Next week, at the invitation of the Vatican, she will stand up in Rome and address some of the world’s most senior bishops, telling them the unwelcome truth that few wanted to hear 27 years before.

“I don’t feel nervous or intimidated,” she tells me just days before her address. “I feel more hope that something I say might help. No matter how much help you receive as a survivor that 13-year-old child is still inside somewhere and still comes up, that little voice saying: ‘You’re not really a good person. You’re worthless.’ That never really goes away. But I’ve had a lot of help to become the person I would have been had I not been abused.”

Marie continued to practise her Catholic faith long after she was abused. She married a Catholic and they brought up their son in the faith. He served as an altar boy at Mass. But it was not until she experienced the Church’s response to her anguish that she became disheartened and could not bring herself to continue practising. This is one of the things she is quietly determined to explain in Rome next week.

“I have been a Catholic all my life and when I went to the diocese and the archbishop it was with the absolute conviction that once they knew they had a dangerous man in their control they would want to protect other children,” she explains. “And I found it devastating that they would not do that.”

It was Marie’s doctor who first urged her to report the abuse for the sake of other children within the diocese, if nothing else. Marie had had close contact with psychiatrists as her life had been marked by anxiety, depression and agoraphobia.

But when she approached her local curate in 1985 he told her: “It was probably your fault so I don’t think I need to do anything about it.”

“He even went as far as to say that I was forgiven and I should go away and forget about it,” Marie recalls. “He refused to take the name of the offending priest and just finished the conversation at that. That totally destroyed me. I just fell apart.”

For the following 10 years Marie was often hospitalised due to severe depression sparked by her utter dismay at the curate’s response. She resolved that she would never speak about the abuse with anyone ever again.

But 10 years after her first attempt to speak out disturbing media coverage of a serial abuser in Ireland, Fr Brendan Smith, confronted Marie with the nagging question: was she the only one?

“I always thought that this man abused me because it was something about me. It occurred to me at that point that he may have abused other children. And of course from that thought came the other thought: he may still be abusing children. At that point it wasn’t a question of whether I should go and report him again or not. I just had to. I had no choice. I had to do something.”

But once again Marie was crushed by the response after she urged that the offending priest be removed from his current parish where he was in regular contact with schoolchildren.

“The archbishop told me that I couldn’t possibly ruin this priest’s good name and that it all happened a long time ago,” she says.

It then emerged that the diocese had already known for many years that the priest in question was an abuser. He had been removed from the hospital where he had abused Marie but he was still working in the archdiocese.

Dublin archdiocese’s handling of Marie’s case has made it difficult for her to face Sunday Mass and practise her faith in full. She explains that she couldn’t stomach moral instruction from a priest in a pulpit given the wounds she had received at the hands of the Catholic hierarchy.

“Men in power covered up for these perpetrators,” she says. “It’s like having a fox or a rabid dog and it has killed hens in a hen house. So you move it into the next field and it kills hens in that hen house. You’re the one in charge of it. It’s up to you to stop it.”

Marie hopes to tell her audience in Rome next week what she now tells me: “Being treated in the way that I was by the Church can destroy your Catholic faith and actually exacerbate all your problems. I mean, I was a practising Catholic up to that time that I reported to the diocese in 1995-1996. I now find it very, very difficult to practise my religion.

“I’d like to see the Church going back to the basics of what Christ said, and he did not teach that institutions are more important than little children.”

Marie is also determined to communicate to the conference that the psychological effects of child abuse are far-reaching and enduring.

“Child abuse destroys a person’s view of themselves,” she says. “You can’t just judge it by what’s physically done. It’s the psychological damage which is so dreadful.”

Marie describes how her mother, a devout Catholic living in a nursing home, was heartbroken when Marie finally told her about the abuse in anticipation of media coverage.

“It was heartbreaking to see her reaction because immediately she felt she hadn’t protected me,” she recalls. “She was quite devastated.”
The daily purgatory that Marie endured made simple sociable activities seem insurmountable.

“I couldn’t do the things with my son that I’d like to do. I had agoraphobia, I couldn’t take him out to play. I couldn’t take him on picnics. I really felt he was losing out in his life as a child. He didn’t have a mother who could do all the things that a mother should do.”

Yet Marie has not allowed self-pity or bitterness to hinder her constructive efforts to safeguard Catholic children in partnership with the Church. She has organised liturgies of reconciliation to cultivate spiritual healing for survivors of abuse. She has also written and spoken extensively about the effects of abuse.

Marie admits that her participation in the Vatican’s conference next week is controversial, given that some, including survivors of abuse, will regard it as simply a public relations exercise on behalf of the Church, rather than an expression of a genuine desire for change.

“I think this conference is a sign that things may be changing,” she says. “I hope things are changing and there is now going to be a new, more enlightened attitude to the whole abuse crisis, because we have had blame thrown out in every direction, from the secular society, to homosexuals, etc, etc. That’s sort of blame game is pointless. I’m hoping that this conference will at least improve things from now on – and it’s only a hope. And that’s why I am taking part. I’ve always lived on hope that they will learn and that things will be right for the future.”

The strongest test of Marie’s firm faith occurred when her abuser asked her to visit him in jail. By 1997, her tenacity had resulted in his conviction. Before he appealed against his sentence he asked to see Marie so that he could apologise. One can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the timing of the apology, but Marie talks about it without cynicism.

“If someone sits across a table from you and asks you to forgive them, if you’re Christian, it’s part of what we believe,” she says. “I
had to believe that he was sincerely sorry and looking for forgiveness. I would not withhold it from him.”

Marie has undoubtedly lost trust in the Catholic Church but her faith in God is firm.

“Even through all that time of struggling with the hierarchy my faith has carried me through. Before I speak in Rome I will be praying for the Holy Spirit to be with me and help me through it.”

She explains that one day she hopes she can return fully to her Catholic faith, “but in the meantime I’m definitely still holding on to my belief in God”.

The dying woman has begged her parents for help but they turn away, too afraid of contracting the disease and too ashamed that their daughter carries it. If they adopt their grandson, the villagers would ostracise the family so much that they would not even be allowed to use the local well for water. They fear threats and intimidation. They fear being burned out of their own home.

The only peace that the dying woman can salvage is the knowledge that someone will take care of her baby when she is gone.

Fr Michael Shea says that when he faced his first young mother dying from Aids he made her a promise that he was unprepared for.

“I did not feel confident at all,” he recalls. “But it was just, you know, you have someone who is dying and has nobody. But I was confident that somehow I would be able to find people to help me to help them. So that was pretty much just how it worked out. It was desperation. I did not have a plan or any idea what I was getting in to.” He starts to laugh and continues: “I don’t know if I would have done it if I had known what I know now. It sort of exploded on me.”

Fr Michael was raised on a farm in Wisconsin in the United States and arrived in Thailand in February 1966, aged 28. A newly ordained Redemptorist priest who struggled with the language, Fr Mike disliked the food and felt incredibly homesick. “It was a rough beginning,” he admits.

A country boy at heart, Fr Michael was not at all keen when after over 30 years of missionary work across rural Thailand he was offered a transfer to the Thai capital Bangkok by his local bishop. Fr Michael insisted that he would find more solace in rural Thailand supporting men and women suffering with Aids than in the bustling metropolis inhabited by 15 million people. Although he had only been exposed to Aids sufferers a year before, it was his new-found devotion that would lead to the creation of six new homes for Thai children orphaned by the disease. These homes enabled Fr Michael to make that precious promise over and over again to dying mothers.

“I didn’t think it was gonna wind up to be anything, you know,” Fr Michael says in his distinctive Wisconsin accent. “But they just kept coming. It got really big really fast.”

With six houses scattered across the region, the project employs 50 people who work as farmers, administrators and cooks in support of the different houses. Philanthropic projects can often focus on one particular age bracket, sex or condition. But Fr Michael’s homes open their doors to orphans with and without Aids from birth and they remain open throughout the child’s upbringing.

Fr Michael tells me that a lack of education in Thailand concerning Aids has inflamed prejudices, leading to stigma and abandonment. For a man with indiscriminate compassion, he describes himself as, “kind of judgmental”, but he “learned real fast that these people needed respect, help, compassion”.

