Vol 27 No 24

04 December 2017

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CARTOON

All I want for Christmas
- Fiona Katauskas
- 19 December 2017
2 Comments
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RELIGION

Lay lead the way in child abuse lament
- Helena Kadmos
- 19 December 2017
24 Comments
A small group of lay Christians in Perth, including myself, were so worried that our institutions might not wholeheartedly embrace the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse that we decided not to wait to find out.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

My recurring nightmare before Christmas
- Megan Graham
- 19 December 2017
7 Comments
I look at those who can't get enough Christmas sentiment and stimulation. They crave them to the same degree I crave a quiet night on the couch. I wish I could be like them, feeling, well, like 'all their Christmases have come at once'. [God no, please, never]
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AUSTRALIA

Actively bending the moral arc of time
- Fatima Measham
- 19 December 2017
11 Comments
What we know from resistance to social justice is that the conception of time as a single direction, like an arrow, is favoured by those in power. It does not pierce the realities of those who are historically oppressed. Where the linear past demands reparation, it is something to leave behind, but the powerful revert to it in haste at the prospect of change, saying the line is what it is.
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RELIGION

Pondering Palestine at a Tokyo Christmas Mass
- Irfan Yusuf
- 14 December 2017
4 Comments
Last year I spent Christmas at St Andrew's. There was incense, holy communion and a whole heap of stuff that would horrify many Sydney Anglicans. Which is their bad luck because this St Andrew's was the Cathedral Church of the Tokyo Diocese of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai. I doubt Henry VIII imagined a diocese with a name like that!
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AUSTRALIA

Society pays a heavy price for jailing children
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 December 2017
3 Comments
We may feel momentary relief that a dangerous little villain is being dealt with. But the cost of imprisonment is heavy: a malleable child whose path might have changed is stunted in their development and sent to a preparatory school likely to graduate to a lifetime in adult prisons.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Reckoning with abuse in the Australian arts
- Neve Mahoney
- 13 December 2017
2 Comments
The results of recent surveys concerning sexual assault and harassment in the Australian arts are appalling. Post-Weinstein, this feels like a reckoning of the creative industries. Despite the increased awareness, many are asking how we can possibly change the entrenched culture of harassment and discrimination.
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RELIGION

Food for imagination in Christmas stories and art
- Andrew Hamilton
- 12 December 2017
7 Comments
The embroidery on the Gospel stories shows that, like the painter and the refugees treading through the dust and heat of the road to Egypt, God dreams of a peaceful world in which people and nature live at peace, villages are well watered, trees cared for, grapes hang in bunches, refugee children are fed, and angels help make art.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Material girls in an addiction fuelled world
- Isabella Fels
- 12 December 2017
6 Comments
My astute mother was the first to suspect Maggie of taking and selling my clothes to fund her addiction. After that, my friendship with Maggie fell apart. I began to hate her and wanted nothing to do with her. This year, that all suddenly changed.
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ECONOMICS

Economic doom looms in Oz's game of homes
- David James
- 12 December 2017
1 Comment
It is not difficult to imagine a scenario where the game of musical chairs in Australia will come to a shuddering end, imperilling the banks and dragging the economy into a deep recession. As we saw in the GFC in America and Europe, government money will be thrown at the banks to rescue them at the expense of ordinary citizens.
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CARTOON

Naughty or nice
- Fiona Katauskas
- 12 December 2017
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AUSTRALIA

Passport privilege entrenches inequality
- Sonia Nair
- 12 December 2017
12 Comments
The world is often characterised as porous and easy to manoeuvre in this age of unparalleled technology and a globalised economy. But it's only ever been this way to people who have a combination of a particular passport and cultural heritage, particularly in settler colonial nations such as Australia.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Sharpen your ears to soul
- Sean O'Carroll
- 11 December 2017
6 Comments
And hear God dropping pins, like tropical rain; torrential.
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ENVIRONMENT

Forecast: political storm over energy
- Greg Foyster
- 08 December 2017
4 Comments
Summer is here, and so is the political spin about blackouts. This year, with a record November heatwave in Victoria and a press gallery hypersensitised to energy politics, the blame game started early - well before anything has actually gone wrong.
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AUSTRALIA

