As my recently deceased spiritual guide, Peter Steele, would never tire of saying: ‘There are only two conditions in the spiritual life — you’re either growing or you’re dying.’ What makes for spiritual growth? In my childhood and adolescence, it was all about going to Sunday Mass, confessing your sins once a month at least, going Read more
On Sunday, October 7, 2012 I went to an ecumenical sharing service in Wellington in honour of Hildegard of Bingen being made the 35th Doctor of the Catholic Church. At approximately the same time the Opening Mass for the Synod on the New Evangelisation was being celebrated in St. Peter’s in Rome and the doctorates Read more
Kids need a dad and a mum, not just “parents”, because, as a new study shows, dad does different things for the growing child than mum does, at least some of the time. I know this will not impress die-hard gender egalitarians, but most mums and dads will quickly see the point. The study tracked Read more
Rainbows are a universal sign of hope, although they only exist in the eyes of the people who see them and sometimes in their photographs. How intriguing then that biblical storytellers saw this trick of light as the sign of God’s promise. Talking about the God that was nowhere to be seen before science discovered the unsettling Read more
Neither presidential campaign has distinguished itself with its veracity. But there is a hierarchy of deceit in campaigns, as in life. I recall an incident during the 1976 campaign, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not. Jimmy Carter had said he would never lie to the American people. A group of reporters came to Plains, Ga., to interview Read more
Humanism in its most virulent form tries to make science into a religion. It is awash with the intolerance of enthusiasm. For a start, there is the near-hysterical repudiation of religion. To quote Richard Dawkins: “I think there’s something very evil about faith … it justifies essentially anything. If you’re taught in your holy book Read more
I have previously written about the Catholic Church’s need to be realistic about its property needs — in terms of schools, churches and presbyteries. If a property is no longer needed or the revenue generated from its sale would be a better use of the asset, assuming it’s not going to be disproportionately detrimental to Read more
Margaret Sullivan now wears the public editor hat at The New York Times and with a recent ombudsman column took on a huge media problem: False balance aka false equivalency. False balance reports are those that appear fair because they have two sides, except that one side reflects neither knowledge nor a right to speak. Reports on Catholicism are especially vulnerable Read more
The Marriage Amendment Bill aims to amend marriage legislation to ensure gay couples are not treated in “a discriminatory manner”. It has passed its first reading and is now open for submissions from the public. In our next piece in a series of opinions, Wairarapa man and future Labour political hopeful Kieran McAnulty says marriage Read more
There’s more to art and spirituality than meets the eye, ear or intellect. More is what lingers, soothing the troubled soul, leaving a bad taste, irritating beyond belief or what we thought we knew. More is about our interaction with that which is not obvious, a process that inadvertently engages us in co-creation of the Read more