Columns

  • The passing of a good shepherd

    Mar 16, 2018

    He led us well, nothing too daring, nothing reactionary, just good, steady, charitable leadership that helped us, among other things, be more pastorally sensitive, more ecumenical, less self-absorbed, less clerical, more open to lay involvement, and more sensitive to the place of women. He kept things steady but inching forward, even while properly honoring the past.

  • Another look at what Jesus may have looked like — and does it matter?

    Mar 16, 2018

    Traditional artistic depictions of Jesus tend to show him as tall, fair skinned, with long flowing hair, perhaps penetrating light-coloured eyes. Similar depictions may have been seen in movies about Jesus until recent times.

  • Our ache for earthly immortality

    Mar 09, 2018

    We share the world with more than seven and a half billion people and each of us has the irrepressible, innate sense that we are special and uniquely destined.

  • Despite strong GDP growth, underweight stunted children in our midst

    Mar 09, 2018

    About two decades ago, at a press conference after a food security conference in Penang, I asked the then Health Minister about some statistics that I had come across that showed that a quarter of children in Malaysia were underweight.

  • Celibacy revisited

    Feb 28, 2018

    Writing in the first person is always a risk, but the subject matter of this column is best done, I feel, through personal testimony.

  • Sharing and caring – and a question of land ownership

    Feb 28, 2018

    There are so many ways to be human, but all too often our own modern and mainly urban societies are used as the yardstick for what is universally human.

  • Faith and superstition

    Feb 15, 2018

    The power of a subordinate clause, one nuance within a sentence, and everything takes on a different meaning.

  • The heavy price of speaking the truth

    Feb 15, 2018

    In recent times, we have become acutely conscious about the importance of speaking the truth — and the heavy price that sometimes comes with it.

  • How does God act in our world?

    Feb 09, 2018

    There’s an oddity in the gospels that begs for an explanation: Jesus, it seems, doesn’t want people to know his true identity as the Christ, the Messi

  • What would Jesus do?

    Feb 09, 2018

    As countless fellow human beings suffer terribly in a myriad of ways and much of our planet groans from gaping human induced wounds, our government, other governments, and many well-off people, seem to hardly care. It is what Pope Francis calls a “globalisation of indifference.”