by Gunther Simmermacher · Published September 1, 2018 · Last modified November 1, 2018
A memoir by a Catholic author about growing up under apartheid has been a surprise bestseller in South Africa this year. Günther Simmermacher interviewed Beryl Crosher-Segers. What was supposed to be a family memoir...
Church / Church History / History
by Kilian SC · Published June 30, 2018 · Last modified June 29, 2018
Jesuit Father Guy Tachard, an astronomer and something of a secret agent, visited the Cape of Good Hope in 1685 and again two years later. While he was received with courtesy, he and the...
A DARKER SHADE OF PALE, by Beryl Crosher-Segers. Torchflame Books, Durham NC, 2018. 243pp Reviewed by Günther Simmermacher The rich body of literature on the subject of apartheid has rather neglected the experience of...
Father Pat Connor was on his way from a graduate class at the University of Memphis to St. Joseph Hospital to visit a priest friend the evening of April 4, 1968.
King William’s Town Dominicans celebrated their 140th anniversary in South Africa with a jubilee Mass in Johannesburg led by Auxiliary Bishop Duncan Tsoke.
Christian Living / History / Ntabeni
by Mphuthumi Ntabeni · Published August 26, 2017 · Last modified August 24, 2017
My father’s death, after almost a lifetime of absence, seems to close the yawning chasm between us. I feel him closer in death than when he was alive. The seed of an “inclination to look back on history” was planted the day I heard he had died.
Secret negotiations between Heinrich Himmler and a Swiss Catholic politician, hired by a Jewish woman and helped by an Italian papal nuncio, may have contributed to ending the mass extermination of the Jewish people.
“To keep a dangerous memory alive, we need to tell and hear our South African story. We need to find a unifying narrative that allows us all to claim a better life for all...
Patrick Dacey, Johannesburg – At the time of Jesus, Roman law had been codified in what is known as the Twelve Tables. Table IX, Law No 6, stated: “Putting to death of any man...
History / Simmermacher / The Holy Land
by Gunther Simmermacher · Published April 18, 2017 · Last modified April 13, 2017
In February GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER made a private visit to the Holy Land. In the fifth of a series of six articles, he considers the Crusaders and their legacy. When the terrorists of ISIS announce...
Thomas J Lucas, a trooper in the Cape Mountain Rifles of the Cape Colony during the mid-19th century, kept a private journal. He began it when he was shipped off from London on the...
Connecting the dots between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history is never easy, according to Mark Goodacre, a religious studies professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “When you’re...
