New Zealand

Bailed former priest’s news coverage unfairly skewed

Sateki Raass

The Auckland diocese is questioning the fairness of a Stuff report concerning the housing of bailed former priest, Sateki Raass. Communications spokesperson for the diocese, Lyndsay Freer suggests Stuff reporter, Steve Kilgallon seems to have unfairly skewed supplied answers to questions. On Sunday 12 September Stuff reported the Catholic Church planned to accommodate a priest Read more

Most churches support vaxxing – but what of anti-vaxx end-times preachers?

RNZ

It’s a fact that most Christian church leaders in New Zealand support the COVID health measures, including vaxxing – ie getting the Covid vaccinations. It’s also a fact that a few don’t and they’re scaring and confusing people. Take, for example, the evangelical church Celebration Centre in Christchurch. Its pastors have been posting online sermons Read more

Analysis and Comment

Mission, Ministries and co-responsibility

unmoored

The front line of the Church’s work is the Christian people whose lives are leaven in the dough of all the ordinary circumstances of ordinary life. The purpose of ministries within the Church is to provide nurture and formation for that mission.  It is the mission that matters. Part I – Ministries For some years Read more

Catholic women push for female deacons

Casey Stanton wanted to offer encouragement, love and healing to the inmates at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, where she served as a chaplain intern a few years ago. But as a Catholic woman she could not represent her church there in any official capacity. The state of North Carolina requires chaplains in Read more

Giving or Sharing? How we think about the Eucharist

Tom O'Loughlin

In everyday life, our experience tells us – unconsciously – when it is appropriate to use the verb ‘to give’ and when it is appropriate to use ‘to share.’ So we might ask someone to ‘please give me that book lying there’ or ‘I gave him the money’ or ‘she should give that form to Read more

Our duty to challenge Catholic politicians who support abortion rights

abortion rights

Prominent politicians lost no time in reacting hyperbolically to the Supreme Court’s decision refusing to enjoin Texas’s new law banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. President Biden announced a “whole-of-government effort” to find ways to overcome the Texas measure. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced the Supreme Court’s refusal as a “cowardly, Read more

Dunedin survivors get a repulsive slap in the face

Dunedin survivors

Not holding a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care hearing in Dunedin is a “repulsive slap in the face” for Southern survivors, says the Network of Survivors in Faith-Based Institutions. According to the ODT, the South and Dunedin in particular are considered one of the country’s epicentres for child sexual abuse in the Read more

  • World

  • Christianity is a relic – it’s time to get creative says Pope

    Christianity is a relic

    Christianity is a relic that no longer neither speaks to many people nor affects the way they live their lives, Pope Francis said on Tuesday. He made the comments to Catholic Church clergy and lay leaders in St Martin’s Cathedral, Bratislava during his pastoral visit to Slovakia. “The centre of the Church is not the Read more

  • Pastoral plan seeks new inclusivity

    Amazon

    An Irish Archdiocese’s pastoral plan is being described as a “blueprint for transitioning the Church to this new era of inclusivity”. Everyone, including divorced or separated people, LGBT+, migrants and minorities should all feel they belong to Catholic parishes, as should “those who consider themselves ‘cultural Catholics’,” it says. In addition, “images of families used Read more

  • Faith-based hospitals denied a say in patient deaths

    iStock

    Faith-based hospitals in Queensland will not be able to deny entry to outside ­doctors to help terminally ill ­patients die, new legislation proposes. The Queensland government has rejected pleas by the churches for institutional protection from the widest voluntary assisted dying law to go before an Australian parliament. The legislation leaves the private, church-backed institutions Read more

  • Questions surround conscientious exemption from Covid vaccination

    conscientious exemption

    Australian Archbishop of Tasmania, Julian Porteous, is requesting a conscientious exemption to a Covid public health directive for a small group of priests. Porteous has written to Tasmania’s health minister, Jeremy Rockliff asking for the exemption. He says he is “obligated to respect the decision of those members of the clergy who have a conscientious Read more

  • Youth news: New global survey illustrates climate change anxiety

    Greenroofs

    A new global survey shows the depth of anxiety many young people are feeling today about climate change. A majority of them report feeling fearful of the future, sorrowful and doomed. The Bath University-led survey questioned young people from 10 countries. Its focus concentrated specifically on young people’s emotional reactions to climate change. Claiming to Read more