G K Chesterton once wrote that Christianity may be right or it may be wrong, but it is uniquely right or wrong. Alone among the world’s faiths Christianity has as pivotal to its understanding of God’s revelation to humanity the historical fact of the birth of a baby in a stable in an outlying province of the Roman Empire.

History shows that the message of the Gospel has been best radiated by the Church when Christianity has been persecuted or greatly at odds with the culture of the day. Pope Benedict has chosen the counter-cultural John Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars, as Patron Saint for the Year of the Priest.

Benjamin Disraeli in 1845 launched his book Sybil, The Two Nations. It spoke of the chasm between the gentry and the working class in England. As Disraeli saw it, there were two nations in one England. In Australia today can we speak of two classes in one Church? The gap is [...]

The oft quoted words of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador are even more relevant today than they were in 1980, the year of Oscar’s martyrdom: “We are workers, not master builders, ministers not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”