Posts Tagged ‘children’

Children disengaged from church during lockdowns

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

An international study of the effect of the pandemic on the faith of young people and families has found widespread disengagement and disconnection, and that many failed to return to church after lockdowns eased. The study, based on research carried out in the UK, United States, Brazil, and Canada in June, suggests that children felt Read more

Intersex children in New Zealand are routinely undergoing unnecessary surgery – that needs to change

Monday, November 8th, 2021
intersex children surgery

Until very recently, people with intersex variations have often been unseen, stigmatised and routinely discriminated against. Intersex Awareness Day (October 26) is therefore an opportunity to examine how much progress has been made and how far we still have to go. It’s estimated 1.7 to 4% of people globally are intersex – meaning they don’t Read more

Keep Instagram for kids far far away from children

Thursday, September 23rd, 2021

The Christian mystic and philosopher Simone Weil wrote that “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” Indeed, we can only love something insofar as we direct our pure, generous attention toward it—be that to God, to a neighbour or to ourselves. And in a world that so hungrily demands it, Read more

Children’s access to online porn fuels sexual harassment

Monday, June 21st, 2021
online porn fuels sexual harassment

Curbs on children’s access to online pornography need to be brought in urgently to stop the spread of an activity that is partly to blame for normalising sexual harassment in schools, according to the new children’s commissioner for England. Dame Rachel de Souza is urging governments and tech companies to introduce age verification checks. She Read more

Housing crisis: More than 4,000 NZ children living in motels

Monday, February 22nd, 2021

The housing crisis is seeing more than 4000 children growing up in motels across New Zealand, devastating parents who are desperate to find a permanent place for their kids to live. Skyrocketing house prices are prompting many landlords to sell, forcing up rents which are becoming unaffordable for many families. Figures released to Checkpoint show Read more

Keeping children safe in the Catholic Church

Monday, February 15th, 2021

Sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic priests has been headline news for years. But even with so much press attention, there are many commonly accepted misconceptions about this. Remarkably, evidence-based research doesn’t always receive attention, while sensationalized stories that create a particular—and sometimes false—narrative do. This ultimately misinforms and harms the public—not to mention efforts to keep Read more

Suffer the little children as adults experimented

Monday, September 21st, 2020
children

The 1970s was not a time anyone in their right mind should feel nostalgic for. It’d be a difficult ask if you actually lived through its madness. Maybe you might recall Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies is worthy of note, but I can only watch them in fury today – as I did then. Starting Read more

Pandemic highlights social problems and inequality

Sunday, August 30th, 2020

The pandemic is highlighting and exacerbating social problems, especially inequality, Pope Francis said at his General Audience  last Wednesday. Focusing his talk on the fourth of his “Healing the World” series, Francis is urging everyone to check statistics to see how many children are dying of hunger because of a poor distribution of wealth and Read more

Arms trade is killing thousands of women and children

Monday, August 10th, 2020
arms trade

The drums of war are beating ever louder as arms traders supply weapons for war in the Middle East while the superpowers line up in confrontational posturing in a show of might and military power. “Might is right” is the thinking behind the three biggest military powers vying for prestige and power in the world. Read more

ChildFund, NZ govt target Pacific youth well-being

Monday, July 13th, 2020

The charity ChildFund has gone into partnership with the New Zealand government to improve well-being in the Asia Pacific region. The $NZ11.2 million ‘Impact programme,’ to which New Zealand’s foreign ministry will contribute about $NZ8.6 million, targets children, youth and their families in Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Solomon Islands over Read more