I was sitting in Mass a few weeks ago when the book of Isaiah was one of the readings, which included the following;

“Integrity is the loincloth round his waist, faithfulness the belt about his hips.” (Is 11:4)  It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard the word ‘loincloth’ for quite a while. It struck me that this might be yet another example of modern translations tending to gloss over anything we might find mildly embarrassing in the text, by changing the translation.

Even the Douay-Rheims and King James used “girdle of his loins” and the NAB reads “the belt about his loins”. NIV, NLT, ESV, NET all tone this down to “the belt” around his “waist”.

With so much love, hate, confusion and misinformation flying around in the media about Pope Francis, it is no wonder that he likened some misleading forms of media (and our obsessive consumption of it) as coprophilia.

Over the past decade of reading a fair range of academic papers and books on sex and gender, I have noticed a few big differences in the way different academic disciplines approach the study of sex and gender.

On the one hand, some insist that sex and gender are not necessarily related. That 'sex' describes biological organs and 'gender' describes the person's actual sexual identity.

A recent news/opinion piece containing input from Justice Kirby is the latest in a long line of people complaining that a Same Sex 'marriage' plebiscite will cause hateful dialogue.

"This is going to be, if it goes ahead ...

The 2016 elections in Australia and the USA have sparked many excellent discussions on politics. The more I discuss these topics, the more my thoughts come back to GK Chesterton's one-line critique of so-called reformers of the sixteenth century. "A reformer is often right about what is wrong, but wrong about what is right."In other words even if you agree with someone that a particular problem is indeed a problem, it does not follow that you automatically agree with their proposed solution.

It has been a disappointing week for Australians. For those who do not care about politics, the disappointment has been that everybody keeps talking about politics! :) For those of us who care about politics, the disappointment has come in many types and flavours, and it keeps coming.

A double dissolution is the mechanism built into our Australian Constitution to resolve a deadlock in parliament.

Further to my previous post on preparing for the 2016 Federal Election, it is worth noting where the various parties advise their supporters to distribute their preferences.

Until this election, the parties could direct all your preferences if you voted "1" above the line in the Senate, and so their preference distribution list was a big deal. This election they can only advise their supporters.

Royal Commission

Submission June 2016

To whom it may concern

I write this response as a man who is Catholic by choice, a father of eight children, and a lecturer in Theology at a Catholic University.

With all Catholics, I have been shocked, appalled, dismayed and angered by the accounts of sexual abuse and misconduct by clergy and other representatives of my Church.

Reading through various voting guides and comments by Christians in the lead up to the general

election, I was struck by the general assumption that ‘conservative’ and ‘Christian’ are often assumed to be more or less the same thing. It is simply not true.
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A quick post to share this little milestone.

That's right, Albert has progressed from pulling himself up on furniture to standing by himself, in a relatively short period of time. It is still a very wobbly and stationary standing, but we are preparing ourselves for his reach to extend twice as high, all over the house!

Anyone with children knows that small things are big things, but with Albert these small milestones seem huge.
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Married with eight children, I read for work and recreation which results in the current combination of G.K. Chesterton, Orson Scott Card and Terry Pratchet in my backpack. I'm not always certain which is work and which is recreation!
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