Several summers ago, my younger son and I went to Berlin. For me, the most meaningful experience of my time in that city was the morning that we visited the campus of Humboldt University. That was the location of the infamous book burnings by the Nazis in 1933. We spent a few moments at the Read more
A conversation with the 44-year-old bishop Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk of the Ukraine Latin diocese of Kharkiv – Zaporizhzhia. Honcharuk describes life in his diocese at the moment. Could you describe the situation in your diocese, which has become the main theatre of this terrible war? Our Church is alive and active! Priests and faithful are Read more
Like many people in the southern hemisphere of our planet, winter 2022 is the year of rain, floods and landslips. We have all heard about global warming and seen graphs and projections of changing temperatures, but it takes a constant and sometimes torrential rain for the statistics to become a reality. But has this anything Read more
A new report, based on interviews with some 300 Catholic priests, nuns and laypeople concludes that clergy aren’t adequately prepared to wield the power they exercise and need more education on questions of sex and gender. The report, “Beyond Bad Apples: Understanding Clericalism as a Structural Problem & Cultivating Strategies for Change,” released Monday (Aug. Read more
Last month, Pope Francis came to Canada and expressed regret for the Roman Catholic Church’s part in running notoriously abusive residential schools for Indigenous children, which operated between 1880 and 1996. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” the pope said. Canada’s own government has previously Read more
Doctor Judith Bovensiepen teaches Social Anthropology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Her research explored post-conflict recovery as well as oil development in rural Timor Leste, one of the only two Catholic-majority countries in Asia. In 2015, she published her book, The Land of Gold: Post-Conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in Independent Read more
Recently Britney Spears made a stir in Catholic circles when she told her Instagram followers that she had wanted to get married in a Catholic church in Los Angeles but had been turned away. Britney Spears, who has since had her wedding to longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari in the backyard of her Beverly Hills mansion, Read more
I have been blacklisted by the Ukraine government. The Center for Countering Disinformation, an agency of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine – which advises the president of Ukraine – has compiled a list of over 78 international figures who are accused of promoting so-called “Russian propaganda.” And I happen to be included Read more
As a Catholic, the horror of sexual abuse is not that the Church is being scapegoated by the media, it’s the horror that ordinary Catholics feel conned. The comments were made from Wales by Professor Thomas O’Loughlin in “Scapegoating: The Church’s fall from grace”, a Flashes of Insight conversation with Dr Joe Grayland, Dr James Read more
The jury is out. The collated data from the diocesan Synod responses have been published for all to read. After the New Zealand Catholic Bishop’s Conference has prepared the synthesis of syntheses, all will be posted to Rome. The can of worms has been opened. The reading is too serious to ignore. In amongst the Read more