Posts tagged 'religion'

A push by parishioners of Father Bob Maguire to have his retirement delayed a second time has failed. The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart has written to the popular priest that his successor has been appointed to take up tenure in February at the South Melbourne parish church of Saints Peter and Paul, where the 77 year-old has been parish priest for 34 years. Father Bob, as he is widely known, has accepted the Church’s decision with fatalism, telling the The Age, “The Romans are pretty ruthless”.

Father Bob is the presenter, alongside Jon Safran, of a long-running Sunday evening radio show on the ABC youth network JJJ examining matters of faith. As canny as he is colourful, he has long perfected the art of sailing close to the wind in doctrinal matters without incurring the wrath of the Church. He describes himself as doctrinally orthodox but unconventional. The former beekeeper was awarded an Order of Australia in 1989 and is this year’s Victorian of the Year.

A Wheeler Centre staff member remembers attending a wedding officiated by Father Bob at his South Melbourne parish church several years ago. A conventional Catholic wedding liturgy was printed in the booklets handed out to all the wedding guests as they entered the church, but over the course of the ceremony it became clear that Father Bob had his own liturgy in mind. He would substitute the usual well-worn keywords of the Catholic liturgy with synonyms of his own devising. In so doing, he transformed the ceremony from doctrinal recitative to an act of love and kinship on a scale as human as it was divine. Yet – perhaps in an allusion to the fate of colleagues such as Father Peter Kennedy – on several occasions he interrupted himself, placed an index finger on his lips and said, “Loose lips sink ships.”

Father Bob Maguire is considering continuing his work by setting up a “parish without borders”.

The Wheeler Centre hosts the last Intelligence Squared debate of 2011 on Tuesday 15 November. Speaking for the proposition, ‘The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world’ will be Helen Coonan, Julian McMahon and Sister Libby Rogerson. Speaking against the proposition will be Father Peter Kennedy, Anne Summers and David Marr.

In recent days, tragic events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square have overshadowed the previous gains of the Arabic Spring. The violence claimed the lives of 26 and injured some 300 more – all unarmed – after Coptic Egyptians had walked to Tahrir Square to voice their frustration over several recent incidents of anti-Coptic violence. The weekend violence seems to have been instigated by elements of the Egyptian army and security forces.

Some ten to 15% of Egyptians are Copts, an indigenous ethnoreligious group distinct from Muslim Egyptians. The Coptic Church is an ancient Christian community that predates the arrival of Islam into Egypt. It bears some superficial similarities with the Eastern Orthodox Christianity of Greece, but is theologically and ecclesiastically distinct. The Coptic language fell into disuse for everyday purposes several centuries ago.

In an op-ed published in the Guardian, William Dalrymple, best-known for his authoritative writing on Indian society and history, gives some historical context to these events. According to Dalrymple, Egyptians as a whole hold their army in high esteem, despite the abuses of the Mubarak era, because of the role the army played in key national events in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, Dalrymple suggests that, when Egypt was under the sway of European powers, Coptic Egyptians dominated the national economy, a privileged status that has since been eroded. Now that, in the post-Mubarak era, the political balance of power in Egypt is being contested between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Copts are in danger of becoming the one scapegoat both sides can agree on. Senior army figures are now reported to be in negotiations with Coptic leaders, who have called on Copts to observe three days' mourning beginning today.

To make sense of these and other events consuming the Middle East and North Africa, join us next Thursday, 20 October, as chair Hamish McDonald and a panel of specialists discuss the Arabic Spring, its achievements, its failures and its future implications.

The online Australian-Muslim magazine Sultana’s Dream has just published its second edition. Editor Hanifa Deen introduces the issue with an editorial on the burqa, which to many Westerners has become a kind of symbol of an imagined contest between Islam and Western civilisation.“Fed up talking about the burqa, yet ending up on the same old treadmill talking about the burqa!” writes the Kalgoorlie-born Deen. “A garment used in Australia by a miniscule minority becomes tabloid fodder in a nasty uninformed debate that often smacks of bullying.”

