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Keywords: Pope Benedict

  • Our man in the Vatican's inter-religious optimism

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 13 August 2010

    One of Australia's most eminent theologians, Redemptorist Anthony Kelly, believes that what currently feels like a global breakdown of beliefs and culture may actually be the beginnings of a breakthrough to new forms of belief.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Benedict's greed-free capitalism

    • Paul Oslington
    • 15 July 2010

    Some commentators have latched on to Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate as a new 'third way' between socialism and capitalism. This is a remarkably bad idea.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Bigot' gaffe jars with British presidential politics

    • Peter Scally
    • 30 April 2010
    8 Comments

    Gordon Brown's campaign has hit rock-bottom thanks to an inadvertent remark being whipped into a huge story by mischief-making reporters. He is to Tony Blair what Pope Benedict is to John Paul II — shy, serious, and a little too 'heavy' for our sound-bite culture.

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  • RELIGION

    Easter's image of compassion for abused and abusers

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 April 2010
    10 Comments

    It is appropriate to attend to the complex patterns of sin that are involved in abuse and its consequences. This kind of gaze resists the temptations to deny or to minimise the extent of sexual abuse and the harm done by it.

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  • RELIGION

    The apology Benedict should have given

    • Garry Eastman
    • 23 March 2010
    12 Comments

    Pope Benedict's letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland released this weekend is a watershed in the way the Church speaks on abuse committed by priests and religious. The Pope's letter would have been better received, not just in Ireland but throughout the world, if he had added a few extra paragraphs.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Best of 2009: Why green Catholics are not communists

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 08 January 2010
    3 Comments

    Many conservative Catholics are sceptical about global warming. For them environmentalism is the new communism. This echoes the paranoia of the '50s and '60s are clear, when anyone with an interest in social justice was suspect. September 2009

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  • RELIGION

    Pope's fighting words for a world in crisis

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 07 January 2010
    8 Comments

    In his World Day of Peace statement for 2010, the Pope again highlights the urgency of responding to climate change. Pope Benedict has had major problems in communicating this message, notably a lack of journalistic expertise to make his documents more readable.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope skips language of love in Anglicans manifesto

    • Charles Sherlock
    • 20 November 2009
    25 Comments

    Pope Benedict XVI's recent Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (‘Groups of Anglicans’) moves the pastoral openness of Vatican II towards a ‘Rome is right’ mentality. This is disturbing and dangerous, not only for Anglicans, but for Roman Catholics themselves.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Why green Catholics are not communists

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 04 September 2009
    20 Comments

    Many conservative Catholics are sceptical about global warming. For them environmentalism is the new communism. This echoes the paranoia of the '50s and '60s are clear, when anyone with an interest in social justice was suspect.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Pope's 'new anthropology' shoots for the moon

    • David Holdcroft
    • 17 August 2009
    7 Comments

    Reflections on the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing can help us understand the major themes of Pope Benedicts's social encyclical, and explain why many critics of this radical document have missed the point.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Patron saint of troublemakers

    • James Martin
    • 07 August 2009
    8 Comments

    In 1871 Mary MacKillop was excommunicated by her local bishop on the grounds that 'she had incited the sisters to disobedience and defiance'. The idea of a holy woman who had been at loggerheads with the hierarchy is not new in the annals of the saints.

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  • RELIGION

    The meddling priest and the Redfern prophet

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 July 2009
    9 Comments

    Last week, Pope Benedict gave Kevin Rudd a copy of his new encyclical Caritas in Veritate. Rudd gave the Pope a copy of the National Apology. I wonder what the radical Redfern priest Ted Kennedy would have made of this exchange of literary gifts.

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