News
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13-Aug-2007
Pope Benedict has called on the world community to come to the aid of
coastal regions in Peru devastated by Wednesday's earthquake.
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13-Aug-2007
A California researcher says that he has uncovered evidence of efforts
by dozens of companies, political and other organisations - including
the CIA, the British Labour Party and the Vatican - to edit entries on
the popular Wikipedia website in order to boost their own public image.
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13-Aug-2007
Likening materialist ideologies including consumerism to the red dragon
of the biblical Book of Revelation, Pope Benedict yesterday reminded
his Feast of the Assumption audience that "love is stronger than evil"
and God more powerful than the dragon.
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13-Aug-2007
The Holy See has endorsed a new tourist venture that plans to fly
pilgrims around the globe under the slogan "I'm searching for your
face, Lord".
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13-Aug-2007
Pope Benedict will hold a consistory in November this year with up to
17 new cardinals expected to be named from countries including Germany,
Brazil, France and the United States, reports say.
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13-Aug-2007
In an encyclical to be published for the 40th anniversary of Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, Pope Benedict plans to condemn tax evasion as "socially unjust" and will denounce "tax havens", Vatican sources say.
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13-Aug-2007
Describing next year's World Youth Day in Sydney as a great opportunity
to showcase Australia, Prime Minister John Howard has agreed to a
request from Cardinal George Pell for another $15 million in federal
funding while Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has also endorsed the
funding increase saying that "the event will be huge".
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13-Aug-2007
Sydney Muslim leaders have offered to open their mosques and schools to
World Youth Day pilgrims while the Catholic Church has given a
commitment not to try to convert WYD volunteers from other faiths.
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13-Aug-2007
WYD coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher has called on Australian Islamic
leaders to assist in offering facilities for inter-faith forums during
next year's World Youth Day in Sydney saying that the event will be an
opportunity to demonstrate "the potential of faith to unite rather than
divide our world".
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13-Aug-2007
Trainers and other affected racing professionals are considering a ban
on moving horses blocking preparatory work at World Youth Day's
Randwick Racecourse venue.
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13-Aug-2007
The well-known jockey Ray Setches committed suicide eight years ago as
a result of abuse at a Melbourne Catholic school, according to his
brother, James Setches, also an abuse victim, who is now organising a
protest against what he regards as inadequate compensation.
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13-Aug-2007
The Australian Catholic Commission for Employment Relations has said
the Industrial Relations Commission's decision on the Federal Minimum
Wage discriminates against low paid workers with family
responsibilities.
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13-Aug-2007
Condemning the lack of consultation on the Federal Government's
Northern Territory Indigenous legislation, Catholic Social Services
Australia chief, Frank Quinlan, yesterday insisted on two months of
deliberation before passage of the bills presently before Parliament.
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13-Aug-2007
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott will be a keynote speaker at tomorrow's annual convention of the Christian Democratic Party.
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13-Aug-2007
In questions to Australia's political leaders during an Australian
Christian Lobby webcast, Australian Bishops president, Archbishop
Philip Wilson asked Prime Minister Howard and Opposition leader Rudd to
identify the personal qualities required for "authentic leadership".
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13-Aug-2007
Commenting on a battle between Prime Minister John Howard and
Opposition leader Kevin Rudd for the voting allegiance of Christians,
Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce says he doesn't know whether
God is on his side and that He may indeed be "distinctly offside with
me".
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13-Aug-2007
With non-Catholic enrolment in Wollongong Catholic schools varying from
10-15 per cent, diocesan Catholic education head, Peter Turner, says
that the Church will maintain its current policy on admissions.
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13-Aug-2007
A report on the welfare of primary school principals has found that
while many schools often fail to extend pastoral care to their own
principals Catholic schools score best on this issue.
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13-Aug-2007
A report on the welfare of primary school principals has found that
while many schools often fail to extend pastoral care to their own
principals Catholic schools score best on this issue.
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News - National
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13-Aug-2007
Victorian police have arrested two teenagers over a fire that destroyed
five classrooms and an office at the Lavalla Catholic College junior
campus in Traralgon during the weekend.
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13-Aug-2007
Even though the Holy See has backed the right of its parish priest to
close down and sell the local St Brigid's church and hall, the Western
Victorian country Catholic community of Crossley is fighting to retain
the facilities and to transform the church into a cultural and heritage
centre.
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News - International
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13-Aug-2007
A Catholic priest who kidnapped and killed his son to preserve the
secret that he had broken his vow of celibacy has been sentenced to 55
years imprisonment by a Mexican court.
