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Keywords: Vatican

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • RELIGION

    Faith and reason, same-sex relationships and blessings

    • Ross Jones
    • 06 April 2021
    241 Comments

    The opening line of John Paul’s encyclical is memorable: ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.’ The recent pronouncement by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on the blessing of same-sex unions certainly had people assessing its reasonableness as a so-called ‘deposit of faith’.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    How do fathers figure in?

    • Mike Kelly
    • 01 April 2021
    5 Comments

    There are many gems and reflections on ‘fathering’ in Pope Francis’s apostolic letter, Patris Corde ‘With a Father’s Heart’, in which he nominates 2021 as the year to honour the fatherhood of St Joseph. Francis’s letter is inclusive, encompassing the scope of fatherhood and the responsibilities fathering entails. ‘Fathers are not born, but made’, Francis says.

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  • RELIGION

    A skeleton for the Plenary Council agenda

    • John Warhurst
    • 25 March 2021
    108 Comments

    Continuing the Journey, the working document (or instrumentum laboris), is another stepping stone towards the Plenary Council (PC). How you view this document, provided explicitly both to those few hundred called to be PC participants and to the whole Catholic community, depends very much on your expectations.

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  • RELIGION

    Did the pope’s Iraq visit make a difference?

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 25 March 2021
    6 Comments

    Pope Francis is the first Pope to ever visit Iraq. Although Pope Francis only spent three days in Iraq, his visit received much attention and support from the Iraqi Government and was of major interest to Iraqis both in Iraq and here in Australia. I spoke with several Iraqis in Australia in order to hear their thoughts on this historic visit.

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council must address structural inertia and church decline

    • John Warhurst
    • 25 February 2021
    56 Comments

    Two documents from and about the church in Australia issued in December last year should be compulsory reading for all Plenary Council (PC) delegates. They offer crucial insights into the state of the church in Australia, and taken together they paint a picture of church inertia and decline.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Halki Summit highlights care for creation amid pandemic

    • Stephen Minas
    • 18 February 2021
    2 Comments

    The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked difficult questions about the links between the simultaneous health and ecological crises. These questions were examined in late January at the virtual Halki Summit, the latest in a long series of environment-focused events convened by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate.

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  • RELIGION

    Francesco the film: ‘The path is opened by walking’

    • David Holdcroft
    • 27 October 2020
    9 Comments

    Insofar as there is hope in Francesco, it emerges gradually through an intimate viewing of the Pope’s engagement with the ‘hot button’ issues of our day, the environment and climate change, refugees and immigration, violence and conflict, disparity of wealth and poverty, women’s place in society and Church, family and sexuality, and sexual abuse within the Church.

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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

    Fratelli Tutti: seeking the common good

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 October 2020
    47 Comments

    Pope Francis’ latest encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti is, as we might have anticipated, a reflection on our times. The burden of the encyclical is to commend fraternity and social friendship and deplore selfishness and hostility in the response to the crisis.

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  • RELIGION

    The Catholic Church and modern science

    • Bill Uren
    • 15 September 2020
    250 Comments

    Whereas the Vatican II document sought to engage with, and to respect, the autonomy of the modern world and its science, only too many of the Vatican’s official statements over the past fifty years have effectively resiled from that commitment.

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  • RELIGION

    Ecumenical history offers lessons

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 June 2020
    19 Comments

    With churches closed throughout much of the world, many events and dedicated weeks have passed us by. One of those weeks was the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Catholics who paid attention to Pope Francis’ engagements may have noticed it through his references to the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul’s Encyclical on Christian Unity, Ut Unum Sint.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Social services, Laudato Si’ and Jack Mundey’s legacy

    • Joshua Lourensz
    • 22 May 2020
    6 Comments

    In thinking through how social services can contribute to what society or the economy needs in light of the ramifications of COVID-19, Catholicism and communism are not two traditions that probably come to the mind for most. But for the kind of thinking that governance and leaders require to make good decisions in and beyond a time of crisis, there are people and concepts from each tradition that we can learn from.

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