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Prior to the conclave that elected Pope Francis, the Cardinals who met together identified the need for a reform of the Vatican finances and a broader reform of the Roman Curia. Shortly after Francis was elected, work began on the reform of the Roman Curia. There was wide consultation including with the various bishops’ conferences around the world.
Taken together the events of recent years suggest that we face a crisis, a time in which the working assumptions that have guided our personal and collective lives no longer hold. If we do not change we face increasing threats to the world that we shall hand on to our children.
A local event in the United States Catholic Church has recently aroused interest in Australia. A Bishop declared to be invalid (non-existent and without effect) baptisms celebrated over twenty years by a priest of his diocese. As a result people baptised by the priest will have to be properly baptised. Although the issues raised by this event are specific to the Catholic Church it raises broader questions of how any group should respond to behaviour considered deviant.
The Apology by the representatives of Government was a landmark at the juncture of the road from the past and the path to the future. It defined the harm suffered by Indigenous Australians at the hands of governments obsessed by an ignorant and biased ideology. It also vindicated the Indigenous advocates who had long demanded an end to discriminatory attitudes and behaviour within non-Indigenous Australian society and its institutions.
American novelist Jonathan Franzen has in his last three fictional works taken words that loom large in the collective consciousness and built worlds around them. First, it was Freedom (2010), then Purity (2015), and now Crossroads (2021). The latter title, of course, refers to a literal and figurative decision-making moment, but also the mythic locale where blues singers, notably Robert Johnson, made their pacts with the devil.
On the fifteenth anniversary of Rutilio Grande’s death, I went to a memorial celebration in Aguilares. This crossroads town was the centre of the Jesuit local mission of which Grande had been part. I had already been struck by the affection with which everyone spoke of Rutilio Grande. In a society where any ministry to people who were poor exposed one to constant danger, it was natural to become hardened in order to survive. Rutilio Grande, however, was remembered and treasured for his vulnerability.
In developing an understanding of place-based disadvantage, shame and stigma are transmitted between generations within the small number of communities we collectively fail. And yet no matter the number of indicators of place-based disadvantage, each community possesses some unique strengths.
I don’t write to State Premiers very often. However, a month ago I did. It was to the Western Australian Premier, Mark McGowan. It was not about Test cricket, the Juukan Gorge or opening the state’s borders. It was in relation to a photo on the front page of The Australian on the weekend of the 6/7 November showing an Aboriginal man in Western Australia boarding a plane under arrest. He was barefooted and with both a wrist and ankle chain.
Although I teach poetry and do occasional workshops, the following is written in response to one such workshopper, new to writing poetry, who in lockdown would message me on social media with fairly open-ended questions about poetry. My answers are written after the wry manner of the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska; wry, but generally helpful. They are not the launch pad for a new poetics. I have stopped for now at 12 questions, but the questions keep rolling in.
Well before the pandemic, the future for poetry’s slim volumes was looking far from healthy. Last November, the threatened closure of UWA Press, one of the largest publishers of poetry in Australia, drew attention to the narrowing opportunities for emerging poets to make their mark.
Does life have meaning? Or, as the new nihilists suggest, is life meaningless? A new book, The Sunny Nihilist, by writer and journalist, Wendy Syfret, puts the case for nihilism as an antidote to the obsessive search for meaning and purpose that many modern people experience.
For almost two years our pets have had us all to themselves. Everywhere I go now, the dogs follow: to the study, to the television, to the bathroom, to bed. I’m the recipient of that same loyal companionship sought out by so many during the pandemic: across the world, demand to adopt or foster animals — and dogs, in particular — has surged.
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