A waste of time?
Richard Doney, a Catholic candidate in the Synod elections, takes stock and looks to the future “What’s the point then? You’re just wasting your time.” I had explained to one of my children that my chances of winning a [...]
Godly and quietly governed
Paul Benfield looks at proposals for reform in the National Church Institutions The Church of England is not a single legal entity, but consists of various inter-related and inter-dependent charities at national, diocesan and parish level. This makes for [...]
Synod Special
General Synod Elections 2021 Though the elections to General Synod took place last month and awareness of them was high over the summer, a huge amount of effort went into them for many months prior including campaigning, supporting candidates [...]
A Changing Scene of Life: Refinding Christian Values
William Allen sees secular chaplains as a call to Christian soldiers Christian proselytism is by its nature a tricky business—and, it seems, is yet to grow trickier. Catholic Christians, indeed, may have cause of concern or anxiety, that the [...]
Touching place
ALL SAINTS, ILE BREWERS, SOMERSET It is far from the Somerset norm; there is nothing else in Somerset like this church with a striking S porch tower and short octagonal spire. Given the clergyman who inspired it, that is [...]
Faith of Our Fathers
Arthur Middleton on Holiness Bishop Paget, formerly of Oxford said: Surely, there is no power in the world so unerring or irrepressible as the power of personal holiness. All else goes wrong, blunders, loses proportion, falls disastrously short [...]
Ghostly Counsel
Andy Hawes God of the Harvest I do hope readers have managed to enjoy celebrating a Harvest Festival. The chances are that many haven’t. Even in rural parishes, Harvest is ‘not what it was’. I notice that in [...]
Harvest and Consecration
Elizabeth Jennings After the heaped piles and the corn sheaves waiting To be collected, gathered into barns, After all fruits have burst their skins, the sating Season cools and turns, And then I think of something that you said [...]
Guild of All Souls’ Requiem Mass
Thursday 4th November, St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road The Coronavirus pandemic has given rise to many tensions in our society. One which particularly impinged on church life and practice arose around the extent to which a concern to protect others [...]
Alcuin of York
John Gayford spends time with Alcuin: Master of Charlemagne’s Palace School at Aachen; Abbot of Tours. The life of Alcuin divides neatly into three phases: his beginning at York, his post with Charlemagne and finally becoming Abbot of Tours; [...]