013 :
31 Jan 2012

Advice for Pilgrims on El Camino de Santiago... During April last year Dr Graham English undertook the famous Santiago de Compastella Pilgrimage across the top of Spain. This pilgrimage is today possibly the most famous of all pilgrimages in the world. In English it is called The Way of St James. The numbers undertaking the pilgrimage have been ballooning in recent decades and it is estimated that nearly 300,000 individuals undertook the pilgrimage last year. In this commentary Graham shares something of his experience and also provides practical advice for others who might be thinking of making the trek. [more]

012 :
03 Nov 2011

Catholic identity today... Dr Graham English was one of the panelists last Saturday at a discussion sponsored by Australian Reforming Catholics. The broad topic for the discussion was "What are the possibilities today for identifying as Catholic?" His talk is nostalgic and pointedly critical of how Catholicism seems to have lost focus and direction. [more]

011 :
16 Aug 2011

Are you infected with any of the madness in contemporary Catholicism? Here's part 2 of the cure... Dr Graham English concludes his whimsical and insightful reflection on the problems besetting Catholicism in the modern world. What do you believe? What do you think the bishops want you to believe? How do you preserve your spiritual and temporal sanity in the madhouse where nearly 90% of the baptized across the educated world have simply turned their back on it all? [more]

010 :
15 Aug 2011

Are you infected with any of the madness in contemporary Catholicism? Here's the cure... Are you ready for this: it's a whimsical reflection from Dr Graham English taking a look at the madness that seems to be infecting contemporary Catholicism. Are you infected with any of this or have you managed to escape? Part 1 today and the conclusion will follow tomorrow. [more]

009 :
09 Jul 2011

Lessons for the Australian Catholic Church from an unlikely source: Karl Marx! Now here is something that is really thought-provoking. It's a commentary by Dr Graham English that has been sparked by his reading of a new book by Terry Eagleton titled "Why Marx was Right". Graham English applies a few lessons to the curious situation the Catholic Church finds itself in in Australia — an institution that held out so much hope, still has to some extent, but one where the leaders have figuratively shot themselves in the foot and squandered the hope and potential. Commentaries don't get much better than this one! [more]

008 :
14 Aug 2010

Searching for a mature set of beliefs... It is something of an irony that one of the greatest achievements of the Church has been in the realm of education. The irony being that as we've been educated we've also begun to question many of the old certitudes upon which the edifice of the institution was built. Dr Graham English is a recently retired member of that important cohort in Australia who helped build the modern Catholic Education system. In today's commentary he reflects back on the maturation of his own faith discarding many of the shibboleths but also disinguishing those things he still believes have enduring truth or insight. [more]

007 :
04 Sep 2009

Catholic Schools and the Poor In August last year we published a commentary by Dr Michael Furtado commenting on the legacy of Dr Peter Tannock to Catholic Education in Australia. (See "The Legacy of Dr Tannock" Catholica commentary 14Aug2008 LINK.) Today's commentary by Dr Graham English is partly a response to that and other comments Dr Furtado has made about Catholic Education in this country. Dr English's commentary is an attempt to provide an honest view of the good and bad in what Catholic Education has achieved and is achieving. [more]

006 :
21 Nov 2008

Communicating with Young People Part 2 of 2: Dr Graham English concludes his two-part commentary exploring the challenges the institution needs to make if it is going to retain the attention of future generations of young people. This commentary is from an address Dr English gave recently to members of the St Vincent de Paul Society. [more]

005 :
20 Nov 2008

Communicating with Young People Part 1 of 2: In a sense this two-part commentary from Dr Graham English follows on from the last commentary he wrote for Catholica exploring the challenges that young people face today in having a sense of "belonging" to the Catholic Church. Today and tomorrow though the focus is back the other way in exploring the ways in which the institutional Church may have to adapt if it is to have a hope of maintaining relevance to the young people of tomorrow. This commentary is from an address Dr English gave recently to members of the St Vincent de Paul Society. [more]

004 :
07 Aug 2008

A reflection on the challenges of belonging to Church today… Dr Graham English has been a Catholic teacher for 45 years. Now lecturing RE teachers at the Australian Catholic University he reflects on the challenges that young people face today in having a sense of "belonging" to the Catholic Church. [more]

003 :
17 Jul 2008

The Church in Australia – far from static… Dr Andrew Kania's overview of Catholicism in Australia published in The Tablet last week has generated much comment in response. There have been other articles in the media, written for audiences in other countries, seeking to give a brief over view of the Church in Australia. Dr Graham English felt that Dr Kania offered too static view of the Church in this country and seeks in this commentary to offer an alternative view to the one presented by Dr Kania. [more]

002 :
04 Jul 2008

"Freedom, ideology and the Catholic Church" Amidst the gathering frenzy by some leaders, and some lay groups, within the Catholic Church to turn back the clock and re-establish a pre-Vatican II mindset on the institution, here is a timely and rigorously argued commentary by Dr Graham English. The issue he puts under the microscope is our changing understanding of the meaning of "religious freedom". He argues that the Second Vatican Council brought about far reaching changes in how we ought to understand and interpret this term. His commentary is effectively a strong argument as to why we need to collectively defend this advance in thinking that the Council introduced. [more]

001 :
04 Jun 2007

Catholic Religious Education in Australia — why and how it has changed... Catholic Education in Australia faced a major crisis in the 1960s to the point where the bishops of the time seriously considered having to close the entire system down because they simply did not have the resources to sustain it any longer. The new system that was established in the 1970s, thanks largely to government funding, is fundamentally different to the system of religious education that had existed in the past. In today's commentary, Dr Graham English, Senior Lecturer in Religious Education at ACU National, explores some of the other social and cultural factors that make Catholic Religious Education today so much different to what it was in the past. [more]