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Christian Leadership Formation programme launched

Friday 1st January 2021

Christian Leadership Formation programme launched for Sixth Form students

Stefan Kaminski

Government leaders are easy targets for our criticisms, however justified these may be. But we cannot escape the fact that leaders do not grow on trees. They emerge from our very own society, and their shortcomings to some extent reflect our own collective failures in educating and forming our young people.

 As Catholics, we have a duty to provide a solid philosophical and theological formation for those whom we wish to see safeguarding and promoting a Christian society. We cannot expect future government ministers and legislators to formulate and implement ethically-coherent laws that distinguish between morally-licit surgery and invasive operations, genuine rights and the demands of lobbyists, if we have not given them the framework for such judgements.

 

The Lord Alton of Liverpool is one of many who have long recognised the need for a greater preparation of potential leaders. When he founded The Christian Heritage Centre charity, he dovetailed his desire for such a preparation with the charity’s objectives.

The Centre is delighted to now announce the launch of its first Christian Leadership Formation course. It has partnered with St Mary’s University, Twickenham and the Catholic Union of Great Britain to offer a course consisting of three, residential modules delivered over a nine-month period. Organisations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and Catholic Voices, besides other independent, Catholic academics, are also contributing to the course, so that participants will receive a variety of top-quality input from experts in different fields.

“In an increasingly fast moving and complex world where decision makers have to grapple with ethical challenges, about which they feel ill-equipped to deal with, a course which provides formation, maps and sign posts will be greatly welcomed by many,” noted Lord Alton.

Applications for the course are now being welcomed from Lower Sixth students until the end of March, when fifteen students will be selected on the basis of their personal statements, recommendations from their school, academic grades and personal references. The students who will be offered a place will be those who are motivated by their faith to help shape and create a society founded on Christian values; those who are driven towards public life by a love of God and of neighbour.

The successful applicants will gather at the charity’s Theodore House, in Lancashire, at the end of July for the first, five-day residential. Two shorter residentials will follow in London, during the October half-term and the Easter break of their last year of school

Each residential will have a particular focus. The first will consider the prerequisite “Philosophical Foundations for the Common Good”, providing the students with a grounding in concepts such as human dignity, natural law and conscience. The bedrock of Catholic ethics, these concepts today remain mostly in name whilst their origins have been lost from view and their meaning substantially mutated. The course will seek to offer students the necessary vision and tools to engage both faith and reason in pursuit of the truth that is common to all people, and which is the only source of a genuine and common good.

 The second residential will offer input on “Human Life and Ethical Considerations”, covering a range of issues from the basic definition and understanding of human life, through stem cell research and end-of-life care. As St John Paul II noted, “A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and amongst the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.” This second module will thus aim at instilling in our future leaders a profound sense of the full dignity of life at all its stages, and a clear, moral framework to tackle the continually-growing field of ethical issues around the existence and the nurture of human life.

 The final module will focus on “Applied Political Leadership”. It will examine Catholic Social Teaching in the context of the current political field, providing students with a clear, applied understanding of the purpose and role of politics as well as the essential principles that are necessary for a pursuit of the common good. One particular field that will also be addressed, which so many are particularly sensitive to today, is that of the management of public finances. Economic interests are often at the heart of political divisions, and yet the Church has long-since elaborated clear principles for the structuring of a fair and just fiscal policy.

Interspersed with the lectures provided on these different themes will be workshops on practical skills such as public speaking, policy making, political virtues and statesmanship. Learning and team-building activities, as well as social time, will complete a daily routine framed by communal meals, prayer and liturgy.

 The charity has been securing sponsorships from various organisations and trusts to cover the costs of the participants, in order to make this course free of any financial burden. However, the current pandemic has not made this process easy, and several places remain awaiting sponsorship.

 The charity will therefore not only be very grateful for any further support it receives towards meeting the costs of the course, but particularly for prayers offered for the course’s success. Please do also signpost your local Catholic secondary schools and Lower Sixth students to the details below!

 For more information about the course and for the Information and Application Pack, visit www.christianheritagecentre.com/clf or contact [email protected]

To donate towards the cost of this programme, please use the link below:
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Media Video

St Benedict of Nursia

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#7 St Benedict of Nursia

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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The seventh talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters turns to the “Father of Western Monasticism” and his Rule of life, which  still guides religious life around the world 1,500 years later. Benedict fled Rome, with the degenerate and empty lifestyle that he found amongst his fellow students, to become a hermit in the hills outside the city. His saintliness soon attracted diverse followers, and set him on the path of establishing monastic communities and writing a Rule. Though these were not primarily centres of learning, Benedictine monasteries, and others following their example, became the repositories of learning and culture. Europe thus owes not only its monastic tradition to Benedict, but also the continuity of its development through the medieval era.

