Be the Miracle You’re Praying For
Like every avid reader of The Southern Cross, the news that the weekly newspaper version would be discontinued gave me a cold shock and a lump in...
Category: Ntabeni
How Naive, Mr Justice!
It is unfortunate when great men reveal too many secrets about themselves until they dissolve what maintains of their prestige. This is the feeling I had as...
Basic Income Grant has Catholic Backing
I hear everyone say, with much hope, that the Covid-19 virus will change how the world operates. When I hear that, I keep quiet because I don’t...
The Church in Times of Pandemic
There is a saying that goes: “You must never allow a good crisis to go to waste.” Moments of crisis should be moments of reexamination and reevaluation....
Open Eyes To Moral Error Within The Church?
Early last year the Irish-American Catholic novelist Alice McDermott wrote a controversial opinion column in The New York Times about what she called “the moral error of...
In Advent, Have Hope for South Africa
This year will probably go down as one of the hardest in our national psyche. Its memory will be dominated by the dark incidents of gender-based violence,...
Southern Cross Columnist Wins Major Literary Prize
A Southern Cross columnist has won a prestigious literary prize awarded by the University of Johannesburg for South African writing in English. Mphuthumi Ntabeni was awarded the...
The Gospel Evangelises
I write this late in the evening on the feast of St Jerome. I’m a little exhausted, having just arrived from Johannesburg, after a rather hectic weekend...
As I Approach The Thumb Stage Of Life
Nothing exposes us to the vulnerability of life, and the inevitability of our own mortality, like the death of a child. It unsettles and makes us angry...
Are there Limits to Freedom of Speech?
It had been long time coming. I finally gathered enough strength to leave our local community’s social media page. Not only was this forum for our suburb...
Why Xhosa Christians are ‘Majakane’
My friend, a theology PhD student, recently asked me why the first black African Christians in our region, mostly Xhosa, were called “Majakane”. What she didn’t know...
Why There’s No Joy in Schadenfreude
At first I thought Tiffany Watt Smith’s little book Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another Misfortune addressed the weirdest of topics — until I started reading it. It...
