Throughout New Directions this month you will see a new logo: #KeepTheSeal. This is part of a campaign launched by Forward in Faith to ensure that the Seal of the Confessional is kept by the Church of England; that is [...]

Lift high the Cross From Fr Richard Norman Sir People and parishes across our constituency look forward each year to the celebration of patronal festivals; many of the Catholic societies of the constituency do likewise. The priest-brothers of the Society [...]

John Gayford considers the life and legacy of the Venerable Bede Bede was a modest but very intelligent Anglo-Saxon monk from Northumbria who lived from about 671 to 735, entering the monastic life as a child oblate at the age [...]

Julian Browning reads the latest Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis I took Pope Francis’s third Apostolic Exhortation on the parish pilgrimage I was leading at Walsingham this summer. This proved to be a good choice. Here is a tract for [...]

Robin Ward reminds us of the historical, theological and practical importance of the seal of the confession The Church of England has always made provision for her members to confess their sins to a priest and receive absolution. At the [...]

Living Truthfully Andy Hawes There are some well-tried spiritual exercises that enable an examination of conscience.  There are passages from the Bible that can be used a template for prayer and reflection: The Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments,1 Corinthians 13 for [...]

Guy Willis on an important conference at Pusey House It seems that the ‘death of God’ is truly dead. The 2018 Pusey House Theological Conference, Totus Christus: Knowing and Loving the Son of Man, which ran from 9 July to [...]

A survivor of abuse writes to the Archbishop of York Your Grace, I write as an adult survivor of what my former counsellor calls chronic childhood trauma, some of which included sexual, physical and emotional abuse over a prolonged period [...]

Thomas Seville CR summarizes the practical and theological arguments for the seal of the confessional The issue of the abuse of children and the vulnerable is perhaps the issue of our times. In the past twenty years it has become [...]

Sarah Gillard-Faulkner explains the importance of prison chaplaincy The community where I minister is really quite self-contained. It has residents, a health centre, a café, a gym, a mechanical garage, classrooms, a hairdresser, several residential spaces with many offices, a [...]