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There has been a bland assertion in places that obligatory celibacy has not in any way been a cause of abuse. Few people believe this assertion, and personally I find it impossible to deny that it has been a significant contributing factor. Unless obligatory celibacy is put on the table for discussion, the question will not go away.
The Hon. Michael Kirby recently said those in the churches expecting gay people to be celibate should start thinking about 'real moral questions'. If some Christians are obsessed with sex, it is because many human beings are. The ethical 'supply' exists to meet the demand, and when it comes to sexual ethics, the demand is not being met by secular society.
On a television in a grimy bar, Barack Obama waxes lyrical about the unity of the people. In the foreground, a brutal and enigmatic enforcer of the criminal underworld scoffs. America is not a community, he counters — it's a business. 'I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own.'
In the 2012 Catholic Social Justice Statement on the family, 'the family' is characterised by stable relationships between husband, wife and children. In Australia families of this kind are the exception. Reflection on family needs to consider the factors that create instability and suffering to children in a variety of relationships.
The Federal Coalition has taken to making monsters of its own MPs in the hope that their larger than life profiles will translate into electoral success. But with the Cory Bernardi gay marriage bestiality debacle, Tony Abbott might have finally learned the lesson of Mary Shelley's morality tale Frankenstein.
You, too, despite the false witness of the mirror in your mind, are part, a very small part, of a very old music ... Poetry writes the only prayers you feel free to offer these days. It is the glint in the eye of the god you stopped believing, when she started causing you all this pain.
Any discussion of the morality of torture must distinguish two kinds of justification. The first is concerned with cases so exotic they have nothing to do with the ordinary affairs of mankind, such as the nuclear bomb ticking away in a New York basement. A real-life justification must provide a rationale for a wide range of common garden cases.
The many bad stories about the Vatican raise questions about how central authority is exercised. Some critics focus on arrogance and misbehaviour there in the way that others see these behaviours in News Limited, the Greens, the Unions, and elsewhere. To address the way people in any organisation behave, you must first understand why they act as they do.
It should be mandatory for anyone writing on asylum seekers to spend time visiting detention centres. Many commentators ignore the hard work of those who have. Moreover the politicians are too poll driven to even explain the human desperation that leads to boat journeys.
Recently Catherine Deveny tweeted that my claim to be a Catholic and a feminist showed I was 'suffering serious cognitive dissonance'. Many gay Christians are confronted by a similar lack of understanding from non-believers who can't understand why they would embrace a Church that rejects them.
A group of women debate whether familiarity with a long-term spouse is not better than the passion of a new relationship. Everything new gets old, argues one woman. Take This Waltz is a kind of morality play about a woman torn between the familiarity of the old and the excitement of the new.
'This Jesuit network will not succeed where Copenhagen failed, but it is an incremental contribution to one of the great moral challenges of our age [climate change].' Text from Frank Brennan's paper 'An interpretation and a raincheck on GC 35's call to develop international and interprovincial collaboration', Boston College, 28 April 2012.