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Nine prime ministers have been observant Christians. Two have been conventional Christians. Ten have been nominal Christians. Five have been articulate atheists or agnostics. One was a nominal atheist or agnostic.
For those born in Adelaide, there is something endearing about the place. It's like living in a country town where Big Ears, Ratty or Mole could be spotted. But the penchant for nostalgia and for by-gone days is exactly the wrong impulse now for the City of Churches.
Social commentator Frank Furedi wrote that the Pope's UK visit provided Britain's cultural elite with 'a figure that it is okay to hate'. We might regard the angst as a manifestation of the growing pains that are to be expected in a world of emerging pluralism.
It's not that Catholicism has nothing to answer for, but the problem is that caricatures quickly become facts. Many Catholics have learned to 'cop it sweet', but there comes a point where you have to say something. The papal visit to the UK might just be it.
Throughout more than 30 years of killing and maiming in Northern Ireland, the media and governments maintained that the unrest was a political conflict. Though virtually everyone on one side was Catholic and those on the other were Protestant, nobody dared call it a religious war.
How times change. Early in the 20th Century, it was Protestant Orangemen who warned Australians not to vote for a Catholic. In the early 21 Century, such warnings are now delivered by a former Catholic priest in a publication of the Jesuit Order. –Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute
Tony Abbott had a close association with B. A. Santamaria and personifies church ties with politics through his relationship with the man he has called his confessor, Cardinal Pell. The question is whether Abbott is a one-off or represents a larger group of Catholic Liberals.
now because of you kneeling .. beside me, thumbing the scarred leather .. of the little mass-book your grandmother .. hid at the back of her Protestant linen-press
Some Protestants question whether Catholics are Christians. Some Catholics say there is no salvation outside their Church. Identifiying the essentials of Christianity matters in today's post-Christian society, where young Westerners are bored with Christianity and they feel that they have moved beyond it.
Pat Robertson's comments about Haiti's 'pact with the devil' are unhelpful, when deeply religious Haitians are themselves wondering about God's role in the earthquake. A more welcome image of Christianity is visible in the aid agencies that are assisting in the relief efforts.