News
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Health Minister Tony Abbott has defended his decision to award a contract to operate a 24-hour pregnancy counselling hotline to Centacare following protests that a Catholic agency would not be able to offer objective advice.
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A family of Taiwanese origin whose children attend the local Catholic school in Cowra, central NSW, have won a last minute review of an Immigration Department decision ordering the family to leave the country because their small organic farm is not profitable enough.
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Giving his annual new year address to the Vatican diplomatic community, Pope Benedict yesterday condemned a worsening "scandal of famine" which he said is "unacceptable in a world which has the means and knowledge to tackle it".
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Italian researcher Paolo De Coppi's groundbreaking research paper on amniotic stem cells was rejected by four scientific journals over seven years before its publication this week in Nature Biotechnology but Catholic commentators have welcomed the discovery as making available a new source of ethically acceptable stem cells.
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Ex-Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus in effect misled the pope by his failure to disclose the true nature of his links with the former Polish communist regime, Italian media reports say, as news breaks of the resignation of another high level church official in the late Pope John Paul II's home diocese of Cracow.
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A Holy See Congregation for the Clergy decree calling for "implementation without further delay" of an earlier 2004 decree invalidating the removal by Bishop Jeremiah Coffey of controversial priest, Fr John Speekman, from his Morwell parish has now been published on a local website.
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A new musical version of Dante's medieval masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, produced by the St John Lateran Cathedral choirmaster, Monsignor Marco Frisina, features symphonic music in heaven, Gregorian chant in purgatory - and hard
rock and heavy metal in hell.
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Pope Benedict continues to attract large crowds to all his talks with figures for attendance at Vatican public events up again in 2006 over 2005 figures - the last year with John Paul II as Pope.
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Centacare has defended its role in the Government's new pregnancy counselling service, saying the agency would be involved in developing a manual for counsellors and is "well suited" to the task.
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Catholic Health Australia CEO, Francis Sullivan, says that the Australian Medical Association had been "sold a googly" running an "anti-Catholic line" after its president said doctors want state governments to stop contracting to Catholic hospitals that refuse to provide IVF, abortion and sterilisation.
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Following the rejection of his second appeal to the Holy See Congregation for the Clergy against the reinstatement of a controversial priest, Sale Bishop Jeremiah Coffey has launched a new appeal to the Vatican's highest court, the Signatura.
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Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has renewed its attack on the Dakar motor rally following the death of a participant, condemning the race as a bloody, violent, irresponsible and cynical imposition of questionable Western tastes on the developing world.
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Covering a crucifix on the walls of a hospital ward does not reflect a drift to secularism or political correctness, says Bishop Justin Bianchini from Geraldton, WA, defending the practice of a local Catholic hospital to occasionally remove religious images at the request of non-Catholic patients.
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World Youth Day 2008 participants from the poorest countries will pay the lowest registration fees while participants from industrialised nations such as Australia will pay the most in a solidarity pricing scheme adopted for the world event.
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Twenty four missionaries were killed during 2006, according to Catholic Mission director, Fr Terry Bell, with most being non-Western missionaries working in their own countries.
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Tensions between Catholic-operated health services and IVF fertility clinics are likely to increase, says a leading reproductive health expert, but Catholic Health Australia has played down the threat to IVF services from Catholic health sector growth.
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Telling a Brisbane newspaper that he was grieved that he could not ordain women or married men to the priesthood, Toowoomba Bishop William Morris has expressed hope for a change in Church policy through "dialogue".
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Catholics form the largest religious group among the newly inaugurated US Congress with 29 per cent of members of the Senate and House of Representatives, which also includes its first Muslim congressman, according to media analyses.
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Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus hours before his official installation after the Polish prelate admitted that he had "damaged the Church" over his links with the former communist regime.
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A representative of the Russian bishops conference has warned against "hasty conclusions and accusations" as Polish bishops meet to discuss the fall out from the resignation of Warsaw Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus over spying allegations.
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According to a recent survey, only 51 per cent of French people now identify themselves as Catholic, down from 80 per cent a decade ago, with the number of professed atheists rising to 31 per cent.
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The number of people formally leaving the Austrian Church in the wake of a series of sex scandals dropped by 18 per cent in 2006 compared to the previous year while church attendances in Ireland have also levelled off after a similar series of scandals.
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"Where to eat", "Where to sleep" and "Where to wash" in Rome are among the section headings of a new guidebook for the homeless published by the St Egidio Community in Rome and which has been dubbed the "Michelin Guide for the Poor".
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Irish Columban Fr Frank Nally who was working with former British government minister Clare Short on a report on the impact of foreign mining companies in the Philippines was detained and deported upon his arrival at Manila airport on Sunday.
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Concluding their annual plenary which focused on the vocation and role of the laity, Indian bishops have committed the Church to urgently establishing participatory structures for lay people and a system of accountability for bishops and priests.
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A Sri Lankan bishop says that there was only one rebel soldier who was on leave among 16 Christian civilians killed and 35 wounded in an attack last week on a Sri Lankan village by four airforce bombers.
