Having lost his only sibling, his mother and then his father before he reached adulthood, Karol Józef Wojtyła knew the importance of family. It would be one of his chief areas of teaching as pope, running like a watermark throughout his 27-year pontificate. Pope John Paul II believed the family is the school for a deeper humanity, the nursery of faith…
Many of our shared spaces are broken and we seem only able to see things through a hyper-tribal lens of progressive and conservative, us versus them. On hot-button topics there’s little room for civil exchange of views, reasoned arguments and openness to persuasion, nuance, compromise, or respectful disagreement; instead, we have slogans, vitriol…
Lately there’s been plenty of talk about UFOs, aliens, and interstellar travel: a former US official has even claimed under oath that government is in possession of a non-human spacecraft with some intact alien biological material! I don’t pretend to know the rights and wrongs of all of this, but I wonder what an alien species would make of a million plus adolescent humans…
“We don’t need no education,
We don’t need no thought control,
No dark sarcasm in the classroom,
Teacher, leave them/us kids alone”
Pink Floyds’ 1979 protest song, Another Brick in the Wall, was a massive hit…
With 87 winning teams in over 15 franchises so far, The Amazing Race is the most popular reality tv adventure show of all time. Teams of two with a limited budget traverse the globe on various forms of transport, navigating unfamiliar territory, solving puzzles, interacting with locals, and overcoming physical…
Weather charts, soil quality, ploughing, seeding, growth, pests and weeds, first-fruits, harvesting, grain yield (Isa 55:10-11; Ps 64(65); Rom 8:18-23; Mt 13:1-23)—today’s readings are positively horticultural.
God is presented as a gardener from the…
José Salvador Alvarenga is hardly a household name, but perhaps it deserves to be. In 2012 José and his mate Ezequiel set out on a seven-metre fibreglass boat for a night of fishing off the Mexican coast. It proved to be a nightmare. A catastrophic five-day long storm left them with no engine or radio. They had no instruments to figure out their location…
Recently, some MPs joined some young people at the Federal Parliament to launch the ‘Make it 16’ campaign.[1] : They were supporting lowering the voting age so teens will be more politically engaged and bring their concerns to government. At present young people can work, pay taxes, serve in the armed…
Sixty years ago next month, the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land sent two bark petitions—framed by traditional ochre paintings—to the Federal Parliament, protesting the grant of mining rights in Arnhem Land and seeking…
As a Fisher I am pleased to observe that there’s plenty of Anglophone idiom about fish. When asked before the last conclave if he was in the running for pope, the late great Cardinal Pell said it was one thing to be “a big fish in a small pond” like Australia, but that there were “plenty of fish” in the sees of the universal Church. He was himself subsequently the victim…
Evoking Charles Dickens’archenemy of Christmas, Ebenezer Scrooge (in A Christmas Carol 1843), the economist Joel Waldfogelhas written Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays. He invites us to consider that “rooster sweater from Grandma or the singing fish from Uncle Mike” that we’ve…
Alexander III (356-323 BC) was tutored by Aristotle and mentored by his father Philip II, before assuming the throne of Macedon aged only 20. Over the following thirteen years he led military conquests of many lands from Greece to as far as India, creating one of the largest empires in history and inaugurating the …
