The Catholic Church has historically been unwilling to extend full priesthood to women. However, Pope Francis could take the lead in ordaining women to become deacons, a scholar says.
Practices for a redress scheme should follow what the royal commission did when working with survivors.
AAP/Jeremy Piper
By placing institutional abuse within its larger context, the royal commission has made the prevention and identification of child sex offending a collective responsibility.
In light of the church’s catastrophic failures of care, documented in this report, its survival as a public institution is dependent on responding adequately to this historic commission.
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The commission’s final report revealed the staggering scale and nature of abuse uncovered in Catholic institutions.
Immaculate Heart College Art Department c. 1955.
Photograph by Fred Swartz. Image courtesy of the Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles.
Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
In the ‘60s, a Roman Catholic religious order, the Immaculate Heart Sisters, created a new vision of a religious community. Meghan Markle, engaged to Prince Harry, attended the high school founded by the nuns.
Detail of figures from the Dance Macabre, Meslay-le-Grenet, from late 15th-century France.
Ashby Kinch
All the world’s major religions are concerned with moral behavior. But research shows little evidence that religious people are more ethical than atheists.
Religious organisations have freedom under Australian law to practise their own doctrines and marriage rituals.
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Even if secular law changes to allow same-sex couples to marry, churches are protected by religious freedom to choose who they will - or will not - marry.
Pope Francis talks with bishops during the Liturgical Week at the Vatican in August 2017.
AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis
A liturgy expert explains that until the 12th century local bishops made decisions on Catholic liturgical practices even though the Catholic Mass was celebrated in Latin until 1970. How did that change?
As the marriage equality debate heats up, some Christian groups are depicting themselves as potential victims of discrimination.
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The Catholic Church prohibits the use of gluten-free bread for Communion. The reasons lie in the challenges faced by the Catholic Church in the past.
Archbishop of Granada Francisco Javier Martinez and priests prostrate in front of the altar to seek pardon for sexual abuse in the Church at the cathedral in Granada, southern Spain, Nov. 23, 2014.
Pepe Marin/Reuters
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church requires nearly absolute obedience. This makes it difficult to speak up against superiors. And by the same token, superiors too can protect offending priests.
Anthony Foster famously took on Cardinal George Pell on a number of occasions.
Julian Smith/AAP
Anthony Foster’s attention to detail and his clarity about the evil perpetrated in the systematic institutional abuse of children was often the object of media analysis.
Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been criticised for turning the country into a dictatorship.
Reuters/Rogan Ward
The world’s media, which has in the past found Zambia uninteresting, are suddenly paying more attention to the impoverished nation, for all the wrong reasons.
The ongoing debate is a continuation of the Philippines’ long journey towards reproductive health - and its having been turned into a political and moral issue by various actors.
A bison on its way in the Bialowieza forest in Poland.
By Herr stahlhoefer - Own work, Public Domain,