Mission & Justice

Heath Gilmore; 11/5/08

The arrival of Pope Benedict in Sydney for World Youth Day is looming as an unholy disaster for the luxury hotels of Sydney. Top-end hotels and businesses are reeling from the huge shortfall in predicted numbers. Domestic tourists are also reluctant to take holidays in Sydney because of the expected disruption to roads. One five-star hotel set aside 1000 beds and has not received one booking. NSW Tourism Minister Matt Brown yesterday said the Government was determined to change the public perception about the event. It aimed to let potential visitors know that central Sydney was open for celebration during the pope’s visit as long as they used public transport.

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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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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…)

5/5/08

The Reverend Marcial Maciel once looked like a shoo-in for sainthood, but the charismatic leader of one of the most important orders in the Catholic Church has ended his life better known as the highest ranking priest ever disciplined because of sexual abuse allegations. The leader of the Legionaries of Christ - the order Maciel founded in Mexico in 1941 - informed the congregation of his death at 87 in a letter that mixed expressions of devastating loss with the news the funeral would be private.

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Muriel Porter; 6/5/08

Predictably, the Australian Christian Lobby has praised the Rudd Government for deciding to override the ACT’s planned gay marriage legislation. Most Christians will be grateful, the lobby’s managing director, Jim Wallace, has said. Yes, the mainline churches will openly or tacitly agree with him, and I imagine many individual Christians will, too. But not all Christians will be happy with this backdown and some of us feel quite dismayed. Not many will speak up, however, because they have been effectively silenced by the recent concerted conservative push that has made homosexuality the great taboo in the churches. My own church, the Anglican Church, stands on the brink of an international schism over the issue. Conservative forces, fuelled by right-wing American money and led by pugnacious African bishops spoiling for a fight with the West, have declared war on the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in the US and the Anglican Church of Canada.

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Paul Maley & Samantha Maiden; 6/5/08

The ACT Government has accused Kevin Rudd of pandering to the “extreme Christian Right” in its threat to scuttle the territory’s controversial civil partnerships bill. Yesterday, the ACT’s federal Labor members and senators were labelled hypocrites for failing to condemn the commonwealth after it threatened to disallow the bill on the grounds that it would mimic marriage. ACT Attorney-General Simon Corbell accused the Prime Minister, a devout Christian, of “kow-towing” to the Christian lobby.

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6/5/08

AT least half of Sydney’s Hyde Park will be closed for up to three months after World Youth Day to repair damage from thousands of Catholic pilgrims treading on the turf. The NSW government will pay at least $100,000 to rehabilitate the northern half of the park and the British Lawn, which will be used as a security clearance zone for pilgrims waiting to enter St Mary’s Cathedral. Up to 225,000 pilgrims are expected to converge on the city as part of the six-day Catholic festival, commencing on July 15 and culminating with a visit by Pope Benedict XVI. A report to the City of Sydney’s finance committee, and obtained by Fairfax newspapers, also states most of Hyde Park north will be inaccessible for normal activities during the festival.

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Ron Rolheiser; 27/4/08

There is a popular theme within Christian apologetics that goes something like this: Christianity is the most hated of all religions and that is a certain proof of its truth. The logic works this way: If we are so unfairly hated, we must be doing something right. Truth and innocence draw hatred. Jesus was hated, and so are we. We need to be careful with that because, among other things, today, thanks to certain radical fundamentalists claiming to be Muslim, Islam is probably the most hated of all religions, and hated not because of what is true and best inside of it. Not only innocence and truth draw hatred. Being hated is not always a good sign or an indication that you (alone among the unfaithful) are holding to the real truth. It may be that you have made a vow of alienation rather than of love. Both eventually make you hated.

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