The comments about parish sacramental celebrations come from Palmerston North's Bishop emeritus, Peter Cullinane, in an article published in Tui Motu.

Citing examples of the Church's mistakes, Cullinane says the lack of training for diocesan priests in ministry to Maori combined with the Church entrusting the ‘Maori Mission' to specialist groups ensures that most Maori do not feel 'at home' in our parish church celebrations of Eucharist.

He says that developing a sense of inclusiveness does not come about by running parallel Maori and European churches.

"The Church in our country is greatly indebted to the Religious Orders to whom the ‘Maori Mission' was entrusted," he writes.

Cullinane mentions the Society of Mary, the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, the Mill Hill Missionaries and the Congregation of Our Lady of the Missions in particular.

"Their work continues to bear fruit, and any alterations to pastoral practices need to safeguard the right of Maori to continue to experience life and worship in the Church in ways that are natural to them."

Nevertheless, Cullinane says, running a Maori Mission parallel to parishes had serious unintended side effects.

He writes it is against that background that introducing te reo into parish Eucharists seems a tiny gesture - but it is about recognition of tangata whenua, inclusion and belonging.

"Of course, it would be mere tokenism if it were not to follow through in all the ways required by respect for the rights of Maori in wider society and Te Tiriti o Waitangi."

Our celebrations of the Eucharist are meant to feed into our daily lives, Cullinane points out.

"Eucharistic life involves the rejection of racial prejudice and discrimination wherever these occur.

"In this way, the use of te reo in parish Eucharists should whet our appetites for the kind of hospitality, listening, sense of community and inclusiveness we have been talking about on the synodal journey."

He suggests that the next step is to experience Eucharist on a marae and recognise Maori's warm and welcoming ways.

"This way, people can see how these properly belong to the gathering stage of coming together for Eucharist.

"Respect for the rights of the home people can be only a first step in our reaching out to the many others in our society who suffer from inequalities …

"It also involves our support for other ethnic groups who can be victims of racial prejudice. Anything less than a prophetic stand for all these is less than Eucharistic."

Failure to address prejudice or help people disadvantaged by personal, social or economic conditions, proves the Second Vatican Council's claim:

"The split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age," writes Cullinane.

Source

• Tui Motu

This essay is not about them. Rather, it is about those who have an ideological agenda.

Yet, in either case, people who identify as LGBTQ+ are owed the respect that is due to everyone on the basis of being human beings.

So, I ask: is it in their best interests to define themselves by their sexual variations?

There are those who try to persuade us all that gender is only a "social construct"; that it is independent of biological sexuality; that chromosomal variations mean there are more than two sexes; that there are genders in between male and female; that gender can be "fluid" and changeable, etc.

These claims are sometimes made for the well-intentioned purpose of safeguarding the health and well-being of young people experiencing unease or dissatisfaction with their gender (dysphoria), and a praiseworthy desire to assure them that they are OK.

In this sense, at least, these claims are agenda-driven.

But it can also be useful to look to what the human sciences are generally agreed on:

• that some young people do experience dysphoria;
• that this is more often temporary and that after puberty most of them are comfortable identifying with their biological sex;
• that sexual differentiation is reinforced during growing-up years through the experience of male-female socialising; t
• hat a more deep-seated attachment to the same sex is also a reality for some;
• that this can result from genetic and hormonal factors even before birth, or from trauma (sometimes during very early childhood);
• that the first sexual experience can have a deep and lasting impact on one's orientation; that there are other conditions that originate very early - even before birth - including heart defects, spina bifida, Down syndrome, brain damage (due to a mother's drug or alcohol intake), dyslexia, autism, allergies, etc.

It is a blessing that medical science is able to correct some of these, sometimes even while the child is still in the womb.

So, we can acknowledge that some conditions are "on a spectrum", and that some conditions originate from genetic or hormonal variations.

But it is not necessary to affirm that all these conditions are somehow equal in order to assure people they are OK.

People are already OK because their dignity, worth and equality is based on the simple fact of being a human being, not on any other characteristics.

An incident during a visit to the Vatican by the British comedian Stephen Amos illustrates the point: he had been concerned that the Pope might not accept him because he was gay. He said to Pope Francis: "So me coming on this pilgrimage, being non-religious and looking for answers and faith; but as a gay man I don't feel really accepted".

The Pope responded that placing more importance on being gay than on being human was a mistake. "We are all human beings and have dignity. Whoever we are, and however we live, we don't lose our dignity as human beings." Amos said he was "blindsided" by the Pope's response; "and so I was in full respect of the man."

