In the days following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and with both houses of Congress in the hands of a Republican party keen to limit immigration and abolish President Obama’s healthcare system, there were no shortage of voices online calling for a withdrawal from civic life. “I’m just going…

The advantages of social media as a tool for evangelisation or – arguably – an environment in which evangelisation can take place are discussed on a regular basis nowadays, but the difficulties of maintaining a coherent, timely and appropriate social media presence aren’t always acknowledged. This was demonstrated all too sharply last weekend, when the…

It’s hard to deny that online debate about Amoris Laetitia has been marked far more by heat than light. Indeed, disagreement about the Pope’s exhortation on love and the family has reached such a point that at least one commentator has claimed the Church is now entering a fully-fledged civil war. This is, of course, nonsense: that…

Without a doubt, one of the key challenges of the Church in the modern world is to reach out to those who are outside it – whether those might be people who have fallen away from the Church, or never been part of the Church, or simply people opposed to whatever social role they see…

It’s hard to imagine a more inflammatory title for a blogpost than ‘Catholic pro-lifers at the Women’s March? Get used to it’, but American blogger Simcha Fisher has never been one to pussyfoot around. Writing at simchafisher.com, she starts with a bang. “Were you surprised, even shocked, to see Catholics and other pro-lifers joining in…

Among the most consistently interesting religious blogs over recent years have been those on the Catholic channel of patheos.com, with Eve Tushnet’s being a fine example of this. Tushnet, who converted to Catholicism in 1998, describes herself as an “openly lesbian and celibate Catholic”, and writes often on themes of religion of sexuality. In a…

It was no fluke that the climax to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – the destruction of the Ring on Mount Doom – took place, as Tolkien fans who pore over appendices will tell you, on March 25. March 25, writes Eleanor Parker at aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, is “the single most significant date in salvation…

Few topics have drawn as much attention online of late than Donald Trump’s seemingly inexorable path towards becoming the Republican candidate in next year’s US presidential election. What Catholics think of this isn’t entirely clear. A solid place to look for data on the subject is fivethirtyeight.com, where last month Catholic blogger Leah Libresco pointed…

“Give me the child, and I will mould the man”, Grace Bozzino at quadrapheme.com quotes St Francis Xavier as having said. “If that’s the case,” she points out, “then parents have some fairly important questions to ask. To whom are we giving our children? What sort of men – and women –will be returned to…

When the Church of England twitter account reacted to news that Richard Dawkins had had a mild stroke by tweeting “Prayers for Prof Dawkins and his family”, the tweet’s author didn’t expect the ensuing storm of protest, along with cheers from those who thought it a hilarious thing for them to have done. Anxious to…