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Section: Religion

  • RELIGION

    'Sheila' MacKillop boosts Catholic brand

    • Paul Collins
    • 19 November 2010
    9 Comments

    This week it was reported that the canonisation of Mary MacKillop boosted enquiries at Australia's Catholic Enquiry Centre by 63 per cent in the past year. The saturation media coverage of the event suggests the Church may not be as much 'on the nose' as is popularly thought.

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  • RELIGION

    Anglicans and Catholics

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 November 2010
    20 Comments

    Predictions that massive numbers of Anglicans will become Catholic seem far-fetched. Certainly, the Anglican communion is sharply divided by proposals to ordain women Bishops and to ordain as Bishops men in openly homosexual relationships. But only some of those opposed would feel any attraction to Rome.

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  • RELIGION

    Questions miracles raise

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 November 2010
    12 Comments

    In the 1970s Latin American theologians began to explore the connections of faith to a public world marked by great injustice. Some of them initially criticised such popular expressions of faith such as devotions, fiestas and processions. The miracles dimension of the coverage of Mary MacKillop's recent canonisation uncovered a similar tension.

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  • RELIGION

    Reconciling religion, politics and human rights

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 November 2010
    15 Comments

    Cardinal Pell, with whom I have voiced disagreement, preached superbly at the mass of thanksgiving after the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. 'She does not deter us from struggling to follow her.' As we wrestle with the common good, let's make a place for all our fellow citizens.

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  • RELIGION

    Rethinking indigeneity in the age of globalisation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2010
    3 Comments

    There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.

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  • RELIGION

    Queensland's abortion law shortfall

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 October 2010
    19 Comments

    Those who believe a good society must be built on respect for human life at its beginning and end must work to change public attitudes. Such an approach needs to be based on respect for the freedom of women whom child bearing and rearing touch most intimately.

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  • RELIGION

    Mary MacKillop's Australian story

    • Katharine Massam
    • 15 October 2010
    1 Comment

    Mary MacKillop's face is on the Sydney Habour Bridge, at least temporarily. Is she becoming one of the clichés for Australia, alongside bushmen and Hills Hoist mums in our catalogue of national identity?

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  • RELIGION

    The Mary MacKillop reality test

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 October 2010
    4 Comments

    It is possible to represent MacKillop as a brave woman, a feisty woman, her own woman, a feminist before her time, a woman who resisted clerical tyranny, a scourge of pedophilia and an activist for the poor. Each of these descriptions misses what was central in her.

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  • RELIGION

    Patron Saint of abuse victims

    • James Martin
    • 13 October 2010
    3 Comments

    MacKillop can be properly seen be as someone drawn into the sexual abuse scandal a century before the rest of the Catholic Church was. As a result, she might be someone that victims and their families feel drawn to in prayer.

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  • RELIGION

    Geoffrey Robertson's Catholicism for dummies

    • Paul Collins
    • 11 October 2010
    26 Comments

    Robertson may be a celebrity QC, but historian he is certainly not. He touts the notion that the Vatican is not a real state and that as a consequence Benedict XVI should not be granted immunity from prosecution for his alleged responsibility in covering up clerical sexual abuse.

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  • RELIGION

    A feminist's view of Mary MacKillop

    • Moira Rayner
    • 11 October 2010
    12 Comments

    Men's control over Christian women's religious lives has grown vastly over the centuries. Perhaps MacKillop might have agreed with Virginia Woolf, 'The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.'

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  • RELIGION

    'Divided' Anglicans dodge conflict

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 30 September 2010
    1 Comment

    The Australian Anglican Church is divided on questions of women's ordination, sexuality, lay presidency and liturgical texts. But the recent assembly in Melbourne was relatively polite, although the question of the conservative, evangelical Sydney Diocese's relationship with the rest was never far from the surface.

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