Mission & Justice

Rana Husseini; 10/5/08

Authorities are questioning a 22-year-old man, who allegedly killed his pregnant married sister on Wednesday evening for reasons related to family honour, official sources said. The 20-year-old victim, who was not identified by officials, received three fatal bullets to the side of her head, reportedly by her brother, at her in-laws’ house in the Wadi Seer area, according to the sources. The victim was three months pregnant, the sources said, adding that the suspect immediately headed to the nearest police station and turned himself in, handing over the gun he reportedly used to shoot his sibling, to officers on duty. “The suspect told police he had just killed his sister to cleanse his family’s honour,” the source told The Jordan Times.

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Nicolas Rothwell;10/5/08

They Are Meditating: Bark Paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

In the mid-1960s, Jerome Gould, an American graphic artist with a keen eye and a taste for adventure, took a series of field trips into the remote terrain of Arnhem Land. Gould was a collector; he had a big budget and a strong visual sense: indeed, his innovative design for Michelob beer bottles was all the rage just then. He chartered light aircraft and flew through the north, snapping up early masterpieces of Aboriginal bark painting from missionary settlement craft shops. During those years, in the margins of his journeys, he did contract design work for Arnott’s Biscuits. So, by a strange and convoluted chain of circumstances, was born one of Australia’s greatest and least-known holdings of indigenous art.

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Andrew Hornery; 10/5/08

The Church of Scientology has lost its grip on James Packer. The billionaire’s closest friends say he has quietly distanced himself from Scientology. Members of Mr Packer’s inner circle have confirmed that the billionaire, Scientology’s wealthiest member in the world, was no longer undertaking Scientology courses and had slowly moved away from the religion, telling his closest friends he no longer “needs it”. Mr Packer’s office did not respond to reporters’ calls yesterday.

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Paul Collins; 10/5/08

Edited extract from: Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?; Paul Collins; University of NSW Press, $34.95. Collins is an author, commentator, former priest, historian and broadcaster.

…Despite my initial optimism that BenedictXVI might come to grips with some of these issues, I now feel there is little evidence that he will take action. I am now convinced that change will not come from the top. Another John XXIII or a progressive pope who will act as a kind of circuit-breaker or messiah for reform-minded Catholics is a most unlikely possibility. That is why bishops are so important. But a central problem is that many bishops feel their sole line of responsibility is upward to Rome because it was the Vatican that appointed them. There is little or no consciousness that they have responsibility to the local church and that they must answer to priests and laity. …

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Karlis Salna; 9/5/08

A retired Marist brother who has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing students in his care at a Canberra school has been likened to an alcoholic in charge of a pub. John William Chute, also known as Brother Kostka, has been charged with 19 counts of committing an indecent act with a child. The litany of charges relate to the abuse of six boys aged between 13 and 15 who were students at Marist College in Canberra between 1981 and 1987.

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Richard Ackland; 9/5/08

In recent weeks the charter of rights “debate” has been heading largely in one direction - against. The antagonists have had longer at the megaphone than usual and have cranked up the volume. Cardinal George Pell is out on the barricades, and unsurprisingly he thinks a charter of rights is a bad thing, along with stem-cell research, contraception and abortion. The NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, and the former premier Bob Carr have lent their voices to the anti campaign. They think you would be crazy if you let anyone other than NSW politicians look after your freedoms. A handful of conservative provocateurs from the fourth estate keep banging away about how awful such legislation would be. These voices are relatively fresh from saying the invasion of Iraq was a good idea, which gets me thinking that surely they cannot be hugely wrong yet again.

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Nuha Adlan; 8/5/08

A two-day conference on domestic violence ended yesterday with participants saying there is no justification in Islam for abuse of women and children. They also came up with a list of demands and recommendations to tackle the problem. Experts from across the Kingdom participated in five sessions of discussions at the first National Experts Meeting to Fight Domestic Abuse Against Women and Children, with all participants agreeing that Islam does not condone abuse and that the problem should be brought to an end. “Traditions that allow abuse should be brought to an end,” said Dr. Maha Al-Munief, executive director of the National Family Safety Program (NFSP), which organized the event. “We will start training courses for people who work with abuse victims… We need cooperation from all NGOs,” she said in a press conference held to announce the recommendations.

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8/5/08

A Malaysian court has allowed a convert to renounce Islam, a rare decision for the conservative Muslim-led nation. Othman Ibrahim, Penang Sharia Court judge, said he had no choice but to allow an application by Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a Malaysian citizen of Chinese origin, to renounce her faith and return to Buddhism. Apostasy, or renouncing one’s faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a very sensitive issue in Malaysia where Sharia courts have rarely allowed such renunciations and have also jailed apostates”The court has no choice but to declare that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah is no longer a Muslim as she has never practised the teachings of Islam,” Othman told a packed courtroom on Wednesday.

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On Behalf Of Graeme Ferguson; 7/5/08; Kevin Toomey OP

Peter Murnane OP became parish priest of St Benedicts shortly after I went to St David’s. I came to appreciate him as one of the most Christ-like priests I have met. Peter has the capacity to act in highly creative ways to ensure that the Gospel is demonstrated in life.

He planted - with others - a city garden on waste land on the edge of the Auckland motorway. With the Dominican nuns in St Benedicts, he had created an entire wall of the church property painted by graffitti artists who were being hounded by the city authorities. (more…)

Michael McKenna; 7/5/08

The Queensland Government has continued work on Fraser Island’s dingo fences after federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett’s office yesterday back-flipped on its insistence that construction needed to stop. Indigenous leaders are concerned that bulldozers have damaged sacred sites in the World Heritage-listed area. Despite a meeting being called between the governments and traditional owners for this Friday, Queensland Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara last night vowed work on the almost-completed fences would continue unabated. On Monday, a spokesman for Mr Garrett said discussions between federal and state bureaucrats last week had led to a voluntary agreement by the Queensland Government to stop work until an assessment of the traditional landowners’ claims could be completed.

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