In other words, people are not defined by any of their characteristics or conditions or orientations.

They are first and above all else human beings, and that is the basis of their worth and dignity - not the presence or absence of various conditions.

The real problem derives from society losing sight of this basis of human dignity and equality.

Pre-natal screening is done often with a view to terminating the life of children who have disabilities or defects before they are born.

A society that does that no longer regards the status of being a human being as paramount; it can be overridden by lesser considerations. Such a society robs itself of the very basis on which the absolute equality and worth of every person depends - regardless of other conditions and variations.

Consequently, because the paramount dignity of being human has been eclipsed, and in order to establish the equal dignity and equality of people who happen to the LGBT, activists claim equality for the different sexual and gender variations.

But that agenda can be self-defeating and lead to some very silly claims: e.g. that "all are born perfect" (yeah, right); that binary gender is "an invention of recent years" - (so what were the male and female pronouns referring to all those hundreds of years before that and probably for as long as there has been language?

Do we honour what is properly distinctive of female identity (or male identity), by thinning identity out into something on a spectrum?.

Respectful, intelligent discussion on this is often disrupted by confusion over what is "being judged".

It is not for us to judge other people, but we may, and sometimes must, judge others' actions.

For example, to say that "rape is wrong" is a judgment! Nor is it enough to say that sexual activities only need to be "consensual and safe". After all, that could be true of promiscuity and marriage infidelity.

Sooner or later, we need to look to sexuality's purpose and meaning. This leads us to recognise two purposes that are entwined and come together uniquely in marriage: they are sexuality's potential for deeply nurturing the love of two people and in a way that is also designed to generate new life as the fruit of their love.

And because new life needs to be protected and nurtured, the child's parents need to be in a relationship that is stable, committed and faithful.

Psychologists also speak of children's need to experience both maternal and paternal love.

Removed from its context, sexuality is removed from its meaning, and removed from its meaning, ultimately anything goes.

We need not be naïve about attempts to give sexuality different meanings.

There have been strong, organized and determined cultural movements whose agenda has been to "liberate" sexuality from all previous restraints.

We look back incredulously to the 1960's through 1990's when some activists described themselves as ‘victims' of harsh laws aimed at preventing "man-boy love"; and children as ‘victims' because harsh parents didn't want their children to have that kind of loving care!! "Inter-generational sex" and "man-boy love' were euphemisms intended to make acceptable what society calls pederasty. Even though by the 1990's those movements had mostly lost their credibility, the underlying ideologies have a way of re-surfacing.

Whatever one's sexual orientation or gender, chastity is for the protection of all. Chastity is the virtue that applies self-respect, restraint and respect for others, to sexuality.

Unchastity and self-indulgence can lead to violence - whether inside or outside of marriage - as the expression of unrestrained determination to get what one wants.

Modesty is the virtue that protects chastity. It is an aspect of care and respect for others - which is not at the forefront of people's minds who are concerned mostly about their own rights - real or perceived.

As the basis for affirming the dignity and equality of everyone, there is no substitute for the simple fact of being a human being.

Anything else that one happens to be, or not be, is no match as a basis for affirming the dignity and equality of all.

So, it is the fundamental dignity of being human that needs to be affirmed, and not subordinated to any other consideration.

• Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired, he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.

You will be the architects of the future.

Amazing science and technology will open doors we haven't even come to yet.

Hopefully, you will always be guided by what it means to be authentically human, which involves more than what science and technology can tell us. In fact, it also helps us to safeguard against the abuse of science and technology.

I am a fan of Professor Brian Cox.

As a former musician with the British bands D:Ream and Dare, and associate of Monty Python's comedy troupe, Cox presumably believes life is to be enjoyed.

He is right.

As professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, and BBC documentary presenter, he clearly finds the universe cause for great wonder.

It's interesting that science and faith both evoke a sense of wonder and awe.

Science is in wonder at what exists, from its smallest details to its greatest dimensions.

No matter how far back scientists look for the universe's origins, science can only wonder at what exists.

Faith is in wonder that anything exists at all, because God didn't need to create.

We need to find ourselves in wonder at what it means to be part of something that might not have existed. "The world will never starve from want of wonders; it will starve from want of wonder." (G.K. Chesterton.)

I find myself both enchanted and challenged by the history of the universe - 13.8 billion years to the first stars; now billions of stars within each galaxy, and trillions of galaxies, and planets formed by the stars; our planet formed from colliding debris over 4.5. billion years, at just the right distance from the sun for life to develop; distances measured in billions of light-years; gravitational forces that could kick planets into different trajectories; the combination of variables that gave us the world that is, instead of all the others that could have been but never will be…!

