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Section: Religion

  • RELIGION

    Schooling for a more cohesive society

    • Frank Brennan
    • 19 March 2010
    4 Comments

    The challenges and opportunities are to fund equitably all networks in education and to ensure that robust morale and community engagement are hallmarks of all parts of the network, including state schools and emerging schools such as Muslim schools.

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  • RELIGION

    Reading Nigeria's Christian-Muslim violence

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 March 2010
    12 Comments

    Recently over 500 Catholics died at the hands of a Muslim mob in Northern Nigeria. It would be easy to understand the killings as an expression of a wider Muslim intolerance of Christians and miss the subtle interplay of religious faith, tribal loyalties, and traditional religion and group identity.

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  • RELIGION

    Empathy for Irish priests

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 17 March 2010
    26 Comments

    In Ireland, the attitude of locals to the Murphy and Ryan reports into child abuse in Catholic institutions is commonly anger at the apparent obfuscation by Church leaders. This St Patrick's Day, spare a thought for the ordinary priest in modern Dublin.

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  • RELIGION

    Hype undermines atheists' mission

    • Tim Roberts
    • 12 March 2010
    31 Comments

    An ego-driven, take-no-prisoners approach dooms atheism to remain an exclusive club. Only by forming alliances with the moderate religious community will atheists be able to preserve the elements of society they value most, such as freedom of enquiry and the separation of Church and State.

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  • RELIGION

    Conversations with atheists

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 March 2010
    35 Comments

    Australia's first Global Atheist Convention will feature such speakers as Richard Dawkins, Philip Adams and Peter Singer. I look forward to it with the same tempered gloom that would descend upon me if a convention of Christian evangelists came to town.

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  • RELIGION

    Uighurs failed by Cambodia's sham refugee law

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 March 2010
    6 Comments

    In June last year a solitary Uighur from Xinjiang province arrived in Phnom Penh seeking asylum. On 18 December he and 21 other Uighur asylum seekers were praying when Cambodian police entered their safe house and abducted them at gunpoint.

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  • RELIGION

    Liturgical payback

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 25 February 2010
    33 Comments

    It's unlikely people will flock back to mass simply because a new translation is in place. Far more likely is that, as with the change at Vatican II, there will be a disaffected minority who cease to practice because their experience of the sacred has been violated.

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  • RELIGION

    Tony Abbott, the poor and Jesus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 February 2010
    30 Comments

    Expressing scepticism about the value of politicians committing to healing social problems, Abbott quoted Jesus: 'The poor you have with you always'. This phrase, used here to diffuse the claim the poor make on us, is much richer in meaning when read in context.

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  • RELIGION

    What is Christianity

    • Peter Vardy
    • 12 February 2010
    6 Comments

    Some Protestants question whether Catholics are Christians. Some Catholics say there is no salvation outside their Church. Identifiying the essentials of Christianity matters in today's post-Christian society, where young Westerners are bored with Christianity and they feel that they have moved beyond it.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church as advocate in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 February 2010

    'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.

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  • RELIGION

    Martyrdom and other revolutionary miracles

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 February 2010
    12 Comments

    Reports regarding Mary MacKillop's miracles have provoked the ire of those who see miracles as evidence of the irrational character of religious faith. Another angle on this debate may be found in an apparent oddity in the processes of saint making.

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  • RELIGION

    Toothless, Trojan or true to Trinitarian anthropology

    • Frank Brennan
    • 28 January 2010
    1 Comment

    The full text of Frank Brennan's January 2010 address to the Australian Association of Catholic Bioethicists, 'Toothless, Trojan or True to Trinitarian Anthropology? Reflecting on the 2009 National Human Rights Consultation'. 

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