With the two bigest sporting events taking place in Brazil over the next two years, Caritas is calling on FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to protect the poor from being evicted from their homes in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

Lighten up. Find some pleasure. Don’t be such a wet-blanket. In whose writings will you find these timeless tidbits of advice? Those attentive to his actual work, will find that Thomas Aquinas wanted to help people live a considered, holy life, writes Dr Andrew Kania, not a miserable one.

When I was growing up I was taught to bow my head whenever I said or heard the name “Jesus”. I have noticed that some priests still bow their heads in Mass but no one else seems to do it anymore except for some of us oldies. How has this come about?

Today’s men must look to Christ and not TV’s four-fingered father, Homer Simpson, for the true example of masculinity.

In the lead up to September 11, Western nations took their collective eye off the ball when they relegated religion to the realm of the menial and sentimental. Studying fringe, fundamentalist theologies is key to understanding the nature and origins of contemporary religious extremism, writes Prof Matthew Ogilvie.

Abstaining from meat on Fridays was the only way a Catholic could fulfill their penitential obligation until 1985 in Australia. Almost three decades on, some of the Church’s leaders believe we’ve lost a unique mark of Catholic identity, as Matthew Biddle explains…

A friend recently lent me a book by a Spanish nun named Sr Josefa Menendez, which I am finding very inspirational. I would like to know whether she and her writings have been approved by the Church.

Children need to be given a balance between being shielded from the world’s harsh realities and being exposed to them…

Aimee Jones found Catholicism in searching for something to guide her family in an increasingly materialistic world.

In a world of instant communication, the tragic and historic events occurring on the streets of Kyiv and in other Ukrainian cities are more immediate to non-Ukrainian Australians than ever. The antecedents of the horrifying events of this year and last, including the sniper killings of 100 protesters in Independence Square on February 20, are little understood by the populations of other Western countries, writes Dr Andrew Kania, but need to be grappled with if the fledgling country is ever to move forward and become again the place of great civilisation it has historically been.