Douglas Knight

For a gentle introduction to the financial crisis, see Ann Pettifor’s The Week that changed Everything and Why the Bail-Out would not Work.
For longer-term reasons for the crisis see Spengler’s US Shrinking wealth
Why didn’t these overseas investors buy mortgages in their own countries, instead of scraping the bottom of the credit barrel in the [...]

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Christians have a relationship of direct and personal familiarity with the Church and the saints. The relationship is personal and involves our entire being, not merely our minds or feelings. Yet when someone lights a candle or makes an offering, you will often hear someone remark that such an action is meaningless if that person [...]

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The day humanity starts eating the planet
On September 23, humanity will have used up all the resources nature will provide this year, according to the latest data from Global Footprint Network and its member organisation NEF (the new economics foundation) who devised the concept of Ecological Debt Day. Just like any company, nature has a [...]

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The reason why the Lehman Brothers collapse is historic is that this institution expected until a very late stage to be saved by the state-run Korea Development Bank (KDP). But Seoul looked at the books and had other ideas: on 9 September 2008 – to the astonishment of Lehman’s shareholders and investors – this ever-so-reliable [...]

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We now know that on 9 August 2007 central bankers and regulators finally woke up to the scale of bad debts on the balance-sheets of banks and other financial institutions. On that day blindfolds were removed and scales fell from the eyes – of at least some of the key players in the finance sector. [...]

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The texts for all his future sermons—which God knows were not many—were constantly taken out of the gospel for the day; and he did as constantly declare why the Church did appoint that portion of scripture to be that day read; and in what manner the collect for every Sunday does refer to the gospel, [...]

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The Battle for Truth, God and the Universe, Stories of Evolution, Body and Soul
Four Public Dialogues in St Paul’s Cathedral
Tuesday 7, 14, 21, 28 October 6.30 – 8.00pm
Nancy Cartwright
Nicholas Lash
John Milbank
Roger Trigg
David Burrell
Frances Young
Steve Jones
Alister McGrath
John Polkinghorne
Keith Ward
Robert Winston
I [...]

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Third Annual National Theology of the Body conference – in Dublin
For Theology of the Body in the UK, it is off to London Colney (25-26 October) with Faith and Family.
Resources for Natural Family Planning Awareness Week are available from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Our own Robert Colquhoun offers some resources [...]

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Scripture and Liturgy in the Theology of Benedict XVI
at the Catholic Chaplaincy, Oxford, Saturday 1 November 2008
Scott Hahn
Aidan Nichols
Michael Waldstein
Adrian Walker
and our very own Stratford Caldecott – details are here
And Scott Hahn is in London on Friday 31 October.
Now wait a minute, I had a little paper on Benedict on the liturgy somewhere, [...]

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The UK now has a de facto blasphemy law which protects Allah, Mohammed and mosques more than it did in during the modern era the names of Jesus and YHWH or the Church of England. It is ironic that whilst Parliament was legislating to abolish the crimes of blasphemy and blasphemous libel as they related [...]

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All of our faith-based respondents reported ‘€immense religious illiteracy’ on the part of local government officials, politicians and throughout the policy-making community as a whole. As we have said, the view most consistently expressed was that all faiths were ‘€˜private ideas’ or ‘€˜private practices’ with relevance only on one day of the week. This contrasted [...]

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By the mystery of your holy incarnation; by your birth, childhood and obedience; by your baptism, fasting and temptation,
Good Lord, deliver us.
By your ministry in word and work; by your mighty acts of power; and by your preaching of the kingdom,
Good Lord, deliver us.
By your agony and trial; by your cross and passion; and by [...]

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As a matter of course, BBC writers have blamed crimes against humanity perpetrated by the enemies of the West on the “root cause” of Western provocation. Occasionally, but more frequently than the casual viewer might appreciate, they have gone a step further and presented the atrocities of totalitarianism as the atrocities of the West.
Maybe they [...]

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Two pieces of sturdy and intelligent common sense from two contemporary apostles:
Archbishop of Denver Charles Chaput Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life
Oliver O’Donovan Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion – first published as Fulcrum web sermons. My [...]

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One week after the beginning of the violence in Orissa, thousands of people, most of them Christian, are still hiding in the forests or have found refuge in the shelter camps set up by the government. According to the latest figures, there are at least 6,000 people in the refugee camps, and 5,000 hiding in [...]

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The Berlin Gemaeldegalerie appears if anything to be one of the most user-friendly artistic sites in Europe. So why – unlike other museums in cutting-edge Berlin – isn’t it crawling with culture vultures?
It’s hard to avoid the obvious here: given the centuries in question, the gallery’s collection is inevitably, ineradicably, inescapably Christian. Such is true [...]

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