Controversy over religious education in Victorian government schools is hardly new. The debate has raged since the 19th century when the Education Act established that public education should be free, secular and compulsory. A more recent complication is the rise of a multifaith society, along with a decline in religious observance by the slightly more than 60 per cent of Australians who identify as Christian.

While only one in 14 Australians attends church weekly, and one in six monthly, some of the strongest objections to the way religion is taught in school do not come from non-believers. The Religions, Ethics and Education Network Australia has written to the Prime Minister, premiers and education ministers urging a review so that the national curriculum improves on the current flawed model for teaching religion and ethics….

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A pizza company has upset people over an advertising campaign that compares its limited-edition hot cross buns to Jesus.

Hell Pizza has put billboards around Auckland’s CBD that advertise its hot cross buns with the tagline: “For a limited time. A bit like Jesus.”

Anglican Church media officer Lloyd Ashton said the campaign was disrespectful to many religions and the people who followed them.

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As the Libya conflict appears to settle into a potentially protracted stalemate, the memory of President Obama’s demand that Muammar Qaddafi step down from power ”“ essentially a call for regime change ”“ is feeding a debate over what the president will or should do now to influence the outcome.

A growing number of policymakers and regional experts are concluding that a drawn-out war in the midst of a turbulent Middle East would be the worst of all possibilities. And as they do, doubts are mounting over the Obama administration’s decision to take ”“ or at least try to take ”“ a back-seat role among international powers involved in Libya.

Even as Libya’s rebels retreat from gains made last week and Colonel Qaddafi shows no signs of budging from his Tripoli stronghold, a debate builds over what the US should do. One side says Obama is in tune with a majority of Americans who may support the idea of humanitarian intervention, yet who are leery of any deeper involvement of the US in Libya.

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More than 20 years after God’s bikies revved up my school, the Victorian Education Department still forces its primary schools to hold ”special religious instruction” taught by volunteers.

While other religious groups – including Jewish, Islamic and Hare Krishna – are accredited to run classes, 96 per cent are taught by Christian education provider Access Ministries.

The education department says schools, by law, must offer religious classes if approached by accredited course providers. This is despite the fact that less than 10 per cent of the population goes to church each week.

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Footballer Brendan Fevola has been urged again this week to seek more help for his alleged gambling addiction. This follows another visit to the pokies.

“Brendan’s is a case study in why the Australian Church’s Gambling Taskforce urged this week the adoption of a national pre-commitment scheme that is mandatory in all gambling machine venues,” said Bishop Philip Huggins today.

Bishop Huggins, who is the Chair of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, said such a scheme requires gamblers to choose and stick to their gambling limit.

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Now that’s funny. Just as we’re all about to fill in a Census, the most controversial issue of which is the question of religion, the BBC carries two highly spurious stories about the decline of faith…

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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

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Voluntary euthanasia is in the news again.

At last week’s state election health forum, organised by The Sydney Morning Herald, we heard how 61-year-old Loredana Alessio-Mulhall, suffering from MS, intends flying to the Netherlands to end her life. This, of course, is illegal in Australia. Indeed, next month a man named David Mathers goes on trial in Sydney for the alleged murder of an old, sick friend. I cannot discuss that case for legal reasons, but there are a few facts about voluntary euthanasia worth putting on the record.

More than 80 per cent of Australians in opinion polls say they’d like to see voluntary euthanasia legalised. This issue is nearly unique because a majority of politicians, normally so keen to follow public opinion, refuse to change the law. One of the biggest arguments they use is that to do so would lead to a “slippery slope”. {But is the argument valid?]

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Wedding photos in a cemetery, a reception in a courtroom or a rickshaw for transport.

These are just some of the unique touches arranged by Sydney brides and grooms to make their weddings unique….

At the historic St Stephen’s Anglican Church in Newtown, couples can walk down the aisle in the sandstone church, then have afternoon tea or wedding photos among the gravestones.

Read it all and make sure to note the average cost of an Australian wedding at the moment (guess before you look).

The messy same-sex marriage debate continues in Australia and in the US. I remain of the view that we should not extend the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions; that we should legislate to recognise same-sex unions; and that we should leave questions about the legal availability of new technologies for the creation of children by same-sex couples for determination at a later date.

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A leading IVF clinic is helping clients choose the sex of their baby by sending them to an overseas clinic it co-owns, avoiding Australian rules which allow the practice only for medical reasons.

Sydney IVF, which has several clinics in NSW as well as in Canberra, Perth and Tasmania, is part-owner of Superior ART, a Thai clinic that will provide IVF for ”family balancing” – when families with children of one gender are seeking another child of the opposite sex.

