In ancient times the celestial spheres were thought to influence our health, moods, actions, fate. It’s not so crazy: after all, the sun is crucial for days and seasons, sleep and wake, photosynthesis and life. It’s light and warmth affects our moods, and some people suffer seasonal affective disorders. Its partner, the moon, influences the earth’s axis and wobble…
Over the last fortnight, the world has watched on in horror as two disasters struck North Africa. First, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake claimed around 3,000 lives as it devastated Morocco’s capital Marrakech and wiped-out whole villages in the Atlas Mountains. Those mountains rise by 1mm per year as tectonic plates press against each other, but roughly once-in-a…
In our highly sexualised culture, celibacy is often despised or belittled. It’s said no normal man would commit to it. Yet here in the Archdiocese of Sydney we will have four ordinations to the priesthood this year, we had five last year, six in COVID time, and six in the year before…
He was at the height of his powers going into the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The British sprinter, Derek Redmond, held the British record over 400m and the year before was on the relay team that upset the red-hot US squad, winning the world championships. His Olympic campaign couldn’t have started better: he blitzed the field in his qualifying heat and…
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…
“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…
