News
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10-Oct-2008
Pope Benedict XVI yesterday backed the beatification of World War II Pope Pius XII, saying he spared no effort in "the defence of the persecuted, with no distinction of religion, ethnicity, nationality or political affiliation."
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06-Oct-2008
Warning that nations once rich in faith were losing their identity under the influence of "a certain modern culture", Pope Benedict opened the Synod of Bishops on the Bible yesterday at a Mass at St Paul Outside the Walls Basilica.
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10-Oct-2008
Saying that he has been trying to memorise biblical passages from the daily Mass ever since his episcopal ordination, Korean Bishop Vincent Ri Pyung-Ho called on the Bible Synod for more "by hearting" in the formation of priests.
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08-Oct-2008
Vatican II called for a renewal of preaching that has only partly been achieved, Canberra-Goulburn Archbishop Mark Coleridge told the Bible Synod, suggesting that a Homilectic Directory be prepared to foster a new proclamation of the "kerygma".
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10-Oct-2008
National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission (NATSIEC) chief, Graeme Mundine, has called for the Rudd Government to "rollback and rethink" the Northern Territory intervention.
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07-Oct-2008
Catholic Education Commission of Victoria chairman, Bishop Tim Costelloe, has welcomed the injection by the State Labor Government of $38.9 million in capital grants to rebuild and upgrade needy Catholic schools.
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07-Oct-2008
Public performances of major Western religious music works such as Handel's Messiah and Mozart's Requiem have been banned by China's Ministry of Culture.
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News - National
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10-Oct-2008
Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn addressed Victoria's Upper House for five hours yesterday in a bid to stave off a vote on the abortion law reform bill while Sydney Cardinal George Pell condemned the bill's conscientious objection provisions as "tyranny".
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10-Oct-2008
Order of Australia recipient and Newcastle priest Fr Peter Brock was yesterday charged with 22 offences dating back to the 1970s.
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08-Oct-2008
Australian Catholic University has awarded former Wagga Wagga police officer, Terry O'Connell, with an honorary doctorate for his ground breaking work in restorative justice in Australian communities and abroad.
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07-Oct-2008
New Norcia Abbott Placid Spearritt OSB has died suddenly while on retreat at Ampleforth Monastery in the UK.
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06-Oct-2008
New South Wales and New Zealand publications were the big winners in last week's annual Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) awards in Brisbane.
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06-Oct-2008
Over 2,000 people gathered on Friday night at Sacred Heart Church, Cabramatta, in Sydney's west for a prayer vigil in solidarity with Hanoi Catholics.
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08-Oct-2008
As debate on the abortion law reform bill began in Victoria's Upper House, Melbourne's Archbishop opened a Pregnancy Assistance Centre in Frankston south of the city saying that the womb had become an endangered area.
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07-Oct-2008
Victorian Greens MP Colleen Hartland has accused Catholic hospitals of refusing to refer sexual assault victims to rape crisis centres that prescribe the morning after pill.
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06-Oct-2008
Pets can be our ladders into heaven, Friar Matthew Hufer said yesterday at a blessing ceremony for pets at Port Melbourne beach in a celebration for the Feast of St Francis of Assisi.
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06-Oct-2008
Thousands of pro-life supporters packed Melbourne's St Patrick's cathedral yesterday in response to Archbishop Denis Hart's call for a Day of Prayer to defeat the abortion law reform law bill now before Victoria's Upper House.
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10-Oct-2008
Mourners at St Canice's Church in Kings Cross yesterday farewelled Sydney homeless man, John O'Connor, who was reputed to have cost the state up to a million dollars in welfare payments and services.
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08-Oct-2008
Retired Sydney Bishop David Cremin joked after the launch of his biography that there would not be a movie version of his life.
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06-Oct-2008
A baptism at St Mary's Church, South Brisbane, that was videoed and uploaded on Youtube, may be invalid, commentators say.
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News - International
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09-Oct-2008
In the wake of a scandal in which blenders were used to cover up illegal late term abortions, Spanish priest, Fr Joan Manuel Serra, has petitioned King Juan Carlos not to sign a royal decree that would legalise the use of "baby crushing machines".
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08-Oct-2008
Addressing the Synod of Bishops, Israeli Rabbi Shear-Yashu Cohen described Jewish-Catholic relations as "a history of blood and tears" but said that his appearance at the Synod was a signal of "hope and a message of love."
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07-Oct-2008
Australian Sr Suzanne Philips FMM hs been elected as Superior-General of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, an international communion of 6,272 Sisters working in seventy six countries.
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07-Oct-2008
Pope Benedict has launched a marathon non-stop reading of the Bible, from Genesis to Apocalypse, broadcast live on Italian state television.
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09-Oct-2008
The Vatican is to drop Eucharistic prayers for children from its authorised Missal, at least for the time being, US bishops liturgy committee Bishop Arthur Serratelli has reported.
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09-Oct-2008
An online vocation guide website, Vocation Match reports that nearly 7,000 people interested in religious vocations have requested information meanwhile Catholic marriage matchmaking site, MeetaCatholic, is expanding in Australia.
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08-Oct-2008
A New Zealand court has sent three members of the Anzac Ploughshares group, including Australian Dominican, Fr Peter Murnane, for trial on charges of entering a spy base and damaging property.
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07-Oct-2008
The grave of Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman was excavated last week on instructions from the Vatican but no physical remains were found in the coffin.
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08-Oct-2008
The Catholic Church in South Korea has launched the world's first integrated computerised system to standardise management of parish affairs across the country.
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09-Oct-2008
As Mother Teresa's successor, Sr Nirmala met with the Orissa chief minister, police announced they have arrested five suspects over the rape of an Indian nun.
