title: Faith, politics and reconciliation: the Roman Catholic Church, New Zealand Maori and indigenous Australians

authors: O'Sullivan, Dominic

abstract: The Roman Catholic Church claims from Jesus Christ a mission to teach consistently religious ideals in accordance with its understanding of God’s constant truth. These ideals include the belief that human creation in the image and likeness of God establishes rights to dignity, to culture, to religious freedom, to self-determination and a share in the common good. These ideals form the basis of the unique contribution to human affairs which the Church claims it can make. Although these are religious goals for the Church, they require political realisation, which means that the Church cannot but be alert to the formation of alliances of common intellectual aspiration around concrete political issues so that secular expression and context can be given to the magisterium (the Church’s body of teaching). At the same time the Catholic hierarchy is conscious of a need for caution in how it responds to political events lest that religious mission be compromised by a perception of it as a partisan political lobby group, thus lessening its capacity to make its unique contribution to human affairs. 

The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed that the Church’s religious objectives do not exist in isolation from the political order because human law, which is developed through the secular political process, should conform to the religious natural law. Prior to the Council’s reaffirmation the Australian and New Zealand Churches generally, but not exclusively, understated or misunderstood this relationship and became impotent in challenging secular objectives inconsistent with religious aspiration. In contrast when the Church has accepted the relationship, as it has since the Second Vatican Council, it has positioned itself to identify opportunities to give secular context and expression to religious thought. Such opportunities increased from the 1960s onwards as political developments in both Australia and New Zealand saw a secular questioning of racism and a broadening of the parameters of secular political debate to the extent that established Catholic thought was shifted from the fringes to the widening mainstream of public opinion on indigenous policy. 

Although the Second Vatican Council required attention to the relationship between religious ends and political means, the changing secular environment was a significant factor in encouraging public advocacy in support of indigenous aspiration, which peaked in Australia in the 1990s with substantial Church interest in the native title debate and with the Church playing a leading role in the entrenchment of reconciliation - a religious concept - on the Australian political landscape. In New Zealand there has been an equal but less vocal interest in reconciliation because the political process itself established the Treaty of Waitangi as a political context for reconciliation and a context around which the Church has been able to focus its interest in the advancement of Maori aspiration. Yet, while the Treaty of Waitangi and the associated bicultural discourse have provided contexts for the expression of religious principle, they have also detracted from the Church’s use of its own magisterium as the moral authority for the articulation of its aspirations for Maori.

text: Faith, politics and reconciliation: the Roman Catholic Church, New Zealand Maori and indigenous Australians The Roman Catholic Church claims from Jesus Christ a mission to teach consistently religious ideals in accordance with its understanding of God’s constant truth. These ideals include the belief that human creation in the image and likeness of God establishes rights to dignity, to culture, to religious freedom, to self-determination and a share in the common good. These ideals form the basis of the unique contribution to human affairs which the Church claims it can make. Although these are religious goals for the Church, they require political realisation, which means that the Church cannot but be alert to the formation of alliances of common intellectual aspiration around concrete political issues so that secular expression and context can be given to the magisterium (the Church’s body of teaching). At the same time the Catholic hierarchy is conscious of a need for caution in how it responds to political events lest that religious mission be compromised by a perception of it as a partisan political lobby group, thus lessening its capacity to make its unique contribution to human affairs. 

The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed that the Church’s religious objectives do not exist in isolation from the political order because human law, which is developed through the secular political process, should conform to the religious natural law. Prior to the Council’s reaffirmation the Australian and New Zealand Churches generally, but not exclusively, understated or misunderstood this relationship and became impotent in challenging secular objectives inconsistent with religious aspiration. In contrast when the Church has accepted the relationship, as it has since the Second Vatican Council, it has positioned itself to identify opportunities to give secular context and expression to religious thought. Such opportunities increased from the 1960s onwards as political developments in both Australia and New Zealand saw a secular questioning of racism and a broadening of the parameters of secular political debate to the extent that established Catholic thought was shifted from the fringes to the widening mainstream of public opinion on indigenous policy. 

