In a special selection of recent articles, The Catholic Weekly examines an issue that neither Australian society nor Australian media seem to be particularly interested in, much less concerned about. Yet it is one of the great human stories of the 21st century: religious persecution around the globe. As many of our readers will be […]
If we were to survey the Church in Australia at the present moment, we could be forgiven for concluding that in many respects an institution which has been a major factor in Australian life since the earliest days of this nation is now a significantly spent force, exhibiting many signs of being spiritually exhausted. This […]
As Everett, Pete and Delmar are on the run in the Depression-era Deep South of the 1930s in the classic Coen Brothers movie O Brother Where Art Thou?, they pick up a hitch hiker carrying a guitar case at a lonely crossroads in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. Shortly before this they encounter a […]
If there’s one problem facing Christians it is an increasingly hostile culture inimical and, indeed, often toxic to their best efforts to raise their children with the values they regard as most important. Another problem can sometimes be the misinformed and not very deeply formed other Christians whose limited or doggedly doctrinaire beliefs can make […]
On 19 August 1692 Martha Carrier, George Jacobs, George Burroughs, John Willard, and John Proctor were hanged at Salem in the-then colony of Massachusetts. Their purported crime had been the practice of witchcraft. The five were among an eventual 20 persons executed for consorting with the Devil, although an additional five, two of whom were […]
The Catholic Weekly hits parishes this weekend as a remarkable milestone in the life of the Church is reached: the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Mary to three peasant children at the Cova da Iria at Fatima in Portugal. The coming period from 13 May to 13 October is an anniversary of profound importance […]
The mentally ill wear their own crown of thorns in this life because they are so misunderstood and rejected by almost everyone. In Belgium, their lot has just become much worse. In a shock move which will reverberate through Catholic healthcare institutions and the wider Church around the world, the Board of Management controlling 15 […]
The name really says it all. How could anything as profound as marriage – the greatest adventure possible in this life – possibly succeed on the basis of nothing more than a programming idea cooked up by some commercial television station executives and their marketing departments hunting round for something – anything, really – to capture […]
We all know someone who has been bullied, often in school. Many of us have seen the lifelong effects bullying can have. Tackling bullying is important. But the dropping of the deceptively-named ‘Safe Schools’ programme by the New South Wales Government over Easter was not so much a victory for sanity as it was – […]
One of the truly remarkable developments around the ‘gay marriage’ campaign which has come to eclipse so much in Australian public life in recent years is the bullying and violence that has come to characterise and define it – as opposed to the notional support it receives from some ordinary Australians to whom gay ‘marriage’ […]
It was reported in the media this week that between 1995 and 2013 Japan moved from having 5.9 workers for every person eligible for the pension to 2.5 workers. Australia, it was reported, faced going down a similar path in the period from 2015 to 2055. What was not reported is that this demographic shrinking […]
Here in Australia, our collective problems are, as a rule, not so bad as we imagine them to be. It is true, of course, that for some people life’s problems can be crushing. Their problems may include diagnosis with a terminal or a mental illness, family breakdown, loss of a child or a spouse, addictions, […]
