Keywords: International Law
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
-
RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 12 January 2023
Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 12 January 2023
In recent days, if you were to listen to the media reports, you could be forgiven for thinking that religious educators want to retain a right to exclude children or teachers from their schools on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or nothing should be further from the truth.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Justin Glyn
- 05 January 2023
In the early part of the twentieth century, Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin) used the latter’s work to argue that human breeding stock could be improved. He would weed out the weakest and the less able and produce a sturdier race. Until recently, the crematoria of Hitler’s death camps were enough to remind most that this was not an idea consonant with actual human flourishing.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- 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.
READ MORE 
-
AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 17 November 2022
1 Comment
Australia’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) came about as a reaction to the abuses recorded at the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth prison. To monitor compliance with OPCAT, UN independent inspection teams are permitted to conduct unannounced visits to any place where people are deprived of liberty. But on October 24, a Corrective Services NSW spokesperson announced that inspection teams were ‘refused entry without incident’.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 28 October 2022
6 Comments
In recent years, Australian policies in relation to asylum seekers and refugees have been unnecessarily mean, cruel and disorganised. The election of the Albanese government provides the opportunity for a reset, putting behind us the past mistakes of both Coalition and Labor Governments in the last 20 years.
READ MORE
-
ECONOMICS
- David James
- 28 October 2022
Who wields the most power in the world? If one follows the money trail, it becomes clear that Western societies have become ruled by a new type of aristocracy: a management aristocracy.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 10 October 2022
8 Comments
Two weeks ago, Bishop Hilton Deakin died. My memories of him are inextricably tied to the Mass he celebrated in 1999 at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, certainly the most emotionally charged event that I have seen there, following the violence orchestrated by the Indonesian military following the Referendum on Independence in East Timor. During the struggle for Independence, many East Timorese had joined the Catholic Church.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Antonio Castillo
- 01 September 2022
2 Comments
In Nicaragua, Catholic priests and institutions are under siege. In the last five months, the Ortega regime has increased its persecution of the Church, accusing them of being ‘terrorists.’ The conflict has been further exacerbated by the detention of Bishop Rolando Álvarez, the most outspoken critic of Ortega. In less than four years, the Church has suffered 190 attacks, including a fire in the Cathedral of Managua. However, the crisis in Nicaragua is not as clear-cut as it might seem.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 17 August 2022
2 Comments
We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 11 August 2022
9 Comments
Much has recently written about the doctrine of discovery and its bearing on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the United States where it grounded an early legal decision. The doctrine enshrined in law claims that the discovery of underpopulated and cultivated lands conferred on the discoverers the right to ownership, and was used to justify colonial occupation of territory in the Americas, Asia and Africa.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Damien Linnane
- 27 July 2022
Two months into a 10-month prison sentence, I was placed in solitary confinement after having a nervous breakdown. I’d originally made a fruitless attempt to keep my breakdown to myself, because I’d been told what would happen if Corrective Services found out I was having mental health issues. One of the first friends I made in prison, like many of the inmates, was suicidal. ‘The best advice I can give you if you’re struggling with your mental health’, he told me, ‘is to do everything you can to keep it from the officers.’
READ MORE