Keywords: Clerical Sexual Abuse
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EDUCATION
- Frank Brennan
- 13 August 2013
1 Comment
'You are the first generation of Catholic educators who will not have members of religious orders or congregations present in any number at all in your staff rooms and in your classrooms. Thus the need for lay Catholic educators to cultivate their spirituality while also being attentive to the demands of Church and the Church hierarchy.' 6th International Conference on Catholic Educational Leadership, Sydney, 13 August 2013.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 25 July 2013
26 Comments
Robinson's recent book on the culture of the Catholic Church critiques the factors that have contributed to clerical sexual abuse of children. Robinson desires institutional changes, yet institutional changes are insufficient unless relationships and attitudes change. In this there is a happy conjunction between Robinson's project and the way of proceeding of Pope Francis.
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AUSTRALIA
One consequence of mandatory celibacy has been the creation of a priestly mystique: a notion that the priest is a man set apart. When bishops say that cover-ups were attempts to avoid 'scandal', they are really talking about their fear of what might happen if priests were no longer thought to be special.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 23 May 2013
2 Comments
Fr Frank Brennan's keynote address at the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Clergy Assembly, St Clement's, Gaylong, on 22 May 2013
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 14 March 2013
21 Comments
The new pope is a conservative, but as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he chose to live in a small apartment rather than the palatial bishop's residence. He failed to openly challenge Argentina's dictatorship of the late 1970s, but he regarded clericalism as a scourge that 'separates the people of God from salvation'.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 01 March 2013
37 Comments
There is a temptation to see justice, compassion and transparency as the obsessive concern of western liberals. They are much more universal than that; they are the contemporary, institutional rendition of gospel values. The unaccountable hiddenness of Vatican clericalism has reached its use-by date.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 February 2013
17 Comments
Like sex, scandals in governance attract an avid audience. So the master story of the papal election has become one of governance in disarray — of Vatican departments riven by ambition, scandal and acrimony. Even if the reports are not true, hearers begin to wonder who leaked them, and in whose interest.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 February 2013
25 Comments
When Joseph Ratzinger was elected many Catholics were surprised, some alarmed. They identified him with the stern disciplinary actions and doctrinal intransigence of the Congregation for the Defence of the Faith, and assumed he'd bring the same narrow focus to his leadership of the Church. The reality has been different.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 14 January 2013
57 Comments
It can't denied that the chief impetus for the creation of this royal commission has been the appalling record of concealment of abuse in Catholic institutions. If that record did not exist, the royal commission would not exist. And Catholics — especially bishops and major superiors — cannot evade this fact by complaining.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 22 October 2012
22 Comments
If the Catholic experience is any guide, the loss of trust in cycling will have lasting effects. Revelations of past drug taking and of official conniving will inhibit the regaining of trust. Measures taken to change the culture will long be viewed with scepticism. Public disdain is a cold environment to live in, but its air is healthy.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 24 September 2012
10 Comments
'Looking to the future, I want to focus on the role of the laity in the growing absence of priests. And I want to insist on the need for due process, transparency and respectful dealing within the Church.' Full text of Fr Frank Brennan SJ's presentation 'Looking Back and Looking Forward Over Church and Life on the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II' at the Spirituality in the Pub Goulburn Valley Annual Dinner, 21 September 2012.
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AUSTRALIA
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 31 August 2012
15 Comments
The post-war migration policy favoured single men as labour for the burgeoning heavy industries. By the mid-1950s thousands of lonely male migrants populated the cities, and many local women found them threatening. Like those women, Slutwalk participants defend their right to walk the streets wearing what they want without being harassed.
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