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I am bemused that whenever I agitate questions of Aboriginal and refugee rights I am well received by liberals, who then question my clerical entitlement to speak when I buy into debates on issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research. On same sex marriage, I am attacked from both sides.
In 2012, the settler people of Australia finally made their peace with their Indigenous brothers and sisters. With this came the discovery of what had been lost, what was missing, what needed to be restored. There was much work to be done and together they made a plan.
When we search in distant places for fulfillment and purpose, we can miss the value of the local experience. I recently spent time in Nganmarriyanga, a remote Indigenous community, where I was greeted by a child. 'This is the country of my mother,' she told me.
Dhurga is a dead language. At my school however it is taught to every student, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. A subject like this is quite radical in an education system that is heavily focused on churning out workers rather than thinkers.
Nine prime ministers have been observant Christians. Two have been conventional Christians. Ten have been nominal Christians. Five have been articulate atheists or agnostics. One was a nominal atheist or agnostic.
Prominent Aboriginal elder Tom Calma was brought up Catholic but no longer sees himself as a Christian. While he has gravitated towards his Aboriginal spiritual heritage, he envisions a positive engagement between Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality, and urges the Churches to be open to a hybrid Christianity that embraces both.
There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.
The annual Blake Prize for Religious Art has never been far from controversy. Works honoured this year include Sydney artist Rodney Pople’s Cardinal with Altar Boy, which is a provocative painting dealing with clergy sexual abuse. Its setting is the interior of a beautiful baroque church, and it portrays a headless prelate dressed in ecclesiastical finery, with an altar boy in his lap.
On his return to Europe after many years absence, Raimon Panikkar said: ‘I left as a Christian, I found myself a Hindu, and I return a Buddhist, without having ceased to be a Christian.' This statement of his own multiple religious belonging is just one of many challenging insights and ideas that he wrote about with passion and eloquence.
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