Author: Neil Ormerod

  • AUSTRALIA

    Tony Abbott's missing moral core

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 08 November 2010
    60 Comments

    Tony Abbott has been in public life for a long time. Most recently there has been his meteoric rise to leadership of the Liberal party and to a hair’s breadth from the prime ministership itself. Charming and disarming as he can be, there is something deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role.

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  • EDUCATION

    Gillard's education afterthought

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 15 September 2010
    12 Comments

    Only yesterday, as an afterthought, were the words 'tertiary education' added to Minister Evans' responsiblities. But a clear statement of priorities had already been sent, revealing just where the Government believes universities belong.

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  • EDUCATION

    Will a real university please stand up

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 29 July 2010
    7 Comments

    In 2012 Australian universities will experience a radical shift in government policy, resulting in a marketplace where universities must hawk their wares in a bid to attract the best and brightest. Whether all the present universities will survive in this competitive marketplace is an open question.

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  • RELIGION

    Storming the atheist ethic

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 27 April 2010
    3 Comments

    The Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal indicates a major ethical breach somewhere within the club. Perhaps their senior executives might benefit from the NSW trial of school ethics classes.

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  • EDUCATION

    The trouble with school ethics classes

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 16 April 2010
    22 Comments

    The Sydney Anglican diocese is concerned that proposed ethics classes in schools might attract students away from existing scripture classes. This looks more like a matter of turf wars, of seeking to maintain numbers and so justify their continuance.

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  • RELIGION

    Liturgical payback

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 25 February 2010
    33 Comments

    It's unlikely people will flock back to mass simply because a new translation is in place. Far more likely is that, as with the change at Vatican II, there will be a disaffected minority who cease to practice because their experience of the sacred has been violated.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Best of 2009: Why green Catholics are not communists

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 08 January 2010
    3 Comments

    Many conservative Catholics are sceptical about global warming. For them environmentalism is the new communism. This echoes the paranoia of the '50s and '60s are clear, when anyone with an interest in social justice was suspect. September 2009

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  • EDUCATION

    Why universities welcome theological colleges

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 18 November 2009
    7 Comments

    The movement of existing theological schools into the university structure restores the ancient place of theology as a discipline within a university. But universities could be more interested in money than theology, with theological colleges bringing healthy student numbers and value for money research outputs.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Brake failure on the economic freeway

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 26 October 2009

    Even if we understand the intelligiblity of an automobile, we can still drive badly. With the GFC, the argument is not that better theories will ensure everyone behaves properly, but that without a proper economic theory even people of good will cannot work to achieve the good.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Why ignorance, not greed, caused the GFC

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 20 October 2009
    2 Comments

    Sixty years ago, Jesuit Bernard Lonergan developed an analysis of the boom and bust cycles of economy. He often asked, 'Where were the Christian counter-parts of Karl Marx, sitting in the British Museum voraciously reading and relentlessly studying about political economy?'

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  • RELIGION

    Christopher Hitchens' illogical atheism

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 05 October 2009
    36 Comments

    Hitchens, like The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins, views belief in God not just as quaint, but as a sign of intellectual bad will. The age of muscular evangelical Christianity has been replaced by the age of muscular evangelical atheism.

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  • RELIGION

    Learner lobbyists let loose on Canberra

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 25 September 2009
    3 Comments

    When the Hawke-Keating Government cut back funding for overseas aid, churches said nothing. Last week, 260 Christian young people set out to lobby politicians about Australia's failure to meet its obligations to developing nations.

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