What is really important is that people realize that catholic does not mean exclusively Roman Catholic. Kevin Rudd as far as I am able to make out was born into a Roman Catholic family, but when he fell in love with a good Anglican Girl, found the companionship of shared churchgoing both fun and educational, and still regularly attends church with his wife. The Anglicans call themselves a apostolic catholic Church, and were top dog in the Church pecking order until 1900, along with the Presbyterians and Methodists.

The Roman Catholic Church would not support the concept of a self governing Australia except they were given equality, and once promised S 116 Constitution, supported the second referendum to create Australia and it was passed 370,000 to 141,500 or thereabouts. Sufficient to go the London, and ask for self government in a united colony. The New Zealanders were invited to join, and probably still could. I do not think a time limit is set in S 6 Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, for New Zealand, to be admitted as a State, though it lost its opportunity to be an Original State, it has always been a de facto State.

The wars between Roman Catholics and Anglicans in the Labor Party in New South Wales led to the rise and rise of Menzies, and it was Whitlam’s suppression of these wars, that led to his win in 1972. He was unable to keep the lid on these divisions, or govern in the interest of all Australians, and frictions divided his party, to his chagrin.

The same led to the demise of Labor in Queensland in 1957, and in Victoria, under Bolte. Now with a positive external threat from Islam, and people swearing to destroy us, by Jihad, living very close to our northern border, a united Christian front representing the vast majority of Australians is emerging. Kevin Rudd represents that united front, born Roman Catholic and practicing Anglican Catholicism, acceptable to both major Churches, and also by the rising tide of evangelical leaders. He of course can talk to the Pope

George
No he did not tell they will go to hell but he told that they "WILL NOT GO TO HEAVEN" but I learn from the school that only the heaven and hell exist in the other world, if they do not go to heaven as pope said, then they will go to hell!
He was speaking about the churches, creation and continous churches from apostoles, real churches etc. I thing I read it on BBC.
Sure is not from my fantacy, I read it.

ASymeonakis,

Of course, the controversial declaration I was referring to was not called “Dominus Dei” but “Dominus Jesus” (issued in 2000), apologies. It indeed (in part), insisted that non-Catholic Christians are “in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the (Catholic) Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation” and that non-Catholic Christian communities suffer “defects.”

You can google it out for yourself - it is not an easy reading for those who have no theological qualifications - and you will see that although it indeed can be seen by non-Catholic Christians as controversial, there is no mention about who will go to heaven or to hell: that is a language used today by BBC - as you say - and the like, not by the Pope.

Also, one should not draw conclusions about e.g. the nature of mathematics from what one learned in Grade 1 or even 5. The same about Christian teachings.

Of course, I am not surprised you heard/read it thus: this would not be the first time that the Pope‘s words were misrepresented, intentionally or not.

Saint Kevin of Glendalough (the first person in history to be called "Kevin," by the way) was a charismatic teacher, a man dedicated to the spiritual growth of not only himself but his neighbors, an enthusiastic if somewhat extreme advocate of animal welfare and reverence for the natural world, he wore cool monk robes, he was a lovable kook, and he was a major force in the Irish monastic movement that literally saved Western Civilization What more does it take to rate a first-class holiday?

Saint Kevin’s day is the Third of June. His feast day was used as an excuse for much merrymaking, carousing and generally having fun. We need our very own St Kevin. Australian Civilisation is predicated upon a Rule of Law. Before the advent of Kevin, we will leave the saint bit for others to judge, we have had a succession of sinners, whose main aim was to enrich the legal profession at the expense of everyone else. We had a more honest than most leader from 1993, and between 1993 and 1996, a whole raft of excellent Commonwealth legislation was enacted and promptly ignored.

Perhaps we had a miracle in 2007. It was an elusive miracle for Mark Latham, because when he came out and admitted he was an atheist, his miracle, which looked assured deserted him. God is back, it would seem, and 23 seats, more than enough to assure the Prime Ministers job, came across to Kevin’s side. In the Senate the party that wanted to abolish prayers, lost every seat it had.

Perhaps if we can rely on Kevin to restore the spiritual growth of the men and women in the justice industry, to have them accept they cannot continue to impersonate Almighty God, simply because the Parliament mistakenly says they can, in 1400 years we may have a Second Saint Kevin.

It took St Kevin until 1900, to make Sainthood. Born in 498, he was not greatly impressed with women. In that our Kevin has shown that he not only likes women, but is a great judge of women as well

It took decades of lobbying by Australian Catholics to beatify Josephite nun, Mary McKillop and while this most humble woman is worthy of canonization, the Vatican will decide when and if she is to receive a sainthood.

Rudd's intervention to lobby the pope for canonization, I find offensive and politically motivated. After all, a large proportion of Catholics are right leaning and what better way to attract votes at next year's elections?

Rudd's project of carbon capture is merely to protect the big polluters so they can continue pillaging and plundering our resources and polluting these lands. After all how does one capture the mercury, cyanide, arsenic, particulate matter or lead from say, the super pit in WA's goldfields or the 100,000 litres of radioactive water seeping from a tailings dam every day at the Ranger uranium mine? How will carbon capture mitigate the environmental carnage Alcoa is committing in the Jarrah forests of WA? How will carbon capture mitigate the obscene use of precious water by the mining industry?

History tells us that more than 1,700 people died after deadly gases spewed from Lake Nyos in North Western Cameroon, during 1986.

The lake released a cloud of carbon dioxide which hugged the ground and flowed down surrounding valleys to suffocate local villagers and animals.

The phenomenon (though rare) also occurred at Lake Monoun in the same zone two years earlier killing 34 people.

According to some reports, the lake now contains twice as much carbon dioxide as was released during the explosion.

Carbon capture technology is still unproven at industrial scale and is a dangerous distraction from the realities. Carbon capture, on the massive scale required, will be very expensive and has the potential to cause unprecedented environmental catastrophes.

In the meantime, why hasn't Rudd enforced the "Polluter Pays" principle? After all it's legislated into the preamble of every Environmental Protection Act in the country. Oops - that's right. Industry captured the corrupt EPA bureaucrats (to do their bidding), decades ago and this corruption was "canonized" by successive, equally corrupt governments.

The lack of fury in the discussion on this post confirms what I had suspected. All the agitation against Howard because of his alleged blurring of the lines between religion and state was just political posturing. Didn't matter what Howard did it was always going to be wrong for some people and any excuse to criticise him was sufficient.

Mind you, the global warming skeptics were a bit slow here too. No-one pointed out that to become a saint you have to have at least two miracles by you confirmed. So, in lobbying for someone to become a saint you're lobbying for something of an unscientific nature to have occurred. Ironic that Rudd should combine an exercise in faith and anti-science with a conference based on scientific concern about natural phenomena.

But then, some would say that a lot of global warming science is in fact dogma, and that it would be a miracle if the climate behaved anything like the IPCC models say it should.