✣Highlights from the week online
Don’t believe all the Catholic hype on May At ncregister.com, Joanna Bogle examined Michael Gove’s claim (reported in last week’s Herald) that Theresa May is the “first Catholic prime minister”. It’s true, Bogle wrote, that May’s Anglo-Catholicism “might shock some of the Protestant establishment of previous centuries”. And her conservatism is clearly one which “associates itself with concern for the poor and marginalised”.But in other areas – notably her support for same-sex marriage – “her Toryism and her Anglicanism are of a kind that belong very much to the present era rather than to the Catholic social teachings of Leo XIII and St John Paul II.”
Nonetheless, most Catholics probably see May as a safe pair of hands. They also “share May’s patriotism and her sense of obligation to the community and the common good.”
Breaking the power of the smartphone
At aleteia.org, Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble discussed a few ways to moderate your smartphone use during Lent – and maybe beyond. One is to “enforce phone-free zones”: “Try placing a basket in the middle of your dining-room table and put your phones in it when you eat with family or friends. Most of us know there is really no excuse to use phones at the table. Don’t judge those who do, just set a good example, and come to agreements with those you live with so everyone is on the same page.”
Sister Noble also suggested frequently reminding yourself that you will die: it might seem “morbid”, but it helps you focus on this life.
First steps for Benedict Optimists
In his New York Times column, Ross Douthat joined the debate over the “Benedict Option” – the idea, proposed by Rod Dreher in a new book, that Christians should focus more on building strong Christian communities.
Dreher’s book, says Douthat, “begins in sweeping pessimism, describing a Western Christianity foredestined to all but disappear, collapsing from within even as its institutions are regulated and taxed to death by secular inquisitors”.
Maybe this is accurate prophecy, maybe not; but, said Douthat, Dreher’s suggestions are worth taking seriously in any case. “If every Catholic high school or college were one degree less secularised and worldly; if every Protestant megachurch were one degree more liturgical and theological; if not every Catholic but more Catholics became priests and nuns; if not every Christian family but more Christian families decided to have a third child or a fourth or fifth; if not every young Christian but more young Christians looked at working-class neighbourhoods as an important mission field; if Catholics and Protestants alike could imitate even part of Mormonism’s dense networking … all this would be a form of the Benedict Option in action, and both the churches and the common culture would be better for it.”
✣ Meanwhile…
✣ The Vatican has not responded to claims that it possesses a time machine which can access “traces” left by events in the past. The “chronovisor”, a screen with tuning dials, can’t actually take anyone into history, but it provides a window on the past, according to author Alfred Lambremont Webre. Mr Webre told the Daily Star Online, in a story reprinted by the Daily Express and other media, that the Vatican gave “quantum access” to the CIA, and probably to MI5 and MI6 too.✣A blogger has been accused of inciting religious hatred for playing Pokémon Go in a church. His trial has begun in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. Ruslan Sokolovsky, 22, was charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers after posting a video of himself playing the game in an Orthodox church built on the supposed spot where the family of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, was killed. He faces a possible sentence of seven and a half years in prison if convicted.
✣ A judge has sided with singer Katy Perry in her legal battle to buy a convent. Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles had sought to sell the property to Perry but the nuns living there had opposed the deal. The battle is not over, though: the sale must still be approved by the Vatican.
✣ The week in quotations
Whoever ... takes work away from men and women commits a grave sin
Pope Francis speaking to Italian Sky employees whose jobs are at risk
General audience
A colourful man in a Church often dominated by grey characters
Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic, on Bishop Casey
Irish Independent
Hear confession every time you are asked
Pope Francis
Talk to priests
What bothers him most are his legs
Archbishop Gänswein on why Benedict XVI uses a walker
Vatican Radio
✣ Statistic of the week
16m
People at risk of famine in east Africa
Source: DEC
