At least four Australian bishops have banned or restricted sales of a book by Emeritus Bishop William Morris, which details how he was sacked by Pope Benedict. Bishop Morris’s book “Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three”, published by ATF Press, is banned from sale in Catholic bookshops in Toowoomba and Brisbane. It is only available Read more
Former Whanganui mayor and media personality Michael Laws is moving to Timaru for a new role at Craighead Diocesan School, and he is not ruling out a return to local government. The new position as development manager for the school will entail him fundraising for the school’s new buildings, board of proprietors chairwoman Phillipa Guerin Read more
With the Australasian Catholic and Australasian Religious Press Associations hosting their annual gatherings in Melbourne last week, September is the month of religious media conferences. Perhaps because hope springs eternal. This year church media, particularly Catholic media, face a growing challenge: how to deal with bad news about the church. At stake is their credibility. Read more
The NZ Catholic has won the Bishop Philip Kennedy Memorial Prize for the best local Catholic Newspaper in Australasia at the recent Australasian Catholic Press Association Awards. The citation for the award states: “This is the best local newspaper. It seeks to cover the activities of the district from a Catholic perspective and yet is accessible to Read more
EWTN, the Catholic network that has become the world’s largest religious broadcaster, is staking out a presence in America’s political heartland by launching an evening newscast from Washington. The live, half-hour show, scheduled to start in July, is a major step for the broadcaster, whose message is typically expressed through devotional talk shows, replays of Read more
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve commented once or twice or 429 times about how the Catholic Church around the world, and in Australia and New Zealand in particular, often fails to adequately communicate the message of Jesus Christ to the faithful, not to mention to non-Catholics. It’s hardly a view Read more
Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St Joseph in Missouri says the National Catholic Reporter — published in his diocese — rejects Church teachings and should not call itself Catholic, but the paper insists it is “proud to call itself a Catholic publication”. In a column for World Communications Day in his diocesan paper, The Catholic Read more
Wel-com, Wellington’s Arch-Diocesan paper, which now also publishes in the Palmerston North Diocese, celebrated its 300th issue last week. This free monthly newspaper was first published in September 1984. Fr Bernie Hehir began the newspaper as a small bi-monthly, at the request of Cardinal Tom Williams. Initially published as a newsletter in early 1984, eventually the Read more
The New Zealand Bishops’ Conference has made it clear that only the officially approved new missal may be used for the celebration of the liturgy in churches in New Zealand. Having been made aware of the fact that a spiral bound version of the new missal has been published by the Catholic Publications Centre (CPC), Read more
Fourteen Kiwis attended the ARPA (The Australasian Religious Press Association) conference in Adelaide last weekend. It was held at the Stamford Grand, Glenelg, Adelaide’s seaside suburb. The Conference was full of practical helps in the art of providing ‘Christian media’ including a major plenary by the University of South Australian School of Law and Commerce Faculty’s Read more