News
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17-Mar-2009
Pope Benedict has announced the Church will celebrate a special year for priests to begin on June 19, the 150th anniversary of the death of the Cure d'Ars, St Jean Vianney.
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16-Mar-2009
Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Pontifical Academy for Life president, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, says that "mercy" should be applied in the case of Brazilian doctors who aborted twins being carried by a nine year old Brazilian girl.
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20-Mar-2009
A meeting of Australia's Eastern Rite bishops has complained to Latin Church bishops and to the National Catholic Education Commission over the religious education and treatment of Eastern Rite Catholic children in Australian Catholic schools.
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19-Mar-2009
Many male teachers are abandoning public education to work in the Catholic or independent system, new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.
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18-Mar-2009
Parents at a St Joseph's primary school, Riverwood in New South Wales are at loggerheads with parish priest, Fr John Walter, over his refusal to allow a shadecloth to be erected because of the risk of children suffering vitamin D deficiency.
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News - National
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20-Mar-2009
Former St Mary's South Brisbane administrator, Fr Peter Kennedy, is seeking a Supreme Court injunction against his removal but parish spokesperson, Karyn Walsh, says that mediation with Brisbane Archdiocese will continue without his participation.
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20-Mar-2009
Nine AFL captains voted in favour of football on Good Friday while seven were against the concept according to an informal poll yesterday.
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19-Mar-2009
Trinity Catholic College, Lismore has pleaded guilty in the NSW Industrial Court to charges that it failed to ensure the health and safety of persons on the school grounds after five year old Gabriel McBurney was killed in 2005 by a 100kg school gate.
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18-Mar-2009
Wagga diocese's Vianney College seminary is at full capacity, Rector Fr Peter Thompson says.
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18-Mar-2009
Victorian Premier John Brumby says that Tabcorp betting on Good Friday is not appropriate but if it does go ahead the company should donate a substantial portion of its profits to charity.
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17-Mar-2009
ACBC President Archbishop Philip Wilson has called on all Catholics to offer special prayers for Pope Benedict and for Church unity, as part of their Lenten observances this year.
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17-Mar-2009
Tabcorp has announced that TAB agencies and pubTABS will be open for business this Good Friday for punters in New South Wales and Victoria.
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19-Mar-2009
Three teenagers who spent the night on a drinking binge have pleaded guilty in Parramatta Children's Court to an axe and machete attack on Trinity Catholic College Auburn in Sydney's west.
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16-Mar-2009
Sydney's Bidura Children's Court has refused bail to a schoolboy charged with supplying drugs after his Catholic high school principal allegedly found almost 100 ecstasy tablets in his bag.
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18-Mar-2009
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has handed over a newly restored chalice originally donated to a Toowoomba church by her grandfather.
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17-Mar-2009
Brisbane archdiocese will launch legal action against former St Mary's administrator Fr Peter Kennedy after he withdrew from mediation and refused to hand over the parish, Chancellor Fr Adrian Farrelly has announced.
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20-Mar-2009
Archbishop Philip Wilson has announced papal honours for former SA Catholic Education head, Allan Dooley, obstetrician Graham Anderson and Dominican Sr Gemma Nicholas.
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19-Mar-2009
After editing the National Council of Priests' magazine, The Swag, for more than 10 years, Ballajura Perth parish priest, Fr John Jegorow has bowed out only to relaunch The Cross Roads, a parish magazine with a circulation of 14,500.
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20-Mar-2009
Canberra's St Joseph's church which was badly damaged by suspected arson in 2007 has celebrated its first service since the fire after a long restoration process.
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News - International
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17-Mar-2009
French quantum physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat, who says that "mystery is a constituent dimension of being", has won the 2009 Templeton Prize for religion.
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16-Mar-2009
Bankers should assume moral responsibility and ask God for forgiveness for sins that caused the global financial crisis, Apostolic Penitentiary head, Cardinal James Francis Stafford has said.
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16-Mar-2009
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has reported a rise in molestation claims against clergy during 2008 although total settlement and other abuse related payments of $A666 million were down from 2007 figures.
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16-Mar-2009
In an appeal for calm, Vienna Cardinal Christophe Schonborn says that he understands the reaction of people who "find it impossible to understand recent decisions by the Vatican" that have made them angry.
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16-Mar-2009
Senior UK bishops are reported to have written to the Papal Nuncio warning against the appointment of Birmingham Archbishop Vincent Nichols to replace soon to retire Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.
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19-Mar-2009
Israel's Ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, has moved to allay fears over a statement by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch that Pope Benedict would not be allowed to wear a cross on his visit to the Western Wall.
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18-Mar-2009
The rabbi of Jerusalem's Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, has said that it would not be proper for Pope Benedict to wear a cross on his forthcoming visit to the site.
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20-Mar-2009
Pope Benedict has told Muslim leaders that true religion rejects violence, and he held up peaceful coexistence between Christianity and Islam in Cameroon as "a beacon to other African nations."
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19-Mar-2009
AIDS cannot be solved by "advertising slogans" or with condoms that "risk worsening the problem" but by a twofold response based on assisting the suffering and spiritual renewal, Pope Benedict told journalists as he began his visit to Africa.
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18-Mar-2009
Pope Benedict leaves today for a seven day trip to Africa where he will visit Cameroon and Angola and deliver the "Instrumentum laboris" of the forthcoming Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.
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17-Mar-2009
The Vatican will launch a Chinese language version of its website on Thursday this week despite fears by some that it could be subject to blocking by authorities in China.