About the speaker:

Father Cassian Folsom, O.S.B., is the founding prior of the Monastery of San Benedetto, located in Norcia, Italy, the birthplace of Saint Benedict. He was born in Massachusetts in 1955, and has been a monk since 1979 and a priest since 1984. Fr. Cassian studied music before joining the monastic community of Saint Meinrad in 1974. He has served as the pro-president of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute at Sant’ Anselmo from 1997 to 2000. He founded his monastic community in Rome in 1998 and transferred it to Norcia in the year 2000. Father Cassian has been a consulter to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments since 2010, and is the author of numerous studies on Roman Catholic liturgy.

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

#8 St Francis of Assisi

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Media Video

The Spanish Mystics

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#6 Saints Teresa of Avila & John of the Cross

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The sixth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters looks at two giants of the interior life: St Theresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. The profound mysticism of these two well-loved, Spanish saints did not detract from their pragmatic determinedness. Together, they reformed the Carmelite order in Spain, founding no less than 23 monasteries between them and effectively establishing the order of Discalced Carmelites. The hardships and difficulties they both endured in pursuing their vocation and in reforming their order were only met with a strength that was founded on their deep love for Christ, which was also the foundation of the great friendship between them.

About the speaker:

Fr Matthew Blake is a Carmelite priest. Originally from Ireland, he has lived and worked  in the UK for more than thirty years. His ministry has mainly involved retreat direction, for which he is well-known in the UK, and he has also worked in many different parishes.

A selection of Fr Blake’s talks can be found here.

 

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#7 St Benedict of Nursia

#8 St Francis of Assisi

Categories
Articles Media

Newman: A Light between the Reformation and Modernity

Friday 6th November 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Newman: A Light between the Reformation and Modernity

Stefan Kaminski

St John Henry Newman’s journey to the Catholic faith remains a powerful testimony to an increasingly-secularised world

Last month, two important anniversaries of English saints coincided. We saw the fiftieth anniversary of the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, and we celebrated the first anniversary of John Henry Newman’s canonisation.

Although the Martyrs and Newman lived and died several centuries apart, they are united by the experience of the protestant Reformation and the ensuing split of the English State’s Church from the Catholic. However, they both experienced this split in rather different ways. The Martyrs experienced it from without: being persecuted and executed for not adhering to the new, Protestant Church. Newman, as a member of that Protestant Church, experienced it from within; from there, finding his way to Catholicism.

Oriel College, Oxford, where St Newman was elected Fellow in 1822.

Although Newman was no longer subject to laws that penalised the practice of Catholicism in England, he was nonetheless ostracised following his public conversion, and lost – at least for a period – many of his friends. A large dose of prejudice and suspicion of Catholics remained from the Reformation era, and in this sense too, his experience was in continuity with the Martyrs. 

However, Newman also faced a prejudice and suspicion from different quarters, which, in our turn, we can identify with too. The philosophical current known as modernity had already taken root by Newman’s day. The “modern” way of thinking rejected the possibility of acknowledging any religious belief to be true. It declared, in the words of Newman, that “revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous.” Modernity meant that all interpretations of reality were equally valid: meaning that none were ultimately true. In this milieu of an increasingly secular culture and an embedded hostility to Catholicism, Newman found his way to God and to the Church.

The statue of Cardinal Newman in front of the Brompton Oratory, London

It was not, as is often the case, a simple and immediate conversion. Rather, as Pope Benedict XVI observed when he beatified Newman, it consisted of three, distinct phases. The first is, in part, a response to the secular world: it is basically the thought that there exist “two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator”. In effect, this was a conversion to a properly Christian way of thinking, which we are increasingly alienated from due to the contrary assumptions that secular thinking makes. For “modern man”, reality is defined by the empirical: that which science can tell us. For the Christian, reality is defined by the spiritual: God and one’s soul.

