Douglas Knight

Following St. Benedict’s example, “monasteries have, over the course of the centuries, become lively centres of dialogue, of meeting and of beneficial fusion among different peoples, brought together by the evangelical culture of peace. Through work and example, the monks were able to teach the art of peace, giving tangible form to the three elements [...]

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Sunday sets the rhythm of Church time. It is “the first day of the week” (Matthew 28:1), and therefore the first of the seven days of creation. But it is also the eighth day, the new time that began with the resurrection of Jesus. For Christians, therefore, Ratzinger says, Sunday is “the true measure of [...]

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Benedict’s Opening Address to the Synod
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away“. Humanly speaking, the word, my human word, is almost nothing in reality, a breath. As soon as it is pronounced it disappears. It seems to be nothing. But already the human word has incredible power. Words create [...]

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Let us dwell on only two points. The first is the journey towards “the maturity of Christ”, as the Italian text says, simplifying it slightly. More precisely, in accordance with the Greek text, we should speak of the “measure of the fullness of Christ” that we are called to attain if we are to be [...]

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The Lord Chancellor has warned doctors they risk going on trial for assault if they refuse to allow patients who have made ‘living wills’ to die. Lord Falconer set out the determination of the Government to use draconian penalties to enforce living wills in a guide to Labour’s Mental Capacity Act for doctors, nurses and [...]

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Romanus the Melodist is one of these, poet, theologian and composer. He learned the foundations of Greek and Syrian culture in his native city, and then moved to Beritus (now Beirut), to complete his classical education and knowledge of rhetoric. After being ordained permanent deacon — around 515 — he was a preacher in this [...]

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If however reason, concerned about its supposed purity, fails to hear the great message that comes from the Christian faith and the understanding it brings, it will dry up like a tree with roots cut off from the water that gives it life. It will lose the courage needed to find the truth and thus [...]

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The premier example of this was his Regensburg lecture of September 2006 in Germany, widely criticized at the time as offensive to Islamic sensibilities. That lecture, in fact, has shifted both the course of inter-religious dialogue and the internal dynamics of the intra-Islamic debate, precisely as I believe Benedict XVI intended it to do. It [...]

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That Pope John Paul II was profoundly formed by and faithful to the general pastoral purpose and style of Gaudium et Spes throughout his pontificate is easy to show. He not only made constant reference to Gaudium et Spes, 22 and 24, referring to the former as encapsulating the motif of his pontificate, his encyclical, [...]

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In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer’s own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not [...]

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To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves — these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.
Are we capable of this? Is the other important [...]

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As far as the two great themes of “reason” and “freedom” are concerned, here we can only touch upon the issues connected with them. Yes indeed, reason is God’s great gift to man, and the victory of reason over unreason is also a goal of the Christian life. But when does reason truly triumph? When [...]

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The words that Benedict XVI speaks every Sunday at midday, before and after the Angelus are among those most closely followed by the media.
The real and proper message comes before the prayer…is a brief homily on the Gospel and the other readings of that day’s Mass.
As in the Wednesday catecheses Benedict XVI is gradually recounting [...]

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This loss of Christian memory is accompanied by a kind of fear of the future. Tomorrow is often presented as something bleak and uncertain. The future is viewed more with dread than with desire. Among the troubling indications of this are the inner emptiness that grips many people and the loss of meaning in life. [...]

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Pope Benedict XVI’s masterly lecture [at Regensburg] tended in fact to highlight a widening of reason that, by going beyond anti-religion Enlightenment thinking (”irrational”), allows for rich and fraternal dialogue with extra-European and non-Western cultures. At the same time, the Pope showed that violence is “irrational” and is therefore worthy neither of God, nor of [...]

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There is no doubt that we are living in a moment of extraordinary development in the human capacity to decipher the rules and structures of matter, and in the consequent dominion of man over nature. We all see the great advantages of this progress and we see more and more clearly the threat of destruction [...]

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Dear brothers and sisters, in the catechesis on the prominent figures of the early Church, today we come to the eminent personality of St Irenaeus of Lyons.
…Irenaeus was concerned to describe the genuine concept of the Apostolic Tradition which we can sum up here in three points.
a) Apostolic Tradition is “public”, not private or secret. [...]

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Speaking each Wednesday to the thirty to forty thousand faithful who flock to listen to him (twice as many as went to the audiences of his predecessor) Benedict XVI has been holding, since March, a new series of his weekly catecheses. He dedicated the previous series to the twelve Apostles and to the disciples of [...]

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From all this it clearly emerges that an authentic European “common home” cannot be built without considering the identity of the people of this Continent of ours. It is a question of a historical, cultural, and moral identity before being a geographic, economic, or political one; an identity comprised of a set of universal [...]

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“Jesus of Nazareth” is the first part of a two-volume work that Joseph Ratzinger conceived many years ago as part of his “long interior journey” in search of “the face of the Lord.” In this first volume, the narrative begins with the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and continues to his transfiguration on [...]

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