A home is not the same as a house. You can live or stay in a house and it is not a home. You can possibly live in a house many years and yet it never becomes a home. Home, the ancient expression goes, is where the heart is. While that might have become rather … Read more
Stand thou for ever among human Houses, House of the Resurrection, House of Birth; House of the rooted hearts and long carouses, Stand, and be famous over all the Earth. — Hilaire Belloc One of the few joys of this year, a year that has proved particularly joyless, happened back at the end of January … Read more
G. K. Chesterton, that archetypal Englishman—he really could not be imagined as any other nationality—wrote probably the best biography of another quintessential Englishman, Charles Dickens. Chesterton’s biography is so wonderful, and so brimming with insight and understanding of his subject, mainly because he moves thematically through the life of Charles Dickens, rather than year by … Read more
Despite their terrible suffering, not just in recent years under ISIS, but after centuries of being treated as second-class citizens, Iraqi Christians are happy people. There are two things that are guaranteed to make them smile, if not actually laugh out loud. The first is to ask them what they think will happen to the … Read more
Looking at social media recently, I saw someone asking for people to explain why they were Christians in five words or less. I was tempted to write three words: “It is true.” Then I remembered the words of the novelist and Catholic convert Walker Percy. When asked why he had converted to Catholicism he answered, … Read more
Considering a title for this essay, I rather facetiously suggested to my friend, Father Edward Tomlinson, who assisted me with many of the facts for the piece, that I should call it either “Newman’s bums” or “Sacred bottoms.” Father Tomlinson, a priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, as am I, is the … Read more
That the Church continues to canonize men, women, and children of “heroic virtue,” and to encourage their public veneration by the faithful, is not, however it may seem, the secular equivalent of The X Factor. They are not, in that sense, winners of a spiritual talent show, although we could say with Saint Paul that … Read more
We are now in what is called the “Great Fifty Days” of the Easter Season. As we know, every Sunday is really the celebration of Easter, what the Church calls the “Paschal Sacrifice,” the saving death and resurrection of Christ. During these great fifty days, we are meant to recall and be refocused on the … Read more
For those who know what they are looking for, the journey to the twelfth-century Norman church of St. Mary the Virgin is still something of an adventure. Others—hikers, tourists, or just people who take a wrong turning—come upon the deserted church by accident. The winding country lanes of that part of Kent—the county where St. … Read more
Recently the nonagenarian environmentalist, Sir David Attenborough, familiar to viewers of BBC America over many years for his nature shows, warned in bloodcurdling terms that it was almost too late to save the world from the horrors of the “climate crisis.” I remember as a child watching similar warnings during the early 1970s, of the … Read more
Just a day after the second World Conference on Persecuted Christians ended this November in Budapest, Hungary, a “reformed” jihadi terrorist stabbed two innocent people to death in London, before being shot by police. The inability of the liberal secularists, who are at the center of most Western governmental policies and who control most of … Read more
It was not the vision of the Risen Lord that nearly blinded me on the road to Damascus. It was the searing light and clouds of dust thrown up by the unusually hot October, and the fact that my driver believed in natural air conditioning: windows wide open. While it was romantic to imagine I … Read more
I have an elderly clerical friend who describes himself as a “martyr to his stomach.” Now, there are many reasons why one might become a martyr, but to bear witness to the needs of the colon seems fairly low on the list. He also goes to the pub and orders his beer in half-pint glasses, … Read more
At the end of the Second World War, the revered crown of St. Stephen, the first Christian monarch of Hungary, was smuggled out of Austria by the U.S. Army to prevent its falling into Soviet hands. It remained at Fort Knox in the United States until it was handed over to the communist government of … Read more
It is a widely held belief, at least in these United States, that the greatest preacher of the 20th century in the English language was Fulton J. Sheen. Certainly, Archbishop Sheen was one of the greats—not to mention a pioneer of televangelism. Notwithstanding, the finest preacher of the century was, in fact, an Englishman, Monsignor … Read more