William Oddie, Author at Catholic Herald

William Oddie

Christmas brought out the best in GK Chesterton

December 20, 2018

Every year for more than 30 years, GK Chesterton wrote five or six articles and a number of poems about Christmas. Chesterton’s friend and biographer Maisie Ward once wrote that she had an ambition to collect all of Chesterton’s writings on Christmas into one volume. But it was the writer Marie Smith who first assembled

The message of a boiled pudding

December 21, 2017

Christmas, we all know (despite the common belief of non-Christians), is not the most important feast of the Christian year. We know that that is Easter, and that it is only in the Resurrection of Christ that the story of our salvation comes to its climax and its fulfilment. But Christmas does have about it

The Maltese Church once defied secularisation. Now its bishops have surrendered

February 03, 2017

The Maltese bishops' guidelines on Communion mean that secular culture has triumphed over the Church

The gift of Joseph Ratzinger

December 22, 2016

How does one begin to enter into such a mind as that of Joseph Ratzinger? How does one enter – more importantly – into such a spirituality, one at the same time so simple and yet so profound? These are large questions: the answer to them has been made accessible by the journalist Peter Seewald,

We are all entitled to our political views: but should the US elections be so angry and so personal?

February 12, 2016

Things on the campaign trail are getting ugly (as well as grossly expensive). Is this all really unavoidable?

Archive: Five years ago Benedict XVI routed his enemies and brought joy to the British faithful

September 16, 2015

We republish the following blog, originally published on September 20, 2010, to mark the fifth anniversary of Benedict's papal visit to Britain

‘The Church saves us’, I wrote: I am told that actually it is Jesus Christ. How many Catholics think like Protestants?

August 24, 2015

The Church, rightly perceived, is a thing of divine wonder, even though it so often looks like a thing of earth

The Pope’s spokesman says he is ‘confused’. Few understand this pontificate: but it’s the Church that saves us

August 13, 2015

This Pope doesn’t ‘do’ doctrine. His particular vocation as Supreme Pontiff may not be established for many years

Here we go again: another ill-informed attack on Bishop Egan and the Friars of the Immaculate

August 06, 2015

This sort of thing used to happen all the time: are we now to expect a renewal of the Tablet’s old anti-traditionalist hostility?

The German bishops have declared independence from Rome on same-sex marriage: how far will the rot spread now?

August 06, 2015

Are we witnessing the beginnings of an international campaign of defiance against the Catholic moral law?

Holy Communion for divorcees is again on the agenda: as the Synod approaches, the Pope Emeritus has quietly spoken again

July 30, 2015

The ‘silent’ Pope Benedict has ways of being heard; and he is still being listened to

The premature sexualisation of our young has become a massive problem: what will the Church do about it?

July 28, 2015

Underage girls are being fitted with contraceptive implants without parental consent: this has to stop

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