Religion
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The Catholic politician
While each party is working hard to persuade the electorate to vote for its electoral programme it is time to sit down and reflect on some important aspects of political life. The question I wish to address is: What is the mission of the Catholic...
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Quotes and news
In a speech at UN headquarters in Geneva, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, said: “A fundamental question ought always to be present in our minds. “Are human rights universal because a majority of...
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‘I am not coming down from the Cross’
Pope Benedict bid an emotional farewell at his last general audience yesterday, acknowledging the “rough seas” that marked his papacy “when it seemed that the Lord was sleeping”. In an unusually public outpouring for such a private man, he alluded...
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Energising belief
Today’s readings: Gen. 15, 5-12.17-18; Philippians 3, 17-4,1; Lk 9, 28-36. Climbing up the mountain in the Scriptures means breaking with routine, being in search of what is beyond our earthly life, searching for the divine. This can be a luxury...
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An election or just a selection?
It’s all about choices. I would like to distinguish between two ways of making choices. For the purpose of this article I’m taking ‘selection’ to mean choosing one or more out of several possibilities; in other words, ‘to choose from’. On the other...
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Quotes and news
In a February 17 Russian television interview on Pope Benedict’s decision to step down from the papacy, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev said: “He [Pope Benedict] saw [at the end of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate] the process of...
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Who will be the next Pope?
After Pope Benedict’s papacy of almost eight years, the cardinals who will elect the next Catholic Pontiff are more European, more conservative and more “Roman” than the conclave that chose him in 2005. Benedict has hand-picked more than half the...
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In listening mode
Today’s readings: Deut. 26, 4-10; Romans 10, 8-13; Luke 4, 1-13. Lent is mainly about refocussing on the reason to believe. We all have reasons not to believe but Lent is the opportune time in which the true self in each of us is explored and made...
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The Catholic vote
The right to vote and choose our representatives is a hard-fought and sacred right that so many people are denied and have died for. One needs only to look at the current tragedy in Syria and other Arab countries. At such a crucial time, more than...
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Quotes and news
Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, said comments by Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne were manipulated as the cardinal was misinformed about the effects of the ‘morning-after pill’. The...
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God’s politics
Today’s readings: Wisdom 14, 3-7; Acts 27, 16 – 28, 6; Mark 16, 15-20. The 10th of February each year is a date with connotations that range widely from national to religious, political to cultural. Politics has by now come to saturation point. But...
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The Christian faced by the elections
In one of the riddles of the gospel, our Lord says that his disciples are not of this world and yet he sends them to the world and insists he is not asking the Father to remove them from the world. The solution of the riddle: for the evangelist, the...
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Quotes and news
Following a court order, the Los Angeles archdiocese released the personnel files of 87 clergy accused of sexual abuse. The files, which were also posted online, were described as containing “brutal and painful reading” by the Archbishop of Los...
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New situations
Today’s readings: Jer. 1, 4-5.17-19; 1 Cor. 12, 31 - 13,13; Luke 4, 21-30. For so long the Christian faith has been the foundation stone and source of our civilisation. But now the prevailing sensation is one of rejection. Jeremiah’s call in today’s...
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Human rights revisited
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights held that where conditions of employment forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and an employee following her/his religious beliefs discriminates, she/he may lawfully be dismissed. In...
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Quotes and news
At his midday audience last Sunday, Pope Benedict said: “Each moment can be the auspicious ‘today’ of our conversion. Each day can be the salvific ‘today’ because salvation is a continuous story for the Church and for each of Christ’s...
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The soul of religion
Today’s readings: Nehemiah 8, 2-6.8-10; 1 Corinthians 12, 12-30; Luke 1, 1-4; 4, 14-21. If religion is not liberating spiritually and bodily, then we would do much better without it. This is what comes out clearly from today’s Scriptures where the...
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Evangelising in the post-modern world
The opening paragraph of the great novel by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), shows that today’s post-modern world is deeply entrenched at crucial crossroads: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of...
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Quotes and news
A new phase in the relationship between the Church and the Vietnamese government has been struck by the first ever meeting between Pope Benedict XVI with Nguyen Phu Trong, secretary-general of the ruling Communist Party. For the past five years...
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Life’s added value
Today’s readings: Isaiah 62, 1-5; 1 Corinthians 12, 4-11; John 2, 1-12. To believe in God is not a duty. It is a gift. In religion, we need to learn more the language of gratuitousness. We were very often brought up to think of being in duty bound...
