Ramadan has just ended. Mainstream media have reported that “food waste had hit a peak during the final week of Ramadan when large quantities of untouched food packets were disposed of mercilessly. Photographs of heaps of uneaten food, in a…
We often speak today of the terrible toll that fatherless homes have on young boys. And this is true. Without a reasonably good (even though not sinless) model of manhood and responsibility, many boys lose their way. Fathers also play…
The environmental movement includes many people who don’t subscribe to any particular faith, as well as many others who do. Caring for birds, beasts, and the natural world is a common thread running through all the world’s religions. For example,…
I have come to think that social media is not an optional extra, but rather a central part of the church’s mission now. Can social media help us communicate beyond the church or beyond the “network bubble” in which we…
CHANGING “Sunday school” culture and Catholic schools’ religion classes into a relational process of faith formation is no simple task. It will require church leaders to admit that the path we have been on for decades is not sufficient to…
In recent days, widely shared quotes attributed to Pope Francis, in which he advocates for a merging of the religions of Christianity and Islam, have been debunked by the Vatican as fake. Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan recently addressed…
Certainly, there is something originally pagan about the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. January takes its name from Janus, the two-faced god who looks both backwards and forwards—the god of entrances and doors. So, the custom of looking both…
The coming of the Messiah seems to be so small, so little, that it is breathtaking when you recognise the truth of the incarnation as God’s majesty coming to live among lost humanity. God chose to be born as an…
In his catechesis in the Jubilee audience held in St Peter’s Square on 16 Nov 2016, the Holy Father reflected on the relationship between mercy and dialogue, based on Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. “What strikes us about this…
With the 36th General Congregation, we Jesuits have a process to elect a new superior general, four days of private one-on-one conversations called the murmuratio, which is actually designed to help Jesuit governance avoid the conspiracy and power-brokering that so…