Cecily McNeill2011 It is hard to put into words the horror of watching Christchurch city crumble, the crushed but alive, the bodies, the heroic rescues. The rest of the country and indeed the world has been listening to stories of people finding their loved ones, or discovering that a family member would no longer be […]
Cecily McNeill2011 Many Catholics are passionate about New Zealand’s abyssmal abortion rate and rightly so. This country has one of the highest rates in the world and children who have yet to be born are the most vulnerable. Yet while this country’s abortion rate is high, research shows that children who are already born have […]
Cecily McNeill2012 Last month a young father sitting in his car in Stokes Valley was stabbed to death in what is believed to be a fit of road rage – just one more in a spate of crimes perpetrated by young people. At the same time the Minister of Social Development, Paula Bennett, went on […]
Columns Msgr John Broadbent 2012 Brothers Ss Cyril and Methodius were born in the ninth century in Thessalonika in Greece. They studied at the imperial university in Constantinople and the emperor later sent them to Moravia to preach the gospel to the Slavs. The king had requested missionaries who could preach in the people’s language. […]
Cecily McNeill2012 An Otago University study published in international medical journal The Lancet has revealed that hospital admissions for infectious diseases in this country rose by more than half in the nearly 20 years to 2008 and a top scientist is blaming damp housing, poverty and a lack of primary healthcare. Fairfax NZ News reported […]
Archbishop John Dew2012 One of the new Lenten Prefaces we will hear in the new Missal just implemented, prays, ‘You have given your children a sacred time for the renewing and purifying of their hearts – so that they may deal with the things of this passing world and hold rather to the things that […]
Columns Kieran Fenn FMS2012 At the second Vatican council, two patterns of approach to Mary came into conflict and the first millennium won as the pattern for the third Christian millennium. Let us examine the two in more detail. Of the 2,500 bishops at the Council, 600 asked for a specific statement from the Council […]
Columns Msgr John Broadbent2012 St Nicholas was born near Sachselin in Unterwalden in 1417. It is said of him that ‘no religious figure in the history of Switzerland has given rise to so varied and voluminous a body of literature’. From a farming family, Nicholas’ father also held a civil post in the canton. His […]
Columns Kieran Fenn fms2012 Among the new factors emerging in the Church of the second millennium was a growing legal system within church bureaucracy, an increasingly severe penitential system and a growing remoteness from the risen Christ as a saving figure who now became a stern and just judge. Eternal salvation was regarded as exceedingly […]
Columns Msgr John Broadbent2012 St Peter Chanel was born at Cuet near Billey in France in 1803. At seven he began shepherding sheep on his father’s farm. But his disposition and intelligence attracted the attention of the parish priest who brought him to a small school he had started in post-revolutionary France. From there, Peter […]