And planet Earth is microscopic within our solar system, let alone within the wider universe of other galaxies. But it is also special.

The massive transformations that were part of its geo-history led to further transformations in the development of life in its marvellous and complex forms (bio-history).

Last of all, and very late, human life emerged, and what emerges from human freedom - human history. Each of those histories; a reason for unending awe.

Eventually, out of what had been a vast wasteland of rock, volcanos, lava, gases and acidic seas, someone called Beethoven surfaced, who could pull together the sounds that make a symphony.

At the right time, unlikely raw materials had been transformed into a variety of instruments and delicate sounds that would beautifully blend and move together - moving us and drawing us together.

That's a long way from when the first boulders bashed against each other to form a planet capable of this - and every other wonder like it.

But if the past is mind-boggling, it's the future that really challenges me.

Our planet, scientists say, is destined to end up like the other planets - burned out and dead!

Some scientists surmise that by the time planet Earth dies we will have established ourselves on some other planet(s).

Who knows?

What we do know is that any planet that might have lit up to become our new home had better not count on getting its heat from the sun; it will have been the sun's demise that ensures Earth's demise.

Cruising around from one dying planet to another seems a lot of trouble to go to for unpromising returns.

Brian Cox relishes life; he says life is what gives the universe its meaning.

With sincerity and courage, he asks all the hard questions.

Following the evidence of the sciences, he tells us that in some trillions of years all the other suns will have burned out like our own, and "all life and all meaning" will vanish with them.

Where there was void before our universe came into existence, there will be void again.

I suggest the question of meaning cannot so easily be put aside.

Even if, as some surmise, our universe originated from some previous universe that also came and went, and so on over and over, the question always remains: why is there not just nothing at all?

Of course, time is on humanity's side: the sun is good for another five billion years.

But however long or short the time frame, it matters now because it is our present lives that are either pointless already if they are pointless in the end; or wonderful already if they are on their way to a wonderful future.

The overall direction of evolution has been towards life, with its potential for more wonderful and complex transformations. Can evolution deliver what it seems to promise? Or is it just part of the planet's life and destined to share its fate?

There was one transformation within the life of the planet that was qualitatively different from all others.

It reached right into the life of the planet, but took that life beyond anything evolution could do.

The Incarnation is about God's personal participation in the life of the planet and in human history - surpassing all other reasons for wonder, joy and thanksgiving!

A creation in which God has a stake is a creation with a future!!

Jesus' life - bringing healing, hope, peace, forgiveness and compassion into people's lives ratified human nature's deep hunch that this is what we were made for. And his resurrection confirmed that death does not have the last word.

Those who were witnesses to these things summed them up in their message that all creation is being "made new" - with a newness that creation cannot bring about for itself.

There is much at stake on this claim, because it means our lives will matter forever.

The whole of life is different - already - when we know that:

• all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise,
• we shall find again, cleansed and transfigured. (Second Vatican Council, Church in the World, n.39)

People we love, times that were special, good things we have done, all somehow belong with us in our future.

What is truly precious to us now is never really lost.

The sacrifices we make for what is good and right and just, do count.

The planet Brian Cox has good reason to love, we have even greater reason to love.

So, how does this picture of our future sit with science's claim that our planet will die?

Some believe our spirits go off to Heaven, leaving material creation behind.

That view originates from ancient pagan belief that material things are somehow bad and ultimately don't belong. Christian belief is different, based on the ancient Hebrew belief that God made the whole of creation "good", and human life "very good". Our bodies are part of what it means to be human. It is our human nature, and the whole of creation, that is being "made new".

The early Christians spoke of the risen Christ as the "first fruits" of this new creation.

They emphasised that his resurrection involved his whole human nature.

It was bodily; but was not a return to this life. It belongs to creation "made new".

In this new form they experienced his real presence among them.

Reflecting on their experience, they now realised it was to be expected: "In a little while the world will no longer see me; but you will see me, because I live on, and you too will live" (John 14:19).

God's plan for our future does not discard material creation.

It is the present form of material creation that will pass. It will be transformed in the way that Jesus was transformed through his death and resurrection.

We don't have language for that, because language is based on our experience of the world in its present form.

It hardly matters that the planet in its present form will die.

What matters is that the Incarnation brought about a transformation that continues.