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Regulars
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10-Oct-2008
Since John Paul's death, and considering the appropriate statistics, we have descended much further down that slippery slope of the vampire cult in our consensual belief that people are ends in themselves, and can be used as a means to an end. - Garry O'Connor, The Catholic Herald
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09-Oct-2008
First of all, what is IVF? It is the fertilisation of the female egg in a glass dish or test tube in a laboratory, rather than in the woman's body. The Church’s rejection of this means of conceiving children is based in great measure on an important teaching of Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae. A child should be conceived in that mysterious interplay between God's love and the loving embrace of the parents, not as an object of scientific technology. - Fr John Flader, The Record
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08-Oct-2008
Perhaps we should ask ourselves when was the last time we sat down and had a real conversation with our husband, our children, our family, our work colleagues, our neighbours. Do we pay attention to their, sometimes wordless, story?
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07-Oct-2008
Every election year Catholics are asked, by bishops or political activists, to uphold Catholic values when they vote. They are told they must vote with a well formed conscience, put on the seamless garment of the Church’s social teaching, and not try to renegotiate the nonnegotiables. These are all good rules as far as they go but they must be applied in complicated circumstances. They do not by themselves yield any conclusions about how a Catholic should vote in a particular election. - Commonweal
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06-Oct-2008
While the Vatican is most assuredly not a democracy, probably the closest thing it has to the trappings of democratic debate opened in Rome on Sunday with the 22nd session of the Synod of Bishops. Though complaints have surfaced over the years that it’s an expensive talk shop with no actual authority, it’s nonetheless a unique sounding board. Each participant will have a few minutes to deliver a message to the pope himself, and to the wider world, about the state of the Church. - John L. Allen Jr, National Catholic Reporter
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10-Oct-2008
Social Policy Connections is a Melbourne based independent ecumenical organisation informed by Christian social thinking. It is motivated by the promotion of social justice and for the rights of the poor in public policy.
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09-Oct-2008
Centacare in the Archdiocese of Brisbane is one of the most diverse Centacare organisations in Australia with its involvement in social welfare programs in over 200 locations across south-east Queensland. Its website reflects this significant presence with its simple, yet functional presence providing clarity about the organisation's services and programs.
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08-Oct-2008
The Daughters of St Paul are a Catholic order of religious women and part of the "Pauline Family" of religious congregations. Their specific mission is to use the most effective and suitable means of communication available to proclaim the Gospel.
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07-Oct-2008
MercatorNet is a website from which CathNews often sources some of its feature and opinion articles. With linkings to Opus Dei, the site claims to assist people to "navigate life's complexities". It considers itself above the "liberal" and "conservative" tags of the culture wars and aims to reframe ethical and policy debates in terms of human dignity, not dollars and cents or political calculation. It prefers the label "dignitarian".
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06-Oct-2008
The new seminary for Queensland, Holy Spirit Seminary at Banyo officially opened in April this year. It marked a return of the seminary to the site of the original St Pius XII Seminary now also occupied by the McAuley campus of the Australian Catholic University.
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10-Oct-2008
After the grim excellence of No Country for Old Men, what would the Coen Brothers do next? They haven't taken very long to show us: a Washington DC drama that moves into comedy that revels in spoof. Most audiences are going to find it very funny indeed. - Fr Peter Malone, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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07-Oct-2008
Lies and consequences form the heart of this bold, hard hitting drama in which people are used as commodities, while Big Brother keeps a watchful eye. The wide reaching tumultuous War on Terror is the backdrop for this complex screenplay. The subject matter is tough and we are taken right into the midst of the action. Ridley Scott is a master at orchestrating such a project and there are no compromises when it comes to his two extraordinary leading men. - Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile
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09-Oct-2008
The SBS program First Australians takes us back to some of those early contact places and relationships. It offers striking photographic images of those people, now seen through further historical evidence and a prism of current Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives. - Fr Brian McCoy, Eureka Street
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08-Oct-2008
This week's edition of The Religion Report takes a further look at one of the most controversial figures in the twentieth century Church. For many people, Pope Pius XII is better known for his failure to speak out clearly on behalf of Jews during the Holocaust.
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10-Oct-2008
People today see wrong doing solely in terms of outcomes. The private sphere is mine to command exactly as I like and in the public sphere I have only to avoid harm to others. In so far as they are seen as key actions that harm others then the Seven Deadly Sins are indeed unhelpful. - Abbot Christopher Jamison, Thinking Faith
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09-Oct-2008
Pope John XXIII quickly won the hearts of Catholics and the admiration of many non-Catholics. According to one historian of the papacy, he is the "most beloved pope in history." It helped that he was such a contrast to Pius XII. - Fr Kevin Hegarty, The Mayo News
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08-Oct-2008
There are many forces that can blind us to the reality around us. One such powerful force can be culture. The challenge is always to identify our own limitations and the prejudices that are deeply hidden within us. These prejudices can blind us to new ways and new insights. They can narrow our perspectives rather than broaden our horizons. - Sr Clare Condon, Pathways
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07-Oct-2008
The new working party set up by British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, seeks to end the Catholic ban, and this certainly makes good sense, though it could possibly mean that one day in the future a Catholic will again sit on the throne of England. Would this matter? To some it would. - Hugo Vickers, abc.net.au
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06-Oct-2008
This week members of Victoria's Parliament have a conscience vote to decide if they will pass a Bill that seriously interferes with the rights of conscience of doctors, nurses and other health practitioners. The Bill achieves a rare and undesirable double, it tramples on both state and international law. - Timothy Ginnane & Greg Craven, Herald Sun
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06-Oct-2008
The Christian Brothers have been putting a considerable effort into developing what it terms its wider Edmund Rice Network (ERN), a broad collection of Brothers, supporters, volunteers and anyone who identifies with the charism of Blessed Edmund Rice.
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