A long, slightly irreverent, scrupulously honest tour of the Shroud of Turin — the carbon-dating fiasco, the bloodstains, the man who fainted in his darkroom, and the one question that has out-survived every expert who ever tried to answer it.

There are some questions a writer chooses, and others that choose the writer. The question of who may be ordained to the priesthood is, for me, very much the latter. It is a question that has followed me through years of ministry, study, and conversation — with seminarians, with fellow clergy, with faithful women who have felt called to serve at the altar, and with sceptics who simply want to understand why so many ancient churches still hold the line they do. The Male Priesthood: Precedent and Mandate is my attempt to set down, as carefully and as honestly as I can, what I believe the answer to be and why.

And if you are a pastor, a church leader, a chaplain, a deacon, a home group leader, a friend from the congregation who has been asked to visit someone in hospital — this article is especially written for you. Because the ministry of accompanying the sick is one of the most ancient, most sacred, and most humanly demanding callings in the life of any community of faith. It is also one of the least talked about, the least trained for, and the most feared.

Raise your hand if you've ever sat in a pew, a Sunday school class, or a late-night dorm room conversation and thought: "The Holy Trinity? Sure. Absolutely. Three-in-one. Totally got it." — while absolutely not getting it. 😂

Don't worry. You're in excellent company. Theologians have been wrestling with the doctrine of the Trinity since the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and the debate has been lively enough to make modern Facebook arguments look like polite tea parties. In fact, one bishop reportedly punched another bishop in the face over it. At a church council. Which, when you think about it, is an extremely committed way to do theology.

On the morning of Monday, 11 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV received participants in the eighth joint colloquium organised by the Holy See’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and Jordan’s Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. The theme chosen for this year’s gathering was “Human Compassion and Empathy in Modern Times.” In his address — delivered in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope called Christians and Muslims to a common mission: “to revive humanity where it has grown cold, to give voice to those who suffer and to transform indifference into solidarity.”

There are conversations that polite society prefers to defer, always hoping that the urgency will somehow resolve itself. This is no longer one of those conversations. Churches have been set ablaze. Synagogues have been firebombed. Sacred art has been desecrated. And across European and North American cities, the accumulated heritage of two thousand years of Christian civilisation — its music, its sculpture, its literature, its architecture — is increasingly subject to demands, pressures, and acts of hostility rooted in a theological framework that considers much of that heritage to be, quite literally, forbidden. The name of that framework is haram.

“The stone had been rolled away not to let Jesus out,
but to let the witnesses in.”

Mary Magdalene, arriving in the pre-dawn dark, at first concludes the worst: that the body has been stolen. She weeps. She does not recognise the risen Christ when he stands before her. She mistakes him for the gardener. Even the disciples, when they first hear her report, dismiss it as idle talk. The Resurrection enters the world quietly — almost reluctantly — and it asks not for immediate acclaim but for the slow, deepening recognition that transforms fishermen into martyrs.

Holy Saturday is the quietest day in the Christian calendar. The crowds have gone. The disciples are hidden behind locked doors. The shouting, the trial, the agony, the death — all of it is over. And in a garden outside the walls of Jerusalem, a great stone has been rolled across the entrance to a tomb, and sealed.

We tend to rush past that sealed stone on our way to Easter Sunday. But it is worth pausing here, in the silence, and asking what that sealed tomb actually means — and why it matters so much for everything that comes next.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" — "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — is the opening line of Psalm 22. Attributed to David and composed around 1000 BC, this psalm was not an obscure text. It was well-known, regularly sung, and deeply cherished. Any observant Jew hearing those words would have immediately recognised them.

The debate provoked by the Open Iftar in Trafalgar Square has been, on the whole, a depressing spectacle. It has revealed a Christian community — or what remains of it in the British public square — that is more comfortable with reactive indignation than with the hard work of evangelical renewal. It has revealed politicians who invoke Christianity as a cultural marker while showing little evidence of any personal acquaintance with its actual content. It has revealed media commentators who can generate heat around questions of religious identity without shedding much light on what any of the faiths in question actually teach.

What it has not revealed — at least not prominently — is the Christianity we actually need. The Christianity of the Holy Week processions. The Christianity of the open door and the burning lamp. The Christianity of the priest who takes the gospel to the streets, not because he wishes to dominate anyone, but because he has been grasped by something he cannot keep to himself.