It costs $11,000 including flights and accommodation, a spokesman for Sydney IVF said.

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Traditionalist Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church rather than taking up Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican ordinariate are wasting their time and spiritual energy clinging to a dangerous illusion, said the Vatican’s delegate for the Australian ordinariate.

Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, a former Anglican, urged Anglicans at a Feb. 26 festival in Perth to take up the pope’s offer of “peace.”

“I would caution people who still claim to be Anglo-Catholics and yet are holding back,” he told The Record, Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth, Feb. 26. “I’d say ‘When are you going to face realities?’ because there’s no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore.”

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The Maori call it upoko runaka, the farewell for the dead. In Christchurch yesterday, they said, it was also much more: a ritual to heal a broken city, and to reconnect its people with the earth that has so hurt them.

It began with local tribal chief Maurice Gray, in a black suit and holding a tokotoko, a staff carved with his family’s history that is symbolic of his authority as an elder.

He strode into an intersection lined with dignitaries and emergency workers and brandished the tokotoko at a small pile of broken masonry collected from shattered buildings in the heart of the city.

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An annual conference of Anglican bishops in Newcastle has been told the church is even more relevant during times of natural disasters.

The past few months has been described as an ‘onslaught of disaster’ with the Queensland floods, West Australian fires and New Zealand’s double tragedies of the Pike River mine disaster and Christchurch earthquake.

Newcastle Bishop, Brian Farran says in Brisbane, unaffected parishes were critical in providing support to those in the flood zone.

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Worshippers gathered outdoors on Sunday (Feb. 27) after an earthquake ravaged New Zealand’s second-largest city, meeting in unfamiliar churches and next to damaged buildings to reflect, pray, mourn and give thanks.

The death toll from the Feb. 22 quake reached 147 on Sunday, and is expected to double as dozens were trapped in wreckage. The entire central city was cordoned off as hundreds of rescuers continue to find bodies in the rubble.

“It’s going to be a very poignant day for a lot of our people today, as they reflect … on our values,” Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker wrote in the New Zealand Herald. “It’s a day of everybody reaching out. We need to keep our spirits up.”

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Christchurch is broken and will never be the same, and people would need to offer strength and support to each other for ”many, many months”, a minister told his flock.

”We need to be kind to one another, and patient with one another,” he said.

Reverend Mark Chamberlain, the vicar of St Barnabas Anglican Church in Fendalton Road, told about 250 people gathered in chilly morning shade outside the cracked and unsafe 1925 stone church yesterday that when he was appointed, ”I never dreamed of being called upon to lead you in your grief”.

”I’m just beginning to realise the depth of that grief.”

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From the BBC Programme introduction:

It was Christchurch’s second major tremor in five months, and New Zealand’s deadliest natural disaster for 80 years. As the death toll from last week’s earthquake continues to rise, Victoria Matthews, the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch talks to Edward about how the shattered community are trying to rebuild their lives.

The interview starts one minute in–listen to it all (a little over 4 3/4 minutes).

Church leaders in Christchurch, New Zealand, are ministering to the population of the city after the fatal earthquake on Tuesday, which left hundreds of people trapped under rubble, and caused the spire of the Anglican Cathedral to collapse.

This morning, the number of deaths stood at 113, with more than 200 people reported missing. It was the second earthquake to hit Christchurch in six months (News, 10 September). It measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, less than the 7.1-magnitude tremor in September last year, which happened at night, without loss of life. This week’s earthquake was more devastating, as it occurred at 1 p.m., when many people were out and about.
The Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt Revd Victoria Matthews, has called on Christchurch residents to “be calm, be sensible, be compassionate, be a good neighbour” in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.

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An Anglican priest, the Reverend Wally Behan, who normally lives in Christchurch but is caretaking a Sydney church for six months, said he had been shocked by television footage from inside the cathedral.

”The whole place is like a bomb hit it but when you look up to the steeple now, you see the sky, and all that’s come down.

”[Before the quake] you’d look across the skyline of Christchurch and there’d always be the cathedral, always the steeple of the cathedral sticking up wherever you’d look. Now, that’s gone.”

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Huge quake damage to the landmark Christ Church Cathedral was particularly shocking for one Queenstowner.

Local Anglican vicar David Coles was the cathedral dean for six years before an 18-year stint as Bishop of Christchurch.

“I spent good years of my life in there ”“ Joy and I were married there in 2001, I was ordained as a bishop there, so it’s a pretty important place for us.

