De Cura Animarum: Father Aidan Nichols: The Priest Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Saturday, 27 February 2010

Father Aidan Nichols: The Priest Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Faith Matters - Lent 2010 - Fr Aidan Nichols from Catholic Westminster on Vimeo.

1 comments:

Jeffrey Steel said...: I am hoping that this space will provide some good discussion on Father Nichols' talk on priesthood. I found his future outlook quite challenging and very hopeful and would enjoy hearing what others think. Please do comment and link this post for discussion on other Catholic or interested Anglo-Catholic blogs. Send them here to discuss the theological content. Thank you!; 27 February 2010 10:43

"I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater... She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn't opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say... Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them. Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the most portable person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it. That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable."

- Flannery O'Connor