Catholic Voices

I’m really honoured to have been selected to join the Catholic Voices team.

Austen, Jack and Kathleen have gone out of their way to make this possible, both in terms of interview arrangements and assisting me with the logistics of coming to Leeds with a young baby, who can’t really be left for long periods of time, not least because she is refusing to take a bottle of any description. Kathleen has gone above and beyond the call of duty in terms of sorting out arrangements so I can attend, Austen was incredibly helpful and forbearing in terms of my IT issues and of organising an interview at short notice, so I’m really very grateful.

For what it’s worth, I’m really looking forward to being a part of the team, I hope that not only will I learn valuable skills from their experience and hone my apologetics, but I also hope to be able to make a valuable contribution. The Catholic blogosphere can often feel like something of a specialist and perhaps irrelevant niche, so I’m delighted to be going more mainstream.

In the words of Blessed John Henry Newman:

I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men [and women] who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity – I wish…to enlarge [their] knowledge, to cultivate [their] reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism…