When you hear words like ‘Lent’, ‘fasting’ and ‘abstinence’, what immediately comes to mind? In my childhood it meant giving up what you liked best, like chocolate, for a few weeks, with exceptions made for birthdays, St Patrick’s Day, other solemnities and, in laxer families, Sundays.
THE CHALLENGES OF THE TIMES St. Bernadette’s Parish, Carlton When my predecessor Sir Norman Thomas Cardinal Gilroy returned from one of the sessions of the Second Vatican Council, he was asked by a breathless reporter what he thought was the greatest challenged faced by the Church and society today. No doubt he was expected to […]
Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return – so we are reminded every Ash Wednesday of the words of the Book of Genesis. It was the moment when humanity had its first premonition of death as a result of …
The British singer-songwriter Steven Demetre Georgiou is better known by his stage name, Cat Stevens. He was all the rage in my adolescence, and perhaps the young Fr Rayner crooned some Cat Stevens with his CYO group. Then, in my last year at school and to everyone’s surprise …
When most people in a country like Australia hear the word ‘slavery’ they think of Africans brought across the sea to work the cotton plantations of America. But since the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, most people would think slavery a …
STATEMENT ON THE RESPONSE OF THE CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF SYDNEY TO MODERN SLAVERY Cathedral House, Sydney, 8 February 2018 I would like to begin by acknowledging the efforts of the Archdiocesan Anti-Slavery Taskforce, especially John McCarthy QC and Katherine Moloney, who have worked tirelessly to complete the report you have received today. This report details […]
One of the most highly acclaimed films of the past year is the biographical war drama, Hacksaw Ridge. Andrew Garfield brilliantly plays Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist Christian who served as a U.S. army medic in the Second World War but refused to bear arms. He was the first conscientious objector …
Well, the verdict is in. After a meticulous search through eight million books published between 1776 and 2009 for positive words such as ‘enjoyment’, ‘peace’ and ‘happiness’, researchers at Warwick University have concluded that 1957 was the happiest year in modern history.
Genealogy is all the rage. There are plenty of websites and search companies to help: some search birth and death, migration and marriage, council and electoral records for you; others even investigate your DNA.
Why the reading for the Annunciation five days out from the Nativity.
Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