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A US air attack on a Somali village suspected to be sheltering al-Qaeda terrorists "risks throwing fuel on an already explosive situation" and is unlikely to boost support for the country's fragile transition government, a bishop responsible for Somali Catholics says.
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Police have released a computer-generated image of a man they are seeking over an attack on Melbourne priest Fr Michael Shadbolt who was beaten in his Doveton presbytery last week after he disturbed a burglar.
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Members of murdered Griffith teenager Andrew Farrugia's band played their newly composed tribute to their colleague, "Waiting for you", in front of a crowd of over 700 mourners at Sacred Heart Church yesterday.
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The Canberra Fertility Centre (CFC) which offers IVF treatment and which has been based at the John James Hospital, has attacked the hospital's new owners, Little Company of Mary Health Care, for allegedly withdrawing services that the clinic describes as essential.
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Regulars
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Almost no country is immune to the scourge of human trafficking, despite the many international laws and United Nations standards condemning it. Just ask the Franciscan men and women who live with and serve the poor in many of the countries where it thrives. In their ministries they encounter its victims - women, girls, men, boys - who, typically, have left their country of origin, lured by promises of employment, new opportunities and a stable life - Judy Ball
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Bob Santamaria maintained that "penetration" or "permeation" of outside bodies was a legitimate pressure-group tactic for him and his Catholic followers, akin to Fabian socialist influence on the British Labour Party. Opponents saw it as a takeover tactic. A burning question at the time of the Labor Split of the mid-1950s was whether the Movement he led was trying to take over the Australian Labor Party. Santamaria's letters to his intimates provide some evidence towards that conclusion.
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Journalists often use the spelling "lede" to distinguish the first sentence of a story from other connotations of "lead." The 2006 Lede Us Not Into Confusion Prize goes to Malcolm Moore of London's Daily Telegraph who, in a November dispatch from Rome, managed to pack an awful lot of confusion into a single sentence: "The Pope has shocked theologians and opened a chink in the theory of papal infallibility by saying that people should feel free to disagree with what he has written in his latest book, a meditation on Jesus Christ." The Pope said that? - George Weigel
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The Vatican secretary of state said the Polish church under the former communist regime was the "victim of abuse, forced to live in moments of uncertainty, even compromise." Poland was apparently not alone in this. Records released in recent years allege involvement by scores of priests - including two bishops in the Czech Republic and even the now retired primate of Hungary, who voted in the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Nor was the Catholic Church alone, as Orthodox and Protestant clergy have also been suspected of collaborating.
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Debates over what "Catholic identity" entails in the domain of liturgical speech and practice will be with us for some time to come. Last week brought a classic case in point with an address by American Bishop Donald Trautman, chair of the US bishops' Committee on the Liturgy and a longtime champion of liturgical reform. Trautman challenged a recent Vatican ruling that the Latin phrase pro multis in the formula for the consecration of the Precious Blood should be rendered as "for many" rather than the current English phrase "for all" - John L Allen
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The Government's decision to fund pregnancy counselling with input from Catholic agencies is controversial but preoccupation with the issue overlooks a larger question. Over four years the Government will spend $15.5 million on the pregnancy advice hotline and an additional $35 million on a Medicare rebate for pregnancy-related counselling. At a time when there are critical deficiencies in other health services, many are asking whether there is any evidence of a sudden demand for pregnancy counselling or a sudden rise in the number of abortions - Elisabeth Wynhausen
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At a time when many world political leaders have lost their moral authority, it is religious leaders who are fighting the good fight. Only religious leaders seem willing to come to the defence of our society's most disadvantaged and to condemn political brutality and social decay. As a young person, I find more wisdom and relevance in the words of church leaders than in the signposts of popular culture or in the deeds of political leaders - James Norman
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The appalling images and stories from Saddam Hussein's execution chamber in Baghdad was irrefutable proof that execution dehumanises not just its victims but its perpetrators. The Catholic Church opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein on principle. The Church says that while capital punishment was once justified to preserve the common good, that is no longer true. This is not yet a powerful enough argument to swing opinion in the US, even among Catholics, whose pro-life inclinations are somewhat selectively applied.
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We long for happiness more than for anything else in life. Acknowledging this, we are led to the assumption that everyone knows what happiness is. And yet the truth is that this question is somewhat elusive. Books have been written about attaining happiness, plans have been laid out, step-by-step programs have been offered and secrets have been divulged for attaining this goal. And yet, in the fact of all this, why do we have so many unhappy people in our midst? - Fr Richard Scheiner
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News reports suggest that US President George W Bush's "new direction" in Iraq will be more of the same. A "surge" in the number of troops appears to be in the works. The President's refusal to admit error or failure will now lead to more error and more failure. The ostensible reason for sending more troops is to control the sectarian violence engulfing Baghdad. Except for the most fervid advocates of this war, few observers think that additional troops will either increase the safety of Americans already there or provide the basis for long-term stability.
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