Eureka Street

Keywords: Celibacy

ARTS AND CULTURE

Sanmao and the priest
- Margaret Simons
- 13 December 2024
High in Taiwan’s mountains, Jesuit priest Barry Martinson found a soulmate in celebrated author Sanmao, who inspired millions with her writing. Their relationship—neither romantic nor conventional—was a profound meeting of kindred spirits, rooted in shared curiosity, literary love, and the sacrificial essence of friendship.
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AUSTRALIA

What happened to #girlpower?
- Cherie Gilmour
- 18 October 2024
1 Comment
The ideological fissures within modern feminism demand examination. Raising a daughter gives me literal skin in the game, making this a deeply personal journey to understand what has changed and what remains true since the seemingly carefree days of #girlpower.
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RELIGION

Vatican document focuses on process, not problems
- Bill Uren
- 30 July 2024
7 Comments
The Vatican's new Instrumentum Laboris outlines the path forward for the Synod on Synodality, but with a heavy emphasis on process over substance. While it acknowledges the need for greater women's involvement, it firmly reinforces the authority of the Pope and bishops, raising questions about the true potential for change.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Sins of the fathers
- Ken Haley
- 29 March 2024
2 Comments
Recent years have made clerical child sexual abuse a badge of shame within Australia’s Catholic hierarchy, and rightly so. But Anne Manne’s new book, Sins of the fathers, will give pause to those who blame these offences on the rule of hieratic celibacy.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Wifedom and the casual patriarchy
- Bill Uren
- 26 September 2023
16 Comments
Why has Orwell's wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, been strikingly omitted from his many biographies? As Anna Funder's Wifedom delves into this oversight, we're prompted to question: have we truly moved beyond the casual patriarchy?
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RELIGION

Synodality: 'Why did you doubt?'
- Bill Uren
- 29 June 2023
10 Comments
I must confess that in the lead-up to the first session in October 2023 of the Synod on Synodality, I more than a little resembled Peter. Embarking on synodal waters, initially I was apprehensive. Would anything substantial come of Pope Francis' initiative?
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RELIGION

Behind the bold discussions of the German Synod
- Susan Sullivan
- 25 May 2023
4 Comments
In the final German Synodal Way assembly, the Church addressed difficult issues, openly discussing obligatory celibacy and blessing same-sex couples and divorced Catholics. The assembly pushed for Church teachings to adapt to individual congregations' realities, but how this approach will affect the global Church is unclear.
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RELIGION

Original synodality: Consultation in the early Church
- Constant Mews
- 22 February 2023
2 Comments
Words get tired, and need to be reinvented, to recapture their original meaning. Synodality is simply the most recent way of regenerating traditions of consultation that go back to the earliest days of the Church.
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RELIGION

Does synodality dilute the apostolic tradition?
- Bill Uren
- 14 February 2023
12 Comments
Is the Catholic Church risking the dilution of its apostolic tradition with the upcoming Synod on Synodality? This is the concern raised by Cardinal George Pell in his recent article published posthumously in The Spectator. Despite his criticisms of Pope Francis and the Synod, his warning on the potential consequences of diluting the apostolic tradition are worth consideration.
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RELIGION

What is to be done?
- Andrew Hamilton
- 24 March 2022
10 Comments
Any program of church reform will have soon to ask Chernyshevsky’s question, What is to be done? It is a dangerous question — he wrote his novel from jail and spent much of his life in exile or imprisonment. Discussion of Church matters is mercifully less perilous today, but the question does invite a radical repiecing of the connections and tradition and energies that constitute Catholic life.
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RELIGION

Aussie bishops can't shy from celibacy questions
- Nick Brodie
- 16 January 2020
55 Comments
Cardinal Sarah's scandal-causing book arguing against changes to the rule of mandatory celibacy was a transparent attempt to thwart proposals coming out of the Amazonian Synod of 2019. Whatever the fallout, it should not be allowed to scare Australia's bishops off from discussing the subject during Plenary Council 2020.
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RELIGION

Flaws, fancy in Vatican homosexuality book
- Michael Furtado
- 14 June 2019
34 Comments
Martel's work cannot be ignored because it is published at a time when the Church is engulfed by several sexual scandals of global magnitude. Reviewing Martel's book provides an opportunity to critically examine the narratives of accusation and defence that surround such accounts, so that onlookers can make sense of them.
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Keywords: Celibacy