Over-diagnosis epidemic – David Le Couteur discusses recent changes in the definition of dementia and their ramifications: The pattern of over-diagnosis is the same for many diseases: we screen healthy people and those with minimal symptoms; we use sophisticated technologies that detect early or minor abnormalities that may not progress; and we treat people with Read more
The Vatican II council, which began 50 years ago next month, was the most momentous religious event in 450 years. On January 25, 1959, the newly elected Pope John XXIII invited 18 cardinals from the Vatican bureaucracy to attend a service at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He told them Read more
Discussion of the environment can be a turn off. The topic is vast and complicated, and it raises high passions. When we imagine the environment, we may imagine walking in remote bush country now threatened by logging. We may imagine Tasmanian tigers that have become extinct, or the inhabitants of Tuvalu whose island is gradually Read more
Most people, most of the time, are fundamentally decent. Hence if they knew that there’s a minority facing an epidemic of persecution — a staggering total of 150,000 martyrs every year, meaning 17 deaths every hour — there would almost certainly be a groundswell of moral and political outrage. There is such a minority in Read more
Let’s go back to 15 February 2000, when you were informed you were to become the 10th Archbishop of Westminster. Did Pope John Paul II send you a letter or a text, or how did it happen? Easing back in his chair, Cardinal Cormac reflected for a while on that life-changing event 12 years ago. The circumstances Read more
This year, my summer reading included Carolyn Maull McKinstry’s memoir, While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement (Tyndale, 2011, 301 pp., with Denise George), which I picked up at the Civil Rights Institute on a recent visit to Birmingham, Ala. I was profoundly moved by her story about Read more
From the Johnsonville Uniting Church: During August, Sunday morning worship services have focused on The Word. On 5 August, the focus was on Spirited Conversations. The following is one of the spirited conversations, held between Anna Gilkison and Kathy Stirrat during the service. Introduction (Anna) Church is Wherever God’s People are praising. At the Methodist Read more
On Monday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti met Benedict XVI at the pope’s retreat in Castel Gandolfo, signifying the end of the summer doldrums. A brief Vatican statement said the exchange focused on the “European situation,” understood to mean the Eurozone’s massive debt crisis, high unemployment and generally dismal economic outlook. It was the fifth Read more
The death of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has prompted a bout of soul-searching about America’s national destiny as well as mourning for an icon of the 20th century. As tributes continued to pour in on Sunday for the former astronaut who died aged 82 there were also expressions of regret that Read more
‘Man is the only animal for whom his existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.’ Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (1947). To be called sane might be regarded as a salutary point. To be regarded as insane is, however, another matter — a point that is hotly debated in Read more