Douglas Knight

While many factors have contributed to this truly diabolical, bureaucratic onslaught against the family, we might begin by looking within. The churches’ failure or refusal to intervene in the marriages they consecrated and to exert moral pressure on misbehaving spouses (perhaps out of fear of appearing “judgmental”) left a vacuum that has been filled by [...]

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Fertility and Faith – A day conference, with talks, Q&A and panel discussion, on fertility, infertility, marriage and love
Saturday 21st February from 10am in the Catholic Chaplaincy, Oxford
Fertility and Faith: An introduction – Fr Tim Finigan (Founder, Association of Priests for the Gospel of Life)
Marriage and Meaning – Anthony McCarthy (Research Fellow, Linacre Centre for [...]

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John Médaille The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace is far-and-away the best book I have seen on the (bad) theology of economics. It puts economics into its political-philosophical context, with plenty of history, Catholic Social Teaching and immediate relevance to our present situation. It is a big but very well controlled [...]

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The financial crisis that we are suffering represents the crisis in confidence of this society. We can no longer be taken at our word because we ourselves do not believe our ourselves. It is us who do not believe that our word is our bond or that we are good for the money. Money is [...]

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Profoundly unpalatable decisions are going to have to be taken for the sake of our survival and the possibility of future prosperity. It is not enough to say that confidence must return. Instead, great truths will have to be spoken: we are going to have to start being honest with each other about our predicament. [...]

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Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. “In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in [...]

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The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic. The political impact will be seismic; [...]

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After an angry, inevitably, celebrity-studded rally in Trafalgar Square, groups of Jews descended on Brick Lane to assault anyone visibly identified as a Muslim. Some burst into a curry house and attacked the diners, tugging at their beards while shouting Oi Vey. A rabbi is rumoured to have tried to strangle a waiter with a [...]

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Civil society emerges out of altruism – small platoons of enthusiasts with the freedom and resolve to change things. Britain’s institutions and services all began with Victorian self-help groups. Schools, sewerage, charities for the blind, the sick, for orphans, lepers, stray dogs, all were pioneered by Christians. Yet, in Orissa, India’s poorest [...]

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Why do citizens in democracies enthusiastically embrace a radical Islamist group that not only seeks the destruction of a fellow democracy but is overtly committed to the substitution of a world-wide Islamic caliphate (or umma) for the existing international order based on territorial nation states? Not because of compassion for the Palestinians, whose plight has [...]

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The current reference in legislation to a child’s need for a father is being removed because of the alleged offence such a clause is causing to single women. Removing this reference, for the sake of a tiny minority that currently does on the whole have access to assisted reproduction, sends a powerful signal to the [...]

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Helpers of God’s Precious Infants
The next vigil at Marie Stopes abortion facility, 88 Russell Road, Buckhurst Hill, Essex IG9 5QB, will be held on 24 January 2009 From St Thomas of Canterbury Church, 557/559 High Road, Woodford Green IG8 0RB led by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal
8.45am – Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at [...]

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Longtime habits of virtue, enactments of responsibility and unconscious acknowledgement of generational bonds had continued to maintain the order upon which the modern system rested and flourished, but in no way renewed or replenished. Thrift; moderation; liberality; self-sacrifice; these, and other virtues, continued for a time, but in this year were revealed to have been [...]

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