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Keywords: Ireland

  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Hospitality in mean times

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 September 2024

    In prosperous times many people in developed nations are sympathetic to refugees and migrants and welcome them into their own societies. In hard times, however, xenophobia spreads.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Is peace worth fighting for?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 September 2024

    Though little known in Australia, Abraham Johannes (A.J.) Muste spent his life commending pacifism and leading movements to make the world more just. His commitments to pacifism may still seem extreme to many. But will anything more mild address the threats facing the world from violence, inequality and apathy?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Old men for an old order

    • Ken Haley
    • 11 July 2024

    Whatever the outcome in the United States elections, the most powerful countries are ruled by elderly men. This fundamental and ominous failure of a new generation to supplant its elders bodes ill for the future.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Elegy for Peter Porter

    • John Kinsella
    • 05 June 2024

    An elegy doesn’t need to be written straight after a death... and maybe one’s own death catches up before the obituary we write is published. It might be something like re-arranging modernism into structurally sound lines, or discussing the context of metaphors in poems about London and friendship.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why do referendums bite the dust?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2024
    3 Comments

    Much like Australia's recent Indigenous Voice Referendum, the recent Irish referendum sought to change constitutional perspectives on family and marriage met with overwhelming defeat. What does this reveal about the relationship between public sentiment and the process of enacting constitutional changes?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    We don't know ourselves: A personal history of Ireland

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 07 July 2023
    1 Comment

    Comparing perspectives from different generations of Irish writers, Fintan O'Toole explores the weight of Ireland's 'lovely past', its unaddressed traumas, and their impact on the present. Addressing themes of change, politics, and religion, his narrative offers an unflinching exploration of the Emerald Isle's history.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The constant remaking of a nation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 August 2022
    4 Comments

    Few Australians of Irish descent will now be familiar with this history and the experience that accompanied it. They would see themselves as simply Australian. But the emphasis on social justice, the recognition of the value of community, and the concern for people who are marginal that are communicated through Catholic schools and the sympathy with the underdog owe much to the Irish heritage.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ireland's Brexit troubles

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 02 November 2018
    4 Comments

    It is the ordinary people — the pensioners on trollies, the sick interminably waiting on ever-increasing lists, the patients being treated in understaffed hospitals — who will truly suffer from Brexit's immediate body shocks to an already frail healthcare system decimated by years of austerity funding cuts.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mending man

    • Julie Perrin
    • 02 November 2018
    14 Comments

    Padraig leads the Corrymeela community in the north of Ireland. It is a place committed to healing the social, religious and political divisions that exist in Northern Ireland. Corrymeela is an ancient Irish word. Padraig says they understood it meant 'hill of harmony' but recently they've discovered it is more like 'the lumpy crossing place'.

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  • RELIGION

    Do pro-life Australians need a new approach?

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 04 June 2018
    56 Comments

    The result in Ireland is a timely reminder to political and/or church leaders in Australia who like to use Irish Catholic heritage as a way to defend their conservative views. On nearly all issues that have been debated by Australian Catholics against their religious obligations, the motherland is, clearly, no longer the source of moral legitimacy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ireland's 'hard border' irony has a bitter taste

    • Brian Matthews
    • 08 May 2018
    11 Comments

    The word 'irony' is sometimes preceded by 'delicious'. But it is sour and wounding in Ireland, where British withdrawal from the EU, Brexit, and the Irish Republic's firm intention to remain, raises the possibility of what pundits call a 'hard' border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Addressing the democracy deficit

    • Lizzie O'Shea
    • 07 May 2018
    12 Comments

    A common response to voters behaving badly is to call for qualifications on the franchise, such as education, or the outsourcing of public policy decisions to experts. Instead, I'd argue the opposite: the problem is not democracy, it is the deficit. It is not that too many people have a say in how society is run, but rather not enough.

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