Joanne Paul wrote her powerful and considerable biography of Thomas More because she finds More’s life relevant to today’s world. But the book also addresses another question: Was More a saintly martyr or a vicious murderer?
United Kingdom
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Elizabethan drama (and fiction)
In her debut novel ‘Lightborne,’ Hesse Phillips portrays a world of intrigues swirling around Christopher Marlowe and his London circle.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The mysterious Muriel Spark
The force and clarity of Frances Wilson’s arguments in ‘Electric Spark,’ however debatable, do her subject the literary justice she deserves.
Posted inNews
King Charles’s presence at first Catholic royal funeral a ‘historic event’ for church and monarchy
“This historic event will help renew the link between the monarchy and Catholicism which was broken at the Reformation,” said Timothy Guile, chairman of the English Catholic History Association.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
UK court backs Vatican in refusing to say London financier acted in ‘good faith’ in property deal
A British court backed a Vatican tribunal’s ruling that financier Raffaele Mancione defrauded the Holy See of tens of millions of euros related to a London property.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Josephine Ward was one of British Catholicism’s leading lights—and a prolific novelist.
Josephine Ward was a strong critic of Catholic modernism, and many of her novels featured protagonists struggling to reconcile au courant political and religious ideas with the strictures of the Catholic Church.
Posted inFaith, Features
England’s ‘Catholic Moment’: What can the history of British converts tell us about American Catholics?
As our own cultural moment in the United States has included some prominent conversions to Catholicism, what might we learn from some of the more prominent converts in British Catholic history?
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering David Lodge, the ‘agnostic Catholic’ who captured the post-Vatican II zeitgeist
David Lodge’s novels—as well as his many works of nonfiction—made him an important figure in 20th-century British literature. He also captured well the angst of many lay Catholics in the aftermath of Vatican II.
Posted inPolitics & Society, The Weekly Dispatch
In England and Wales, a bill to legalize assisted suicide faces Catholic opposition
U.K. faith leaders oppose the assisted dying bill: “We believe that a truly compassionate response to the end of life lies in the provision of high-quality palliative care services to all who need them.”
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
I am a Catholic member of the U.K. Labour Party. Assisted suicide is not the answer.
Since launching a campaign within the Labour Party against legalized suicide, I’ve been met with the refrain, “Your only allies are the Tories.”