Douglas Knight

The Role of Parents in God’s Plan of Salvation
It is a fundamental principle of Catholic education that parents, as co-creators with God of the life of their child, are the primary educators of their children (CCC 2223). Parents have an ‘irreplaceable and inalienable’ role in education because of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between [...]

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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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Here then, beloved seminarians, is the world which you will be sent forth to serve. In the mind of secular man, there is no God, or even if He does exist, it does not matter. This is clearly the condition of a grave disease. WWhat is the medicinehat are the models of healthful words that [...]

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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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Today the marching season begins. It is Corpus Christi, so let’s see that Body.
I am off to All Saints St Margaret Street for 6.30pm High Mass and outdoor Procession of the Blessed Sacrament. St Mary the Virgin Bourne Street has its procession on Sunday.
St Patrick’s Soho has an International Mass with all [...]

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Some 18 different groups – mostly of Catholic and evangelical inspiration, mostly small outfits – have united to oppose the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in a campaign called Passion for Life. But it has failed to make much impact in the media. The pro-abortion and pro-embryo research lobbies are far more powerful, far better [...]

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What Britain needs is US-style think-tanks whose size enables them to do what the far more modest British think-tanks cannot do and for which there is a crying need — to challenge the intellectual stranglehold of the universities. Indeed, we need to go much further than that. At the heart of Britain’s spiral of intellectual, [...]

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Around the world, the two-person, mother-father model of parenthood is being fundamentally challenged.
In Canada, with virtually no debate, the controversial law that brought about samesex marriage quietly included the provision to erase the term “natural parent” across the board in federal law, replacing it with the term “legal parent.” With that law, the locus [...]

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Marriage and birth rates are falling dramatically, pensioners now outnumber teenagers, and more and more people are living alone, says the Institute for family policy in a survey of life in the 27 EU countries.
The report, ‘The evolution of the family in Europe in 2008’, was debated in parliament on Wednesday and describes the European [...]

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This is why the Church must safeguard the eucharist from new introductions. I remember in one of my first visits to Mount Athos I heard a psalm of lament being sung during holy communion. I expressed my surprise to the Prior of the monastery, and when he looked into it they found that this order [...]

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In order to mark this Second Reading of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the House of Commons on Monday 12th May we will be holding a prayer vigil together with other groups.
PLEASE COME to our prayer vigil outside Parliament, invite members of your church, Christian groups, family and friends. We will gather [...]

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Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he [...]

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The priest was gradually changed in the popular imagination from the celebrant of the Sacred Mysteries of salvation into the coordinator of the liturgical ministries of others. And this false understanding of the ministerial priesthood produced the ever-expanding role of the “priest presider,” whose primary task was to make the congregation feel welcome and constantly [...]

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Philip Hamburger Separation of Church and State

In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that [...]

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Der Gottesbeweis: Warum wir, wenn es Gott nicht gibt, überhaupt nichts denken können
Solange Vergangenes erinnert wird, ist es nicht schwer, die Frage nach seiner Seinsart zu beantworten. Es hat seine Wirklichkeit eben im Erinnertwerden. Aber die Erinnerung hört irgendwann auf, und irgendwann wird es keine Menschen mehr auf der Erde geben. Schließlich wird die [...]

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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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All the stars will be out in Nottingham for
The Pope and ‘Jesus of Nazareth‘ conference 19-20 June

Archbishop Javier Martínez (Granada): ‘Christ of history, Jesus of Faith’
Questions and Discussion (chaired by Prof. John Milbank)
Prof. Walter Moberly (Durham): ‘The Use of the Old Testament in Jesus of Nazareth’
Prof. Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford): ‘Lessons learned from Reading Scripture [...]

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Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. [...]

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