The Thomas More Centre is a body of Australians of Christian convictions, drawn from various professional and social groupings. It aims to bring these groups together in programs and activities designed to: Deepen their knowledge of their Christian faith; - Strengthen the practice of their faith;
- Explore bioethical issues in accordance with authentic Christian teaching;
- Study political and social issues in accordance with authentic Christian teaching;
- Assemble and train a new Christian force to spread the Christian faith and to challenge the prevailing philosophies of utilitarianism, subjectivism, materialism and nihilism, which seriously threaten Christianity.
The Thomas More Centre is active in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Please also contact us if you live in other areas of Australia.
Heard about the event that's attracting over 500 university students and young adults (under 35) each month in Sydney? Post WYD in August sees Faith on Tap launch in Brisbane based on Sydney's famous Theology on Tap, start every second Monday at 6:30pm.
Every second Monday of the month, the young & hip of Brisbane will be hitting up the Pineapple Hotel in Kangaroo Point to grab some food and drinks and listen to some of the best speakers around and quiz them in the 'free 4 all' Q&A.
"Faith on Tap" is a casual and relaxed forum where friends from all walks of life gather for straight talk, hard facts and real answers on our faith and how it applies to daily life.
Come for a listen (and maybe a drink!). Invite your friends, especially those wanting to learn more (or debate) about the Catholic faith! Fire off the questions you have never had the opportunity to ask!
Get on the tap with other young adults & learn about the Catholic faith in a new & refreshing way.
Dates confirmed. 2nd Monday of the Month at the Pineapple Hotel Kangaroo Point. Starting Post WYD in August on Monday the 11th.
Tracey Rowland - a former President of the Queensland University Pro-life Club will return to the St Lucia campus to launch a new book. Tracey is also Dean and Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Continental Theology of the John Paul II Institute, Melbourne, Australia, and Member of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham
Ratzinger's Faith
The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI
Forward by George Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
The recent Newman story regarding their “pro-woman” and “pro-pregnancy” campaign has gone global with a number of sites picking up the story.
catholicnewsagency.com Catholic student group’s pregnancy support campaign banned at university campus
A Catholic student group at the University of Queensland has been censored and threatened with disaffiliation from the school’s student union because student union leaders believed the group’s “pro-woman” and “pro-pregnancy” campaign took a stand against abortion.
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, May 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Student Union at Queensland University have shown themselves to be opposed to differing opinion and free speech like many other secular universities around the world.
"There are certain topics which are simply off limits. Abortion is one such topic. Homosexuality is another. So too is evolution, or challenges to it. There are certain issues which are simply taboo in Western universities, and if dissidents dare speak up to the contrary, they can expect swift and harsh punishment by the campus thought police.
"In the former Soviet Union dissidents were sent to the Gulag for daring to question the official State line. Increasingly, students or staff who dare to challenge the PC orthodoxies on campus are likewise sent to the academic Gulag, be it in the form of bans, fines, censorship or public humiliation."
The UQ Newman Catholic Society have had a runnin with the University of Queensland Student Union and its president Josh Young. All for displaying an pre-born baby (at 8 weeks).
A lot of support has been show to Newman on this site.
Others to show interest have included the Catholic Leader and ABC Radio.
If students are shut down for displaying an image of a fetus on Campus what right will be next to be taken away?
To express concern please contact:
The University of Queensland
Brisbane QLD 4072 Australia
Office of the Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Paul Greenfield
Phone: +61 (7) 3365 1300
Fax: +61 (7) 3365 1266
E-mail: vc@uq.edu.au
The University of Queensland Student Union
Joshua Young, President
Phone: +61 (7) 3377 2200
Fax: +61 (7) 3377 2220
E-mail: uqunion@uq.edu.au
To express support to the Australian Catholic Students Association please contact:
Camillus O'Kane, President
PO Box 171
Broadway NSW 2007
Australia
Phone: 0407 538 044
Email: president@catholicstudents.org.au
Website: http://catholicstudents.org.au/
A new website has just been launched in the lead up to WYD in Sydney. The site will be a daily news site by young people, with news, happenings and preparations on WYD. Sign up for the daily emails and keep up with the latest insider happenings. The site also includes useful info on registering, overseas pilgrims and groups that you may want to register with.
