What lies at the heart of moral decision-making? If there were an Olympics of university teaching, I’d expect Michael Sandel to place highly. Sandel is a professor at Harvard University and teaches an extraordinarily popular course on ethics (you can watch it on YouTube – look for “What’s the right thing to do?”). He opens Read more
A bioethics conference will focus on spiritual practices about dying, including whether the body is a temple — or a prison. Back when my father’s life was coming to an end at an excruciatingly slow pace, my brother and I vowed not to die like that, with so much compromise and indignity. But hanging on Read more
Only the truth behind the Vatileaks scandal can free the Catholic Church. It has all the makings of a Hollywood adaptation of a Dan Brown novel. Secrets of the Vatican exposed, documents stolen from the Pope’s desk, rows and rivalries between cardinals, vast sums of money, the involvement of the cultish organisation Opus Dei. And Read more
So help me, Hone Harawira is right. It’s not the display gangs make of themselves that matters, but the reasons why gangs exist in the first place. That a blue-eyed, pink-skinned, blonde MP, Todd McClay, tagging along after ex-Whanganui mayor Michael Laws, wants gang patches banned, illustrates the ignorance of even intelligent people when they Read more
How should bishops conduct themselves in the public square? The question is especially urgent today when so many divisive issues, including contraception mandates and same-sex marriage, complicate the nation’s politics. Economic concerns still dominate the public’s interest, but it is these hot-button issues that get people’s blood pressure rising. The question is urgent for another Read more
Who’s the better Catholic: Paul Ryan or Sister Simone Campbell, who recently led a rollicking group of nuns on a cross-country tour to protest Ryan’s budget bill? We think Jesus would choose Sister Simone. Her platform is simple: unlike Romney and his running mate, nuns know what real-life Americans go through because they actually work Read more
I’ve been a parent for a long time now, and I have heard many, many parents — in real life, in print, and on television — talk about their ultimate hopes for their children: “I just want my child to be happy.” “I want my child to be successful.” “I want my child to have Read more
Last night, watching the Olympic closing ceremony, like millions of others , I heard a digitally remastered John Lennon singing Imagine. The song was familiar, but the words took me by surprise. These words encapsulate so many of the modern objections to religion and faith, that it seems a good idea to present a few counter-arguments. Read more
The Church in England is losing the fight against secularism. With the opponents of the Church gaining the upper hand we have to ask if Catholics are well- trained and strong enough to fight back. We are outnumbered and, at best, considered superstitious and irrelevant – at worst, a danger to society. In such circumstances Read more
I’ve lost track of the number of times people have told me about the ‘enormous wealth of the Vatican’. Some are confused: they think the Vatican owns all the Church’s worldwide real estate, lock, stock and barrel. Others think that all that art could be sold for the poor without adverting to the difficulty of Read more