'Moral Reflections on the Iraq War'
Thursday 23 July, 7.30 pm
 Disturbing ethical issues continue to surface about the justification and conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a leading Australian moral theologian.
Professor Brian Johnstone, a Redemptorist priest visiting his home city of Melbourne, was speaking at a forum on the war in Iraq organised by the advocacy organisation, Social, Policy Connections, at Yarra Theological Union on 23 July.
Fr Johnstone summarised the opposition to the war by church authorities in all major churches, and particularly by Pope John Paul II and then Cardinal Ratzinger. Fr Johnstone said that it was now clear that the reasons given for the war were spurious, and that the war had also been prosecuted in an unjust way, especially in the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure such as sanitation treatment works, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
He continued that the invading countries, including Australia, incurred serious ongoing moral obligations to help rebuild Iraq and restore order and security.
He said that historically ‘just war’ theory had often been used to rationalise the interests of rulers, but in recent times it was being recast to fit the new situations, limiting war far more tightly than in the past. This required a new system of international governance to curtail warfare. He said this explained why the Catholic church so strongly supported the United Nations as the foundations for a renewed system of governance. Fr Johnstone said Pope Benedict saw the United Nations as a necessary step beyond tribalism, as part of securing peace in a “commitment to the whole human family”.
Fr Johnstone was particularly critical of the use of drones in the Middle East. Because of faulty or inadequate intelligence, operators in another continent, it appears, were often killing innocent people, including women and children.
This was Fr Johnstone’s first public engagement in Australia in over ten years. He lectured at YTU until the 1980s, and then took up positions at the Catholic University of America in Washington and at the Alphonsian Moral Academy in Rome. For the last three years, he has been back at the Catholic University of America, where he currently specialises in bioethics, moral theology and the Philosophy of the Gift.
'A response to global warming'
Wednesday 1 April, 7.30 pm
 A civil engineer, Geoff Lacey is also well known as a pioneering environmentalist and naturalist. He is the author of a landmark work on the ecology of the Yarra: 'Still glides the Stream': the Natural History of the Yarra from Heidelberg to Yarra Bend (2004). He is an honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Geoff Lacey discussed how society has failed to adequately respond to the global warming crisis and proposes a prophetic model as an impetus for change. Professor Lacey explained how the prophetic model will empower humanity to solve this global catastrophe.
Stephen Ames drew out some theological reflections on the implications for how we might adjust to environmental threats. Stephen is an Anglican priest, a Canon at St Paul's Cathedral and lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at the University of Melbourne. He is one of the founders of Social Policy Connections, and first president of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy.
Please click HERE to download a transcript of Professor Lacey’s lecture
‘Making taxation more equitable’
Marh 18 2009
Social Policy Connections was pleased to welcome Professor John Fox as guest speaker on March 18 2009, at the Yarra Theological Union in Box Hill.
John Fox spent 36 years wrestling with tax laws as a lawyer in Washington, D.C. He is the author of the highly praised book “If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax” and “10 tax questions the candidates don’t want you to ask” (see www.10taxquestions.com). Professor Fox is a frequent media commentator on the distortions in the US tax system. He presently teaches ‘Winners and Losers’, a course on U.S. tax policy at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
Professor Fox’s lecture focused on ‘Making taxation more equitable’. His talk illustrated the need for major systemic tax reforms as a matter of social justice. With the elections of President Obama and Prime Minister Rudd, Fox emphasised that governments have a fresh opportunity to undertake a major reform of tax policies in order to create a more just tax system.
Please click below to view John Fox’s 5 rules to better understand the tax system.
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