Let me focus the thread just a little bit. Setting aside the off-the-cuff remark re ‘low hanging fruit’, the criticism of Pius XII’s Munificentissimus Deus seems to offer some focus. Firstly, there is the criticism that there is no biblical basis for the Assumption of Mary, and secondly, there is criticism of the exercise of the…

My recent post about Russia’s declining population led me off on a tangent where I found myself wondering what, if any, impact the ‘mail order’ bride phenomenon had on that decline. In fact, mail order brides are not new and date back to the 1600’s with Britain and France both using it to populate and…

The conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels in Yemen has been going on since 2015.  It has simmered away with various clashes between 2015-2020 but 2021 saw a dramatic escalation in strikes by the Houthi and strikes/retaliation by the Saudis. For background, Saudi Arabia and Yemen sharing a land border on the Arabian…

Newscorp.com.au recently posted a story about the declining population of Russia.  Whilst fundamentally true, I thought I would take a deeper look. Immediately prior to the fall of the USSR in 1991, Russia’s population was 148.3m people with a fertility rate of 1.77.  Considering everything the Russian people had been through in the preceding years,…

Over the past few years the trend to hold ‘candlelight vigils’ for child victims of crimes or accidents seems to have accelerated.  Within hours of the admittedly terrible event, the media announce that a vigil will be held at the local school, footpath, bush setting or other nearby/relevant location to where the event occurred. At…