He explains that, since anti-retroviral drugs have been available in the last six years, not one child has been born with Aids where the drugs have been administered appropriately to pregnant women and their babies. He does add, ruefully, that the medication “is really hard on their little livers”.

I feel apprehensive about my next question. It is one that he has probably grown sick of given the media’s infatuation with the Church’s position on condoms. But before I even finish my sentence, Fr Michael chimes in: “We have a Redemptorist bishop in South Africa, Kevin Dowling, who supported the use of prophylactics to prevent Aids from crossing to the unaffected partner. People say prophylactics don’t work and that’s not true. They do work. But then Rome came out and said couples couldn’t use them.”

He adds approvingly: “Bishop Dowling wrote a blistering open letter to his fellow bishops in Rome saying: ‘What are you talking about? You are just condemning people to death”.

Although Fr Michael’s views do not completely accord with Rome’s there can be no doubt that his work has saved lives. He tells me that abortion is readily available in Thailand but his outreach projects means that doctors and nurses have refused to assist in abortions until the mother had gone to see him first.

Fr Michael’s voice betrays a lump in the throat when I ask what the saddest moments have been during his ministry.

“Every time a child dies,” he replies. “When a child dies that’s really, really rough. A child is dying, we’ve been kicked out of hospitals and we have brought them home to die.

“They’re still dying,” he adds wearily. “Last year we lost two. It really hurts you and you see little kids and their friends who are improving and other kids who are just slipping slowly down the ladder. Their kidneys fail and their livers begin to fail. Watching them is a terrible feeling because you can’t help them and all you can do is be there for the child and hold them at the end. That’s the roughest part.”

But what about the obvious question? Where is Fr Michael’s loving God when an innocent child dies of Aids in his arms?

“It’s not God’s fault, it’s the fault of the system,” he says. “Diseases mutate and that’s a natural thing in a flawed world. Terrible things happen to good people.”

I am now used to his pauses, which mean he is thinking and not that he has concluded his answer. He promptly continues with typical frankness: “You know, I remember talking to this guy with lung cancer and he said: ‘Why did God do this to me and not anybody else?’ I said: ‘How many cigarettes did you smoke a day?’ He said: ‘I smoke three or four packs a day.’ I replied: ‘And you’re blaming God?’”

It is hard to envisage practically how Fr Michael manages to interact with so many children spread across six different houses. It is hard to envisage the interaction between orphans who have Aids and orphans that don’t but he insists that they play together without prejudice or segregation.

He concedes that it’s difficult to see the children every night and, due to other priestly duties, he cannot be with them before school. But he makes a special effort to visit in the evenings when he can. But his weekends are wholly dedicated to taking the children out and entertaining them. “We got kids here who came in who were unable to eat because they had thrush so bad from the Aids virus and they’re at high school now. We got kids that came in so traumatised by what happened to them that they wouldn’t communicate and one of those girls is going into college next May.

“To have a kid who was once so traumatised and then they come running up to you and they’re just like everybody else. It makes you feel good. But I am always wary about feel-good stuff because then you start congratulating yourself, which sucks big time.”

When I ask him how he remembers all their names he replies dryly: “They don’t all come at once.” With a laugh he adds: “Sometimes I go over to visit, see a kid and I say: ‘Who the hell is that?’ because they grow like reeds. A little girl will come up and she’s tall, slim 15 and you can’t believe it. You’ve got a young guy talking and his voice is breaking every other word you know and you realise…”

His voice trails off and he says pensively: “I think I am blessed.”

Fr Michael Shea who is supported through the Thai Children’s Trust UK, urgently needs help to grow crops to feed his flock. To find out more or to donate visit here.

I call him crazy. Had the man done no message research? This single tweet did more even than Huntsman’s decision to pose for Annie Leibovitz in Vogue to confirm that the candidate was out of touch – not only with popular opinion in the small towns that Sarah Palin likes to call “real America”, but also with a philosophical anxiety that pervades the United States, from sea to shining sea.

The political salience of evolution is not new. In the last GOP primary round in 2008 the candidates were asked in a television debate whether there was anyone on the stage who did not believe in evolution. Three of them proclaimed their disbelief proudly and unambiguously. John McCain, who won the nomination, said that while he did acknowledge some truth in evolution, when he hiked the Grand Canyon he believed the hand of God was there also.

These candidates had done their research. Two years earlier, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life had published evidence that only 26 per cent of adult Americans accepted Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as it is understood by scientists and taught in public schools. Or, to put it another way, almost three in four American voters did not. The polling firm Gallup found Pew’s figure to be a considerable overstatement of support for the science side of the argument. According to its own 2006 survey, only 13 per cent of Americans accepted the truth of evolution.

For this year’s election, Gallup has been digging beneath the surface to produce numbers that allow candidates to optimise their responses to the inevitable evolution questions along the campaign trail. Voters were invited to choose between three options: “God created humans in present form within the past 10,000 years” “Humans evolved, God had no part in the process” or “Humans evolved, God guided the process”. The first of these is full-on Creationism. The second represents orthodox Darwinian science, while the third could be seen as congruent with Intelligent Design, but is not necessarily so, offering space for more nuanced theological and scientific positioning.

Gallup’s findings pose some radical challenges to the reflexive assumptions of secular, liberal commentators on both sides of the Atlantic. For a start, those rejecting the scientific orthodoxy do not all conform to the media stereotype of an inbred, Right-wing, Christian fundamentalist redneck. Support for the “God guided” option is, for instance, stronger among Democrats (40 per cent) and Independents (39 per cent) than it is among Republican voters (36 per cent).

Smart alec acolytes of Richard Dawkins, who like to style themselves “Brights”, while dismissing anyone who questions their materialist outlook as intellectually deficient, will be peeved to discover that only one in four American voters who have been awarded Masters degrees accepts the Darwinian line on evolution. Indeed, Gallup found that scientific orthodoxy on this topic is a minority position at every level of education – from high school dropout to PhD – and in every category of political affiliation. Despite the barrage of publicity that attended the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 2009, the latest Gallup figures show that overall only 16 per cent of Americans today believe what they were taught about evolution in science classes at school. Consequently, any politician, of whatever stripe, who unambiguously sides with science on this issue puts him or herself at odds with the majority of voters.

So, what explains this bizarre political reality? It would be facile to attribute it to American stupidity. The United States is not, all things considered, a stupid society. During the last century it established itself as the most economically successful and technologically advanced nation on earth, leading the world in innovation and scientific achievement. Besides, as Gallup has shown, the majority of Americans with two or three university degrees reject the scientists’ story too.

The answer lies in the way evolution has evolved in the United States. It is not Darwin’s original scientific theory that so many sensible, well-educated Americans object to, but the ideological monstrosity that Darwinism has become over time. First, at the turn of the 20th century, scientists claimed that evolution had social implications. This found expression in Social Darwinism and eugenics, which saw the rural poor hunted across the Appalachians and young women forcibly sterilised for having children out of wedlock. Then came Scientific Racialism, which claimed that evolutionary science proved that America’s minorities – Blacks, Hispanics, Italians, Greeks and Jews – were biologically inferior to those of pure New England stock. Meanwhile, the Darwinists were asserting that evolution necessarily implied the triumph of philosophical materialism. Americans were told that the rights they held to be self-evident had no basis in reality at all and that a human life has no more intrinsic value than that of an insect.

Evolution began as a neat explanation of variation within species and a plausible hypothesis for the origin of species. But today it is held out as a sufficient explanation of the origin of all life, a general explanatory theory of the development of everything – including culture – a grand narrative to end all grand narratives. Evolution is presented by Daniel Dennett as a “universal acid” that dissolves all ethical and moral systems, and by Richard Dawkins as a compelling argument against the existence of God and a slam-dunk case for abandoning any search for meaning, purpose or direction in human affairs.

Does anyone seriously expect the American public to buy into all that? Science has broken its bounds. Instead of confining evolution to the natural world, scientists have sought to intrude its application into the social, political, philosophical and religious domains. Denying evolution’s veracity is for many ordinary Americans a way of rejecting that. It is righteous cussedness.

Astute politicians sense this indignation, and play to it. Some, like Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul and Rick Perry, have been prepared to go a long way to meet the Creationists and ended up being pilloried by the liberal media, who are themselves as plonkingly literal-minded in the way they frame this issue as the Christian fundamentalists they disdain.

