News
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07-May-2009
Women may be allowed to join the Vatican's exclusive Swiss Guard, Commander Daniel Anrig has told Italian TV.
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04-May-2009
Australian TV comedy team The Chaser is in hot water again after allegedly flying a blimp into protected airspace above the Vatican.
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04-May-2009
Israel
President Shimon Peres is pressing his government to cede sovereignty
over key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, reports say.
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07-May-2009
Australian Catholic University has awarded its highest honour to Melbourne's Newman College Rector, Fr Bill Uren in recognition of his work in the area of bioethics.
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08-May-2009
Catholic Social Services chief Frank Quinlan has described a mooted crackdown on fringe benefits for the not-for-profit sector as "a fundamental attack on wages and conditions of employees who are already often being paid below market rates."
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04-May-2009
Catholic Health Australia and health fund HBF have launched campaigns against feared budget cuts to the private health insurance rebate, warning cuts will drive out fund members and overload public hospitals.
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08-May-2009
L'Osservatore Romano reviewers have judged that Ron Howard's film Angels & Demons is commercial and inaccurate but ultimately "harmless'' entertainment.
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News - National
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08-May-2009
Mary MacKillop may be canonised within 18 months with her second miracle expected to be approved by the Vatican within a few weeks.
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08-May-2009
National human rights charter consultancy head, Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan, will today move to dispel concerns by some church leaders that the charter could entail the introduction of federal religious vilification laws.
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07-May-2009
Rockhampton Bishop Brian Heenan says he is standing by Fr Kevin Phillips, who has pleaded not guilty to charges over alleged incidents at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, in 1990, but the priest has been relieved of his duties until the case is resolved.
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06-May-2009
Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby has written to former St Mary's South Brisbane administrator warning him that penalties will be imposed unless he ceases to celebrate Mass at the Trades and Labor Council building.
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04-May-2009
John Paul II Institute Associate Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini has criticised the basis of a ruling by Family Court Chief Justice Dian Bryant that a 17 year old girl may have her breasts removed so she can be more like a boy.
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06-May-2009
Catholic Social Services Victoria has welcomed the Victorian Government's budget focus on vulnerable sections of the community and on investments that are linked to increased employment demand.
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06-May-2009
Melbourne football clubs Carlton and Hawthorn are lobbying the AFL to play a match on Good Friday beginning next year.
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06-May-2009
The remains of bushranger Ned Kelly and other executed prisoners found at Melbourne's old Pentridge Prison site should be returned to their families, says former prison chaplain, Fr Peter Norden.
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06-May-2009
Pope Benedict has appointed Melbourne Vicar-General Monsignor Les Tomlinson as an auxiliary bishop for Australia's largest archdiocese.
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08-May-2009
Irish singing trio The Priests drew a record crowd of young people to a Parramatta pub this week for a session of Theology on Tap.
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05-May-2009
Philanthropist Dick Smith, NRMA chief, Tony Stuart, and Pfizer managing director, John Latham, will be among the business executives who will sleep under the stars in June in a major Vinnies fundraiser.
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04-May-2009
Adelaide priest, Fr James McEvoy, will explore the nature of the Church's dialogue with the world as part of a prestigious international visiting fellowship post at Georgetown University.
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05-May-2009
Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey is celebrating 25 years as a bishop and 50 years of priesthood.
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04-May-2009
Visiting missionary priest, Fr Wade Menezes has been badly misreported as claiming that swine flu is the punishment of God for immoral legislation and behaviour, Canberra-Goulburn Archbishop Mark Coleridge says.
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News - International
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05-May-2009
Norma McCorvey - the "Jane Roe" of Roe v Wade - has condemned the decision by Notre Dame University to invite the fiercely pro-abortion Barack Obama to deliver its commencement address.
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07-May-2009
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity chief, Cardinal Walter Kasper, has slated Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, warning that he should behave with "seriousness and sobriety".
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07-May-2009
Men prefer to sing "proper macho songs" in church and feel uncomfortable with hugging, holding hands or sitting in circles discussing their feelings, a British survey has found.
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05-May-2009
A Northern Ireland court has sentenced four young men to life in jail for the sectarian murder of Catholic teenager, Michael McIlveen, three years ago.
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06-May-2009
Thousands of Catholics had to walk up to 30km to Hanoi after police forced their bus drivers to dump them outside Hanoi on their way to participate in Golden Jubilee celebrations at the Thai Ha Redemptorist parish.
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08-May-2009
Pope Benedict leaves for Israel today on his long anticipated Middle East tour that will also take him to Jordan.
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05-May-2009
An Iraqi newspaper yesterday quoted an unnamed lawmaker as saying that Pope Benedict may visit Baghdad as part of his tour of the Middle East but Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, appeared to deny the story.
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07-May-2009
Canberra-Goulburn Auxiliary Bishop Pat Power has appealed to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to intervene on behalf of the civilian Tamil population in Sri Lanka.
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04-May-2009
Christian families in Karachi, Pakistan are locking themselves in their own homes following escalating violence against them in recent weeks, Catholic Mission Pakistan director, Fr Mario Rodrigues has said.
