A material world Andy Hawes is Warden of Edenham Regional Retreat House To pray and to engage in worship is to recognize the limits of the physical. In prayer and worship the spirit in us seeks the Spirit upholding creation. [...]

Wreaths and crosses Austin Farrer The sermon I am going to preach to you came to me ready-made – it drove into the Front Quadrangle where I happened to be standing: a brisk little van with this inscription painted on [...]

Arthur Middleton on the necessity of aids to personal devotion During his lifetime, one of the Venerable Bede’s former students became Archbishop of York. Bede challenged the Archbishop to find priests for the many vacant parishes in the North of [...]

FROM PARIS: A TASTE FOR IMPRESSIONISM Paintings from the Clark Royal Academy 7 July–23 September Admission £9, concessions available ROBERT STERLING Clark’s fortune came from the Singer Manufacturing Company – his grandfather Edward Clark was Isaac Singer’s business partner. Robert [...]

Denis Desert on Matthew Arnold’s challenge to the Church to communicate the faith in a way that speaks to contemporary society In 1851 the poet and educationalist Mathew Arnold wrote his prophetic and perceptive poem Dover Beach. Arnold saw religious [...]

Gregory Tucker reflects on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and draws our attention to a church that is often overlooked I have just finished re-reading H.V. Morton’s classic 1934 travel journal In the Steps of the Master. His lucid account [...]

Richard Norman provides some recommendations for making the most of a visit to Venice It is a fine city indeed in which even at the café next the bus-station one can order a Bellini or a Campari spritz: and, having [...]

(It turns out that the most requested music at funerals is Frank Sinatra) Our funeral music used to be Amazing Grace, Abide With Me; Serious anthems went down best When we went to our last rest. But now they sing [...]

For a late medieval church in western Europe, a roodscreen with loft and attendant rood was a sine qua non. In England, roods were destroyed at the Reformation and the lofts were generally pulled down too. Keeping screens compartmentalized the [...]

Digby Anderson believes that the Better Together campaign is using a dangerous strategy How should we characterize our enemies, that is, the enemies of catholic order and truth? The gentle English saint, the Venerable Bede, writing in the seventh century [...]