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Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Advancing human rights in Australia — lessons from the National Human Rights Consultation' at the 'Human Rights Matters!' conference marking Anti-Poverty Week 2012. 17 October 2012, Cardinal Knox Centre, St Patricks Cathedral, Melbourne.
'The common law leaves a gap between the mandates of the law and the conduct that we choose to engage in according to our individual moral standards. We call that gap 'freedom'. The challenge is determining the width of that gap for groups bound by religious faith which differs from the Australian majority.' Frank Brennan launches Carolyn Evans' Legal Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia. Full text
Donkeys are gorgeous but make an ugly sound. Sadly, religious discussion in Australia too often sounds like donkeys competing to see whose braying is the loudest and ugliest. Recently Christian lobbyists spread misinformed messages about sexual orientation. Loud braying was heard on Saturday too when a group of louts hijacked what should have been a peaceful Muslim protest.
Church groups in Australia have vigorously campaigned to protect themselves from particular equal opportunity laws. While there is agreement about a faith community's right to employ practising believers, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to how most prudently and charitably to exercise that right.
Most, if not all priests, would prefer to go to jail than disclose material from confession. The seal of the confessional is a red herring when it comes to protecting children. If confessional reporting were mandatory, chances are that the perpetrator would simply not come to confession.
Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg observed that ‘the oldest, deepest, most poisonous debate in Australia has been about government aid to church schools’. The most dramatic episode in the history of church state relations in Australia was the Goulburn schools strike, which took place 50 years ago this month.
In the shadow of the blockbuster Q&A and Global Atheist Convention was a poignant encounter between atheist broadcaster Philip Adams and Jesuit theologian Gerald O'Collins. The instant bond between the two may have a flipside in an affinity between fanatical atheists and fundamentalist religious believers.
Atheist Richard Dawkins' debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February was a gentlemanly affair. By contrast Dawkins' debate with Cardinal George Pell on the ABC's Q&A this week was billed as a 'title fight of belief'. As one comment on Twitter noted the next day, 'they both lost'.
In the south people love to compare Sydney and Melbourne Catholicism, as if there is no other. But no one does Catholicism quite as ecumenically, quite as incarnationally, and quite as laidback as in Queensland. There is something distinctive and admirable in it, and it is summed up in the life of Fr John Dobson.
Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Bringing the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel (John XXIII's half century challenge)' at the Catalyst for Renewal Dinner, Hunters Hill, 23 March 2012.
Even if the Parliament does legislate to expand the definition of marriage beyond its traditional meaning, there will be a constitutional challenge in the High Court. It would be a pity if those of us trying to contribute the strength of the Catholic tradition to the debate were simply characterised as homophobic naysayers.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address at the 'Ethics in a Multi Faith Society: Muslims and Christians in Dialogue' Conference, Conference under the auspices of the Fethullah Gulen Chair in the Study of Islam and Muslim-Catholic Relations, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, 23 November 2011.
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