Pope: Put the Phone Away and Talk to Each Other
By Cindy Wooden – Pope Francis prayed that people all over the world would end 2019 “in peace, peace in their hearts,” and that families would mark New Year’s by “communicating with one another.”...
Category: Family
The Church and Family: Let Me Speak Boldly
Before I started writing this article I was reading the October 16 issue of The Southern Cross. A few things in particular struck me as particularly interesting. The Southern Cross enters its centenary year;...
Not Missing a Beat: Record School Attendance!
Zaine Perry has received a special achievement award for not missing a day of school in 14 years, an achievement his mother Michelle Perry, Southern Cross subscriptions administrator, says is due to his hard...
July is for Grandparents
Working with family themes month by month has been quite useful for me to reflect more deeply on the domestic church, or the little church of the home, on how God is present in...
The Genes You Wear
By Mahadi and Rob Buthelezi – Who am I and who are you? What is your make-up, your DNA? Or, put differently, what genes do you wear? In our family ministry, we put...
How to Make ‘Sacrifices of Love’
Someone said to me the other day that your Lenten sacrifice should be your secret with God. That sounds fine, to a point. I also know that in my family over very many years,...
Every Family Matters!
It’s quite a number of years now that I have been submitting this column under the heading “Family Friendly”. Apart from the feedback I get from time to time, I do sometimes wonder whether...
Raising Our Boy with Autism
Janine Scott dos Santos’ son has autism, a condition still not understood well by society. Here she shares her journey. ‘These days, everybody has a label. When we were kids, there was no autism,...
Priests and Bishops Attend Family Violence Conference
Priests and bishops from various dioceses attended a conference on the family and violence in Benoni, Gauteng. The guest speakers, from Canada, were clinical psychologist Dr Christauria Welland and her husband Michael Welland. Bishops...
Joy of Families is the Joy of the Church
The Australian writer and gender activist GD Anderson observed of that empowerment: “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”
50 Years of Humanae Vitae
Much has changed in the half century since the release of Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), and yet a lot of it is more prophetic now than it was...
Family: What More Can be Done?
Participating in a conference of the Department of Social Development was enlightening and for me also affirming. I know that those in the DSD Family Directorate and the family services forum understand and base their...
