Book review: Faith, family and a good skirmish
The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau Simon & Schuster, £17 London, 1537: Smithfield is awash with gawpers flocking to see a beautiful Yorkshire noblewoman burned alive for questioning King Henry VIII’s...
View ArticleThomas More and John Fisher: two saints who died for the integrity of the...
Today the Catholic Church celebrates two great English saints and martyrs. I am forever grateful to my history master at Ratcliffe College, back in the day, Fr Bill Curran, who explained this great...
View ArticleHenry VIII, stinking sadist
How would King Henry VIII react to the news that Cardinal Vincent Nichols will preside at Catholic Vespers in the Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace on February 9? Not just by turning in his grave...
View ArticleThe best way for Catholics to mark the Reformation is to celebrate the papacy
The reminder from the ever excellent Cardinal Müller that the Reformation is nothing to celebrate, while a statement of the obvious – after all, how can one celebrate disunity? – still leaves us with a...
View ArticleNationalism is a form of heresy when taken to extremes
The Guardian, ever the first with religious commentary, recently carried a piece by Canon Giles Fraser, in which he drew an interesting historical parallel between the Brexit movement and the...
View ArticleThe great Tudor Bible myth
When it comes to state violence, official justifications have always been paramount. Throughout history, savvy administrations have paid close attention to their messaging around the use of force and...
View ArticleA brilliant novel helps make sense of the dissolution of the monasteries
Pope Francis’s meeting with Lutheran leaders raises many questions for Catholics: How do we view the Reformation? What should we think of Luther? Lucy Beckett’s fine historical novel The Time Before...
View ArticleTudor mansion offers audio experience of Mass as Henry VIII would have heard it
Visitors to a Tudor mansion are being given the chance to listen to a reconstruction of a 16th-century Mass. The Vyne, a country house near Basingstoke where Henry VIII attended Mass, has worked with...
View ArticleMartyrdoms that could rival any horror film
As a child, deeply affected by stories of vampires and suchlike, I once tapped the wisdom of my father on the question of which was the most terrifying of all horror films. Not hesitating, he told me...
View ArticleNever forget the bloody horrors of the English Reformation
Martin Luther was a theologian. If you read the Ninety-Five Theses he reputedly tacked up on the door of Wittenberg’s Schlosskirche in October 1517, it is clear his interest lay in the nature of sin,...
View Article
