FOUNDING CONFERENCE

SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY AND WORKSHOP ABSTRACT

FRIDAY NIGHT, APRIL 19, 2002

"Challenging Global Institutions: Social Movements and Global Transformation"
Prof Marc Williams

Biographical summary
Marc Williams is Professor of International Relations and Head, School of Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales. He has written widely on international development issues, global environmental politics and global trade. He is the co-author of Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Abstract
One of the most noticeable impacts of globalisation is the increasing attention given to international organisations, particularly those engaged in the management of the global economy. The role played by these organisations in global governance has come under increased scrutiny from a number of civil society actors. In this talk Prof Williams will explore the engagement between social movement actors and international organisations. He will first outline the changes in world politics that have created the space for social movement activism. Second, he will discuss a range of strategies employed by social movements targeted at international organisations before addressing possibilities and limitations of social movements to transform structures of global governance.

"Transformative Practices: A Feminist-Poststructuralist Perspective"
Ms Sallie Saunders

Biographical summary
Sallie Saunders is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research and teaching interests focus on adult learning as a social practice. Particular contexts of interest include community organisations and activist groups big and small. Ms Saunders is currently completing a doctoral thesis concerned with re-visioning the NSW Women's Refuge Movement.

Abstract
The intention of this talk is twofold: to open up feminist community work to the diverse directions in which critical post-structural theories can take it and, to assist activists to think through possibilities for transformative practice in contemporary times.

Firstly, Ms Saunders will explore and problematise her engagement with the transformative practices of feminist community work within NSW women's refuges over the past 20 years. Secondly, she will briefly explore what feminist post-structuralism can offer the feminist agenda of transformation. And thirdly, she will argue for a re-valuing of local changes as different from, and certainly not less than, the aspirations of total transformation which have long guided activism.

SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2002

Workshop: "What kind of faith leads to action?"
Fr Adrian Lyons sj

Biographical summary
Adrian Lyons is a Jesuit priest and former university chaplain who works part-time as support person for the Catholic chaplains at five Sydney campuses. He has worked as an editor with the Jesuit Refugee Service, and recently completed a book on faith - exploring the word's ordinary meanings as well as biblical ones.

Abstract
The workshop is designed to encourage participation and discovery. It will begin by teasing out our current notions of faith and believing. Fr Lyons will propose that two strands of faith run through the Scriptures, but only one leads naturally to creative action. Participants will be invited to explore both kinds of faith, and the situations in which each is appropriate. Second, he will propose that biblical faith is social rather than individual, and that solidarity, expressed through face-to-face conversation, is a faith experience in itself and a path to action that empowers everyone involved.

Workshop: "Indigenous struggles and Catholic Church"
Mr Peter Sabatino

Biographical summary
Peter Sabatino is a Torres Strait Islander with extensive experience Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs covering early childhood through to tertiary and adult education, vocational training, employment and community development. He has worked for Government, Catholic education and an Indigenous private training organisation in Queensland, Northern Territory and New South Wales. He has also participated in committees with a national and international perspective. Most recently he worked with the former Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in Canberra. He is currently the Executive Secretary of the Aboriginal & Islander Commission of the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA).

Abstract
Mr Sabatino strongly believes that, in the context of their call as followers of Christ, the NCCA in collaboration with its Aboriginal & Islander Commission must display leadership and set an example to all Australians in achieving a "fair go" for Indigenous Australians. He believes all churches are called to move beyond mere words and express in action the values of their Christian faith.

Through the viewing of the recently released video A Dark History - 200 Years of Christian Disappointment, workshop participants will hear first hand from a number of Indigenous Christian leaders on how they see the Church and its relationship with Indigenous Australians since invasion. This will provide the opportunity for workshop participants to discuss with Mr Sabatino and further their own awareness and understanding of the issues.

Workshop: "To be Christian is to be a revolutionary."
Mr Denis Doherty

Biographical summary
Denis Doherty is a well known peace and political activist in Sydney. He was for many years a Marist Brother and is a teacher by profession. He has taught in Catholic secondary and primary schools for over 30 years. He is currently the National Coordinator of the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition (AABCC) and has remained in that post for 15 years. He is a member of the Communist Party of Australia and has stood in many elections for them. Denis lists among his achievements the fact that he has been arrested by every police force in Australia except Tasmania. Denis is an articulate campaigner for social change with a startling range of experience and thought on the Australian situation.