This truth applies not only to our own, physical existence in this world, but also to every person around us and, indeed, to the entire world that surrounds us. It leads to the understanding that the meaning of things is given by God; their existence itself is guaranteed by God, rather than by the laws of nature (which are themselves an expression of God’s will). And so, the second of Newman’s conversions is summed up in his insistence that it is not enough to hold one’s faith as an abstract state of consciousness: Christianity means “’looking to Jesus’ (Heb 2:9) … and acting according to His will.” It is a trusting in the Lord to lead us concretely through along the path of life, perhaps best summed up by Newman’s hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light”.

The third conversion was, in a sense, the most difficult. If there was a stigma attached to the rejection of his own, Anglican Church, it was increasingly counter-cultural to profess adherence to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. As Benedict XVI noted, this step involved giving up his rank, profession and many of his academic and personal ties; and yet Newman resolutely took this step in October 1845. If it was a step that involved a great interior struggle; it was also a step that finally brought a peace to his mind. Despite the corruption, divisions and imperfections that Newman saw vividly in the Catholic Church, he understood that these were not relevant to the question of faith. For in the Church, Newman saw the same objectivity that he identified in God: the reality of the Church as the real and living, Body of Christ. The Church, with its frail and human outward appearance, is the real place of God’s presence, that the Creator made for Himself upon entering into the world. In that Church, Newman “found a power, a resource, a comfort, a consolation in our Lord’s Real Presence, in communion in His Divine and Human Person, which all good Catholics indeed have.”

Contrary to what is sometimes, sceptically, asserted: becoming a Catholic did not involve a handing over of his own powers of thinking and autonomy. Becoming a Catholic meant finding the freedom to be transformed by what is true, and therefore to discover oneself ever more authentically. It is the same freedom that the Martyrs possessed in giving their lives readily for God, the Church and their flock. It is a freedom that appears contradictory to the secular mind, which can only conceive of freedom as pure, unstructured (and therefore meaningless) liberty.

St Newman thus retains an enormous relevance to today’s Christians. He stands as a powerful reminder that authentically seeking God entails neither freedom from the Church nor freedom from religion.

This article draws from a talk given by Dr. Giuseppe Pezzini’s on St Newman for The Christian Heritage Centre. It is accessible at www.christianheritagecentre.com/media/sssm3newman/

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Media Video

St Francis de Sales

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#5 St Francis de Sales

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The fifth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters explores the spirituality of a great Bishop and director of souls: St Francis de Sales. Known for his deep love of God and his determination to bring every person – be they lay or religious – to a real holiness of life, he paid special attention to lay people living working lives. Much of his writing was directed to showing such people how to grow in holiness through their day-to-day activity. His fame as a spiritual director brought him into demand from Popes, royalty and nobility. Despite this, he lived out the last word of advice he gave from his deathbed: “humility”.

About the speaker:

Canon Scott Tanner is a priest of the Institute of Christ the King, Soverign Priest. After studying Theology and Religious Studies at Nottingham University, he studied for the priest at St Philip Neri Seminary, near Florence, Italy. He was ordained in 2015 and worked in the Diocese of Shrewsbury before joining the parish of St Walburge’s in Preston, Lancashire.

 

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#6 The Spanish Mystics

#7 St Benedict of Nursia

#8 St Francis of Assisi

Categories
Media Video

Newman 101 conference

Newman 101: Why Newman Matters Today

Recordings of the online colloquium celebrating St Newman’s 10th anniversary of beatification and 1st anniversary of canonisation.

Introduction

***The recordings are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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Newman's Marian Turn

For more information about Dr Lamb, please click here.

 

Newman as Friend & Pastor
in the Work of Meriol Trevor

For more information about Mrs Caldecott, please click here.

Newman on Imagination:
Callista Revisited

For more information about Dr Pezzini, please click here.

Newman on Why Culture Matters

For more information about Dr Phillips, please click here.

Questions & Conclusion

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Articles Media

Homage to the Martyrs at Deepdale

Friday 2nd October 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Homage to the Martyrs at Deepdale

David Gorman

David Gorman looks back 50 years to when 20,000 flocked to Preston’s Deepdale Stadium for Mass to celebrate the Canonisation of the Forty Martyrs, a quarter of whom came from Lancashire.

The cause for the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, which eventually took place on 25th October 1970, stretches its roots back to the mid-19th Century. 

Following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman and Cardinal Henry Manning led a campaign for the recognition of those who had been Martyred for the faith. 

