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Keywords: Christopher Hitchens

  • 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

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

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  • RELIGION

    Religion and Australian law

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 August 2011
    1 Comment

    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.

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  • RELIGION

    Churches and the Malaysian Solution

    • Frank Brennan
    • 19 July 2011
    12 Comments

    This is not a regional solution to a regional problem, but a bilateral attempt at solving an Australian problem. To stop the boats, one needs to engage in measures contrary to the Refugee Convention. Church groups can not endorse something they know to be either unworkable or immoral.

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  • RELIGION

    Religious groups and the Bill of Rights debate

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 July 2011

    Speech given by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the 'Law and Religion: Legal Regulation of Religious Groups, Organisations and Communities' Conference Dinner in Melbourne on 15 July 2011.

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  • RELIGION

    Human rights and Christian lawyers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 July 2011
    5 Comments

    When I appeared on Q&A with Christopher Hitchens, a young man asked whether we can 'ever hope to live in a truly secular society' while the religious continue to 'affect political discourse and decision making' on euthanasia, same-sex unions and abortion. Hitchens was simpaticao. I was dumbstruck.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drawing Julia Gillard

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 11 March 2011
    2 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Drawing Julia Gillard

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 11 March 2011

    Eureka Street's political cartoonist Fiona Katauskas says she became a cartoonist 'accidentally'. 'I'm bloody glad I did. Cartoonists are lucky folk indeed — able to take all their experiences, beliefs, bile and passion, wrap them in a metaphor and get their fingers inky in the process.'

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  • EDUCATION

    Germaine Greer's Catholic education

    • Gregory Day
    • 23 February 2011
    15 Comments

    In trying to convince my atheist goddaughter to embrace her Catholic schooling, I found an unlikely role model. I'd never thought of Greer as a chip off the old block of a convent education. Now I realised that that's exactly what she was.

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  • RELIGION

    Schooling for a more cohesive society

    • Frank Brennan
    • 19 March 2010
    4 Comments

    The challenges and opportunities are to fund equitably all networks in education and to ensure that robust morale and community engagement are hallmarks of all parts of the network, including state schools and emerging schools such as Muslim schools.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church as advocate in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 February 2010

    'Tonight I want to reflect in light of the National Human Rights Consultation how we as Church can do better in promoting justice for all in our land. Full text from Frank Brennan's 2010 McCosker Oration, 'The Church as Advocate in the Public Square: Lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation'.

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  • RELIGION

    Problems with Hitchens and Islam

    • Herman Roborgh
    • 09 October 2009
    3 Comments

    Modern atheists in the West and modernist Muslims in Islam are both abusing religion. Their discourse about God has been influenced by the popular demand for scientific empirical verification, and they have lost confidence in the ability of figurative language to open a way to truth.

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