August 2005

Starting to talk

Social communications is the term the Catholic Church uses to describe its means of speaking to the faithful and the world.

Dangers in transformation

In the dark days of apartheid, the Catholic bishops shone a light of hope in the fight against institutionalised racism.

Behind Israel’s wall

A series in this newspaper on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land has raised the hackles of some readers who perceived anti-Semitic sentiments in its criticism of...

1: Welcome in the Holy Land

In bygone eras, pilgrims to the Holy Land would arrive at the bustling, colourful port of Jaffa (at least if they were travelling from the West), often...

2: Where Jesus and Mary stood

When the author Mark Twain made his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1869, he found Nazareth “wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about it...

3: On Jesus’ stage

The advent of Jesus’ public ministry arguably was his baptism by his relative John, the itinerant preacher of a new spiritual order, the man who set the...

4: Galilean boatride

Tabgha, at the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes, is one of those sites that reminds us that Jesus’ concerns were rooted not only in the eternal...

5: Transfiguration of the pilgrim

A Holy Land pilgrimage is a transforming experience. This is not necessarily evident externally, but few pilgrims come home without having their perspective on life and faith...

7: Pagan signposting

When Queen Helena, mother of the newly converted emperor Constantine, came to the Holy Land in the first half of the 4th century to build churches, she...