Euthanasia marginalises an already vulnerable group and should not be legalised. A report from a Victorian parliamentary committee is expected to recommend legislative changes that would permit assisted dying. The stage for such change has already been set through a series of recent media articles and public events. Earlier this year, The Age reported the case of 55-year-old Read more
Much of the scientific research on resilience – our ability to bounce back from adversity – has focused on how to build resilience in children. But what about the grown-ups? While resilience is an essential skill for healthy childhood development, science shows that adults also can take steps to boost resilience in middle age, which Read more
We often hear it said of Pope Francis: “He’s not a great theologian, but he is a great pastor,” as if this assertion made any sense. As a theologian who shares Pope Francis’s heritage of Latin American Catholicism, I strongly disagree. Pope Francis is a terrific theologian, whose theology is coherent and cogent because it Read more
I once found great comfort in the black-and-white world of apologetics. The Catechism of the Catholic Church provided the answers to all of my questions concerning faith and morals. It was the definitive voice of the church, and I believed everything that voice said. And then my black-and-white world began to fall apart. Dysfunctional leadership Read more
When I was a child I wondered how the ark with Noah and all those animals, could store enough food for forty days. Then there were the Israelites who spent forty years in the wilderness. Wouldn’t most of them be dead by the time the tribe got to the promised land? And how did Jesus Read more
Although Crux’s John Allen likes to pretend otherwise, Roman Catholicism is now clearly divided between the Party of Francis and the Party of Benedict. Not since the days of the Jesuits and the Jansenists has the Catholic elite — clerical and lay intellectual — been at daggers drawn as it is now. Yesterday, the New York Times nicely encapsulated the partisan Read more
Some time ago I found myself on the fringes of a group of Catholics discussing the impending birth of a baby to a teenage girl. I detected just the faintest whiff of scandal in the air – nothing said, but plenty implied. I quipped: “Isn’t that great.” Faces turned, eyes probing. “ Isn’t it great Read more
Don’t be hoodwinked by the humbug being uttered by those fool enough to be making excuses for Metiria Turei, the long-time Green MP and now it turns out an even longer-time-ago benefit cheat. Those heaping praise on her for what they deem to be exceptional courage in confessing that she deliberately indulged in welfare fraud Read more
If someone’s house was on fire would you pour gasoline on it? Well the answer is obvious: Of course you wouldn’t. Yet that is very similar to what the United States and many other more economically developed nations are doing. Despite the tragic fact that approximately 40 current armed conflicts worldwide are causing over 150,000 Read more
Before 2017, Jimmy Fallon dominated Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel in the late night talk show ratings wars. But Colbert has since emerged as the victor, besting his rivals in overall viewership for the recently concluded 2016-2017 season. Colbert ended the September-to-May season with an average of 3.19 million nightly viewers, compared to Fallon’s 3.17 million and Read more