Search Results: encyclical
-
RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 31 January 2023
17 Comments
Last year, the late Cardinal George Pell anonymously published a memorandum that criticized Pope Francis and his vision of a synodal church and condemned the Synod as a ‘catastrophe’, Cardinal Pell's memo signals building tensions between different visions for the future of the Church in Australia.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Michael McVeigh
- 17 January 2023
11 Comments
The two Catholic leaders who passed away this summer both lived in the public spotlight for much of their lives, but they also each lived a private life of which we only ever gained glimpses. Those of us who didn’t know them tend to fill in the details based on which aspects of their public persona best align with our own attitudes.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 08 December 2022
20 Comments
Nancy Pelosi recently announced her retirement as leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, proclaiming that she was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a devout Catholic. Yet citing her support for pro-choice on abortion, the archbishop of her home archdiocese of San Francisco has forbidden her access to Holy Communion. So, the question remains: what sort of moral reasoning could Mrs Pelosi invoke to support her pro-choice stance?
READ MORE 
-
ENVIRONMENT
- Andrew Hamilton
- 01 September 2022
2 Comments
To address climate change demands concerned action that is built on people working together for the good of all. This in turn demands the recognition that the environment is not something different from us but part of us. Our personal good depends on the common good of our world.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Bruce Duncan
- 21 June 2022
3 Comments
Some 278 Catholic bishops, clergy, religious personnel and lay people will meet as members of an unprecedented Plenary Council during 3-9 July to finalise the resolutions of their first assembly last year. However the May working document ‘Framework for Motions’, despite much worthy content, especially on Indigenous affairs, relies on a narrow notion of mission overly focused on inner-church issues at the expense of the wider social engagement that Francis emphasises.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 26 May 2022
19 Comments
News leaked earlier this month that the US Supreme Court plans to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision has attracted much criticism both in the past and now on account of its dubious legal reasoning – in particular, its attempt to link the right to abort to a right to privacy which itself was notional and not specified in the US Constitution.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 04 November 2021
13 Comments
In large organisations love hardly rates a mention. Mission statements highlight care, duty, responsibility and friendliness, but not love. Love is generally seen as an interrupter, combustible, something to fence in with protocols and professional standards, and for HR to monitor. When Pope Benedict XVI devoted an Encyclical to the place of love in public relationships, people were surprised. His argument is worth revisiting.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Vincent Long Van Nguyen
- 28 September 2021
12 Comments
The Australian Government’s decision to buy nuclear-powered submarines has brought to the surface once again big questions around how governments should spend money, particularly during a pandemic. The Government has ditched a $90 billion plan for French submarines in favour of even more expensive boats from the United Kingdom or the United States.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 05 August 2021
60 Comments
Critical Race Theory, which has recently been banned ineffectively by the Australian Senate from the National Curriculum, has everything going for it as a lightning rod. It has an acronym (CRT), opacity and an air of self-importance. It is also associated with a controversial social movement: Black Lives Matter. The theory does not need to be understood before generating heat.
READ MORE
-
FAITH DOING JUSTICE
- Vincent Long Van Nguyen
- 24 June 2021
15 Comments
With the average length of detention in Australia now at an historic high, it is timely to review how immigration detention is used. It should be a last resort that is used for the shortest practicable time so that people who pose little risk to the community are not unnecessarily deprived of their liberty, and that they are able to contribute to the community.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
The opening line of John Paul’s encyclical is memorable: ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.’ The recent pronouncement by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on the blessing of same-sex unions certainly had people assessing its reasonableness as a so-called ‘deposit of faith’.
READ MORE
-
FAITH DOING JUSTICE
- Anthony Albanese
- 23 February 2021
17 Comments
What we have is a rare opportunity — in all likelihood a once-in-a-lifetime chance — to shape the future and emerge from the pandemic as a better, fairer nation.
READ MORE