BOOK LAUNCH: RATZINGER'S FAITH The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI
Posted by: admin on 05/17/2008 11:45 AM
Dr Tracey Rowland, Dean, John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family East Melbourne
Oxford University Press: Introduction by Cardinal Pell
Dr Rowland, a Queenslander, is an outstanding theologian on the world scene in
our time. Co-patron with Cardinal Pell of the Australian Catholic Students
Association, she will present this book, her second, at Duchesne College,
College Road, UQ, St Lucia, on Monday May 26, at 7.30 PM.
CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION Sunday 25, 2.00 PM
Posted by: admin on 05/17/2008 11:44 AM
CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION will be on Sunday 25, 2.00 PM, Nudgee Junior, Kate
St, Indooroopilly, with Archbishop Bathersby.
Those who have come over the past ten years to this public manifestation of
Eucharistic Devotion will recall that the entry is from Kate St, and the
internal school drive is one- way, exiting on to Bridge St.
CHANGE: The school has introduced this change to traffic movements. The
driveway is still one-way, except for the last thirty metres before the exit.
It is now possible to drive in there from Bridge St, and into the car park.
Buses too should drop their passengers at that spot, allowing them to walk
across the flat to the stage location, while the buses go to park elsewhere.
Parking will also be possible in the fields on the far side of Kate St.
Iuventutem at WYD 08 Sydney
Posted by: admin on 05/17/2008 11:43 AM
IUVENTUTEM: Father Terrence Mary will speak after Mass at St Luke's Buranda in
David Edwards House on Iuventutem, the World Youth Day group celebrating the
Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. He has been commissioned to do this in
all the Mass Centres across Australia. Needless to say this is intended
primarily for those who fill the definition of ?Young?, which is
arbitrarily determined as 18-35, but ALL WELCOME. 10.45 AM start.
The AFA website (www.family.org.au) has the details of three Senate Committees that are currently taking submissions on three very important issues;
SEXUALISATION OF CHILDREN IN THE CONTEMPORARY MEDIA ENVIRONMENT
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BROADCASTING CODES OF PRACTICE
MATERNITY LEAVE INQUIRY-IMPROVED SUPPORT FOR PARENTS WITH NEWBORN CHILDREN
Please take the time to submit your pro-family thoughts on these issues. An outline of the AFA's intended approach to the issues raised and some further suggestions for members' own responses is also given. Readers may find this helpful in preparing their own responses. Many readers will be able to share personal experiences that pertain to the inquiry issues.
Details here;
Walking with Love - alternatives & responses to abortion
Posted by: admin on 03/18/2008 10:11 AM
(Read: 153)
Walking with Love aims to educate all people of goodwill, on how to walk with love and gentleness in their encounter with vulnerable pregnant women and those who suffer the effects of an abortion.
Saturday 19th April 2008
Time: 12.45pm (for 1.15pm start) – 5.15pm
Marymac Community Centre,
616 Ipswich Rd, Annerley
This article gives a succinct diagnosis of our culture. It would appear that everyone is hell bent of seeking pleasure and taking their 'freedom'! However, beneath all of this grasping, lies a deep 'pathology of boredom'. Everything is the same, on tap all the time, and as a consequence nothing is compelling!
The irony is that in seeking personal freedom, individuals have become trapped, disconnected and lonely as a consequence. Living in a 'private realm' hasn't brought them happiness.
A return to 'Sundays' & 'festivals' is posed to counteract this way of living. Feasting and fasting, to help bring the joy back to living. In a world of tolerance where nothing is good or evil, the greatest tragedy is society has lost the their very 'humanity'.
You may have heard a lot about a new list adding to the seven deadly sins.
Phil Lawler from CWnew.com sheds some light on what is really going on;
"When he finished his interview with L'Osservatore Romano, Archishop Gianfranco Girotti probably thought that his main message had been an appeal to Catholics to use the sacrament of Confession. Little did he know that the English-language news media would play the interview as a newly revised list of sins...
The fundamental point of the L'Osservatore Romano interview was that Catholics need to recover a sense of sin, make use of the sacrament of Confession, and receive absolution for their offenses. Sin, the archbishop insisted, is a reality that man cannot escape...
Archbishop Girotti said that the modern world does not understand the nature of sin. With their coverage of the interview, the mass media unintentionally underlined the prelate's point."
"Intended to build on the growing cultic veneration of the late Pope and add impetus to the campaign to make him a saint, the late Pope John Paul II is the star in a new trip-hop music video backed by the Vatican. The DVD was launched recently in the UK by Universal"
Posted by: admin on 10/26/2007 10:23 AM
(Read: 386)
Cardinal George Pell has just released a statement on climate change. "I am certainly sceptical about extravagent claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes... My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes. "
”The Dolly/Cleo Culture”
by Anna Krohn, Researcher in Bioethics and Lecturer at the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne.