Just a year previously, in 1849, Frederick William Faber had written the rousing hymn Faith of Our Fathers in memory of the Martyrs. Born and raised an Anglican, Faber converted and was ordained a priest, later becoming an Oratorian Father. 

By 1935 nearly 200 Reformation Martyrs had been beatified, earning the title ‘Blessed’, but only two, John Fisher and Thomas More, had been canonised; both on 19 May 1935 by Pope Pius XI.

Following the end of the Second World War, the cause, which had been largely dormant for some time, was gradually revived and, in December 1960, the names 

the Lancaster Evening Post, 3 July 1961

of 34 English and six Welsh Martyrs were submitted to the Sacred Congregation of Rites by Cardinal William Godfrey, Archbishop of Westminster. All had been Martyred between 1535 and 1679. The list of names was drawn up in consultation with the Bishops of England and Wales and an attempt was made to ensure the list reflected a spread of social status and religious rank, together with a geographical spread and the existence of a well-established devotion.

Of the 40, 33 were Priests (20 religious and 13 secular) and seven were lay people. It is worth noting that around a quarter of these Mar-tyrs came from within the historic boundaries of the County Palatine of Lancashire, a reminder, albeit a poignant one, that the region remained a true stronghold of the faith despite the persecutions and difficulties that brought.

On 24th May 1961, the re-opening of the cause was formally decreed by Pope John XXIII. It was no surprise, therefore, that once the list of 40 names had been submitted, and the decree issued, the Diocese of Lancaster was quick off the mark in organising a rally in support of the cause. The rally took place on Sunday 2nd July 1961 at Deepdale, home to Preston North End, and was attended by more than 20,000 people including over 200 clergy. 

Pontifical High Mass at the Forty Martyrs Rally, Deepdale, Preston

Parishioners, school children, scouts, guides, cubs and brownies all processed through the streets of Preston from their respective churches to the stadium while others, from parishes further afield, arrived by coach. The Lancashire Evening Post reported that: ‘It started back in the parishes where three huge processions based on St Joseph’s, St Ignatius’ and St Gregory’s formed and walked through the streets with banners and bands to converge at Deepdale’.

A ‘Pageant of the Martyrs’ took place with 40 individuals each dressed as a martyr in the colourful costumes associated with the Tudor and Stuart periods. Narrators announced brief details of each martyr’s life and death, and once all were assembled on the dais ‘they presented a huge tableau, strangely set in a modern football stand, of figures who suffered the strife and religious persecution in England and Wales 400 years ago’.

The pageant was followed by Pontifical High Mass celebrated by Monsignor Thomas Eaton, the Vicar General of the diocese, in the presence of Bishop Thomas Flynn of Lancaster. 

For the canonisation to proceed it was necessary for two miracles, granted through the intercession of the 40 as a group, to be recognised. A list of 24 miracles was collated and submitted by the English and Welsh bishops and, after careful examination, two of these were chosen for further scrutiny. The Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints granted a special dispensation whereby it was decided, subject to Papal approval, that one of the two miracles would be sufficient to allow the canonisation of all 40 Martyrs to proceed. This was the “cure of a young mother affected with a malignant tumour (fibrosarcoma) in the left scapula, a cure which the Medical Council had judged gradual, perfect, constant and unaccountable on the natural plane”.

On 4th May 1970 Pope Paul VI confirmed the “preternatural character of this cure brought about by God at the intercession of the 40 blessed Martyrs of England and Wales”. The path was now open for the canonisation to take place on a date to be set, and thirty-four English and six Welsh Martyrs were submitted to the Sacred Congregation of Rites by Cardinal William Godfrey, Archbishop of Westminster. All had been Martyred between 1535 and 1679. The list of names was drawn up in consultation with the Bishops of England and Wales and an attempt was made to ensure the list reflected a spread of social status and religious rank, together with a geographical spread and the existence of a well-established devotion.

Parishioners on Skeffington Road, Preston about to leave St Joseph's Church for Deepdale

However, there was concern in some quarters about the effect the canonisation might have on the ecumenical agenda. In November 1969, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, had “expressed his apprehension that this canonisation might rekindle animosity and polemics detriment to the ecumenical spirit that has characterised the efforts of the Churches recently”. 

