this war of flagrant aggression as a combat for Christian values. To speak in such terms is to engage in mere rhetoric, to hold moral values hostage to a political agenda.
Continue reading It has ever been the case that true reforms in the Church have set out from Catholic teaching founded on divine Revelation and authentic Tradition, to defend it, expound it, and translate it credibly into lived life — not from capitulation to the Zeitgeist. How fickle the Zeigeist is, is something we verify on a daily basis.
Continue reading For too long we have lived as if prosperity, peace, and good order were necessary consequences of an irresistible evolution - this is not the case. We are fragile beings living in a fragile world, a world in need of salvation.
Continue reading The government's proposal does not only regard pragmatic action in emergencies of public health. It regards the disproportionate intervention of state power in the lives of citizens.
Continue reading Our faith cannot be reduced to a model for a perfect society of justice and peace, to a catalogue of cogent answers to life’s hard questions: our faith is about life transformed in Christ, redeemed from the reign of sin, whose wages is death, life illumined by the hope of resurrection.
Continue reading A human being reaches maturity by finding a proper place, subjectively, among objective norms; sometimes perhaps by assuming positions that go against the grain of norms. But the cancellation of norms will not resolve the experience of a conflict of identity.
Continue reading After several weeks in lockdown, my eight-year old goddaughter in Italy told her mother: ‘Mummy, I no longer recognise myself!’ It was wisely said.
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