Early this year, I had the best holiday of my life when the Sisters in New Zealand invited me to join them for two celebrations, one in Auckland and the second in Samoa. The occasion was the forty years of Mercy ministry to schools and clinic in that small country. For me the whole experience Read more
Before globalization the maritime industry played an important role in shipping consumables, raw material and finished products around the globe and also in transporting a great number of migrants. Even more today when 90% of the global trade is moved by sea together with millions of passengers travelling for pleasure on board of cruise ships. Read more
In this fiftieth anniversary year of the opening of Vatican II, a number of interviews on Eureka Street TV have featured critical reflections from prominent Catholic thinkers and activists on various aspects of the Council. This interview is with journalist, author and broadcaster, Clifford Longley, who is one of the UK’s leading lay Catholics. He was invited Read more
Papua New Guinean Catholics and their Christian friends in Australia are organising a Special Holy Mass in English and Tok Pisin in honour of Blessed Peter ToRot in celebration of the 100th year of his birth. The mass will be held at St Vincent’s Catholic Church, 7 Bindel Street, Aranda in Canberra at 11am next Saturday and Read more
My high school chemistry teacher’s motto, “The facts are friendly,” applies to a lot more than scientific experiments. The English version of the German magazine, Der Spiegel offers a summary of and explanation for the disarray and confusion at senior levels of the Vatican that have resulted from rivalries, scandals, blunt and even brutal administrative acts, falsification Read more
The mood at the Vatican is apocalyptic. Pope Benedict XVI seems tired, and both unable and unwilling to seize the reins amid fierce infighting and scandal. While Vatican insiders jockey for power and speculate on his successor, Joseph Ratzinger has withdrawn to focus on his still-ambiguous legacy. Finally, there is clarity. The Holy See has Read more
Even as certain mental skills decline with age—what was that guy’s name again?—scientists are finding the mind gets sharper at a number of vitally important abilities. In a University of Illinois study, older air traffic controllers excelled at their cognitively taxing jobs, despite some losses in short-term memory and visual spatial processing. How so? They Read more
We find ourselves in a deeply divided church — and society as well. For those who love the church, the many contemporary trials Catholics face cause concern and, for some at least, pain. Some trials, with origins stretching back 400 years, are manifest in an increasingly secularized society. Other trials are more contemporary and play Read more
A father’s love contributes as much — and sometimes more — to a child’s development as does a mother’s love. That is one of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood. “In our half-century of international Read more
A recently released study suggesting children of same gender parents fare worse than others is flawed because it does not compare children living with parents in stable same gender relationships with children living with parents in stable heterosexual relationships. “In fact, only a small proportion of its sample spent more than a few years living Read more