I read with great interest, and I hope empathy, the story about Beverley Broadbent ending her life. I think I can appreciate her choice to end her life while still able to enjoy living. But it is not a choice that I intend to make. It is, nevertheless, a choice that confronts me. I was Read more
Searching for Sugar Man is a strange story. On the face of it, a documentary about a musician famous in one country and completely unknown in his own. Within the layers it becomes an Easter tale. David Letterman called it jaw droppingly fascinating and that about sums up this movie about Sixto Rodriquez, a musical political from Read more
I soooooooo don’t get it. John Main says, “Language may not be able to lead us into the ultimate communion but it is the atmosphere in which we first draw breath of consciousness.” I have spent more than fifty years acquiring language – a spiritual language, that is, not my native tongue – and suddenly Read more
Much has been made of the impressions Pope Francis has created by his ordinary, every day activities: catching buses, using a telephone to make his own calls, not dressing in all the fine drapery usually worn by popes, treating people respectfully as he did the journalists, celebrating the Holy Thursday Mass in a Roman prison. Read more
There is no delusion more surprising than that human beings are rational. You need only consider the position the ghastly Kardashians occupy in the hearts and minds of millions of television viewers for evidence of that. We wreck the world through overpopulation, squander resources and exterminate species far lovelier than ourselves. Climate change looks to Read more
He’s convinced the cardinals, wowed the crowds and on Saturday he attempted perhaps the trickiest task of all – to woo the hardbitten media. And Pope Francis pulled it off spectacularly, speaking warmly to several thousand journalists crowded into the Vatican’s Paul VI hall about their hard work covering his election and passionately of “a poor church for Read more
Outside a lepers’ colony in Navi Mumbai, India, is a small chapel. Painted in both Hindi and English on the outside of the chapel, it reads: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. The chapel welcomes people of all faiths, and is visited by lepers who have been rejected from Read more
Recently I viewed a YouTube video by Australian performance poetry artist, Joel McKerrow. “God Rid Me of God’ it was called. The poem explores the constraints we put on the nature of God; the shackles we use to confine God. Joel entreats that we stop shaping God in our own image: “God, rid me of Read more
Catholics from China admit feeling embarrassed when they see a crucifix. Beyond the image of a tortured man suffering execution, the crucifixion depicts total humiliation, or “loss of face” as the Chinese say. To them, this seems harsher than the physical pain. The trouble with the crucifix is we no longer see it, but rather Read more
The election of a new pope is always an exciting moment for the Church and the world. After weeks of uncertainty, it seems there is good reason to celebrate the election of Pope Francis I, and to congratulate and offer support to him in the immense task ahead. The excitement of the election of a Read more