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Keywords: Merit

  • 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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gone to graveyards every one

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 November 2021
    13 Comments

    Aficionados of United Nations Days and Weeks will know that this is the Week of Science and Peace. In the middle of it, perhaps deliberately and certainly paradoxically, sits Remembrance Day. Initially called Armistice Day, it marked the end of the First World War and of the industrial scale killing involved in it. The events of 1918 and what they might say about the relationship between war and science merit reflection today.

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council: Consulting the faithful

    • Bill Uren
    • 30 August 2021
    31 Comments

    One might submit that a Plenary Council is a cumbersome instrument to ascertain the genuinely representative views of the Catholic Church in Australia. Many of the canonical strictures regarding the membership, agenda and process of the Council will dampen the original enthusiasm for the Council that provoked over 17,500 submissions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Murugappan family and the cynicism of refugee politics

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 June 2021
    27 Comments

    The Murugappan family have found themselves in the middle of this nasty tangle, their fates politicised and manipulated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Recognising the human value of work

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 June 2021
    9 Comments

    In Victoria the latest lockdown has prompted fresh questioning of the business-as-before approach to life after COVID-19. In particular it urges renewed reflection on the connection between the remuneration of work and its importance to society.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    The hollow meritocracy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 April 2021
    19 Comments

    The debate about quotas based on gender has been well canvassed. The wider issues raised about merit and meritocracy, however, merit further reflection. Far in the background to both conversations lies a sophisticated body of reflection on merit among Christian theologians. 

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  • RELIGION

    Commending faith

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 February 2021
    41 Comments

    The exchanges within churches echo trends in national life that heighten disagreements, lessen respect, and tend to confine conversation circles to people of similar views. People become annoyed if those opposing their views gatecrash their forums. This trend creates problems for Church sponsored publications.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Breaking the glass ceiling in Australian elite sport

    • Erin Riley
    • 17 November 2020
    6 Comments

    If the up-and-across path isn’t available, it makes it all the more important that there are sufficient development opportunities within sports in Australia. Unfortunately, as women’s professional sport has grown in Australia, fewer women have been given coaching roles.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rulers in crisis

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 October 2020
    11 Comments

    In the choppy waters of public conversation, rulers have recently attracted much attention as they have bobbed along on its surface. This is not unusual, but in these months the attention has been more frenetic and perhaps harder to read. Whether it be Trump, Johnson, Andrews, Ardern, Berejiklian or Pope Francis, there have been unusual eddies about them that merit reflection.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Support after Suicide report: 'Fighting the system as well as the illness'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 September 2020
    4 Comments

    A recent report from Jesuit Social Services’ Support after Suicide program reflects on the experience of people who have accompanied a friend or family member before, through and after their suicide. At the heart of the report is its insistence on the importance of the human face in health care.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hong Kong Church silent as the people sing

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 04 November 2019
    12 Comments

    That the Catholic Church in Hong Kong has not only chosen to remain silent, but also enforce this silence through the banning of a song, is itself a political act. Considerations as to whether this silence is a consequence of the Vatican's recent agreement with the PRC about the appointment of bishops within China do seem to have merit.

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  • RELIGION

    The gifts of being a priest with a disability

    • Justin Glyn
    • 17 October 2019
    15 Comments

    In some ways to be a priest with a disability is to be at a strange advantage. We tend to think about priesthood as a gift and a calling — and so it is. It is not, however, about merit, of saying 'I am better than you / uniquely gifted'. Instead, it is a call to enter the hurts and joys of other people's lives from a position of weakness, not strength.

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