New Zealand

culture & faith

Feb 3, 2023

Today we mark 183 years since the first signatures were put to the Treaty of Waitangi on Thursday 6 February 1840. Here in Aotearoa we mark this day with a public holiday.

The history of Aotearoa-New Zealand as taught in the schools of our country did not feature the Treaty and its implications until the mid-twentieth century. Until this point, history was presented from the view-point of the confiscating colonials. This view generally considered that the European had been generous to the Maori in the terms of the Treaty.

It is also now accepted that Maori and European had significantly different understandings of what they were accepting and agreeing to in this document.

treaty & culture

Feb 6, 2016

Today we mark 176 years since the first signatures were put to the Treaty of Waitangi on Thursday 6 February 1840. Rightly this day is a public holiday in New Zealand,...

Anzac dawn

Apr 25, 2015

Before dawn this morning here on the Chatham Islands, the Islanders gathered to remember that one morning before dawn 100 years ago this morning, New Zealand and...

living vocationally

Feb 12, 2015

Thirty-five years ago this morning (12 February 1980) I woke for the first time as a seminarian discerning a call to diocesan priesthood for the diocese of...

my word your home

The heart of the home in years past was the hearth.
It was at the hearth that the family gathered for the warmth and light of the flame and the food that was prepared there.
The fire was treated with respect since the same flame which provided energy for the home could just as easily destroy it.

stand up look up

The Israelites in their forty years in the desert were journeying from captivity to freedom, but the struggle of their desert years made them vulnerable to attack from every temptation as today’s first reading continues

confident in God

I’m not sure if children today are told the great story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but if not let’s make sure that the parable is taught at all schools of higher learning.

the teenagers

A few years ago I discovered the wonderful way that God uses my imagination in my prayer.
Such openness to imagination when seeking God does not take us away from reality into fantasy but instead brings me into what is most real and inescapably personal and intimate.

Annunciation

A couple of thousand years ago, a young Jewish woman was going about her normal morning routines, perhaps with a mixture of house and garden work, chatting with parents and neighbours, aware of the local drought, the sickness of a neighbour and annoyed by the neighbourhood’s lack of sleep caused by the Romans’ noisy party the night before, when God broke into her routine and entered her life in a new and powerful way.