The Law Commission’s report on alternative approaches to abortion law portrays a day of infamy, betrayal, shameful injustice and the denial of the dignity of women and of motherhood. The choice of the Labour-led government to trample on the human rights of our precious unborn and the right of women to be protected from the Read more
More than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to them. An overwhelming majority of people say that they don’t feel comfortable speaking about faith, most of the time. During the Great Depression, the playwright Thornton Wilder remarked, “The revival in religion will be a rhetorical problem — Read more
Catholic women say there’s a clerical stained glass ceiling in the Vatican, and they want to shatter it. They want to vote in major policy meetings. They want Pope Francis to deliver on his promise to put more women in senior positions in the Holy See’s administration. And some of them say they want to Read more
The Australian royal commission is over, but there is still a long way for us to travel so that we might stand together in solidarity committed to justice, truth and healing for all, for the living and for the dead. We are unlikely as a Church or as a society to get this right for Read more
We prepare for Mass, gathering together in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So let’s look at that sentence and ask ourselves, which word is the most important? Is it the aspect of God that feels closest to our heart? What about God the creator of all that Read more
Praising God for the gift of life is common to all world religions. Deep down in the heart of every person is the knowledge that life is precious and often fragile. The worldwide human family recently experienced this belief as we watched with bated breath the heart-warming rescue mission of the Thai boys trapped in Read more
Once every five years the priests in New Zealand meet nationally for a professional development week. This time it was in Christchurch. And the experience was seismic. No priest or Bishop could have left that week unshaken. The two input speakers – each very different from the other – shook us to the core. Take Read more
Most Americans begin their day with at least one nice, hot cup of coffee. The beverage is so widely used that it is estimated that 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily, worldwide. This suggests that a third of the world’s population relies on its tasty kick to help them through the day. What Read more
Saints Oscar Romero and Paul VI, two very different men, facing different sets of dire challenges with prophetic courage, faithfully journeyed along two different paths to the same destination: sainthood! Who would have predicted it? Who would have imagined on Feb. 23, 1977, the day of his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador, that the Read more
Ours is an antinomian age. It is a time when people are “spiritual but not religious.” Young people especially are counted among the “nones” who, while believing in God, eschew the doctrines and communal bonds of traditional religion. It is a time of individualism and a distorted notion of conscience that, in practice, becomes indistinguishable Read more