Penelope Middelboe You have to keep inside the dolphins in the Venetian lagoon. These tall groupings of two or three wooden pillars, set a short distance apart, mark the outer edge of deeper water. The locals call them bricola. There are apparently 90,000 of them creating sea-lanes like railway tracks to steer clear of…
Dear Editor, There has been a lot of controversy recently regarding immigration with one side expressing concern over its level or type and the other condemning them as simply hating foreign people and being far right. Polarisation is the order of the day and the possibility of a meeting of minds on the subject seems…
Expect your marriage to change following the growth of your family, writes Simcha Fisher Ever have one of those days when you lose the hamburger you were defrosting and find it later in the washing machine, full of soap? And you can deal with that, but you cannot deal with being accused of leaving the…
Elizabeth Scalia You have no idea how many of my columns have begun as a germ of a thought – usually an annoyed question – scribbled on a scrap of paper. This one reflects my late, rather curmudgeonly, “wish list” of what I’d like to see happen within Catholicism in 2024. Indulge me, please. Let…
Fr Patrick Briscoe OP In August 2022, when Transformers star Shia LaBeouf revealed during a conversation with Bishop Robert Barron that he had experienced a conversion and begun to attend Mass, I wrote that LaBeouf seemed to me to have undergone a genuine change of heart. He spoke regretfully of the pain and harm he…
Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese has announced the completion of the script for a new movie, A Life of Jesus. Mr Scorsese co-wrote the screenplay with critic and filmmaker Kent Jones, based on Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name, and plans to to shoot it later this year. The American director said he envisions…
Jenna Marie Cooper Q: I always thought the end of the Christmas season came with Epiphany and the arrival of the Magi. A priest recently said the season doesn’t end until a week later with the Baptism of the Lord. What has the Baptism of the adult Jesus got to do with Bethlehem? If…
The German Child Protection Association has criticised Pope Francis for his comments on the beating of children. “There is no justification for beating children, not even a papal one,” said Daniel Grein, Federal Director of the Child Protection Association, in Berlin. “Anyone who physically abuses a child is doing the wrong thing. This also includes…
Liz Harris Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe. But how has the war affected the religious life of Muslims and Christians in the area? Water shortages and wudu Gaza is running dry. Water shortages have been rife in the strip for decades, but since the war began after the Hamas attack on 7…
Luca Attanasio While in Europe and other areas of the world there has been a mixed reaction to the publication of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s statement ‘Fiducia Supplicans’, with German bishops in clear majority in favour or French who speak of blessings as a ‘way to get closer to God’, the…