Catholic candidates such as Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich (a recent convert) enjoy an advantage in navigating the clashing rocks
of science and religion. Catholics have not been required to take the creation story in Genesis literally since Origen in the early second century AD. Consequently, they are more comfortable in asserting that faith and evolution are by no means mutually exclusive than many in the Evangelical Protestant tradition.

Catholics can (like Santorum) flirt with the Intelligent Design crowd when it suits, while still having an intellectually respectable sanctuary in a position that holds the Creator’s activity as something operating in the spiritual dimension rather than as a physical intervention. Or, (like Gingrich, whose hobby is paleontology) Catholics can choose to mollify the science crowd with the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s doctrine of “non-overlapping magisteria”.

Catholic politicians are not the only ones to avail themselves of this political wriggle-room. The Mormon Mitt Romney, whose flip-flop politics could teach a Galapagos finch a thing or two about adaptation, maintains a studied ambiguity on evolution too. Of course, Romney believes in the scientific truth of evolution, as do Gingrich and Santorum. But they aren’t going to say so in any way that signals they endorse the philosophical extras that nowadays come bundled with Darwin’s theory. You can call these political stances flexible; you might even call them opportunistic at times; but given the polling data, you can’t call them crazy.

Dennis Sewell is the author of The Political Gene. How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics (Picador)

A harmless piece of entertainment, Superman stories can also be the vehicles for serious themes. Superman himself has been subject to literary and cultural analysis by people as eminent as Umberto Eco.

Spiderman, who dates from 1962, has also made the leap from comic book to screen, and to my mind repays careful theological study. Like Superman, he seems to be a Messiah-figure, Christ-like in his dedication to the service of others, and prepared to sacrifice himself for the general good. Spiderman is an exemplar of what theologians call oblative love.

Both Spiderman and Superman have supernatural powers, which perhaps points to humanity’s desire to see miracles.

But what about real-life superheroes? These are people, like you or I, quite lacking in supernatural powers, who dress up in superhero costumes, masking their true identities, and who tread the mean streets at night looking for those who might need their help, and, of course, fighting crime. So, for example, in the town of Yeovil you might meet “Shadow Ninja”, a real-life superhero (or RLSH as they more snappily term themselves), who could get you out of a spot of bother if you need his help. RLSH’s have their own organisation and have been featured in media reports around the world.

What can we make of the phenomenon of men dressing up in silly costumes and patrolling the streets in cities across the United States and Europe, looking for trouble, or hoping to prevent it?

The first reaction might be to think that these people have simply read too many comic books and seen too many films, and that their nocturnal habits reflect the same excesses that one might spot at a Star Trek convention or (just to be fair) at a Jane Austen conference. Fandom can be taken to ridiculous lengths.

But one should not rush to dismiss this form of vigilantism. Just as the character of Superman draws on religious precedents, the RLSH phenomenon calls to mind the knight errantry of the Middle Ages (or what we assume to have been the knight errantry of that period).

In fact, there probably never was a time when knights set out on adventure, frequently obscuring their identity behind a visor, seeking out those in distress whom they could rescue, and seeking to right wrongs. The legends of the Round Table exist in a never-ever land that resembles no society that has ever existed. There never were people like Sir Lancelot and Sir Percival who dedicated themselves to the service of damsels, or the poor, or who went on quests. But – and this is the key point – there was a time in English history when the ideal of such knight errantry was deeply appealing.

But what have the knights errant of the High Middle Ages to do with the RLSHs of today? Just as the people of Edward III’s time found inspiration in the Round Table legends, today’s people have found inspiration from the popular cultural figures of our own day such as Superman and Spiderman. The comic book and film characters have given people the language they need to express a longing that is constant in the human heart, namely to do good, and to feel the thrill of adventure in doing good.

But a note of caution is necessary. The world of Superman and Spiderman, though superficially like our own, does not in fact exist, and the RLSH of today lives in a rather different world to that of Peter Parker and Clark Kent. Aren’t social problems on the streets better left to the police?

And here of course we get to the nub of the question, and an indication of why the RLSH movement is so quintessentially American: who should deal with problems on the street, the power of the state or ourselves? In Seattle, for example, a RLSH called Phoenix Jones, masked from head to toe, confronts drug dealers in nasty neighbourhoods and has on occasion faced them down. By confronting them and not being intimidated by their threats, he has forced them to move on.

Again, in the notoriously sleazy Washington Square in New York City a RLSH called Dark Guardian (real name Chris Pollak) dresses in stab-proof garments and shines a powerful torch into the faces of drug dealers and yells: “This is a drug-free park!” Of course the police should be doing these things, but do we really want to live in a society where everything is the responsibility of the police and nothing is left to ordinary citizens? Surely the police should be there as a last resort and the real enforcers of good behaviour should be all of us?

One enters morally questionable territory were the RLSH to use force. Some are armed with Mace and Tasers, and in a society where there is a right to bear arms this may be acceptable. Their use in self-defence is, from a Catholic point of view, also acceptable, provided the force is proportionate to the threat to life and limb. But in Britain those who engage in self-defence often end up on the wrong side of the law; it is worth noting that Catholic teaching is far more liberal on this matter than the restrictive law of the land.

Moreover, even dressing up in a costume in Britain, never mind carrying a weapon, could be construed as threatening.

One fears that in Britain shining light into the face of a drug dealer and shouting at him might be deemed a criminal offence. But if this is the case, the law is lopsided, and not in the favour of the victim.

It hardly seems a year ago that a packed Westminster Cathedral witnessed the moving ordination of three former Anglican bishops and the first moments of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, writes James Bradley.

Easter 2011 saw around 1,000 Anglicans fulfil Newman’s hopes, as the first wave of ordinariate members were received into the full communion of the Catholic Church. At Pentecost, almost 60 priests were ordained, and now – across England, Wales and Scotland – dedicated groups of former Anglicans are making their mark on the life of the Church in these lands.

There have been moments of profound joy and sheer exhilaration; there have been times of great anxiety and frayed nerves – and the story has only just begun. The first chapter of the ordinariate is written. Now, as that vision of an Anglicanism united but not absorbed, begins to take shape, members of the ordinariate share their views, their hopes, aspirations and fears, as the page turns and the story continues.

They need our support, both spiritual and material. There are still no churches, or buildings, and few funds. If you want to support this personal initiative of the Holy Father, visit Ordinariate.org.uk for details of how you can help.

Deacon James Bradley is communications officer for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

1. Deal

I don’t see myself as a pioneer, but Pope Benedict XVI’s call to “maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared” was an imperative not to be denied, writes Fr Christopher Lindlar.

From the erection of the ordinariate in January, through resigning as rector of St Andrew’s, Deal, the exhilarating crash programme at Allen Hall, reception into full communion with the Church in April, ordination to the sacred priesthood in June, and now life pastoring the Deal Ordinariate Group and also serving as Parochial Administrator of a diocesan parish, it has, at times, been a bumpy ride. There have been misunderstandings and muddles, but they fade alongside the warmth of welcome on the ground. My overriding feeling remains one of great relief, coupled with the joy of knowing the truth of unity with the Successor of Peter.

As I look to the next 12 months and beyond, my hope is that the place of the ordinariate is as one more component in the New Evangelisation. I hope and pray that we have gifts and treasure to share in winning these lands for Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church.

2. Torbay

Pope Benedict announced the establishment of the ordinariate on my silver wedding anniversary, which made that day extra-special, writes Jean Chinery.

Despite being married to an Anglican priest, my decision to accept this generous offer had to be made independently of my husband.
In conscience, I could not refuse; fortunately my spouse came to the same decision.

Our son remains in the Church of England, as do many of our friends, and this divide has made the last year hard at times. However, I’ve tried to stay close to my Anglican friends and am fortunate that many of them have respected our decisions.

Dealing with the uncertainties that this first year has brought (particularly regarding accommodation and finance) has not been easy. We have had to move house twice in three months.

But despite the practical difficulties there has been enormous joy and real peace – a feeling of “coming home”. The welcome we’ve received has been wonderful, and I’ll never forget the spontaneous applause as our group was received in Plymouth Cathedral.

