One month ago I was doing a 14-hour long route in the Cairngorms. Although I went there well-equipped, for the last two hours of my route I was dying with thirst because of the weather. I had no drinkable fluid left in a bottle or a flask. But I wasn’t so desperate as to take water from burns along the path;…

The papal visit to the UK, finishing today down in London, was preceded by several controversies: from theological to social ones. One of the most popular was the high cost of the pilgrimage, paid by the state. Some people said that the pope or the Catholic Church in the UK should pay for it. The Sunday Times, a magazine hardly…

Let me look around for a while… I’m looking for sinners… Are there any sinners among us here? Of course, we all are sinners, but – actually – we are not. We want to think about ourselves as decent people. And, trust me or not, we are quite decent people. Of course none of us is perfect, but we are…

The gospel we’ve just listened to seems to be a perfect recipe for a suicide bomber or a sectarian (or both in the same person). Such a radical appeal automatically lights a warning light in every head. Or it should do. But many examples of the killing innocent people by terrorists provides sufficient evidence that’s not always obvious. I really…

I’ve been thinking for some years about a rather surprising custom of many mass attenders: taking the seats in the last pews. This is particularly noticeable when I say mass for Polish congregations. At the theatre or the opera it is the price that decides where you sit. But we don’t have tickets for mass. So, in this case it…