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Keywords: St Patrick's Day

  • AUSTRALIA

    Building constitutional bridges: In conversation with Frank Brennan

    • David Halliday
    • 28 June 2024

    It's been eight months since the Voice referendum, and people are starting to grapple with what its defeat means for Australia. There are few voices in Australia as qualified to conduct a postmortem of the outcome of the Voice referendum campaign as Frank Brennan. We examine what lessons can be learned and crucually, whether there’s reason for hope for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stepping up for St Pat's

    • Sheila Ngoc Pham
    • 14 March 2024
    1 Comment

    Watching your child perform and be judged is a sure way to make you feel ‘all the feels’. Yet this is what happens every month throughout Australia at feis — Irish dancing competitions. Welcome to the world of competitive Irish dancing, which reaches peak visibility around this time of year because of St Patrick’s Day.

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  • RELIGION

    Dancing through St Patrick's Day myths

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 16 March 2017
    8 Comments

    My grandfather told me Patrick was a saint because he drove the frogs and snakes out of Ireland. He also told me if I stepped in a fairy ring while we were on our walks I'd disappear forever. So naturally as I grew older, I became skeptical. Each year in my family St Patrick's Day has marked a survival of Irish culture in Australia. Sometimes this can be in subtle ways and sometimes it means singing at the top of our lungs, enjoying a drink and having a dance.

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  • RELIGION

    St Patrick's Day talk

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 March 2012

    Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's St Patrick's Day Celebration talk at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 17 March 2012.

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  • RELIGION

    Empathy for Irish priests

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 17 March 2010
    26 Comments

    In Ireland, the attitude of locals to the Murphy and Ryan reports into child abuse in Catholic institutions is commonly anger at the apparent obfuscation by Church leaders. This St Patrick's Day, spare a thought for the ordinary priest in modern Dublin.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Irish, prisoners of a sacred past

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 17 March 2009
    5 Comments

    St Patrick holds the Irish in a powerful emotional thrall. Parades all over the world honour the man who brought Christianity to Ireland. This week in Northern Ireland, saintly ghosts of the past have been called upon to bless murder.

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  • RELIGION

    St Patrick, a man before his time

    • Ursula Stephens
    • 26 March 2007
    2 Comments

    Even though St Patrick's Day has not yet arrived, I have already received several cards and messages. Some came the old-fashioned way, delivered by the postman, but most were like my friend Colleen's, the virtual variety, and arrived with a "ping' in my inbox.

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