As Christmas approaches, there is one thing we can be as sure of seeing as Santa Claus and incessant ads for holiday deals: full Catholic churches. As predictable as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, Catholics of all stripes return to their parish every Christmas, many visiting for the first time since the previous Read more
More New Zealand households are under financial pressure than ever. New Zealand families are under growing financial stress as stagnating wages and salaries prove inadequate to cover spiralling costs – and even top-tier earners are feeling the squeeze. According to Statistics New Zealand’s Household Income Survey, 29,200 more families now rate themselves as having incomes Read more
The Occupy Wall St movement is being criticised by some as a crowd of malcontents having no solutions to offer to the problems they are protesting about. To start with they were portrayed as a movement that objected to what they deemed to be unfair bank regulations. Two months down the track, the novelty has dimmed, the objectives Read more
The recent conviction of Sean Davison has revived the euthanasia debate. In an article in the New Zealand Herald, John Kleinsman argues that there is no case for killing society’s most vulnerable members. He argues that “the ‘right to die’ could become a ‘duty’ to die”. Read John Kleinsman’s article Image: Voxy.co John Kleinsman Read more
Last week TV3 broadcast a documentary on child poverty highlighting the issue of child poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. Child Matters supports Bryan Bruce’s call in his documentary – for legislation to put our children first; for a strong focus on the needs of children, not the status of parents; and for this to happen across all political parties. Read more
Brian O’Connell sm, editor of the Marist Messenger, develops his November Focus article on the theme that the “Evangelical movement is not just a ‘top-down’ message but a strong ‘bottom-up’ force.” He quotes John Allen, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, and says that it is time for the evangelical movement, the Catholic Evangelicals, “to Read more
Mass had just begun at Corpus Christi Catholic Church when Jennifer Zickel, a Sunday school teacher, glanced at the church bulletin and saw something that made her sick to her stomach. Tucked in with announcements about a new electronic donation system and a church dinner at Margarita’s Mexican restaurant was news that Zickel, the mother of two Read more
Religious leaders have long been powerful in US elections, but this year something new is happening. Leading members of the American Catholic clergy have escalated their conflict with the Obama administration, most notably in the new “religious liberty’’ campaign launched by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The slogan picks up on a long-standing evangelical Read more
Controversial social commentator Celia Lashlie says too-soft mums ‘put sons at risk’. She said that many teenage boys are killed on the roads because their mums smother them and refuse to let them discover the consequences of their own actions. Speaking to a Traffic Institute conference in Hamilton yesterday, the former prison officer turned author Read more
Charities say they have watched with concern as the gap between rich and poor grew over the past few years with no solution in sight. Wellingtonian of the Year and former City Missioner Father Des Britten said there was no doubt things were getting worse. Unfortunately in today’s world it was up to each person Read more