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Keywords: Clergy Sexual Abuse

  • RELIGION

    Sexual abuse summit: naive no more

    • Tracey Edstein
    • 18 February 2019
    28 Comments

    My hope is that the summit will recognise that the hierarchical nature of the institutional church, and its corollary, clericalism, is the biggest stumbling block to making the church not merely a safe place for all, but the welcoming, compassionate, open community it is intended to be.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaping the Pope's sexual abuse summit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 February 2019
    33 Comments

    This week the presidents of bishops conferences and representatives of religious congregations around the world will meet in Rome to reflect on responses to the sexual abuse of children To understand and evaluate the meeting, we should keep in mind its background and the different groups that have a particular interest in it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cultural change beyond royal commissions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 January 2019
    17 Comments

    Experience suggests that royal commissions disclose only a fraction of unacceptable behaviour committed, and that the cultural attitudes that entrench it outlast the proposed reforms. The reasons for their comparative ineffectiveness can be illuminated by reflection on reforms of the 19th century.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Confidentiality, Confession and the law

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 December 2018
    15 Comments

    Victoria's government has promised legislation to force religious ministers to report information about child sexual abuse received in Confession, and called a royal commission after revelations a lawyer breached the professional duty of confidentiality to clients. The implications of these breaches of confidentiality deserve reflection.

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  • RELIGION

    Church reform scorecard

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 December 2018
    53 Comments

    Scoring the performance of the Australian church is a complex task at any time. Dioceses and congregations vary enormously. The mission of church agencies continues unabated in education, health, social services and aged care. But by any measure 2018 has been a big year.

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  • RELIGION

    Philip Wilson's dead letter day

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 December 2018
    41 Comments

    The show trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson has backfired badly causing hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame. Section 316 of the New South Wales Crimes Act is a dead letter and it causes nothing but trouble to everyone involved.

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  • RELIGION

    What it will take to prove the Church gets it

    • John Warhurst
    • 02 September 2018
    47 Comments

    The question of the seal is seen as proof that the church leadership is still resisting the royal commission recommendations. That impression can only be allayed if the church's record in a decade's time can be shown to be impeccable in responding to the other 98 per cent. Already 98 per cent has been shown to be a rubbery figure.

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  • RELIGION

    Child abuse and the church, media and police

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2018
    23 Comments

    When the law and the media do their job competently, we can work together to ensure that children are safe and that initiatives such as the national redress scheme deliver truth, justice and healing for all. Once they join a populist movement without regard to the important role they play in ensuring that truth and justice are done, all society is in trouble.

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  • RELIGION

    Past is present for the Catholic Church

    • Jim McDermott
    • 31 August 2018
    19 Comments

    The Annabel Crabb-led Back in Time for Dinner has some perhaps inadvertent lessons for society — and for the Catholic Church. Amid the frothy wonder of it all come unexpected moments of pain and dislocation. We are always in the process of seeing and becoming.

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  • RELIGION

    Policy vs penance amid US church crisis

    • Jim McDermott
    • 21 August 2018
    22 Comments

    The idea of some sort of communal action by bishops does speak to the deepest desire of many if not most US Catholics: that leaders of the US Church might finally take responsibility for their actions, and demonstrate that the pastoral needs of their people and the Church are more important than their own status or position.

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  • RELIGION

    Circumscribing the seal of the confessional

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 August 2018
    31 Comments

    There is no way I would want to defend a seal of the confessional so widely drawn as that defined by Archbishop Anthony Fisher. However, I do think there is a case for respecting the seal of the confessional tightly defined as done by the canonist Fr Ian Waters. But to do that, the Church would need to get its act together.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic lobby the insider outsider

    • John Warhurst
    • 17 August 2018
    8 Comments

    Political insiders are those forces that use economic clout, political connections, extensive networks and reliable access to decision-makers to influence political outcomes. Outsiders, by definition, lack these characteristics. The Catholic lobby now doubts its own strength and influence. The education sector is a good example.

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