Religion News Australia 2016 - 5 (Jan 31 - Feb 7)
(06 February 16)by Greg Spearritt
Religion News Australia
January 31 – February 7, 2015
Religion news stories from Australia
(Research: Greg Spearritt)
abuse / anglican church / arts & entertainment / education / international stories / islam / politics / religion & society
ABUSE
Brisbane archbishop says
abusers may have traded boys interstate (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - One of Australia's most senior Anglican leaders says evidence suggests
boys were traded interstate by pedophiles linked to the church.
George Pell's health at
risk if he travels to give evidence, inquiry hears (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - The Royal Commission into
Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been told Cardinal George
Pell's health could be at risk if he travelled to Australia to give evidence.
Also:
Victims sick at heart
that George Pell won't front child sex abuse royal commission (The Guardian, Australia)
Feb 5 - The cardinal won’t be coming. It’s his heart.
Former Sydney Anglican
archbishop Peter Jensen to give evidence at abuse royal commission (Daily Telegraph, Sydney)
Feb 5 - THE former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney has apologised to a victim of
sexual abuse and admitted the response of the church to his allegations was
wrong.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Blake Prize: Hanging
sheep carcass shortlisted for religious prize (ABC News)
Feb 4 - A sheep's carcass hanging from a steel hook has made the shortlist for
one of Australia's oldest religious prizes.
Also:
Blake Prize 2016 is a
show of faith (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - Religion and spirituality have long inspired artists and this year's
Blake Prize explores everything from Islam to Sufism, Judaism to yoga.
Spiritual link with
artefacts (The Australian)
Feb 4 - Artist Christian Thompson returns to the landscape of his inspiration.
Gavin Rowland seeks out
God in Mind Before Matter (The
Australian)
Feb 4 – (Review) As a devout atheist
I’ve always been puzzled about why people believe in God.
The Whale review: sad
tale of morbidly obese Charlie puts empathy to the test (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - "Tell me the truth," says the vastly heavy and seriously ill
Charlie to the earnest Mormon attempting to interest him in the teachings of
the Church of the Latter Day Saints. "Do you find me disgusting?"
Grayson Perry's pretty
art career (The Saturday Paper,
Australia)
Feb 6 – (Opinion: Miriam Cosic) Turner Prize-winner Grayson Perry talks about
art, religion, and how he began cross-dressing at a young age.
ANGLICAN CHURCH
Church asylum
‘sanctuary’ bid (The Australian)
Feb 4 - The Anglican Dean of Brisbane, Peter Catt, has proclaimed the cathedral
a ‘sanctuary’ for asylum-seekers facing deportation.
Also:
Armidale's Anglican
Bishop urges caution on calls to defy the law to safeguard refugees (ABC
News)
Feb 7 - There has been a cautious response in the New England North West of NSW
to calls by some parts of the religious community to defy the law and offer
sanctuary to refugees.
EDUCATION
NSW Government making it
harder for children to get into ethics classes, warns ethics group (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 7 - NSW school children are facing unprecedented hurdles to get into ethics
classes in schools, the state's provider of ethics classes has warned.
Catholic school enrolments
fall as fees hit hard (Adelaide
Now)
Feb 7 - HAS the growth of private schooling in SA finally stalled? That is the
question raised by the release of education figures by the Australian Bureau of
Statistic
Parents face fee rise in
Catholic teacher wage fight (Adelaide
Now)
Feb 7 - CATHOLIC families would be hit with harsh fee rises if union claims for
higher pay and less student contact time were met, Catholic Education SA says.
INTERNATIONAL STORIES
Catholic Church
Pope Francis set for
historic meeting with leader of Russian Orthodox Church (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 6 - Vatican City: Pope Francis will make a surprise trip to Cuba on
February 12 for a historic meeting with the leader of the Russian Orthodox
Church, the first meeting between a pope and the Russian patriarch since the
Eastern and Western branches of Christianity split nearly 1000 years ago, the
Vatican announced Friday.
Islam
Muslim women 'blocked
from seeking office by male Labour councillors' (The Guardian, Australia)
Feb 6 - A women’s rights organisation has written to Jeremy Corbyn calling for
an inquiry into allegations female Muslims were discriminated against and
blocked from seeking office by male Labour councillors.
Anti-Islam groups rally
across Europe (The Australian)
Feb 7 - Protesters rallied against Islam and immigration in several European
cities overnight, sometimes clashing with police or counter-demonstrators amid
growing tensions over the massive influx of asylum-seekers to the continent.
Religious Violence
The crimes of Islamic
State jihadist Neil Prakash (news.com.au)
Feb 2 - NEIL Prakash was a rapper who wrote songs about sex, Islam and drugs
before he turned into a terrorist mastermind.
Where Osama bin Laden
got inspiration for 9/11 (news.com.au)
Feb 4 - THE untold truth about September 11 has finally been exposed, almost 15
years after the evil terrorist attacks.
ISIS releases photo of
wheelchair-bound executioner (news.com.au)
Feb 4 - ISIS propaganda chiefs have released a photo of a wheelchair-bound
killer preparing to crucify an alleged Libyan spy.
ISIS sniper: Did mystery
gunman just shoot three terror chiefs? (news.com.au)
Feb 4 - HE IS the mystery gunman credited with taking down three Islamic State
leaders in just 10 days.
Al Qaeda will release
Australian female captive, according to audio statement (ABC News)
Feb 6 - The militant group Al Qaeda in the Islamic region of Magreb (AQIM) has
claimed responsibility for the January 15 kidnapping of two Australians in
northern Burkina Faso, according to an audio statement.
