Blog

Each book of the Bible has impacted in its own unique way on the life of the Church over the course of history. Some have never had to struggle for attention: Genesis with its richly evocative myths of origin, Isaiah, the pilgrim’s necessary companion in Advent, and Exodus, providing that […]

Fr Damian’s Homily at the University Church Mass for the ...

June 16, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

At the Newman Society, we are blessed with many gifted scholars: recently, two among them discovered this astonishing Medieval Manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which they have transcribed for our enjoyment. It is attributed to St John of the Crossword, but is probably pseudepigraphical; the true authorship is lost to […]

“St. Arbuck”, by St John of the Crossword

June 5, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

Jan Beerblock, De ziekenzalen van het Sint-Janshospitaal (The Wards at Saint John’s Hospital), 1778 March 2020, Twilight Shift The hospital had one very big perk for a junior doctor at the time, a large doctors’ mess facility. Unlike most doctors’ messes, limited to the whole spectrum of cupboard sizes, from the cozy […]

A Quiet Night and a Perfect End, by Max Hollowday, ...

May 30, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

I have recently had the misfortune of hearing a truly terrible happy-clappy rewriting of Newman’s hymn Lead Kindly Light, arranged for guitar, drum kit, and Hozier-wannabe vocalist. I don’t mean to slate anyone who likes that kind of thing; only to say that the wild incongruity of the genre and […]

Lead Kindly Light, by Eleni Thwaites

May 21, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

By Alcuin Schachenmayr, O.Cist. Image: Sarah sofía at English Wikipedia A truly global Catholic devotion, the Brown Scapular or Scapular of Mount Carmel, represents the habit of the Carmelites. Even if largely unknown in today’s secularized Europe, it is a common Catholic devotion the world over. Legend states that it […]

The Scapular of Mount Carmel, a classical Catholic devotion… from ...

May 16, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

Image: St. George and the Dragon, c. 1490, Storkyrkan Stockholm (photo: Øyvind Holmstad, CC BY-SA 4.0) In 494, Pope Gelasius issued a decree now traditionally referred to as the Decretum Gelasianum at the Council of Rome.[1] The final section of the decree lists a number of works as apocryphal, including […]

Saint George: A Testament to Tradition, by Joseph Silva

April 28, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

A Lenten poem based on a Meditation by Denis the Carthusian (1402-1471) – by an anonymous student “Observe attentively with the eye of your heart how I am hanging upon the cross. I’m hanging with outstretched arms so that I can embrace you whenever you come to me. […]

A Sword will Pierce your Heart

March 6, 2025 in Blog by Sam Troy

Earlier this year, our friends in the Oxford Companions established a proto-Shrine to Blessed Gerard, founder of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta. The Shrine stands at the entrance to the Catholic Chaplaincy of the University and was blessed by […]

Blessed Gerard, a saint yet to be sainted?

August 6, 2023 in Blog by William Morris

Today, 6th July, St Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill. His martyrdom seems almost unfathomably distant from us – though sadly not from many of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world – but today we can see, with our own eyes, someone taking the opposite decision, on […]

Papa vs rex – St Thomas More and the Abingdon ...

July 6, 2023 in Blog tagged Thomas More by William Morris

Dear Friends in Christ, Te Deum laudamus! May I take this opportunity to firstly wish you all a very Merry Christmas and now also a very Happy New Year! I hope that this year will be filled with many blessings for us all and especially for the Society. It would […]

Happy New Year!

December 31, 2022 in Blog by William Morris