Online Articles
FREE e-Newsletter
Sign up below to get our free weekly newsletter packed with news & updates.-
We Respect Your Privacy
Year-end Review 2005
Our prayers for 2006
AS we enter a new year, we pause to reflect on the often dramatic 2005 which brought changes, trauma and some graces. Read more…
Religious freedom for all
Forty years ago, the Second Vatican Council decreed that everyone has an inviolable right to religious freedom. In the declaration Dignitatis humanae, the council fathers finally repudiated instances in the Church’s history when Catholics impeded religious freedom, just as Catholics were oppressed elsewhere. Read more…
A gift we don’t deserve
It is a fact that most people expect a Christmas box at Christmastime. What on earth for? Read more…
Nativity play nerves
Nativity plays. Everybody has either been in one or watched one. Sr ROSE POWER of Groblersdal reminisces about nativity plays and the children who act so earnestly in them.
Read more…
Yehonatan and the baby
A short story by Louis Mallett
He was street-child of his day, and Yehonatan’s mother had him up at first light. There would be good pickings in the streets today, the town would be thronged for the census. Yet the boy’s day had been fruitless, with the sun not far from setting.
Read more…
The bell of St Raphael
A short story by Fr Ralph de Hahn
Port Raphael, on the Cape’s West Coast, was just a small insignificant fishing village, no more than 150 inhabitants, mostly of Portuguese descent, but with a dialect of their own. The people lived off the sea. Because of the salty ocean winds and the hot blazing sun, all the surrounding sandy wastelands were barren.
Read more…
Christmas habits
We celebrate it, eat through it, give gifts on it, and carry out the traditions our parents, and probably our grandparents, carried out. FR DESMOND NAIR finds out where our most memorable Christmas habits come.
Read more…
Time and eternity meet on crossroads
Wherever Christian hearts beat, the holy night of Christmas draws millions together, writes Mgr JAN JAWORSKI.
During the silent and holy night, Jesus Christ the infant God/man comes into this world. Stillness reigns, nearby Bethlehem is asleep, and so are the other hamlets. Only the star-spangled firmament lights up with God’s brilliance (Luke 2:9) while the heavenly troops descend to earth to proclaim the great joy to the simple but righteous shepherds who keep vigil over their charges.
Read more…
Gays in the priesthood
After years of leaks, hints and speculation, the Vatican’s instruction on the admission of homosexual men to the priesthood has finally been released. Read more…