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Edmonton’s Anglicans are being asked for prayers, not dollars, in the aftermath of an earthquake in New Zealand that damaged the Christchurch cathedral and left hundreds of people trapped under rubble.

The disaster area is the home of Victoria Matthews, former bishop of Edmonton’s diocese who is currently the archbishop of Christchurch. Matthews and her staff are safe and working in a “surreal” situation, supporting people affected by the tragedy, said Jane Alexander, who succeeded Matthews as Edmonton’s bishop.

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Listen to it all (a little under 3 1/2 minutes).

More than 300 people were still trapped in collapsed buildings last night after a massive earthquake hit New Zealand’s second biggest city, Christchurch, claiming at least 75 lives and destroying buildings.

As police, emergency services and hospitals struggled to cope with the disaster, which toppled the spire of Christchurch’s stone cathedral, the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, declared a national state of emergency.

This morning, Mr Key vowed that Christchurch’s “comeback” would begin today. “Though lost lives will never be replaced, and though your city will never look the same again, you will rebuild your city, you will rebuild your lives, you will overcome,” he said.

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A large earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, on Tuesday, according to the United States Geological Survey, causing buildings to collapse and burying vehicles under debris. Prime Minister John Key said at least 65 people had been killed.

Damage was extensive and people were trapped inside buildings, The Associated Press reported.

Video from the scene by 3 News New Zealand showed extensive damage to the city’s main cathedral, as well as people running through the streets to safety. One person called it “the most frightening thing of my entire life.”

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The Anglican Ordinariate which aims to be established in Australia by Pentecost is about evangelising, not preserving some pure form of Anglicanism, one of its leading figures said, reports the Record.

Bishop Harry Entwistle of Perth (pictured), one of 50 disaffected Anglicans who met on the Gold Coast earlier this month to gauge “how many and who” will join the Ordinariate, said the Ordinariate’s aim will be that of the universal Church ”“ to bring people into relationship with God.

Bishop Entwistle, who will address a Festival this Saturday at Holy Family Catholic Parish in Como to “introduce the Anglican Ordinariate for Australia”, said it has always been believed that the Ordinarate will begin “with smallish numbers who will then try to grow and evangelise”.

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The churches of Australia guard with absolute determination the right to hire and fire according to the ancient sex rules of their faiths. Orthodox Jews and Muslims claim and exercise the same right, too. But across the faiths and denominations, religious leaders are far happier talking the talk of religious liberty than detailing the human cost.

Are de factos on the list? “Yes.” Single mothers? The bishop pauses. “General carte blanche, no. You need to know why.” The key is repentance: an unmarried mother is employable if she repents of the “behaviour” that occasioned conception. Indeed, everyone on this list of shame can save themselves ”“ and their jobs ”“ by being seen to wrestle with their sins.

[Robert] Forsyth, who speaks on this issue for the Anglican Church in Australia, says it isn’t a matter of proving harm or showing someone can’t do the job. The damage to church organisations is inevitable: “In the long run, someone behaving in a way that is consistently immoral working for an organisation is going to depower and chill the fervour and the life of the organisation.”

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Bishop Huggins, who is Bishop of the Northwest Region of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and Chair of the Melbourne Anglican Social Responsibilities Committee, appealed to the State Parliament to leave Easter Sunday as it is.

“Easter Sunday is a holy day which would only be impoverished by the sheer banality of longer shopping hours, rendering more difficult the family life of staff and small business owners,” he said.

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Those younger than the Baby Boomer generation may have missed the release of a Productivity Commission aged care report. Pre-Baby Boomers may wrongly have thought it doesn’t impact them.

Anyone who has had to find an aged care home for a loved one will tell you the system is a maze. It’s hard to access, and hard to find a way through. It’s not able to give everyone what they want.

The reason younger people should worry is that if they have family members, chances are they’ll take a crash course in aged care navigation if, without warning, a family member needs care urgently….

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The head of the Anglican Church in Australia, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, could join Newcastle Bishop Brian Farran as a defendant in a NSW Supreme Court case testing how the church runs professional standards matters nationally.
Archbishop Aspinall has asked to be named as fifth defendant in a case launched by former Dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence and Cardiff priest Graeme Sturt after professional standards hearings in December.

The archbishop advised the court this week that he wanted to intervene in proceedings because the matters raised had general application to the operation of professional standards procedures in Australia.

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The Australian federal election campaign of 2010 was the perfect illustration of the contemporary problem of leadership. And it’s this: we want a leader we can trust, but we aren’t ready to trust anyone. Or to put it another way: we want a leader who is real, but we aren’t prepared to believe anything they say.

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