Our fantastic group is very active and, without a doubt, our youth event, VOICE, was the highlight of this first year.

3. Oxford

It was with very few doubts, but much trepidation, that I began the formal path to join the ordinariate early in 2011. There have been definite highs as well as moments to pause and reflect since then, writes Thomas Mason.

The catechesis during Lent, in preparation for to be received, gave me (and those around me) a valuable opportunity to reflect on our faith, on what we really hold dear.

The Oxford group has developed from a group of individuals into a genuine community within the Church. We meet week by week for a “vigil” Mass, adapting the space of a modern Catholic church for our style of liturgical celebration. These celebrations have been greatly enriched by the music: at times complex and choral, at times simple and congregational, but always beautiful and deeply enriching.

The definite highlight of the year has been the celebration of Evensong, now in the full unity of the Catholic Church. In Oxford this has been celebrated solemnly on two occasions (with more planned for the future), but also very simply a couple of times before our Mass on Saturday evenings, both styles being deeply resonant of the vision showed by the Holy Father in Anglicanorum Coetibus.

4. Coventry

We knew that 2011 would be an eventful year, and we were right. In March around 40 of us set out from various Anglican parishes in and around Coventry to be received into the Catholic Church as members of the ordinariate, Fr Paul Burch writes.

Filled with a mixture of emotions – sadness at leaving behind friends and familiar places that held many dear memories, and excitement and joy in moving towards the unity for which we had prayed for so long – we took our first steps.

Only a couple of months old by then, the ordinariate was very much an unknown, and something that its first members have had to have an active part in building.

And, here in Coventry, build we steadily have. We have built up our life together as a group, liturgically, spiritually, socially and financially. We have built up a relationship of trust and co-operation with the people of St Joseph the Worker, Coventry, where we are based, and with the parishes of the deanery. And we have built up our vision for the future and our distinctive contribution to the mission of the Catholic Church, in our small corner of it.

It hasn’t all been easy or without problems, but we keep faith that our efforts are part of the construction of something of real value and will be blessed.

5. Birmingham

On Sunday March 6 2011, a group of around 40 Anglicans in Birmingham said an emotional goodbye to their churches, the rest of their congregations and the Church of England, and on Ash Wednesday began to attend Holy Cross and St Francis’ Catholic Church, writes Laura Magson.

We continued to attend Mass there throughout Lent, while we underwent a phase of instruction with the parish priest, until our magnificent Confirmation at St Chad’s Cathedral on Maundy Thursday, which we shared with the other ordinariate groups in the Midlands.

Following another trip to St Chad’s for the first round of ordinations in June, we began our own Mass at Holy Cross, at which we celebrate our heritage with traditional Anglican hymns. Our weekly formation continues as we get to know more about our patron and fellow pilgrim, Blessed John Henry Newman.

I am incredibly grateful for the warm welcome shown to us by the Catholic Church and particularly the priests and congregation of our host church.

As we grow, it is our hope that we will have a building of our own in the future to help us to fulfil one of the primary purposes of the ordinariate: the evangelisation of the nation.

6. London (South)

Most of our group came from St Agnes, Kennington, while I came from St Michael’s, Croydon, writes Jonathan Creer.

So I was a little daunted at the prospect of worshipping at a different church, in a somewhat different rite, with a diocesan congregation and an ordinariate group in which I knew no one, but I was soon put at my ease by the friendliness shown by them all.

We settled into a pattern: attending the local Sunday Mass and afterwards retiring for coffee and instruction. At midday, after the Angelus, we would often go to a local pub for a drink and lunch. It was – and is – a highly convivial group.

From September, rather than joining the parish we established an ordinariate Mass on Saturday evenings. But some things don’t change – we still often retire to the pub afterwards.

Looking back over the year, I have no regrets about my decision to join, hard though it was.

I have missed the people and the very traditional Anglo-Catholic liturgy at St Michael’s, but have made new friends and it is wonderful not to have the constant sense of being an embattled and losing minority within the Church: for Catholics, being a Catholic is normal!

8. Isle of Wight and Portsmouth

As I write this preparations for Christmas are in full swing, writes Ruth Smith. As we recall the journey of faith of Mary and Joseph, and the difficulties that they encountered, I begin to think about the journey of faith that I have travelled in the last year.

After much discussion and prayer, my two teenage children and I decided that the ordinariate was the right path for us. We belong to an interesting group encompassing members from both the Island and the mainland. On Sunday the group celebrates Mass at 9.15 am in St Mary’s, Ryde. Their musicians help out for our services and some of us also sing in the St Mary’s choir. Once a month Mass is celebrated in St Agatha’s, Landport, a former Anglican church in Portsmouth. Most of us from the island go and meet up with our mainland family members.

Though we have moved forward so much in the last year, we know there is still a lot to do. We have hopes of having a church of our own in the future, but money is always an issue.

We are very grateful for our new friends, especially Fr Anthony Glaysher and the people of St Mary’s as they continue to support us. As a group, we wish to thank our pastor, Fr Jonathan Redvers-Harris, and his family for the hard work and strong faith that have helped make our group what it has become, a family.

9. Tunbridge Wells

It’s tempting to describe the ordinariate in terms of the Exodus: small groups of people setting out, leaving behind a problematic situation and trusting that God will lead them to the promised land, writes Tom Davis. But promised lands are not always empty of existing inhabitants, who will also have opinions on the new arrivals.

In Lent 2011, over 70 Anglicans left our church in Tunbridge Wells and joined a small Catholic community in Pembury. While the change was dramatic for ordinariate members, we had the advantage of knowing that change would come. For those in Pembury, our arrival must have been a great shock. The similar size of the two congregations added to the potential for disruption. Over the course of the year both groups have had to learn a lot about each other’s traditions, which on the surface have been diametrically opposed: eastward versus westward facing, contemporary versus Edwardian hymnody, “high” versus “low” ceremonial. It is sometimes difficult for everyone to remember that “different” is not necessarily the same as “wrong”. But going forward, the decision has been made that we are to become a diocesan quasi-parish, under the care of an ordinariate priest, maintaining both traditions. Our hope and prayer is that this will allow us to become one church, supporting two traditions, and happily the early indications are that this is already starting to happen.

10. Hemel Hempstead

Like most who were received into Church via the ordinariate, I found Holy Saturday to be the high point of 2011, writes Ann Murkin.

Since the early 1970s my husband and I had happily belonged to Holy Cross church, Luton; it took four minutes to drive there, 10 minutes to walk. It had always been an Anglo-Catholic parish with traditional values and teachings, and a reputation for good liturgy and music, and we were both heavily involved.

But as things in the Church of England began to change, the dilemma was “what to do now?” Although we knew some of the local Catholic priests and the church was nearby, Mgr Keith Newton had been our bishop and we felt moved to follow him.

After several months of thought, prayer and discussion we decided to join the ordinariate. The nearest group was in Hemel Hempstead and we knew the congregation and priests through Forward in Faith and a recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The welcome from the group, and also from the local diocesan congregation and clergy, has been warm and generous.

The only downside is that we now have to leave home an hour before Mass on Sunday – but if you believe in what you’re doing, then it’s all worthwhile.

On March 2 masked men sprayed Shahbaz Bhatti’s car with bullets as he left his mother’s home. Shahbaz, a brilliant lawyer and the only Christian Minister in the country’s government, was murdered for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. David Cameron called his assassination “absolutely brutal and unacceptable”.

In his role as Federal Minister for Minorities, Shahbaz frequently criticised the abuse of the blasphemy laws, saying they were used as a pretext to persecute innocent Christians. He knew that he was endangering his own life by speaking out. Pakistani law can impose execution or life imprisonment for offences against Islam. Shahbaz had received death threats since 2009. He predicted his death in a video, in which he said bravely: “I believe in Jesus Christ who has given his own life for us… I’m living for my community… and I will die to defend their rights.”

In August 2009, after reports of a Koran being desecrated in the Punjab province, anti-Christian mobs killed eight people. Shahbaz called for better civil and legal protection for the Christian community. He was also the most vociferous speaker in defence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was on death row because she was found guilty of insulting Mohammed.

In 1985, as a university student, Shahbaz put his head above the parapet when he co-founded and led Pakistan’s Christian Liberation Front. His early work of sticking up for Christians proved good preparation for becoming the chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance in 2002.

