Religion and Faith
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John Menadue. Keep trucking!
At the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne last week, Cardinal George Pell is reported as saying that if the driver of a (trucking company) sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way ‘I don’t think that it is appropriate for the .. leadership of Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Bishop and the Prime Minister
In August 1987 The Bulletin published an account by Tony Abbott of why he left the seminary. A link to Tony Abbott’s account is below. Following Tony Abbott’s account, Fr Bill Wright on August 25, 1987, replied. He was a priest at that time in the Archdiocese of Sydney and Vice Rector of St Patrick’s Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Those pesky nuns.
I was taken with an article by Nicholas Kristof. It was first published in the New York Times and yesterday in the SMH. The link to the article is below. In this article there is a quote from an American nun “Let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell: The Royal Commission on the Melbourne Response
Next Monday, 18 August, 2014, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will commence Case Study No. 16 on the Melbourne Response that operated within the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. In 1994, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson had been appointed by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to draw up a protocol for dealing with Continue reading »
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Paul Collins. Much ado about nothing?
The 2014-15 Synod on ThePastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization Around Christmas 2013 there was much ado in the Australian Catholic community about the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family called by Pope Francis for October 2014 and 2015. In preparation for this synod, for the first time ever, the Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. A Jesuit Bicentenary
Everyone knows that we Jesuits have had a rocky history. We were fabulously successful in educating the European elite for quite some time. Things went off the rails badly in the eighteenth century. We lost out to the Vatican Curia over the dispute about accommodating some Confucian and Hindu traditional rites in prayer and liturgy Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Suffer the little children to come unto me…
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children or asylum seeker children in our detention centres. At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Israelis have died. Close to 1,000 of those Palestinians killed were civilians, including children. Only three Israeli Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Today’s Totalitarianism’s Powerful Forms.
Australian eyes are focused on the unspeakable brutality and pointlessness of the downing of MH 17. But alongside this event, Australian minds and hearts are assailed daily by barbarism across the Middle East and in different parts of Asia. It’s the paradox of liberalism that pluralistic secular democracies like Australia afford citizens far greater freedoms Continue reading »
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Bruce Duncan. Pope Francis: economic system is failing millions.
A blog in the Economist accused Pope Francis of following the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, in adopting an “ultra-radical line” on capitalism. The blog, “Francis, capitalism and war: the Pope’s divisions”, was reacting to the Pope’s interview on 9 June in the Spanish journal, La Vanguardia, in which he linked an earlier Continue reading »
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MH 17-Light a candle rather than curse the darkness
In the horror and sense of evil we all feel about the downing of MH17 how should we respond? Perhaps out best response is summed up in the above exhortation which is attributed to Peter Benenson the founder of Amnesty International. The candle cycled by barb wire has become the emblem of Amnesty. The quote Continue reading »
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Elenie Poulos. Morrison’s Vision of the ‘National Interest’ Does Us No Good.
The parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible (Luke, chapter 10) has become common place and almost clichéd in Christian conversations about the current Australian Government’s increasingly cold-hearted and abusive responses to asylum seekers. Christian conversations in the public space about this issue matter because the Minister for Immigration has made much of his Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Rolf Harris and the Vatican.
Rolf Harris, aged 84, was found guilty of sexual assaults on children in the long distant past, and was sentenced to 5 years jail. The judge took into account his age in determining the sentence. Many people still thought it was inadequate, and there is talk of an appeal by the Attorney General to increase Continue reading »
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Garry Everett. Where angels fear to tread in the Catholic Church.
One of the significant and pressing pastoral theological issues currently dividing opinion among the hierarchy and among the laity of the Church, is the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, and their access to eucharist, writes Garry Everett. Pastoral theology is a tricky undertaking. It is easier, and certainly safer, to discuss theological matters in Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. Catholic Church needs to show more than legal compliance
It’s been a big few weeks for the clergy and their dealings with the police across the world. In legal matters in countries covering four continents – India, the Dominican Republic, Italy and Australia – clerics are being held to account by police and civil courts. Two priests in India have been charged with murdering Continue reading »
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The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.
