Online Articles
FREE e-Newsletter
Sign up below to get our free weekly newsletter packed with news & updates.-
~ We Respect Your Privacy ~
Strange chance encounters
One of my favourite dinner table conversation pieces is about chance encounters.
I find it fascinating that no matter how far from home one travels, somehow one always manages to bump into a complete stranger with a common connection.
Growth by suffering and mourning
BY CATHERINE DE VALENCE
It is difficult to counsel and comfort someone who has endured the loss of a loved one when we ourselves have never been in their shoes, but when we have experienced it we can have compassion for them and walk alongside them in their loss.
Priests must open their eyes
BY CHILEYA MOBA CSSp
Most of the Church’s activities are done through the parishes. It is important therefore to look at the relationship between priests and the laity—the People of God.
Those thousand pre-judgment years
I have friends who devoutly believe that Christ will reign on earth for a thousand years and after that time has elapsed, he will carry out the Last Judgment. I know the Church rejects this doctrine, but I need some help to understand where and why it originated.
Read more…
Healing prayer
THE HEALING POWER OF PRAYER, by Thelma Coert. CB Publications, Cape Town. 2010. 76pp.
Reviewed by Michael Shackleton
This is the autobiography of a Cape Town woman, a Catholic, who experienced a transformation in her spiritual life when she joined a charismatic prayer group. Read more…
Precedent for lay involvement
At Mass in late September we received brochures advertising the newly-created SACBC Foundation, asking us to contribute to it either directly or in the form of a bequest.
Sorry for the Silent Blog
I am on sabbatical this semester and spent three month in the US and am now back, working on a book on feminist interpretations of discernment.
In conversations in the US with many people, it is becoming clear that people are making distinctions about the sexual abuse crisis which goes on and on in the States and in so many other countries. They speak of the horrendous abuse that happened and the cover-up by bishops as equally terrible. I feel that now people are more angry about the culture of clerical privilege which has caused so much suffering to so many people.
Another area which struck me is the great spiritual hunger people have and how their parishes seldom meet their needs. I met with a group of women who are barely hanging on as Catholics and who find their parishes devoid of any kind of nourishment–homilies are dull and boring, no faith sharing groups, no lectures, nothing. I encouraged them to meet as a group and read books together, pray together, support one another.
And this is much the same in South Africa–seldom do parishes help nourish the faith of adults and when you find a parish that does it seemslike a miracle.
27 October to 2 November, 2010
Headlines
» 16-Page supplement for our 90th anniversary
» Priest’s mother turns 106
» Meet the 24 new cardinals
» Priests killed by Nazis to be beatified
» New series: The Pilgrim’s Trek 2010
This Week’s Editorial
We are 90
We are 90
On October 16, 1920, The Southern Cross published its debut edition, featuring a photo and message of Pope Benedict XV on the front-page. This week, one week short of our 4 700th edition, we look back at 90 years of The Southern Cross—and also to the future.
A missionary position
It is, I am told, like Dante’s inferno meets the Fall of the Roman Empire. It takes place every year in South Africa and it is commonly known as a “Sexpo”—an exhibition of everything related to sex, sexual deviance and a showcase for the multi-billion dollar global “sex-toy” industry.