Shahbaz only served 28 months in government, but from the beginning he took several courageous approaches in support of religious minorities. He launched the national campaign for interfaith harmony and proposed to make hate speech illegal, as well as proposing the introduction of quotas for religious minorities in government posts.

Shahbaz also pioneered the establishment of a National Interfaith Consultation in July 2010, which was the impetus for bringing together senior religious leaders from all religions and from all over Pakistan and resulted in their signing a joint declaration against terrorism.

Shahbaz was the recipient of many prestigious awards, from the Human Rights Award in 2004 to the International Freedom of Religion Award in 2009. He was also awarded a PhD by South Korea University in recognition for his interfaith work.

The fact that Shahbaz paid the ultimate price for standing up for his fellow Christians is inspiring others to continue his work.

On July 2 Aid to the Church in Need and the British Pakistani Christian Association delivered petitions with over 6,000 names to 10 Downing Street. The petitions called for action to protect Christians and other minorities in Pakistan.

2. Dylan Parry

The “reluctant sinner”, as Dylan Parry is known to those who read his blog, masterminded the creation of a pioneering guild for Catholic bloggers in Britain. Aiming to unite bloggers in the “real world”, the guild arranges events and meetings for Catholic bloggers to meet face to face and share about the joys and woes of evangelising views online.

Dylan took inspiration from St Paul who exhorts us “therefore encourage each other, and build each other up”. Last May, Dylan was invited to the Vatican meeting for bloggers where he met Mgr Paul Tighe of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications who supported Dylan’s idea of setting up a guild that would benefit both the Church and bloggers. The guild adopted Blessed Titus Brandsma, killed by the SS after he criticised anti-Jewish marriage laws as a patron.

The guild held its first official meeting on the freakishly hot October 1, when 15 Catholic bloggers came from all over Britain to guild chaplain Fr Tim Finigan’s parish of Blackfen. The guild is open to a diverse mixture of Catholics and has done nothing that challenges the independence of bloggers.

From the growing success of the guild, to its great contribution to Catholic life in Britain, so much gratitude is due to Dylan. His blog imparts a palpable sense of love for the Lord and His ways. While Dylan’s blogposts offer a strong defence of Catholic teaching, they are never hard-hearted or condescending.

3. Mgr Keith Newton

Pope Benedict personally appointed Mgr Keith Newton as Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, after he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in January, having resigned as a Church of England bishop last year.

On April 1 Pope Benedict received Mgr Newton in a private audience. This was taken as a sign of the Holy Father’s continued support for the ordinariate. Mgr Newton, accompanied by Cardinal Levada and Bishop Hopes, presented the Holy Father with gifts on behalf of the ordinariate.

A tireless champion of the ordinariate, Mgr Newton cares for each Anglican group swimming the Tiber. He values catechetics highly and knows precisely how each group is benefiting from catechetical programmes like Evangelium. He spent much of 2011 travelling around the country and meeting ordinariate groups, from the Black Country to the community of St Luke’s in Kennington, south London.

Last July Mgr Newton led members of the ordinariate to their spiritual home during the Pilgrimage of Reparation and Consecration to Walsingham. He was the main speaker at the Towards Advent Festival at Westminster Cathedral where he gave a talk on “Joy and Hope in the Church” and described his spiritual fulfilment at being in full communion with the Pope. A large crowd heard Mgr Newton’s talk. After he spoke he was greeted with resounding applause.

Mgr Newton has never lost his optimism and good humour, even when he has faced limited resources, including inadequate funds and a lack of accommodation for clergy and their families.

4. Bishop Mark Davies

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury was only installed as bishop in October 2010 but has already established himself as one of the most articulate, astute and prayerful bishops of our times, living by his maxim: “My task is to announce the Gospel.”

In October Bishop Davies responded to a report from the Care Quality Commission that underscored the failure in many hospitals to care for elderly people by saying that “the neglect of the elderly… may be a symptom of the ‘culture of death’ that has grown out of the loss of respect for human life following decades of abortion”.

The following month he addressed an audience at a synagogue in Manchester on how the Holocaust teaches us to be vigilant in defence of life. Bishop Davies stressed that we must fight “the return of eugenic thinking directed against the unborn and the most vulnerable deemed unfit to live or threatened with mercy killing”.

Bishop Davies warmed the hearts of traditional Catholics when he agreed to the establishment of the first house for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in England and Wales in the Wirral. This church is becoming a centre for the Extraordinary Form Mass.

A firm advocate of the rosary, he often prays this prayer for the priests of his diocese and the rest of England and makes them aware that he does so. Renewal and support for the priesthood is a motif of Bishop Davies’s preaching and actions.

He is fond of the St John Vianney quote: “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.” Bishop Davies has arranged for a relic of the patron saint of parish priests to tour his diocese in July.

5. Thomas Peters

Thomas Peters is like a modern-day St Paul of the Catholic blogosphere. The 26-year-old founded his blog, American Papist, in 2005 with the intention of documenting his journey of following the Pope and hoping to attract fellow “papists.” Six years on, and now combined with CatholicVote.org, his blog is read by tens of thousands every day. As it continues to gain popularity, Peters gathers what he terms “web elves”: Catholics who give him information and details that furnish his blog posts.

Peters was voted the best Catholic to follow on Twitter in 2011 and was the most active participant in the Vatican Meeting for Bloggers, during which he asked if the Vatican would make Catholic bloggers privy to sensitive documents in the same way they do the mainstream media outlets.

Peters was homeschooled, got his university education at Ave Maria, Florida, and did extensive postgraduate study in theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. He has often said that it is his study of theology that underpins much of his success in communicating the eternal truths of Christ on the web.

Peters works in Washington DC as communications director for the American Principles Project, an organisation founded by Dr Robert George with the aim of upholding the values of human life, traditional marriage and safeguarding the innocence of young children in the US Constitution.

He has been quoted by such major media outlets as BBC News, CNN and the Daily Telegraph among many others.

6. The Mizens

In May 2008 Jimmy Mizen was celebrating his 16th birthday with a visit to buy a lottery ticket when he and his brother were attacked by a local troublemaker, Jake Fahri. Coming to the aide of his sibling, Jimmy was stabbed in the neck and bled to death in his brother’s arms.

Jimmy’s devout Catholic parents, Barry (pictured) and Margaret, have since devoted much of their lives to fostering peace. In May 2009 they took part in an ecumenical service called “Building a Legacy of Peace” at Westminster Cathedral, conducted by Archbishop Vincent Nichols and with close to 1,000 people in attendance, including the Prince of Wales, Schools Minister Vernon Coaker and Jimmy’s school friends. Barry and Margaret spoke at the Hyde Park vigil during the papal visit, sharing how their Catholic faith has helped them overcome losing Jimmy at such a young age, a talk that brought hushed silence to a crowd of 90,000 people.

They founded the Jimmy Mizen Foundation, which aims to organise practical initiatives that bring out the best in young people. So far they’ve arranged apprenticeship placements, and the foundation helps young people find employment with local businesses. This year, they raised enough funds to buy “Jimmy buses” for local scout groups in Lewisham.

Barry and Margaret, who have eight other children, travel around England giving talks to parents, young people and teachers. In schools, prisons and youth clubs they speak about the grave necessity of anger management and preventing violence.

7. Robert Colquhoun

The British pro-life movement has been waiting for a dynamic young leader like Robert Colquhoun for some time. Robert led two 40 Days for Life prayer events in 2011, with 1,000 pro-lifers (including countless newcomers) taking part. Members of pro-life groups such as the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants and SPUC stood side-by-side to pray and offer pro-life literature to pregnant mothers. During the last event at least eight women decided against abortion.

Robert has diligently articulated pro-life apologetics to the secular media. He was interviewed by Liz Ashfield, who wrote in the Times that pro-lifers are often much better in reality than the distorted image projected of them.

Some of his lesser-known achievements in 2011 include being involved in public awareness days around London, inviting Dr Janet Smith to come to the Carmelite Priory, Oxford, and lead a Theology of the Body weekend retreat, which was attended by 25 young people, and organising a Theology of the Body symposium co-organised with St Mary’s University in Twickenham, which was attended by 260 people.

