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Keywords: Andrew Chan

  • AUSTRALIA

    Look back at who we’ve left behind

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 November 2021
    7 Comments

    The abrupt change in public attitudes to the threat of COVID calls to mind an earthy Cambodian proverb. It describes someone who has begged a boat ride across a river and then goes on his way without thanking or paying the boatman. Roughly translated the proverb says, ‘Flash your bum and say good-bye’.

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  • RELIGION

    Handing on a tradition

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 October 2021
    44 Comments

    One of the challenges facing churches today has to do with tradition. Tradition is a sometimes charged word, but it refers to an everyday social need. It has to do with how a community passes on its way of life and its understanding of authoritative writings that shape it. The word itself can refer both to what is passed on and to the process of passing it on. The challenge of passing on a tradition is perennial. Both ways of living and writings reflect the culture of their own time and so need to be translated into the changing languages of later cultures.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Children don’t need counselling for climate anxiety, they need climate action

    • Cristy Clark
    • 13 September 2021
    7 Comments

    It was reported recently that Coalition MPs have been calling for an expansion of the government’s school chaplaincy program in order to reduce the mental health impacts of climate change ‘activism and alarmism’ on children. Yes, that’s right, they want to address the mental health impact of activism, not the impact of the actual, visible effects of climate change itself, or the very real threat that it poses to children’s futures.

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  • RELIGION

    Cry of the Earth

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 August 2021
    11 Comments

    Last week the annual Catholic Social Justice Statement was launched. Entitled Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, its theme is care for the environment. In the same week the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report warned of the need for immediate and radical effort to minimise emissions and of the likely effects of their existing growth.

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  • RELIGION

    The challenge of Church leadership

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 August 2021
    67 Comments

    Among Australian Catholics the Plenary Council and the preparations for the Synod in Rome on Synodality have aroused hope and stirred scepticism. It is clear that a Church diminishing in numbers of participants in its public life and in its financial resources, and discouraged by the extent of child abuse by its officers, must find new ways. But that the processes of the Council and the Synod will spark fresh energy for change is not a given.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia should resist totalising China narratives

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 July 2021
    28 Comments

    We should resist the pressure to regard China as our enemy. The pressure to do so is powerful, given the cycle of retaliatory words on both sides that further poison relationships. The impetus to enmity, however, damages both sides. To treat people as enemies means that they become enemies, with the result that both sides will spurn the mutual exchanges that can help each.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Keeping refugee advocacy alive

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 June 2021
    23 Comments

    The present climate offers little encouragement for people anyone who cares for refugees and wants to press their cause. It would be rash to think that things will change soon.

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  • RELIGION

    Anniversary of St Ignatius’ encounter with a cannonball

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 May 2021
    29 Comments

    20 May marks the five hundredth anniversary of a chance event with large consequences. In 1521 a stray cannonball ricocheting off a castle wall in a minor skirmish broke the leg of a knight defending the castle. It had large consequences for him and for the world. The long convalescence of Ignatius Loyola after the siege of Pamplona changed the direction of his life and shaped the church and world that we inherited.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Truth lies at the heart of communication

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2021
    10 Comments

    There are larger and unchanging questions about why we communicate and about the effect of our communications on the way we live. World Communications Day is an opportunity to think about these basic questions.

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  • RELIGION

    Hands-on faith

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 May 2021
    17 Comments

     The laying on of hands has been associated with controverted change in Western religious societies. Central in religious societies, it became neuralgic in cultures seeking to mark out clear boundaries between religion and such domains as politics, science and medicine and demography. To appreciate the significance of the action, it is worth reflecting on its history.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate crisis, displacement and solidarity

    • Stephen Minas
    • 13 April 2021
    2 Comments

    On 30 March, the Holy See engaged with an important aspect of displacement with the publication of its ‘Pastoral Orientations on Climate Displaced People’. The intersection between climate change and human displacement is a still emerging area of concern. Nevertheless, we know that climate change is already a factor in various forms of human mobility.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Keeping the common good after COVID

    • Anthony Albanese
    • 23 February 2021
    17 Comments

    What we have is a rare opportunity — in all likelihood a once-in-a-lifetime chance — to shape the future and emerge from the pandemic as a better, fairer nation.

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