A little less hysteria and a lot better collective memory would help us pope-watchers settle down. The Catholic Church – and the Pope – don’t have a nasty history on their own. Over much of the world, the concept of children’s rights is still non-existent, and child prostitution and slavery is a fact of everyday Read more
On the evening of April 10, six weeks after the conclusion of the Vatican’s summit on the sex-abuse crisis, the Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, made known his thoughts on the genesis of that crisis in a five-thousand-plus-word essay sent to a periodical for Bavarian priests, quickly translated into English, and then diffused online by Catholic Read more
Fr Gerry Hughes SJ had a rich imagination for creating parable relevant to present times. He often used one of these in a homily. Here is a story that has stayed with me both in essence and effect. Two women won a national competition. The prize was to have a meal cooked for them by Read more
Life and death are not individual events. There are very few people who are on the Earth by themselves. We exist as part of our families, our whānau and our communities. For many Māori, death is a process the whole whānau goes through together because the whānau is farewelling a part of itself. It’s a Read more
Could a practising Catholic do a good, honest job of chairing the Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care and Faith-based Institutions? Yes. To disqualify chairman Sir Anand Satyanand simply on the basis of his own faith, rather than any deeds, would be to indulge intolerance. The church has far too often been a place Read more
In a televised interview of Prime Minister Scott Morrison by the Australian public intellectual Waleed Aly, Morrison was asked whether Australia has “a problem with Islamophobia.” Less than a week after the Christchurch massacre, Morrison replied, “I don’t know if Australians understand Islam very well … and that can often lead to a fear of Read more
2019 will be a momentous year for Bougainville. This region of Papua New Guinea, that has had an autonomous government since 2005, is to hold a referendum on whether to extend this to full independence. It is the culmination of a peace process that began in 1997 and which had ended nearly ten years of Read more
The appointment of Wilton Gregory as archbishop of Washington, D.C., is good news for the church, the city and the country. The only drawback is his age. Gregory, 71, will have to submit his resignation when he reaches 75, the age when every bishop must submit his resignation. Whoever the pope is in December of Read more
Theologians in Germany were recently invited to speak to the nation’s Catholic hierarchy about the clergy abuse crisis and they used the rare opportunity to chastise the more than 60 bishops for being too slow in pushing for major Church reform. The theologians were given an entire “study day” to address the German Bishops’ Conference Read more
Vibrant flowers gild the gates of the Christchurch mosques, each bouquet laid with trembling hands, representing a beautiful solidarity amidst a heart-rending grief. “This is your home,” wrote a Wellington artist, and “you should have been safe here.” But the flowers will, eventually, wither away. It is up to us to make sure that when Read more