Keywords: Royal Commission
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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RELIGION
- Tracy McEwan, Patricia Gemmell
- 06 October 2021
15 Comments
Annabel Crabb’s ABC TV documentary series Ms Represented had us gasping, laughing and raging all at once. The series struck an achingly familiar chord as women from different political parties and generations voiced their common experience of sexism and misogyny in Australia’s parliament, elucidating just how hard it is for women to have a voice at the table in Australian institutions of power.
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RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 05 October 2021
13 Comments
As a result of the pandemic, like other religious observances, the availability of the Sacrament of Penance has been drastically curtailed, and it is unlikely that recourse to the sacrament will be as frequent as previously even when the restrictions are lifted. Further, the confidence of the laity in the inviolability of the seal has, understandably, been undermined, a consequence of which may again be that recourse to the sacrament will be in decline.
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RELIGION
- Nimmi Candappa
- 30 September 2021
19 Comments
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.
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AUSTRALIA
- Vincent Long Van Nguyen
- 28 September 2021
12 Comments
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.
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RELIGION
- Gideon Goosen
- 23 September 2021
40 Comments
The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse identified clericalism as a significant contributor to abuse across religious institutions Australia-wide. Clericalism is rooted in a theological belief that the clergy are different to the laity, having undergone an ‘ontological change’ at ordination, and feeds the notion that the clergy may not be challenged. And according to the report, the culture of clericalism is on the rise in seminaries in Australia.
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RELIGION
One might submit that a Plenary Council is a cumbersome instrument to ascertain the genuinely representative views of the Catholic Church in Australia. Many of the canonical strictures regarding the membership, agenda and process of the Council will dampen the original enthusiasm for the Council that provoked over 17,500 submissions.
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AUSTRALIA
- Celeste Liddle
- 12 August 2021
9 Comments
Across the Pacific Ocean, in Canada or ‘Turtle Island’ as it is also known by many of its Indigenous inhabitants, a horror has been unfolding. It started at a the former residential school in Kamloops, British Colombia where, via the use of ground penetrating radar technology, the remains of at least 215 Native Canadian children were found buried in mass unmarked gravesites. This school ran for 85 years, was part of compulsory government programs to forcibly assimilate these children, and was administered by the Catholic Church.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 12 August 2021
66 Comments
Among Australian Catholics the Plenary Council and the preparations for the Synod in Rome on Synodality have aroused hope and stirred scepticism. It is clear that a Church diminishing in numbers of participants in its public life and in its financial resources, and discouraged by the extent of child abuse by its officers, must find new ways. But that the processes of the Council and the Synod will spark fresh energy for change is not a given.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 July 2021
9 Comments
The tidal movement from treating children as persons each with their own dignity, and worthy of respect and of encouragement to a good future, to treating them as adult and incorrigible criminals worthy only of punishment is both irrational and injurious of society as well as of the children themselves. Yet it is deeply rooted in the mindset of all Australian Governments.
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AUSTRALIA
- Celeste Liddle
- 15 June 2021
9 Comments
Those two little boys turn ten this year, reaching a milestone most Australians celebrate simply as reaching 'double figures'. Yet with these double figures comes a new threat most Australians aren’t aware of: they will also reach the age of criminal responsibility.
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AUSTRALIA
In legislatures around Australia at present euthanasia is a staple item. It is vital that euthanasia legislation ought to balance the liberty of the invulnerable against the safeguarding of the vulnerable, especially the elderly and people with disabilities.
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AUSTRALIA
The Prime Minister has recently denounced ‘the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics‘. In doing so, he raises a number of important questions. The claim of ‘commodification’ of human beings and their relations is a powerful one.
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