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Keywords: Ceremony

  • AUSTRALIA

    Miriam Rose's clear vision

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 October 2013
    2 Comments

    'We spent about a week planning the baptism of 12 kids using traditional symbols including the water ceremony to welcome newcomers to country, the firesticks, the smoking, and the ti tree bark to heal and make strong. Miriam has always drawn strength from culture and church no matter what the internal tensions.' Frank Brennan launches the Miriam Rose Foundation at St Mary's Cathedral Darwin.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian connections to drowned asylum seekers

    • Marg Hutton
    • 21 October 2013
    13 Comments

    In 2001 Prime Minister Howard tried to distance Australia from the SIEVX tragedy, in which 353 asylum seekers drowned, by repeatedly referring to the sinking as having occurred in 'Indonesian waters'. If there was any doubt then that SIEVX was an Australian tragedy, in 2013 there is none. There are now young kids growing up in Australia, who were born here and speak with Australian accents, who had brothers and sisters who drowned on SIEVX.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remote Australia's renal refugees

    • John Adams
    • 09 October 2013
    11 Comments

    Kiwirrkurra is 700km of bad roads west of Alice Springs. Renal failure forces many Indigenous community elders from important roles such as presiding over ceremonies and passing down knowledge to future generations. Many choose not to make the long journey into town for dialysis, seeing life away from country and family to be a fate worse than death.

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  • RELIGION

    The Pope who put a spring in our step

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 September 2013
    11 Comments

    Fasten your seat belts. We are in for an exciting ride with this Pope. He's happy to make mistakes. He's happy to go with the flow. But above all, he is so happy in his own skin and in his religious tradition that he exudes the confidence that comes only from knowing that he is loved and forgiven, and not from thinking that he is always right and has all the answers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Multiculturalism puts the lie to monarchists' mission

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 June 2013
    66 Comments

    There is no denying that our nation was forged by men and women who settled here from the UK. There is also no denying that men and women from other parts of the world came after them, and that there were countless generations here before them. Until monarchists can reconcile themselves with these facts then the image they hold of Australia is incomplete.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cheap shots at religious fish out of water

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 16 May 2013
    11 Comments

    While Anthony the Maronite is dismissive of his Buddhist hosts' beliefs, Freeman the Buddhist finds meaning in the symbols and rituals of Catholicism. The overly simplistic intention seems to be to set open and inclusive Eastern religion alongside narrow-minded, arrogant Western Christianity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reconciliation in Australia and East Timor

    • Mark Green
    • 14 February 2013
    4 Comments

    I was in Dili on Apology Day 2008, and wept as I listened on the radio to the Apology offered by Kevin Rudd. The previous year, I had arrived in Dili to take up a post with an aid and development program, and was accosted by a very angry young man. 'What are you doing here? Have you come to make us like your Aboriginal people?'

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  • RELIGION

    Contemplating Fred Hollows

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 February 2013
    9 Comments

    'I have been asked to provide a spiritual reflection for Fred who was not always given to spiritual conversation. I find the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah helpful. He came to bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives, bring freedom to the oppressed and sight to the blind. Fred did all these things, sometimes brusquely.' Frank Brennan on the 20th anniversary of Fred Hollows' death.

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  • RELIGION

    Negotiating Catholic healthcare moral dilemmas

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 October 2012
    15 Comments

    The nation is the better for policies and funding arrangements that encourage public and private providers of healthcare, including the Churches. The public may need to be patient with Church authorities as they discern appropriate moral responses to new technologies. This is a small price to pay.

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  • RELIGION

    Aboriginal Catholics' culturally enriched living

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 October 2012
    6 Comments

    'It has been helpful to have the Pope offer the encouragement that there need not be any conflict between Christian faith and Aboriginal culture. But Aboriginal culture is often founded on religious beliefs which find and express God's self-communication outside of Christ and the Church's seven sacraments.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Culturally Enriched Through the Gospel' at the NATSICC Conference on 1 October 2012.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fuzzy thinking on obeedjunt wives

    • Brian Matthews
    • 14 September 2012
    15 Comments

    An old Dublin man once observed to me that my wife must be an 'oncommonly obeedjunt woman'. Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen's argument regarding the suggestion in his diocese's draft new prayer book that brides be invited to 'submit' to their husbands is equally fuzzy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Paralympics as a work in progress

    • Michael Mullins
    • 03 September 2012
    5 Comments

    The Paralympics opening ceremony shows how far we've come in reversing the exclusion of disabled athletes. But they encourage physically disabled athletes at the expense of the intellectually disabled. 

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