Hate thrives as much in the open as in the dark
- Fatima Measham
- 08 December 2017
21 Comments
It is apparently not enough for Muslims, Jewish, queer and Indigenous peoples to deal with homegrown hate; they must deal with imported brands, too. The latest such visitor was feted by Leyonhjelm, Hanson, Latham and assorted hangers-on. There was something pathetic about it, the scramble to goad 'lefties' about their 'worst nightmare'.
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RELIGION

Will abuse commission be another damp squib?
- Moira Rayner
- 07 December 2017
40 Comments
This royal commission has changed the public response of religious institutions, not their culture. Nor has it altered the culture at the political pointy ends of state, territory or national government. The cause of the misuse of power over children was our refusal to take a child's world view as seriously as our own adult priorities.
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AUSTRALIA

Turnbull's magic budget bowl is a fantasy
- Joe Zabar
- 07 December 2017
5 Comments
Many of us have grown up with Norman Lindsay's classic tale of the magic pudding; the pudding bowl that never empties no matter how often the pudding was eaten. It seems that the magic pudding bowl has been borrowed by the federal government, if the proposed new business and income tax cuts are anything to go by.
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RELIGION

Seal of confession should remain inviolate
- Bill Uren
- 07 December 2017
34 Comments
I suspect the royal commission will recommend the seal of confession should no longer remain absolute. I also know that all priests of my acquaintance will rather go to jail than violate the seal. I cannot then see that such a move will be anything but unproductive. Perpetrators will be less likely to go to confession and priests will go to jail.
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AUSTRALIA

Legislation is no substitute for respect
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 December 2017
11 Comments
The government has appointed a panel to report what legislation may be necessary to safeguard religious rights in light of changes to marriage laws. Given the conflictual nature of public conversation, it may be helpful to step back and to reflect on human rights more generally.
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AUSTRALIA

Turnbull friendly fire is mostly undeserved
- John Warhurst
- 05 December 2017
8 Comments
As Barnaby Joyce, standing beside the Prime Minister last Saturday night after his by-election win, proclaimed: 'Running a country is a little harder than running sheep through a gate.' Similarly, Turnbull must find running a party, much less a Coalition of parties, like herding cats.
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CARTOON

House party
- Fiona Katauskas
- 05 December 2017
1 Comment
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Songs for children on the path to maturity
- Barry Gittins
- 05 December 2017
1 Comment
2017 has seen us stirring a large pot of sticky issues with our 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Old-school parenting used to play nice, with no discussion of sexuality, religion or politics. While recognising the need to speak appropriately to the ages and maturity of our kids, I disagree with that convention.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

In my world tigers eat leaves
- Fitzroy Community School students
- 04 December 2017
2 Comments
These seven poems were written by students of the Fitzroy Community School in Melbourne. They were among the many submitted to the Dorothea MacKellar Poetry Awards, the oldest and largest annual national poetry competition in Australia. This year's subject was 'All Over the World'.
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AUSTRALIA

21st century protest from Cairo to Don Dale
- Marta Skrabacz
- 04 December 2017
4 Comments
There’s no reason to judge the success of a protest by whether it achieved its desired outcome: the adage ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’ rings true. Effective change is a matter of increment; it has to happen at every strata of society. Protests bear the brunt of proving success, when the burden for change actually exists with the system they’re opposing.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Consummate battler's PNG Christmas fable
- Gillian Bouras
- 03 December 2017
6 Comments
'The Three Wise Men' was published in the Herald newspaper in 1943. It is set in the jungle of New Guinea, and is about three Australian soldiers called Jack, Bill, and Fred. It is Christmas Eve, and Jack, Bill and Fred are lost 'in the middle of New Guinea in jungle as thick as the hairs on a dog.'
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INTERNATIONAL

Pope receives the grace of Rohingya shame
- Michael Kelly
- 03 December 2017
17 Comments
Francis' approach to the religious differences in Myanmar and Bangladesh models something of universal significance for the Catholic Church. If, in the 21st century, the Church in Asia is generations from its colonial foundations, it is also well aware of its minority status and its need to live well with fellow citizens who are religiously different.
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Vol 27 No 24