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Keywords: Secularism

  • AUSTRALIA

    After Christianity, what is Australia's civil religion?

    • Michael Jensen
    • 19 January 2024
    4 Comments

    In contrast to the United States, we in Australia ‘don’t do God’, and we rarely acknowledge the religious dimension of our national identity. In an age of declining adherence to the Christian faith, has Australia found a new civil religion? And will it serve us well? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Listen – just listen!

    • Brian McCoy
    • 30 August 2023
    16 Comments

    The Kimberley region stands as a testament to both the enduring spirit of Australia's Aboriginal communities and the shadows of colonisation. As the Referendum looms, the potential for a united Voice beckons, inviting Australia towards a harmonious future.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Existential church-state hospital crisis

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 June 2023
    25 Comments

    Amidst escalating tensions, the ACT government's move to acquire Calvary Public Hospital is facing strong backlash from the church. With claims of hasty decision-making and allegations of anti-religion bias dominating the discourse, this crisis highlights the societal shift towards secularism and questions the role of religious entities in managing public services.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic, female and struggling: Survey reveals women's desire for Church reform

    • David Halliday
    • 17 March 2023
    8 Comments

    Over 17,000 women worldwide have called for Church reform in a newly published survey by Catholic Women Speak Network. Respondents from 104 countries expressed dissatisfaction with a lack of transparency in governance and voiced the need to be seen, heard and valued. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    New heresy: In conversation with Richard Dawkins

    • David Halliday, Juliette Hughes
    • 03 March 2023
    2 Comments

    In the world of science and rational inquiry, few names loom as large. The often-controversial evolutionary biologist has spent decades exploring the mysteries of the natural world and ruffling feathers in religious and secular movements alike. Speaking to Eureka Street, Richard Dawkins discusses the difficulties in public discourse and what constitutes modern heresy.  

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  • RELIGION

    What is a welcoming church?

    • Paul Collins
    • 20 September 2022
    5 Comments

    The word ‘Catholic’ is derived from the Greek Καθολικός (katholikos) meaning universal, of the whole, and the entire tradition is the very opposite of sectarian, particularist, narrow. It is most truly itself when it’s embracing and inclusive.

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  • RELIGION

    Roe vs Wade: The Bishops’ dilemma

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 26 May 2022
    5 Comments

    News leaked earlier this month that the US Supreme Court plans to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision has attracted much criticism both in the past and now on account of its dubious legal reasoning – in particular, its attempt to link the right to abort to a right to privacy which itself was notional and not specified in the US Constitution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Public faith and Perrottet

    • Julian Butler
    • 01 November 2021
    15 Comments

    The elevation of Dominic Perrottet to the Premiership of New South Wales caused a flurry of commentary about his religious faith. In many parts of the media his politics and personality were framed by his Catholicism. I watched on with a degree of discomfort, and with a sense of possibility. Could some of the bigoted characterisations invite a richer conversation about the ideals and deeper narratives that enliven our public leaders?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Delhi's spirit resists divisive ideology

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 05 March 2020
    8 Comments

    The divisive and foreign Hindutva ideology goes against the culture and spirit of Delhi. Recently Modi’s party were trounced in local elections. Almost always the violence and hatred is caused by outsiders and resisted by the Dilli-walas.

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  • RELIGION

    Freedom from the tyranny of doing

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 06 February 2018
    12 Comments

    The human brain has always needed silence, and there have always been people who needed solitude, at least for certain periods. In 1948 war hero and adventurer Patrick Leigh Fermor retreated to a French monastery simply in order to write. But the experience of silence was an unexpected bonus.

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  • RELIGION

    Demystifying 'God's Rottweiler'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 February 2017
    18 Comments

    The inflated image I once had of Cardinal Ratzinger, and that many Catholics have of cardinals and other authority figures, was shaped by fear. Fear hands over to the human beings behind the image a power they do not possess. Conversations always turn to them and inhibit the free and constructive living of faith. In helping to demystify such images Last Testament, the autobiography (written with Peter Seewald) of Pope Benedict XVI, serves us well.

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  • RELIGION

    Discerning the place for the churches in the great moral questions of the age

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 November 2015
    2 Comments

    'The crisis of child sexual abuse in our societies has required that our institutional procedures be more transparent and that we learn from the ways of the world in exercising power openly and justly. This means we have to restructure some of our church arrangements so that power is exercised accountably and transparently. All of us who have positions of influence and power in institutional churches need to be attentive to the voices of those who have suffered within our institutions.' 'Discerning the place for the prophetic voice and pragmatic cooperation of the churches in the great moral questions of the age', address to the Association of Practical Theology in Oceania conference, 26 November 2015.

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