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…
In his retirement years, my father, Francis Xavier Duffy (1927-1999) and his brothers, like many Australians, became fascinated by our family history. His detective work had him browsing through newspapers, ship manifests, and church records from Galway to small Australian towns such as Maldon in Victoria. It also involved him reaching out to other people…
Many of the tributes published recently for the Scottish-American social and moral philosopher Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre, who died in the United States on May 21 at the age of 96, are tinged with personal experiences and memories. That many of these originate from warring worlds of thought reflects the genuine perplexity many experience when attempting to…
A few years ago, in preparation for an article on the importance of cultural memory, I interviewed the organisers of what has become a most impressive and effective project called simply The Biography Program sponsored by The Knights of the Order of Malta in Victoria and Tasmania. The very full title of this very ancient Catholic order founded in…
Thanks for your patience… we encountered a technical problem publishing this TMC newsletter. Perhaps it was meant to be as this is our 70th edition of the TMC Newsletter and now coincides with the election of Pope Leo XIV. The new pope, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost born in Chicago in 1955 is a relatively…
In these times there is much secular media and church chatter about the deliberations for the selection of the next pope in the Catholic Church. A great deal of this is simply ill-informed and stereotypical political banter. There is also some intelligent discussion which indicates that the role of the pontiff and of the Church…