It was clear, however, that the majority of people within both faiths supported the canonisation and, on 18th May 1970, Pope Paul VI declared, during a consistory, that the canonisation would take place on 25th October that year “pointing out, with serene frankness and great charity, the ecumenical value of this Cause, also laying particular stress on the fact that we need the example of these Martyrs particularly today not only because the Christian religion is still exposed to violent persecution in various parts of the world, but also because at a time when the theories of materialism and naturalism are constantly gaining ground and threatening to destroy the spiritual heritage of our civilization, the 40 Martyrs – men and women from all walks of life – who did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives in obedience to the dictates of conscience and the divine will, stand out as noble witnesses to human dignity and freedom”.

Some 10,000 English and Welsh pilgrims, together with the bishops of England and Wales and representative bishops from Scotland and Ireland, were among the large congregation which attended the canonisation Mass at St Peter’s. Special guests included descendants of many of the martyrs, including the Duke of Norfolk, England and Wales’s most senior Catholic layman and himself a collateral descendant of the soon to be St Philip Howard. In recognition of the unique significance of the event for English and Welsh Catholics, the Maestro Perpetuo of the Sistine Chapel Choir, which would normally sing at all canonisation Masses, agreed that the Westminster Cathedral Choir could sing in its place. The Catholic writer, Auberon Waugh, described the canonisation as “the biggest moment for English Catholicism since Catholic emancipation”.

This article is from a series published in the Catholic Voice of Lancaster this month, commemorating the 50th anniversary of canonisation of the Forty Martyrs.

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Media Video

St Thomas Aquinas

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#4 St Thomas Aquinas

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The fourth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters will explore the spirituality of one of the Church’s greatest theologians: Thomas Aquinas. Known for his unique and massive synthesis of Catholic theology, Aquinas earned the title of “The Angelic Doctor” not just for his great learning, but for the wisdom and light he brought to the Church’s thinking. In this talk, Fr Richard Conrad, O.P. will focus particularly on the themes of being, freedom and friendship. As the greatest of God’s gifts, they are fundamental to this great saint’s spirituality.

About the speaker:

Richard Conrad studied chemistry at Cambridge, and after his doctorate joined the Dominican Friars. He has served as Prior in Cambridge and Leicester, and for 8 years was Novice Master of the Province. He taught dogmatic theology at Maryvale Institute part-time from 1992 to 2016, and from 2007 has been resident at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he teaches dogmatic theology and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and is currently Director of the Aquinas Institute.

For more information about Fr Conrad, please click here.

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

#2 St Therese of Lisieux

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

Categories
Media Video

St John Henry Newman

St John Henry Newman

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#3 St John Henry Newman

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The third talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters explores the spirituality of the latest English person to be canonised: John Henry Newman. Known for his great intellect and his conversion from Protestantism to the Catholic Faith, Newman’s journey was powered by his grasping of the realism and certainty of God’s presence.  At the heart of this journey was his conscience, drawing him “out of the shadows into truth”. This talk will focus on Newman’s ‘realism’ and his conversions.

About the speaker:

Dr Giuseppe Pezzini

Tutorial Fellow in Latin Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College Oxford. He came to St Andrews in 2016 after research fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin, and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern, including above all Tolkien’s views on the ‘mystery of literary creation’. He is an Associate of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Art in St Andrews and the Tolkien Editor of the Journal of the Inklings Studies. He is a member of the RSE Young Academy Scotland, the Young Academy of Europe, and a collaborator of the Meeting of Rimini, for which he has curated exhibitions on John Henry Newman (2011, 2014), Oscar Wilde (2015) and JRR Tolkien (2021).

For more information about Dr Pezzini, please click here.

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

#2 St Therese of Lisieux

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

Categories
Media Video

St Therese of Lisieux

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#2 St Therese of Lisieux

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The second talk in the series explores the life and spirituality of Therese of Lisieux. Perhaps one of the most beloved saints of Western Europe, Therese died at the age of only 24 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. She had spent 9 years as a Carmelite nun, fighting to be allowed to enter the convent at the age of 15. Her hidden and simple, yet whole-hearted life of prayer was repaid with a special grace of intimacy with God. Her vocation to love in her very ordinary struggles and simple life instantly made her an immensely popular and accessible saint. Canonised only 28 years after her death, her “Story of a Soul” has been read by and inspired countless people all over the world.

About the speaker:

Canon John Udris is Spiritual Director at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham.  He has a Licence in Spirituality from the Dominican University in Rome.  He is the author of two books on St Therese: ‘Holy Daring’ and ‘The Gift of St Therese of Lisieux.’

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics