Keywords: Clergy Sexual Abuse
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RELIGION
- Vincent Long Van Nguyen
- 01 April 2025
As war rages, the climate suffers and inequality grows, the ancient idea of Jubilee feels newly urgent. Can an economy built on profit give way to one rooted in justice? Can the Church trade power for presence? Renewal may begin where the poor, the displaced and the earth come together.
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RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 11 December 2024
A contentious graduation speech at Australian Catholic University laid bare divisions between traditional Catholic values and modern sensibilities. The backlash, marked by audience walkouts, underscores broader challenges facing the Church.
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RELIGION
- Bruce Duncan
- 14 November 2024
14 Comments
The Synod is possibly the most important event in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council. And despite its focus on internal Church reform and participation, can it effectively address broader social and moral issues in the world while still promoting a more inclusive and accountable Church?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
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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RELIGION
- Miles Pattenden
- 06 September 2023
4 Comments
In a recent interview, Professor of Church History and conclave expert Alberto Melloni passionately argued that the current conclave system, shrouded in secrecy and absent of clear criteria, might be outdated. With the Catholic Church facing unprecedented scrutiny, and in light of reforms initiated by Pope Francis, is it time for the Vatican to reconsider how its supreme pontiff is chosen?
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RELIGION
- Jamie Calder
- 21 June 2023
5 Comments
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made a recommendation for professional supervision within religious and pastoral environments. But can professional supervision repair broken trust, ensure accountability, and promote a more ethical approach to care in the face of past failings?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 20 April 2023
2 Comments
For Father Bob, being a priest entails getting his hands dirty, giving everything of himself, and doing what he thinks is right, even if doing so upsets power structures; especially if it upsets power structures, if they have contributed to the plight of the downtrodden. (From 2013)
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RELIGION
- 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
- 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
- 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.
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RELIGION
- Bill Uren
- 14 December 2022
4 Comments
The recent election of Archbishop Timothy Broglio as President of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference has significant implications for the United States Church, for the global Church, and potentially for the Australian Church.
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RELIGION
- Paul Collins
- 20 September 2022
5 Comments
The word ‘Catholic’ is derived from the Greek Καθολικός (katholikos) meaning universal, of the whole, and the entire tradition is the very opposite of sectarian, particularist, narrow. It is most truly itself when it’s embracing and inclusive.
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