Religion News Australia 2010 - 33 (Aug 22

Religion News Australia 2010 - 33 (Aug 22 - 29)

(28 August 10)
by Greg Spearritt

Religion News Australia

Aug 22 - 29, 2010

Religion news stories from Australia

(Research: Greg Spearritt)

abuse / arts & entertainment / catholic church / education / international stories / politics

ABUSE

Cleric on child porn counts (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 25 - A FORMER assistant chaplain at a Melbourne school has been charged over the possession of child pornography allegedly found on a thumb drive at a Perth girls' college.

Ipswich priest blames girl, 12, for 'inviting' him to abuse her (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)

Aug 27 - AN IPSWICH priest jailed for molesting a girl says he thought his victim, who was 12 at the time, wanted him to kiss and touch her.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

A sorry tale of intellectual apologists (The Australian)

Aug 28 – (Opinion: Rebecca Weisser) In one corner are Christopher Hitchens and Melanie Phillips; in the other are Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash; and they are slugging it out in the pages of The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Spectator and The Guardian over first an essay and now a book by Paul Berman about, among other things, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan.

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Mission MacKillop almost accomplished for our man in the Vatican (The Australian)

Aug 28 - IN the rising heat of a Roman summer morning, a large Australian man stands before a fountain near St Peter's Basilica.

EDUCATION

Private schools stay quiet on cash bonanza (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 23 - THE state's wealthiest private schools posted financial surpluses of up to $8.4 million last year after the Commonwealth delivered them as much as $10 million in annual subsidies.

Harry Potter essential to learn morals (Adelaide Now)

Aug 26 - AUSTRALIA'S young are growing up in a moral vacuum because many schools do not teach ethics or religious education and values, a visiting UK academic says.

Catholic school sorry over Hitler costume win (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)

Aug 27 - AN Australian primary school apologised after a student was awarded first prize at a costume party for dressing as Adolf Hitler.

INTERNATIONAL STORIES

Abuse

Parents sue after filming priest having sex with teen daughter (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 28 - A Pennsylvania couple secretly videotaped a Catholic priest having sex with their 18-year-old daughter in the basement of their home and are now suing, saying he got her pregnant.

Catholic Church

Catholics split on rejected plan to pay homage to Mother Teresa (Herald-Sun, Melbourne)

Aug 23 - Some progressive Catholic groups have termed foolish the campaign to light the Empire State Building in honour of the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth.

Also: Mother Teresa remembered, 100 years on from birth (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 26 - Nuns, priests and slum-dwellers held a solemn mass in Kolkata on Thursday to mark the birth centenary of Mother Teresa, known as the "Saint of the Gutters" for her work with the city's sick and dying.

Also: No Empire State Building Teresa tribute (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 27 - Managers of the iconic Empire State Building declined on Thursday to commemorate what would have been Mother Teresa's 100th birthday by lighting white and blue bulbs atop the building.

Catholic Church denies IRA cover-up (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 24 - The Catholic Church has insisted it did not cover-up the Claudy bomb atrocity by moving a suspected terrorist priest out of Northern Ireland.

Boyle To Perform At Papal Mass (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 25 - Susan Boyle is to perform for the Pope during his visit to Scotland next month.

Sainthood a big-ticket item in SA town (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 26 - The canonisation of Australia's first saint is going to be a massive event in the tiny South Australian town where she established her first school.

Islam

Malaysian government workers evicted for having sex outside marriage (Adelaide Now)

Aug 24 - MUSLIM civil servants caught having sex outside marriage have been evicted from government housing in Malaysia's administrative capital, authorities confirmed.

Jakarta's voices of reason (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 25 - TWITTER and pop music are helping to keep democracy alive and Islamic extremism in check in Indonesia, a leading progressive Muslim scholar said in Melbourne yesterday.

Saudi court baulks at victim's call to paralyse attacker (ABC News)

Aug 26 - A Saudi Arabian court is trying to persuade a man paralysed in a fight to drop a demand that his attacker suffer a similar injury by having his spinal cord surgically damaged.

Iran regime can't foul 'Asia's Maradona' (The Australian)

Aug 26 - THE Iranian regime may have crushed million-strong street protests after the disputed presidential election last year. But it is having a much harder time suppressing the most popular football player in the country.

Top Ramadan TV show satirises, irks Saudi hardliners (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 27 - There's little sacrosanct -- including the tradition of polygamy cherished by many Muslim men -- in the most popular Saudi TV series during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Iran bans pet ads, brands dogs 'unclean' (Adelaide Now)

Aug 27 - IRAN today banned all advertisements in the country for pets, pet shops, pet food and other pet products, claiming that people's love for their dogs and cats may lead to "evil outcomes".

