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Keywords: Celibacy

  • INTERNATIONAL

    An uneasy conversation with Michael Kirby

    • Gordon Preece
    • 25 June 2012
    71 Comments

    The homosexuality debate in church and society is an uneasy and often destructive conversation that should not be entered into lightly. Both sides thus need to beware: ‘Conservatives’ if they slip from opposing homosexual acts to opposing homosexual people. The ‘liberals’ for frankly writing, as Michael Kirby admits, ‘very easy pieces’. Well before Malcolm Fraser, Jesus said (Christian) ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. Kirby, and the FUP authors, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, are cheapening grace.

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  • RELIGION

    The call to celibacy

    • B. F. Moloney
    • 18 April 2012
    25 Comments

    The man becomes priest upon taking his vows of celibacy. He is no longer a man who would work and care for family, enjoy his leisure and be father to his children. In his robes and vestments he is for the flock, but not of them. What can the church offer a man or a woman who chooses celibacy?

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  • RELIGION

    What difference does it make now that Mary MacKillop is a saint?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 October 2011

    Mary visited Rome as a young religious woman when she was being persecuted by local bishops for being too independent. She got a good hearing from the Pope and great assistance from Fr Anderledy who became the Superior General of the Jesuits. If only Bishop Bill Morris could have received the same sympathetic hearing.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope's theory on clergy sex abuse

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 June 2011
    33 Comments

    Benedict uses large theoretical constructs to reflect on the condition of Western societies and the Church. This can simplify complex realities and provide a focus for reflection and conversation. But the weaknesses of this approach are revealed when he blames bad moral theory for sexual abuse by the clergy.

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  • RELIGION

    Clergy sex abuse blame game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 June 2011
    21 Comments

    The media said the US Catholic Bishops' John Jay report blamed the 1960s sexual revolution for church sex abuse. More significantly, it implied that the roots of the sexual abuse crisis instead lie in the shallow Catholic culture of earlier decades.

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  • RELIGION

    Twelve Steps to healing an abusive Church

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 23 March 2011
    32 Comments

    I received a letter from a former student. Ten years ago, he had suddenly vanished without warning or further communication. Now he was about to reveal the reasons for his disappearance. It was the sort of story I had heard often before.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Troublesome nun's faith and feminism

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 22 October 2010
    6 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Troublesome nun's faith and feminism

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 22 October 2010

    Like Mary MacKillop before her, Sandra Schneiders is fearless in calling the male Church hierarchy to account. She warns of the dangers for the Church in seeing itself above and separate from the world.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic Church needs total reform

    • Pat Power
    • 23 April 2010
    81 Comments

    The crisis facing the Church arising out of sexual abuse is arguably the most serious challenge it has faced since the Reformation. Issues such as authoritarianism, compulsory celibacy, the participation of women and the teaching on sexuality cannot be brushed aside.

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  • RELIGION

    Easter's image of compassion for abused and abusers

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 April 2010
    10 Comments

    It is appropriate to attend to the complex patterns of sin that are involved in abuse and its consequences. This kind of gaze resists the temptations to deny or to minimise the extent of sexual abuse and the harm done by it.

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  • RELIGION

    The apology Benedict should have given

    • Garry Eastman
    • 23 March 2010
    12 Comments

    Pope Benedict's letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland released this weekend is a watershed in the way the Church speaks on abuse committed by priests and religious. The Pope's letter would have been better received, not just in Ireland but throughout the world, if he had added a few extra paragraphs.

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  • RELIGION

    Mixed blessings on Anglican road to Rome

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 23 October 2009
    22 Comments

    Liberal Roman Catholics have particular reason to be perturbed at the influx of ex-Anglicans driven not by ecumenical zeal, but by dogged adherence to positions on women's ordination or human sexuality which bespeak a broader conservatism.

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