The current anxiety surrounding AI‑assisted writing is neither new nor particularly original. It is simply the latest iteration of a recurring cultural reflex: whenever a new intellectual tool emerges, a chorus rises to declare that “real work” is under threat. The same objections were levelled, almost verbatim, against electronic calculators in mathematics classrooms several decades ago.

The recent remarks of Pope Leo XIV urging priests “to resist the temptation to prepare homilies with artificial intelligence” merit careful and extended analysis. His concerns touch on the nature of preaching, the exercise of the intellect, the authenticity of pastoral communication, and the place of technological mediation in ecclesial life. Because the Pope is correct on several foundational points, it is all the more important to examine where his conclusions do not follow and where his diagnosis of artificial intelligence rests on conceptual misunderstandings.

As the Canons Regular of the Sacred Heart of Jesus prepare to enter a year dedicated to the Eucharist, three books have been chosen as guiding lights: In Sinu Jesu, God Is Near Us, and This Is My Body. Each approaches the Eucharistic mystery from a different angle — contemplative, theological, and missionary — yet together they form a coherent vision of renewal. These works will shape the CRSHJ’s prayer, formation, and outreach throughout 2026.

There are moments in history — and moments in our own lives — when the world confronts us with something so unjust, so contrary to the heart of God, that silence becomes impossible. The Scriptures do not ask us to pretend that everything is fine. They do not ask us to smile politely while the vulnerable are harmed. They do not ask us to be neutral when human dignity is trampled.

In fact, the Scriptures show us something quite different.

As we step into 2026, the Canons Regular of the Sacred Heart of Jesus begin our annual Donations Campaign — a moment each year when we invite friends, benefactors, and all who share our mission to stand with us in sustaining the pastoral, educational, and charitable work entrusted to our care. This is not simply a fundraising effort. It is a renewal of shared responsibility for the life of the Church, and for the people who rely on us for sacramental ministry, spiritual accompaniment, and practical support.

In recent years, the question of whether women should be ordained as priests has become a topic of lively debate in many corners of the Church and society. Some see the issue through the lens of equality, others through the lens of cultural change, and still others through personal experience of gifted, faithful women who serve the Church in countless ways.

These conversations are often sincere and heartfelt. But for the Catholic Church — and for the Canons Regular of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — the question of priestly ordination is not ultimately about cultural preference, personal ability, or institutional reform. It is about fidelity to what we have received.

We come today to reflect upon a question that has stirred debate, provoked misunderstanding, and, at times, caused deep wounds in the lives of countless individuals. The question is this: Is being gay or bisexual a choice?

This question is not merely academic. It touches upon the dignity of human persons, the integrity of families, the justice of societies, and the compassion of communities of faith. To answer it wrongly is to risk perpetuating prejudice, to justify discrimination, and to burden souls with guilt for realities they did not choose. To answer it rightly is to affirm truth, to defend human dignity, and to extend the hand of justice and mercy.

The thesis I advance today is clear: being gay or bisexual is not a choice. It is not a lifestyle selected from a menu of options, nor a preference adopted at whim. It is a natural variation of human sexuality, deeply rooted in biology, psychology, and lived experience.

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, today we stand before the mystery of the Temple—not merely as a building of stone, but as a living reality, a sacred dwelling, a sign of communion between heaven and earth. The readings appointed for this feast—the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica—draw us into a profound meditation on the nature of the Church, the holiness of God’s dwelling, and the zeal of Christ for the sanctity of His Father’s house. But more than that, they invite us to recognise that we ourselves are temples of the Holy Spirit, living stones built into a spiritual house, called to holiness, to communion, and to transformation.

In this hour, when wealth is flaunted as virtue and poverty is dismissed as failure, the Gospel speaks with thunderous clarity. Pope Leo XIV, in his Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te, reminds us:

“The path to salvation is not widened by wealth, but narrowed by its misuse. The rich must learn to walk barefoot, or they will not pass through the gate.”
— Dilexi Te, §58

This letter is a call to repentance. To conversion. To mercy. It is a mirror held up to those who have built fortresses of comfort while Christ stands outside, hungry and ignored.

The Canons Regular of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (CRSHJ) issue this statement with solemn urgency. Across the United Kingdom and the wider world, we are witnessing a dangerous distortion of the Christian Gospel. Nationalist-fascist movements are hijacking Christian language, symbols, and theology to sanctify exclusion, authoritarianism, cultural supremacy and to justify persecution. This is not merely a political concern—it is a spiritual crisis…