‘Sick of it’: Catholic women vent frustration over sex, power and abuse

Sometimes I regret being an academic with long experience in survey research. It means that much of what I read stinks of dishonesty. The survey reported below is a case in point. The originators of the survey say bluntly that "the survey does not claim to be representative of all Catholic women" yet you get no idea of that in the report below. You get the impression that what was found DID represent what Catholic women think.

But it is a basic axiom of survey research that to find out about a given population by survey research you have to draw the sample in such a way that it IS representative of the population you want to study, otherwise it could tell you all sorts of untrue things about the population concerned.

And sampling or the lack of it is not the only problem on this occasion. We read here that the questions in the survey were largely leading questions, not fair ones. So the survey tells us only what its authors wanted to hear. To be blunt about it, it is nothing more than Leftist propaganda. It tells us nothing truthful


The largest study of Catholic women in the church’s 2000-year history has found they are hungry for reform. They resent their lack of decision-making power, want to follow their consciences on sex and contraception, and think the church should be more inclusive of the diverse and the divorced.

Australian researchers led the global study, to be presented at the Vatican on International Women’s Day, which also found women want to be allowed to preach, dislike priests promoting political agendas, and are concerned about a lack of transparency in church governance.

Theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle Tracy McEwan co-authored the study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 14 countries.
Theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle Tracy McEwan co-authored the study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 14 countries.CREDIT:FLAVIO BRANCALEONE

“There was this underlying sense of hurt, and certainly this feeling of being voiceless and ignored,” said co-author Tracy McEwan, a theologian and sociologist of religion at the University of Newcastle. “These are not women on the edge. These are women in the church. Being Catholic is important to them, and they are struggling.”

The study, which surveyed 17,200 women from 140 countries, comes as Pope Francis leads the church in a discussion about whether women should have a greater role in its governance and ceremonies. He has ruled out female priests, but the deaconate – someone who assists priests during mass and can preach the homily – is a possibility.

McEwan will present the findings to female ambassadors to the Holy See on Wednesday. They will include Australia’s representative, Chiara Porro, who helped organise the presentation. The first woman ever to be allowed to vote with the Vatican’s synod of bishops, Xaviere sister Nathalie Becquart, has also been briefed on the research.

The survey results show 84 per cent of women supported reform in the church, and two-thirds wanted radical reform. Almost three in 10 said there would be no place for them without it. There was significant concern about abuses of power and spiritual harm, particularly by male clerics. “I cling on to the church by my fingernails,” said one respondent.

Almost eight in 10 agreed women should be fully included at all levels of church leadership, and more than three-quarters agreed that women should be able to give the homily, a commentary on the gospel during services. Two-thirds said women should be eligible for the priesthood. “I’m ashamed of my church when I see only men in procession,” said one respondent.

More than four in five said LGBTQ people should be included in all activities, and just over half strongly agreed same-sex couples were entitled to a religious marriage. Seven in 10 said remarriage should be allowed after civil divorce, and three-quarters agreed that women should have freedom of conscience on their sexual and reproductive decisions.

Some respondents pointed out that they do much of the work in the church, but get no recognition or say. “If every woman in every parish stopped cleaning, cooking, dusting, typing, directing ... for just one week, every parish would have to close,” said one. “Yet, why do women have so little real power?”

Co-author Kathleen McPhillips, a sociologist at the University of Newcastle, said she was surprised at the enthusiasm with which women embraced the survey. “What it showed is they’re really sick of it,” she said. “They want to be there, but they’re sick of not being able to contribute. In their secular lives, they can do so much more.

“It’s still the largest religion in the world. It’s hugely important we understand it. The church itself hasn’t been interested in studying its own population.”

The results varied between countries. Australia was more conservative than the global average on some of the indicators; 74 per cent of women said they wanted reform, compared with the global average of 84. Appetite for change was strongest in the Catholic strongholds of Ireland and Spain, as well as Germany.

But the tension has been evident in the Australian church and boiled over at a historic plenary council meeting last year, at which bishops failed to pass two motions aimed at empowering women in the church. About 60 delegates staged a silent protest. The motions were re-worded and passed.

