Category: Uncategorized

Witnessing groups fundraising, attending pastoral preparation retreats – are mere examples of how the Holy Spirit is working among us as we lead up to World Youth Day in Sydney in July.

The Catholic church badly needs its radical heroes, too. But everyday life offers no end of scope for releasing treasure and making it present in our parishes, families, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

Now that the hospital had finished its work and a new parish priest had taken over at Stratford I had to find a new place to continue my checkered journey.

Members and guests gathered to celebrate the blessing and opening of the new building next to St Joseph’s parish school.

‘I also like to think that we care deeply for these islands that we call our home. We cherish our natural environments, our mountains, our waterways, our indigenous flora and fauna and I think there is a real interest in our people to be a caring and responsible nation.’

But, Professor Mason Durie, vice-chancellor of Massey University and professor of Māori studies, said New Zealand needed to work out how it valued and recognised its indigenous people given the government’s refusal to sign the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was ratified last year.

A constitutional law expert, Matthew Palmer, is calling for relationships between New Zealand’s Treaty partners to be put on a more sound footing to avoid a repeat of the foreshore and seabed debacle.

Race relations has dropped off the top 10 issues that most concern New Zealanders for the first time since it peaked in 2004 with then National Party leader Don Brash’s controversial Orewa speech to the nation and the passage of the Foreshore and Seabed Act.