In the era of smartphones and social media when our attention is constantly drawn downwards, this weekend saw an event so spectacular it made much of the planet pause and look upwards to marvel at creation. It was a sign of God’s action and beauty in the world. Global wonder The past week has been Read more
There was a varied response when the ordination of Angelic Molen of Harare, Zimbabwe, as a deaconess by Metropolitan Seraphim, the Greek Orthodox archbishop of the south African country, was announce. The press release from the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess resulted in a predictable reaction on social media: over-the-top vitriol from the usual Read more
Children today are growing up surrounded by technology. So it’s easy to assume they will be able to write effectively using a keyboard. But our research suggests this is not necessarily true. We need to actively teach students to be able to type as well as write using paper and pen or pencil. Our research Read more
Easter is behind us, and everything is back to normal. The resurrected Jesus is cooking fish for his friends. We are not told how he got the fish or given details of the preparation, but we can imagine silver fillets laid out on red hot stones and the air fragrant with breakfast. Was everything back Read more
Dear Brother Priests, The International Meeting “Parish Priests for the Synod”, and the dialogue with all of you who have taken part, provide me with the opportunity to pray for the parish priests the world over. To all of you, I address these words with great affection. It is so obvious as to sound almost Read more
Is 15 minutes enough for a church service? It’s the question arousing interest within the U.K.’s Protestant community following the decision by a Welsh minister to offer 15-minute services on Monday evenings. Micro services launched The Rev. John Gillibrand (pictured), vicar of St. David’s Church in Swansea, launched the micro services initiative as a way Read more
“How would you feel about Daddy and me turning into ghostbots?” I asked this peculiar question to my two children after reading about “grief tech,” the latest wonder child of artificial intelligence that allows the living to remain digitally connected to the dead through “ghostbots.” I explained to our children that they could feed our Read more
On May 1, the Associated Press ran an interesting report on the return of conservative Catholicism in the United States. The nutshell of the article is this sentence: “Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has Read more
The controversies over the blessing of homosexual couples in Africa and Pope Francis’ diplomacy regarding Ukraine are evidence of a global shift happening in the Catholic world, that favors the global South. Catholics from the Old Continent must take this into account in a Church that has been, for centuries, led by Europe. Global shift Read more
Before Pope Francis was elected, conservative Catholics had fallen into a habit of dismissing the more liberal form of Catholicism as an old and faded thing, a vision of the future that belonged to the church’s past, a relic of the 1970s that had little purchase among younger Catholics seriously practising their faith. The last Read more