Although the Second Vatican Council required attention to the relationship between religious ends and political means, the changing secular environment was a significant factor in encouraging public advocacy in support of indigenous aspiration, which peaked in Australia in the 1990s with substantial Church interest in the native title debate and with the Church playing a leading role in the entrenchment of reconciliation - a religious concept - on the Australian political landscape. In New Zealand there has been an equal but less vocal interest in reconciliation because the political process itself established the Treaty of Waitangi as a political context for reconciliation and a context around which the Church has been able to focus its interest in the advancement of Maori aspiration. Yet, while the Treaty of Waitangi and the associated bicultural discourse have provided contexts for the expression of religious principle, they have also detracted from the Church’s use of its own magisterium as the moral authority for the articulation of its aspirations for Maori.

year: 2003

title: Te tātari i te kaupapa

authors: Ka'ai, Tānia M.

abstract: The primary objective of this thesis focuses on the linking of the National Qualifications Framework and standards-based assessment as an emancipatory mechanism for Māori in Kaupapa Māori schooling and the wider Māori community in New Zealand.

Argued from an eclectic theoretical approach incorporating Kaupapa Māori theory, it espouses a position which rejects structural inequalities that perpetuate the subordinate positioning of Māori people through the development of culturally responsive assessment theories and practices in written language for teachers and children in Kura Kaupapa Māori which purport a culturally responsive pedagogy.

The thesis also links curriculum, assessment and pedagogy using Kaupapa Māori theory which provides insights into Māori views of emancipation in education.

text: Te tātari i te kaupapa The primary objective of this thesis focuses on the linking of the National Qualifications Framework and standards-based assessment as an emancipatory mechanism for Māori in Kaupapa Māori schooling and the wider Māori community in New Zealand.

Argued from an eclectic theoretical approach incorporating Kaupapa Māori theory, it espouses a position which rejects structural inequalities that perpetuate the subordinate positioning of Māori people through the development of culturally responsive assessment theories and practices in written language for teachers and children in Kura Kaupapa Māori which purport a culturally responsive pedagogy.

The thesis also links curriculum, assessment and pedagogy using Kaupapa Māori theory which provides insights into Māori views of emancipation in education.

year: 1995

title: Rapid global ocean-atmosphere response to Southern Ocean freshening during the last glacial

authors: Turney, Chris S.M.

abstract: Contrasting Greenland and Antarctic temperatures during the last glacial period (115,000 to 11,650 years ago) are thought to have been driven by imbalances in the rates of formation of North Atlantic and Antarctic Deep Water (the ‘bipolar seesaw’). Here we exploit a bidecadally resolved ¹⁴C data set obtained from New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) to undertake high-precision alignment of key climate data sets spanning iceberg-rafted debris event Heinrich 3 and Greenland Interstadial (GI) 5.1 in the North Atlantic (~30,400 to 28,400 years ago). We observe no divergence between the kauri and Atlantic marine sediment ¹⁴C data sets, implying limited changes in deep water formation. However, a Southern Ocean (Atlantic-sector) iceberg rafted debris event appears to have occurred synchronously with GI-5.1 warming and decreased precipitation over the western equatorial Pacific and Atlantic. An ensemble of transient meltwater simulations shows that Antarctic-sourced salinity anomalies can generate climate changes that are propagated globally via an atmospheric Rossby wave train.

text: Rapid global ocean-atmosphere response to Southern Ocean freshening during the last glacial Contrasting Greenland and Antarctic temperatures during the last glacial period (115,000 to 11,650 years ago) are thought to have been driven by imbalances in the rates of formation of North Atlantic and Antarctic Deep Water (the ‘bipolar seesaw’). Here we exploit a bidecadally resolved ¹⁴C data set obtained from New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) to undertake high-precision alignment of key climate data sets spanning iceberg-rafted debris event Heinrich 3 and Greenland Interstadial (GI) 5.1 in the North Atlantic (~30,400 to 28,400 years ago). We observe no divergence between the kauri and Atlantic marine sediment ¹⁴C data sets, implying limited changes in deep water formation. However, a Southern Ocean (Atlantic-sector) iceberg rafted debris event appears to have occurred synchronously with GI-5.1 warming and decreased precipitation over the western equatorial Pacific and Atlantic. An ensemble of transient meltwater simulations shows that Antarctic-sourced salinity anomalies can generate climate changes that are propagated globally via an atmospheric Rossby wave train.

year: 2017