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Keywords: Catholi

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

  • AUSTRALIA

    A pro-life crossroads in Australian politics

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 15 June 2022
    6 Comments

    One would assume that the Victorian Liberal Party has looked at the numbers, and believes that religious conservatives no longer make up a significant proportion of their constituency. Certainly, the moral authority of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations has taken a battering in the state over the last decade, with many remaining openly hostile to religious perspectives. If the pro-life movement was ever a significant force in Australian politics, that’s no longer the case.

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  • EDUCATION

    Teal candidates and the Catholic vote

    • Chris Middleton
    • 23 May 2022
    7 Comments

    Perhaps the most dramatic individual result of the Federal election was that Menzies’s seat, Kooyong, has fallen to a Teal independent, Dr Monique Ryan. Xavier College sits in the Kooyong electorate, and Dr Ryan is a parent at the College. Dr Ryan proved to be an impressive candidate who ran as a good a local campaign as I have ever seen. It was marked by a strong engagement by many locals, and especially among professional women, and older residents.

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  • RELIGION

    Distinctive Catholic voices in the election campaign

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 April 2022
    22 Comments

    The Church must speak up to be relevant, but those who seek to ‘speak for the church’ must be brave. They risk exposing themselves to claims of bias unless they stick to a very narrow agenda and speak in extremely measured terms. Yet if they are too bland they risk being irrelevant to the sharp end of political debate and their intervention becomes little more than a symbolic ritual.   

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Distinguishing communities

    • Julian Butler
    • 22 March 2022
    4 Comments

    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

    Cancelling in church and society

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 February 2022
    44 Comments

    A local event in the United States Catholic Church has recently aroused interest in Australia. A Bishop declared to be invalid (non-existent and without effect) baptisms celebrated over twenty years by a priest of his diocese. As a result people baptised by the priest will have to be properly baptised. Although the issues raised by this event are specific to the Catholic Church it raises broader questions of how any group should respond to behaviour considered deviant.

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  • RELIGION

    The enigma of knowing

    • Gerry O'Neill
    • 17 February 2022
    13 Comments

    At a time when the Catholic Church is being invited to greater humility by the Plenary Council and greater synodality by Pope Francis it may be prudent to acknowledge both the richness and limitations of human knowing, especially when it comes to matters concerning ultimate reality. 

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  • RELIGION

    Open government for the Church

    • John Warhurst
    • 10 February 2022
    37 Comments

    The Church in Australia has taken a step towards greater transparency with the release by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) of its first ever Annual Report-this one for the 2020 year. This step is welcome, but there is more to be done. Synodality and co-responsibility presumes that those who are walking together have equal access to information upon which to discern the future of the Church at all levels. 

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  • RELIGION

    What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 27 January 2022
    31 Comments

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The case for basic, public values

    • Greg Craven
    • 25 January 2022
    53 Comments

    One reasonably could ask whether this is the moment to write a book about the potential of Catholic Social Theory to contribute to Australian politics and policy. After all, the Church is still struggling to come to terms with decades of child abuse, hardly a recommendation for social potential. We currently also are attempting to make sense of a Plenary that is both confused and confusing.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Best of 2021: The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 January 2022
    3 Comments

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2021: The careful choreography of plenary

    • Francis Sullivan
    • 04 January 2022
    14 Comments

    The First Assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council held few surprises. The program made sure of it. Proceedings were carefully choreographed and the agenda was deliberately anodyne. It took several days before participants found their feet. The upshot was a week devoid of strategic focus.

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