On Thursday, there is more lost-history to contemplate. More Christian life unknown. Certainly, His Grace tacitly withdraws some measure of the veil of – more creative years. Though what he has to say does not overtly contradict received Church teaching.

His Grace moves the beginnings of Christian faith – the Church – as from stunned remains: Jerusalem razed – as our first generations looked back onto it.

This nexus of salvation-history – all history pointed forwards-backwards either way in faith in Jesus. As, in intervening centuries, disparate communities scatter through what is becoming a wreckage of Empire, spiritual waste, gather their scraps, and they begin to communicate. Truth-recalled – reverse-transcribed like RNA like a retrovirus – penetrated into the pagan world laid out for it – became life [ … ]

We were at Lourdes before we crossed the Pyrenees. This lies back in the days when I wanted a clean faith, a vertical faith, where I could just be me, and nothing to do with home. Later, I have come to know, and quite to like, that modern Catholicism’s splashed all over the blessed place, a more womany religion, and perhaps that is its secret heart. Fundamentally vulgar, squalid, domestic, this, necessarily, was an attempt to share. All manner of things. All manner of stuff and business. Normally, the rule is, Mum and I talk through the dog: Samson’s very happy to see you. Samson was missing you. Oh look, Samson’s giving you his paw. That’s how we share most directly. That’s how we confer such mutual feeling and human emotion. I had wanted to share a lot, but we never did – not directly. Now this delicate matter of Catholic faith [ … ]

Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, [ … ]

The Carrefour will be open, where I can buy nuts for the red squirrel, who lives in Campo Grande. The red squirrel is Valladolid’s best bit. Even as a child, [ … ]