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Keywords: Priesthood

  • AUSTRALIA

    Conferences, summits, talkfests

    • Julian Butler
    • 13 September 2022
    1 Comment

    Those who suggest that gatherings like the Jobs Summit are not worth the time overlook the possibility of long-term solutions being found through people coming together and talking. Much of the talking was done, of course, prior to the Jobs Summit. But the date in the diary focusses the mind; preparatory conversations start to refine a common understanding of what is being sought, and maybe even why.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The price of mistrust

    • Julian Butler
    • 29 August 2022

    The absence of trust undermines our ability to meet basic human need, to feel supported, to share resources and to effectively divide responsibilities. Mistrust imposes its own ‘price’ on every ‘transaction’, every engagement with others becomes more costly as we need to account for the perceived insincerity and unreliability of others.  

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  • RELIGION

    What did the Plenary Council achieve?

    • Paul Collins
    • 12 July 2022
    33 Comments

    The Plenary Council (PC) is over and the time has come for assessments. What did it achieve? In positive terms it brought together an enormously generous group of people whose dedication to Catholicism is extraordinary. It also demonstrated the diverse complexity of the community. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    LaMDA and the (lack of) body

    • Julian Butler
    • 05 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Just over a fortnight ago Google suspended Blake Lemoine, an engineer for Google’s AI organisation, for publicly claiming a computer chatbot he was working on is sentient and thinks and reasons like a human. The publicity surrounding the suspension has raised questions about the development of artificial intelligence (AI), about our shared understanding of what it means to be conscious and sentient.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stray thoughts: On Ozark

    • Julian Butler
    • 04 July 2022

    Ozark is, at heart, an unflinching look at evil. I’ve always known I’d come back to each new release of episodes in part because the darkness is made watchable by the likeable faces of Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. They play the couple at the centre of a family amidst sinister violence and corruption. Indeed, the juxtaposition between the content and those faces is a key part of what makes the show so intriguing.

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  • RELIGION

    A Vatican-inspired theological revolution

    • Paul Collins
    • 28 June 2022
    7 Comments

    A basic principle was laid down in the pope’s recent Apostolic Constitution entitled Praedicate evangelium that is profoundly important with far-reaching consequences for the whole church. This principle states that any baptised Catholic ‘can preside over a dicastery,’ that is run a Vatican department. Previously only ordained clerics could do this.

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  • RELIGION

    What can we expect from the Plenary Council? A Roundtable

    • Geraldine Doogue, Greg Craven, John Warhurst, Julian Butler
    • 17 June 2022
    3 Comments

    After four years, the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia is nearly at a close with the second and final assembly in July. So what has been the significance of the Plenary Council so far, and what can we expect from the final session? In this Roundtable, Geraldine Doogue, John Warhurst, Greg Craven and Julian Butler reveal their hopes and expectations for the process and discuss likely outcomes.

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  • RELIGION

    Should women be deacons? The stories behind Motion 54

    • Elizabeth Young
    • 15 June 2022
    3 Comments

      Should women be considered for ministry as deacon? Should Pope Francis authorise such ministry? This topic often raises emotions, and strong views either for or against. This is one of the questions posed by Motion 54 to the Church’s July Plenary Council session, where members will amend and vote on 105 motions, prompted by the question, ‘What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time?’ Motion 54 is one to watch.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On Bernie Finn

    • Julian Butler
    • 03 June 2022
    1 Comment

    Bernie Finn is not a figure I would naturally warm to. He has a rambunctious, contrarian persona that grates. A few months ago, if you had said to me that he would be expelled from the Victorian Liberal Party, I would have imagined it would be for some position or action I find egregious. Instead, he has been expelled for a position I essentially share.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The ties that bind: How negative campaigns eclipse community focus

    • Julian Butler
    • 12 May 2022
    3 Comments

    Election campaigns can be defined by all sorts of things. Gaffes, negative ads, international incidents, public policy. It is trite but no less true to say that this federal election campaign has been much more about the first three rather than the last. The policy discussion has been edged into the election mix most seriously by various interest groups and by some of the macro party and independent candidates seeking election.  

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  • ECONOMICS

    Supply to survive

    • Julian Butler
    • 31 March 2022
    1 Comment

    In 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic raged globally, as Australia shut its borders and some states shut in their people, massive government income support was introduced. The government was a little slow coming to recognise the need for such measures. Once they had, they wanted the support rolled out as quickly as possible. Frydenberg, Scott Morrison and their colleagues recognised that a demand side boost was absolutely necessary to sustain economic activity. The government was uncomfortable, though, with this approach.  

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  • RELIGION

    What is to be done?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 March 2022
    10 Comments

    Any program of church reform will have soon to ask Chernyshevsky’s question, What is to be done? It is a dangerous question — he wrote his novel from jail and spent much of his life in exile or imprisonment. Discussion of Church matters is mercifully less perilous today, but the question does invite a radical repiecing of the connections and tradition and energies that constitute Catholic life.

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