Thanks to a stroke of extremely good luck combined with similarly extreme gesture of generosity, I’ve recently had the pleasure of watching an international football match from the stands. It was a welcome distraction that offered me the chance to have a mental rest from the very intensive and occasionally overwhelmingly busy time I’ve had ever since the beginning of…
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That story began when I was seven years old – or forty years ago, if you prefer to put it that way. Two man-made spacecrafts were launched into space in the August and September of 1977. Perhaps you may remember the old Mini Cooper – that’s one of those was roughly the weight and size of each spacecraft. Yet these…
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How did it come about that you are a believer, a Christian, a Catholic? Some of you will have been born into a Catholic family; some of you will have been raised as Catholics; some of you will have become Catholics later in life. These are the three main avenues, but undoubtedly there are many roads that each one of…
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Five hundred years ago a monk called passionately for reforms of the Catholic Church in order to return it to its evangelical roots. All his ‘Ninety-Five Theses’ were summarily rejected, and the monk in question was urged by Pope Leo X and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to follow suit. He refused and, as a consequence, he was excommunicated…
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Ten years ago, I took part in an introductory weekend course for clergy and religious from abroad who had come to work in Scotland. The main goal of that weekend course was to give us a better understanding of the country, including its historical, cultural, religious and political background. One talk was about the political framework of the UK including…