Weeks after Scott Morrison became immigration minister in September 2013, a 17-year-old Iraqi boy at the Manus Island detention centre alleged he was “on a list” of a group of Iranian men who planned to gang rape him. He was moved to another compound, but lived in fear at the camp until three months later, Read more
Katherine Mansfield—writer of short stories, friend and literary compatriot of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence—had a gift for arousing strong opinions. The reckless abandon with which Mansfield threw herself into sexual relationships with both men and women, and the acerbity of her tongue and pen, could provoke critics, family, and friends, not to mention Read more
It’s not surprising that Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on climate change has already generated a lot of attention in the media and elsewhere, given the stature of his office and his sky-high popularity – not to mention the politically polarizing nature of the subject matter. The upcoming encyclical, which is scheduled to be released on Read more
In a recent mini-documentary, the New York Times investigates the unrealized horrors of population explosion, especially those predicted by Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb. Despite the failure of his forecast, Ehrlich remains undaunted. “The end is still nigh,” he says according to the Times, and population control ought to be implemented, Read more
(RNS) A new report mapping the Catholic Church’s more than 1.2 billion souls — on track to reach 1.64 billion by 2050 — holds some surprises. And not all bode well for the church’s future as it faces major demographic and social shifts. “Global Catholicism: Trends & Forecasts,” released Monday (June 1) by the Center Read more
Evangelical voters are a major force in Iowa Republican politics. A force that can tip the balance in the state’s marquee event: the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. And it’s been that way for a long time. Sixteen years ago those voters delivered in a big way for a Texas governor named George W. Bush. But it’s Read more
The second half of the 1960s was a boom time for nightmarish visions of what lay ahead for humankind. In 1966, for example, a writer named Harry Harrison came out with a science fiction novel titled “Make Room! Make Room!” Sketching a dystopian world in which too many people scrambled for too few resources, the Read more
They’re an experienced team, the three of them. The driver has barely stopped, and already the security guard has grabbed a child from the crowd on the left and is holding it up for the pope. The pontiff bends over, kisses the child — and then it’s over. The whole thing takes mere seconds and Read more
For nearly 350 years, anti-Catholic bias was a reliable and powerful presence in the political and religious culture of the United States. Today, when the Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, for example, insists that Muslim immigrants ‘want to use our freedoms to undermine… freedom’, it can be easy to forget that for most of US history, Read more
For more than a year, Sister Megan Rice, 85, a Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, had caught occasional glimpses of the glittering World Trade Center from her living quarters: the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison on the Brooklyn waterfront. So when the Volvo she was riding in one Read more