De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

There is something quietly revealing in the way people now talk about The Lord of the Rings. It is treated as a great story, certainly, and often as an imaginative escape, occasionally even as a nostalgic artefact from a more innocent age. What it is not usually treated as is what it actually is: a work of profound moral and theological seriousness, shaped by a vision of reality that modern culture no longer easily recognises. That loss of recognition is not accidental. It is symptomatic. In this recent conversation on Catholic Unscripted, we explored not simply Tolkien himself, but the conditions under which Tolkien can still be understood. The conclusion we arrived at is as unsettling as it is illuminating. The reason so many modern readers and viewers misunderstand Tolkien is not because his work is obscure, but because we have lost the framework that makes it intelligible. Tolkien’s world is not morally ambiguous in the way modern storytelling has trained us to expect. Good and evi...

Being Catholic is uncomfortable, it's challenging, it forces you to constantly question modern received opinion. Talking these issues over with my children, they are always amazed how the Church's well thought out consideration is more interested in truth than popularity. Even though they might have had a good idea put to them at school, reviewing the issue from a Catholic perspective always reveals the truth of a situation. It's not always an easy truth, but it is a truth nevertheless. As G.K. Chesterton famously put it  “A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” In the UK today, it seems most people in charge of Catholic organisations do not agree with me, however. Point of fact, Independent Catholic News report that St. Mary's Twickenham have appointed Mary McAleese as a visiting professor. I had to double take. St. Mary's is our Catholic university, although it's far from obvious from their website . In fact I had...

Further to my post a couple of days ago which considered the state of Catholic Education, and what (if anything) to do about it, Michael Merrick has pointed me to some very interesting comments of his own on the subject. In his first post , he discusses a question which I have heard for some time now in Catholic circles: Is it right for our Mass-going population to continue to fund schools which are Catholic in name only? This question was bravely posited by the Rt. Rvd. Bishop Michael Campbell in a pastoral letter. Michael notes: It is worth saying that, until relatively recently, this question would simply not have been asked, or at any rate not framed in such terms. Indeed, the very use of the words ‘Catholic in name only’ (or CINO in shorthand) is itself provocative for those who have not and do not necessarily see the role of Catholic schools as being ‘Catholic’ at all, at least not with a capital ‘C’. That the Church should compromise its generous access and influence w...

Fr. Andrew Pinsent,  B.A.,  M.A.,  Ph.D.,  Ph.B.,  S.T.B.,  Ph.L.,  Ph.D.(again).    I want to expand on some thoughts concerning Catholic education . I am suggesting that there is some disconnect between Catholicity and our Catholic Schools. I think that in some schools, Catholicity has somehow evolved into a holistic "every child matters" approach to inclusive education rather than being about a seriously different approach to academic study. This is not to discount the excellent Catholic teachers who I know are out there battling away, but rather, knowing some of them, I would like to support, encourage and thank them for what they are doing. Why? I think this has happened as a result of a growing false understanding of the Christian ethic as being non-judgemental . Also, a lack of decent Catholic apologetics and a dearth of academic engagement with the more controversial aspects of Catholic doctrine. I wonder what a survey of Catho...

St. Thomas More—Ora pro nobis. Contrary to the modern misconception that faith is somehow in adversity to knowledge and reason, historically, the truth has, in fact, demonstrated exactly the opposite. Schools are actually a Catholic legacy. The Church has always had a mission to educate, making it a duty to offer this, especially, to the poorest in society. Following Catholic emancipation in the 19th Century, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales prioritised the building of schools before the building of churches. The Church's commitment to education remains just as strong today. There does appear to be a malaise at the heart of the contemporary Catholic educational system however. This was referred to by the head teacher of Ampleforth College in an address he gave to the Catholic Grant Maintained Schools Conference in 1996. He criticised, in particular, the reaction of some Catholic religious educators in the face of 'steeply rising rates of divorce, the abandonme...