Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
In the 1970s Latin American theologians began to explore the connections of faith to a public world marked by great injustice. Some of them initially criticised such popular expressions of faith such as devotions, fiestas and processions. The miracles dimension of the coverage of Mary MacKillop's recent canonisation uncovered a similar tension.
Cardinal Pell, with whom I have voiced disagreement, preached superbly at the mass of thanksgiving after the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. 'She does not deter us from struggling to follow her.' As we wrestle with the common good, let's make a place for all our fellow citizens.
There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.
Like Mary MacKillop before her, Sandra Schneiders is fearless in calling the male Church hierarchy to account. She warns of the dangers for the Church in seeing itself above and separate from the world.
Mary MacKillop's face is on the Sydney Habour Bridge, at least temporarily. Is she becoming one of the clichés for Australia, alongside bushmen and Hills Hoist mums in our catalogue of national identity?
It is possible to represent MacKillop as a brave woman, a feisty woman, her own woman, a feminist before her time, a woman who resisted clerical tyranny, a scourge of pedophilia and an activist for the poor. Each of these descriptions misses what was central in her.
MacKillop can be properly seen be as someone drawn into the sexual abuse scandal a century before the rest of the Catholic Church was. As a result, she might be someone that victims and their families feel drawn to in prayer.
Sexual abuse was part of the mix of challenges facing Mary MacKillop and her sisters, but it was only one of many elements of disfunction within the Church and society of the time. Historian Father Ed Campion has described MacKillop as 'a heroine to modern Australian feminists'.
Men's control over Christian women's religious lives has grown vastly over the centuries. Perhaps MacKillop might have agreed with Virginia Woolf, 'The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.'