Vol 35 No 8

21 April 2025

ARTS AND CULTURE

The storm
- Damian Balassone
- 01 May 2025
Despite the raging storm, I clearly see a figure on the Sea of Galilee/ a Son of Man/ with outstretched hands/ and he is calling me.
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RELIGION

The papal conclave is a referendum on the Church's future
- Miles Pattenden
- 01 May 2025
As cardinals gather in Rome, they must confront declining trust, shifting global power, financial scandals, and unresolved doctrinal divides within the Church. More than a choice of leader, this moment is a reckoning with modernity and the future direction of the Church itself.
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AUSTRALIA

An American looks longingly on the Australian election
- Jim McDermott
- 01 May 2025
From across the Pacific, Australia’s election looks refreshingly sane: debates over fuel taxes and modest wage hikes. But the surface calm belies deeper frustrations: housing scarcity, voter disillusionment, political evasion. For an American watching from a fractured homeland, the question isn’t whether Australia is better, it’s how long that difference can hold.
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RELIGION

Three elections with a single focus
- Andrew Hamilton
- 01 May 2025
Three elections, three systems, one shared question: what kind of person should lead? As voters and cardinals choose their next leaders, attention turns from policy to personality — to character, courage, and conviction. In an age of division, the qualities that guide a life may yet decide the fate of nations.
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RELIGION

Failing, upwards, in the Catholic Church
- Michael McVeigh
- 30 April 2025
Pope Francis’ pontificate was marked not by triumph but by a humble reckoning with failure. In a Church marked by scandal, division, and decline, he didn’t reverse the tide but pointed to another measure of faithfulness: mercy over mastery, presence over power, and the courage to fail, not downward, but upward.
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INTERNATIONAL

The fable of suicidal empathy
- Warwick McFadyen
- 30 April 2025
And so as the 21st century marked its first quarter, reality in the most powerful country on Earth slipped into a vortex of blurred lines of what it meant to be a living, moral being.
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AUSTRALIA

Principle in party politics: Remembering Petro Georgiou
- Stephen Minas
- 30 April 2025
As Australia prepares to vote, the legacy of Petro Georgiou casts a long shadow, reminding us that politics can still be principled, compassionate, and deeply human. He reshaped multicultural policy, challenged cruelty, and proved that conscience has a place in party politics.
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RELIGION

Faith in the balance: Religion and the 2025 Federal Election
- John Warhurst
- 30 April 2025
Faith, once a quiet undercurrent in Australian elections, is now entangled in questions of ethnic identity, foreign policy and cultural grievance. Religion has returned to the centre of political life, only to find itself more divided, and more contested, than ever before.
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AUSTRALIA

Anzac Day and the living wounded
- Brian McCoy
- 24 April 2025
As we witness those wars that continue to rage, we might wonder, this Anzac Day, what were the effects on our First Nations people when their lands were first taken? We can now see only too clearly that it is difficult, if not impossible in the longer term, to defend one’s land when the invader has more powerful resources and shows no intention of negotiating peace.
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AUSTRALIA

The quiet injustice facing the outer suburbs
- Bronwen Clark
- 24 April 2025
As Australia moves through another federal election campaign, a quarter of a million new voters in the nation’s outer suburbs remain largely invisible in political discourse. These are not marginal communities in the cultural or economic sense; they are the nation’s most dynamic zones of growth, diversity, and aspiration.
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AUSTRALIA

The two paths before us
- Andrew Hamilton
- 24 April 2025
This year has been marked by growing introspection concerning our culture. At the heart of the division between a conflictual and an eirenical view of public life lie different understandings of the value of human life and of what it means for human beings to flourish.
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EDUCATION

Are universities about to become a political priority?
- Erica Cervini
- 23 April 2025
Despite a lot of talk about education, neither of the major parties has talked about the funding of universities. However this federal election is likely to be determined by voters under the age of 45, the very group that rising university fees and HELP (higher education loan program) debts are hitting the hardest.
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RELIGION

The legacy of a Jesuit pope
- Frank Brennan
- 23 April 2025
Francis was a pope prepared to blur the edges of doctrine, or at least its application, opening the doors of the Church to all those seeking love, mercy and forgiveness. He never doubted God’s capacity to love and forgive all who sought that love and forgiveness. He maintained the certainty, not of doctrine but of the simple piety of believers.
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AUSTRALIA

Why Australians with disabilities are still left behind
- Adam Hughes Henry
- 22 April 2025
By any measure of moral progress, a society should be judged by how it treats those who are most vulnerable. Yet in Australia, people with disabilities continue to be treated not as citizens with equal standing, but as problems to be managed; an inconvenience to be contained within a labyrinth of bureaucratic delay and economic rationalisation.
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RELIGION

In praise of Pope Francis
- Andrew Hamilton
- 22 April 2025
In a world that sees refugees and immigrants as a threat, disregards the victims of war, trashes the environment, rewards self-interest and cheapens religious faith, Pope Francis wept with those mistreated, pleaded their cause and radiated joy and hope.
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EDUCATION

Adolescence stoked our fears about schools. Here's what's actually happening
- Meaghan Paul
- 16 April 2025
A Netflix drama about violent teens has ignited a global moral panic. But behind the hysteria, schools remain imperfect but vital places where most children still learn, grow, and thrive. The real crisis may not be with the students, but with the adults watching from afar.
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Vol 35 No 8