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When the Hawke-Keating Government cut back funding for overseas aid, churches said nothing. Last week, 260 Christian young people set out to lobby politicians about Australia's failure to meet its obligations to developing nations.
Many conservative Catholics are sceptical about global warming. For them environmentalism is the new communism. This echoes the paranoia of the '50s and '60s are clear, when anyone with an interest in social justice was suspect.
A religious purpose is at the heart of Catholic Social Services. Because of this purpose, organisations need to be able to recruit people who support the social mission of the Church, and whose conduct will not compromise or undermine the witness of the Church.
In 1871 Mary MacKillop was excommunicated by her local bishop on the grounds that 'she had incited the sisters to disobedience and defiance'. The idea of a holy woman who had been at loggerheads with the hierarchy is not new in the annals of the saints.
Assumptions that detained businessman Stern Hu could not be guilty because he is Australian show how national pride can cloud perceptions. Something similar was at play in calls for Kevin Rudd to lobby the Pope for the canonisation of Mary MacKillop.
This week's release of the new social encyclical Caritas in Veritate expands moral teaching to promote a concept of 'human ecology' that covers both human life and the environment. It would seem that Benedict is not a climate change sceptic.
Abstinence and fidelity win little public support in Western discourse, but are increasingly included, even favoured, in national AIDS strategies in Africa. Culture counts, and a condom is more than a piece of latex.
Professor Martha Nussbaum's recent book Liberty of Conscience provides a rich textured treatment of the place of religion in the public square. If God is taken out of the picture, it may be difficult to maintain a human rights commitment to the weakest and most despised in society.
In East Timor, I was able to see close up the work of Caritas in war torn conditions. There could be no reconciliation without justice. Caritas worked tirelessly to proclaim the message.
'Lee and Christine Rush are your average Ozzie couple, except that their teenage son Scott is on death row in Bali having been convicted of being a hapless drug mule. It will not go down well on the streets of Jakarta if Australians are baying for the blood of the Bali bombers one month and then pleading to save our sons and daughters the next month.'
It's hard to think of anybody who would not have welcomed Pope Benedict's apology for sexual abuse. By contrast, nobody could have been pleased to hear an exasperated Bishop Anthony Fisher refer last week to those 'dwelling crankily ... on old wounds'.
In his keynote message to the World Food Summit Pope Benedict XVI called for new strategies to promote food production. Feeding the world population in the coming decades is as big a challenge as climate change, and no less important.
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