Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home Life Faith Archbishop

Leaders peacefully speaking the truth

byStaff writers
3 November 2014 - Updated on 1 April 2021
Reading Time: 3 mins read
AA

Interfaith meeting: Archbishop Mark Coleridge met with eight Islamic leaders and seven Heads of Churches at a meeting at Wynberg on October 20.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Interfaith meeting: Archbishop Mark Coleridge met with eight Islamic leaders and seven Heads of Churches at a meeting at Wynberg on October 20.
Interfaith meeting: Archbishop Mark Coleridge met with eight Islamic leaders and seven Heads of Churches at a meeting at Wynberg on October 20.

By Archbishop Mark Coleridge

AT a recent meeting of the Brisbane-based Heads of Churches, we discussed the difficulties faced by the Muslim community at this time.

We decided that it was time for us to meet with Islamic leaders not only to express our solidarity, but to explore what we might do together to ease tensions.

We felt we couldn’t just sit back and watch or look the other way.

On the night of Monday, October 20, eight Islamic leaders met with seven Heads of Churches, with apologies from other invitees.

The meeting was held at Wynberg and was chaired by Canon Richard Tutin of the Anglican Church who is General Secretary of Queensland Churches Together.

In a two-hour meeting the discussion ranged far and wide.

The Islamic leaders were asked to report on how things were in their own community; and it was clear from what they said that Muslims have been targeted in the most appalling way, the women more than the men.

Some have been assaulted physically or verbally; the crudest kind of graffiti have been scrawled on Islamic buildings.

 All this inevitably creates an atmosphere of fear and resentment.

Related Stories

Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria

Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia

Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

How could it be otherwise when people are made to feel outsiders in their own country?

The impression is given at times that Muslims are some Johnny-come-lately intruders who should stay in their own country and have no place in Australia.

But Muslims have been in Australia for a very long time, some of the Queensland mosques among the oldest in the land.

There are Muslim families that are almost part of the furniture here in Brisbane, so long have they lived in the city and been involved in its life at every level.

 It’s absurd to say or imply this isn’t their place.  Brisbane’s part of them and they’re part of Brisbane.

The Islamic leaders were also keen to know how our Christian communities were reacting to what’s going on.

We said that it’s hard to generalise, but also that there’s widespread ignorance about Islam among Christians as a whole.

Ignorance breeds fear of the unknown; and this can quickly become an attitude towards Muslims as the dangerous “other”, much in the way Jews, Catholics and even the Indigenous (in their own land) have been in the past.

But the focus of our discussion was mainly practical.

The key question was: What can we do together?

All kinds of options were canvassed, among them these:

  • open our social gatherings to each other
  • examine our schools and their curriculum
  • launch a broader educational thrust to overcome ignorance in the community
  • organise forums open to all
  • promote the “open mosque” program where people can visit a mosque, meet Muslims and have their questions answered
  • speak together to politicians when the need arises
  • make joint submissions on debated issues
  • speak with leaders in the media

We decided to issue a joint press release and to set up a working group, three Muslim leaders and three Christian leaders, to build on the momentum of the meeting.

The new Queensland Moderator of the Uniting Church, Reverend David Baker, Canon Tutin and myself were nominated as the Christian members of the working group.

The larger group will also meet from time to time as the need arises, and in the meantime there will be email contact.

In one sense the meeting was a small step.

It came up with no magic solution.

But in another sense it was important, signalling not just some vague good will but a shared determination to act in the face of what’s going on at the moment.

Our concern was not just with our own communities but with society as a whole.

Much of what’s happening shows the darker side of the Australian psyche, which betrays the very values that we like to call “Australian”.

The values that prompted the meeting and which we will seek to promote in every way possible are not exclusively Muslim or Christian; they are not exclusively Australian.

They are deeply human values, based upon and expressing the shared humanity of people created by the one God.

The Wynberg meeting was a special moment for all of us there because it was a genuinely human encounter.

No politics, no ideological bickering, no self-interested game-playing: just believing men and women trying to speak the truth peacefully and asking how we might help others to do the same.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Praise God, proclaim salvation, pray for the persecuted, Pope says

Next Post

Helping others to discern the call

Staff writers

Related Posts

Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria
World

Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria

27 May 2022
Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia
Australia

Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia

26 May 2022
Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church
Australia

Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

26 May 2022
Next Post

Helping others to discern the call

wedding

Pope Francis to open Vatican conference on traditional marriage

Dying is terrifying, that’s why we need courage

Popular News

  • Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

    Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Archbishop calls for prayers in “troubled times”

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Nuncio take in the sights of Queensland’s far north

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria
World

Gunmen kidnap two Catholic priests in Nigeria

by Staff writers
27 May 2022
0

By Catholic News Agency GUNMEN attacked a Catholic rectory and kidnapped two priests in northwest Nigeria on...

Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia

Ethiopian cardinal brings sense of gratitude to Australia

26 May 2022
Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

Blessed Sacrament desecrated in robbery of sacred vessels at Canberra church

26 May 2022
Pope Francis – ‘My heart is broken’ over Texas elementary school shooting

Pope Francis – ‘My heart is broken’ over Texas elementary school shooting

26 May 2022
Nuncio take in the sights of Queensland’s far north

Nuncio take in the sights of Queensland’s far north

25 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping