Jan 30, 2023
In a recent Quarterly Essay entitled “Uncivil Wars: How contempt is corroding democracy”,[1] Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens addressed the contemporary phenomenon that every demographic feels victimised, and every issue draws sharp lines between us. Opposing sides consider themselves shamed and cancelled and regard the others as bullies and “deplorables”. Outrage and contempt are the emotions of the age. This undermines our ability to dialogue and govern…
Jan 16, 2023
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons, all were keepers of sheep; Abel, Moses and David were also.[1] Like his ancestor Jacob, David called the Lord his ‘Shepherd’, and some of the prophets followed suit.[2] While Israel’s leaders often proved to be poor shepherds,[3] God promised them better ones, shepherds after His own heart…
Jan 11, 2023
Today we have lost a Cardinal of the Church, a former Archbishop of Sydney, a fine priest, a good Christian soul.
The Church in Australia and around the world is deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney and of Melbourne.
Cardinal Pell’s episcopal motto was ‘Be Not Afraid’ and through good days and bad, he lived up to these words…
Jan 03, 2023
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.”[1] So asks the heroine in Shakespeare’s romance-tragedy. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet could be Jack and Jill Smith for all she cared, as long as they were the same people, and they should resist the attempts of families and culture to pigeonhole them. Yet as romantic and postmodern as this might sound, it raises all sorts of metaphysical…
Jan 03, 2023
“He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not,” so the game goes as petal after petal is plucked from a daisy until the last petal answers the question. The history of ‘the Daisy Oracle’ has been traced through 19th-century classics such as Goethe’s Faust (1808) and Adam’s ballet Giselle (1841) back to the songbook of a 15th-century German nun (Clara Hätzlerin 1471) and before…
Jan 03, 2023
United with Pope Francis and Christians throughout the world, the Church in Sydney and Australia mourns the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, one of the greatest theologian-popes in the Church’s two-thousand-year history.
For more than 70 years, as priest-theologian, bishop-pastor, cardinal-prefect, teacher-pope and finally pope-emeritus, Joseph Ratzinger selflessly…
Dec 22, 2022
After a year of terrible war in Ukraine and disastrous floods closer to home, in which people have lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods, where are they to find security and hope? Amidst fragile recovery from pandemic and rising cost of living, how do we deal with anxiety and uncertainty?
At Christmas, God comes to us as a newborn baby, the most vulnerable…
Dec 21, 2022
There are a few contenders for the most iconic line in an Aussie film. Who could forget Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee (1986) saying: “That’s not a knife”? Or Farmer Hogget (played by James Cromwell) at the end of Babe (1995): “That’ll do pig, that’ll do”? But perhaps the most popular Aussie film line, if sheer recitations are anything to go by, are four words uttered by Darryl Kerrigan…
Dec 13, 2022
When St John baptised Our Lord in the Jordan, the Gospels tell us the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus. One might have expected thunder, lightning and quake, a pillar of cloud and of fire, a fearful voice from a burning bush, a vision splendid and stupefying of God upon a lofty throne surrounded by seraphim…
Dec 12, 2022
Earlier in the year at our Mass commemorating the 200th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of St Mary’s Cathedral, I spoke of the towering influence of some Irish pioneers of the early Church in Australia, the most prominent one going by the name of “Therry.” This Therry was…