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Keywords: Paul Collins

  • RELIGION

    Jury still out on Francis the game-changer

    • Paul Collins
    • 13 March 2014
    12 Comments

    The greatest danger is that we expect too much from Francis. He brings a new perspective that has little to do with the preoccupations of the developed world. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that he is a closet progressive. The other danger is that he could turn out to be all show and no substance. His 'Gang of Eight' has not even begun to address the diabolically difficult problems embedded in reforming the curial structures of the Vatican.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate change and Australia's weather on steroids

    • Paul Collins
    • 04 February 2013
    38 Comments

    Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said that, coming from Australia where climate change denial 'fills the air', he finds it significant that world leaders see climate change as the world's most important concern, even more than the economy. Recent extreme weather events, including the floods in Queensland, are symptoms of long-term climate change.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate view from a nation doomed to drown

    • Paul Collins
    • 14 December 2012
    15 Comments

    Kiribati, situated in the central Pacific Ocean and home to 101,998 people — more than half of them Catholic — will be the first country to be drowned by global warming. While we wring our hands and climate sceptics pretend there is no problem, on Kiribati people are already in the midst of a climate change disaster. 

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  • RELIGION

    The truth about the Vatican's money

    • Paul Collins
    • 15 August 2012
    35 Comments

    People often talk about the 'enormous wealth of the Vatican'. Some think the Vatican owns all the Church's worldwide real estate, others that all that art could be sold for the poor, others that the Vatican is corrupt and busy laundering vast sums of Mafia money through the 'Vatican Bank'. Now for the first time we have some hard facts.

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  • EDUCATION

    Thought under threat at Australia's universities

    • Paul Collins
    • 23 May 2012
    27 Comments

    The Australian National University vice-chancellor's proposal to asset-strip Canberra's School of Music prompted the biggest university demonstration in 30 years. ANU isn't the only uni in financial stress, thanks to successive governments' under-funding of tertiary education and user-pays attitude.

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  • MEDIA

    The commercialisation of the ABC

    • Paul Collins
    • 05 August 2011
    22 Comments

    Increasingly the ABC is 'outsourcing' material to commercial production companies. Interest group Friends of the ABC describes this as 'privatisation by stealth' and is calling for a public inquiry. All who value the ABC and its role as a public broadcaster need to support this call.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Paul Collins and the Vatican

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 07 April 2011
    6 Comments

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Paul Collins and the Vatican

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 07 April 2011

    In 2001 Collins resigned from priestly ministry because of a dispute with the Vatican over his book Papal Power. In the interview he discusses his views on the Church and its governance, as well as eco-theology.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Priests, sex and the media

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2011
    13 Comments

    Media coverage of the Church usually assumes priests form a homogeneous and disciplined body whose uniformity derives from fear of authority. Priests are more like franchisees than employees, independent and always ready to grumble. This does not amount to disaffection.

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  • RELIGION

    Australian Catholics facing disaster

    • Paul Collins
    • 03 March 2011
    46 Comments

    The troubles facing Australian Catholicism have been documented in a new report. When people focus on this most think of sexual abuse. In fact this is more a symptom than the actual core of the problem. 

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  • RELIGION

    'Sheila' MacKillop boosts Catholic brand

    • Paul Collins
    • 19 November 2010
    9 Comments

    This week it was reported that the canonisation of Mary MacKillop boosted enquiries at Australia's Catholic Enquiry Centre by 63 per cent in the past year. The saturation media coverage of the event suggests the Church may not be as much 'on the nose' as is popularly thought.

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  • RELIGION

    Geoffrey Robertson's Catholicism for dummies

    • Paul Collins
    • 11 October 2010
    26 Comments

    Robertson may be a celebrity QC, but historian he is certainly not. He touts the notion that the Vatican is not a real state and that as a consequence Benedict XVI should not be granted immunity from prosecution for his alleged responsibility in covering up clerical sexual abuse.

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