The question is: What is the point of forgiveness? Listening to a programme on the radio about restorative justice a few years ago, I was reduced to sudden and copious tears by an exchange between a grieving mother and her daughter’s imprisoned killer. The mother, though well aware she would never get over the loss Read more
Over the course of the past century, “spree killings” committed by and directed toward civilians have become a regular part of our social world. It seems that we have developed a discrete category for them in our social imaginary. In the years since the Columbine massacre of 1999, the dramatically increased frequency of these killings Read more
Carl Jung thought psychology could offer a language for grappling with moral ambiguities in an age of spiritual crisis. In 1959, two years before his death, Jung was interviewed for the BBC television programme Face to Face. The presenter, John Freeman, asked the elderly sage if he now believed in God. “Now?” Jung replied, paused Read more
Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why. Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its Read more
David Quinn, the most perceptive Catholic observer of Church affairs in Ireland today, has been working overtime in response to the latest public assaults on the Vatican. Writing for the Irish Catholic, Quinn compares the fury of the current Irish government with the ardor of the Jacobins, warning that the Vatican is always the main Read more
Love him or hate him, Archbishop Charles Chaput is impossible to ignore. The Archbishop responsible for the Toowoomba Diocese visitation is Pope Benedict XVI’s choice as the new chief shepherd of the embattled Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Few American bishops relish public debate more than the 66-year-old Chaput, whose background is in the Capuchins, and who’s widely Read more
Online, God has been released from traditional doctrine to become everything to everybody. I remember several years ago, when the virtual world Second Life was the thing on the web, wandering in the embodiment of my avatar through a most extraordinary representation of a cathedral. The frescoes, stained glass and flying buttresses were replicated to Read more
The Seal of the confessional is generally respected in most western jurisdictions, whether constitutionally or by custom and practice. To date, in the Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain it is respected under custom and practice, while in the US it is protected under two constitutional amendments. Legislation to breach the seal of the confessional would Read more
Marshall McLuhan, was a convert to catholicism and described by one of his colleagues as “a mystic Catholic humanist”. And if the man who coined the phrase “the medium is the message” were alive today, there isn’t much that would surprise him — not the Internet, or Google, or Twitter, or WikiLeaks, or even the phone-hacking Read more
The “nuclear question” is at once complex and straightforward: what do we do with the Cold War legacy of thousands of the most destructive weapons humankind has ever created? For more than 60 years since the dawn of the nuclear age, the world, and particularly the Church, has grappled with the role of these weapons, Read more