What that leads to is what we call Heaven.

There is more to the Incarnation than Santa Claus at Christmas and chocolate bunnies at Easter.

I indicated at the outset that our participation in the life of the planet and human history needs to be guided by what it means to be authentically human.

Much hangs on this, including how we use the sciences and technology.

So, what does ‘authentic' mean in this context?

In the second century, St Iraneus said we are never more fully alive and true to our own nature than when we "see God".

Pausing to know we are in God's presence sharpens our realisation that God never owed us our existence, or needed to create; we are part of what might never have been.

That's marvellous: it means that God, who didn't need us, wanted us!

When we know that, we become more alive.

That also means our existence is pure gift; so, we are true to ourselves most of all when we are being given, i.e. being there for others - in all the ways required by right relationships, with each other and with all creation.

That is being true to our human nature - "authentic."

It involves loving others the way God loves us: love that isn't owed or measured or needing to be deserved is a circuit breaker - the kind of love that "changes everything, and the only kind that can! Many Religious Orders, and lay movements based on the gospel, were founded to put that kind of loving into action.

Outside the Catholic tradition, it is exemplified in those religious movements which were based on the twin focus of social activism and a spiritual basis - e. g. Methodism, Quakerism, and many others.

Catholic social teachings about the dignity of every person and the sacredness of every life; the common good, including our common home; solidarity and option for the poor, are all premised on it.

It's hardly surprising Pope St John Paul II insisted that "humanity is the route the Church must take".

Being true to our nature - "authentic" - is compromised wherever a narrow focus on our own rights blinds us to our responsibility to be there "for others"; wherever deeper moments for noticing God's presence are crowded out by noise, hurry, and the pressures of modern living; where the fast flow of information displaces understanding and wisdom; wherever superficiality replaces depth - (e.g. where even news programmes are presented through the prism of entertainment, sometimes even called "shows")….

Authenticity involves being counter-cultural.

Knowing this, Pope St John Paul II told the New Zealand bishops to "make a systematic effort in your dioceses and parishes to open new doors to the experience of Christian prayer and contemplation" (Ad Limina visit 1998).

Contemplation means ‘seeing God', noticing God's presence, in the midst of life.

This changes how we think and act.

That is what the gospel means by "repentance" and conversion. It's about how we participate in creation's newness and its future.

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels.

There are features of our Western world's culture that seem to fit the image.

Important aspects of our lives seem to have become disconnected from what gives them meaning. If this is true, it is hardly healthy. I offer the following examples.

"Me" disconnected from "we"; and "my" from "our"

To say modern culture suffers from acute individualism is by now a truism.

Clamours for "my rights" often involve little or no sense of "my responsibilities".

It seems incredible that some would regard public health requirements as infringements of their rights - it's as silly as regarding the road rules as violations of their freedom.

During the pandemic, some have been willing to put other people's lives at risk for no better reason than to enjoy themselves. Obviously, legal restrictions are no substitute for moral formation.

But all is not lost:

• Catastrophes can still bring out the best in people.
• It is still easy to admire individuals who are generous, even risking their own lives for others.
• It is still easy to dislike gross forms of self-centredness and self-aggrandisement.
• People still give generously to charitable causes.
• And it is still easy to pity individuals caught up in over-anxious self-concern.

But there are also subtler forms of disconnect that we can become used to; they become ‘normalised'.

For example, in most if not all cultures, marriage has been a moment of celebration for whole communities. Now, "what we do is nobody else's business". Within an individualist culture, it isn't easy to see anything wrong with this. It's the culture that has become reductionist.

Work used to be regarded as an expression one's person and relationships with others. Now, within the culture we are regarding as ‘normal', it is reduced to a commodity and business transaction. Commercial value attaches to the work, not the person doing it, so work becomes unmoored from its own deepest meaning.

The common denominator to all forms of self-centredness is failure to realise that we can become our own true selves only through being "for others".

This paradox is at the centre of Jesus' teaching.

The drift away from his Gospel has become a drift away from what we need to become our own true selves. This will show up in the uglier kinds of self-centredness.

Facts' unmoored from truth

When truth is reduced to whatever we say to get whatever we want - whether it is true or not - we are targets for manipulation. We become vulnerable to every kind of spin - commercial spin, political spin, and agenda-driven ideologies.

Scientists work hard to establish facts.

They know we need to act on what is objectively true.

Solving crimes, the judicial system, and research in every field are all based on the premise that truth matters.