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13-Aug-2007
University of Manchester researchers have uncovered evidence that
Indian scholars discovered elements of the mathematical calculus
hundreds of years before Leibniz and Newton, the latter of whom may
have received assistance from Jesuit missionaries who had visited the
sub-continent.
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13-Aug-2007
East Timore police have arrested a teenage youth who is suspected of
raping an 11 year old girl at a Catholic convent in Baucau diocese
during violence that erupted after the naming of independence hero
Xanana Gusmao as the country's new Prime Minister.
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13-Aug-2007
Descendants of 19th century PNG cannibals have expressed sorrow for the
actions of their forefathers who killed and ate four Fijian
missionaries in 1878.
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13-Aug-2007
With an estimated 100,000 poor farmers estimated to have killed
themselves over the last ten years in India's "suicide region", the
Catholic Church is mobilising to assist widows and prevent further
deaths.
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Religion
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13-Aug-2007
Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president Archbishop Philip
Wilson has published a letter noting that, while celibacy is not
essential to the priesthood, it has a value "not just as a personal
choice" but as a "clear sign of the Kingdom of God".
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13-Aug-2007
In an interview in which he criticises an over-emphasis on theological
education, Parramatta Bishop Kevin Manning says that the Church has
become "too professional" leading to a loss of sensitivity for other
people who are suffering and need compassion.
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13-Aug-2007
Retired French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray has said that both Pope
Benedict and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II want to meet. However
he added that the time should be favourable, and no "show" should be
made of the event.
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13-Aug-2007
Breda Bishop Tiny Muskens, who once worked as missionary in Indonesia,
has proposed that Dutch Catholics should pray to Allah just as
Christians already do in other countries with significant Muslim
populations.
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Regulars
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13-Aug-2007
In the boom years after World War II, when we were making lots of
babies, anyone who had drunk too much would be accused of being "as
full as a Catholic school." A few decades on, it seems that Catholic
schools are not so full of Catholics, but have managed to accumulate a
sizeable enrolment of other believers and even non-believers. The
document Catholic Schools at the Crossroads, issued last week by the
bishops of NSW and the ACT, refers to the tendency for Catholic
schools, in our increasingly dysfunctional framework of public and
private schools, to become decidedly middle class - Chris Bonnor
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13-Aug-2007
The continuing debate over the access of same-sex couples to social
benefits and so-called entitlements is a distraction from the real
issue. The real issue is not about infringement of rights. Rather, it
is about what heterosexual marriage can offer society that other forms
of relationships cannot. Married heterosexual unions are not simply a
legal invention with an associated bunch of benefits. They have an
intrinsic value which enables them to provide a number of reciprocal
benefits to any society - Chris Meney
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13-Aug-2007
When does a human become human? Is it at the moment of conception when
a sperm cell fuses with an egg? As a researcher in developmental
genetics (the study of how genes control embryo development) I would
like to put in my two cents worth to remind the faithful and even some
scientific colleagues of one basic fact. Human life never begins! Human
life never begins because sperm cells and egg cells are not dead - Michael Lardelli
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13-Aug-2007
Every year I write a column on suicide and each of those columns
usually prompts a flood of mostly grateful letters. The gratitude comes
from the fact that those columns suggest that, in most cases, suicide
claims its victims in the same way as does a heart attack, a stroke,
cancer, or an accident. There is no freedom not to die. Suicide victims
are, like victims of sickness and accidents, not responsible for their
own deaths and suicide should not be a matter of secrecy, shame, moral
judgment, and second-guessing - Ron Rolheiser
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13-Aug-2007
Sixty-two years ago, on 9 August 1945, the second of the only two
atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive
war (against essentially defenceless civilian populations) was dropped
on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained
American soldiers were only "doing their job," and they did it
efficiently. What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over
200 years of Christian persecution, American Christians did in nine
seconds - Gary G Kohls
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13-Aug-2007
Whenever a moral issue swims into public view, people will call for
church leaders to make a statement about it. The call should be weighed
carefully - such statements have their place but are not normally all
that helpful. The reason is that church statements are written to
achieve broader goals - to help form a lively and faithful church
community and to ensure that the wider public is properly informed
about Christian faith and its implications for issues facing the nation
- Fr Andrew Hamilton
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13-Aug-2007
When the engagement between Peter Phillips, the 29-year-old son of the
Princess Royal, and Autumn Kelly, 31, his management consultant
girlfriend, was announced a fortnight ago, it barely created a ripple.
But the royal romance took an unlikely twist when it emerged that Kelly
is a baptised Roman Catholic and therefore falls foul of the 1701 Act
of Settlement, which bars monarchs and their heirs from marrying
"papists". Although there is now a broad cross-party consensus that
aspects of the Act are unfair, there is little political will to do
anything about it - Jonathan Petre
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