The Archdiocese of Sydney’s Great Grace Conference, held from May 20-23, was so popular organisers ended up turning overflow crowds away. Among the speakers, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron set out the authentic Vatican II agenda.

The media are not inherently hostile to the Catholic Church, CatholicVoices founders Jack Valero and Austen Ivereigh told an international conference in Sydney last month. Most of the time journalists are just doing their jobs. Catholics could run from their difficult questions or, in the spirit of Vatican II, seize on them as opportunities to change the world, reports Robert Hiini …

Apparent a-religiosity among Catholic schools and hospitals was a major sign an authentic reception of the Second Vatican Council had yet to take place in Australia, a leading Australian Catholic intellectual told an international conference last week.

Hollywood didn’t abandon Christianity, Christianity abandoned Hollywood, visiting US family-friendly media advocate Dr Ted Baehr told audiences in Perth last week.

Advocates of the Church accommodating itself to the ‘signs of the times’ were hopelessly out-of-date, even at the time of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Professor Tracey Rowland said at The Great Grace Conference in Sydney last week.

Greenmount man, Trevor Knuckey, has announced his intention to establish an Aboriginal drop-in centre in Midland, and is calling on the Church in Perth to help.

A recent education symposium in Perth showed that the loving arms of Our Lady of the Missions founder Sr Euphrasie Barbier RNDM still span the world. Principals from more than 30 RNDM-founded schools in Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, England, and India gathered at Sacred Heart College in Sorrento to honour her charism and to look for ways to share and collaborate.

The Catholic Church has to be honest with itself in assessing why many former Catholics have switched to Pentecostal Christianity, a leading Holy See official in ecumenical affairs said in Sydney recently.

A high-powered conference in Sydney will seek to shed light on whether Tradition liberates or enslaves us. Tradition Conference 2013 will take place at the University of Notre Dame’s Sydney campus from July 2-5. The conference will feature seven international speakers and a bevy of well-known Australian philosophers and theologians, including Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, John Haldane, Ma...

Organisers of the Grace and Silence retreat are calling all young women who wish to contemplate their vocation, whatever that might be, to join them at the Schoenstatt Shrine over four separate dates, beginning May 18.