Anti-abortion activists have been told being pro-life involves many issues that can threaten life. It’s not just about abortion. It’s about easy access to guns, poverty and rising maternity mortality. “Being for life always, for example, means being concerned if the mortality rates of women due to motherhood increase,” wrote Andrea Tornielli in his Vatican Read more
Churches across the US are tackling the big question of how to address homelessness in their communities with a small solution: tiny homes. On vacant plots near their parking lots and steepled sanctuaries, congregations are building everything from fixed and fully contained micro homes to petite, moveable cabins and several other styles of small-footprint dwellings Read more
The late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York often said women who had abortions were “invincibly ignorant” — they did not understand what they were doing. He blamed the bishops for not teaching convincingly. The question of abortion may be decided politically, but the real test is if morality is taught. The Supreme Court’s decision Read more
“Over new plan to elect pope, 3 cardinals threaten to quit.” That headline appeared in the October 6, 1972 issue of the National Catholic Reporter. “If insiders’ reports are accurate, Pope Paul is faced with a threatened palace revolt over proposed changes in the procedures used to elect a pope,” wrote Desmond O’Grady, the now-deceased Read more
Newly promoted minister Kiritapu Allan has said what a lot of people think but feel unable to say. She lashed out in a tweet against “tokenistic” use of te reo by employees of DOC “as an attempt to show govt depts are culturally competent”. She told Stuff she encouraged the use of the Maori language, Read more
A century ago, one in five people who died in New Zealand were killed by an infectious disease. Infectious diseases, as a group, took more lives in 1922 than heart disease. Twice as many people were killed by communicable viruses or bacteria as died of all forms of cancer combined. These days, heart disease and Read more
Pope Francis wants the Catholic Church to build bridges with remarried divorcees who are Catholic. In the preface of a new Vatican document on preparing couples for the Sacrament of Matrimony, he called for new “concrete” guidelines to be drafted. These would help those offering pastoral care to divorced and remarried Catholics, he said. The Read more
Chaos defines a leader. Albert Einstein wrote ‘the stupid need order; the genius masters chaos.’ A sympathetic translation could be ‘while the majority need an ordered world, a genius is needed to master a chaotic one’. The genius can see beyond the current chaotic circumstances by seeing the order in the chaos. Chaos is not Read more
The Bishop of Hong Kong has likened the existence of the Church in the former British colony to plants growing in pavement cracks. Bishop Stephen Chow commented in the Sunday Examiner that these plants “are proofs of the amazing power of life that comes from the Creator. How can they grow up in such a Read more
Catholic dioceses in New Zealand have completed their synodal consultation and submitted their diocesan synod synthesis to the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference (NZCBC), reports Mr David McLoughlin, NZCBC Communications Adviser. An unrealistic deadline for southern hemisphere countries who were enjoying a summer holiday saw Pope Francis extend the diocesan deadline by four months. “A Read more