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Keywords: Forgiveness

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fargo and reconciling debt

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 25 January 2024

    The world of Fargo, like ours, is a fallen one, and it’s clear at the end of this season that the cycle of violence will continue. But we’re also left with a strong hope that some of the characters might have found a way out of that hellish cycle of debt and restitution. And if there’s hope for them, there’s hope for us all.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A Christmas Carol and the making of a miser

    • David Halliday
    • 30 November 2023
    2 Comments

    Why another Christmas Carol and why now? This version takes a detour from Dickens’ original delving deeper into Scrooge’s past, painting him not just as a villain, but as a victim of circumstances. It suggests that behind every act we hastily label as ‘cruel’ lies a story of fear and anxiety, and a flesh-and-blood human being. And forgiveness, then, becomes an acknowledgment of our shared human frailty.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    All apologies

    • Tony Thompson
    • 31 August 2023

    In an era where victories are celebrated and mistakes are concealed, the power of the simple phrase 'I am sorry' seems to be vanishing. From personal slights to public gaffes, our society seems increasingly averse to accepting responsibility and offering genuine apologies. But why has this sentiment become so rare, and what does its absence say about the values we hold?

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  • RELIGION

    'How Christianity can grow again in the West'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 April 2023
    14 Comments

    Greg Sheridan's Easter article in the Weekend Australian argues that a radical, supernatural version of Christian faith may be more persuasive than an accommodating one. However, Christians must show an attractive way of life, balancing high ideals with the reality of failure and forgiveness. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forgiveness and duty collide in Time

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 13 April 2023

    Prisons are settings to which TV and film writers return regularly. It’s because ‘the joint’ gives them an environment in which they can enact the dramatic principle of the crucible easily: tension between duelling inmate protagonists and antagonists is heightened quickly to boiling point because no one can simply walk away.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forgiving and forgetting

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 23 February 2023
    6 Comments

    During a trip to Poland, an encounter with the story of Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor, who chose to forgive those who persecuted her and her family, serves as a reminder of the costly and essential need for remembrance and reconciliation.   

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  • ECONOMICS

    Why debt forgiveness may be inevitable

    • David James
    • 25 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Monetary authorities are caught in an impossible situation. Inflation is rising: it is over 5 per cent in Australia and over 9 per cent in the United States. Inflation is often seen as a way out of excessive debt because it erodes the real value of money and therefore the real value of the debt. But what is increasingly being discussed are ways to cancel the debt.

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  • RELIGION

    The final form of love

    • Simon Smart
    • 04 February 2022
    10 Comments

    How are your New Year’s resolutions going? One that probably didn’t make the list was: forgive more. But maybe it should have. I recently met a couple, Danny and Leila Abdallah, who have a compelling story to illustrate that, while challenging, forgiveness offers unexpected rewards. I interviewed them for a podcast and can’t stop thinking about them.

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  • RELIGION

    An atheist's take on the virtue of forgiveness

    • Ben Pobjie
    • 03 August 2018
    46 Comments

    I am not a fan of Christianity. For years I have been what some might call a 'militant atheist': the type who is far more likely to catalogue the pitfalls of faith than to highlight the benefits. But more and more I am enamoured of one element of Christianity that I consider its most striking, and most laudable, feature.

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  • RELIGION

    Muslim forgiveness jars circle of prejudice

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 November 2017
    5 Comments

    Last week we saw the magnanimity and depth of Raeed Darwiche. While travelling in the hearse carrying the body of Jihad, his eight year old son, he pleaded for an end to the vituperation directed at Maha Al-Shennag, whose car had crushed his son. Darwiche appealed to his Islamic faith in explaining why he forgave Al-Shennag.

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  • RELIGION

    Why the seal of the confessional should remain in tact

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 December 2016
    18 Comments

    One distinctively Catholic practice is personal confession in which an individual confesses to God their sins and seeks forgiveness in the presence of and at the hands of a priest. Some groups and individuals are proposing to the royal commission that the seal of the confessional no longer be inviolable. I was quoted in The Australian saying, 'If a law is introduced to say that a priest should reveal a confession, I'm one of those priests who will disobey the law.' Being also a lawyer, let me explain.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A society that forgives wins

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 August 2016
    11 Comments

    Almost all public conversation quickly turns to transgressors. Olympic competitors growled about proven and suspect drug users. Many wanted people found to have used drugs shamed and shunned. This insistence that transgressors should definitively lose their good name and the right to participate is not confined to sport. If inflexibility and exclusion become the rule in dealing with aberrant speech or behaviour we find unacceptable, they will impose heavy burdens on individuals and society.

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