Every time Anne Tolley and Bill English talk about the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, or oppose an inquiry into the historical abuse of children in state care, it sticks like a knife in my guts. I am Ngāti Porou through my mother, and I’m Weira — Welsh — through my father. After spending 14 Read more
Praying through the tedium at Mass can be a more authentic way of sharing the divine life. As citizens of late modern life, we seek to avoid boredom. We alleviate the stillness of a quiet moment by turning to our smartphones. We delight in the arrival of new emails, fresh stories and notifications from social Read more
I was in my teens when a sudden rush of sexual publications became available, thanks to a change in censorship law. The Left-wing bookshop where I worked bought boxes of them, mostly lurid black and yellow-covered paperbacks of Robert Burns’ jaunty poems about fornication, The Kama Sutra, and The Perfumed Garden. We possibly made a profit for Read more
Let’s start with the moment I realized I was already a loser, which was just after I was more or less told that I was destined to become one. I’d been summoned to an editor’s office at the Globe Magazine with the old “We have a story we think you’d be perfect for.” This is Read more
A group of people stood outside the airport waiting for a bus. Behind us, a young worker in an orange jacket was singing a song, a sweet voice, words indistinct. Further back a man whistled a different tune. Sometimes the sounds collided, sometimes they harmonised. They were backed by the percussion of hammers and steel Read more
So many aspects of Pope Francis’s personality either delight or consternate people, depending on their perspective, that it seems almost reductive to single out one element. If you were going to put all those things on a list, however, pride of place almost certainly would have to go to his endless capacity for soundbites. Time Read more
Keep religion out of politics. As a catch-cry it is nonsensical. Religions and faith have always been in the politics game and vice versa. The Sanhedrin, the body which oversaw the trial of Jesus, was political. And civic institutions which support and uphold democracy across our globe are founded on a Judaeo-Christian understanding of the Read more
The pro-euthanasia case is compact and quick and easy to make: It focuses on a terminally ill, seriously suffering, competent adult who gives informed consent to euthanasia and bases its claims to prevail on the obligation to respect that person’s right to autonomy and self-determination and dignity. The case against euthanasia is more complex and Read more
One emerged from a crisis conclave, the other was elected after the strangest campaign in recent American history. Both have upended traditions and reached outside the usual channels to speak to the concerns of ordinary people. Donald J. Trump and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the president and the pope, are the world’s most famous populists. But Read more
Conservative Christians in America are enjoying fresh winds of political favor. In his first month in office, President Trump upheld his promise to nominate a conservative Supreme Court justice. Last week, his administration rescinded former guidelines allowing transgender students to use the public school bathrooms of their choice. And evangelical leaders report having direct access Read more