British comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry has a great intellect – no doubt. His intelligence, wit and extraordinary life were clearly displayed during an interview broadcast recently on the ABC’s Compass program. When asked what he would say to God if he happened to get to the pearly gates, Fry, a declared atheist, didn’t Read more
Young women, are you contemplating next year’s plans? Perhaps finishing school and wondering about the next steps? Perhaps not quite sure you’re on the right track with your studies? Ready to get out of the workplace and into the books? Theology. Philosophy. I know you think I’m kidding. Who does that? Can you even get Read more
The future of religious freedom in Australia is in the hands of religious faiths, not its secularist opponents. Last week, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, delivered the Centre for Independent Studies’ Acton Lecture titled “Should bakers be required to bake gay wedding cakes?” Fisher raised a range of challenges facing religious liberty in Read more
I am thinking now that I have to speak very gently. I need to tread warily and allow you the chance to absorb what I want to say. There are things that can tear us apart. There are people who are more interested in turning us on each other. It is so easy to distort Read more
A Catholic friend of mine who spent his professional life as a journalist at what was the then rather WASPISH Melbourne Age told me in the 1980s that two sports dominated that paper’s pages – Australian Rules football and Catholic fights. Cardinal George Pell should have stuck to playing Ozzie Rules. In that game, shirt Read more
Most of what I read online in the New Zealand and Australian papers seems to have an Israeli bias. Well that’s the impression I get here in Palestine, where I work at Bethlehem University. Bethlehem University is home to over 3300 students and 400 employees and over the past two weeks it has been closed for seven Read more
Over 100 years ago, soldiers from New Zealand were engaged in a massive conflict, and shed much blood. Fighting for a cause they fiercely believed in, for some soldiers the survival of their community was at stake. Other soldiers found themselves in hostile, unfamiliar territory thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Should we Read more
The first pope in history to address a joint session of Congress, Pope Francis, defended the human right of masses of oppressed and poor people to immigrate. “We must not be taken aback by their number, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can Read more
The Church’s response to the crisis of marriage must surely be to find ways to help all Catholic spouses come to know and experience a deeper conversion to Christ. This means that the Church will need to ask great things of Catholic spouses in order that they become what they already are sacramentally; united with Read more
I went to a party last night. I don’t really go to parties, at least not of this kind. My kind of party involves ginger beer and snuggling under blankets to watch a movie. This party involved drinking games, very intoxicated people, startlingly immodest dresses and smoking pot. I started off the evening by demurely Read more