US Politics

'Allahu Akbar' rings out at the Pentagon (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 23 - WASHINGTON: Inside the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial Chapel, a female air force sergeant unlaced her combat boots, set them under the pews and slipped her black veil around her hair and over her camouflaged uniform.

New York governor slammed for Muslim comments (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 28 - Muslim leaders are criticising New York Governor David Paterson for describing the developers of an Islamic centre planned near Manhattan's ground zero as peaceful, "almost westernised" Muslims.

Conservatives rally to 'restore America' (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 29 - Tens of thousands of people have gathered in the US capital to hear right-wing icons, including talk show host Glenn Beck and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, call on them to "restore America".

Religious Violence

New Yorkers denounce attack on Muslim taxi driver (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 26 - New Yorkers, including the city's mayor, and several national US organisations, have strongly condemned an attack on a taxi driver believed to have been targeted because he is a Muslim.

Afghan schoolgirls in suspected gas attack (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 26 - Dozens of Kabul schoolgirls were admitted to hospital on Wednesday after a suspected poison gas attack on their school, officials said.

CIA views al-Qaeda in Yemen as top threat (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 26 - FOR the first time since the September 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda's offshoots - rather than the core group, now based in Pakistan - as the most urgent threat to US security.

Indonesian terror suspects go on trial (The Australian)

Aug 26 - ALLEGED Islamist extremists from a group dubbed "al-Qaeda in Aceh" went on trial today accused of plotting to kill Westerners including US aid workers and tourists.

Death on streets as sectarian clash erupts in Beirut (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 26 - A STREET battle involving machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades erupted in sect-riven Beirut in which a senior member of the radical Shiite movement Hezbollah was killed by a rival Sunni faction.

'Al-Qa'ida in Aceh' in court (The Australian)

Aug 27 - ALLEGED Islamist extremists from a group dubbed "al-Qa'ida in Aceh" went on trial in Jakarta yesterday.

Yemen officials, rebels reach peace deal in Qatar (The West Australian)

Aug 28 - SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen's government and northern rebels have agreed to bolster a fragile truce and start political dialogue to end a civil war that has raged on and off since 2004.

Militants take hostages in Pakistan (The Australian)

Aug 28 - ISLAMIC militants overpowered their guards during interrogation in an army building in northwestern Pakistan and took two of them hostage, the army said.

Other

Mosque plan sparks New York rallies (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 23 - Several hundred supporters and opponents of plans to build a mosque near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York staged peaceful rival protests on Sunday, some brandishing signs against Islam and others denouncing religious bigotry.

Bible gets Twitter makeover (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 24 - In the beginning was the word. And then came 140 words.

Suspect priest protected over bombings (Adelaide Now)

Aug 26 - TOP police, government and Catholic Church officials in Northern Ireland conspired to protect a priest suspected over 1972 bombings that killed nine people, an investigation revealed.

Pastor says 'Jesus was HIV-positive' to boost AIDS awareness (The Courier-Mail, Brisbane)

Aug 26 - A PASTOR has preached a sermon entitled "Jesus was HIV-positive" to raise awareness of the "serious issue" of AIDS in South Africa.

Say a little prayer (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 26 – (Opinion: Eric Ellis) New evangelical, deal-making networks are tiptoeing to the edges of power in south-east Asia.

Doctors' religion affects time of death (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 27 - NON-RELIGIOUS doctors are more likely to make decisions that could hasten a terminally ill patient's death than are religious doctors, a new study suggests.

Life is greater than the science of its many parts (The Age, Melbourne)

Aug 29 - IS PHYSICAL science, as some people say, omnicompetent?

POLITICS

NSW cabinet votes against burqa ban (Sydney Morning Herald)

Aug 24 - NSW Premier Kristina Keneally says her government will not support a ban on the burqa, the head and body veil worn by some Muslim women, because "such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW”.

From the Archive…

Religion News Australia 2010 - 32 (Aug 15 - 22)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 31 (Aug 8 - 15)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 30 (Aug 1 - 8)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 29 (July 25 – Aug 1)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 28 (July 18 - 25)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 27 (July 11 - 18)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 26 (July 4 - 11)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 25 (June 27 – July 4)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 24 (June 20 - 27)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 23 (June 13 - 20)

Religion News Australia 2010 - 22 (June 6 - 13)