Abstract

"When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When asked 'why are there poor? They call me a communist!"
Bishop Dom Helder Camara

"To be Christian is to be a revolutionary. If you are not a revolutionary, you are not a Christian."
Fr James Guadalupe Carney

Mr Doherty's workshop will focus on the life and times of Father Jim Guadalupe Carney SJ, whose book To be a Revolutionary he will cover with the purpose of shedding light on the Australian context. Guadalupe or Lupe, as he preferred to be called, was a middle class American from the mid-west who served in WW2 and then entered the Jesuits and worked in Honduras. His journey from middle class Catholic to Jesuit missionary to guerilla fighter and probable death at the hands of the CIA sometime in August 1983 contains many insights for us in Australia today.

Workshop: "Women, discrimination and the Catholic Church"
Ms Joëlle Battestini

Biographical summary
Joëlle Battestini is a lecturer at the School of Modern Language Studies at the University of New South Wales. She is presently working on a research project on expatriate women, foreignness and issues related to settling into a second culture/language. She is associate national convener of The Ordination of Catholic Women Inc - Action for the ordination of Catholic women into a renewed priestly ministry.

Abstract
For more than twenty years the Vatican has declared, with increasing firmness, that the Catholic Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, and that this teaching, based firmly on Scripture, has been held faithfully for two thousand years.

The declaration Inter Insigniores set out this position in 1976. In 1994 Pope John Paul II restated this teaching in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and added that it was to be held 'definitively' by all the faithful', OCW Pamphlet 1998. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered all further discussions on women's ordination to stop.

At the WOW Conference in Dublin 2001, Joan Chittister, OSB, stated:

In the woman question, the Church is facing one of its most serious challenges to discipleship since the emergence of the slavery question when we argued too that slavery was the will of God.

In this workshop we will consider possible sites for resistance to women's alienation in the Catholic Church, such as in language (making new positive symbolic meanings), and in public/controversial events. Specific instances of Church's bans on women activists will provide a framework for a search for other forms of resistance.

Workshop: "Spirituality and practice of dialogue, a way of creative action"
Sr Trish Madigan op

Biographical summary
Trish Madigan is a Dominican sister with pastoral experience in education and university chaplaincy. Sr Madigan holds a Masters in Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin in 1996 and has held the position Director of the Commission of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

Sr Madigan is currently involved in many levels of interfaith dialogue. She is a member of the Bishops' Advisory Committee for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations and attended the Third and Fourth National Forums of the National Council of Churches in Australia (1998 and 2001) as a Catholic delegate. She is a Vice-President of the NSW Ecumenical Council. She is also an executive member of the NSW Council of Christians and Jews and a member of the NSW Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP). She is a foundation member of the Christian-Muslim "womens dialogue network" in Sydney and a foundation member of the Women's Interfaith Network (WIN) which represents women of eight faiths.

Abstract

The search for a spirituality of dialogue arises not merely out of pragmatic considerations emerging from multiculturalism, globalisation and religious pluralism, but also and more importantly out of a growing and deepening consciousness of the dynamism of the dialogue of salvation originated by God with humankind. God initiated and continues to pursue a dialogue of love with all humanity. God is honoured and served when Christians enter into a dialogue with God and with others, a dialogue that engages all people of good will. This is a dialogue of love which respects the freedom of the other. It is a dialogue of love that knows no boundaries. Entering into this dialogue is an important aspect of the Church's mission. (Draft document on "A Christian Spirituality of Interreligious Dialogue," Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue)

This workshop will explore the ideas expressed in this statement.

Workshop: "Taking an Australian role in an international movement for transformation?"
Mr Bill Neville (with Sr Robyn Johnson rsm)

Biographical summary
Bill Neville is a retired educator and public servant with extensive experience in Catholic laity movements. He was council member and President elect of Pax Romana-International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA) (1987-92). Before this, he was an executive member of the University Catholic Federation of Australia.

In 1971, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference appointed him to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Joint Secretariat (with the Australian Council of Churches) of Action for World Development. He chaired the first National Conference of Australian Catholic Laity and was a co-founder and editor (until its demise in 2001) of the National Outlook, an ecumenical magazine concerned with religious affairs, theological developments and the ethical dimensions of economic and political issues.

Abstract
After considering a brief history of the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA)-Pax Romana, this workshop will pose the question: Should ACMICA be part of this process on a global level? If so, is there a distinctively Australian contribution to be made? Are all issues now global issues? What difference can a local group, an individual, make?