An accusation frequently levelled at the Church is that while it talks a good game regarding helping the impoverished, it actually hoards its riches in a very immoral way. Comments such as “The Pope lives in a palace” or “The Church should sell some of its treasure to help the poor” are commonplace in this…
Starring Catholic convert Alec Guinness as a mild-mannered bank attendant who happens to be in charge of shipments of gold, The Lavender Hill Mob is a whimsical 1951 comedy made by Ealing studios. It gets onto the Vatican’s great films list from 1995 under the ‘art’ section. It is an odd choice for the Vatican’s…
Saint of the Week A mother of five who went on to become a religious sister and the United States’ first saint is one of the examples the Church pays tribute to January 4. St Elizabeth Ann Seton was born Elizabeth Ann Bayley, into a prosperous Protestant family from New York in 1774 – a…
Silence plays a mysterious and important role in a healthy spirituality, writes Jason Osborne “There’s nothing so much like God in all the world as silence,” 14th Century German mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart is reported as saying. Whether he said it or not, it certainly sums up a certain vein of the Church’s spiritual tradition,…
Faith in film The Christmas and New Year’s period is a great time to sit down as a family and watch a film. But it’s not always easy to agree on what to watch, or to know what is suitable for younger children and what isn’t. So here’s a suggestion, a lovely animated film which…
Saint of the week One of the most famous poets in history, Dante, in his masterwork, the Divine Comedy, glimpses a moving scene: the stoning of a young man, who, while dying, asks forgiveness for those casting the stones at him. Dante chose to commemorate the unparalleled charity of the man often held up as…
Sr Josephine Garrett CSFN New Year’s celebrations can be a mixed experience. On one hand, the holidays have brought us opportunities to be renewed in our relationships with family and friends. On the other hand, secular media can present this sort of ‘new year, new you’ approach that may not really jive with our actual experiences. Catholics must stand…
Questions of Faith The Catholic Church teaches that moral values are objective – that is to say, certain actions are always good or always bad, regardless of the circumstances or what anybody thinks about them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this quite explicitly in CCC 1756: “There are acts which, in and of…
Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, once wrote: “After a mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin to smile back; she has awakened love in its heart, and in awakening love in its heart, she awakes recognition as well…In the same way, God explains himself before us as…
The Sunday Gospel The liturgical celebration of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, has been ascribed to several different dates down through the ages. The liturgical reform which prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council prompted the restoration of the feast to January 1, the completion of the Octave of Christmas, the eighth day,…
Ruadhán Jones
Fr Ronald Rolheiser