Where are they “coming from”? What attracts a young man? In our quest for more vocations to the priesthood we firstly need to understand what the contemporary seminary candidate is looking for in his pursuit of the priesthood. This in turn can help us, as priests, to...
G. K. Chesterton was a prolific writer on all manner of subjects, and my particular focus will be on one vital part of his life and thought; namely, his inner life or spirituality. When Chesterton was asked to explain why he had become a Catholic, a step which he took...
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Pope Benedict XVI afforded us the opportunity to accomplish our long held hope of holding an International Conference for anglophone clergy. In calling the “Year for Priests”, the Holy Father pushed us to put aside all the practical and logistical obstacles that...
Conferences do not just “happen”: they have to be organised. Some one remarked that organising priests is like herding cats! Add to this the fact that the Conference occurred in Rome, where “pazienza” is the watchword, and it is amazing that the Conference “happened”!...
Rabbi: You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. (Jn 1:49) This brief but resounding confession of faith by the apostle Nathaniel gives us the basis for Christ’s mission: his divine sonship. He is the Word Incarnate. This is one of the two hinges on which...
The great and abiding cause of the joy of the Nativity of the Lord and of His Epiphany to the nations through the Three Kings is clearly expressed in the First Letter of John. The cause of our joy is the testimony given by the Holy Spirit Himself: God gave us eternal...
Introductory remarks Having had the honour of previously addressing some members of this august body in Perth, Australia, a number of years ago, it is a distinct privilege to address you, in a more international grouping, “sub umbra Petri”, here in the Eternal City of...
From the vast patristic literary corpus, three works stand out as classic texts on the priesthood: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Second Oration, otherwise known as the De fuga; John Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio; and Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis. These three works are...
In recent years, the notion of the genius of the Roman Rite has seen resurgence. That the Oratorian, Fr Michael Lang, and the Jesuit, Fr Keith Pecklers, have both published books called The Genius of the Roman Rite testifies to the usefulness of this turn of phrase....