I’m not used to posting my woes and sorrows for all to see. I am however open to allowing my life to be opened up to the truth and allowing it to liberate me as I believe the truth should. With that said, I’m hoping that there are others who can gain or empathize with Read more
The reverberations can be heard nationwide. As church employees and volunteers receive notices requiring them to attend safe-environment trainings, their responses have become familiar: “Again?” “Didn’t we just do that?” “I went through this where I teach; do I need to do it in the parish too?” “I barely come in contact with kids; why Read more
I read “I’m a Catholic but …” in CathNews NZ on Tuesday 6th August, and pondered upon it as I stacked the firewood. I walked over a carpet of camellia flowers – some pink, some brown, some crackly, some squishy. They need to be collected and put on the compost to be transformed, and later, Read more
Those early Christian missionaries certainly did an impressive job in Samoa. Christianity remains the backbone and strength of the Samoan culture – every village has at least one church and sometimes up to four, with about 10 denominations represented across the islands. Samoa’s motto says: “Samoa is founded on God” and the locals’ strong religious Read more
Last week, Pope Francis loosed a media tsunami by dropping a pebble of sanity into an ocean of religious angst. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he told reporters on the flight back to Rome after his trip to Brazil. What did it Read more
For many, being a Catholic nowadays is like saying you’re a Star Trek fan. They feel the need to immediately caveat it with a denial that they’re a “trekkie.” I hear so many people talk of their Catholicism in a similar way. Here’s some of the more popular sentence I’ve heard start with “I’m a Read more
For the faithful it (birth control) is a sad and agonizing issue, for there is a cleavage between the official teaching of the Church and the contrary practice in most families. — Former Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church quoted in What Happened at Vatican II, by John W. O’Malley. Recalling that Thursday was Read more
While pondering last week’s sapphire anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) and the continuing controversy over the so-called “birth control encyclical” throughout both Church and society, I came across a striking passage in an essay by Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, written shortly before his death in 2004. “Increasingly the institution Read more
The third and final installment in a series on social justice in Catholic social doctrine: When the Italian Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio (1793-1862) coined the term “social justice” in the middle of the 19th century, he probably could not have foreseen its mention in an 1894 curial document and a 1904 encyclical, nor the Read more
The “right wing” of the Catholic Church is not happy about the election of Pope Francis, according to Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. The archbishop, who is known for speaking plainly, made this comment in an interview with National Catholic Reporter correspondent John Allen during World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro. Allen had asked Read more