Press photographers can be so rude! - True or false?

Attending a high-level event like the funeral Mass of Archbishop Emeritus Gregory Yong really shows the difference between a church photographer and one from the secular media.
It’s not that the church photographers are less professional (actually I think they’re more professional). It’s that church photographers are usually more polite. It also helps that we know [...]

Finding Christ in the liturgy

I was sitting on my chair, waiting for the priest, Carmelite Father Thomas Lim, to come celebrate Mass. The congregation was small, a handful of elderly folk. I glanced around to the back, where a lady in red was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the celebrant.
Lily was her name, and she worked in the Society [...]

Book Review: Church Humour

A Dominican, a Franciscan, and a Jesuit were meeting in a room. In the middle of their discussion, the lights went out. Undeterred by the darkness, the Dominican stood up and said, “Let us consider the nature of light and of darkness, and their meaning.”
The Franciscan began to sing a hymn in honour of “Our [...]

Are you a church-fan?

When I first read Father David Garcia’s article on The Difference Between A Church-fan And Belonging To The Church“, it hit me like a sledgehammer. It was very true. How often had I been a church-fan rather than a member of the church? In so many issues, I felt blows and triumphs to the church… [...]

Befriending Mary

I went for a Marian pilgrimage today, a practice done once a year usually during a month dedicated to Mary, that is, May or October.
During the pilgrimage to a Marian shrine or church under the patronage of Mary, the pilgrims pray fifteen decades of the rosary - five on the way to the location, five [...]

My new book has been published!

Regular visitors to this blog might have noticed the sudden appearance of a link under the Recommended Sites on my sidebar. It links to my new website www.TheCatholicWriter.com. I added it a couple of nights ago.
I bought this domain name about a couple of months ago, and was initially planning to use it for a [...]

How liberal or authoritarian are you?

I was playing SimCity Societies on Nutella’s new N95 phone, which enables a player to build a SimCity that is either liberal or authoritative.
I found that most of the time, l leaned towards building a liberal society, but one day, I decided to try building an authoritarian society. To my surprise, my city turned out [...]

The word

If you’re wondering why is it that Catholic Writings has suddenly come alive again, it’s simply because I’ve started blogging on my PDA again. I was doing a lot of reading during my waiting time in the past months, so I didn’t blog so much, but lately my concentration on reading hasn’t been so good, [...]

What is love?

I was thinking the other day about love, and how it is a decision rather than an emotion. A decision to accept the shortcomings of another person, a decision to forgive and accept the humanity of another person. And I was thinking of that in relation to the Church, which is both human and divine.
I [...]

The joys of having a low pay

One of the joys I experience with working in the Church is the low pay. Now, hold on a moment, you say, how can low pay ever equal to joy? Doesn’t more money mean more freedom?
Not necessarily. Having a higher salary often means having higher expenses, more bills to pay, and often a greater degree [...]