Keywords: England
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Patti Miller
- 14 October 2015
13 Comments
I have always felt guilty about an inability to commit to any belief system. So when Montaigne said 'Only fools have made up their mind', I felt an enormous sense of relief. He knew that those who are certain are the ones to shut down newspapers, lop off heads, blow up planes, burn books. There is a thread throughout his essays, too, of him finding sex undignified and therefore unfitting for grown men and women. It is one of his many contradictions and confronts me with my own contradictory attitude.
READ MORE 
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 16 July 2015
4 Comments
English literary journalist Lucasta Miller noted that Hardy's title, Far From the Madding Crowd, with 'madding' taken to mean 'frenzied', is an ironic nod to idyllic perceptions of rural life; Hardy 'disrupts the idyll'. At the heart of the story is Bathsheba, a proud and independent young shepherd who becomes the new proprietor of her late uncle's farm. Her story unfolds against stunning rural landscapes that provide a sublime stage for violence both physical and emotional.
READ MORE
-
- Frank Brennan
- 08 July 2015
3 Comments
I suspect Pope Francis had some of our Jesuit alumni in mind when he wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: 'A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth... True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty'.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 17 June 2015
3 Comments
It was far from democratic and arose from circumstances of pure opportunism, but the Magna Carta was created as a break on arbitrary rule and power. Therefore contemporary moves to undermine such principles as the rule of law are prescient. Australia's parliament commemorates its birthday even as it extends the reach of national security laws and endorses a draconian refugee policy.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 20 May 2015
19 Comments
The Death of God debate raged on and off several decades ago. Now it's the Devil's turn. Medieval clerics believed he was everywhere. Earlier this year the General Synod of the Church of England decided it was time for him to retire, and have 'disappeared' him.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Duncan MacLaren
- 07 May 2015
4 Comments
It has certainly been an extraordinary election where, for once, Scotland has played a central role, especially in the realm of new ideas. It will be good for democracy in the UK if the predicted SNP landslide occurs, to put progressive policies ahead of party advantage and ensure the neo-liberals in Cameron's team are stopped from unleashing the same chaos as Mr Abbott in Australia, and compassion, care for the most vulnerable and services such as the NHS remaining in public hands return to centre stage again.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 23 April 2015
15 Comments
Anzac Day is special but limited in its depiction of Australian virtues. A deeper manifestation lies in the housing cooperative members of former Pay Corps members who used their military schooling in planning and organisation to launch a housing cooperative north of Melbourne. It was open to everyone, regardless of religion or race, and reflected the veterans' determination to make Australia a better place free from the class divide and unfairness of the Depression.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 09 April 2015
2 Comments
Nathan was diagnosed when he was young, and was encouraged by his parents to view the diagnosis as a gift rather than a curse. It manifests in part as a prodigious talent for mathematics. Nathan finds patterns soothing, and so mathematics becomes a refuge as much as an academic interest. He shares a close bond with his father, but his mother, despite her best efforts, struggles to connect in the same way.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 09 April 2015
32 Comments
Recently priests in England drafted a letter about this year's Synod on the Family. They invited other priests to sign it and made it public. In turn, Cardinal Vincent Nichols rebuked them even though Pope Francis has insisted participants in the Synod are free to express opinions. Free speech has long been tendentious topic for discussion in the Church. 60 year ago German theologian Karl Rahner was daring in the approach he took in his pamphlet Free Speech in the Church.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 March 2015
15 Comments
Daniel Mannix, who was Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-63, knew how to control an audience and shift the perception of events. He argued fiercely against conscription in the 1917 Referendum, and railed against the exploitation of struggling workers. On finishing his new biography, I imagined a meeting between him and Pope Francis, both masters of public symbols with a disdain for church clericalism and sanctimonious speech.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Diane Fahey
- 24 March 2015
8 Comments
'If I'm deported back to Sri Lanka, torture is certain because I'm a Tamil.' On the day I hear of Leo's death I pass a tall maple, its star-like leaves, blood-red and flame-red, irradiated. The Australian government refused the visas applied for by Leo's family so that they might attend his funeral. As three Tamil men at a microphone sing a long hymn in Tamil the Basilica fills with an undertow of sound.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ellena Savage
- 20 February 2015
8 Comments
When Damo and Darren's 'Train Station' — Michael Cusack's animation of an obscene 'part derro, part yobbo, part bogan' duo fighting over a lighter — was published on YouTube, it clocked 2 million views in its first month, and made people very happy. I showed it to a friend who had grown up in England's north under Margaret Thatcher. He was not amused. 'Why are Australians laughing at poor people?' he asked.
READ MORE