Who will be witness if we do not? The 2024 International Peace Day Lecture
This 13th annual Brisbane lecture marks the United Nations International Day of Peace. The horror
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An address to Brisbane Pride Festival: We value your presence, we celebrate your gifts, we respect your lives.
An apology is just one step on a much longer journey of healing – it does not end the process we have started. The work, we must do, to build some trust and credibility is to live into the apology in our churches, schools and other agencies: this will mean changes to behaviours, language and policies among other things. I know that we have much work to do.
RUok? Checking in and shaping life for well-being
On RUOk? Day Archbishop Jeremy Greaves has written to Brisbane clergy with encouragement to move
Gender Disparity and the Leadership Experiences of Women
Over the course of its history the Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn has been at the forefront of the extension of women’s ministry to the three orders of ordained ministry.. However, not all is as it should be or might have been expected. This report examines why levels of leadership among women in parish ministry have gone backwards despite this long-term commitment to their access and involvement in ministry as deacons, priests and bishops.
The Work Ahead
“One of the significant motions that was passed at our recent synod was one endorsing
Human Dignity for Those Released from Prison
Those movies where you see a prisoner walk out the gate and look around and see no one to greet them are sometimes true. Stories are even told of full-timers being deposited at the front gate of the prison and being given directions to walk to the nearest train station, as no transport is provided.
To Tend, To Transform, To Treasure: Sustainability and the Communion Forest
I have received and planted two trees: one has been planted in the garden at St Anne’s, Highfields, and one in the clergy house garden at Highfields. My plan is to treat them like Pokémon and “collect them all!”
However, that’s not really the intent. To use a local example, Highfields an area of high growth, and that means trees coming down for development at rate that seems unsustainable and damaging to our local wildlife, particularly koalas and native birds.
So, this motion calls us to be givers as well as receivers. In supporting this motion, we hope that all parishes, schools and agencies will find ways that we can use our collective strength to make a real difference towards conservation, re-foresting and re-wilding.
Negative media reporting and young people
“We are witnessing a disturbing attempt to scapegoat, stigmatise and socially exclude young people through negative reporting. This messaging in the media is damaging. It does not reflect the truth of young people in our society and in many cases seems to deliberately present a false message not supported by the data. This is particularly the case regarding youth offending.”
What Makes An Apology?
.. a meaningful, genuine and effective apology starts with saying sorry. Period. It is very tempting to want to explain why, or to indicate that one didn’t mean it to cause harm, or to refer to social mores at the time and so on. This undermines the effectiveness of the apology. Anything that sounds like self-justification doesn’t help those to whom the apology is directed. This is one of the costs of being prepared to make an apology. And reminds us to remember that the apology is for those who have been hurt, not those who are doing the apologising. The words of the apology therefore need to be clear and unequivocal; free of any desire to save face, to qualify or justify.
People on the move: Archbishop’s address
We are not called to conform and to sit still, the people of God have always been a people on the move. As Dom Hélder Câmara said, “Pilgrim, when your ship long moored in harbor gives you the illusion of being a house; when your ship begins to put down roots in the stagnant water by the quay: put out to sea! Save your boat’s journeying soul and your own pilgrim soul, cost what it may.”
In all things, charity
“The truth is that, as I said at my welcome, I do not want this diocese to be labelled either a High Church diocese or a Low Church diocese. It is neither. It is a Church diocese. And if there be some, as I know there are, who reflect sadly that services are in several churches different from what they were thirty or forty years ago, I would ask them to remember that certain changes such as have occurred rather generally in England were bound to come here….Room must be found in our Church and in this diocese of our Church for those who are Anglo-Catholics and for those who would not like to call themselves so. There must be in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.”
Archbishop Sharp, Brisbane Synod 1924