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Catholic burials for non-Catholics
My non-Catholic wife and I were married by a Catholic priest. Before we married, my wife was diagnosed with an incurable disease, and died two years later. She had expressed a desire to become a Catholic before we married, but as the illness affected her brain and senses, she could not attend classes. Before she died the same priest would not give her the last rites or bury her, because she was not a Catholic. The local Anglican priest did the last rites and burial without question. Can the Catholic Church not provide some sort of service for a non-Catholic in such circumstances?
Monks and coffee
In the good old days, Catholic parishes and religious orders used to raise money to pay their bills and lend a helping hand to the poor by holding jumble sales, fêtes, bring-’n-buy cake-fests and all sorts of variations on what has become generically known today as the lotto. Read more…
Approaching Advent with love
When the different departments of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference were asked to make a response to the bishops’ document on healing, I started thinking and came up with the idea of using the topic as the regular Marfam ( Marriage and Family Life Renewal Ministry) Advent-Christmas programme. Read more…
Reflection on the First of Advent
By Mgr Jan Jaworski
…because your redemption is drawing near (Lk 21: 28).
Advent marks the coming of a very important person. The word derives from the Latin word – advenio, ire, which means arrival. In the Christian context this obviously refers to the arrival of Jesus Christ. Read more…
Values in Business
Systems of Values in Business
In the so-called Enlightenment Era, an era which is slowly receding in influence, but has no doubt still many firm adherents, only rational knowledge such as the type science provides can impart reliable, accurate information. Only what we can measure is important. Values are subjective, valid only for the person concerned, not for all people, and to this category religion has obviously been relegated. Systems of knowledge such as economics have been seen as free of values, based on rational analysis alone. Read more…
Our Catholic heritage slips away
Port Elizabeth diocese recently bade farewell to two wonderful Franciscan Clarist Sisters who until recently ran a retreat centre in the heart of our city. Gone too is the centre itself, which previously housed the diocesan chancery and the chapel of the Little Company of Mary when they ran the neighbouring St Joseph’s Hospital (now Life St George’s Hospital). Gone, another piece of our Catholic heritage! Read more…
AIDS: A new strategy
When a decade ago the experts drew up their worst-case scenario for HIV/Aids in Africa, they failed to anticipate the furious extent of the disease. Whatever worst-case scenario we might write now for a decade hence may likewise underestimate the devastation of the pandemic, unless a consensus can be achieved on how to understand the disease and how to fight it.
A Catholic primer
OUR JOY IN BEING CATHOLIC: Our Catholic Customs and Beliefs, by Oswald Hirmer. Mariannhill Mission Press, Mariannhill. 2007. 158pp
Reviewed by Michail Rassool
Hollywood’s official religion
CATHOLICS IN THE MOVIES, edited by Colleen McDannell. Oxford University Press, New York. 2008. 362pp
Reviewed by Günther Simmermacher
Read more…
Getting ready for Christmas
The singer Andy Williams would have you believe that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Yeah, right. Try “stressful”, Andrew.
December is a rush, and Christmas is to blame: preparing for Christmas lunch or dinner, perhaps planning a holiday, writing cards, and scouting for appropriate and affordable gifts. Read more…
