News
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04-Dec-2009
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to counter recent assertions by Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, that homosexuals don't go to heaven.
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News - National
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02-Dec-2009
Right to Life Australia says it is excited that Tony Abbott, who has said on record that abortion should be reduced and is a stain on Australia's national character, is leading the federal opposition.
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02-Dec-2009
Faith communities can influence changes to public policy and empower marginalised women, said Sister Joan Chittister. She said two-thirds of the world's hungry, illiterate and poor are currently women.
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02-Dec-2009
When Tony Abbott decided to run for the opposition leadership, he rang his "somewhat retired" Jesuit mentor, Emmet Costello, The Australian reports.
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01-Dec-2009
Instead of the "entirely ridiculous assumption" that abstinence is the way to go, young Australians need to be better taught about safe sex, the Sydney Morning Herald quoted the Lowy Institute's Bill Botwell saying.
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01-Dec-2009
In a letter to mark the International Day of People with Disability, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Bishops' Delegate for Disability, Peter Elliot, urged communities to embrace people with disability.
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30-Nov-2009
Tony Abbott, the only declared Liberal Party leadership challenger to Malcolm Turnbull, says he's a "pragmatic common sense" politician and not a narrow minded conservative, the Sunday Herald Sun reported.
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04-Dec-2009
About 4,000 delegates are gathered for the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne this week. The opening of the meeting was blessed by Zoroastrians, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Baha'is, Aborigines, Shintos and in song.
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04-Dec-2009
Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart will contact police over concerns the Church's investigator Peter O'Callaghan QC, tipped off two priests that they were under investigation by detectives for alleged sexual abuse.
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03-Dec-2009
The Sisters of St Joseph have launched a book on the history of the order in Victoria called From Humble Beginnings.
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30-Nov-2009
The Archdiocese of Melbourne is "investigating whether there is any prospect of recovery" of more than $400,000 in parish funds that drug addicted Olivia Raymond conned from 83 year old North Fawkner parish priest Father Paul Kane, The Age reports.
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04-Dec-2009
Kristina Keneally, a self-declared Catholic feminist, is poised to take over the reins as the next Labor premier of NSW from Nathan Rees.
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04-Dec-2009
All 22 child sex charges levelled against Father Peter Julian Brock were dropped by Director of Public Prosecutions solicitor John Stanhope at the Newcastle Local Court yesterday.
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01-Dec-2009
The community in Jindera, near Albury in NSW is being urged to weed out vandals who smashed religious statues, threw over the altar and caused other destruction over the weekend at the town's Catholic church and school.
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03-Dec-2009
No one will face further charges over the failure of the Catholic Education Office in Toowoomba to report child sex abuse allegations in a local school according to police, because a six month legislative time limit had expired.
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03-Dec-2009
Brisbane Archdiocese launched a comprehensive statement on disability and inclusion to mark the International Day for People with Disability today.
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02-Dec-2009
Toowoomba Bishop William Morris said he would be thoroughly considering the implications of a court decision clearing a Catholic school principal of wrong doing in a case concerning students who complained about sexual abuse.
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30-Nov-2009
Father Peter Kennedy, who was stripped of his holy orders and banned from preaching, hearing confessions and officiating at weddings since June, says his "St Mary's in Exile" community is still attracting large numbers.
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03-Dec-2009
Perth charity campaigner Father Brian Morrison, who dedicated his life to helping those less fortunate and ran a crisis care centre in Perth for 37 years, has died from leukaemia. He was 76.
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03-Dec-2009
Fees for students at Catholic secondary schools in Canberra will rise by 6 percent next year and primary schools fees are set to go up 3 percent, ABC reports.
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News - International
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04-Dec-2009
Representatives from the Pacific Island communities most threatened by rising sea levels, will travel to the Copenhagen UN climate summit next week, together with Australian human rights advocates, to ensure the human face of climate change is not forgotten.
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30-Nov-2009
Extreme religious and anti-religious views are on the rise, while measured debate wanes, said physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies. He blames the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US for this, The Age reports.
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03-Dec-2009
Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has urged bishops and priests mentioned in the Irish government report on abused children to admit their mistakes and resign or stand over their belief that they made no mistakes.
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02-Dec-2009
Ireland's Papal Nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza denied he showed contempt for the institutions of the State by not responding to the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
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01-Dec-2009
Saying that he had no authority to ask anyone to resign, Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has told bishops implicated in the Irish government report into child sex abuse to look into their consciences.
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01-Dec-2009
A total of 16 leaders of Christian Churches in the UK, including the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will join in a service to call on world leaders to act against climate change.
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01-Dec-2009
The Anglican Bishop of Croydon in England, Nick Baines, says traditional Christmas carols are misleading, embarrassing and twist the birth of Jesus into a commercialised fairytale.
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30-Nov-2009
Pope Benedict plans to personally take charge of the ceremony to beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, when he visits Britain in September next year, the UK's The Catholic Herald reports from unnamed Vatican sources.
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02-Dec-2009
About 128,000 Sri Lankan civilians who have been held in state-run camps since the end of the country's separatist conflict in May have been released, Nine News cited from an AFP report.
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Religion
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30-Nov-2009
Australia's Catholic Bishops Conference welcomed the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus of Pope Benedict XVI, and appointed Bishop Peter Elliot as the delegate on the matter at their November plenary meeting.
