Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Dead Certainty

  • RELIGION

    Culture and conspiracy: In conversation with Fr Gerald Arbuckle

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 09 June 2023
    5 Comments

    Known for incisive insights into societal issues like fundamentalism, loneliness, and abuse, theologian and cultural anthropologist Fr Gerald Arbuckle is now examining the rise of conspiracy theories. In conversation with Michael McVeigh, Arbuckle discusses his work, cultural anthropology, and the impact of 'cultural trauma'.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: An Odyssey

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 July 2022
    2 Comments

    Daniel Mendelsohn lectures in classics at Bard College, a liberal arts institution in New York State. His retired father, aged 81 in 2011, regrets gaps in his own education, and asks to sit in on his son’s course of seminars on Homer’s The Odyssey. Professor Mendelsohn agrees, and Jay Mendelsohn joins a class of 18-19 year-olds. Later, father and son go on a cruise that retraces The Odyssey where they discover: is home a physical place, or something you carry around with you or within you? 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tis the times' plague

    • Brian Matthews
    • 24 November 2020
    5 Comments

    In measures now sadly familiar in 2020, theatres were closed once the number of weekly deaths exceeded 30, later 40, but because actors and the theatre world itself were so economically vulnerable, actors, understandably intent on earning a living, soon legally or otherwise cut themselves some slack by taking liberties with the rules governing performances and quarantine — again, a phenomenon that is now, against all previous odds, familiar to people of 2020.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Walking together for a better future

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2018
    3 Comments

    Frank Brennan's keynote address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Assembly entitled: 'Strong Faith. Strong Youth. Strong Future — Walking Together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. 1 October 2018, Technology Park — Bentley, Perth

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump's Syria pantomime

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 April 2018
    4 Comments

    If anything, there seemed to be something hollow about a gesture that all but acknowledges the success of the Russian-backed regime which has taken a stranglehold over the civil war. One conclusion is that brutality is fine as long as it avoids the use of certain types of force, namely chemical weapons.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Seeking a true new start for all job seekers and workers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 November 2017

    'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Being clear eyed and misty eyed about human rights and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 October 2016
    8 Comments

    Australia's policy is unique and unrepeatable by other nations because it requires that you be an island nation continent without asylum seekers in direct flight from the countries next door and that you have access to a couple of other neighbouring island nations which are so indigent that they will receive cash payments in exchange for warehousing asylum seekers and proven refugees, perhaps indefinitely. The policy over which Turnbull presides is not world best practice. It's a disgrace.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Eye on the messy ethics of drone warfare

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 March 2016
    5 Comments

    With more than 30 dead in Brussels just a few short months after the horrors in Paris, the Western world again confronts an assailant in ISIS who deals in fear and bloodshed. In contemplating our responses to such attacks we recognise the historical and current geopolitical realities that have bred the ideologies that fuel them. This messiness is the stuff of a new British film that arrives in Australia this week, which explores the plight of those who might be 'collateral damage' in the hyper-technological 'war on terror'.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Year of Mercy's opportunity for Aboriginal reconciliation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 March 2016

    'On his last two visits to Latin America, Pope Francis has focused on past and present relationships between indigenous peoples and their colonisers. This Jubilee Year of Mercy perhaps it could be a blessed moment for Aboriginal Australians and descendants of their colonisers to walk together through the Door of Mercy at the St Francis Xavier Cathedral, calling to mind the sins and endeavours of the past, the achievements and commitments of the present, and the hopes and aspirations of the future.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ, Lenten Talk, Norwood Parish, 3 March 2016

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis and the face of mercy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 09 December 2015
    2 Comments

    'I joined the Jesuits in 1975 just as the previous 32nd General Congregation (GC32) was concluding. Pedro Arrupe was at the height of his powers. That Congregation asked the question: 'What is it to be a companion of Jesus today?' and answered unequivocally, 'It is to engage, under the standard of the Cross, in the crucial struggle of our time: the struggle for faith and that struggle for justice which it includes.' I have always regarded myself as a GC32 Jesuit. Many of those who gathered for GC33 thought that the GC32 mission was a little too one-dimensional. I suspect Bergoglio was one of those.' Frank Brennan on the eve of the Catholic Church's Jubilee Year of Mercy.

    READ MORE
  • Reshaping the public space: Lessons for Australian refugee, Aboriginal and climate policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2015

    Pope Francis's concerns are not narrowly dogmatic or pedagogical but universally pastoral. He knows that millions of people, including erstwhile Catholics, are now suspicious of or not helped by notions of tradition, authority, ritual and community when it comes to their own spiritual growth which is now more individual and eclectic. He wants to step beyond the Church's perceived lack of authenticity and its moral focus on individual matters, more often than not, sexual. He thinks the world is in a mess particularly with the state of the planet — climate change, loss of biodiversity and water shortages, but also with the oppression of the poor whose life basics are not assured by the operation of the free market, and with the clutter and violence of lives which are cheated the opportunity for interior peace. He is going to great pains to demystify his office. He wants all people of good will to emulate him and to be both joyful and troubled as they wrestle with the probl

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Practical magic

    • Megan Graham
    • 28 August 2014
    3 Comments

    While we are all afraid of the unknown, complete certainty and predictability do not make for a vibrant life. Magic in the Moonlight is a film about the lens through which one chooses to see the world. Cynicism or wonder? Mayhem or magic? It poses the question: Which way brings more joy?

    READ MORE