“Sexualizing Our Little Girls”
by Melinda Tankard Reist, journalist and author of Giving Sorrow Words, and Defi ant Birth, and Director of Women’s Forum Australia
Speech to the Australian Catholic Student's association
Posted by: admin on 07/10/2007 02:07 PM
(Read: 501)
Ladies and gentlemen.
Firstly, I would like to pass on to you the Prime Minister’s greetings and sincere regrets that other commitments prevented him from attending this evening. He has asked me to represent him.
You have a major address coming from Bishop Anthony tonight so I will keep my remarks short. Everyone keeps reminding me that the Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in history yet it took only two minutes to say and has only 266 words.
Defending his right to speak: Cardinal George Pell
Posted by: admin on 06/19/2007 03:55 PM
On Friday it was announced that Cardinal Pell's comments about a NSW bill on stem cell research would be investigated for contempt of parliament. You can listen/or read the transcript of his interview on Sunday with Monica Attard on Sunday profile here.
Some extracts;
"...Many Australians really don't understand the issues involved. They've been told that they're likely to be cures and therefore the human life involved is so microscopic and destined to exist for so long that unfortunately they're not too much concerned by that.
So, the situation has got to be explained to them. This is a marker event. We are creating human life to be destroyed...
I'm the only one that's talking the science. Now, the science is this. There have been no cures brought from experiments on embryos.
As yet. There have been many cures from adult stem cells. I think 1,422 trials, 72 claims actual for cures. I've set out these statistics before the federal legislation, before this legislation, they've never been refuted...
You see, it's very interesting when I say, as I did, on the industrial relations legislation, that the removal of the no-disadvantage test was a big mistake, nobody said that this was an infringement of church-state relations...
[I'm] informing the public that, to lapse into the vernacular, they're being sold a pup. That tens of millions of dollars are being put into embryonic stem cell research and there has not been one established cure so far. When are the economic rationalists, the hard heads, going to do a little bit of cost benefit analysis on this?"
Fri 6 - Sun 8 Jul - Canberra. Transport Available.
The 2028 CONGRESS will be a once in a life time opportunity to contribute to a vision for Australia’s future. World Youth Day 2008 will touch our country for many, many years to come & the 20 years beyond WYD has been defined as part of the final stage of the project: “The Legacy of WYD till 2028+.”
As we count down to the final year before WYD, the 2028 CONGRESS will be a chance for young Australians to reflect on the biggest cultural issues confronting our country into the future. With internationally acclaimed speakers gathered alongside an expected 300+ delegates, lively discussion is expected about life in 2028 – sex & vocation, poverty & economics, politics & prayer and life & death will all be addressed through the lens of ‘Faith in the Future’.
Visit Australia’s national icons in Canberra, join the Adoration roster, pray at Mass with hundreds of young Catholics & discuss the issues in life that really matter.
WILL THERAPEUTIC CLONING BE MOTHBALLED BEFORE IT SUCCEEDS?
Posted by: admin on 06/15/2007 09:55 AM
Ten years ago there was Dolly the Scottish cloned sheep and the race towards therapeutic cloning was on. Ten years later there are Japanese mice and the race could be over. Three different groups reported last week that normal skin cells in mice can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state. "Neither eggs nor embryos are necessary. I've never worked with either," says Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, who first unveiled the technique a year ago to sceptical colleagues.
Now his results have been confirmed by two other teams, at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The reprogrammed cells meet all the tests of pluripotent cells -- they form colonies, propagate continuously and form cancerous growths called teratomas, as well as producing chimaeras. "Its unbelievable, just amazing," says Hans Schöler, a German stem cell expert. "For me, it's like Dolly. It's that type of an accomplishment."
What Yamanaka did was to take a mouse skin cell and introduce into it four proteins which trigger the expression of other genes to make it pluripotent. He calls the result induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). "It's easy. There's no trick, no magic," he says.
Naturally, it's easy only for experts at the moment. In practice, the four transcription factors reprogram cells inefficiently -- only 0.1% of the cells in a skin biopsy. Then these cells have to be isolated. But Yamanaka has developed a technique for this as well. And there are some worrying issues to contend with: one of the proteins seems to contribute to cancers in 20% of the chimaeric mice.
