Weekend Wrap for 14 June 2020

A lot of viewpoints in today’s Weekend Wrap on the push to reform the Catholic Church! The Wrap aims to share news and views from across the country on issues of concern to secular Aussies.

Don’t forget that the Weekend Wrap, which aims to help secular-minded Australians keep abreast of the latest news on current issues, is also published on our Facebook page!

At the National Level

The Australian Christian Lobby has voiced its opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement, describing it as ‘anti-Christ’ and as a ‘Cultural-Marxist’ front for political beliefs including ‘queer affirmation’ (Out in Perth).

Kevin Rudd triggered a response from Hillsong pastor Brian Houston on social media when the former Prime Minister questioned why Scott Morrison had failed to stop the church from holding a major conference early in the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Catholic Church has denounced a series of fake emails claiming to be from Catholic sources and attacking numerous people, including Witness J and a politician (Catholic Weekly).

A fake email attacking the Labor candidate in the Eden-Monaro by-election alleges she had trained witnesses “to wrongly accuse priests to get pay-offs” and also encourages voters to support the Liberal Party candidate (Riot ACT).

Archbishop Mark Coleridge says that the Catholic Church wants to play a major role in the country's post-pandemic recovery, arguing it is well placed to make a “unique contribution” at this time when the chance “to shape society in ways that were not possible before this crisis” presents itself (Catholic Leader).

Having lobbied for a parliamentary inquiry into what it says is an “explosion” in the number of children seeking to transition gender, the Australian Christian Lobby has commended Health Minister Greg Hunt for increasing pressure on the states to investigate potential links to autism (ACL).

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper has risen through the hierarchy of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil (The Age).

Around the Country

Commentary and Analysis

John Sandeman highlights a range of Christian perspectives in response to claims of Black Lives Matters being a ‘cultural Marxist’ movement (Eternity News).

Systemic racism is at the heart of racial inequality in Australia and in America, writes National Anglican Aboriginal Bishop Chris McLeod (Eternity News).

While some within the Catholic Bishops Conference simply want to ‘move on’ from the abuse scandals, Francis Sullivan writes that the task group reviewing church governance has produced a pragmatic array of very ‘doable’ proposals (John Menadue blog).

In reviewing the Catholic Church’s Plenary Discernment papers, Dr Philippa Martyr writes that proposals to bring more lay people into positions of authority feel more like “rearranging the first-class deckchairs on the Titanic” (Catholic Weekly).

Michael Mullins writes that disruption of the status quo is necessary in the Catholic Church to avoid future clerical sexual abuse of minors (John Menadue blog).

In seeking to keep the report into governance reform of the Catholic Church, Australia’s bishops seem to have learned little from the sexual abuse scandal and associated cover-ups, writes Terry Fewtrell (John Menadue blog).

Far from being unaware that the Catholic education system has been misappropriating taxpayer funds from poor schools to support its schools in wealthy suburbs, Malcolm Turnbull and others have opted to turn a blind eye, writes Trevor Cobbold (John Menadue blog).

Christopher Brohier, of the Australian Christian Lobby, writes that South Australia’s authorities are to be commended for not changing abortion laws during the pandemic despite pressure from the “abortion proliferation lobby” (ACL).

Des Houghton argues that the late Lord Mayor of Brisbane Clem Jones is continuing to have far too much influence on the current political debates around issues such as voluntary assisted dying (The Courier-Mail).

Gregory Melleuish explores the influence of devout lay Catholic Bob Santamaria on countering Communists in the unions and splitting the Labor party (The Conversation).

In a fractious age, Christians have become entangled in politics and are being “played by fools” by both the Right and Left, writes Michael Jensen (Eternity News).

That's it for another week!

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