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Search Results: trains

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Gifts of blood follow Kunming horror

    • Evan Ellis
    • 07 March 2014
    4 Comments

    My tutor in Kunming was deeply shaken by the mass stabbings last weekend that left 29 civilians dead. When Chinese authorities put out a request for blood donors in the city, giving blood was all she wanted to do. The city's blood banks have struggled to accommodate the throng of willing donors, the upturned arms of ordinary citizens replacing some of the blood spilt by the long knives. This strikes me as profoundly Eucharistic.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    JFK and the myth of American innocence

    • Ray Cassin
    • 22 November 2013
    10 Comments

    The assassination of John F. Kennedy 50 years ago elicited a particular quality of grief. It was not only a matter of mourning the violent death of a world leader who, at the time, was much admired. The notion also stuck that something called innocence had been lost because of what had happened in Dallas. That sense has withered under reassessments of Kennedy's character and record in office but it has never been extinguished entirely.

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  • RELIGION

    Christian social thinking for Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2013
    1 Comment

    'Many Catholics wonder how we can maintain our Christian faith at this time in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis and the many judgmental utterances about sexuality and reproduction. The Church that has spoken longest and loudest about sex in all its modalities seems to be one of the social institutions most needing to get its own house in order.' Frank Brennan's address to the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy, 8 November 2013. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Would-be nun's Holocaust history

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 October 2013
    2 Comments

    On the eve of taking her vows as a nun, 18-year-old novice Ida learns that she is Jewish. This sets her on a journey of self-discovery as she seeks to, literally, uncover the bones of her past, which has its roots in the Holocaust. It is timely to reflect on these matters in the wake of last weekend's anti-semitic violence in Bondi. It is better to grasp the bones of truth than walk in pious ignorance past the mass graves of history.

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  • EDUCATION

    Advice for graduating health sciences students

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 October 2013

    'My sixth piece of advice is for all graduates and not just those of you who are religious. We all need to develop a comprehensive worldview, nurturing the sense of the transcendent in the human spirit, and holding together in tension ideals and reality, dreams and our shortcomings.' Full text from Frank Brennan's La Trobe Graduation Address, Health Sciences, 18 October 2013.

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  • RELIGION

    Catholics' radical alternative

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 October 2013
    4 Comments

    'When confronted with moral evil in public policy, church personnel have a choice: to be prophetic sticking to the moral absolutes, or to be practical engaging in the compromises needed to temper the evil. At the moment, the only political parties not wanting to embrace a short term shock and awe approach are the Greens, the DLP and the Palmer United Party. And neither Christine Milne, John Madigan nor Clive Palmer will ever be prime minister.' Workshop paper from Catholic Social Services Victoria's Listening, Learning and Leading conference, October 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    PNG policy places politics over principle

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 July 2013
    15 Comments

    PNG is not a resettlement country, has few if any resettlement services for a refugee population and is struggling with its own serious law and order and basic services issues. Australia has subcontracted its international obligations to a former colony. Once again the poorer countries of the world are used to warehouse refugees while the richer countries cherry-pick those they deem suitable for resettlement.

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  • MEDIA

    The socialist with rosary beads

    • Ray Cassin
    • 26 June 2013
    6 Comments

    Paul Mees, who died last week at the age of 52, was a public intellectual in the best sense of the term; a scholar and teacher with an international reputation; an activist who never shrank from a fight. He was also a man of deep faith, though many who admired Paul ignored this or regarded it as an eccentricity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Maintaining empathy as Boston mourns

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 18 April 2013
    12 Comments

    The image of the face of eight-year-old Boston victim Marty Richards will touch the hearts of all. Yet in his name, and depending on the outcome of the investigation, we might see calls for invasions of other lands. Such actions are hardly representative of the express wishes of terror victims and their families.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grace and intimacy in Les Miserables

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 December 2012
    5 Comments

    Valjean betrays a priest who has been kind to him, and the persistence of that man's mercy despite this betrayal sets the tone for Valjean's journey. The compassion and generosity to which he aspires contrasts with the Old Testament sternness of Javert, who is both driven and tortured by a dedication to divinely ordered justice.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    City rush hour adventures

    • Peter Bakowski
    • 20 November 2012
    3 Comments

    What a gift is hunger. Because of it your ancestors left their caves, explored plains, valleys, rivers, seas. Their adventures became stories, paintings, songs. There's the story of each person, on the trains, trams, street corners. How vulnerable you are, how strong you are.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    God gathers dust

    • Peter Gebhardt
    • 29 May 2012
    3 Comments

    Never hoards it, for he has new urns to make, for us to admire and, sometimes, to love.

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