On 2 June Archbishop John Dew was one of the Church Leaders invited to speak at the launch of the Closer Together: Whakatata Mai information programme. This is a project of the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services of which the Catholic Church is one of the six member churches. The project is targeted specifically Read more
College graduate Kate Childs has found that over the past five years she had changed and grown. She found she had different reasons for being Catholic, different hopes for her church. She wondered if those she graduated with had experienced a similar transformation. So she asked some of her peers to answer a few questions Read more
Forty years ago our parents had to get married if they wanted to have sex and children. Those who flouted the convention were either careless or brave. Today, nearly half of the children born in New Zealand are born outside marriage. At any one time, though, only about 12 per cent of them live with Read more
In nine years I have been graced with three children and here is what I have learned about them. They are engines of incalculable joy and agonising despair. They are comedy machines. Their language is their own and the order of their new halting words has never been heard before in the whole history of Read more
War and the arms trade that feeds it cannot make life for the people on our small planet more just or more secure. It is not simply that crimes are committed by all sides in every war. War itself is the crime says Paul Oestreicher “Unless we change, unless the Church moves to the margins Read more
Is the use of the word the phrase, “I am spiritual but not religious” an attempt to get “the warm cozy feeling” of religious life without making the intellectual commitment to what is the central question: Does God exist?” Adam Frank suggests the those who struggle to integrate their science with their theology reformulate the question. Not Read more
“Bishops must be conservative”. Instead of being on the edge pushing boundaries (which would lead to even more conflict-ridden factionalism), the role of a bishop is to create a community that holds people together, that sets boundaries and is a source of unity.” That’s what Patty Fawkner heard her pairsh priest say, and it left Read more
In May last year, chief coroner Neil MacLean revealed that at least a dozen teenagers had died from binge drinking since July 2007. One was only 13. Other research shows that tens of thousands of teenagers a year are injured through drinking, or are diagnosed with alcohol problems, while the damage from unprotected sex, lost Read more
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson was recently critiqued by the US bishops. As the keynote speaker at assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 2008 she spoke of the universal need to extend and accept forgiveness. A lesson she must now put into practice herself. In the course of her address she quoted Bernard Haring: “At this time the church is Read more
“Divorce is a hard path, a long, circuitous journey that is not something you can control. You open the door and walk through it, thinking you will go to destination ‘x’ only to find out that it was just an illusion, that destination ‘x’ is only visible from inside the marriage and that once you Read more