Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Church Sex Abuse

  • AUSTRALIA

    Building constitutional bridges: In conversation with Frank Brennan

    • David Halliday
    • 28 June 2024

    It's been eight months since the Voice referendum, and people are starting to grapple with what its defeat means for Australia. There are few voices in Australia as qualified to conduct a postmortem of the outcome of the Voice referendum campaign as Frank Brennan. We examine what lessons can be learned and crucually, whether there’s reason for hope for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Best of 2023: The Empty Honour Board

    • Michele Gierck
    • 11 January 2024

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    The Empty Honour Board: In Conversation with Martin Flanagan

    • Michele Gierck
    • 18 August 2023
    5 Comments

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Best of 2022: What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 12 January 2023

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Roe vs Wade: The Bishops’ dilemma

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 26 May 2022
    19 Comments

    News leaked earlier this month that the US Supreme Court plans to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. The decision has attracted much criticism both in the past and now on account of its dubious legal reasoning – in particular, its attempt to link the right to abort to a right to privacy which itself was notional and not specified in the US Constitution.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    What now for senior clergy who covered up abuse?

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 27 January 2022
    31 Comments

    Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Parallels between the military and the church

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 December 2020
    31 Comments

    The Australian community and its government are struggling to come to terms with the extremely serious allegations against members of the SAS for their alleged criminal misconduct during the war in Afghanistan. At the same time, we Catholics are experiencing a bad case of déjà as there are many echoes of how we felt when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (RC) began in 2013.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Francesco the film: ‘The path is opened by walking’

    • David Holdcroft
    • 27 October 2020
    9 Comments

    Insofar as there is hope in Francesco, it emerges gradually through an intimate viewing of the Pope’s engagement with the ‘hot button’ issues of our day, the environment and climate change, refugees and immigration, violence and conflict, disparity of wealth and poverty, women’s place in society and Church, family and sexuality, and sexual abuse within the Church.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Child safety reforms still progressing slowly

    • John Warhurst
    • 14 October 2019
    8 Comments

    The royal commission concluded that child safety, in all its organisational ramifications, raised questions of culture and governance for the church. If the Plenary Council 2020 doesn't take such issues seriously then it will be one indicator that the momentum around last year's official national apology has slowed.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    New standards for a child-safe Church

    • Sheree Limbrick
    • 30 May 2019
    16 Comments

    To be effective, safeguarding requires genuine engagement with, listening, valuing and responding to children — respecting and upholding their rights and inherent dignity. The Safeguarding Standards strive to embed these practices within the Catholic Church.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    More than rules, Church needs a change of heart

    • Tracey Edstein
    • 30 May 2019
    19 Comments

    There are guidelines, rules and laws galore. None of these stopped clergy and church personnel abusing children, or necessarily led those in authority to act. The community could therefore be forgiven a certain scepticism. Legislative changes, stronger governance and mission statements mean little without a change of heart.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    No shortcuts to reform after church abuse crisis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 April 2019
    75 Comments

    The sentencing of Pell highlighted the dismay and soul-searching among Catholics at sex abuse and its devastation of the lives of victims and their families. It also brought home the depth of the crisis caused by clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Although it still challenges understanding, a historical parallel may help illuminate it.

    READ MORE