Given the content of most horror films, it’s not always a genre easily squared with the Catholic tradition. However, there is one horror film on the Vatican’s list of 45 significant films – Nosferatu (1922). The film is director FW Murnau’s unauthorised adaptation of Dracula and an important trend-setter in the realm of horror cinema.…
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire,” our saint of the week is regularly quoted as saying. St Catherine of Siena certainly lived according to that maxim, so much so that not only is she a saint, she’s recognised as an esteemed ‘Doctor of the Church’ and…
The Wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is. In the face of the enormous problems surrounding the development of peoples, which almost make us yield to discouragement, we find solace in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us: “Apart…
Learning to live and celebrate this Easter season confers many benefits on us, writes Jason Osborne Many of us are better at being penitential than we are at celebrating, unfortunately. As Pope Francis said way back in 2013, “sometimes these melancholic Christians’ faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having…
The Vatican’s 1995 list of significant films is very eclectic, catholic with a small ‘c’ (meaning broad and open minded). If one theme emerges strongly from the panoply, however, it’s the damage caused by war and the importance of human fraternity. I suppose it should hardly come as a surprise – many of those who…
Most of us are familiar with that famous image of a heavenly knight plunging his spear into a serpentine creature, even if we’re not overly familiar with the mysterious hero it represents. That would be St George, who is venerated far and wide to this day, despite the lack of concrete detail we have on…
How much time is too much time online? It’s a question facing all of us in the 21st Century, as technology becomes more and more integrated into our lives. How do we balance work, shopping, reading, communicating – all the ways that we use technology – with a desire to be intentionally present in our…
Easter is a reminder that Christians are called to be lights in an often dark and weary world, writes David Gibson “This is the night,” the Church sings out again and again in a poetic hymn dating far back in Christian history called the ‘Exsultet’. It is heard each year in Catholic Churches during the Easter Vigil…
The Sacrament of Penance is an opportunity rather than just an obligation, writes Russell Shaw When Dr Bernard Nathanson died of cancer in February 2011, the obituary writers dutifully recorded that he’d become a Catholic back in 1996. Some even recalled the reason he gave for taking that step. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dr…
In his passion, Jesus’ sufferings were unequaled. For the Son of God offered himself as a sacrifice for all. No one, not even the saintliest person, can take on the sins of all people in every time and place. Only God can, and did. It is this gift of faith, at the heart of our…
Ruadhán Jones