Jonathan Wright, Author at Catholic Herald

Jonathan Wright

Is Protestantism the gateway to secularism?

May 16, 2019

Permanent Revolution By James Simpson Belknap, 464pp, £25.95/$35 The Reformation is often depicted as the cradle of many excellent ideas: the opening up of Scripture to the masses, with wonderful-sounding terms such as the priesthood of all believers, and the rejection of deep-seated assumptions. With a hop, skip and a jump we are off down

Faith has never been at odds with science

April 18, 2019

Silly claims about the conflict between science and religion come thick and fast, these days. We know them to be erroneous, but the history of Catholic engagement with any scientific discipline you might care to mention is more spectacular than many of us realise. This isn’t to say that the Church hasn’t cracked down, sometimes

How to become a Doctor of the Church

February 21, 2019

Anyone aspiring to become a Doctor of the Church requires an impressive CV. The official criteria are a major contribution to Christian thought (be it at the spiritual or lofty theological level), a hefty dose of sanctity, and formal recognition by the pope or a General Council. Thus far, the final nod of approval has

How one English school shaped America

February 14, 2019

These days, schools and universities enjoy sending out yearly bulletins to their alumni: it’s partly an exercise in reminding former students of happy times and partly a way of raising funds. Neither pursuit is reprehensible. If such updates had been the fashion during earlier centuries, Stonyhurst would have been able to produce a very impressive

When anti-Catholicism inspired riots

February 07, 2019

Historians, including some of the good ones, have often proffered sweeping generalisations about American anti-Catholicism. You’ll read about it being “the deepest bias in the history of the American people” or the most “tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history”. The pity is that these analyses are not too far wide of the mark.

Being a Puritan was never an easy life

January 31, 2019

Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America By Michael Winship Yale University Press, 351pp, £20/$28 Hold on to your hats. Michael Winship has written one of the finest and most challenging studies of early modern Puritanism – and this in a field replete with gifted scholars. The prose is excellent, but that’s

The quest for the ‘historical Jesus’ started early in Asia

January 17, 2019

Jesus in Asia By RS Sugirtharajah Harvard University Press, 311pp, £21.95/$30 The quest for the historical Jesus has been an obsession of Western scholarship since the 19th century. Judging from RS Sugirtharajah’s splendid new book, it would seem that writers and thinkers in Asia beat the West to the punch by many centuries. Attempts to interpret

A Reformation history with few villains

December 13, 2018

To Gain at Harvest: Portraits from the English Reformation By Jonathan Dean SCM Press, 220pp, £20/$35 In this elegantly written, heartfelt book, Jonathan Dean sings the praises of “10 remarkable figures” from the Reformation era. Everything is a little rose-tinted, but then these people are Dean’s heroes – “icons of faithfulness”, as he puts it

Arts essay: Mary’s dramatic life needs no embellishment

July 19, 2018

We may think that Parliament can be a little fractious these days, but we are pale shadows of our Tudor forebears. In 1586 Job Throckmorton, the MP for Warwick, launched a ferocious attack on the Catholic Mary Stewart, calling her “the daughter of sedition, the mother of rebellion, the nurse of impiety [and] the handmaid

The heartthrob who shocked the Athenians

June 21, 2018

Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens by David Stuttard, Harvard, 276pp, £23.95 Alcibiades had it all: the heartthrob looks, the agile mind and the loftiest of family ties. Everyone knew that, with Socrates for a tutor and Pericles for an uncle, Alcibiades was going to make a splash in 5th-century BC Athens. At first,

Gossip, frustration and inspired intrigue

June 07, 2018

Vatican I by John O’Malley, Belknap Press, 307pp, £17.95 In June 1868, the apostolic letter Aeterni Patris announced the forthcoming First Vatican Council. It was not the jolliest of papal documents. The Church had been “attacked and trampled on by the enemies of God and man. Everything that is sacred is held in contempt.” Not

A brief history of deaconesses

June 07, 2018

References to female deacons in the early Church are not hard to locate. Admittedly, the initial biblical glimpses are confusing. Is Phoebe, in Romans 16:1, being depicted as a specific official, or as a “servant” in a more general sense? 1 Timothy 3:11 isn’t much more helpful: the text, depending on whom you ask, refers

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