All these, and most of life, would be turned up-side-down if it were enough to say: "truth is whatever the individual thinks it is - it is true for her/him" and "right is whatever the individual chooses - it is right for him/her".

How could we even say rape or sexual abuse are wrong if it might be "right" for the person doing it?

So, we cannot escape the need to acknowledge an objective difference between true and false, and right and wrong.

Conspiracy theories during the pandemic duped some people into believing claims that were far more bizarre than anything the sciences ever present us with.

What kind of culture is it when they are so gullibly believed?

Parroting cliches is a lazy alternative to serious thinking. For example: lazy thinkers don't distinguish between judging a person's actions (which we may do, and sometimes must), and judging their conscience (which we may not - because we cannot know whether or how much they are guilty before God.)

That is the meaning of the saying: "who am I to judge?"

"Who am I to judge", doesn't mean we can't judge their actions!

But even when we rightly judge that another's actions are wrong, it is often necessary to look further.

Their offending can have deep roots in early experience of abuse or deprivation or cultural alienation.

If we are personally attached to truth, we will look more deeply, and avoid superficial judgments and demonising.

Lazy thinking also buys the slogan used to justify abortion: "it's my body," even though the sciences leave no doubt that the embryo is actually someone else's body.

Sexual activity unmoored from sexuality's meaning

I recently heard some young people say they felt it was wrong to send sexual imagery online, but they didn't know why.

They will not come any closer to knowing through "consent education".

"Consent education" is right to teach the need to avoid activities that are not legal or consensual or safe. But that is as far as it can go because it is unconcerned with sexuality's meaning - other than it being a source of pleasure.

That kind of ‘education' allows, if it doesn't promote, the idea that anything goes provided it is legal, consensual and safe.

But is it?

A more holistic education would allow young people to learn about virtue.

Modesty is the virtue that protects chastity.

Of course, if society has given away the virtue of chastity, then it won't feel any need for modesty. Chastity is the virtue that applies self-respect, restraint and respect for others, to sexuality.

Unchastity involves a lack of self-respect, restraint and respect for others.

The Department of Internal Affairs' statistics regarding the extent of attempts in NZ to access child sex sites, and the increasing demand for younger children, and more violent forms of abuse, show where we go when the meaning of sexuality is ignored, or reduced to pleasure.

There have been strong, organized and determined cultural movements whose agenda has been to "liberate" sexuality from all previous restraints.

We look back incredulously to the 1960's through 1990's when some activists described themselves as ‘victims' of harsh laws aimed at preventing "man-boy love"; and children as ‘victims' because harsh parents didn't want them to have that kind of loving care!!

"Inter-generational sex" and "man-boy love' were euphemisms intended to promote the acceptability of what society calls pederasty.

For some, the aim was to shed categories such as ‘heterosexual' and ‘homosexual' in favour of more fluid and non-binary language. Even though by the 1990's those movements had mostly lost their credibility, the underlying ideologies have a way of re-surfacing.

So sooner or later, we do need to come to the question: what is sexuality's meaning?

What is its purpose?

Yes, it is for pleasure.

But so is unchastity. So, there must be some meaning beyond that.

Honest reflection recognises two purposes that are entwined and come together uniquely in marriage: they are sexuality's potential for deeply nurturing the love of two people, and in a way that is also designed to generate new life as the fruit of their love. And because new life needs to be protected and nurtured, the child's parents need to be in a relationship that is stable, committed and faithful.

Whatever allowances we rightly make for people of various orientations or preferences (see below), ultimately it is marriage that can fulfil sexuality's deepest meanings.

Detached from marriage, sexual activities are detached from sexuality's meaning.

Gender identity unmoored from sexual identity

Gender identity is not a label that is put on us, by ourselves or by others. It is given by nature long before we start making our own decisions.

But what about the tensions between biological reality and psychological/emotional reality that some people experience?

We move closer to an answer when we allow both faith and the sciences to be part of our thinking: the world is a work in progress, and we are part of this evolving world.

This means that none of us is a finished product. We are all at one stage or another of being unfinished.

We can be born with deficiencies, or incur disabilities, some of which last through life.

In fact, we are never finished while death is still in front of us.

When there is something that cannot be resolved or fulfilled within our present span of life, it helps to remember that our life was not something we had a right to in the first place; it is simply a gift. And our present life is not the whole of it.

In that kind of world, personal development does not always take place at the same pace or even follow the usual pattern.

Those who are caught in any of the dilemmas resulting from different stages of, or lines of, development have a right to the same respect and unconditional love as everyone else.

