Poirot,
I don't know, I can't help associating Paul Collins with Miss Austen's Mr Collins, though granted Paul is much more condescending.
Let's not forget that Bob Santamaria always managed to sound reasonable, more so than Paul in fact (or the pope), though there was always something dodgy about him!

Hi Squeers,

You know, I have at least four novels by Jane Austen on my bookshelves and a volume of her selected letters - but I haven't read any of them...most remiss of me I know. And I was so busy having the hots over Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the small-screen adaptation that I hardly noticed Mr Collins.
Nevertheless, I've just googled him and I think I can glean the sort of character he was.
I take your point about Bob Santamaria.

In his introductory line in the book of God's Earth, Collins refers to himself as an historian. I saw the televised version on Compass years ago and I was very impressed by Collins who I think did come across as a religious historian. He was exploring man's spiritual connection to the world, not just from the narrow confines of Christian dogma, and seeking to discover how the nexus has been brought undone by modern practices.

Paul Collins is one of Australia's most controversial and respected commentators on the Catholic Church. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the Australian National University, he is a former priest and a historian and broadcaster. Dr Collins is also a former specialist editor of religion for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. His publication include, "Mixed Blessings," "No Set Agenda," "God's Earth," "Between the Rock and a Hard Place," "Burn,"
and "Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have A Future?"

Squeers:

Religious institutions, as such, are not
the only arbiters of religious experience. Nor should they think they hold some franchise on our spiritual life. They are consultants and frameworks, but they are not God Himself. All I meant to say in my previous post was - believe what you want - that is your choice (as it is mine). I respect your right to your choice - I don't consider it a "cop out," neither should you.

Poirot and Lexi,

to be fair, I've only read some of Paul Collins's journalism so am in no position to judge. It's more of institutionalism and its defenders in general that I'm critical of.
Lexi,
We live in profoundly dysfunctional societies and are facing catastrophic issues that threaten our very survival--in fact throw into question whether we are even ethically entitled to survive. Meanwhile the likes of Pel think all we have to do is pay lip service to an archaic morality.
And relativism, otherwise known as philosophical postmodernism/poststructuralism, is indeed the ultimate cop-out. Most of us know little of these arcane philosophies, but they leach into popular culture at large and afford it a cavalier approach to life and belief that posits individual ego's as the ultimate arbiters of material/spiritual/ethical "standards" and consumption. These ego-dirigibles are of course nothing but hot air, inflated phantasms that imagine themselves discriminating shrewdly among the ideological commodities on offer.
Pel at least stands for something. He's completely wrong in my opinion, of course, apropos the world as attested by the dark human history of Christianity and its present impasse.
So yes, I do consider the fetishisation of free choice (social relativism) a cop-out, and so should you! It is the ultimate in spurious individualism that keeps the vacuous ego fully pumped.
We ought to be responsible for our "beliefs" in social/cultural/ethical, indeed universal, contexts (and not in terms of individual whim--petite bourgeois delusion), and only be satisfied with them when they conduce to the overall health and prosperity of our material (actual) existence. Pel and co are more concerned with "spiritual" matters, at the expense of manifest reality and in defiance of the manifest evils they tolerate.

Squeers:

Here's a few more comments from Dr Paul Collins that may be of interest:

"Although this should not be over-emphasized, an understated, but pervasive, anti-Catholic and anti-Christian feeling sometimes bubbles to the surface in Australia. We see anti-Catholicism in the comments made about Catholics that you would never hear made about other religions which reminds us that aggressive secularism is alive and well. Some people see organised religion as just another form of conservative command and control of our society. At the same time, church leaders use "Australian Godlessness" to claim that the collapse in religious belief and practice isn't really their fault.
It's not church structures, poor leadership, dull sermons, uninspired ministry, lifeless worship or failure to address the real issues facing contemporary society that has led so many people to abandom the church. It is all really the fault of the materialism and relativism of the unwashed punters. Its society that has to change, not justified and righteous church leaders. I would have thought it difficult to argue convincingly that Australia is the most secular place in the world. Certainly parts of Europe could make a strong claim, including Pope Benedict's own Germany, or France, where Catholicism has suffered long-term declines. Australians are not crass materialists, nor are they secular, lazy beach-loving slobs. And the local branch of Catholicism, while it may be seriously ill, is not yet in its terminal stages. Benedict XVI's percpetions about Australian "Godlessness" may be explained by the fact that our religiosity is non-dogmatic, egalitarian and simply doesn't take institutional authority seriously."

Basically, I feel that many people (like myself) are not looking for simple answers, they don't need a religious authority to tell them what to do and they are especially suspicious of institutions "with all the answers." I am more content to live with the questions and I certainly want to take charge of my own spiritual life.