But Harvard researcher Chad Cowan says that it will change the field: "The most amazing thing about these papers is you now take this whole idea of reprogramming out of the hands of cloning specialists and put it into the hands of anyone who can do molecular and cell biology." Now the race is on to apply the technique to human cells. "We are working very hard -- day and night," says Yamanaka.
Executives from embryonic stem cell companies were not optimistic about the new technique. Because it involves tinkering with the genome, it could be dangerous, in the opinion of Thomas B. Okarma, of Geron. Getting approval from regulatory authorities would become far more complicated. And the head of the team at the Whitehead Institute, Rudolph Jaenisch, still insists that therapeutic cloning remains "absolutely necessary".
The ethical implications of this development were immediately seized upon by opponents of embryonic stem cell research. "Morally and practically, this new approach appears to be far superior," commented Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the US Catholic bishops conference. ~ New York Times, Jun 7; Nature, Jun 7; Science, Jun 8
ONE of the most frustrating experiences of life is the feeling of being used, exploited for the benefit of others while suffering loss or harm. It is a feeling of being violated and, while leaving self-esteem shattered, it kindles a deep sense of outrage (writes Anthony Succar form IMCSA and Sydney University). In the Australian
Australian Battle Over Government-Funded Abortion Counseling Heats Up
Posted by: admin on 05/31/2007 01:06 PM
Should the government of Australia force taxpayers to fund health workers in third-world nations to encourage pregnant women to have abortions or actually do the abortion itself? That's the question members of parliament are debating as they consider a bill to overturn the funding restrictions on the practices.
Not all lawmakers are supportive of the idea and Nationals Senate leader Ron Boswell called making taxpayers fund abortions and abortion counseling "provocative and divisive."
Set in the Grande Chartreuse or the Grand Charterhouse of the Carthusian Order in the French Alps, Into Great Silence is almost certainly the most important religious film released since The Passion of the Christ. In one sense, these two films represent two sides of the same coin: The Passion emphasised the drama, bloodiness and humanity of the Faith whilst Into Great Silence highlights the silent, peaceful and ultimately inspired nature of Christian contemplation and monastic life.
In the following Cinemas NOW - since Thurs 17 May
Sydney:
Dendy, King St, Newtown,
Orpheum, 380 Military Rd, Cremorne
Melbourne:
Cinema Nova, 380 Lygon St, Carlton
Perth:
Cinema Paradiso, 164 James St, Northbridge
Brisbane:
Dendy, 356 George St, City
About Into Great Silence:
It was 16 years before Philip Groning was granted permission to make the documentary about the Carthusian monks with the strict instructions: No artificial light, no additional music, no commentaries. No additional crew. He then lived with the monks for 6 months filming small amounts each day. The entire project has taken 21 years from original concept to completed film and the finished product is an entirely authentic and sincere representation of life within the Grande Chartreuse monastery.
The film's website:
http://www.diegrossestille.de/english/
Reviews and comments on the film have been laudatory.
Sold out at the Sydney Film Festival
In Germany the film ran for more than 25 weeks in over 20 cinemas with a Box Office of more than 1,000,000 EUR
After 4 weeks in Italy on 44 screens the filmed grossed more than 500,000 EUR
Awarded with the Premio Paoline Comunicazione e Cultura 2006 by the Pontificia Università Lateranense
Special Jury Prize World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival
Best Documentary, Bavarian Film Awards
Comments on the film:
http://www.filmforum.org/films/silence.html
EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2006 - Prix ARTE -
http://www.altfg.com/awards/2006/european.htm
"Philip Gröning’s thoughtful film touches on the mystic quality of belief and our need for stillness and silence in contrast to modern life. It appears that the director, with a lot of patience, gained the trust of this enclosed community and returned with amazing images and sounds. INTO GREAT SILENCE is a great film about humanity and our shared European background."
10 am Saturday 28th of April. A public rally is being organised by Free China supporting 20 million withdrawals from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the Roma Street Forum.
Free China is a Non-Government Organisation (NGO) established in 2005 as a support network for Australians to contribute towards the freedom and human rights improvement of China.
Tracey Rowland - a former President of the Queensland University Pro-life Club will return to the St Lucia campus to launch a new book. Tracey is also Dean and Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Continental Theology of the 
Catholic student group’s pregnancy support campaign banned at university campus
IUVENTUTEM: Father Terrence Mary will speak after Mass at St Luke's Buranda in
