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This is one of the angriest films you will ever see. In the Bible we hear about righteous anger, where God or humanity realises something is so wrong and sinful that 'holy anger' is the first and right response. At its best in the scriptures this anger leads to justice, making things right. Spotlight is an occasion for holy, righteous anger and every adult Catholic should see it.
Francis knows there are all sorts of issues inside and outside the Church where for too long people with power have tried to keep the lid on, in the hope that the problems and complexities will go away, often by parodying those who see the problems or complexities as small 'l' liberals or cafeteria Catholics. He delights in being joyful and troubled while contemplating big problems, calling people of good will to the table of deliberation reminding them of the kernel of the Christian gospels. He has the faith and hope needed to lift the lid without fear and without knowing the answers prior to the dialogue occurring.
Pope Francis is not the first pope to address a social encyclical to everyone. But in comparison with his predecessors, Francis has been more inclusive in the process of writing the encyclical and in the final content of the document. He quotes from 17 different conferences of Catholic bishops. He is at pains to indicate that he is collaborative and that he takes the principle of subsidiarity very seriously. Being the final redactor of the text, he has felt free to interpolate some very folksy advice from time to time. He has also taken the liberty of inserting some very blunt, evocative images of environmental and economic devastation.
'There have been innumerable post-mortems and words of advice as to how the party with new structures, election rules, and policies can pick itself up, dust off, and win the next election. Sadly some of those post-mortems have come with more coatings of spite and loathing. It is no part of my role in the public square as a Catholic priest to offer such advice.' Frank Brennan's address to the Bathurst Panthers Club, 2 November 2013.
Here's the mint still on my hands. A wreath, so Pliny thought was 'good for students, to exhilarate their minds'. Late in the course, I’ll settle for a sprig or two.
A heavenly choir .. some individual faces at the front .. and all the rest in the careful fuzz of distance .. computer-generated to a full infinity
As I reflect back now, I can see the difference between Peter's urge to write and my own. My hero was the master of terseness, Tacitus. But Peter wanted to find words, and ways of putting words together, that could unfold the shape of what lay beyond words.
They change the sky but not their soul who run .. across the sea: the impartial earth .. gapes for the child of a pauper as for a princeling ... (For Peter Porter)
Feed and clothe this Australian poet and lodge him in a library attached to a music venue, and remarkable things would happen. He made of London a country of the mind, its vices, virtues, constant features and mutability there to be inspected and eventually portrayed.
The teenage boy .. drunk, taunting, now hanging from .. your latch of jaw
Angling my foreground to move with me along a crowded pavement in one clarified direction, eyes set to recognise one doorway of gravelled glass and a particular curlicued frame.
Vincent Buckley's work evolves from the explicitly religious to the exploration of experience. But when individual and common experience of love, suffering, or conflict is treated with such depth of seriousness, the result is much the same.