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Keywords: Assembly

  • RELIGION

    Evaluating plenary: One journey ends, another begins

    • John Warhurst
    • 28 October 2021
    23 Comments

    Ten days after the conclusion of the first Assembly of the Plenary Council each member was sent an Evaluation Form to complete. As well as reflecting on our experience we were asked to consider how we would complete the phrase ‘It would have been good if…’. The authorities told us that our responses would help to plan the second Assembly. 

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  • RELIGION

    The careful choreography of plenary

    • Francis Sullivan
    • 25 October 2021
    32 Comments

    The First Assembly of the Fifth Plenary Council held few surprises. The program made sure of it. Proceedings were carefully choreographed and the agenda was deliberately anodyne. It took several days before participants found their feet. The upshot was a week devoid of strategic focus.

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  • RELIGION

    In a state of synodality

    • Brian Lucas
    • 21 October 2021
    32 Comments

    One takeaway from the First Assembly of the Plenary Council that might come as no surprise is that the controlling elite in the Church, the bishops, are not dependent on popular support. They are appointed not elected. They are generally irremovable. They come from a culture that is about preserving ‘the tradition’ (which can easily be expanded to include historical novelties that are not really part of the tradition). Moving into the new world of synodality brings obvious challenges.

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  • RELIGION

    Strapped in for the Plenary Council ride

    • John Warhurst
    • 26 August 2021
    25 Comments

    Those of us who are members of the Plenary Council are now strapped in for what looks likely to be an uncertain ride. Some members, having concluded their initial formal formation and training, are now meeting in officially organised discussion sessions to build up their preparation for the first assembly which is now just over a month away.  

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  • RELIGION

    The challenges of representing Catholic Australia

    • John Warhurst
    • 20 July 2021
    70 Comments

    The Plenary Council First Assembly is only two months away, but uncertainty still remains about the role that its 282 members will play. Not just about what work they will do but what conception of the role they will bring or will be imposed upon them by the authorities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rulers in crisis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 October 2020
    11 Comments

    In the choppy waters of public conversation, rulers have recently attracted much attention as they have bobbed along on its surface. This is not unusual, but in these months the attention has been more frenetic and perhaps harder to read. Whether it be Trump, Johnson, Andrews, Ardern, Berejiklian or Pope Francis, there have been unusual eddies about them that merit reflection.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Protecting our right to online freedoms

    • Marta Achler
    • 16 April 2020
    2 Comments

    The internet and the online spaces are indeed becoming our lifeline for expression and assembly. This lifeline is under threat and deserves much more protection than it currently has under international law. We now have an immediate opportunity to remedy that.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Walking together for a better future

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2018
    3 Comments

    Frank Brennan's keynote address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Assembly entitled: 'Strong Faith. Strong Youth. Strong Future — Walking Together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. 1 October 2018, Technology Park — Bentley, Perth

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The fight to make water a human right

    • Cristy Clark
    • 03 May 2018
    2 Comments

    In 2010, the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council recognised a human right to water, guaranteeing access for everyone to 'sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses'. Eight years on, it is past time that Australia incorporated this right into domestic law.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Can leadership change revive the UN?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 August 2016
    6 Comments

    The United Nations Security Council is in the process of selecting its next secretary-general. There is intense interest, not least because the General Assembly has made efforts to make it more transparent via an open nomination process and televised debates. The UN is seen in some parts as an edifice to bureaucratic ineptitude. But the internationalism that stitched the world back together after two calamitous wars has frayed. We need the UN as ballast against future instability.

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  • MEDIA

    My trip down the grubby tabloid rabbit hole

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 20 November 2015
    3 Comments

    The best thing I ever did was give up reading the Mail Online. I'd log on at the end of a long day for a dose of what I thought was harmless, digestible fun. But it wasn't long before this mental junk food started to bloat my mind. When Jennifer Garner and Halle Berry appeared before a committee at Sacramento's state assembly to press for the introduction of laws aimed at protecting children from the paparazzi, I realised I was engaging in a despicable act: the consumption of other people's private stories.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Freedom of expression for the rest of us

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 04 April 2014
    6 Comments

    How ironic that, even as Attorney General Brandis ensures the rights of 'bigots', the rest of us find our own rights under threat. Liberal state governments continue to roll out laws that affect the more marginalised and less privileged among us. Victoria's new 'anti-protest' laws and Queensland's 'anti-bikie' laws threaten public protest and assembly, which for most of us is how we exercise our freedom of expression.

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