Recent political posturing over partnership visas and arranged marriages is a troubling distraction that derails the real, necessary debates we should be having over the many changes to immigration policy. Let’s take the recent changes aimed at limiting the ability of low-income migrant spouses to work here as an example. While these changes are aimed Read more
Chris Luxon has some explaining to do. He has been identified as an evangelical Christian, which, if you’ll pardon the religious cliché, covers a multitude of sins. That’s why I believe Chris Luxon owes New Zealanders a working definition of evangelical Christianity – and how he intends to practice it. A private matter? Well, that Read more
Pope Francis “seeks to shape a practical ecclesiology — a church capable of shaping the world,” Father J. Bryan Hehir told an audience at Georgetown University in Washington Nov. 12. Bryan Hehir, a professor of religion and public life at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, delivered an annual lecture sponsored by the Read more
As Pope Francis beging the thirty-second trip of his pontificate Nov. 19 to Thailand and Japan, he will once again be visiting nations where Catholics are a small minority. In both countries, there’s one Catholic for every 200 people, as opposed to roughly one for five in the United States. The Nov. 19-26 trip will Read more
A sweeping theory published early November in the journal Science posits a new explanation for the divergent course of Western civilization from the rest of the world: The early Catholic Church, medieval Catholicism, reshaped family structures and, by doing so, changed human psychology forever after. The researchers assert that they can trace all sorts of modern-day Read more
His face weathered from years at sea, kimono-clad Japanese fisherman Masaichi Kawasaki kneels before an altar adorned with images of the Virgin Mary, crossing himself as he softly intones chants handed down through centuries. Kawasaki, 69, is one of a dwindling number of Japan’s “Kakure Kirishitan,” or “Hidden Christians,” descendants of those who preserved their Read more
In 2013, while volunteering in India, Graciela Colon first heard the inner stirrings of Jesus calling her to a religious vocation. For three weeks, she helped St. Teresa of Kolkata’s Missionary Sisters of Charity, minister to abandoned children, some of whom were severely disabled. They took the children off the streets and cared for them. Read more
As Pope Francis prepares to embark on his fourth trip to Asia in the seventh year of his pontificate, he is delivering in a big way on the promise he made shortly after his election that he would make Asia a key focus of his papacy. When he appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle as head Read more
Galileo ran afoul of the Inquisition in 1633 when he was found “vehemently suspect of heresy.” His heresy? Declaring the heliocentric view of the solar system: that the earth revolves around the sun. His punishment was lighter than many others who faced the Inquisition. He was “only” sentenced to house arrest until his death in Read more
The great doorway to growing in the Christian faith is narrowing from year to year in Quebec as baptisms have significantly declined in since 2012 and there’s no indication the trend will reverse. Confronted with a shift away from traditional practices of transmitting the faith in childhood, leaders in the Quebec church are rethinking how Read more