The very hungry caterpillar book cover. Photo: Supplied. This is the edited text of the Homily for Mass for the Opening of the 2025 School Year for St Mary’s Cathedral College, St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, 11 February 2025. Most of you will be familiar with that great classic of […]
ST MARGARET’S AND ALL SAINTS LONDON, 18 FEBRUARY 2025 (FEAST OF BLESSED FRA ANGELICO) In December of last year, NASA telescopes in Chile identified a 100m wide asteroid, with the catchy name ‘2024 YR4’, that will come rather close to the earth in 2032.[1] While it’s not big enough to cause a mass extinction event […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, FEAST OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES, 11 FEBRUARY 2025 Most of you will be familiar with that great classic of English literature, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Authored and illustrated by Eric Carle in 1969, it was on the bestsellers list for children’s picture books for around 19 years and has been […]
ST JEROME’S CHURCH, PUNCHBOWL, 10 FEBRUARY 2025 My beloved Dominican brother, Fr Dominic Murphy, once gave a series on the Theology of the Body in which he proposed that all men are genetically somewhat autistic and all women at least a little neurotic. Men can be so practically-focused that they fail to pick up cues […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL SYDNEY, 9 FEBRUARY 2025 It’s an old fishing trick. In the days leading up to an expedition, experienced anglers cast a handful of bran or other roughage on the waters where they intend to go fishing later. Bran effects fish much as it does people. As a result, when the fishers return […]
Rod Laver Arena Melbourne Park Australian Open 2023 quarter final. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Last week I wrote about the place of faith in the lives of some of the great past and present players at the Australian Open (tennis). This week I’d like to reflect on the behaviour of some of the crowd. Tournament organisers […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 3 FEBRUARY 2025 Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville, was the notorious Public Prosecutor during France’s ‘Reign of Terror’. For his outsized role in delivering thousands to the ‘National Razor,’ he earned the nickname ‘Purveyor to the Guillotine.’[1] An industrious lawyer, sympathetic to the ideals of the revolution, Fouquier was appointed Accusateur […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 2 FEBRUARY 2025 A few days ago, the Church celebrated the memorial of St Thomas Aquinas, the great 13th-century Dominican friar who was arguably the greatest ever theologian, and the first person designated a Doctor of the Church since the patristic period. He was famed for the persuasive way he united […]
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is seen in Hawthorne, Calif., in this April 30, 2015, file photo. Musk is among well-known innovators who have cautioned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence without some thought into what they mean for humanity could threaten human survival. (CNS photo/Patrick T. Fallon, Reuters) See ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-ETHICS March 10, 2016. This […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 29 DECEMBER 2024 It’s the original Home Alone story. Like many pious Jews, Joseph, Mary and the kid had their holidays in Jerusalem during the weeklong Passover celebrations (Lk 2:41-52). They did this every year, only this time something went very wrong. Amidst the to-ing and fro-ing of the hundred thousand […]
Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
