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.
Discourse about renewal in the Church can sometimes regrettably seem like a battlefield with opposing fronts - there is no shortage of big guns with heaps of ammunition. It is important, then, to listen out for the still small voice, to look out for modest but fruitful initiatives sprouting in unlikely terrain, like wildflowers.
Continue reading It is phenomenal, this message - Get ready to live! The older I get, the more I am convinced that many people expereince a kind of arrested potential for life; they know they have it in them to exist with a higher degree of intensity than they actually do; and it can be frustrating to find that this ability is not realised.
Continue reading The pedagogy of chastity presupposes frank recognition of who I am and where I am.
Continue reading If I conceive of myself as the sun in a universe of extinct stars, I will always remain the sole subject of a relationship. Sure, I may realise that others exist, but I do not see them as meaningful.
Continue reading A conversation about the working out of vocation, the nature of obedience, and embodied credibility.
Continue reading On 15 March the Norwegian Bible Society launched its first edition of the Bible published with the 'Catholic Canon'.
Continue reading A conversation about the language of music, the meaning of chastity, the redirection of eros, the potential of human nature - and many other things.
Continue reading To stand one’s ground is to have the courage to keep getting up, to resist the temptation to think, ‘Oh, since I have fallen already, I may as well just wallow in the mud for a bit.’ Climacus says, ‘Don’t dawdle’ - that’s good advice.
Continue reading The way to chaste integrity passes through honest confrontation with the incoherences and passions we carry. The model could be transferred to the body politic, where one tends to project these things onto others, shunning catharsis and — if you admit the term — conversion.
Continue reading Hesitation is ancient and nocturnal, the antidote to youth renewed ‘like the eagle’s’ through Paschal waters, to life in ascent.
Continue reading We often forfeit, it seems to me, a view of human beings broad enough to appreciate what complexity may be contained, given time, within a person’s equilibrated destiny, unfolding through inevitable struggles, supported by friendship, to creative maturity.
Continue reading A conversation touching on many topics under the general heading 'transmission of faith in beauty, truth and freedom'. How can an effective mission be configured today?
Continue reading What was manifest in Bethlehem, such is the Christian claim, is more than the singular grace of a specific destiny. The ‘sign’ reveals a renaissance of humanity, called to relinquish chimeras of self-sufficiency, to abjure the lie that man must be to man a wolf, to pursue peace — pertinent prospects for us who ascertain worldwide the erosion of notions of the common good.
Continue reading In the Gospel, we find Christ receiving all mercifully. But his mercy was always salted with truth.
Continue reading In times hostile to faith, how does one calculate risk? How does one know when caution is called for, when intransigence?
Continue reading I invite you to consider the time leading up to 2030 as a time for mission: by virtue of our baptism we are all sent out as witnesses to the grace we have received. We wish to communicate that grace through prayer and liturgy, through a culture of vocation, through catechesis, and through charitable work.
Continue reading To publish a book is to launch it on a course of its own. The author looks on with wonder as it travels to unexpected places.
Continue reading A thread that runs throughout the project is the motto, 'Lust is boring' - with the implication that the opposite is actually interesting. The hypothesis is borne out by the available material, whose hallmarks are fearlessness, intelligence, and, yes, joyfulness.
Continue reading What is friendship, and how can we cultivate it? How do we deal with polarisation in the Church and in society?
Continue reading It can be enjoyable to be an anarchist – at least for a while, and as long as the anarchy of others doesn’t interfere with mine.
Continue reading The Church refuses to either absolutise or materialise eros and, in consequence, sexuality. That is, here and now, a counter-cultural position to assume, but the here and now will pass, the Christian vision of human nature endures.
Continue reading A conversation about freedom, fashions, maturing, the fear of death, the longing for beauty - and hieroglyphs.
Continue reading On 27 May Cardinal Hollerich, ever unafraid to say the unexpected, said that if we try to speak to people of our time about chastity we are likely to seem to be ‘speaking Egyptian to them’. I had just sent my London publisher a manuscript entitled 'Chastity', so had I in effect written a manual of Egyptian?
Continue reading When theologians and clergy speak of sexual morality and chastity, one sometimes gets the impression that they have never themselves inhabited, for any length of time, a human body.
Continue reading What is really required is a pedagogy of chaste living. Having forgotten what the word actually stands for, we've reduced chastity to an unobtainable ideal, almost a caricature: the image of a virgin in a white dress in a tower - a reality beyond reach!
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