“True education aims to give people a formation which is directed towards their final end and the good of that society to which they belong and in which, as adults, they will have their share of duties to perform.” -Vatican Council II, Gravissimum Educationis (n. 1). A few weeks ago, Queensland Thomas More Centre organiser Mark Makowiecki…
It is with great sense of sad gratitude that many, especially those around the Thomas More Centre, received word that with a mysterious liturgical fittingness the retired Bishop Peter John Elliott died yesterday, August 6, on the Feast of the Transfiguration. He was 81 years old. The Transfiguration is the feast which celebrates the Christological mystery,…
“Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster-shells. We surround ourselves with ‘em, and then we grow out of ‘em and leave ‘em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.” – Dorothy Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Penguin Books, 1935 This week, 90 years ago in 1935, an imaginative English managing editor launched…
In the wake of the recent Home Conference hosted by the Dawson Society in Fremantle, Western Australia, many of those who attended the conference – like myself – have been provoked by the excellent presentations to continue discussing some of the issues addressed at the conference and to raise new ones with their friends and colleagues. There…
This 80th edition of the Thomas More Centre’s newsletter coincides with the Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a Marian patronage of the ancient order of hermits and contemplative women who were first founded in the 12th century in the Holy Land in the site of Mount Carmel. The hermits settled in the…
Through this month of July, almost every second day the Church has memorials for those who have suffered and been killed witnessing to their faith in Jesus Christ – not only our great English martyrs, Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, but for those committed to the truth of the faith and the Gospel. Today…
Over this last month, we at the Thomas More Centre have been exploring the symbol, reality and importance of “the home”. In part it is because the home is so central to the organic notion of human formation for good and sometimes ill. Our new oral history project, “Voices from the Movement”, is so appealing…
Our martyr patron, St Thomas More (1478-1535), shares his memorial day in the Church’s liturgical calendar on June 22 with his older friend and cardinal and Bishop of Rochester, St John Fisher (1469-1535). The date June 22 is the venerable cardinal’s execution date, while More was beheaded two weeks later on July 6. The More-Fisher pair illustrates…
The Thomas More Centre, since it was re-animated in 2023, has aimed to keep a collective ear to the ground. That is, in part, why we have launched our online conversations and our Voices of the Movement oral history project. We are listening to recover our roots but also to find our bearings for our way ahead.…
Birthdays for older people are often embarrassing and full of unwelcome wrinkles and reminders of the passage of time. Birthdays remain important anniversaries even of those who have passed through life into the next. And this week has been a constant reminder of birthdays. We are now in Pentecost time. The Feast of Pentecost is sometimes…