If 9/11 changed everything for Americans and even for Australians, let’s not forget that 9/11 also changed everything for many Muslims. There was much excellent coverage of the 9/11 tragedy on our screens and airwaves this weekend – so much so that it gave us cause to wonder if the sensitivity accorded to telling the stories of some innocent victims of political violence might someday be accorded to all.

Hanifa Deen has twice appeared at the Wheeler Centre, once speaking on ‘Muslim fatigue’ and the other as part of an Intelligence Squared debate, arguing that Australia hasn’t escaped its racist past.

‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1887, via WikiCommons

God has finally set a date for the end of the world. The apocalypse is set to take place on May 21, 2011, according to an American preacher whose last apocalyptic prediction was for 1994. In a way, that first prophecy wasn’t off the mark – 1994 was the year Justin Bieber was born.

The prediction bucks the trend of recent end-of-the-world forecasts. Most such predictions currently settle on 2012, because it’s the year that coincides with the end of a cycle of the Mesoamerican long count calendar. Some have already started stocking up on essentials for starting a whole new civilisation from scratch. They may be relieved to know that they will be able to enjoy a collection of apocalypse-themed poems while slugging it out with the cockroaches.

2012 is also the anticipated release date of a collection of poems from filmmaker Ethan Coen. Coen, who with brother Joel has made films the future cockroach overlords will hopefully prize as highly as we do, has titled the collection, The Day the World Ends. It follows his first collection, The Drunken Driver has Right of Way, published in 2009.

Failed prophecies are hardly new, of course. The Bible has a number of them. In 1844, hundreds of thousands of Americans were persuaded that the world was to end by William Miller. When the date of his prediction passed without incident, it came to be known as the Great Disappointment. Some returned to their churches, some gave up on religion and some started a new one.

Psychologists studied a UFO-related doomsday cult in a groundbreaking 1956 study called When Prophecies Fail. In it, they assessed the thinking behind the bravest call of all. They found that disappointment often leads to believers revising the parameters of the prediction rather than heeding the bleeding obvious and abandoning it altogether. One of the study’s authors concluded drily, “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change.”

Its publication was a milestone in the making of modern England. For centuries, it was all the literature many English speakers around the world ever knew. It peppered our language with phrases like ‘let there be light’, ‘a fly in the ointment’, ‘new wine in old bottles’ and ‘how are the mighty fallen’. It “gave us not only cadences and rhythms but metaphors and references,” writes Melvyn Bragg on its impact on his youth. It’s still commonly found in the bedside drawers of many hotels and motels. In fact, in one gaol in South Carolina, it’s still the only book prisoners are allowed to read.

It’s the King James Bible, and it’s celebrating its 400th birthday, prompting all kinds of wild parties… if by wild parties you mean some books and documentaries. Melvyn Bragg’s new book is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the movie, the BBC doco, the preview of the BBC doco, the special edition (you know, the one that works miracles), there’s the book that isn’t by Melvyn Bragg, and the other book that isn’t by Melvyn Bragg.

There’s been more grist to the mill in the debate around religious instruction in schools. Our Talking Point on Tuesday – ‘Should religion be taught in state education?’ – brought out some amazing responses. Several readers advocated the teaching of comparative religion – Augusta wrote, “If religion is to be taught in state schools presumably all religions must be taught with equal weight and without bias”; “why are we teaching our children that segregation is a natural and acceptable part of religion?” asks Liz, who’s studying to be a teacher; Cait said familiarity with the Bible is a cultural prerequisite like knowledge of Shakespeare; Amanda believes blanket bans create blind spots in children – “I don’t think it hurts to enjoy some fun customs that have religious origins… but mix it up!” she wrote; an anonymous reader wrote of their 6 year-old daughter being ostracised for opting out of religious instruction; and Simon writes, “I don’t trust a volunteer from any religious group not to present religion as facts to my child.”

Today’s Age reports on a working group of academics who recommend a multifaith approach to religious instruction in schools. Religions, Ethics and Education Network Australia has written to a group of Australian political leaders including the prime minister and education ministers advocating a change to the current model, in which about half of students in public education are taught about Christianity by volunteers. Three parents have lodged a complaint about this approach to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, claiming it’s exclusionary.