Robert is a committed Catholic but wants to engage with people of all religions in the struggle to end abortion.

8. Mother Assumpta Long

Mother Assumpta Long is the Michigan-based superior and co-founder of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. This is a relatively new religious order and is brimming with young vocations. The average age of vocation is 21 and the average age in the whole community is 28.

It all started in 1996 when Mother Assumpta was inspired by John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata, which invited members of religious orders to revitalise their vocation. Mother Assumpta and three other nuns founded the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. After their canonical establishment, Mother Assumpta accepted an invitation from Bishop Mengeling to teach in the Diocese of Lansing. Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan gave them start-up funding and asked them to teach in the Spiritus Sanctus Academies. Mother Assumpta’s sisters are trained to be teachers and the Spiritus Sanctus Academies will grow as the order produces more vocations.

They now have many convents in several US cities and the Sisters were twice profiled by Oprah during 2010, after which more vocations came. Mother Assumpta holds retreats for young women to help them discover if they have a vocation, and the order’s website is perhaps the best of its kind.

9. Sister Valsa John

On the night of November 15 in Jharkhand, eastern India, Sister Valsa John was dragged from her bed by 30 to 40 people and hacked to death with sickles and axes. The nun from Kerala was only 53, but was a sworn enemy of the “mining mafia” of Jharkhand’s coal-rich region. For 20 years she had been a whistleblower on the displacement of tribal people, the expropriation of their land by the coal miners and pollution from the coal mines, and she even caused one major coal company to shut down.

The Sister had for years received death threats and was continually intimidated by people connected with the coal miners. Her family have revealed that she received a death threat a few hours before her murder.

She was arrested in May 2007 on the grounds that she had protested against the forced acquisitions of lands for Panem Coal Mines, but was not charged, and after being released she made a compromise where Panem could acquire the land in exchange for alternative land, employment, a health centre and free education for the children of the exiled tribal families. Sister Valsa then ran a school that offered free education to 140 children and provided a dispensary with free medical aid.

Thousands of people attended her funeral which was concelebrated by 50 priests.

10. Mary Kraychy

Mary Kraychy is the Chicago-based founder and director of Coalition Ecclesia Dei, a Catholic lay movement that seeks to widen the use of the Extraordinary Form Mass and Gregorian chant. She is the creator and publisher of the ubiquitous A5 Red Missals. She has industriously worked to make the missals for following the Latin Mass readily available all over the world.

After Blessed Pope John Paul II issued his apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei, Mary started sending out a monthly newsletter and directory of Extraordinary Form Masses in north America since 1988. In 2007, Mary changed the Ecclesia Dei website to promote the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, as well as taking advantage of the eased restrictions on the Extraordinary Form Mass to form links with seminaries teaching the Tridentine Mass and Catholic publishers.

She is as devoted to Catholic social action as she is to liturgy. In 1978 she co-founded Aid for Women, an organisation providing practical help to teenagers and other women in crisis pregnancy so that their circumstances wouldn’t force them into abortions.

For six years Mary has been the Vice President of Una Voce America. Perhaps the folk song writer Laurence England will be inspired to write a ballad about her contribution to the life of the Church.

The interview prompted many people to write heartfelt letters, and one reader even wrote to us offering to pay the cost of his priestly training.

At the time of that first interview the young man (he was just 24) had already decided to pursue his priestly vocation, having been given a medical discharge by the United States Navy. And, incredibly, last month he was admitted to candidacy for the orders of diaconate and priesthood at a ceremony in Philadelphia.

When I catch up with him Philip has just received the news that after over a year of intensive radiation therapy his tumour is stable, perhaps even a little reduced.

“It went well,” he say. “The doctors think the tumour is slightly smaller. It was hard for them to tell because they had to zoom in on it. But they’re going to keep me on chemotherapy for a few months.”

Philip’s story starts on October 15 2008. He was then a gunnery officer in the US Navy and discerning his vocation. He had been suffering from nocturnal fits for several months and had been to the doctor, who thought that it was sleep paralysis, an unpleasant but not serious condition. But because he was asleep he was unable to accurately describe the seizures, and it was only when his ship was in the Persian Gulf on deployment that a fellow officer saw one of the seizures.

He was given an MRI scan. Doctors sat him down and told him he had a brain tumour, and just 18 months to live. He went to the chapel and cried.

The following January exploratory surgery revealed that the tumour was cancerous, malignant and more aggressive than previously thought. The tumour was rated as 3.3, with 4 being the fastest-growing, with average life expectancy being under two years. Because it was too big to operate on the only option available was radiation and chemotherapy. That was three years ago now.

Philip’s health up until that point had always been good. “That’s why it was so surprising,” he says.

Philip was raised a Catholic in North Carolina, although he speaks with a standard Midland American accent. “I don’t know why,” he laughs. “My whole family has a southern accent. I just never picked it up.” Like most Catholics of his generation, he drifted away in his teenage years, rather than actively rebelling, and even as a child he says he was not especially devout.

Graduating from high school in 2002, he immediately entered naval academy in Annapolis, Maryland, although this involved some sacrifice for a young man. “The other universities all had parties all the time,” he says, while Annapolis was very strict and focused. But looking back, he says: “Going to naval academy saved my faith. In any other school I would have fallen away.”

At the time he had a steady girlfriend. The relationship lasted for two years, but he always had an affinity with the priesthood (his former girlfriend went on to marry and the two are still friends). “I started thinking about it after I came back to the faith,” Philip says now. “I had five years owed to serve in the military because they paid for college.”

In 2006 he met his bishop, Bishop Michael Burbidge of Raleigh, to discuss his priestly calling. Then came the news.
“I never felt anger,” he says. “I was just really scared at first and I was confused.

“I wanted to become a seminarian. We have so few priests, why would God cut short someone who wants to add to it?” he says, almost laughing.

The military gave him a discharge and he returned to the United States from his posting in the Middle East to prepare for priestly training. Later, he visited Lourdes for the first time. “I’ve probably been six or seven times. I’ve done that three summers now. It does still have that power. It keeps drawing me back. It has a unique atmosphere.”

There, he met his teacher, a hermit called Fr George Byers who was one of the English-speaking chaplains. Fr Byers teaches him only. Philip just refers to him as “the hermit” as he lives alone in a log cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“He’s been a seminary professor all his life,” Philip explains, “and it just happened that he decided to become a hermit, and the bishop of the diocese next to mine invited him. So he moved to North Carolina right when I needed to take time off for the seminary. We kept in contact ever since.”

I ask Philip whether his way of thinking has changed after carrying this disease.

“You start to care a lot less about worldly things,” he says. “Things that used to bother you don’t bother you any more, when you think about it. It changed my life for the better. It made my prayer stronger, I came into contact with people I otherwise wouldn’t have met. I can see God’s hand in it. I can’t be mad, because I can see how he is working through this. You think about the blessings you have already.

“Death: you never think about it, and if you do it’s so far away that you never give it a second thought,” Philip says. “Now I have to think about it every day.” (He recently lost a friend, Jennifer Robbins, to brain cancer. For like many people with terminal conditions he has come to know many other sufferers.)

Philip is currently assigned to St Catherine of Siena church in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and hopes to return to St Charles Borromeo Seminary for on-campus studies next year.

He loves the Extraordinary Form Mass, which he says is rapidly growing in his part of the United States. Raleigh cathedral now hosts an EF Mass one Sunday in each month and Philip finds it a source of strength. (His mother, incidentally, only became a Catholic three years ago, although he doesn’t believe he was a direct influence.)

Philip writes a blog, In Caritate Non Ficta (which translates as “in unfeigned love” and can be found at Philipgerardjohnson.blogspot.com), and his faith and stoicism in the face of such a terrifying condition have inspired many people.

“My bishop asked me to speak at the local high school,” he says. “He’d already asked them to pray for me, they were praying novenas. There was just overwhelming support.”

Philip gets letters from well-wishers all the time, and he says that knowing that people care helps a lot. “If you have a difficult day, knowing people are thinking about and praying for you helps.”

A friend in the Vatican even arranged for his name to be entered into the prayer book that sits on the Pope’s prie dieu. He remains in the prayers of so many people, friends and strangers who have been touched by his story.

