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In this piece, I wanted to explore the idea that the damage we’re doing to nature through climate change might have unforeseen impacts on the inhabitants of the garden – disrupting their instinctive behaviour in ways that mirror human behaviour and that find parallels in the language of scripture. Apologies for the occasional vulgarity, intended to convey the harsher side…

When I grew up in a small town in the North of Germany, our local Catholic church was an integral part of my family’s life. Both of my parents (not originally from that part of Germany) were Catholic – in fact, they had met at regular, mockingly called ‘mixed marriage prevention balls’ which were afternoon dances…

Monsters have greatest visual impact when placed in the context of the familiar: Cybermen on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral; Martians looming over Big Ben; King Kong atop the Empire State Building. The everyday imparts heightened bearing to the strange, especially if all is eerily quiet in the normally bustling metropolis, the alien…

I am sitting in a café on Madison Avenue in New York. It is 36°C outside (or 97°F, as the locals prefer), and I can honestly say it is a little warmer than I like. Thank the Lord for air conditioning. Literally.  With such extreme heat, and skies occasionally tinged orange by smoke from…

While browsing an 1881 edition of The Boys’ Newspaper (I happen to own two years’ worth of these Victorian “penny press” publications), I came across page after page describing the gruesome instruments of torture once displayed in the Tower of London. What struck me wasn’t simply the cruelty they represented, but how matter-of-factly they…

I had learned that the late Monsignor Rae’s favourite painting was, ‘Christ the saviour of the world’ by the artist El Greco, who worked in Spain from 1577. This painting is housed in the National Gallery of Scotland, just off Princes St. and is well worth a visit. Mgr. Rae had a print of…

I was recently at a meeting of fellow deacons and our wives and we had a small moment that made me chuckle.We were in a small chapel getting ready for evening prayers and, tight for space, someone kicked the bell. I could see the bell was about to be kicked, I then heard the…

The image of a devil and an angel upon each shoulder, whispering persuasively intoopposing ears as conscience and temptation wrestle for mastery, is a simple but highlyeffective visual device that has delighted children and adults across the cartoon decades.Perhaps it references the temptation of Jesus in the desert (although here the devil andangel are…

““They were some bangers today!”Perhaps an unusual thing to hear at the end of Holy Hour, but that was the feedback after aselection of Marian anthems during our May devotion. Mary, who could be called the very firstTabernacle, was the first to carry the true Body of Christ.Hymns are a wonderful part of our…

There is something special about how we experience things: the joy of opening a beautifully wrapped gift, listening to a moving piece of music on the radio when we truly have the time to enjoy it, or simply sitting in the sunshine watching the world go by. What we receive from these moments is deeply shaped…