Still, as Professor Kathleen Stock, herself a lesbian, writing about "Why Reality Matters for Feminism," reminds us, there are only two biological sexes and no amount of hormonal or surgical treatment can change that.

She is aware that by seeking surgical or hormonal treatment to support gender change, people are implicitly acknowledging the link between gender identity and sexual identity.

But she is also aware, and critical of, the more recent claim that they should not need to; it should be enough simply to declare that you are male or female, regardless of biological reality.

Is that where the separation of gender identity and sexual identity can take us?

If reality matters, then it matters to acknowledge that, both socially and biologically, male and female find a certain completion in each other, precisely by being each other's ‘opposite' - which is what the ancient Genesis story has been saying all along.

Politics unmoored from the common good

Politics unmoored from the common good is politics unmoored from its own purpose.

The purpose of political involvement is to create a social and economic environment in which everyone has the opportunity to progress towards achieving their own potential and a fulfilling life.

In a true democracy, political parties differ over how to do this, while being united in a common pursuit of the common good.

Partisan self-interest placed above the common good is a throw-back to tribalism, and like ancient forms of tribalism, it undermines the unity that is needed for achieving the common good.

The alternative to the common good is mere partisan power.

This gives rise to all kinds of inequalities and absurdities (e.g. being duped by misinformation and lies that have been discredited by the courts; basing decisions about masks and social distancing not on science but on which political party you belong to!)

We might be surprised at such fickleness, though perhaps less surprised that it happens in a country where States can still pass anti-democratic laws, and that does not yet have a proper separation of powers.

But the lesson for ourselves is how foolish and self-destructive we too could become through unmooring rights from responsibilities. ‘facts' from truth, and politics from pursuit of the common good.

"Religion" unmoored from ordinary life

Early in the Christian tradition, St Iraneus said the glory of God is human beings coming alive through seeing God in all that God has made and all that God is doing in human lives.

We are being drawn to God through the experience of created beauty, goodness and truth.

Popes St John Paul II and Benedict XVI have picked up Iraneus' theme, emphasising that since human beings becoming fully alive is God's agenda in creating and redeeming us, it is also "the route the Church must take."

So, religion is not somehow running alongside our ordinary lives; it is our ordinary lives being made extraordinary, being sanctified, graced - family life, civic life, industrial and commercial life, political life…

Of course, this is unfinished work, and so it will be until God is "all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).

In the meantime, people for whom life's shortfalls create a sense of insecurity are the ones more likely to seek escape into "religion" perceived as some kind of separate sphere, or construct built on to life, or, worse, a kind of bubble (even having its own separate language).

This perception of ‘religion" being alongside ordinary life is the assumption of some bloggers, and it seems, even some bishops (in Britain, Ireland, France and USA) who resent government restrictions affecting church gatherings even during a pandemic.

It is as if the sciences and good government don't apply to "religion's" separate sphere.

A concept of religion unmoored from the needs of the common good is unmoored from the ordinary processes of becoming more truly human and fully alive, which is what gives glory to God.

Conclusion

A culture in which so many aspects of life have become unmoored from what gives them meaning is a culture that is reductionist, superficial, utilitarian…

The question is: within that kind of culture, how well equipped can we be to deal with the epic issues of our time - those that degrade human life, human dignity, human rights and the planet itself?

• Peter Cullinane is Emeritus Bishop of Palmerston North. He has a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Angelicum, Rome and a Master of Theology from Otago University. Bishop Cullinane is a former President of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference and between 1983 and 2003 he was a member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

Prisms of Light - An Interfaith Conversation on how Compassion Transforms our Communities, explored how compassion is a central theme in the the living out of many world faith traditions.

Other speakers were:

1. 1. Helen Chong spoke on roots of compassion from a Jewish perspective
   2. Thomas Kigufi and Antoinette Umugwaneza spoke on compassion and poverty in light of their own experience as refugees
   3. Sam Te Tau presented an overview of Ba'hai education programs that exemplify compassion and the next generation
   4. Rev. Rilma Sands spoke on compassion and peace - Just Peace
   5. Jaspreet Singh spoke on compassion for the earth including the tree planting efforts of the Dera Sacha Sauda mission
   6. Gen Demo Kelsang guided us through a Buddhist meditation to show how compassion purifies the mind
   7. Shreejithji spoke on the relationship between Hindu Dharma and compassion.

About 100 people attend the meeting which was held in the Palmerston North City Library on 10 September.

Source

1. 1. • Supplied: Claire Birtwell
      • Image: Supplied