One of the main themes in reporting the turmoil in Afghanistan is the fate and future of women and their rights under the Taliban regime. There’s fear of turning back the clock and a return to a situation where females effectively have no rights, no education, no career of their own; their role practically reduced to being submissive underlings of…

Toughen up. Get a grip. Man up. These are among the most commonly used phrases when people struggle with certain situations, conditions or with life in general. These phrases are simple and effective tools to help those in trouble, right? Well, they might work but only in certain situations and not for everyone. Because sometimes life can be quite complicated…

Confusion reigns in today’s gospel. Firstly, the people who were miraculously fed by Jesus – as we heard last Sunday – are confused by his sudden disappearance as well as that of his companions. Some of those people make an educated guess that Jesus might have gone to the fishing town of Capernaum, his Galilean base. So they sail across…

‘The butterfly effect’ is quite a well-known scientific theory. Basically, in a descriptive way, it claims that a tornado is being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. The theory has been popularised by its uses outside its original domain of weather predictions and even made it into popular culture with the…

I’m going to tell you a soppy story, so get your hankies ready – just in case. Having worked for ten years as a priest in Poland I arrived in Scotland fourteen years ago completely burned out and seriously considering my future in the job. It was no one’s fault; it was the result of a well-intentioned but unbalanced pastoral…