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Keywords: Humility

  • RELIGION

    Joan Chittister's humility

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 July 2019
    28 Comments

    Some have portrayed Chittister as a feminist, secular warrior in religious dress. But those familiar with her writing on social, cultural and political issues recognise that it is fed by her life as a Benedictine Sister, and particularly by her deep, lived reflection on the Rule of St Benedict.

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  • RELIGION

    Love, justice and humility to abuse survivors

    • Staff
    • 27 February 2018
    16 Comments

    'Instead of a church walking humbly with its God, it found an arrogant church, that placed its own reputation above the interests of victims, and did so knowlingly in a way that would cause further harm to many of those victims.' Robert Fitzgerald of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse addresses the Catholic Social Services annual conference in Melbourne, February 2018.

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  • RELIGION

    Easter in dark times

    • Fatima Measham
    • 12 April 2017
    18 Comments

    Easter, for me, has always been a time to sit in the brokenness of things, to absorb the dread and devastation, and reel at the inexplicable sacrifice. Crushing humility might have characterised my experience in previous years. This year, I feel formless rage. The human drama of Easter - with its betrayals, moments of audacity and doubt, the machinations in shadow - bears the sting of injustice. The central narrative is political. Choices were made by people in power. They are still being made.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Angels don't travel

    • William Okello Kadima
    • 06 March 2017
    2 Comments

    So true angels never travel. On canning and winding roads I was the road of patience, humility and love, with so much glamour at the end. But in the language of angels I hear the light and the end, took too long to light up.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Calculated risks, incalculable rewards in India

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 27 May 2016
    3 Comments

    In 2013 I attended an event so exclusive, so unique, it wouldn't happen again for another 144 years. It was the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, where, over a six-week period, an estimated 120 million Hindu pilgrims converged on the banks of the Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Sarasweti Rivers in order to perform puja, or the cleansing of their sins. If we're open to what travel seeks to teach us, we'll gain from it the most superior of educations, and the most profound lessons in humility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humility is the forgotten virtue this election year

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 March 2016
    10 Comments

    In a month in which some politicians trumpeted their own virtues and others their opponents' vices, one traditional virtue went unserenaded: humility. The reticence is unsurprising. Humility is associated with timidity, self-doubt and a reluctance to put oneself forward. Successful politicians project themselves, are confident, competitive, and lead like strong men. This view merits challenge. It assumes a corrupted form of humility, and exempts politicians from ethical reflection about their craft.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The holy mystery of why the Sisters are not in charge of the Church

    • Brian Doyle
    • 19 August 2015
    27 Comments

    Not one of them ever raped a child or moved rapists from one parish to another. Not one of them ever played havoc with church funds. Not one of them ran off with a secretary. As far as I could tell each of them embraced hard work, and kindness, and humility and was every bit as committed and dedicated to the ancient mission of the Church as any priest or brother or abbot or bishop or cardinal or pope.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cardinal sins in beautiful Rome

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 January 2014
    5 Comments

    The cardinal is senseless to the libertine Jep's enquiries about faith, and prone to missing ordinary human connections in the midst of his politicking and self-obsession. If this is an unflattering reflection of institutional Catholicism, it finds its counterpoint in an ancient nun known as the Saint, whose humility reveals to Jep the possibility of transcendence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Moved and confused by church in a tent

    • Brian Doyle
    • 09 July 2013
    6 Comments

    Religions are mesmerised and ruined by power but always pregnant with the possibility of humility. They are so easy to ignore. You'd be wise to sneer, with every reason imaginable for the curl of your knowing lip. Yet here I am, on Sunday morning, in the wedding reception tent, agog; not so much at the earnest idiot of a minister, but at everyone, sweetly, else.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Coastal communion

    • Gregory Day
    • 01 June 2011
    6 Comments

    In the tiny church built of ecumenical brick, with barely any aesthetic pleasure to distract from the humility of the message, Patrick and his cohort in both the earlier football match and in the communion to come, sat quietly, though with the telltale legs of novices swinging restlessly under the front pew.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sex and humility in the church and the military

    • Michael Mullins
    • 18 April 2011
    16 Comments

    In the wake of the defence force Skype sex scandal, former diplomat Bruce Haigh pointed out that things start to go wrong when commanding officers forget that they are there to serve, and instead act to protect their reputations. His point holds true for unions and churches.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cricket King's saintly gestures

    • Tony Smith
    • 18 September 2006

    The reactions of many Australians to the deaths of a crocodile showman and a racing car driver suggest that media images canonise our secular saints. Meanwhile the fictional Chris Anderson's love for his family and friends, and his integrity and humility, are very appealing characteristics.

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