On Monday night I was in the diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota, to give the annual Bishop Raymond Lucker lecture. Lucker served as the bishop there for a quarter-century, from 1976 to 2000, and is remembered in New Ulm primarily as a caring pastor who loved his people and his place. Nationally, however, Lucker is Read more
Despite the unpersuasive Vatican spin on Cardinal Pell’s appearance last week before the Royal Commission into child sex abuse in institutions – that his performance was “dignified” and “edifying”, his performance, in the assessment of most observers including this one, was inept, cowardly and unconvincing. Cardinal Pell is only one Australian Catholic and he has Read more
This is my confession. I was tricked into accepting God back into my life. Yes, you read that right, I was tricked. Duped. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled – or perhaps more accurately, I was enticed by fireworks. After all, simple things amuse simple minds and as soon as my friend told me they were doing backyard fireworks Read more
Last week I was in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, where I’ve been speaking at First Friday clubs for several years. My wife Shannon, who handles my speaking calendar, is very loyal to these folks, and insisted that I offer them something new and original. In response, I did something that’s basically an act of madness: Read more
The latest edition of the ‘Church’s Book of Statistics’ was released to coincide with World Mission Sunday. The book details members of the Church, church structures, healthcare, welfare and education. World population To 31 December 2013 the world population was 7,093,798,000 with an increase of 70,421,000 compared with the previous year. Population growth was registered 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
Pope Francis is part of the way through his much-anticipated visit to Cuba and the US, which he is visiting for the first time. He is following in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who visited Cuba in 2012 and expressed his opposition to the US trade embargo. Now Cuba and the Read more
One of the most arresting images published this year is of Pope Francis crossing a cobbled courtyard to enter the ornate Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. He wears the white papal vestments, accompanied by a cardinal, with a ceremonial Swiss guard nearby. He walks across red carpet from his car. But his conveyance is out of Read more
Austen Ivereigh, The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope, Allen and Unwin, London 2014. Deeply disturbing I found this book when I first read it last year and I remain disturbed. Yet everyone I have read so far has given it glowing reviews. I am confused. Most likely I am like the Read more
While in Dublin recently, I stopped by the Jesuit community at Milltown to meet a man who had once taught Scripture in a huge college outside Buenos Aires, which was at that time run by the man who is now pope. Father James Kelly recalls the regime at the Colegio Maximo in the early 1980s Read more