By +Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, Archbishop of Perth As  I write these few words the Australian Parliament has recently rejected, in both houses, proposals to legalise what is becoming commonly known as “same-sex marriage”. A similar proposal has also been defeated in the Tasmanian parliament. Many people will welcome these developments while others will be distressed or anger...

By Tom Gourlay With the month of November looming,  we are reminded of the fanciful season where our brothers, colleagues and friends begin the now-annual ritual of moustache growing. These men, young and old, begin with wisps of fur on their upper lips which, over the course of that dreaded 30 day period, grows into full-blown moustaches. And with this begins the flurry of emails ...

With apologies to the Beatles (or maybe just Paul McCartney), I don’t believe in Yesterday. The song by that name is wistfully lovely and immensely popular (according to the Guinness Book of Records — and they should know — it’s the most covered pop song of all time) but it makes for lousy theology and even worse day-to-day spirituality. But this is not a critique of the song (I am, i...

Fifty years to the day, on August 2, 2012, the Parish of St Aloysius Shenton Park celebrated the 50th anniversary of the blessing and opening of its church by Archbishop Redmond Prendiville on August 2, 1962. The celebration was only one milestone for the parish. The year 2012 also marks: The 75th anniversary of the establishment of the parish which was originally known as Rosalie an...

In 1962 everything was changing. The world came to the brink of nuclear warfare as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. Zebra pedestrian crossings, known in the UK as Panda crossings, were introduced, causing confusion among – and between – pedestrians and motorists. France's President, Francois De Gaulle, survived an assassination attempt by a disaffected airforce engineer over the issue ...

Norma Pizzino, aged 79, passed away peacefully in her sleep last Thursday night after suffering from a severe stroke a few weeks earlier. She has left behind grieving family and friends but despite the sadness of her passing her youngest daughter Linda D’Lima fondly remembers her mother as a kind and caring lady who was very strong in her faith. “She never missed her 3 ‘o clock prayer...

Devout gentleman and letter-writer to The Record, John McKay passed away suddenly at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital on August 30 after collapsing near the Eric Street, Cottesloe, shops which he frequented. His Requiem Mass was concelebrated by Archbishop Emeritus Barry Hickey, a personal friend of John’s, and Parish Priest Fr Charles Waddell, at St Thomas’ Church, Claremont, on September ...

I have always had a problem understanding pride. We are all proud; I certainly am myself. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. How can we be humble when we are always proud, and how can we go to heaven when we are proud? This is a very important question, and it is relevant not only to pride but to all vices, or habits of sin. But first, what is pride? It may be defined loosely as e...

After the birth of our fourth child, I visited the medical clinic for a routine examination. My doctor asked if either my husband or I had undergone sterilisation, to which I responded with a horrified negative. Sensing he’d offended me, he apologised. Then he asked a standard post-partum check-up question: what did we plan to use for contraception? I was tempted to launch into a w...

It is amazing the way that the same-sex marriage debate has taken such a stranglehold on discussion and commentary in Western society. Who would have thought that in the space of just a few years popular opinion could swift to such a degree that to simply hold marriage as the union of a man and a woman could be labelled as intolerant? Yet this is where we are at. One recent move for a...