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09-Sep-2008
Pope Benedict has appointed three Australian bishops who will participate as full members in next month's Word of God Synod in Rome while six women experts and 19 women observers will also attend the event.
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News
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10-Sep-2008
In a letter marking the 30th anniversary of the death of Pope Paul VI, Pope Benedict has praised the late pontiff saying that his contribution in an age of challenges and problems is becoming increasingly evident.
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08-Sep-2008
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has informed the bishop of the Medjugorje region that a priest who served as spiritual director for the alleged visionaries has been disciplined for failing to cooperate with a Vatican inquiry.
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09-Sep-2008
Pope Benedict has sent a message to Catholic social networking site, Xt3, to mark 50 days since his World Youth Day Mass at Randwick.
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10-Sep-2008
Pope Benedict has named Sydney Cardinal George Pell as one of three delegate presidents for the forthcoming Synod of Bishops on the Word of God.
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News - National
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12-Sep-2008
Perth Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton says he is not concerned about a shift from traditional funeral services after funeral directors revealed that football theme songs and heavy metal songs are now among those most requested at WA funerals.
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12-Sep-2008
A Newcastle priest has been placed on restricted duties after seven year old children at a local school were shown an explicit image during a religion class.
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12-Sep-2008
A Queensland bioethicist has called on Catholics to write to senators in support of a bill to end Medicare funding for second and third trimester abortions.
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11-Sep-2008
Mercy taught Bennelong MP Maxine McKew has credited the education she received at Brisbane's All Hallows School with enabling her to defeat former Prime Minister John Howard in last year's Federal elections.
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10-Sep-2008
Churchgoers are losing touch with the Bible and Catholics are doing worse than most, statistics show.
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08-Sep-2008
Sydney Archdiocese investigated recent complaints against Fr Peter Dwyer, who has been charged over alleged events at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst in the 1970s.
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08-Sep-2008
A prominent South Australian barrister, Mr Michael Abbott QC, is preparing to examine witnesses for an investigation into allegations against Fr John Fleming following a briefing from the Adelaide Archdiocese.
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11-Sep-2008
Xavier educated Victorian Deputy Premier Rob Hulls joined Police Minister Bob Cameron and Sports Minister James Merlino in voting against the Abortion Law Reform Bill which passed a second reading in Victoria's Lower House last night.
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10-Sep-2008
Former Victorian World Youth Day Minister James Merlino has warned that if a controversial Abortion Law Reform Bill passes, it will lead to "open slather" for terminations up to six months.
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11-Sep-2008
In the wake of allegations against former teachers and priests at Bathurst's St Stanislaus College, a group of ex-students has called on the Vincentian order to withdraw from the college.
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09-Sep-2008
Months after turning down a proposal for a Muslim school, residents of Camden in Sydney's west have welcomed plans for a Catholic school in the historic town.
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09-Sep-2008
An indigenous community on Bathurst Island is upset after a mahogany tree reputed to have been planted by pioneer priest and later Darwin Bishop Francis Xavier Gsell was cut down on advice by arborists.
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News - International
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12-Sep-2008
The specific role of the layperson is "to imbue the temporal order with the Christian spirit and to transform it according to the divine plan," Pope Benedict has told Paraguay's bishops following the election of a former bishop as the South American nation's new president.
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09-Sep-2008
Democratic Party US vice-presidential candidate Senator Joseph Biden has said he believes that human life begins at conception.
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10-Sep-2008
Senator Joseph Biden displays "flawed moral reasoning" on abortion, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput says, responding to a weekend statement by the vice-presidential candidate.
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08-Sep-2008
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's local ordinary, San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer, has issued a statement saying her public statements on abortion are "in serious conflict" with Church teachings and invited her to a "conversation" on the issue.
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08-Sep-2008
Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin who was baptised a Catholic now claims to be a "Bible believing" non-denominational Christian.
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12-Sep-2008
Pope Benedict has praised the selflessness of late Italian Cardinal Antonio Innocenti who stood before a World War II firing squad before being reprieved.
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12-Sep-2008
No new Lourdes miracles have been recorded since an easing of criteria, local Bishop Jacques Perrier has said.
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11-Sep-2008
Pope Benedict leaves for France tomorrow on a visit to commemorate the 150th anniversary of St Bernadette's Lourdes visions of Our Lady.
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08-Sep-2008
A broken hearted Italian man has mounted a vigil outside a convent at Montecassino Abbey after his ex-girlfriend joined the Franciscan nuns.
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10-Sep-2008
As Catholic protests continue in Thai Ha parish, Hanoi archdiocese has accused state television of falsely presenting two unordained men as priests.
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11-Sep-2008
Anti-Christian violence is slowly subsiding in the Indian state of Orissa but details continue to emerge of the attacks that have left many seriously wounded.
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09-Sep-2008
Hindu radicals have accused Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity sisters of kidnapping and converting four children.
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11-Sep-2008
Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Caritas Australia worker Lulu Mitshabu says her native country is now in an immeasurably worse condition than when she fled.