Also:
Burkina Faso Kidnapping:
Australian woman released by Al Qaeda, Malcolm Turnbull says (ABC News)
Feb 7 - An Australian woman has been freed after she and her husband were
kidnapped by an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Burkina Faso, Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull confirms.
Twitter shuts down more
than 125,000 accounts linked to Islamic State terrorists (ABC News)
Feb 6 - Social media network Twitter has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related
accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State
(IS) group.
Australian suspected of
supporting Islamic State deported from India (The Guardian, Australia)
Feb 7 - An Australian has been deported from India on suspicions he was a
supporter of Islamic State.
Other
Christian mega-church
pastor under investigation after criticising China's cross removal program (ABC News)
Jan 31 - One of China's leading Christian pastors, 'Joseph' Gu Yuese, is
officially under investigation for suspicion of embezzling funds, state-backed
church authorities in Zhejiang province say, following his voiced opposition to
a campaign to remove crosses from atop churches.
'Gay cake' couple: 'We don't
hate anyone. It's done out of love for God' (The Guardian, Australia)
Feb 2 - An evangelical Christian couple at the centre of the “gay cake” court
case have insisted they never meant to discriminate against anyone and do not
hate gay people.
‘Asia’s sexiest DJ’
turned to the Bible to ward off ‘lesbian temptations’ in jail (news.com.au)
Feb 4 - ‘ASIA’S sexiest DJ’ Angie Vu Ha has turned to the Bible to ward off
lesbian temptations in a New York jail as she fights extradition to France.
Headteacher mocked on
Twitter for claiming evolution is not a fact (The Guardian, Australia)
Feb 4 - A primary school headteacher has been mocked on Twitter after claiming
that evolution was “a theory” and there was “more evidence that the Bible is
true”.
ISLAM
Bendigo mosque opponents
ask High Court for extra time to appeal after missing deadline (ABC
News)
Feb 2 - Opponents of Bendigo's first mosque have asked the High Court for extra
time to appeal against the project going ahead.
Teenage wife of Sydney
terror suspect Sameh Bayda refused bail (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 6 - The teenage wife of Sydney terror suspect Sameh Bayda has been refused
bail after she was charged with 31 counts of failure to answer questions.
Number of foreign
fighters heading for Islamic State has fallen (Sydney Morning Herald)
Feb 7 - The number of suspected would-be jihadis pulled off flights leaving
Australia has doubled in the past year, as Islamic State recruiters direct
foreign fighters away from Syria to other battlefronts, including Libya.
POLITICS
Labor MP demands apology
for 'racist' slur over Israel policy (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - The first Muslim elected to the NSW Parliament is threatening
defamation action against The Australian newspaper and reporter Sharri Markson
if they do not apologise for an article branding his comments racist.
Reclaim Australia Rally
drowns out counter protesters (Canberra Times)
Feb 6 - Reclaim Australia protesters held their largest rally yet on Saturday
in Canberra kicking of a wave of Anti-Islam demonstrations in cities across the
world.
RELIGION & SOCIETY
Abortion clinic at
Midland in Perth to be site of 40-day prayer vigil (ABC News)
Feb 1 - A religious organisation with origins in the United States has
announced plans to set up a prayer vigil outside a Perth abortion clinic during
Lent.
Sanctuary offered to
asylum seekers by churches across Australia (ABC News)
Feb 4 - Churches across Australia are invoking the historical concept of
sanctuary, opening their doors to asylum seekers facing removal back to offshore
detention centres.
Also:
Church's lead on asylum
seekers sanctuary a game changer (Canberra Times)
Feb 4 – (Opinion: Editorial) The Federal Government's Herodian stance on asylum
seekers affected by a High Court decision which has cleared the way to banish
almost 270 people, including 37 babies, to off-shore detention needs a serious
rethink thanks to the Christian churches.
Also:
St Vincent's and Calvary
to support to asylum seekers wanting church sanctuary (Brisbane Times)
Feb 7 - Two of Australia's largest Catholic healthcare organisations have
offered medical support to hundreds of asylum seekers applying for church
sanctuary as they face deportation to Nauru, saying it reflected their
"sacred duty" as healing organisations.
Fear at worst,
submission at best: A story of family violence and the Pentecostal church (ABC The Drum)
Feb 4 – (Opinion: Lauren McGrow) She bought her first house in 1961. Of course
in those days women couldn't just buy houses, and as a single mum with four
kids, she was a risk to the bank.
Thieves steal jewellery
worth more than $100,000 and icon from Mornington Peninsula church (ABC
News)
Feb 5 - Police are looking for two thieves they say stole jewellery worth more
than $100,000 and an icon of the Virgin Mary from a church on the Mornington
Peninsula last weekend.
Golden Virgin Mary
stolen as Red Hill church robbed for second time in 18 months (Brisbane Times)
Feb 5 - Inside the Byzantine walls of Red Hill's Greek Orthodox Church is a
framed image of the Virgin Mary.
Preparing for Year of
the Monkey with lucky oranges, money (ABC News)
Feb 5 - Wrapping 8,000 oranges is no quick task, but for those at Mingyue Lay
Buddhist Temple in Bonnyrigg in western Sydney, it is an important one to
welcome in the new lunar year.
Transcend afterlife, be
here now (Brisbane Times)
Feb 6 – (Opinion: Paulyne Pogorelske) Different religions preach various
visions of heaven and hell, based on life lived as a saint or a sinner,
enshrined by some ethereal idea of a Supreme Being. Are these visions
significant in the here and now, albeit whether we "think ... (we) can tell
heaven from hell" as Pink Floyd sang more than 40 years ago?
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