Last month Bishop Burbidge, for the second year in succession, announced a novena for Philip. In a letter to priests, religious and the lay faithful of the diocese, the bishop noted that the “growth of the brain tumour appears to have stabilised about the time of the conclusion of last year’s novena”.

I happened to have read a couple of days before interviewing Philip about a new trial for treating brain tumours, called GALA-5, in which 60 patients newly diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common type of malignant brain tumour, will be given 5-amino-levulinic acid, a substance which makes the tumour glow under UV light during surgery, making it easier to remove under surgery. I mention this to Philip, then realise he probably gets these sorts of snippets of hope all the time from people. It is natural when confronted with such a terrible injustice to want to offer reassurance.

He laughs. He says that he gets “a lot of emails from a lot of people” telling him about the latest in developments in brain cancer treatment.

I ask Philip what he is currently praying for. “I’m praying for strength,” he replies. “I’m praying for the strength to accept God’s will and be joyful about that, because miracles happen.

“I’ve always had a feeling, right after I was diagnosed, immediately I was told I had 18 months to live… for some reason I didn’t believe it. And I keep hearing it from different people, from priests I know, who say that when they pray for me they have a feeling I’m going to be around for a while.”

For some reason I get the same feeling when we speak, such is the strong feeling of hope that he communicates, not just for himself but for all of us who are ultimately heading in the same direction. So many people, in fact, across the world are praying for Philip that it seems as if he has an enormous force of faith behind him. So this Christmas, please remember him in your prayers.

Gingrich’s campaign seemed to have expired last summer when most of his staff resigned and the candidate took a holiday in Hawaii. He is the man who led the charge against Bill Clinton for perjury about an adultery, while he himself was a serial adulterer. He is an egghead autodidact who wants to lead a conservative coalition that now believes much expertise is self-interest with a PhD. He made most of his money after he left Congress in the kind of crony deal-making between private and public institutions that the Tea Party rose to challenge. And yet he is the current favourite among self-identified Tea Partiers.

Gingrich’s personal background is that of a Yankee transplant in Georgia, who won election to Congress in the late 1970s and established himself as an energetic backbencher, one who seemed to be at arm’s length from both the conservative and liberal wings of his party. He described himself as a “conservative-futurist” constantly pitching gigantic technological solutions to problems that didn’t seem entirely political. To wit, he once suggested the building of “a mirror system in space [that] could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for night-time lighting of the highways”. Also in 1984 he dared to suggest that America build “a large array of mirrors [that] could affect the earth’s climate” and extend the growing season of farmers. He is constantly pitching gimmicky “solutions” to almost any problem in society or government, some of them found in science fiction novels, others taken from business management gurus.

Gingrich has also had a colourful personal life, having married his high school maths teacher, Jackie Battley, in 1962. She was 26 and he was 19. Not long after his election he began an affair with Marianne Ginther. A legend grew up around the divorce that Gingrich had given his wife the divorce papers while she writhed on her death bed from cancer. But Battley is still alive. And so is Ginther, whom Gingrich cheated on with his young Congressional aid Callista Bisek in the 1990s. Gingrich married the Catholic Bisek in 2000.

He rose to become Speaker of the House in 1994 when he helped to lead the GOP to its first congressional majority in two generations. It was hailed as a “Republican Revolution” and it resulted in historic welfare reform, and years of budget surpluses. But it ended in utter acrimony, and Gingrich became one of the least popular figures in Washington. Somehow this part of his career has been forgotten.

Over the last decade, Gingrich had two career tracks. On the one side he made money selling his influence among conservative Republicans to the drug industry and to the mortgage giant Freddie Mac. He lobbied for the government expanding its subsidies to pharmaceutical companies and to mortgage makers. Conservatives have loathed the budget-busting results. On the other side, Gingrich morphed into a social conservative. Whereas in the 1990s Gingrich was the first member of Congress to call for Christmas trees to be re-named “holiday trees”, he now routinely bashes “political correctness” and secularism. He made a 2006 documentary and book with his third wife Calista called Rediscovering God in America, which he hawked at conservative gatherings. In this documentary he appeared wearing a crisp suit rather than sackcloth and ashes.

That, of course, is the other outrageous part of Gingrich’s career: his seemingly easy road to redemption. It required just a political pivot. No one has been asking Newt Gingrich to do contrition the way John Profumo did, by releasing all claims to power and status and spending decades doing menial charity work – though no one would object if Gingrich tried. But at times Gingrich’s ambition to appear strong in the face of challenge has led him to give preposterous explanations for his erratic personal behaviour. Earlier this year he told a reporter from the Christian Broadcasting Network: “There’s no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” This mea culpa seems more like Pontius Pilate sitting on Oprah’s couch than the conversion of a modern-day St Paul.

There is a persistent joke among Right-leaning American intellectuals that the conservative movement is a front group for making Catholic converts. William F Buckley Jr, who put it together, was a devoted Catholic, and many of the movement’s major and minor intellectuals have converted. In the past decade that trend extended to more conservative public figures as Senator Sam Brownback, Florida governor Jeb Bush, and journalist Robert Novak were received into the Church. Gingrich converted in 2009, admitting his attraction to the Church’s history, which he discovered touring Rome, and his admiration for Pope Benedict XVI.

But Gingrich’s religious professions, so unlike his political announcements, have been humble. “Over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace,” he told the media in 2009. As a political figure he has compared himself to Charles de Gaulle, Abraham Lincoln and the Duke of Wellington, but he has, thankfully, never compared himself to the martyrs and saints.

And that is part of what seems to be working for Gingrich politically. When challenged about his affairs in public debates he encourages audiences to investigate his record and acknowledges that candidates should be judged on their whole public record and their personal integrity. His face seems to hint that his unpopularity in the 1990s and at times during the last decade caused him to suffer, a redemption through “high negatives” in public surveys.

The goodwill his candidacy has suddenly generated may not be enough to take him to the nomination. He lacks money, organisation, and he is still one of the most undisciplined political figures in modern America. But there is a subset of GOP voters who desire nothing more than to see him debate with Barack Obama. And his biography hits notes of personal redemption and political second acts that can drive a media narrative for months.

Gingrich has benefited because of reticence about his closest rival Mitt Romney’s insincerity and his Mormonism. He is the latest and most plausible of the “Not Mitt Romneys” in this election cycle. But his candidacy could easily implode if he proposes some other scheme involving mirrors or if compares himself to Cicero.

Even if a Newt candidacy is risky and inadvisable, it wouldn’t be the the first time America’s conservatives have had an unlikely champion. Over 30 years ago, media-hating conservatives rallied to Ronald Reagan, a Hollywood divorcé and union leader who had liberalised California’s abortion laws.

Of course, America’s social conservative voters want to nominate better candidates than they have in the past, but their coalition to defeat what Pope Benedict calls the “dictatorship of relativism” is itself a mutable and ever diversifying group. It tolerates all sorts of contradictions in the pursuit of its immediate political goals. And now with the spectre of a second term for Barack Obama terrifying social conservatives, it should be no surprise that it would tolerate the living outrage that is Newt Gingrich.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is politics editor at Business Insider (Businessinsider.com)

He continues: “The social worker described my mother as angry. She had never intended to see me after birth, but then she asked to hold me. The social worker said that there was a noticeable change in her countenance after that.

“I’m glad she chose life and gave me the opportunity to be adopted by an amazing multi-racial Christian family of 15. I had an amazing life growing up on a farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There was never a dull moment. Never a quiet moment either!”

From such inauspicious beginnings, Ryan has gone on to become an Emmy Award-winning creative director. More recently, he has applied his media savvy to designing the Too Many Aborted pro-life campaign, which gained massive media coverage across America, from the New York Times to CNN to ABC News. This enabled Ryan’s personal story to reach millions, along with the pro-life message of the Radiance Foundation, which he co-founded with his wife, Bethany.

In the United States, race and abortion are deeply sensitive topics. Yet Ryan did not shy away from addressing the racial aspects of American abortion. Black women comprise 13 per cent of the American female population, but account for 30 per cent of abortions. Ryan says that in places like New York City, rates of abortion among black women are up to five times higher among than white people, and some 60 per cent of black pregnancies are aborted.

“The Too Many Aborted campaign came out of a need to explore the disproportionate impact of abortion on black and bi-racial children,” he explains. “If you mix race and abortion you get the kind of incredible media response that we got.”