Younger women were also more conservative than older ones, with the 18- to 25-year-old age group least likely to want reform, according to the survey, and the over 70-year-olds most likely. The eldest women were also more likely to support same-sex marriage and the homily being preached by women.

But even among conservative women, there was concern about having their contribution respected. “They were articulating the idea that you want women to be a certain way, that’s OK, but give us our due, give us our voice,” said McEwan.

The church is a hierarchical patriarchy, but McEwan hopes the results will get through to those who will ultimately make the decisions. “I’m hoping that presenting this major report to the women ambassadors and to the more senior women in the Vatican will have an impact, and it will feed through,” she said.

Catholicism is the largest religion in Australia. They make up 20 per cent of the population (women make up slightly more than half), and Sydney is its most Catholic city. The church is the country’s largest non-government provider of health care, education and welfare, and employs almost two per cent of the nation’s workers.

Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher was contacted for comment, but a spokesman declined, saying he was in Rome.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/sick-of-it-catholic-women-vent-frustration-over-sex-power-and-abuse-20230303-p5cp6r.html

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'Not suitable for treatment': FOI documents reveal Garran Surge Centre fears

Canberra's multi-million dollar pop-up emergency department set up in response to the pandemic was not suitable for treating infectious COVID patients, a damning review of the centre found.

Documents, released to The Canberra Times under freedom of information, show a review of the centre expressed concerns about ventilation and airflow.

Emails between health authorities show the centre was not suitable for infectious patients during the ACT's second lockdown "without significant work being carried out".

The pop-up hospital was designed based on guidelines developed for facilities in low- and middle-income countries and a review said it did not meet all national standards, documents also showed.

Both the government and Aspen Medical, the contractor which built the centre, have defended the venue, saying it was built during a medical emergency when global health systems were overwhelmed and the spread of COVID was thought to largely be from droplets.

The ACT government has said the emergency department, which was designed to have 50 beds including six resuscitation bays, was never designed to be a "ward area" for overnight patients.

A review conducted in October 2021 by consultants showed concerns about negative pressures in the centre, along with a lack of filtration and "non-compliant exhaust discharges".

"The facility is generally not suitable for treatment of COVID-19 infected patients as it is," the review said.

The review of the centre also found there was a fire risk if ventilators were used within the facility.

"The high use of ventilators that could be expected in a 'ward area' for COVID-19 patients the environment [sic] could be oxygen enriched increasing the fire risks and so places extra emphasis [on] fire related systems," the review said.

But a spokeswoman said this review was commissioned so health authorities could consider a "revised model of care", including whether the centre could be used to treat patients overnight.

"CHS consultants undertook an assessment of the building mechanical services infrastructure at the Garran Surge Centre in late 2021, as part of due diligence, to assess whether the scope of services within the building could be expanded for a short-term, revised model of care," a spokeswoman said

"The decision was made not to progress these works to avoid additional building changes. This did not affect the health, safety and wellbeing of staff and patients in the building for the services it was being used for.

"The facility was constructed in April 2020 and was not designed to be a ward area."

'Acting now to increase capacity of our health services'
The Garran Surge Centre, which only closed last week, was initially built to be an emergency department for COVID patients.

But it was never used for this purpose. Instead, it served as a vaccination centre, a testing centre and a COVID-specific walk-in centre.

It was initially expected to cost $23 million but only cost $14 million. It was built in just 37 days on Garran Oval in early 2020. It was built to specifically handle COVID patients in the scenario where existing emergency departments did not have enough capacity to meet demand.

When announcing the project in April 2020, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the project was aimed at preventing horror scenes overseas where authorities had to race to set up makeshift hospitals.

"We don't want to be in the sort of situation other cities around the world are currently in," he said.

"We are acting now to increase the capacity of our health services so we can continue to provide emergency care for Canberrans throughout this pandemic."

Authorities had hoped the hospital would never need to be used.

By the time the centre was completed in May 2020 the territory's first wave of COVID was largely finished. There was no community transmission in Canberra until August 2021, which plunged the ACT into a nine-week lockdown.

It was during this second wave that authorities started to consider whether it would need to be used to treat patients.

