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At one level a lot is riding on this Plenary Council. Only the fifth such Council in the Australian church history, there is a great sense of anticipation among a wide variety of groups: those estranged from the church, priests looking for direction, women bereft of opportunities to express their faith and seeking a look-in, parents of uninterested children, those ostracised from the church, as well as those not wanting any changes at all.
The Australian Government’s decision to buy nuclear-powered submarines has brought to the surface once again big questions around how governments should spend money, particularly during a pandemic. The Government has ditched a $90 billion plan for French submarines in favour of even more expensive boats from the United Kingdom or the United States.
The souring of relations with China is driven not just by prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers, or even by Cabinet. It is the product of converging interests with immense reach and influence.
The tertiary level is designed to promote change and innovation. If there is no tertiary level, there is no growth in our understanding of global religious systems, and no emerging individuals who possess critical thinking skills and historical knowledge of these systems. Without these individuals, there’s a risk that religious institutions will become more insular, regressive, disconnected and, most disastrously, unchecked.
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.
Before travelling to Iraq Pope Francis was criticised. The criticism bears reflection. It leads us to ask what weight we place on courage, a quality much discussed in antiquity.
The young in Myanmar have no personal memory of those events of 1988 and 2007. They are Generation Z, raised on the internet and with new ways of communicating. Their emotions overcome fear. Gen Z meets the deadly threat with humour and creative protest.
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.
Now, for a few days it seems something new is happening. Can we name it? Thousands, even millions of people have come to the streets in almost a hundred townships and cities across Myanmar. They reject the coup. The young have glimpsed a new light.
What will it take, I wonder, to change these people’s minds? In an era as politically divisive as the one Americans (and Australians, for that matter) are living through, nothing is likely to convince detractors that COVID is an omnipresent threat — except perhaps the only thing with tangible currency in this whole blasted catastrophe: the visceral consequences of the pandemic itself.
Author Gideon Goosen estimates the percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia is 5 per cent or less. Given the passivity of the laity, his view is that reform proponents should seek to engage the 40 to 45 per cent who might change their thinking. What forums or media, with sufficient audience reach and influence, facilitate respectful discussion of change in the Catholic Church?
Such a profound lack of action from our own government on an existential issue of this magnitude certainly doesn’t inspire hope. So when it comes to climate anxiety as a clinical issue, this is not only a risk factor, but also a barrier to treatment.
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