Religion News Selection 41 (Oct 29

Religion News Selection 41 (Oct 29 - Nov 5)

(04 November 17)
by Greg Spearritt

Religion News Selection

October 29 – November 5, 2017

A selection of religion news stories from Australia.

(Research: Greg Spearritt)

Inclusion here does not endorse the veracity or quality of any particular item – it just means
I found it worth reading and reflecting on (even if badly conceived or poorly written).

If you’re after the unexpurgated (and reasonably unbiased) version,
see Religion News Australia which appears weekly on our website.

ABUSE

Churches to be covered by the ACT’s reportable conduct scheme from July 2018 (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nov 2 - Churches will finally be covered by the ACT’s reportable conduct scheme from July 1 next year.

’Their cross to bear’: The Catholic women told to forgive domestic violence (ABC News)
Nov 4 - Over the past three decades spent working for the Catholic Church, Maria George has been exposed to dozens of women who have survived intimate partner violence.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

How Bob Dylan found God, and his fans found another boxset to buy (ABC News)
Nov 4 - It reads like a scene from a bad movie.

EDUCATION

Catholics warn of more school closures in Victoria under Gonski 2.0 (The Age, Melbourne)
Oct 30 - Victoria’s Catholic education body is warning of school closures under the Turnbull government’s Gonski 2.0 funding model, with two Melbourne schools set to shut this year.

INTERNATIONAL STORIES

Catholic Church

Pope Francis admits: ’When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep’ (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 1 - Pope Francis has confessed he sometimes nods off while praying, and claims saints too have been known to grab some Holy shut-eye.

Islam

Frenchwomen accuse Islamic scholar of sexual assault (Sydney Morning Herald)
Oct 30 - Paris: Amid a recent outpouring by Frenchwomen reporting episodes of sexual harassment and naming their aggressors, two women have accused a renowned Islamic scholar of violent sexual attacks.

Saudi women riled by robot with no hjiab and more rights than them (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nov 2 - Women in Saudi Arabia have scorned the government’s decision to grant "citizenship" to a female robot who, unlike them, does not need a male guardian nor have to cover her head in public.

SingleMuslim.com: how the Yorkshire dating site transformed Muslim romance (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 5 - The business books tell you to follow your heart.

Religious Violence

Sorcery-related violence surges in PNG as women attacked and murdered, accused of witchcraft (ABC News)
Oct 29 - Community leaders in Papua New Guinea have said they are at a loss to explain a recent upsurge in sorcery-related violence that most often targets women, in some parts of the country.

Bin Laden’s disdain for the west grew in Shakespeare’s birthplace, journal shows (The Guardian, Australia)
Nov 2 - A summer trip to the UK as a teenager and visits to Shakespeare’s birthplace convinced Osama bin Laden that the west was “decadent”, the late leader of al-Qaida and architect of the 9/11 attacks wrote in his personal journal shortly before he was killed by US special forces in 2011.

Islamic State is on the brink of collapse after recent defeats (news.com.au)
Nov 4 - WITH new losses, the Islamic State group has been driven from more than 96 per cent of the large parts of Iraq and Syria it once held, crushing its goal of establishing a “caliphate” in the region.

Other

Halloween light parties put a Christian spin on haunted celebrations (The Guardian, Australia)
Oct 29 - In the face of the sugar-saturated pagan onslaught that is now Halloween, the humble parish church is staging a fightback in which superheroes, subversive pumpkins, circus skills and bouncy castles have become its weapons of choice.

Hardline Hindu nationalists campaign against Taj Mahal (The Guardian, Australia)
Oct 31 - Times are tough for India’s monument to love.

Catholic and Protestant leaders unite to mark start of Reformation (The Guardian, Australia)
Oct 31 - Catholic and Protestant leaders will stress their mutual bonds 500 years after the start of the Reformation, a movement which tore apart western Christianity and sparked a string of bloody religious wars in Europe lasting more than a century.

RELIGION & SOCIETY

The God question: listen to your inner voice (The Australian)
Oct 28 – (Opinion: Greg Sheridan) It is more rational to believe in God than to believe there is no God.

Seven reasons Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation still matter today (ABC News)
Oct 31 - It’s been 500 years since upstart priest Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door — or so legend goes — and split the Catholic Church right down the middle.

Catholic, Anglican bishops unite in opposition to Adani mega-mine (Sydney Morning Herald)
Oct 31 - It may have the Turnbull and Palaszczuk governments firmly in its corner, but the Adani super-mine is facing a formidable new opponent: the Christian faith.

’An evil, satanic tradition’: Halloween celebrations divide Perth (Sydney Morning Herald)
Oct 31 - While celebrating Halloween has become increasingly popular in WA, it seems not all Perth residents have gotten into the spooky spirit.