Thanks to all readers who’ve contributed to the Talking Point, and please keep posting. We encourage responses from all sides of the debate.

In a presentation to a federal parliamentary inquiry this week, the Islamic Council of Victoria has argued that the freedom to wear the Muslim veil is a true test of a society’s tolerance. The Herald-Sun reported yesterday on the ICV’s submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia. The daily quoted Islamic Council youth worker Mohammed El-Leissy as saying that most Australian Muslims aren’t anti-Christmas, nor are they supporters of the introduction of sharia law in Australia.

The report also featured a fascinating guide to variations of the veil. It has many names – including abaya, niqab, burqa, chador and dupatta – and is widely worn across the world, but nothing encapsulates the tension between traditional religious and cultural practices and modern Western social values quite like the Islamic veil.

Coincidentally, an Al-Jazeera report this morning on the continuing debate in France on the Muslim veil serves to illustrate the Islamic Council’s contention. France’s dominant party, the right-wing UMP of which President Nicolas Sarkozy is the leading figure, has just hosted a conference on how Islam is to be practised in a secular society. The conference – controversial even within the party’s inner sanctum – featured several Christian clerics and a rabbi, but no Muslim respresentatives. Debate centred on street prayer (in the absence of mosques, many Muslims pray in public) and full-face veils. Proposals were considered that would extend a ban that comes into effect in France on April 11 on veils that hide the face in public.

The UMP is feeling the pressure of a resurgent National Front, the extreme-right party presided over by founder Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter Marine. Between five and ten per cent of French people are Muslim. France’s republican constitution emphasises the strict separation of church and state. Yet paradoxically many French public holidays – like Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost or Whit Monday, the Assumption, All Saints' Day and of course Christmas – are of Christian origin.

Submissions to the federal inquiry close on April 8.

Image of crucifix via WikiCommons

Update, Friday April 8: All week we’ve been talking about the division of religion and state, particularly in relation to education. We ran the original story (below) on Tuesday with a follow-up on Thursday. Today, two more reports of note have added grist to the mill. In the first, The Age reports that the Victorian government has increased funding to Access Ministries, the primary provider of special religious instruction in public schools – the Access Ministries website also publishes this defense of the teaching of Christianity in state education. Secondly, Bob Carr has blogged today on the case for withdrawing funding for school chaplains.

Original story, published Tuesday April 5 The relationship between church and state is a debate that has caused less angst throughout Australia’s history than in many other places, but the issue is still alive and kicking. In the lead up to Easter, it seems that religion is preoccupying the zeitgeist once again. This week’s headlines were dominated by a ban on Easter egg hunts in childcare centres. In Fairfax’s National Times on Monday, education editor Jewel Topsfield argued that religion has no place being taught in state school classrooms. Meanwhile, the Victorian government moved to ban Easter Mass 11, a heavy metal event headlined by Sydney band Jesus Christ scheduled for the Northcote Social Club on Good Friday. The title of Catherine Deveny’s Comedy Festival show God is Bullshit speaks for itself.

British philospoher AC Grayling’s new book, The Good Book: A Secular Bible, sets out the philosophical rationale for an atheism that argues its own case – sometimes called militant atheism by critics. It’s the latest in a line – perhaps an emerging tradition – of British anti-theist writing, which notably includes Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Grayling rejects the pejorative ‘militant atheism’ as paradoxical: “How can you be a militant atheist?” he asks. “It’s like sleeping furiously.”

The Wheeler Centre and the St James Ethics Centre are hosting the next Intelligence Squared debate on Tuesday 24th May at the Melbourne Town Hall. The motion of this debate will be, ‘That public funding of private education is unconscionable.’

Image courtesy of el7bara

US pastor Terry Jones has put away his gasoline and scrapped his plan to publicly burn the Koran, BBC News reports.

