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Keywords: Priesthood

  • AUSTRALIA

    Distinguishing communities

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 March 2022

    Part of what makes community is what distinguishes community, what sets it apart. It might be an interest in music, or sport, a neighbourhood or a set of values or practices. Initially, at least, the extent to which we identify with the community will depend upon the extent to which those things that define or characterise it are important to us.   

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  • RELIGION

    To change church culture, we need service-oriented leaders

    • Anne Benjamin
    • 24 February 2022
    15 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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Juvenile injustice

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 February 2022
    4 Comments

    Having previously spent time as lawyer working predominantly in the Children’s Court of Victoria, there isn’t too much about the State’s treatment of young people that shocks me. That is, until a few weeks ago when I was drawn to the final item of The Weekend Australian’s editorial column. Under the heading, ‘Hurt boy’s inhuman treatment’, was set out the details of a 15-year-old West Australian boy who had been ‘locked alone in a glass-walled observation cell of a juvenile detention centre in the southern suburbs of Perth for 79 days.’    

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Broken: A profound study of Christianity and the priesthood

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 09 December 2021
    5 Comments

    Broken first aired on BBC1 in England in 2017. Four years to make it to Australia, but it was worth it. The series is a profound and powerful study of Christianity and what priesthood means, whether for the man holding up the bread at the altar, or that ‘priesthood of all believers’ to which Christianity’s adherents are said to belong.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Public faith and Perrottet

    • Julian Butler
    • 01 November 2021
    15 Comments

    The elevation of Dominic Perrottet to the Premiership of New South Wales caused a flurry of commentary about his religious faith. In many parts of the media his politics and personality were framed by his Catholicism. I watched on with a degree of discomfort, and with a sense of possibility. Could some of the bigoted characterisations invite a richer conversation about the ideals and deeper narratives that enliven our public leaders?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anti-lockdown protests expose need for new conversations

    • Julian Butler
    • 28 September 2021
    9 Comments

    Walking down to the local Saturday morning street market, I wasn’t expecting to find myself amidst the beginnings of a violent protest. Seeing some police, I thought they were out and about to ensure the public weren’t taking too many liberties with the slightly eased restrictions that had come into effect for Melbourne the previous night. But half a dozen on each corner of Church St and Bridge Rd in inner-city Richmond suggested something more.  

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  • RELIGION

    Is it time to re-think seminaries?

    • Gideon Goosen
    • 23 September 2021
    48 Comments

    The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse identified clericalism as a significant contributor to abuse across religious institutions Australia-wide. Clericalism is rooted in a theological belief that the clergy are different to the laity, having undergone an ‘ontological change’ at ordination, and feeds the notion that the clergy may not be challenged. And according to the report, the culture of clericalism is on the rise in seminaries in Australia.

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  • RELIGION

    Wherever faith resides

    • Julian Butler
    • 29 April 2021
    103 Comments

    Even as it is an ‘inner light’, illuminating all else, having faith isn’t without critical reason. Philip’s ‘appreciative but never uncritical’ approach to faith might be said to characterise the approach of a growing number of young people, too.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Living with lockdown

    • Julian Butler
    • 18 February 2021
    7 Comments

    Each of us has our own experience of the first COVID year. We do all share some of the best results in supressing the virus anywhere in the world. Talk, though, of social cohesion and government competency is loaded here in Melbourne.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Without JobSeeker, inequality will rise

    • Julian Butler
    • 11 February 2021
    4 Comments

    The size and spread of government payments in past 12 months has held steady, and to some extent, improved the circumstances of many on low incomes or government support. The withdrawal of that support risks returning many to payments that do not provide for basic human needs.

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  • RELIGION

    Including women in the Catholic Church

    • Marilyn Hatton
    • 27 October 2020
    37 Comments

    Phyllis Zagano’s latest book Women: Icons of Christ is a must read for all who desire equality for women in our world and an inclusive practice of Catholic faith. The critical issue Zagano presents in this book is that ordaining women to the deaconate is a not a new or forbidden act in Catholic history but rather a return to a practice that endured for hundreds of years.

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  • RELIGION

    Embracing First Nations voices in the Church

    • John Lochowiak
    • 24 February 2020
    17 Comments

    Pope Francis’ 'Querida Amazonia' (Beloved Amazonia) has been warmly received by many members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic community. The tone of the exhortation is reflective of the position that underpins our vision for the Church in Australia — a Church that is open to the gifts of First Nations Catholics, honest to the past and embracing of a new way of thinking that utilizes the principle of subsidiarity.

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