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Keywords: Truth Justice And Healing Council

  • RELIGION

    New horizons for justice and solidarity

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 September 2018

    As leaders like Gough Whitlam and Patrick Dodson have attested, if we are to imagine and strive towards New Horizons for Justice and Solidarity, we need conviction, perseverance, capacity for compromise, relationships of trust, humour.

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  • RELIGION

    Child abuse and the church, media and police

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2018
    23 Comments

    When the law and the media do their job competently, we can work together to ensure that children are safe and that initiatives such as the national redress scheme deliver truth, justice and healing for all. Once they join a populist movement without regard to the important role they play in ensuring that truth and justice are done, all society is in trouble.

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  • RELIGION

    Prayers for Peter Creigh and Philip Wilson

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 July 2018
    4 Comments

    I can personally attest that Philip Wilson has been one of the good shepherds in recent years when dealing with the plague of child sexual abuse. But as a young priest in Maitland-Newcastle back in the 1970s, it turns out that he heard things that make you feel sick in the stomach and tormented in the head all these years later.

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  • RELIGION

    Leading in diverse times

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 July 2018
    3 Comments

    'Kristina Keneally was unapologetic in putting the place of women in our church front and centre. And so we should.' Tropical and Topical, 2018 National Catholic Principals' Conference, Cairns Convention Centre, 16 July 2018.

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  • RELIGION

    Mud-wrestling the Catholic elephant

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 April 2018
    26 Comments

    The size and complexity of the church has bedevilled the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Church reformers face the same dilemma. The church is big and slippery, with numerous opportunities to engage but equally numerous veto points and dead-ends when it comes to getting action.

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  • RELIGION

    Francis Sullivan: Reform and renewal after Royal Commission

    • Fatima Measham
    • 24 January 2018
    19 Comments

    Fatima Measham speaks with Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, to reflect on the journey since the Royal Commission was first announced in November 2012 and to consider what are the next steps for the Church.

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  • PODCAST

    Francis Sullivan on the Royal Commission aftermath

    • Podcast
    • 24 January 2018
    3 Comments

    The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has concluded. What lies ahead now for the Catholic Church? Francis Sullivan, CEO of the Truth Justice and Healing Council, talks about what the process has been like, and the unease among ordinary Catholics that church leaders still don't get it.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholic citizens needed within the Church

    • John Warhurst
    • 23 May 2017
    54 Comments

    Catholics have a proud record of exercising their democratic rights within Australian democracy as voters, members of political parties and lobby groups, and as elected representatives. But within their own church they have been taught to leave their democratic rights at the door. Now is the time to challenge that norm in parishes, dioceses and the wider church. In responding to the royal commission the church needs an infusion of democratic values, including transparency and accountability.

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  • RELIGION

    Finding meaning in a chaotic/changing world

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 May 2017
    1 Comment

    Our Church is presently a strained, outdated social institution with an exclusively male hierarchy and clergy. But it is also the privileged locus for us to be called to the banquet of the Lord sharing theology and sacrament which have sustained the hearts and minds of similar pilgrims for two millennia. Thank God for Pope Francis who is showing us the way, helping us to find meaning in our changing and chaotic world, putting a fresh spring in the step of all those Catholics holding in tension the prophetic and the practical, the theological and the humanist, the tradition and the contemporary reality.

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  • RELIGION

    The Catholic wrap-up at the Royal Commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 February 2017
    74 Comments

    Last Monday, the Royal Commission commenced its three-week forensic examination of the causes of child sexual abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church in Australia over the last 60 years. The statistics were horrifying. Every case represented a person who claims as a child to have been abused by a person of authority in a Catholic institution. Whichever way the statistics are interpreted in comparison with other institutions, they are appalling. We need to hold the victims clearly in focus.

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  • RELIGION

    Redress scheme for abuse victims is a good start

    • Francis Sullivan
    • 08 November 2016
    14 Comments

    With all institutions taking part, this scheme will succeed and it will deliver fair, consistent and generous redress for survivors. If some institutions don't take part it will be yet another blow to abuse survivors, with some reaping the scheme's benefits while others are left to suffer further defeats and humiliations. A case in point is the South Australian government. Before the ink was dry on the announcement, SA had already indicated it would not take part. This is appalling, whatever the justification.

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  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom in an age of equality

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 September 2016
    18 Comments

    'No good will be served by a royal commission auspiced by the state telling a Church how it judges or complies with its theological doctrines and distinctive moral teachings. By all means, set universal standards of practice expected of all institutions dealing with children, but do not trespass on the holy ground of religious belief and practice.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ addresses the Freedom for Faith Conference in Melbourne, 23 September 2016.

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