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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“I am a servant of Christ, my God, and trusting in Him, I have come among you voluntarily, to bear witness concerning the Truth.” (Attributed to St George, soldier & martyred pre-315 AD) Each day during the Easter Octave is treated by the liturgy and…
The media and the online ecosystem have been alive with polarised headlines and images depicting more widely the fragmentation and social upheaval – particularly heightened since the covid-19 experience – throughout England and in the United Kingdom. As is common these days, there are vastly…