Texts – James Alison

Fragment of Hans SFchäufelein, Christ as Good Shepherd from Das Plenarium, 1517 (Gift of Henry G. Friedman, 1961, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Facing down the wolf: a gay priest’s vocation

Lies and violence in the heart of family and church life. That’s where my testimony begins. For whatever reason of God’s own, I have received the formal commission to live this reality as a priest... failure is one of grace’s preferred building sites.... Read More...

Some notes for a Girardian reading of the Book of Revelation

Theological thinking is slow thinking... It is much more like feeling your way into a new relationship than it is achieving clarity about a new definition. And it is here that I think René Girard’s insight is so helpful, both as to method and as to content.... Read More...

On how Pope Francis is changing the Church

The real joy of the gospel is found in groups of sinners who sit lightly to their sins, know they are loved, and long to love better starting from where they are.... Read More...

The story behind the phone call from the Pope

I was being stretched by the tiniest glimpse of something true received, already, in my early adolescence: that ultimately the Catholic faith would embrace and include the gay heart; that the two held together give glory to God; and that it is better to die than to let go of that.... Read More...

‘This is Pope Francis calling…’

Canonically, it makes no sense at all, but … he does these things!... Read More...

Christ the High Priest - Stained glass detail from the great west window of Lancaster Cathedral

Clericalism and the Violent Sacred: dipping a Girardian toe in troubled waters

When Paul urges his listeners to become his imitators in offering himself up as sacrifice, just as Paul imitates Christ; or Peter tells his that they are living stones of the long-awaited New Temple: both take for granted that to be in Christ is a fundamentally priestly form of life.... Read More...

Violence and the Sacred in the Ancient Near East - cover image

Stretching Girard’s hypothesis: road marks for a long-term perspective

What might those who follow the thought of René Girard have to offer to those currently excavating Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey?... Read More...

The unexpected shape of forgiveness

One can, and some do, read Martel’s book as an accusation against the world of systemic mendacity which it reveals. For my part, I read it as one of the events which signal that God’s forgiveness is at last reaching even the hardest-hearted parts of our Church.... Read More...

Welcome to my world… (notes on the reception of a bombshell)

So, the other shoe has finally dropped. The veil has been removed from what the French rather gloriously call a “secret de Polichinelle” - an open secret: one that “everybody knows” but for which the evidence is both elusive and never really sought. The merely anecdotal is, at last, acquiring the contours of sociological visibility.... Read More...

Creation fulfilled and the Book of Revelation: some questions about order, disorder and the “apocalyptic” genre

The destruction of the Temple is prophesied, and wars, revolutions, turbulence, plague and famine all foretold. But.. do not allow your heads to be turned by all this, avert your gaze, do not attribute any sort of divine significance to any of this... The real coming of the son of man will be like a thief in the night, when you are not expecting it, so be vigilant.... Read More...