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]