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Keywords: Churches

  • RELIGION

    Easter as an enduring story of loss and hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 April 2020
    15 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of Easter this year will look more like Lent or Passion week. All Australians, too, will be without football, concerts, interstate and international travel and family gatherings. The atmosphere, too, will be one of constraint, not freedom. Instead of celebrating the present, we may be weighed down by fear and anxiety about the future. We are all captive to COVID-19.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Honours reflect our shifting values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 February 2020
    7 Comments

    The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My seasons among the homeless

    • Barry Gittins
    • 19 July 2019
    7 Comments

    The regulations these guys have to abide by — the behavioural hoops they need to navigate — are designed to protect them, the volunteers and the property of the host churches. It is an ethical dilemma, the ceding of normally inviolate personal freedoms for the use of the facilities. I don't know how I would feel about it if I was in their shoes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Game on: pollies, follies and lollies

    • John Warhurst
    • 03 April 2019
    5 Comments

    The next month will be full of sugar-hits and sweeteners, whether they be personal tax cuts, grants or special deals for organised interests. Every candidate and party is guilty of this in their scramble to win. Citizens are complicit too if their main concern is 'what's in it for me'. Churches play the game as much as any pressure group.

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  • RELIGION

    A survivor's take on the Pell verdict

    • Victim #6, abuse survivor
    • 05 March 2019
    23 Comments

    Apparently there are committees deep within Church institutions that secretly work on tightening up, amending and making standards for their schools and churches to follow. I can guarantee there wouldn't be one abuse survivor on any of these committees.

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  • RELIGION

    When religious language turns public

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 August 2018
    10 Comments

    When conversation in a community is restricted to the public language of broader society, its power to engage community members is diminished. That has happened in the development of a theology of religions within Christian churches. It often emphasises themes that unite religions and are less specifically and distinctively Christian.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic churches confront housing crisis

    • Claire-Anne Willis and Denis Fitzgerald
    • 20 July 2018
    4 Comments

    The demand for social housing and the substantial Church investment in land means that housing should remain a significant priority of the Catholic Church in Australia. It is an injustice for some to have more than enough while others lack bare necessities. Compassionate and fair leadership needs to drive social change.

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  • RELIGION

    Accountability a virtue in churches and banks

    • John Warhurst
    • 22 May 2018
    33 Comments

    General apologies don't go far enough. Compensation is necessary, but also not enough. The reputation of the church would now be higher if there were more obvious signals of accountability by those in charge. The offer of resignation made as a group to Pope Francis by the entire Chilean hierarchy is a breath of fresh air.

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  • RELIGION

    Subverting idolatry in churches and banks

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 May 2018
    31 Comments

    The banking royal commission has already come to resemble the earlier child abuse royal commission. To observers who share a personal and public-spirited interest in the decent functioning of institutions, the similarities invite reflection on why two apparently different forms of institution should behave in such similar ways.

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  • RELIGION

    Steve Smith and David Warner at Easter

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 April 2018
    2 Comments

    'What would it mean for any of us to be wishing Steve Smith and David Warner a happy and blessed Easter?' Easter Homily by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the churches of Adamaniby and Nimmitabel, Easter 2018.

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  • RELIGION

    Rising from the ruins of 2010 Mass translation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 February 2018
    46 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of liturgy is always contentious. Fr Gerald O'Collins' latest book deals with a relatively small and domestic issue: the ingeniously engineered launch and spluttering subsidence of a revised English Catholic Mass translation. Though small, the events carry a large symbolic weight.

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  • RELIGION

    Churches and charities caught in foreign influence net

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 February 2018
    14 Comments

    Keeping foreign billionaires and foreign governments out of Australia's elections can be done without keeping churches and charities out of routine advocacy for the poor and marginalised.

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