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Keywords: Secular

  • MEDIA

    Media matters for the good of the Church

    • Peter Donnan
    • 19 November 2020
    66 Comments

    Author Gideon Goosen estimates the percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia is 5 per cent or less. Given the passivity of the laity, his view is that reform proponents should seek to engage the 40 to 45 per cent who might change their thinking. What forums or media, with sufficient audience reach and influence, facilitate respectful discussion of change in the Catholic Church?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The reconquest of Hagia Sophia?

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 28 July 2020
    7 Comments

    Erdogan’s announcement in relation to the Hagia Sophia is one that is heavily influenced and panders to his Islamist sentiments and supporters. Hagia Sophia, often touted as the pinnacle of Byzantine church architecture and design, was reverted to a museum in 1935 by the founder of the modern Turkish republic, Kemal Ataturk. Altering its status to a mosque is clearly about propping up Erdogan’s Islamist credentials and base, which have slowly been eroding civil freedoms in the Turkish nation.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Felling statues raises deeper questions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 June 2020
    14 Comments

    The larger questions posed by the destruction of the statues, and indeed of reputations, that they symbolise, concern how to handle complexity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Caesar Act ushers in a new phase of suffering for Syrians

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 25 June 2020
    4 Comments

    America has lost the proxy war in Syria and is now looking at punishing ordinary Syrians for the actions of the Syrian government. The so called ‘Caesar Act’, officially known as the Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act, aims to cut off multilateral or direct commerce with Syria’s ruling Baath party, effectively inducing record inflation, poverty and market exclusion.

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  • RELIGION

    Easter as an enduring story of loss and hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 April 2020
    15 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of Easter this year will look more like Lent or Passion week. All Australians, too, will be without football, concerts, interstate and international travel and family gatherings. The atmosphere, too, will be one of constraint, not freedom. Instead of celebrating the present, we may be weighed down by fear and anxiety about the future. We are all captive to COVID-19.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Delhi's spirit resists divisive ideology

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 05 March 2020
    8 Comments

    The divisive and foreign Hindutva ideology goes against the culture and spirit of Delhi. Recently Modi’s party were trounced in local elections. Almost always the violence and hatred is caused by outsiders and resisted by the Dilli-walas.

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  • RELIGION

    Church governance needs to walk the walk

    • John Warhurst
    • 25 February 2020
    7 Comments

    Approaches to governance are in flux within church agencies, sectors, dioceses and at the national level, either driven by the demands of state regulations or in response to the challenging new situation the church finds itself in. There is so much change going on that it is difficult to follow.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Honours reflect our shifting values

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 February 2020
    7 Comments

    The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The sacred secular in China's 'Spring travel'

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 17 January 2020

    More than three billion single trips are taken during the extended period of travel. It is to China's great credit that these journeys occur incredibly smoothly, and on the whole with a convivial spirit. There is too often a tendency to minimise any praise about China's achievements, to the anger of Chinese citizens at home and abroad.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Coal hard truths about Australia-India relations

    • Sundhya Pahuja
    • 16 January 2020
    9 Comments

    It is ironic for those of us who have long wished for a closer and more respectful relationship between India and Australia to be arguing now for caution. But perhaps the time has come for a relationship of political solidarity between the people of India and the people of Australia, rather than the economic expediency that seems to be on offer.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The bushfires of the vanities

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 November 2019
    10 Comments

    The fact that they so easily turned their attention away from the lives of the people threatened by fire to brawling about their own virtues and lack of them offers little hope that the lives of Australians will count with them when they reflect on the causes and the proper response to the fires.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope answers policies that suffocate hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 September 2019
    10 Comments

    The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.

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