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Keywords: Pope Benedict

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Radical Benedict

    • Michael Mullins
    • 18 February 2013
    34 Comments

    Benedict's resignation makes him look like a radical in the tradition of Christian radicalism. He wrote that after examining his conscience, he concluded that he should resign because he was no longer adequate to exercise the Petrine ministry. This logic has implications for other conventions and rules such as priestly celibacy. 

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  • RELIGION

    A pope for hard seasons

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 18 February 2013
    27 Comments

    One of the major challenges facing the new pope will be to find creative and compassionate ways of addressing the issue of clergy sexual abuse. A proper response will require a change in heart and mind, to see the world through the eyes of the suffering and humiliated. Can we expect anything less from the next pope?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconciliation in Australia and East Timor

    • Mark Green
    • 14 February 2013
    4 Comments

    I was in Dili on Apology Day 2008, and wept as I listened on the radio to the Apology offered by Kevin Rudd. The previous year, I had arrived in Dili to take up a post with an aid and development program, and was accosted by a very angry young man. 'What are you doing here? Have you come to make us like your Aboriginal people?'

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  • RELIGION

    Ratzinger and Rowan Williams side by side

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 14 February 2013
    21 Comments

    Now that Williams has returned to academic life and Ratzinger has resigned, it is tempting to commit both their reigns to the category of failure, and debate mostly the nobility or otherwise of their inability to bend lurching structures or less gifted minds to their own wills. This would not, however, be the whole picture in either case.

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  • RELIGION

    Resignation of a teacher-Pope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 February 2013
    25 Comments

    When Joseph Ratzinger was elected many Catholics were surprised, some alarmed. They identified him with the stern disciplinary actions and doctrinal intransigence of the Congregation for the Defence of the Faith, and assumed he'd bring the same narrow focus to his leadership of the Church. The reality has been different. 

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  • MEDIA

    Pope sweet on tweets

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 January 2013
    10 Comments

    When the Pope speaks on social media the casual reader might expect to hear the musings of an old man out of touch and out of sympathy with modern technology. If so, Pope Benedict's recent statement for World Media Day may come as a surprise. He pays little attention to risks, focusing on possibilities.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The media and the vulnerable in 2012

    • Michael Mullins
    • 17 December 2012
    3 Comments

    Browsing the highlights and lowlights of the year, media treatment of vulnerable people has been a constant. The regrettable circumstances surrounding the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha come to mind, but there are surprising moments when journalists have distinguished themselves with investigative reporting for the common good.

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  • RELIGION

    The Church is not beyond reproach

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 November 2012
    1 Comment

    'Might not the chief problem with Church language in the public square be that we tend to come from a position of moral superiority, approaching those dreadfully compromised politicians who will do anything to be elected? The abuse crisis reminds us that the Church is not irreproachable.' Text from Fr Frank Brennan's presentation at the Anglican Church of Australia's Public Affairs Commission Conference, November 2012.

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  • RELIGION

    Why the Church should thank the media

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 15 November 2012
    52 Comments

    Cardinal Pell argued this week that the Church has been unfairly vilified by the media. But the media has done the Church a favour in bringing this issue to light. Until the Church can provide a proper account of its misdeeds and point to real commitments to victims, the attacks will justifiably continue.

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  • RELIGION

    Church needs state help to deal with abuse

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 November 2012
    36 Comments

    What is to be done in the name of law and justice for the victims of abuse? Clearly the Church cannot be left alone to get its house in order. The State may have a role to play, but our elected politicians need assistance from lawyers committed to justice, not lawyers acting primarily to protect or condemn the Church.

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  • RELIGION

    Law and justice for abuse victims, Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2012

    'Even without the political static which is drowning us all out down there in Canberra, there is real doubt whether the Gillard bluff 'Don't get on a boat because you might end up in Nauru' can do what the Howard bluff could not deliver.' Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's Law and Justice Oration at the Law and Justice Foundation 2012 Justice Awards Dinner, Parliament House, Sydney.

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  • RELIGION

    An Anglican view of Vatican II

    • Charles Sherlock
    • 11 October 2012
    15 Comments

    My only contact with Catholics prior to 1963 was avoiding the local Catholic school when walking home, for fear of having stones thrown at me, in my state primary school uniform — sadly, some state schoolers did likewise to Catholic students. I remember it as a parable of pre-Vatican II Catholic-Protestant relationships in Australia.

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