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Mind how you pray
Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA and the most powerful man behind the football World Cup in South Africa next year, has called for players to stop making religious gestures on the field, as The Southern Cross recently reported. I was immediately incensed by this, but my sister disagreed. She felt that it inappropriate for sports men and women to be making the sign of the cross on the field and praising the Lord in their victory speeches.
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St John Vianney today
By Fr Enrico Parry
One of the few things I can do properly in a kitchen is to make soup. What I love about preparing it is the peeling and cutting of many different vegetables. When I can afford it, I add some meat. I love soup, come winter or summer.
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The priesthood today
By Bishop Stephen Brislin
The ministerial priesthood has its foundation in the Priesthood of Christ which therefore forms the starting point for the understanding of priesthood.
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Martyrs or terrorists?
This week we are publishing some of the letters we have received in reaction to a memorial service held in Cape Town on the 20th anniversary of the death of Catholic anti-apartheid activists Coline Williams and Robert Waterwitch, who were killed in July 1989 by a bomb they intended to place at a magistrate’s court.
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An end to prostitution
The column by Fr Chris Chatteris “An end to prostitution?” (August 5-11) gives hope for an upturn in our society in which only downward spiralling in the area of morals seems to continue.
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Mercy at the heart of priest’s novel
THE BURIAL AND THE ECHO, by Albert Herold. Melrose Books, Cambridgeshire. 2008. 70pp.
Reviewed by Michael Shackleton
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Entertaining angels: Seeing is believing
ANGELS IN MY HAIR, by Lorna Byrne. Random House, London. 2008. 325pp.
Reviewed by Michael Shackleton
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A new position on original sin?
In a discussion I was told that the Church has revised its position on original sin, so that we are not born with this sin at all. Is that true? Why, then, would baptism, which I was taught frees us from original sin, be necessary for salvation?
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How much respect is right?
The first priest to make a lasting impression on my life was Fr Bonner of the Monastery parish in Pretoria. This was during my formative years in the late 1940s and, to be entirely honest, the reason for my hanging on to his every word probably had less to do with the fact that he was a devout, humble and wise man of God, and far more to do with the fact that he owned a motorbike.
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Laws not enough to fight crime
Mphuthumi Ntabeni’s article in The Southern Cross of 15-21 July and the editorial of the same edition have started an important debate on social values that needs to be continued. Mphutumi’s article is about “how politics destroys the soul” while Günther Simmermacher’s editorial on Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate among other things explains how in today’s society, “the world has lost its respect for the human person”. Between them these two essays touch on some of the fundamental causes of today’s social ills. For this reason I am taking a break from my current theme of Biblical and Christian role models in order to carry the debate forward. Read more…