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Regulars
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12-Sep-2008
Go out and buy a ticket now! Millions of people every week do just that. But of those millions only a few ever win. Yet people keep on week after week buying tickets because there is the hope that maybe this will be the ticket to riches, maybe this will be their lucky day. We don't realise that the finger of God has already singled us out to be sharers in a wealth beyond all imagining. - St Columban's Mission Society
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11-Sep-2008
To understand the apparent disconnect between the importance in which Catholic faith is held, on the one hand, by the Australian government and over a quarter of Australia’s self-professed Catholics, and on the other, the strident opposition to the Catholic Church from some sectors, it is important to appreciate the interaction between Christian values at the national, institutional and individual levels of Australian society since European settlement. - Joanne Lau, Online Opinion
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10-Sep-2008
Love isn't easy, except in our daydreams. We do not even need to look at the superficiality of the cheaper romantic novels to see the truth of that. It suffices to go to church regularly. I go to Mass every day and I go there with good people, who are sincere, committed, honest, and full of faith. But they are also human and as we stand together in a circle of faith, we are not always the idyllic picture of harmony and love of which our church hymns speak. - Fr Ron Rolheiser, ronrolheiser.com
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09-Sep-2008
Was Alfred Hitchcock a sexual monster? Or was he, as the French film makers Rohmer and Chabrol once claimed, a moralist whose films are steeped in Roman Catholic themes? - Times Online
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08-Sep-2008
A great but little known tragedy occurred within the life of the Catholic Church on June 20 1599, at Udayamperoor in the southern Indian state of Kerala. On that day at the Synod of Diamper, the Archbishop of Goa, Aleixo de Menezes, set in process the Latinisation of the St Thomas Christians. It was the deliberate and enforced emasculation of the Christian tradition of India, a church tradition that had its roots in the legacy of St Thomas the Apostle. - Andrew Thomas Kania, The Tablet
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12-Sep-2008
MacKillop Family Services provides a wide range of specialist support services to some of Victoria's most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, young people and their families. It was formed in July 1997 as a refounding of seven child welfare organisations of the Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers and the Sisters of St Joseph.
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11-Sep-2008
Connor Court Publishing is an Australian owned publisher specialising in books on religion and culture. In recent years it has published many of the texts by conservative Australian Catholic identities including Tess Livingstone and Fr John Flader.
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10-Sep-2008
This website of a publishing house is, as a tribute to St Paul in this Pauline Year, hosting an interactive trivia game about the life and work of the great saint. The game, In the footsteps of St Paul, is the brainchild of a Franciscan Friar and is sparking widespread interest particularly in the Spanish speaking world.
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09-Sep-2008
The regional Queensland city of Bundaberg now has just one main Catholic parish but its website clearly shows a parish alive and busy with activity. The parish's youth group, Ablaze provides the most stimulating aspect of the site with several good images and a couple of YouTube videos as well.
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08-Sep-2008
A flood of suggestions for top shelf parish websites have filtered through following last week's nomination of a New Zealand parish's site as being among the best according to the editors. One such site belongs to All Saints Parish, Fitzroy in inner Melbourne.
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12-Sep-2008
The rich treasures of Chinese culture together with the ever alluring concept of immortality offer an opportunity for the Mummy franchise to leave its Egyptian roots and head East. The ideas and the basic story elements are all powerful and dramatic, combined with spectacular locations and eyelash curling digital effects. The enormity of the production is impressive and the cast includes some highly talented thesps. But something, or somethings, went wrong in the writing and the execution. - Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile
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09-Sep-2008
Waltz With Bashir is about the trauma of recovered memories. But it is also about the nature of war, and its impact upon us, especially when we have been raised to believe in the value of human life, yet are expected to suppress these values and beliefs when we are called upon by our country to go to war. - Jan Epstein, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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10-Sep-2008
This week's edition of The Rhythm Divine features Catholic rocker, Mike Mangione. It also plays host to Texan born, Beth Nielsen Chapman and her Human Family Songbook, better known as her new album Prism, a collection of devotional music from the world's religious traditions.
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08-Sep-2008
No one will be surprised to find Richard Swinburne arguing that the general character of the world makes it probable that there is a God. Emeritus Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford, he has built up over many years an impressive and much discussed case for Christian theism in terms of mainstream analytic philosophy. - Fergus Kerr
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12-Sep-2008
The provisions in the bill limiting the prerogatives of conscience indicate a disturbing mindset, one that finds it offensive that there are contrary views to that which under law will prevail, and which, in practice if not in avowed intent, seeks to suppress them. What an insidious irony it is that this coercion of conscience is being carried out in the name of choice. - Ray Cassin, The Age
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11-Sep-2008
There are still plenty of reasons to bother with the Bible. But at least one is indisputable, and it reveals a gaping hole in the Australian educational experience. You need to know the Bible in order to understand the history, literature and arts of Western culture. In fact, it is an educational and cultural tragedy that the Bible has quietly disappeared from the schooling experience of many Australians. - Greg Clarke, The Sydney Morning Herald
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10-Sep-2008
The central hope of the Obama campaign is to find common ground, not by "favouring" that which can never be acceptable, the taking of innocent unborn life, but by dealing with the legal reality in a way that at least reduces the likelihood of abortion. - Douglas W. Kmiec, Chicago Tribune
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09-Sep-2008
From the moment of conception, a human being's rights as a person must be respected. The existence of each person, their capacity to enjoy life and all other rights, the viability of community and the common good depend profoundly on the right to life.
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08-Sep-2008
The majority of Australian parliaments have now changed or at least clarified the common law, ensuring the legality of widespread abortion practices. Victoria is about to follow this trend, debating the Abortion Law Reform Bill this week. But the pro-abortion lobby has decided to take things three steps further than other jurisdictions. It is quite a try on, under cover of the claim that the Victorian bill 'acknowledges and reflects community attitudes and current clinical practice'. - Fr Frank Brennan, Eureka Street
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11-Sep-2008
The next St Thomas More Forum will have Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor, Professor Greg Craven as its guest speaker. He will speak on the topic Australian Universities and the Catholic Tradition: Intellectual, Educational and Cultural Connections.
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