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Regulars
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20-Mar-2009
My first glimpse of Cardinal Pell is rather surreal. His unmistakable, craggily handsome head emerges about 20 feet above me, framed by a grey Oxford sky. He is leaning out of the window of his rooms at Merton College and is preparing to throw down the key to let us in. - Luke Coppen, The Catholic Herald
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19-Mar-2009
The mood in Ireland in these days seems to be less that of Lenten sackcloth and ashes and more that of discontented and often righteous indignation. At first, people seemed almost in denial about the prospect of recession, then bewildered by the pace of the downturn. Now however, as the reality bites, one can sense a growing public and private discontent, anger, anxiety, even fear and desperation. - Fr Gerry O'Hanlon, Thinking Faith
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18-Mar-2009
Tabcorp invokes the secularist mantra of people have a choice as to what they do on the day and how they wish to spend it. Quite right. And the choice of so many is to spend Good Friday as a day quite different from any other day. - Bishop Christopher Prowse, Herald Sun
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17-Mar-2009
The recent decision to lift the ban on Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research in the US will have far reaching consequences both for the US and the global research effort in this area. The original decision by the Bush government led to waste and absurdity. - Peter Gunning, abc.net.au
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16-Mar-2009
I have read that a sign of us being apostles of Christ is the calmness and peace with which we face life and its challenges. Calmness is not a concept or experience that receives a lot of airplay these days. We hear a lot about the need for confidence, assertion, resilience and strength, but to be calm in the face of adversity or crisis, gives much solace and security to those around us. - Pauline Connelly, The Southern Cross
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20-Mar-2009
Santa Teresa Spirituality Centre is a retreat and spiritual formation centre overlooking Brisbane's Moreton Bay. It is owned and run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane and was formerly known as the Cenacle. The centre is currently being redeveloped to be ready for use later in 2009.
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19-Mar-2009
Queensland Churches Together is the Council of Churches in Queensland. It has 12 member churches, including the Catholic Church and it aims to foster Christian unity through dialogue and respect for one another's doctrines and traditions.
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18-Mar-2009
eRENLAI is an internet magazine which is not just attempting to build its readership but also a network of project builders and a new generation of independent "information mediators" contributing to a Pan Asian community.
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17-Mar-2009
This year's Jesuit Lenten Podcast Series looks at "Reversals", finding God in times of crisis and change. The five podcasts will feature stories of people who have sought God in the midst of turmoil or helped others seek answers through their faith.
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16-Mar-2009
The Fatima Network provides news and information about Our Lady of Fatima online. It provides the "essential" information about the apparition in addition to a range of resources.
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18-Mar-2009
The movie going public will enjoy the thriller aspects of Duplicity. The pace is swift; the plot has copious twists; and, for most of the time, it is hard to know who is really winning and why. - Peter W. Sheehan, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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16-Mar-2009
The further the film goes, the more stereotyped the romance becomes and the less plausible the plot, until the ending is almost simple minded. The way the plant and its jobs are saved might have worked in an Ealing comedy in less sophisticated days, but it is too simplistic to be effective for today's audience. - Jim Murphy, Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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20-Mar-2009
This assessment would sound hollow and artificial in the kind of biography that we have become so accustomed to reading, where the same knowns and unknowns are repeatedly examined only to frustrate the reader with the paucity of the evidence. Bate ably avoids this trap by modelling his book's structure on Jaques' "seven ages of man" speech. - Fernando Cervantes, The Tablet
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20-Mar-2009
One of the insights you get as a parent is the incomprehensible, illogical nature of human love. You feel as though you would do almost anything to keep the love of your children; you will put up with just about anything, turn a blind eye to so much. And if you just can't keep their love, if the relationship does break down between parent and child, the heartbreak, the suffering, the regret must be unbearable. - Catherine Parish, The Record
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19-Mar-2009
So let me stick up for Benedict. He declares that the Church's historic teaching that chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it would prevent the spread of killer diseases such as AIDS. Whatever your views on the subject, that simple statement is undoubtedly true. And Benedict is in the truth business. - George Pitcher, Telegraph.co.uk
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18-Mar-2009
Who of us has not walked into a meeting, a boardroom, a church assembly, a family dinner, a social situation, or a gathering of some kind and, not unlike the mass murderers at Columbine or Virginia Tech, subtly sprayed bullets of jealous anger around the gathering? When we are wounded like Cain, when it seems like our offering is not being accepted while that of others' is, when it seems like everyone is loving each other and we are being left out, the spontaneous impulse is to kill in word, thought, and attitude. - Fr Ron Rolheiser, ronrolheiser.com
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17-Mar-2009
St Patrick holds the Irish in a powerful emotional thrall. As schoolchildren we were told that he refused to come down from a bleak mountain in County Mayo which still bears his name, until the Almighty promised him that the Irish would always be faithful to his message. Never mind the theology in that. Take a moment to admire the propaganda, providing justification for Ireland's adherence to Rome through centuries of persecution while warning the modern generation of a sacred trust. - Frank O'Shea, Eureka Street
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16-Mar-2009
Many of us, if we are honest, will admit to a feeling of empathy with the elder brother of the prodigal son. Here he is, the dutiful son, working hard year after year, doing all his father asks without complaint. And for what? His renegade brother turns up and is he punished? Not a bit of it. The red carpet is put out, the fatted calf killed and a huge party put on for him. - Sr Redempta Twomey, The Far East
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19-Mar-2009
This year's Melbourne Palm Sunday Peace Service and March has the theme Lets Make Peace Possible: End the Waste of War.
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17-Mar-2009
An event for the long term calendar. The Australian Catholic Historical Society will hold its 2009 conference with the theme Catholics in Australian Public Life since 1788. Topics covered will include church-state relations; the place of the churches, individuals and their faith in public life; advocacy for religious and social justice objectives; church involvement in politics, education, healthcare, social welfare, and the media.
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