But Ryan says that the “overwhelmingly pro-choice media” tried to distract from the real issues, implying that the campaign was “racist” and “taking the angle that it was a Right-wing organisation run by white conservative males, which explains why most of them didn’t want to interview me”.

He says that his presence as a black man who was nearly a victim of abortion himself was conveniently airbrushed out by most of the US media.

The campaign was also accused of “misogyny” and of being a political effort to divide the black community.

“Those charges are ludicrous,” Ryan says. “But that’s what you get, because they cannot contest the statistics or the documented history of the abortion industry.”

Ryan argues that the original abortion advocates like Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes were racists and eugenicists. “But that gets excused somehow. Many of those involved [in the abortion industry] today don’t even understand that these are their ideological foundations. Look at the core components of the movement: eugenics, racism, classism, concern about overpopulation and hatred of organised religion. These are all the same components that still exist today. It has nothing to do with women’s health and everything to do with population control and which parts of the population are worthy of life and which ones aren’t.”

But, he says, abortion advocates seek to present these facts in exactly the opposite way. “They have realised the power of marketing,” he says. “The use of a few buzzwords has changed the political and moral landscape of our country.”

He is saddened that the pro-life movement has been comparatively ineffective at communication, often failing to use the power of marketing and advertising to express truth. “We live in a society where people have a two-second attention span and you don’t have time to compete for someone’s attention.”

This is why Ryan felt the need to use his knowledge of communications and the media to assist the pro-life cause. His campaigns make wide use of the internet, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. He says that use of the internet is crucial to circumvent an “overwhelmingly pro-choice mainstream media”. He calls the ideological outlook of the media “a huge barrier”, citing how reporters “will often ignore over 300,000 people attending the March for Life in Washington, DC, but will extensively cover comparatively tiny pro-choice protests”.

The Too Many Aborted campaign featured pictures of black babies next to phrases like “the 13th Amendment freed us” and “abortion enslaves us”, thereby making an emotive link to America’s “original sin” of slavery. Another poster reads: “Every 21 minutes our next possible leader is aborted.” This advert features a picture of President Obama.

While moved by “the principle of a black president”, Ryan does not welcome Obama’s presidency due to “the ideological positions he holds”. Yet, for him, Obama remains “the tangible realisation of possibility”.

“I look at him and see the son of a single mother who struggled through a lot of her life,” he says. “He is the sort of person whose life is often written off through abortion, and yet he is pro-choice and pro-abortion. That is truly tragic.

“Also, when you consider that black Americans weren’t even considered Americans until the 14th Amendment, it’s bizarre to see how our first black President can say that this group of people [the unborn] aren’t human enough either. To me, it’s tragic.”

Ryan believes that there remains a “huge eugenic component” in the pro-abortion movement today. He makes the striking point that the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide actually defines genocide as “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within a racial group. “That is clearly what abortion does in the United States,” he says, “right back to ‘the Negro Project’ in 1939, which effectively continues today. Genocide is clearly happening. Human rights groups are ignoring the most egregious injustice today.”

He says that pro-abortion policies are usually pursued by an elite who invariably claim to be on the side of women, black people and the defenceless. Yet as well as disproportionately affecting black people, abortion has resulted in millions of missing women in China and India due to the selective abortion of girls.

“Not only is it clear that the gendercide is happening, but certain human rights and abortion groups never come to their defence,” Ryan says. Therefore, “they can’t deal with the repercussions of this” which, he says, include the human trafficking of vulnerable women.

Ryan says that some American pro-abortion groups have even remained silent even in the face of crimes recently uncovered by a Grand Jury in Philadelphia, where an abortionist, Dr Kermit Gosnell, ran a clinic where women died. “He butchered children.

He punctured their necks with scissors. He cut babies’ feet off and put them in jars. He did this for well over 15 years, completely unscathed.”

A worker at the clinic recently pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree murder. The clinic was not inspected as city officials felt inspections were “putting a barrier up to women”.

“That’s the position they take all the time,” Ryan says, “because abortion is a sacrosanct act for them and they will defend it no matter the cost.”

But he does sense the tide turning in the US, because the younger generation of Americans is more pro-life than the older one. He feels that this is because the internet enables them to circumvent a pro-choice media and academia.

“We can measure the change from the thousands of emails we get from people explaining how they have shifted their position. It’s amazing how many hearts we have been able to reach.

I think there is going to be a monumental shift because the pro-abortion side does not have biology to back it up. The idea that life begins at conception is Biology 101.”

Ryan believes that technology will also help to turn the tide through the advent of 3D ultrasounds, which help women to see the reality of a baby in their womb, living and moving. Ryan says that the scans scare Planned Parenthood, America’s biggest abortion provider, to death.

“That’s why they fight against any legislation that suggests a woman should have even the option of an ultrasound. They fear a visual representation of what they profit from the destruction of. We know from pregnancy care centres that women overwhelmingly change their minds when they get a window into the womb.”

He adds: “I see scanning becoming more widely available as the cost of such technology comes down. It’s having an incredible impact in allowing women to see truth. Truth: that’s all it is. There’s no way to contest that. There’s no way you can see the beautiful little arms and legs and head and say: ‘Oh, it’s just a blob of tissue.’ Technology means you can’t get away with that.”

For more information about Ryan Bomberger’s work visit Theradiancefoundation.org, TooManyAborted.com and ShouldHaveBeenAborted.com.

The 111th United States Congress (2009-2011), the author points out, ran up more debt than the first 100 congresses (1789-1989) combined. Within a decade, America will be paying more in interest payments than on its military, which itself is more than the combined militaries of pretty much everyone else.

America is certainly not alone in this. Greece might be the first into the abyss but many European countries are falling into a debt black hole, a situation that David Starkey recently described as being as big a danger to Europe as 20th-century Fascism.

But just as a credit card statement says something about an individual, the West’s debt pile reflects a deeper moral malaise, both in the state and its people. Government spending is, Steyn argues, a “moral crisis”, not a spending one. And at the heart of it is an existential crisis, one not unconnected to Europe’s abandonment of faith, of a people who only desire to live for today.

Citing the economist John Maynard Keynes’s comment that “in the long run we are all dead”, Steyn points out: “Keynes’s flippancy disguises his radicalism. For most of human history functioning societies honour the long run; it’s why millions of people have children, build houses, plant gardens, start businesses, make wills, put up beautiful churches in ordinary villages, fight and if necessary die for king and country. It’s why extraordinary men create great works of art – or did in the Europe of old.

A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words, ‘conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream’.”

Europeans have stopped thinking of themselves in such terms, and the stream has become a stagnant swamp. Shorn of a belief in the hereafter, or a higher truth, their cultural efforts have slumped as quickly as their birthrates. Why bother making great art or having children when in the long term we’re all dead?

In an enfeebled civilisation cut off from its own cultural heritage, the state and its apparatchiks have taken on the function of religion. In this secular world “Big Government becomes a kind of religion: the church as state”, and that religion co-opts “many of the best and brightest but politically passive”.

This statism is as intolerant as any theocracy, demanding a narrow set of values of those within its communion, even where those values are shamelessly ignoring the reality of life as it is truly lived.

Britain is, for once, way ahead of America, as Steyn, an Anglophile who has become deeply disillusioned by Britain, points out. He describes a failed, broken and violent society where people in the most expensive real estate on earth dare not wander outside their own homes (with excellent timing, the book came out just as London was rocked by three nights of looting that resembled a zombie film).

Steyn quotes Frederich Hayek’s description of the Britons of 1944, characterised by “independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, non-interference with one’s neighbour… and a healthy suspicion of power and authority”.

Today 40 per cent of Britons receive state handouts, tradition is reviled, and the standard response to any inconvenience is that the Government “do something”.

Reflecting on the welfare state, Steyn says: “Cooperation between the state and the individual has resulted in a huge expansion of the former and the ceaseless withering of the latter.”

This statism has made European society infinitely weaker, unhappier, more sterile and broke, and yet Barack Obama is busy importing this same failed ideology into America. It is, as Steyn comments, like coming down the gangplank on to Ellis Island and finding there’s this new thing called “serfdom” that is all the rage in America.