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04 July 2021
The souring of relations with China is driven not just by prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers, or even by Cabinet. It is the product of converging interests with immense reach and influence.
Benedict’s rule anticipates and handles the weakness inherent in enthusiastic movements led by charismatic leaders to leave the world. They import into the communities the power-based relationships in the world that they left.
Australian governments and judges have been playing catch up for a long time trying to deal with the backlog of claims for migrant visas. A couple of recent judgments highlight the frustration at work in the system.
The atrocities committed in the Taliban siege of Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s have not been forgotten. Nevertheless, the ‘progress’ brought by the invading forces — after twenty years’ hard fighting against the forces which they themselves had previously armed and trained against the Soviets — is equally debatable.
Although there has been a reasonable level of attention paid to governance issues — such as the incredibly slow vaccine roll out, the ongoing problems with hotel quarantine, and the timing of the lockdown itself — Sydney’s current lockdown has also been marked by an unhelpful focus on individual actions.
The question of reconciliation in the Church is particularly pressing, given 2021 marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in Australia, and the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity to the Torres Strait. Yet many First Australians recognise that the Spirit of God was poured out onto the original inhabitants of this great Southern Land many, many thousands of years prior.
Looking from outside at the debates among American Catholics about whether President Biden should be refused communion has been a little like watching the crowd in a Rangers v Celtic game in Glasgow. Much that was said and done fervently in the name of faith showed little familiarity with it. To understand the issue we must enter the Catholic imaginative world in which the Eucharist is central.
Reading the paper, Instrumentum Laboris, written in preparation for the coming Plenary Council, I found myself quite disappointed by the lack of depth, awareness and any sense of the need for an apology. Much less an openness to any serious conversion that is needed within the Church.
There really is no such thing as ‘capitalism’ — or rather there are so many capitalisms that the word is altogether too imprecise to be useful. A much better term to identify the problems, even evils, of modern developed economies is ‘corporatism’. This can be precisely identified and its transgressions and general harm are getting worse.
Father’s hands of finer metal. Chisel, bandsaw, axe and mallet. Bone on wire and flesh on steel. He wore your scars and jabs and cuts. Your friction burns by grinding wheel.