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Vol 22 No 12

18 June 2012


 

  • Emboldening lay Catholics

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 29 June 2012
    10 Comments

    Journalist, author and broadcaster Clifford Longley is one of Britain’s leading lay Catholics. He visited Australia to deliver lectures on the issues and challenges in developing a mature Catholic laity in the light of the teachings of the Vatican II.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Emboldening lay Catholics

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 29 June 2012
    1 Comment

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beauty that was Peter Steele's mind

    • Morag Fraser
    • 29 June 2012
    24 Comments

    Peter Steele SJ – priest, poet, teacher, essayist, homilist, and friend – died on Wednesday 27 June 2012. During Eureka Street’s first months, in 1991, he gave its editor some riding instructions. Media magnate was not his style. ‘Publish the very best writing you can lay your hands on’, he said. That was it. But it was more than enough.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Euthanasing the disabled

    • Moira Byrne Garton
    • 29 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Earlier this month a Canadian Supreme Court effectively legalised physician-assisted euthanasia. While there is a general perception that those opposed to euthanasia do so on religious grounds, many people with disabilities oppose euthanasia because they believe it is bad policy that denies their right to live. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Women heroes of Muslim-Christian unity

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 June 2012
    3 Comments

    When a Christian man takes out his anger by literally kicking the legs out from under a crippled child, two women, a Christian and a Muslim, rush to help the child back to his feet. The women keep the peace in this deeply divided village, but the 'unity' is tenuous and to some extent a fantasy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The end of equal opportunity in Victoria

    • Moira Rayner
    • 28 June 2012
    16 Comments

    In 1978, airline boss Reg Ansett didn’t fancy employing the best qualified pilot because the pilot was a woman. She took him on through the Victorian Equal Opportunity Board and ultimately won. Victoria was a leader in human rights in those days. Sadly the current Attorney General is no defender of the rights of the weak and has gutted the Equal Opportunity Commission.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Knowing the needs of refugees

    • Susan Metcalfe
    • 27 June 2012
    22 Comments

    It should be mandatory for anyone writing on asylum seekers to spend time visiting detention centres. Many commentators ignore the hard work of those who have. Moreover the politicians are too poll driven to even explain the human desperation that leads to boat journeys.

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  • CARTOON

    The not so good Samaritans

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 27 June 2012
    2 Comments

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Love in the fifties

    • Mary Manning
    • 27 June 2012
    9 Comments

    It is February 1952. I am with friends at Jim's place when we hear the news that King George VI has died. A dark-haired boy I have not met before keeps looking across at me.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Xanana on the wall

    • Tessa McMahon
    • 26 June 2012
    9 Comments

    The bed on which I lie is scientifically sprung, approved by chiropractors ... and blessed from on high by Klimt ... Made by a woman Timor-thin, cross-legged on concrete.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Religion and non-religion both alive and well

    • Gary Bouma
    • 26 June 2012
    12 Comments

    Census figures on religion in Australia released last Thursday once again paint a picture of change in the religious composition of Australia. The headline of course is the rise in those declaring that they have 'no religion' from 18.7% to 22.3%. This looks like a tale of the demise of religion. But wait, there is more. Much more.

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  • RELIGION

    Australia's 20 year search for the right asylum policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 June 2012
    18 Comments

    Last week’s tragedy of another mass loss of life at sea between Indonesia and Christmas Island focuses our minds yet again on an intractable public policy problem for Australia – our search for a coherent, workable and moral asylum policy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    An uneasy conversation with Michael Kirby

    • Gordon Preece
    • 25 June 2012
    71 Comments

    The homosexuality debate in church and society is an uneasy and often destructive conversation that should not be entered into lightly. Both sides thus need to beware: ‘Conservatives’ if they slip from opposing homosexual acts to opposing homosexual people. The ‘liberals’ for frankly writing, as Michael Kirby admits, ‘very easy pieces’. Well before Malcolm Fraser, Jesus said (Christian) ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. Kirby, and the FUP authors, in Bonhoeffer’s terms, are cheapening grace.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    News and entertainment a difficult mix

    • Michael Mullins
    • 25 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Many Fairfax readers will miss the familiarity and romance of print. But more disturbing is the likelihood that the dignified authority of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age mastheads will be lost when the more ephemeral, entertainment-oriented electronic edition is all we have.

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  • MEDIA

    Requiem for quality journalism

    • Chris McGillion
    • 22 June 2012
    15 Comments

    There’s no doubt that quality and depth will both suffer, not just from job cuts, but also due to the cultural shift from a world of lasting tangible hardcopy that rouses you at 5 am to fleeting virtual postings that can keep you awake all night. But let’s hope Fairfax management remembers that in a crowded digital environment, quality and depth are the only things that can continue to distinguish its brands.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rain on the Queen's parade

    • Brian Matthews
    • 22 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Constant rain, sullen skies and a scarcely articulate commentary did not deter the massive and sodden crowds or diminish the momentum of the Queen’s recent Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Only the bigger picture and the jaundiced eye of history could assign the event its comparative place in the great panoply of royal extravaganzas.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    G20 is also about food security

    • Jack de Groot
    • 21 June 2012
    2 Comments

    With the crisis in Europe, it's understandable that this week's G20 meeting has focused on international financing. But it gave less attention to the needs of the world's most vulnerable, who could benefit from greater food security that comes with better regulation of markets.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teen girl's post-traumatic guilt trip

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 June 2012
    2 Comments

    A self-absorbed teenager contributes to the road death of a pedestrian, then seeks to assuage her guilt without actually accepting responsibility. One teacher attemps to mentor the girl in her dilemma but is too accepting of her flirtatious advances to be considered a disinterested advisor.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Blue people

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 20 June 2012
    7 Comments

    Have you ever thought about what life would be like for people who saw everything as if looking through a blue-tinged lens? For these people, everything in the world would be a shade of blue. Their car would be a shade of blue. It's one thing to be deceived, another thing to be physically unable to perceive the truth. Should we pity the blue people of this world?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A temporary halt to Grexit and Drachmageddon

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 June 2012
    6 Comments

    Greeks expect the positive outcome of last weekend's election to be weak and short-lived. Austerity has brought predictable unemployment, homelessness, and a rising suicide rate. The elderly are reminded of the fear and the helplessness that accompanied the hideous years of the Civil War and the dictatorship of the Colonels.

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  • CARTOON

    A visit to detention

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 20 June 2012
    3 Comments

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Syria's massacre of innocence

    • Various
    • 19 June 2012

    The hands which pressed triggers, wielded knives at innocent throats, were once the gentle sons of others playing in sand pits, shadowed from scorching winds, while I ferried my own to schoolyard bunkers and safe horizons.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Economic hard times even tougher for refugees

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 June 2012
    11 Comments

    The readiness of developed nations to help and receive refugees and asylum seekers has come under greater strain. Xenophobia has intensified in Europe, where Greece's Golden Dawn party threatened to expel migrants from schools and hospitals if elected.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal solidarity with refugees

    • John Falzon
    • 18 June 2012
    8 Comments

    The words spoken by the people forced to the edges of Australian society are born from a strong and positive vision for Australia. They speak with authority and their message emerges from their collective wisdom and experience. None of us can learn what is right if we fail to listen to what is wrong. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Three short stories about refugees in Australia

    • Troy Pittaway
    • 18 June 2012
    7 Comments

    The first begins in a tiny, rundown Department of Housing house. Inside lives a single mother with her six children aged three to 17. The father, who abused alcohol and was violent, abandoned the familly with a large debt. But they are not unhappy. This is far from the worst experience of their lives.

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