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Keywords: Sexual Abuse

  • RELIGION

    Clergy sex abuse blame game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 June 2011
    21 Comments

    The media said the US Catholic Bishops' John Jay report blamed the 1960s sexual revolution for church sex abuse. More significantly, it implied that the roots of the sexual abuse crisis instead lie in the shallow Catholic culture of earlier decades.

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  • RELIGION

    Trust at stake in Toowoomba

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 May 2011
    38 Comments

    The treatment of Bishop Bill Morris risks further blurring the image of the Church. The story told of a good man who encouraged his church, who was resolute in dealing with sexual abuse, but was removed in an untransparent process, will confirm many in their distrust of the Church.

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  • RELIGION

    Twelve Steps to healing an abusive Church

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 23 March 2011
    32 Comments

    I received a letter from a former student. Ten years ago, he had suddenly vanished without warning or further communication. Now he was about to reveal the reasons for his disappearance. It was the sort of story I had heard often before.

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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

    Fixing the priesthood

    • Michael Kelly
    • 20 February 2011
    41 Comments

    In earlier generations, Australian priests were treated as tribal heroes. But the sexual abuse scandals and their inept management by Church authorities have dealt lethal blows. The paradigm is broken and needs a full review.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Theology coloured by clergy sex abuse

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 10 February 2011

    Lay Catholic theologian Neil Ormerod's approach was strongly coloured in the early 1990s when he and his wife Thea became activists on behalf of survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Best of 2010: Arresting Mexico's borderland femicide

    • Ellena Savage
    • 13 January 2011
    2 Comments

    Some 5000 women have been killed in Juarez since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1994. Most are workers who have been tortured and sexually abused. Because of the boost to the economy associated with NAFTA, Mexican media outlets and academics often turn a blind eye. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Serious business for children

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 October 2010
    4 Comments

    The suffering of children opens a door into the hardness of society. Think about the experience of the Stolen Generations, the detention of asylum seeker children, the sexual abuse of children. Societies try to close doors that open on to vulnerability.

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  • RELIGION

    Patron Saint of abuse victims

    • James Martin
    • 13 October 2010
    3 Comments

    MacKillop can be properly seen be as someone drawn into the sexual abuse scandal a century before the rest of the Catholic Church was. As a result, she might be someone that victims and their families feel drawn to in prayer.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's feminist saint

    • Michael Mullins
    • 11 October 2010
    5 Comments

    Sexual abuse was part of the mix of challenges facing Mary MacKillop and her sisters, but it was only one of many elements of disfunction within the Church and society of the time. Historian Father Ed Campion has described MacKillop as 'a heroine to modern Australian feminists'.

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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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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Art prize tests religious convention

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 03 September 2010

    The annual Blake Prize for Religious Art has never been far from controversy. Works honoured this year include Sydney artist Rodney Pople’s Cardinal with Altar Boy, which is a provocative painting dealing with clergy sexual abuse. Its setting is the interior of a beautiful baroque church, and it portrays a headless prelate dressed in ecclesiastical finery, with an altar boy in his lap.

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