To mark International Women’s Day on Thursday night, Newshub broadcast a montage of inspirational women to the tune of I Am Woman. While women from around the world and Pākehā New Zealand women were included, Māori women were not. Nor were Samoan women. The fact that Joan of Arc — a woman from 600 years ago Read more
Abuse is about having power over someone. An abuser typically wants to feel superior, to control and dominate. To them, communication is not about understanding. It’s a win-lose game. They use verbal abuse and/or violence to accomplish this. They’re frequently self-centered, impatient, unreasonable, insensitive, unforgiving, lack empathy, and are often jealous, suspicious, and withholding. Their Read more
The College Chapel at St. Patrick’s College of Maynooth, Ireland, has 454 carved oak stalls for seminarians and priests. They run in serried ranks down the length of its nave, making it the largest choir chapel in the world. The church itself is a masterpiece of Gothic Revival, and the ceiling of the church offers Read more
For all the world’s teachings on death and dying, the patient who doesn’t lament it for one reason or another is rare. Some people are unprepared to die. Others are worried about those left behind. Some are angry. Many are frightened. Not everyone is hungry for more life, but almost everyone at some point feels Read more
The war in Syria is by no means over, but it rather carrying on under the radar of the usual barrage of news stories we prefer to read about. In the last week or so, the Assad regime is dealing with the last remaining rebel enclave near Damascus, Eastern Ghouta. This enclave has a population Read more
On April 1, 1987, the most popular artists, actors, fashion designers, writers and musicians in America converged on St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Liza Minnelli showed up, along with Calvin Klein, Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton. Yoko Ono arrived a bit early; she was giving a speech. One could have easily mistaken Andy Warhol’s Read more
In an iconic article published a decade ago and entitled, “The Motherhood Experiment,” the New York Times Magazine celebrated Sweden for solving the population and family problems of modern European society. It explained: “Curiously, Europe’s lowest birthrates are seen in countries, mostly Catholic, where the old idea that the man is the breadwinner and the woman is Read more
Joanne (not her real name) has been living and working in a home on Rarotonga for the last six months. (This feature story is was first published by the Cook Islands News.) She gets up at 6.30am every morning to prepare breakfast for her employer’s children, sets out their clothes, makes their lunches and then Read more
In a meeting with Pope Francis, a victim of sexual abuse said with profound sadness and desperation: “Jesus had his mother nearby when he faced suffering and death. But my mother, the Church, left me all alone in my time of pain.” These few words express the horror of abuse, especially the sexual abuse of Read more
Contrary to what you may sometimes hear, school shootings are not unique to the United States. Germany, for instance, went through a string of devastating attacks between 2002 and 2009. Between 1996 and 2008, major school shootings also occurred in Finland and Scotland, among other places. But in Europe, there hasn’t been a major high-casualty Read more