The pastor from Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, had planned to burn the Koran on September 11 to protest against a mosque that was to be built at Ground Zero. Since the mosque has moved a few blocks away, Jones has decided to respect the Muslim holy book and abandoned his plans for a public book burning. He’s also encouraged members of his church (who number less than 50) to stay away from biblio-inflamation. Jones told a press conference, “We would right now ask no one to burn Korans. We are absolutely strong on that.”

Jones, author of Islam Is of the Devil, has not had a last-minute fit of tolerance however. He claims to have reached an agreement with the imam of the planned New York mosque that has let him put away his gasoline. There’s some doubt if Jones' book burning threats had any impact on the decision though as the imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, commented, “We don’t know anything about it”.

Discussion has raged in the US all week about the pastor’s project. At Newsweek they asked “Is the Koran worth burning?” concluding that if Jones had gone ahead with his plans to burn the Koran then September 11 would be “given over to the violent and the prejudiced.”

Image courtesy of Roman Gomez

Almost two out of three Australians identified themselves as Christians at the last census, which seems to create a large voting block and a problem for an avowedly atheist prime ministerial candidate.

Yesterday ABC’s Radio National Breakfast featured an interview with Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), who cited 19% of the population attending church once a month as having “a lot more commonalities than difference” when it comes to their religious values.

Earlier in the week Wallace appeared on ABC’s Lateline with some clear statements on the conditions for their support. Wallace said “We remain concerned that the traditional definition of marriage be maintained. And while both parties have given their commitment to that, we need to know that in the case of Labor that that will continue to stand beyond the national Labor conference, or the next national Labor conference.”

Wallace also voiced concerns about the Greens as a party “supporting euthanasia, supporting abortion, against prayers in parliament, against ISP filtering”. The Greens ‘balance of power’ status in the Senate is the envy of all minor parties, so Christian groups eye their position enviously particularly rising powers like Family First.

ACL launched a website, Australia Votes, yesterday as a handy reference for faith-based voters. The site posed questions to all the parties including Family First and the Australian Sex Party.

Along with some “no change to the existing laws” fudging by major parties, there are insights into opening Parliament with the Lord’s Prayer (“The Coalition remains firmly committed to the opening of Parliament exclusively each day with the Lord’s Prayer”) , abortion (“The Australian Labor Party supports conscience votes on issues before the federal parliament which relate to abortion”) and even cloning (Australian Sex Party: “Supports stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, and maintains it is a vital medical issue, not a religious issue.”)

While Wallace admits in both interviews that voting on religion in contemporary Australia is limited, the lobby group claims to represent many voters based on census stats. Another group who fared well in the 2001 census were those identifying their religion as Jedi with more than 70,000 Australians claiming they followed a faith based in Star Wars. And yet no political parties currently courting the “lightsabre vote”.

Novelist Anne Rice posted a message on her Facebook page last week saying “I quit being a Christian.”

Best known for her Vampire Chronicles series, Rice’s reasons for leaving the church are not so much spiritual as secular. She used her Facebook status to directly tell her fans, “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Rice returned to Catholicism in 1998 after leaving the church when she was 18 years old. While there has been criticism from the religious press, Michael Rowe at the Huffington Post believes she has never been more of a Christian. He writes, “The undeniable fact is that the decision of this sensitive, passionate, and devout woman to leave Christianity is one that Christ himself would likely understand, even applaud.”

Our upcoming lunchbox/Soapboxer Father Bob Maguire had a busy weekend completing the Run Melbourne 5km walk in just over an hour, but at the cost of his mobile, the Age reports.

During the course of the run, Father Bob misplaced his mobile phone during the charity run, but was quick to reassure friends that their numbers were safe. The celebrity priest tweeted to Triple J co-host John Safran “No numbers listed.You’re safe.New number emailed.”

The run marked the end of several weeks of training for the 75-year-old. In the lead up to the event he posted a training update on the Run Melbourne website proving he’s still very active “I stepped up visiting hospitals. The long corridors and stairs instead of lifts keep me fit. I’ve thought of grabbing patients in wheelchairs and insisting on pushing them around.”

Father Bob has another milestone later this week as Melbourne’s best-loved priest celebrates 50 years since his ordination with a Sunday Mass.