On this Easter Sunday during the Easter Morning Mass in his Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, the Trappist Bishop Erik Varden declared with his characteristically fresh crispness that we should keep the traditional Eastertide greeting: “Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!” on the tips of our tongues. He urged his congregation (and his blog readers) that: “We…
In the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church before the changes of the 1969 reform, the Church intensified the experience of Lent by calling the weeks from the 5th Sunday of Lent Passiontide. In a fascinating piece, the 19th-century Benedictine re-founder and liturgical scholar Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger(1805-1875) explains how the Latin two-week intensified liturgical “sub-season”…
Yesterday was the Feast of the Annunciation in the Latin and Byzantine (Gregorian) Church calendars. It marks for all Christians a cosmic, liturgical and historical pivot point. It celebrates the crucial dramatic moment between God’s Old and New Covenants with humanity. Read with fresh eyes, the biblical verses are still astounding. They record the moments…
In his uplifting opening welcome to the Thomas More Centre’s recent Christianity and the Common Good Conference (reported by the Ukrainian Eparchy), the Ukrainian Cardinal Mykola Bychok underlined the importance of founding our discussion about the common good in liturgical prayer and focus. The Cardinal said: “Your first theme today – ‘Prayer and Liturgy as the Foundation of the…
One of the most evocative words in the English language is the word “flourishing”. It is a word that provokes a wide range of poetic, personal and theological truths. The English word itself derives from the Old French word florir, which means to flower or to be full of life and healthy growth. There is an…
When I was in Grade 5, in my local Catholic primary school, our large and often unwieldy composite class (Grades 5 & 6) must have been a trial for any teacher. It was a strange time to be at school. Classical classrooms were making way for experimental methods and catechisms were being replaced by rather…
To wrap up such a lively and momentous experience as last weekend’s TMC Summer Conference, “Christianity and the Common Good”, is a challenge. This week our TMC teams are aiming to “value-add” and share the wealth of content and insight from the conference with you, our readers. The day was refreshing, because it was deliberately…
This January in the south of our continent has been a tough one for our rural and regional people. The wild winds, bursts of stinking heat and even wilder grass fires have exacted a great toll on the land, on animals, on farms and on the lives of people. Some areas are anxiously praying for…
On this Australia Day weekend, it seems very fitting that we encourage our wonderful readers and supporters to consider attending our forthcoming interactive conference day and dinner, which is dedicated to the topic of “Christianity and the Common Good” (book here). We are aware that the notion of “the common good” can seem very vague…
We are probably all entering the new year of 2026 with a fragile flickering of hope and along with some trepidation. Not only are the international and national reports troubling and downright puzzling, but here in Victoria on Friday, January 9, we endured a disturbing day of ferocious heat and even more ferocious wind, the…