At Matins/the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday the Church gives us this 'ancient homily', I find it incredibly moving, it is about Holy Saturday, about what Christ did through his Cross in the...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-lords-descent-into-underworld.html
"AND THERE THEY STRIPPED HIM OF HIS CLOTHES" At the Solemn Liturgy today I was struck by your absence, and yet of the mysterious presence of the whole Church. Today. we who are not poor ...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-homily-for-good-friday.html
",,,, the Antichrist presents himself as a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist. He ... seeks the consensus of all the Christian confessions, conceding something to each one." "The crowds follo...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2019/09/cardinal-biffi-on-antichrist.html
"It is not the healthy who need a physician but the sick" Jesus is supposed to be our Saviour but most of us think we are just fine and we don't need Salvation or a Saviour, in fact the ide...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2019/03/prayer-and-reality.html
Let's be realistic about fasting, it makes you tetchy, even murderous! Jesus was "driven" into desert to face hunger and temptation not for an intimate prayerful experience. if anything fastin...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2019/03/fasting-and-reality.html
Almsgiving means giving to the poor, its easy nowadays, we do it by clicking on a screen. In the past it meant going out to the find the poor or letting them into our comfort zone, it meant be...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2019/03/almsgiving-and-reality.html
A thought I might blog for Lent. > Cardinal John Henry Newman said: "Conscience is the first of the > Vicars of Christ." > "This means that Catholics have a duty to t...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2019/03/ultimate-reality.html
Yesterday a kind Orthodox priest who used comment on this blog telephoned to check I was alright, in a very pastoral way I suppose to check I was still alive. This post is to prove to anyone ...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/08/he-is-not-dead-but-sleeping.html
The Cross is about the vulnerability of God, it is about God placing himself into our hands. In the Crucifixion God is scourged, spat upon, crowned with thorns, nailed to the Cross and left to...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-cross-is-choice-for-heaven-or-hell.html
I am surprised that few people have reacted to the Secretariate for Communications fake news presentation of the Pope Emeritus' letter to Mons. Viganò in which left out is significant sections...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/03/that-letter-from-pope-emeritus.html
For forty days Jesus dwelt in the wilderness. The wilderness was the very opposite of the Paradise, the walled garden God had created for man. The wilderness was the place of thistles and thorn...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/03/3rd-sunday-of-lent-sermon-notes-on.html
With scandals like gay drug parties in Vatican palaces, bishops running major dicasteries who put suggestive murals into their cathedrals, monsignori who get caught in lifts with their boy frien...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/03/where-is-vatican-going.html
DARE WE JOIN THE DOTS? Pope calls Chilean abuse victims spreaders of calumny and says no evidence/proof has been given him. Despite Cardinal O'Malley personally giving the Pope a letter offering...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/02/dare-we-join-dots.html
Thanks to Fr Z for posting this video of an interview with Fr. James Mawdsley of the Society of St Peter. As a young man he was imprisoned in Burma for 14 months (1999-2000) for his work for h...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/fr-james-mawdsley.html
I had a lesson in Peronism from an Argentinian waiter recently, in Argentina he was a PPE graduate. Peronism, he said, was the most corrupt form of politics, because you could be a Communist, o...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/peronism-and-corruption.html
"If he were a priest in my diocese I would ensure he was suspended, and at his age retired from a public liturgical or pastoral function", was the reaction of a certain Vicar General to the Pope...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/imagine-pastoral-opportunities.html
There are some diocese in the UK where even a liberal reading of the Pope's letter to the Argentinian bishops on Amoris Laetitia's opening up of the reception of Holy Communion would be regard...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2018/01/beyond-amoris-laetitia.html
Having celebrated the Octave of Christmas, now we come to the season of the Pastoral Letters from bishops. It is a venerable tradition, that demands a high standard, the Pastoral Letters of Ap...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/pastoral-letters-and-sermons.html
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-happy-and-blessed-christmas-to-you-all.html
I am glad Cardinal Maradiaga has responded to his critics. I asked a friend who is involved with the Curia, why some Cardinals seem to be so wealthy, some still seem to have palaces, some occ...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-wealth-of-cardinals.html
So Cardinal Maradiaga the Pope's friend and advisor has been accused of financial corruption in a report sent to the Pontiff six months ago. There are lots of questions raised by these allega...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/maradiaga-some-questions.html
The Commission for the Protection of Minors set up by Pope Francis for a term of four years effectively came to the end of its mandated term on Sunday which has not yet been renewed. Two of th...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/end-of-commission-for-protection-of.html
I have always avoided direct criticism of Pope Francis preferring to use terms like 'this present Papacy', it is a Catholic thing about the profound deference owed to the Vicar of Christ on Eart...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-more-frightening-thesis.html
I can't see what the problem some people have with the crib in St Peter's Square. The first image I saw of it was someone complaining that it contained an autopsy scene, actually just a littl...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/crib-controversy.html
So, the Sovereign Pontiff suggests the Pater Noster needs a rewrite, well we know from the Superior General of the Jesuits no-one had a tape recorder, so it is not possible to know what Jesus ac...
https://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-pater-noster-problem-with-son-of.html