The future of religious freedom in Australia is in the hands of religious faiths, not its secularist opponents. Last week, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, delivered the Centre for Independent Studies’ Acton Lecture titled “Should bakers be required to bake gay wedding cakes?” Fisher raised a range of challenges facing religious liberty in Read more
A statement from a New Zealander on the goodness of sexual love in marriage is being considered for inclusion in the family synod’s final document. In a blog post on the New Zealand Catholic bishops’ website, Dr John Kleinsman wrote of how the synod’s working document made little mention of this goodness. He told a Read more
A US archbishop has said the Church must respect the decisions divorced and remarried people make in good conscience about their spiritual lives. Speaking to media at the synod on the family in Rome, Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich said he had always respected the inviolability of people’s consciences. “I try to help people along the Read more
Same-sex marriage is often touted as a harmless expansion of individual liberty. Yet the legal redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples has far from innocuous consequences, particularly with regard to children’s well-being and religious liberty. Redefining marriage also strikes at our fundamental liberties in deeper though less obvious ways. A crucial aspect of liberty is Read more
A US archbishop has given priests in his diocese strict guidelines on which people should not receive Communion. Newark Archbishop John Myers also ordered parishes and Catholic institutions in his diocese not to host people or organisations that disagree with Church teachings. Catholics who publicly reject Church teaching or discipline and those whose marriages are Read more
In his intervention at the synod on the family in Rome, Cardinal John Dew reinforced the message that when families are struggling, they need friends. In an interview with the Catholic News Service, Cardinal Dew said that during his intervention he quoted from a letter issued by the Oceania bishops in 1994. Cardinal Dew said Read more
The Church’s response to the crisis of marriage must surely be to find ways to help all Catholic spouses come to know and experience a deeper conversion to Christ. This means that the Church will need to ask great things of Catholic spouses in order that they become what they already are sacramentally; united with Read more
Australian Bishop Peter Elliott is among dozens of converts to Catholicism who have asked the synod on the family to uphold Church teaching on marriage. More than 100 converts signed an open letter to the synod fathers and the Pope. The signatories include such prominent converts as Scott and Kimberley Hahn, Mark Regnerus and John Read more
Pope Francis has opened the synod on the family by calling for a Church that proclaims the truth, but which must be a bridge and not a roadblock. In his homily at the opening Mass of the three-week synod at the Vatican, the Pope spelled out “God’s dream” for humanity. “[This is] God’s dream for Read more
It is true that the issue of “remarried divorcees” is mainly a Western concern. It is also true that it has drawn a great deal of media attention. On the one hand, Instrumentum laboris, the summary of topics for discussion at the Synod, presented a highly superficial view. On the other hand, the issue is Read more