On Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth

On Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth

As I write these words I have just returned to the parish, having made my annual retreat with a group of about twenty priests. There were the usual elements in any clergy retreat: Holy Mass; Liturgy of the Hours; Eucharistic adoration; devotions; spiritual...

Archbishop Ambrose De Pauli, RIP

Archbishop Ambrose De Pauli, RIP

The death on 10 October 2007 in Miami, Florida, USA, after a long battle with leukaemia, of the Papal Nuncio to Australia, His Excellency the Most Rev Ambrose B. De Pauli, was received with great sadness by the ACCC. My last contact with the Nuncio was driving him to...

The priest as evangelical witness

The priest as evangelical witness

Living the mystery I have titled today’s talk, “The Priest as Evangelical Witness,” and in doing so am picking up on a point made the last time I addressed the ACCC (see, “Practice what you teach,” The Priest, November 2002 and “Believe what you read”, The Priest, May...

St Maria Goretti

St Maria Goretti

Such is the embrace of the communion of Saints that today’s commemoration of St Maria Goretti, whom the Church reveres for her witness to virginal chastity one century ago, easily takes the Christian mind back to the memory of the martyrs of her early centuries —...

Where are we now?

Where are we now?

As an avid map-reader and navigator, I like to know where I am, so I can work out where to go next. This practical habit developed at the age of eleven, while steering dazed parents and a grizzling younger brother around post-War London, where we spent six months....

Fr Cyril Cartwright, RIP

Fr Cyril Cartwright, RIP

In the early hours on the feast of the Little Flower, Father Cyril Thomas Cartwright’s 90-year-long earthly pilgrimage came to an end. Father died at Sacred Heart Home, Brockville, Dunedin, where he had been a resident for only a few months, in the care of the Little...

Lord, accept this sacrifice

Lord, accept this sacrifice

Through catechisms, we are all familiar with the ends for which the Eucharistic Sacrifice is offered: in praise and adoration, for intercession and atonement. But in recent decades much less emphasis has been placed on the fourth end – that the Sacrifice of the Mass...