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Keywords: Bishop Ja

  • RELIGION

    To change church culture, we need service-oriented leaders

    • Anne Benjamin
    • 24 February 2022
    25 Comments

    The call to synodality is a call to convert, reform and renew the church’s organisational culture. New cultures do not emerge automatically. It is not about turning upside down the present pyramid structure of the church with a clerical hierarchy at the top and the faithful on the bottom. The church is not a political democracy, but a ‘holy people’ whose mission is to make God and Jesus present and, in a sense, visible to our world.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Social services, Laudato Si’ and Jack Mundey’s legacy

    • Joshua Lourensz
    • 22 May 2020
    6 Comments

    In thinking through how social services can contribute to what society or the economy needs in light of the ramifications of COVID-19, Catholicism and communism are not two traditions that probably come to the mind for most. But for the kind of thinking that governance and leaders require to make good decisions in and beyond a time of crisis, there are people and concepts from each tradition that we can learn from.

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  • MEDIA

    In defence of 'court jester' Mark Knight

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 September 2018
    14 Comments

    The tradition of court jesters licensed to criticise the king exists in many cultures. It is part of a broader tolerance of satire in which the foibles and sins of the great can be safely criticised. The Shakespearian fools are typical in representing the view of the common man as he speaks truth to power. Printed cartoons stand in this tradition.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Dress sense or political statement? It's a tie

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 03 September 2018
    10 Comments

    Collars and ties, or lack of them, can have a specific political application. In 2007 Robert Mugabe, fearsome Zimbabwean dictator, was invited to an EU summit in Lisbon. The Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, cut up his clerical collar on television and vowed to replace it only after Mugabe had gone.

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  • RELIGION

    A planet to heal

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 August 2018

    How are we to honour the commitment to peace of these Japanese and Maralinga survivors of nuclear conflagrations unleashed maliciously or negligently last century? We need to renew our commitment to painstaking negotiation of international treaties and agreements designed to ensure peace and security for all, insisting on the dignity and human rights of all.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Undermining NZ: Dutton's refugee ploy

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 20 November 2017
    9 Comments

    These sprinklings of poison through the press, with occasional mentions in New Zealand, serve two purposes: to show Australian refugee policy as sound, and offshore detention and resettlement in an unsuitable third country as appropriate; and to deflect attention from the discharge of obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Different country, different culture (or how different legal systems view deal-making)

    • Frank Brennan
    • 12 October 2017

    In the 16th century it was the Dominican friars like Vitoria, Las Casas and Montesino in Salamanca who confronted the state and challenged public opinion about the rights of the indigenous peoples in Spain's newly colonised lands. Not even the most nostalgic and forgiving Jesuit would opine that the modern practitioners of Morality with a capital M challenging the powers of the market and the state would be found in a modern monastery.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Netanyahu visit drives the Palestine wedge deeper

    • Andra Jackson
    • 22 February 2017
    15 Comments

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Australia this week is having precisely the opposite impact to what he no doubt intended. Instead of shoring up support for Israel's flagrant disregard for United Nations resolutions condemning its continual annexation of Palestinian land, it is driving a deep wedge into what was previously unflagging bipartisan Australian political party support for Israel. Australia's connection with Palestine actually predates the creation of the state of Israel.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Timorese have had a win but could still lose big-time

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 January 2017
    17 Comments

    Without any media fanfare, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop published a statement on 9 January 2017 announcing that Australia and Timor Leste had agreed to terminate the 2006 Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea. This news is more welcome to the Timorese government than to the Australian government. But the uncertainty created by this Timorese win might in time impact more adversely on Timor than on Australia. Only time will tell.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Pope Francis and climate justice

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 November 2015
    1 Comment

    Francis does not pretend to have answers to the big questions which will confront world leaders when they gather in Paris. But he does think the science is IN, and the evidence is clear that much of the climate change, loss of biodiversity and water shortages are the result of human action. We are blessed to have a pope who speaks to all the world about the prudence, justice and empathy required so that more people on our planet might enjoy integral human development.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The church must be a poor church

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 October 2015
    23 Comments

    The image of the body of Aylan Kurdi cradled in the arms of a Turkish soldier jarred with our sense that poverty is simply the deprivation of material goods — there is no greater poverty than death, and no greater deprivation than that of a child stripped of life. Francis speaks powerfully of the need to address poverty. He insists that the church must move out of its comfortable centre to the margins where the poor live. To address poverty we must know people who live in poverty as our brothers and sisters.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bringing 'boogeyman' Iran in from the cold

    • William Gourlay
    • 22 September 2015
    4 Comments

    Canny politicians know it is impossible to please everyone all of the time. This must be clear to Obama in the wake of the nuclear deal reached with Iran. As he heralded the accord as a harbinger of a 'more hopeful world', Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a 'stunning historical mistake'. The deal is a result of 18 months of hard diplomatic negotiation, but for the naysayers it means Iran is off the leash.

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