Blessed Cardinal Newman's Feast Day This Weekend

What a wonderful chance to pray for the conversion of our separated brethren in the various Anglican churches.

Pope Benedict on Cardinal Newman

Happy Hobbit Day!

A very happy Hobbit Day to one and all: it is the shared birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins of course.

You may wonder why this blog would mention fictional characters with nothing Welsh or Catholic about them. Au Contraire.

The author JRR Tolkien was, in fact, a famous Catholic. And whilst the Hobbits are quintessentially English in their mannerisms, his book and various characters have distinctly Welsh characteristics - from the mining Dwarves, to the language of the Elves.

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892. When he was 12 the death of his mother, who died of diabetes, meant that he and his brother Hilary became wards of a priest at the Birmingham Oratory.

Of course, Birmingham Oratory was founded by Blessed Cardinal Newman whose very beatification we all celebrated last weekend.

Yet another example of how Catholicism imbues so much of our culture and history.


Link:
Tolkien and the Birmingham Oratory

Blessed Cardinal Newman & Charity for the Poor

What a joy for me (I wouldn't dare to speculate on your behalf!) to start this blog of my thoughts and meanderings as a Welsh Catholic on the day that His Holiness the Pope, the head of our universal Church, has beatified Cardinal Newman, a great Prince of the Church.

I am an admirer of Cardinal Newman, not only because he was a wonderful convert and saw that Christianity has its true roots and home in the Roman Catholic faith; not only because he was a great thinker, theologian and writer (now I must dig out my Apologia Pro Vita Sua and read it!); not only because his beautiful poetry reaches into the soul; but because he was such an ardent soul and his apostolate reached out to the poor.

It must be easy, as a Prince of the Church, to be side-tracked into the circles of power and State, yet Cardinal Newman had such a special love and care for the poor, he truly was a servant of God and the poor, remembering that we are all created in the image of God.

When the Catholic Church reaches out to help the poor in that true charity and humility espoused by Our Lord, that is when hearts and minds are won for Christ and His Church.

This true pastoral care, rooted in the faithful traditions of the Church, will bring countless souls into the Church, just it did in Blessed Cardinal Newman's day.


Link:
The Cause for Cardinal Newman's Canonisation

As an aside, in the early days of Saxon colonisation of what would become England, much of Birmingham was for a time in Powys. So, I can clutch at the straw that Cardinal Newman has this tenuous link with Wales.