The government spokeswoman said the centre never had to be used as the demand on the emergency department was "manageable" as long as a range of hospital diversions were in place.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8106399/not-suitable-for-treatment-foi-documents-reveal-garran-surge-centre-fears/

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To defeat climate change, Australia must do the impossible

The argument between Labor and the Greens about new gas projects is strange and pointless. New projects must be included in the government’s emissions reduction target, which doesn’t change.

But it’s true that new mining and industrial projects of almost any sort will make it harder, and new fossil fuels will mean achieving that target goes from being almost impossible to impossible.

None of what the government has said about Australia’s latest plan to reduce emissions, or the media coverage of it, has properly conveyed its difficulty.

The politics has been all about the wonderful opportunity of the green energy economy, and how Australia is going to be a big winner.

This is mostly flim-flam, and sets the country up for a nasty shock.

Sure there will be opportunities – mainly digging up and shipping the lithium, copper and nickel needed for batteries, but we can’t make batteries here because of the carbon emissions that would cause, taking us over our limit.

But as hard as the emissions reduction task is going to be, it will have to be done. There is no choice, and it would be helpful if the government told the truth about it.

The plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent from Australia’s 2005 level by 2030, and to net zero by 2050.

That was an exercise in split-the-difference back-engineering: 43 per cent was roughly halfway between the Coalition’s 28 per cent target and the Green’s 75 per cent, so they started with that number and worked backwards. Spreadsheet jockeys were paid to assure them, and us, that it could be done, no problem, which they duly did.

There’s no mention of “apart from new gas projects” in the fine print. It’s unconditional, and it looks like an election promise that can’t be broken … unlike those about taxes.

Much of the work of emissions reduction has to be done by the 215 firms that each belch more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere and are responsible for 28 per cent of Australia’s emissions. They have to cut their total emissions by about a third over seven years, from this year’s estimated 143 million tonnes to 100 million.

Sitting comfortably atop that list of very anxious big emitters is Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project, at 6.78 million tonnes last year. The company’s huge, lucrative Scarborough project is due to come onstream in 2026. and Woodside has said its emissions will be 880 million tonnes over 30 years, or about 30 million a year, on average.

All going well, and assuming no other new projects, that 4.9 per cent a year legislated requirement will have reduced the emissions of the 215 to 117 million tonnes by 2026. But suddenly, thanks to Woodside and Scarborough, emissions are back to something like 147 million tonnes – and now with only four years to go!

That presumably means the task – for everyone – in the last four years between 2026 and 2030 is a 9 per cent reduction per year, not 4.9 per cent, which is hard enough.

Pressure to reduce production

It’s actually amazing that the other 214 big emitters haven’t already marched on Canberra to support the Greens’ demand for no new projects, although they’re probably more worried about their own gas supplies.

Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar has figured out that the businesses covered by the safeguard mechanism will need to reduce their production by an average of 0.3 per cent a year to meet the 4.9 per cent a year reduction.

Considering that executives are paid bonuses to increase production and launch new projects to satisfy shareholders, that is going to require a very big and unlikely change in corporate culture and remuneration.

It results from the collective need, if they don’t reduce production, also calculated by Vivek Dhar, to reduce emissions intensity – that is, carbon dioxide per unit of production – by 35 per cent by 2030.

The National Electricity Market (NEM) is an example of what can be done on this score. Thanks to a huge increase in renewable power generation, the NEM has cut its emissions intensity in the seven years from 2014 to 2021 – by 24 per cent.

So the 215 largest Australian emitters are being asked to do almost 50 per cent better than the NEM has done with all the renewable electricity that’s been added to its grid.

They won’t cut production and can’t cut emissions intensity that much, so they’ll buy lots of offsets to obey the law, or Australian carbon credit units (ACCUs) that are generated by planting trees or not cutting them down.

Anticipating massive demand for ACCUs leading to a brutal carbon tax, the government has said that the price will be capped at $75 a tonne and then increased by CPI plus 2 per cent per year after that.

But that’s not quite true. That’s just the price at which government itself will trade them, as buyer and seller of last resort. Others can buy and sell them for whatever price they want.

Trees, millions of trees

And if the non-government market price goes above $75, no one will want to sell to the government at $75. So how will Energy Minister Chris Bowen get hold of enough to satisfy what is likely to be enormous demand for cheap government ACCUs?

