There he was, stuck out in the middle of the ocean on a life raft with a suspect crew and a boozy skipper who had run their chartered boat into a reef before it had rapidly begun to sink. There was no fresh water and no supplies, and a then 25-year-old Tom Fisher was delirious in the sun’s brutalising heat, 15 miles off the coast of the Solomon Islands. After surviving the travails an...

By Dr Kania Most societies throughout the course of human history have incorporated into their cultural structures and identities some form of Rites of Passage that indicate that children have now successfully passed through a deliberate and educative process and have become worthy of taking their place in society as adults. These have been developed in order for a particular society ...

My ten-year-old son is growing a moustache but is very diffident in a school-boyish kind of way when I occasionally suggest he try shaving. I’ll leave it alone. Who am I to tell him to shave? Most of my adult life I’ve been bearded or moustachioed, fancying myself in the image of a devil-may-care, likeable scoundrel possessed of some kind of panache or a certain savoir faire. Alter...

Hundreds of people at a time turned out in churches and venues across Perth over the last fortnight all seeking one thing: a miracle. The miracle they were seeking was healing - either from serious or terminal illnesses, injuries or the deep hurts that life can bring. Visiting New Zealand priest Fr John Rea SM, a man with an extraordinary reputation for healing, led numerous Masses and pr...

Among the reported healings administered by Father John Rae during his recent visit to Perth, The Record has received a number of accounts. Here is one of them from Bernadette: “For the last 27 years, I have suffered one way or other with diseased sinuses and asthma. If not chronic allergies, rhinitis, sinusitis or asthma, it was acute infections and pain. I am sensitive to a lot o...

Duty has become a dirty word in the postmodern lexicon—mocked as the province of uptight religious fundamentalists or thickheaded, macho, military men. Doing one’s duty is depicted as dry, lifeless and unpleasant (even hypocritical), and is often juxtaposed to “following your heart” and being “true to yourself” – which sounds terribly noble (primacy of conscience, and all that), but it u...

It may not be popular to say it and, often in the Church, it seems there are some subjects we are all not supposed to talk about. But sometimes we must face up to our responsibilities. One significant problem in the life of the Church today is what we call liturgical music. The problem is that much of the liturgical music used in the average Australian parish is... awful. It is imposs...

In honour of the relic of St Francis Xavier, St Francis Xavier Primary School in Hilbert celebrated a special children’s Mass to welcome the relic - the right forearm - into their parish and community on Friday, October 26. The relic of St Francis arrived in Australia on September 16 and has been visiting dioceses around the country. The staff and students of St Francis Xavier had been pr...

Dr Gerard O’Shea says he believes in parents; possibly much more than they believe in themselves. On a late September evening, at the parish centre under St Mary’s Cathedral, a small but eager gathering of around 40 parents, religious, teachers and sexuality educators turned out to hear from one the Church’s most eminent sexuality education specialists. Throughout the night, his comments wer...

Thousands of people flocked to churches across Perth as the right arm of St Francis Xavier, founding Jesuit and 16th century missionary extraordinaire, visited parishes across the archdiocese as part of the celebration of the Year of Grace. Accompanying the relic was Father Richard Shortall, a Jesuit priest from New Zealand, who said it was an honour to be travelling with it. He told The ...