Yesterday, in Eureka Street, Fr Frank Brennan SJ commented on the first interim report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse. He said: ‘Before Prime Minister Gillard announced the commission, I said that the Catholic Church needed help, in part because there seemed to be a vast discrepancy in the statistics Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. How the Bishop was forced to resign because he played too much for the local team
I have followed the Bishop Bill Morris saga closely. My one new insight from reading Bill’s book – “Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three” – is that he was sacked because he was too much a team player with his local church. By sacking their local leader, the Romans hoped to shatter the morale and Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell: The Nestor Case
The Catholic Church hierarchy has now accepted that its attempts to cover up the sexual abuse of children by clergy facilitated further abuse. But there was a second reason for the increase in the abuse – the canonical disciplinary system was dysfunctional. It was dysfunctional enough prior to 1983, but Pope St. John Paul II Continue reading »
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Michael Kelly SJ. The banality of evil
Denial has many faces. Some of them are necessary. If any of us entertained what might befall us each day and the harm we could come to, we would never get out of bed. But denial also has corrosive and destructive effect if we deny the facts of our experience or refuse to be honest Continue reading »
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Patty Fawkner SGS. Permissible victims.
Permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest. Only once have I been ‘bumped off’ a plane. It was in the USA on a 6am domestic flight. I recall the sequence of emotions: surprise, dismay then anger as I became acquainted first-hand with Continue reading »
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Eric Hodgens. On a Wing and a Prayer – A Personal Memoir.
As priests we were sent out on a mission to spread the Gospel and be pastors of the flock. But it was the secular world that formulated mission statements and pastoral care policies. We had the vocation, but it was the secular world that developed vocational training. We were good at the concepts – but Continue reading »
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Cristian Martini Grimaldi. St Francis of the East
Cardinal John Henry Newman said ‘There is nothing on this earth as ugly as the Catholic Church and nothing so beautiful’. We have seen a lot of the ugliness recently. The following story tells us something about the beauty. John Menadue. The prestigious Ho-Am Prize 2014, known as the Nobel Prize of South Korea, has Continue reading »
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Catholic Church – catch-up and cover-up
The sad saga of the Catholic Church in its response to sexual abuse goes on and on and on. Pope Francis is yet to grasp the nettle. Invariably it is people outside the hierarchy and clergy who are responding and calling for action. The latest has been former NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell, who spoke in Continue reading »
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Irene Sutherland. A day on our Camino
In April this year, my husband and I walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. For months leading up to the event, we both imagined how a typical day would unfold. For my part, I intended taking a sketchbook and had fantasised that we would pass through many a village and I could wander into Continue reading »
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Bishop Bill Morris’ book.
On 17 June in Toowoomba, Bishop Bill Morris’ book ‘Benedict, Me and the Cardinals three’ will be launched. Launches will follow in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Melbourne. Bishop Morris was formerly the Bishop of Toowoomba. In November 2006 he wrote an open letter to his diocese about priest shortages. He discussed the possibility of Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. Canon Law and the Truth, Justice and Healing Council.
In his more than 40 blogs posted on the Truth Justice and Healing Council’s web site, Francis Sullivan, its CEO, has never, until last week, mentioned any difficulties that canon law might have posed for bishops in reporting sexual abuse by clergy to the police or in dismissing them through the Church’s own internal disciplinary Continue reading »
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Frank Brennan SJ. Homily for Trinity Sunday with the Royal Commission in town.
On Friday afternoon, I called into the Canberra Magistrates’ Court to watch an hour or two of proceedings at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The court was packed with lawyers. These are shameful times for us Australians as we realise how great has been the problem of child sexual abuse in Continue reading »
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Mark Isaacs. The Salvos on Nauru.
Judging the Salvation Army’s role in Nauru is difficult. Their job was to provide humanitarian support to asylum seekers in a detention centre that was established to deter desperate people from seeking protection by subjecting them to cruel conditions. The contradictory nature of the Salvation Army’s position meant they were damned by the government if Continue reading »
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Chris Geraghty. Appropriate responses to the scandal in Newcastle
After Bishop Bill Wright appeared on television to register his reaction to the findings of the special enquiry into the Church’s and the Police response to the paedophile activities of two priests in the Newcastle diocese, and to express his sorrow for the whole messy scandal, there was an inter-change of emails between two Continue reading »
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Kieran Tapsell. The Cunneen Report’s Comments on Canon and Civil Law
On 30 May 2014, the Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Matters relating to the Police Investigation of Certain Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland–Newcastle (“Cunneen Report”) was published by the New South Wales Government. The Report rejected allegations by former Detective Inspector Fox that there was an attempt Continue reading »
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Chris Geraghty. Potiphar’s Wife – The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sex Abuse.
A few weeks ago the Roman Church gathered its heavenly forces, summoned her faithful from around the world to assemble in the eternal city, and in the midst of extravagant Renaissance-style splendor, infallibly declared two of her recent CEOs to have been translated into the presence of Almighty God, amid hosts of angels and Archangels Continue reading »