That’s not explained, but it looks like Mr Bowen will have to create them, like the Reserve Bank prints money, by planting trees! Presumably we’ll see harried public servants driving around in utes packed with seedlings and spades, planting trees on every spare bit of dirt they can find.

Without government forests springing up everywhere, it’s likely that two things will happen:

Companies in the safeguard mechanism will be forced to choose between cutting their production and losing market share to imports from countries with less rigorous climate change policies, or increasing their costs and prices by buying ACCUs

The non-government price of ACCUs will go very high indeed, which will be a new cost to businesses in the safeguard mechanism, or those that have voluntary committed to net zero by 2050 themselves, and have said they won’t engage in “greenwashing” by buying cheap, dodgy offsets from overseas.

Normally I’d say that when this rubber hits the road in five years’ time, and everyone realises how hard and expensive the carbon abatement task actually is, politicians will run a mile and the country will go off the whole idea and exhume Tony Abbott to repeal Labor’s legislation again.

Australia, and specifically the 215 hapless big emitters, will have to do the impossible, and the Prime Minister needs to start telling them and us that yesterday.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2023/03/06/climate-carbon-target-kohler/

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NSW Labor promises to slash $1.6bn from budget by cutting private labour hire

Wotta joke. They will use government employees instead? That will cost MORE

NSW opposition leader Chris Minns has vowed to cut the use of private external contractors by a quarter if Labor wins the state election in March. Photograph: Steven Saphore/AAP
New South Wales Labor says it will save the state’s budget $1.6bn by slashing the use of private labour hire, claiming government expenditure on third-party workers has grown more than $1bn over the past decade.

On Monday, opposition leader Chris Minns will announce Labor would cut the use of private external contractors by a quarter if it wins election later this month, vowing to reinvest the extra savings into health and education spending.

Labor said it had commissioned an analysis showing the use of contingent labour had grown by 19% a year since 2016, reaching as high as $1.8bn a year in the current financial year.

It said its own analysis showed labour hire costs would reach $2bn a year by 2025, after the NSW auditor general last week released a report which found $1bn had been spent on private consultants since 2017.

The auditor found in many cases departments did “not procure and manage” the cost of private consultants effectively, and most “do not have a strategic approach to using consultants, or systems for managing or evaluating their performance”.

During his campaign launch speech on Sunday, Minns also said he would cut back on the use of consulting firms.

“We’ll end that exorbitant waste, we’ll find savings to make sure our public services run better. The truth is it’s far too top heavy, and the money must be directed where it’s needed – to those who deliver the services,” he said.

Ahead in the polls less than three weeks out from the 25 March state election, Labor is seeking to paint the Coalition as reckless on spending. When Dominic Perrottet finally ruled out further privatisations after weeks of Labor pressure, the opposition accused the government of racking up billions in gross debt over its ambitious infrastructure pipeline.

Minns said while Labor “recognises that we will have to work with the private sector in government” he wanted to prioritise getting “the budget back under control while reinvesting the savings to repair our schools and hospitals”.

“We will only spend within our means, not make promises no one believes and government can’t keep,” he said.

The analysis on labour hire costs shows the use of third-party firms is predicted to hit about $2.1bn by 2025, up from about $700m in 2016.

The shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, said the use of third-party labour had seen the public service “run by a shadow army of non-permanent workers”.

“With a severe shortage of critical workers across NSW, Mr Perrottet is spending an enormous amount of taxpayer money filling ICT and administrative tasks with temporary workers,” he said.

“The Public Service Commission said as early as 2017 that contingent labour should only be used when it is the most efficient and effective option available to respond to an agency’s business needs. It also recommended that agencies use contingent labour when informed by proper workforce planning.

“Premier Perrottet and his treasurer have not done the work to comply with these recommendations.”

The proposed $1.6bn saving would be used to fund previous Labor commitments to create 10,000 fixed teaching roles.

It comes after Labor announced a suite of measures aimed at public sector workers at its campaign launch on Sunday, including a$76m promise to encourage students into healthcare by offering $12,000 subsidies on university as well as a $93m commitment to hire 1,000 apprentices in government-owned entities like Sydney Water.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/06/nsw-labor-promises-to-slash-16bn-from-budget-by-cutting-private-labour-hire

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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