It was July 29, 1968. The world seemed to be in turmoil. The Paris student riots had happened a month before. I was an army chaplain at Puckapunyal preparing conscripts for Vietnam and, at the same time, an undergraduate at Melbourne University where the Vietnam War was taboo. Those two worlds were a universe apart. Read more
The Māori sexual and reproductive health promotion organisation Te Whāriki Takapou (TWT) is critical of the decision by Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) to spend $18.4m on the Mates and Dates programme. Mates and Dates is a programme for secondary school students. It is aimed at teaching young people healthy relationship skills and behaviour to help prevent Read more
A survey by a UK group committed to the reforms of Vatican II has highlighted issues its authors say are strangling the Church. A survey of 342 people, mostly Catholic, earlier this year by A Call To Action describes a widening gap between Church teaching on sexual and family ethics and the opinion and practice Read more
The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has warned against trying to adapt Christ’s teaching to today’s often pagan lifestyles. Speaking to Die Tagespost on June 6, Cardinal Gerhard Müller rejected placing “any so-called lived realities” on the same level as Scripture and tradition. This is “nothing more than the introduction of Read more
Catholic psychiatrist and theologian Dr Jack Dominian, who championed a rethink on Christian sexual ethics, has died in the United Kingdom, aged 84. As early as 1977, Dr Dominian warned against what he called the Catholic Church’s pre-occupation with marital chastity at the expense of other factors in a successful marriage. In his “Proposals for Read more
Grace Carroll, a Catholic design student from Wellington, has accused some members of the select committee on same sex marriage of behaving in a hostile and “menacing” way to submitters who are against a proposed law change for same sex couples. In a press release from Family First she says when she appeared before the Read more
Anti-abortionists are taking aim at the charity status of the Family Planning Association in their latest assault against women and pro-choice organisations. Pro-choice groups have labelled Right to Life’s ongoing grudge-match as tiresome and time-wasting. The Charities Commission confirmed it received a complaint regarding the Family Planning Association’s charity status, but was yet to decide Read more
At teacher at a Catholic school in Indiana, USA, is suing the Catholic diocese after being fired for receiving in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments. The teacher, Emily Herx, filed the suit because she was discriminated against after the school’s priest found out she had begun the IVF treatements. IVF treatments are against Catholic Church teaching. According Read more