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The two Catholic leaders who passed away this summer both lived in the public spotlight for much of their lives, but they also each lived a private life of which we only ever gained glimpses. Those of us who didn’t know them tend to fill in the details based on which aspects of their public persona best align with our own attitudes.
My mother often reminded us that she was the same age as the queen. They were both stoic to the point of being difficult to understand. There was never any doubt that, living by their lights, they would spend every breath doing what they felt called to do. Self-indulgence was hardly part of their vocabulary; along with that, they didn’t indulge others much either. The generation of 1926 was made of sturdy timber.
Many Catholics will have found the news from Germany this past week painful. A law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. Running to 1,000 pages, the report is shocking: it lists at least 497 victims for the period 1945–2019 and identifies 235 probable offenders including 173 priests and nine deacons.
In recent days, if you were to listen to the media reports, you could be forgiven for thinking that religious educators want to retain a right to exclude children or teachers from their schools on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Or nothing should be further from the truth.
The Plenary Council (PC) is over and the time has come for assessments. What did it achieve? In positive terms it brought together an enormously generous group of people whose dedication to Catholicism is extraordinary. It also demonstrated the diverse complexity of the community.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin) used the latter’s work to argue that human breeding stock could be improved. He would weed out the weakest and the less able and produce a sturdier race. Until recently, the crematoria of Hitler’s death camps were enough to remind most that this was not an idea consonant with actual human flourishing.
When we reflect on how best to live with the consequences of our shared, bloodied history, The Australian Wars calls for a counter-narrative; a re-positioning and re-phrasing of what has brought us to this point in our oft-stalled journey towards reconciliation.
There's something to it, the Advent adventure. Its allure transcends and moves us beyond the corny. The sentimental. When we wade our way through the tinsel, the lights and jolly holly, we find there's a deep, sweet magic to the season.
In all the rush, the crib’s still housed / from last year in the cupboard . . . I wonder / if in all our frantic preparations – beneath the toys, the tinsel, fairy lights / and all the other trinkets, decorations – there’s still within our hearts / and in our whole wide world, in all we plan and do, / even just a minute’s time for you?
so across this bridge of days / lurks a hollowed-out light / picking over the shattered glass of streets / a day when sun / apportions out / this impartial / where the cut & paste / the haste / of swallows is knitting up / all the available light.
The child, Wordsworth thought, is able to witness the divine in nature, but gradually this ability fades. Whereas once everything seemed apparelled in celestial light/ the glory and the freshness of a dream, four stanzas end with the questions Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? We know this development happens to us all.
Emotional intelligence is one of those terms that is hard to define. They take their meaning from people whom we think certainly possess it and those whom we think certainly lack it. In the aftermath of the Victorian election we might also ask whether it matters if political leaders have emotional intelligence or not. Will it help them win elections or contribute to their defeat?
121-132 out of 200 results.