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Regulars
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08-May-2009
While some local Arabs welcome Pope Benedict's five day pilgrimage to Israel and the Palestinian territories, others are adamantly against both the timing and the itinerary. Regardless of these aspects, many see the visit as improving Jewish-Catholic relationships, while Arab Christians applaud the Holy Father's arrival as acknowledgement of their existence in a vast sea of Judaism and Islam. - Duchess of Hamilton, The Catholic Herald
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07-May-2009
Understanding a "contemporary" Mary invites renewed appreciation of Vatican II's concern with divesting her of pious distortions accrued from exaggerated, superstitious and even goddess influences. These had for centuries so idealised Mary as to render her a sign of contradiction within the Church of the West. - Sr Marie Farrell, Aurora
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06-May-2009
Sister Magali has seen many profound changes in the half a century she has spent in outback Australia, living side by side with Aboriginal communities in fringe camps, Third World style reserves, and "out country". Yet the 73 year old Little Sister of Jesus is as much disheartened now as when she arrived in 1957 in Alice Springs to live in a squalid Aboriginal reserve that reminded the French nun of the prisoner of war camps in her own country. - Marie McInerney, The Southern Cross
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05-May-2009
From what we see at the coal face, it is tragically clear that families are the new face of homelessness. In an increasing number of cases, an intact family has ceased to be the buffer against this ultimate disadvantage. - John Picot, Sydney Morning Herald
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04-May-2009
At Vatican II, the great reforming conference of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the 1960s, sweeping changes were made to the way people worshipped. Use of local languages, rather than Latin, was encouraged, ritual was made less elaborate and less deferential; the overall aim was greater involvement and understanding by the congregation. - David Shariatmadari, guardian.co.uk
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08-May-2009
For nearly 25 years Emmaus Productions has been publishing and promoting the music and ministry of Monica Brown, one of Australia's most highly respected Christian composers. It aims to provide creative experiential programs, workshops and events, as well as music and other audio visual resources, which enable children, youth and adults to appreciate their own giftedness and to experience the Sacred in more meaningful ways.
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07-May-2009
The Australian Catholic Council for Clergy Life and Ministry is concerned with both the "life" and the "ministry" of those who are ordained. The Council's view is all who minister must continue to live and grow as mature Christians and as mature human beings.
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06-May-2009
The Australian Council of Christians and Jews was inaugurated in December 1991. Its website provides an excellent summary of the Jewish and Christian communities in Australia and the steps being taken on improving relations between the two faiths.
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05-May-2009
Damascus College Ballarat, a school in the Mercy tradition, is Ballarat's only Catholic coeducational secondary school. The emphasis at the college is on community with the sense of belonging and being cared for two reasons why Damascus is such a great school according to the principal.
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04-May-2009
The St Vincent de Paul Society has recently launched a new national website, no easy task when you consider the diverse needs of the State and Territory conferences of the Society. However, this new site is well categorised and performs an admirable job in the Society's mission of advocacy for the poor.
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08-May-2009
In the aftermath of the upheavals of the 1960s, the student protests, the Vietnam War, the undermining of governments and authority, the 1970s saw a number of revolutionary groups who took to terrorism and thuggery for their alleged social and reformist ideologies. The Italian Red Brigade was one. But, probably, the best known was the Baader Meinhof Gang who called themselves the Red Army Faction. - Fr Peter Malone, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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06-May-2009
Anyone who has seen the films Charlie Kaufman has written (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) will know that he does not make it easy for us, the audience. We have to work hard to keep our bearings in a Kaufman screenplay, and even then we may not always feel we are on secure ground. - Jim Murphy, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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04-May-2009
On February 12 2005, Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic nun from Dayton, Ohio, was shot six times and left to die on a muddy road in the Brazilian Amazon. Who was this woman and why did her work amongst the poor arouse so much anger from ranchers and cattlemen?
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07-May-2009
Deaf Sentence tries to tie poignant reflections on ageing, loss and death into a comedy of manners. It's not an attempt that ever feels likely to come off, and the clash between the two modes is fully brought out by the time we reach the novel's incongruously solemn ending. - Martin Dubois, Thinking Faith
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08-May-2009
The Christian's resurrection hope is not for heaven but for new heavens and a new earth. The resurrection gives us the kind of love and hope that is only possible when we believe that a different world is possible, that history is going somewhere under God and that the future has begun. We believe in life before death. - Fr Noel Connolly, The Far East
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07-May-2009
The idea that God might use natural disasters to punish people for general sinfulness or particular sins is repugnant. But at first glance the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, do seem to represent God as doing just that. This tension bears reflection. - Fr Andrew Hamilton, Eureka Street
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06-May-2009
Look around the world and you find that risible old Nedward, or at least the phenomenon he epitomises, has won one of the great intellectual battles of the past two centuries. And now, far from being put down, Flanderism is spreading around the world, an American export with a potency at least the equal of the very Hollywood products that mock him. - John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Times Online
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05-May-2009
When L'Osservatore Romano published an essay this week suggesting that US President Barack Obama's positions on abortion and other life issues "have not confirmed fears of radical changes," it provided the latest confirmation of a glaring difference in tone between the Vatican and the most ardently pro-life circles in the American Catholic Church, including a growing number of American bishops. - John L. Allen Jr, National Catholic Reporter
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04-May-2009
After all these years, "journey" still seems the truest metaphor for marriage, even when it transforms into suburban life and its encumbrances. It is always a journey, even when we don't see it. Each day the tent is pitched, night falls, day breaks, the old falls away, the new is born and we continue this journey of the spirit. Every morning, the world anew. - Michael Fitzsimons, Wel-com
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05-May-2009
With the aim of highlighting the legacy of St Paul for the Catholic community, the format of the E-Conference will allow the Church across Australia to take part in an exciting innovation in a cost effective way. The conference is structured to allow participants to receive the input from the presenters and then participate in a structured process using a local trained person to help facilitate the learning in each local site as well as assist with coordinating interaction with the conference site.
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