Douglas Knight

Holy and Great Lent 2007
The goal of spiritual struggle is not the acquisition of virtues, or of any other strange abilities solemnly through human powers, as it is believed by those who belong to various humanistic circles. On the contrary, it is the expression of our desire to meet the person of our Lord Jesus [...]

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Pope Benedict gave an unsparing account of European cultural collapse in his talk to participants in a Rome conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome: the pact that led to the establishment of the European Union. The conference was organized by the Commission of European Episcopal Conferences (COMECE), and centered on the [...]

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The Society of St. Catherine of Siena will hold its annual Mass in anticipation of the Feast of St. Catherine at 6.15 pm on April 17th 2007, at St. Etheldreda’s church, Ely Place, off Holborn Circus, London EC1.
Holy Mass will be celebrated by Fr. Andrew Wadsworth in the presence of the Rt. Rev’d. [...]

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In general, I would counsel complete avoidance of litigation – in concert with the explicit teaching of the Gospel – and instead encourage civil disobedience in cases where Christians choose to oppose the depredations of TEC leadership. But is this even a witness we are called to make? Anglicanism has its own sorry [...]

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Leander Harding – An Open Letter to Bishops and Deputies who Participated in General Convention 2006

Below are some conclusions I have developed as a result of my observation both by following the official deliberations and through more informal conversations. I wonder if I have heard correctly, and I welcome remarks from bishops and deputies about [...]

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The relationship between Eucharist and communio had already been pointed out by the Servant of God John Paul II in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia. He spoke of the memorial of Christ as “the supreme sacramental manifestation of communion in the Church”. The unity of ecclesial communion is concretely manifested in the Christian communities and [...]

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THE vote by 168 to 122 in the House of Lord’s tonight (21 March) in favour of the Government’s Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) 2007 marks the imposition of a new morality.
It is a clear sign that despite saying they were going to consult and listen the Government has failed to respect the consciences [...]

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Theology of the Body Explored

St. Patrick’s, Soho Square, London.
March 23 Jane Deegan: “Love is Victorious in the Struggle between Good and Evil” (GA June 27th 1984)
IV. Reflections on Humanae Vitae
April 27 Edmund Adamus: “ The Church’s Position on the Transmission of Life” (GA August 22nd 1984)
May 11 Dan & Anne [...]

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Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy

The Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, Ohio 20-23 September 2007

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Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

It is good to be in time, and to celebrate these ends and beginnings in our morning and evening prayer. These boundaries of day and night [...]

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This was the week that the leadership of the Catholic Church in England and Wales disgraced itself. Pope Benedict XVI issued one of the most significant documents written by a pontiff for many years – and the English bishops’ “communications network” effectively killed the story.
Real anger is building up in the parishes over the bishops’ [...]

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We are near the end of term at last. We have all had some virus which has slowed things right down.
I was about to give up on Wednesday’s paper for Heythrop, but in the last twenty-four hours managed to write something on Williams and O’Donovan on secularism which seemed to go all right. [...]

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36. The “subject” of the liturgy’s intrinsic beauty is Christ himself, risen and glorified in the Holy Spirit, who includes the Church in his work. Here we can recall an evocative phrase of Saint Augustine which strikingly describes this dynamic of faith proper to the Eucharist. The great Bishop of Hippo, speaking specifically of the [...]

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St Andrew’s Institute for Theology, Imagination & the Arts is holding a conference on
THE OFFENCE OF BEAUTY –
What can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today?
3-5 September, 2007
Speakers include:
Bernard Beatty (Liverpool)
Professor Jeremy Begbie (St Andrews)
Dr Carol Harrison (Durham)
Professor Trevor Hart (St Andrews)
Professor Robert Jenson (Princeton)
Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale)
The colloquium takes [...]

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The Church lives from the Eucharist. (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §1 “the Church lives from the Eucharist”) The Holy Father’s announcement that the Synod of Bishops to be held in October 2005 will reflect on the Eucharist follows from his recent Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Already the Society has [...]

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10. Thus there is an urgent need, even within the framework of current international difficulties and tensions, for a commitment to a human ecology that can favour the growth of the “tree of peace”. For this to happen, we must be guided by a vision of the person untainted by ideological and cultural prejudices or [...]

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If you want to know before your friends do what may well be one of the major questions of the 21st century, keep your eye on two new documents. The first is the Berlin Declaration to be released by E.U. President Angela Merkel within the month. The second is the Brussels Declaration, a statement by [...]

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John Zizioulas believes ecumenism, conciliarity and the Eucharist belong to the very being of the Church. The bishop is intrinsic to ecumenism. Zizioulas’ account of the relation of the particular and universal, one and many, demonstrates that the relationships of the bishop and his congregation, and of the local and the worldwide Church, are essentially [...]

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A quite special place in this long development [longo itinere] belongs to Saint Thomas, not only because of what he taught [ob ea quae in eius doctrina continentur] but also because of the dialogue which he undertook with the Arab and Jewish thought of his time. In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the [...]

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The first of The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar consultations took place in Cheltenham in April 1998. The theme for this meeting was the crisis in biblical interpretation and the sort of answers to it being proposed by advocates of speech act theory such as Anthony Thiselton, Nicholas Wolterstorff and Kevin Vanhoozer, all of whom were [...]

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