Inclusion

  • Racism speaks — Church and World must listen

    Structural racism, papal apology, and one priest’s story converge to ask the Church to listen without defensiveness or excuse.

    Racism speaks — Church and World must listen
  • The theology of chairs

    There is a particular irony in celebrating free elections and participatory governance from behind a lectern while your audience sits in silent rows. The Vatican’s meeting with lay leaders exposed a contradiction at the heart of the Church’s synodal project.

    The theology of chairs
  • Shrinking God to fit inside our borders

    Pentecost refutes religious nationalism that makes God reliably sympathetic to one culture’s anxieties. The Spirit crossed every boundary human beings had declared permanent, fluent in every tongue that power had dismissed, authorised by no government, and contained by no border.

    Shrinking God to fit inside our borders
  • Can you forgive the people who destroyed your world?

    Parents who lost children to a drunk driver and a gunman chose mercy over revenge. Their choices echo the Nuremberg interpreter who, concealing his Jewish identity, walked a Nazi propagandist to the gallows with compassion rather than contempt.

    Can you forgive the people who destroyed your world?
  • Mercy, joy and the nearness of God

    People arrive at liturgy seeking love and mercy but leave without feeling them. The gap between what the words intend and what worshippers experience raises an urgent question: what is the liturgy actually revealing about the God we gather to meet?

    Mercy, joy and the nearness of God
  • The hidden theology of “our young people now leave us”

    What is the spiritual impact on the congregation when children and youth depart for their groups near the beginning of a service? Why are the adults who remain in the main church building typically the ones who are seen to remain in worship and teaching?

    The hidden theology of “our young people now leave us”
  • Peter’s failures were preserved for a reason

    The word “constitutive” was applied freely across Church documents to evangelisation, charity, canon law, and even the male-only diaconate. The one thing it was never again permitted to describe was the Church’s relationship to justice.

    Peter’s failures were preserved for a reason
  • Faith has always gone to space. Artemis II shows how much it has changed.

    Buzz Aldrin once wrote that space missions belong to all humanity regardless of belief, yet he found no better way to honor Apollo 11 than giving thanks to God. Artemis II’s crew carried that same tension forward with grace.

    Faith has always gone to space. Artemis II shows how much it has changed.
  • The words we pray shape who belongs in the Church

    The language used in Catholic worship is not a neutral tool — it actively shapes who feels seen, welcomed, and addressed by God. When liturgical words no longer resonate with the lived experience of the assembly, the Church’s ability to gather all the baptised is quietly undermined.

    The words we pray shape who belongs in the Church
  • Catholics and other Christians thanking God together: has the time come to change our practice?

    When Pope Francis visited Rome’s Lutheran church in 2015, he reframed the Eucharist not as a doctrinal reward but as sustenance for a pilgrim people. That shift in language was small but significant, opening theological space that had been closed for decades under two conservative popes.

    Catholics and other Christians thanking God together: has the time come to change our practice?

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