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.
7 mins read
Texts
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.
8 mins read
‘This is Pope Francis calling…’
Canonically, it makes no sense at all, but … he does these things!
1 min read
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.
54 mins read
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?
41 mins read
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.
11 mins read
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.
34 mins read
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.
20 mins read
Interdividuals, individuals and fragmented selves: how can mimetic theory help us understand “huiothesia*”?
Rather than being people who are first ordered, and then fall from order (and so are dis-graced), and then restored to order by forgiveness, understood as a form of pity from on high, we may find it possible to tell another story: we start as those who are not yet ordered, and find ourselves being summoned out of our too-small selves into being... as we are challenged to reach beyond any sort of safety.
24 mins read
Scapegoat: how civilisation harms and how the Cross heals
It’s a word we’re all familiar with, it’s through the violence of the scapegoating mechanism that civilisations are built. And, it is through the scapegoating mechanism that the cross heals. It’s a fascinating way of understanding the atonement, especially for those of us disillusioned with models of atonement that require a violent God.
39 mins read