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Regulars
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04-Dec-2009
The trouble with Ipods and texting on mobiles is that it becomes self-entertainment, lacking the exercise of living relationships with one's immediate community, the family. Through meals together, games together, there is the opportunity for recognition, humour, and affirmation, all the ingredients for love. - Bishop Greg O'Kelly, The Southern Cross
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03-Dec-2009
That Abbott is by no means black and white, and is often tentative and uncertain in his moralism makes him more complicated. But also, to his detractors, less safe and predictable. Abbott is a decent man. He has a high degree of personal honour, if less than an average quantity of political decency. - Jack Waterford, The Canberra Times
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02-Dec-2009
The range and depth of participants' experience of the impact of the abuse indicated that they carried a deep anguish and heaviness of heart; and also a deep desire to be freed of its ongoing effects. Whilst some participants had already initiated steps towards healing, others felt stuck and powerless in the face of the impact. - Dennis Hunter-Papp, Aurora
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01-Dec-2009
As we meditate on Advent, the humility of God holds the mirror up to us. If Christ gives up his honour, his dignity, his omniscient view, and immerses himself in the mess of this world, what are the implications for me? Because surely if Christ is incarnate in the world, we are called to imitate him by being incarnated too. And what is incarnation? - Sarah Broscombe, Thinking Faith
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30-Nov-2009
Efforts are under way to salvage Anglo-Catholic dialogue following Pope Benedict XVI's decree setting out new structures to receive groups of disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church. - Abigail Frymann, The Tablet
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04-Dec-2009
Founded in Canberra in 1986 by Fr Ken Baker, Missionaries of God's Love are a consecrated group of men and women seeking to bring the fire of God's love to all people. Bolding exclaiming the Gospel verse from St Luke, the Missionaries of God's Love exist to share Jesus' mission to bring this fire to the earth.
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03-Dec-2009
The National Institute for Newman Studies is based in Pittsburgh, USA and its aim is to increase awareness of the life, work and influence of Catholic convert, Cardinal John Henry Newman. The website is designed to provide scholars and all those interested in Newman with ready access to resources and information.
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02-Dec-2009
The ABC's coverage of the Parliament of the World's Religions has begun with the commencement of a blog - Talking of Faith. Encounter producer Margaret Coffey will contribute analysis, commentary, reportage and photos from this huge gathering.
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01-Dec-2009
December 1 is World AIDS Day and the Australian AIDS Fund is a charity offering information resources, practical responses and a number of initiatives in Australia, Africa and across the globe to assist HIV/AIDS sufferers and their families.
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30-Nov-2009
The Advent season is upon us, and to celebrate the Redemptorists of Australia have created an online Advent Calender for this important festive season.
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03-Dec-2009
Movies about haunted houses require a suspension of disbelief well above the norm. Even so, or maybe because of it, their success depends on how cleverly the filmmaker goes about the task. Directed, written and edited by Oren Peli, who also co-produced, Paranormal Activity is quite a clever little horror flick. - Jim Murphy, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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01-Dec-2009
The film is a psychosexual drama with a focus on psychological disturbance and therapy. Of its nature, this leads into areas that are private to individuals or to couples. Nevertheless, there is always room for case studies. - Fr Peter Malone, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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04-Dec-2009
The author quotes an old Persian proverb as an example of the national sense of insecurity which has led, he claims, to a mentality of short-termism, a lack of trust in the state and a reliance on strong family and clan loyalty. There is a lack of immediacy, however, and the feeling grows reading this book that the author became an emigré many years ago, with all the detachment that this implies in lack of direct recent experience of the Iranian revolutionary events. - Robert Carver, The Tablet
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04-Dec-2009
When I look back I think I was both blessed and "cursed" to be ordained at the time I was. I was ordained at the peak of the wave. Our seminaries were full; our missionaries young and confident. But it has been a time of questioning since the early 70s, almost forty years of questions. It has certainly been a time of ageing and diminishment and a time when religion and mission have been increasingly marginalised, moving from the centre to the periphery. - Fr Noel Connolly, The Far East
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03-Dec-2009
In the past two months, relations between the three main Christian churches have moved in more promising directions than perhaps during the past 50 years of uninspiring liberal dialogue. By opening a new chapter of theological engagement and concrete cooperation with Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, Pope Benedict XVI is changing the terms of debate about church reunification. In time, we might witness the end of the Great Schism between east and west and a union of the main episcopally-based churches. - Adrian Pabst, guardian.co.uk
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02-Dec-2009
For the three kings, every day must have been lived in anticipation of night and seeing the star of Bethlehem rise in the night sky. That in the light of that star, everything which was usually ordinary, boring even and uninspiring, became extraordinary - the coolness of the night, the sound of the camels' tread, the scent of the air, the comfort of each other. - Maria Kennedy, Marist Messenger
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01-Dec-2009
Once you are convinced that you alone hold the truth, whether your god is Amun-Ra or Marx, you slough off self-doubt and self-examination. You build rich hierarchies of obedience, surround them with impressive ritual and illogical rules, and then circle the wagons to protect your artificial structure. - Libby Purves, The Times
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30-Nov-2009
Not all discrimination is unjust and not all relationships are the same. Parents love their children, including their adult ones, but the law will not allow them to marry. Would we allow siblings who loved each other to marry, of course not! We discriminate and make distinctions between different kinds of relationships and with good reason. Only the relationship of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others for life can be a marriage. - Matthew MacDonald, Kairos Catholic Journal
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02-Dec-2009
Catholic Communities Night is an event that will be held as part of the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne in order to welcome interstate and international Catholic visitors to Melbourne. Archbishop Denis Hart will be present, and the guest of honour will be Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from Washington.
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30-Nov-2009
At the height of the climate talks in Copenhagen, churches in Denmark will ring their bells. Christians around the world are invited by The World Council of Churches to echo them by sounding their own bells, shells, drums, gongs or horns 350 times.
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