Tag: Saints

All through my life I have wandered in and out of belief. As a child I had a sure faith. Then, like many I drifted away. Periodically I would attend church, get very involved and then move away from it all. Sometimes, even when involved, I would have long times of non-belief.

I was swaddled in the fourth century again last week. Eyes filled with the detritus of the early monastic movement, we were moving through the feast of that western monastic pioneer Martin of Tours when I was struck forcefully by a basic reflection on the ways they thought and wrote about what they did. One of the strongest strains of the early monastic literature is the life. Not the treatise, not the argument.

He tried his hand as a businessman, as a soldier, as a man of decadent leisure. But here, with a beggar asking for a mere few coins, Francis was confronted with the greatest choice of all: how to best help the lost and forgotten among us

Now Pope Benedict XVI is coming to Britain, and many would wish that he was not. He is soon going to beatify John Henry Newman. Some people will then pray ‘through’ John Henry Newman. In the spirit of deconversion I’d like instead to beatify Francis William Newman, although I will loyally keep to his stance of not praying through anyone.