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Keywords: Rerum Novarum

  • AUSTRALIA

    The problem with CEO pay rises

    • Joe Zabar
    • 25 June 2024

    For decades, unchecked corporate power and policy failures have driven up Australia's cost of living, leaving many Australians struggling. As corporate interests dominate, CEO pay increases dramatically while wages stagnate, and inflation rises. This influence of corporate Australia has eroded economic safeguards, dismantling the guardrails that once protected the common good.

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  • RELIGION

    First World Day of the Poor

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 November 2017
    1 Comment

    'It's been a big week with the announcement of the result of the survey on same sex marriage. Today is also the World Day of the Poor when Pope Francis invites us to be generous to others less well off than ourselves and then to do more than extend our generous charity to those who are poor.' Homily for the First World Day of the Poor, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 19 November 2017.

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  • RELIGION

    Seeking a true new start for all job seekers and workers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2017

    'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis' social activism has long roots

    • Bruce Duncan
    • 16 May 2016
    38 Comments

    Pope Francis is determined to highlight the opposition of Christian social thinking to the tenets of neoliberalism or market fundamentalism, an ideology which assumes that free markets of themselves will produce the best outcome, and which pushes aside considerations of social or distributive justice. It is unlikely Francis would be waving the flag of social justice so boldly on the world stage had Pope Leo XIII not written his famous social manifesto, Rerum Novarum, 125 years ago.

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  • RELIGION

    Getting ready for Pope Francis' environmental Rerum Novarum

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 11 May 2015
    20 Comments

    Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI made passing reference to environmental issues. Benedict spoke of the need for protection of the environment, resources the climate in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. But in terms of its significance, Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical has the potential to do for the environmental movement what Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) did for the union movement – to provide it with a powerful source of moral and religious legitimacy in the face of those forces which have sought to limit their influence. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Losing the fight for fair wages

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 08 June 2011
    5 Comments

    The 2011 wage review occurred 120 years after the release of the papal document Rerum Novarum, which had a significant impact on the development of Australian minimum wage-setting. The minimum wage provisions of the current Fair Work Act cannot be regarded as a success.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Church and the workplace

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 17 February 2011
    10 Comments

    Despite extensive welfare activities, Catholics have made only a modest contribution to public debate about the economic foundations of family life. Yet the Australian institution that is most associated in the public mind with 'pro-family' policies is the Catholic Church.

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