Fr David Palmer, Author at Catholic Herald

Fr David Palmer

Could the benefits of married Catholic clergy outweigh the costs?

January 23, 2024

Once in a while the spectre – as it is often made out to be – of allowing married priests to be ordained into the Catholic Church rears its head. We seem to be at one of those juntures again, with the Archbishop of Malta having suggested recently that it is time to end celibacy

Of course popes make mistakes. But the papacy isn’t an optional extra

September 04, 2020

This year being what it is, for my short summer break I decided to leave my parish in Nottingham to spend a few days in the far-distant land of Kent. So I went to Canterbury to do the St Augustine of Canterbury trail. First stop: a visit to the (newish) Shrine of St Augustine in

As I gave last rites in a coronavirus ward, I felt a great debt to NHS staff

April 17, 2020

Like everyone else in the country, I had already been feeling grateful for the work of NHS staff – but never so much as that morning

Fr David Palmer: My life as a Hindu monk

May 24, 2018

Hinduism is vast, beautiful, terrifying and confusing. Of the world’s great religions, it is the one that we in the West probably know least about. Christians share a history with Judaism and (to a lesser extent) Islam. Buddhism has been fashionable for decades. But Hinduism remains something of an enigma. It is notoriously hard to

Sorry, Mark Zuckerberg, but Facebook can never be a substitute for the Church

June 28, 2017

Christianity is an incarnational religion. Social media is the opposite

The abuse crisis made Catholicism confront its dark side. Terrorism should do the same for Islam

June 08, 2017

We do a better service to Muslims by forcing them to confront the dark side of their community

The dilemma of giving up Facebook

May 25, 2017

For years I have been something of a social media junkie, regularly checking my phone for updates on Facebook and Twitter (I’m too old for Snapchat) and posting my wisdom to the world at large. I have enjoyed receiving “likes” and retweets as much as the next person (more perhaps). Yes, I was appropriately dismissive of

If you want inner peace, try giving up Facebook

May 25, 2017

A focus on every passing fad and controversy prevents what Benedict XVI calls 'interior recollection'

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