Columns

  • Our restless selves

    Feb 22, 2025

    During the last years of his life, Thomas Merton lived in a hermitage outside a monastery, hoping to find more solitude in his life. But solitude is an illusive thing and he found it was forever escaping him.

  • Trusting in God: The key to true prosperity

    Feb 14, 2025

    Reflecting on our Sunday Readings with Fr Philip Tay, OCD

  • The role of religious in catechesis

    Feb 14, 2025

    In my previous articles I examined the role of the bishops and priests in the ministry of catechesis. In this article, I turn my attention to the role of the religious.

  • Retirement or Re-Tyrement — What’s next?

    Feb 14, 2025

    We have just celebrated the annual Spring festival in Malaysia along with many other peoples in East Asia and globally. The annual celebrations mark the beginning of the lunar new year. It is a time of renewal and new beginnings as families gather in reunions of joyful merriment with work colleagues, friends and neighbours.

  • Monastery of Alcobaça: A medieval Cistercian gothic splendour

    Feb 14, 2025

    Located just an hour and a half’s drive from Lisbon, Portugal, the Monastery of Alcobaça is one of Europe’s finest examples of the Cistercian style and a pioneer of Gothic design in the Iberian Peninsula.

  • Jesus and the poor

    Feb 14, 2025

    I grew up a second-generation immigrant in the outback of the Western Canadian prairies. Our family was poor economically, subsistence farmers, with the necessities but seldom with much more. My father and mother were charitable to a fault and tried to instil that in us.

  • Migrants are not invaders

    Feb 14, 2025

    I bet just like me, you too have experienced the empty feeling that you do not belong here, that you are an unwelcome person — persona non grata.

  • Jesus calls us to be courageous and embrace risks

    Feb 07, 2025

    Reflecting on our Sunday Readings with Fr Andrew Kooi

  • Welcoming vocations: An ecclesial community that embraces desire and doubt

    Feb 07, 2025

    Pope’s prayer intention for February

  • Red-flagged story wins award, thanks to my buddy Jamil

    Feb 07, 2025

    The bond of friendship between a Catholic Journalist and a Muslim religious leader stands as a model for blissful Interfaith engagement.