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Keywords: Synod

  • RELIGION

    The First Synod: Procedure or reforms?

    • Bill Uren
    • 18 May 2023
    8 Comments

    The Vatican's recent refusal of proposed reforms in preparation for the Synod reflects not only the ongoing tension between the Vatican Curia and the German Church but also a reminder of the forces that aim to keep a tight lid on real synodal reforms.

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  • RELIGION

    The inside low-down on Pope Francis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 March 2023
    10 Comments

    Pope Francis's ten-year papacy continues to surprise and puzzle observers measuring him by liberal and conservative polarities. But to understand his actions and words better, it's important to recognise that his framework is not derived from contemporary culture but from Christian faith. 

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic, female and struggling: Survey reveals women's desire for Church reform

    • David Halliday
    • 17 March 2023
    8 Comments

    Over 17,000 women worldwide have called for Church reform in a newly published survey by Catholic Women Speak Network. Respondents from 104 countries expressed dissatisfaction with a lack of transparency in governance and voiced the need to be seen, heard and valued. 

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  • RELIGION

    Cathedrals and caravans

    • John Honner
    • 27 February 2023
    3 Comments

    The word synodality may not be familiar to many, but it's a word that Pope Francis has been emphasising throughout his papacy. It refers to a Church that listens and travels together, with everyone having something to learn from one another. 

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  • RELIGION

    Original synodality: Consultation in the early Church

    • Constant Mews
    • 22 February 2023
    2 Comments

    Words get tired, and need to be reinvented, to recapture their original meaning. Synodality is simply the most recent way of regenerating traditions of consultation that go back to the earliest days of the Church. 

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  • RELIGION

    Does synodality dilute the apostolic tradition?

    • Bill Uren
    • 14 February 2023
    12 Comments

    Is the Catholic Church risking the dilution of its apostolic tradition with the upcoming Synod on Synodality? This is the concern raised by Cardinal George Pell in his recent article published posthumously in The Spectator. Despite his criticisms of Pope Francis and the Synod, his warning on the potential consequences of diluting the apostolic tradition are worth consideration. 

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  • RELIGION

    Cardinal Pell's parting salvo raises questions for the Australian Church

    • 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.

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  • RELIGION

    Significance of Broglio's election for US Church

    • Bill Uren
    • 14 December 2022
    4 Comments

    The recent election of Archbishop Timothy Broglio as President of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference has significant implications for the United States Church, for the global Church, and potentially for the Australian Church. 

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council is dead, long live the Synod of Bishops

    • John Warhurst
    • 06 December 2022
    3 Comments

    The Synod of Bishops, to which all People of God in Australia have now had their attention redirected after the Plenary Council, is another gigantic exercise in consultation and discernment undertaken by the Church. The possibilities for progress are inspiring, but also hedged around by enormous pressures of time and capacity. In a sense it is the Plenary Council writ large. 

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  • RELIGION

    After the Plenary

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 27 July 2022
    7 Comments

    What did the Plenary mean exactly, and what is next for the church? Secretary to the Council, Fr David Ranson, offers a rich and bracingly realistic set of observations about the Plenary Council. As secretary, Fr David was deeply absorbed in the lead-up, in the events of the week itself and now in assessing what comes next. He might surprise you with his judgements. They're delivered by a man with an acute sense of Church procedures but also with an eye to possibilities. 

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  • RELIGION

    Plenary Council fails to embrace Pope Francis’s wider social vision

    • 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.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the name of Kyrill

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2022
    7 Comments

    Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow has received much justified criticism for aligning his Church alongside Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine. If we are to understand how he could think it is right to do so, however, it is helpful to know how he came to be Kyrill. The story of his earlier namesakes illuminate the conduct of the present Patriarch of Moscow. 

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