De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

That Vocations to the Priesthood are in crisis is an internationally accepted reality. I don't think it is rocket science to work out why either. To be a Catholic today is to be attacked by Catholics. I think Pope Benedict XVI went a long way to sorting this out, by making the essentials of the faith clear and that led many who felt disenfranchised in a community which no longer practised what it preached to feel part of the Church once more. However I do think the fundamental malaise remains and that is that many don't like other Catholics who take their faith seriously, some priests as well as lay people! As Father Alexander Lucie-Smith points out in The Catholic Herald today: "People who oppose Catholic teaching from within the Catholic Church, particularly from within the institutional Church, always feel a huge amount of pain when challenged, and are never reticent about sharing it. They usually ignore, however, the pain they cause to ordinary believing ...

"Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." Ps 119:105 Welcome to this, the forty-fifth of my reflections on the theology of the Sunday readings at Mass. I have undertaken this project, regularly posting background information on the readings at Sunday Mass as part of my own prayer life. I have found it helps me to do a little study before I go to Mass about the readings, what the theme of the week is, how it follows on from the previous week's readings and what is being said. In sharing this, I hope to help you too get more from the Bible and Sunday Scripture readings. Perhaps it might give you confidence in the value and legitimacy of the Bible, or perhaps it might inspire you to pray the Divine Office or investigate the weekly readings for yourself. I see this as very clearly part of what the Church teaches about the Bible: This heaven-sent treasure Holy Church considers as the most precious source of doctrine on faith and morals. No wond...

Although I have known that there was an Anglican Church since my history studies of the Tudor age in school, I wasn't ever hugely aware of the importance and value of an established church in our country until, probably, the first influx of Anglicans came home to Rome back in 1992. That was on the back of the ordination of women; if you want to understand what the Catholic position is regarding that I would suggest you have a look at this wonderful exposition by Megan Hodder . More recently (January 2011), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a Decree which formally established a ‘Personal Ordinariate’ in England and Wales for groups of Anglican faithful and their clergy who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. The establishment of this Ordinariate was the first fruit of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus , issued by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 November 2009. The purpose of this was to respond to petitions received “repeate...

I've been in the beautiful, wild, West of Ireland for ten days with my family. I love it here, it is home to me, a place that has constantly been a part of my life no matter where I have been or lived in England. Mayo has always been home, where the family are, where the familiar places are. I often wonder, and am often asked if I could live here. I dream about it all the time, but one of the real problems I would have would be the Church here. The liturgy is poor, the people seem spiritually starved. The Mass is often dreadful, occasionally bearable. There is no sense of reverence or sacredness, the best you can hope for is an enthusiastic or genial delivery of the canon of the Mass; the responses are rushed and formulaic. Yet Ireland IS Catholic. I went to Mass last Sunday and there were literally thousands of people in St. Mary's Church, Westport . Thousands! It's awesome! Irish people ARE Catholic—it's in their nature, their bones, it oozes out of their p...