Keywords: Ministry
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brian Matthews
- 18 July 2014
20 Comments
Life in Orwell's Airstrip One is graceless, demeaning and inhumane for all but those entitled to preferment. Surveillance is increasing, ruling-party secrecy and monopoly on information is rigid, refugees are demonised and language is reduced to sound bites and slogans. The leadership is disjoined from and cynical about the natural world. Just as well it's fiction because it sounds awful doesn't it?
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AUSTRALIA
Ian Thorpe’s interview with Michael Parkinson on Sunday revealed the self silencing he believed was necessary to protect his integrity, his sporting career, and his relationship with friends, family and fans. It is still a challenge to be open about sexual orientation. Some parents blame their children for ‘insisting in being gay’, and a few priests continue to advise young people coming out to seek medical and psychological help for their ‘problem’.
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RELIGION
She was walking up and down the middle of Roslyn Street, wailing. I put my arms over her shoulders: 'It's all-right Delma, its okay.' She turned and looked at me: 'Don't tell me it's all-right. It's not all-right'. It was for all the wrongs, all the anguish, the suffering, the pain, the separation from her family, land, culture, her children. I couldn't leave her. I called an ambulance. As she was carted out, she looked up from the stretcher: 'You betrayed me.'
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 08 July 2014
8 Comments
The prime minister stumbled last week when he said: 'I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um scarcely settled, Great South Land.' His Indigenous advisor Warren Mundine said: 'I know his heart is in the right place.' With hearts in the right place, we can all forgive and be forgiven.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 24 June 2014
53 Comments
'My one new insight from reading Bill's book is that he was sacked because he was too much a team player with his local church ... the Romans hoped to shatter the morale and direction of those who had planned the pastoral strategies of a country diocese stretched to the limits as a Eucharistic community soon to be deprived of priests in the Roman mould.' Frank Brennan launches Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three by Bishop William Morris.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 18 June 2014
11 Comments
All is not well in the Sunshine State, where Premier Newman is running a strong 'law and order' line. Judges are used to politicians running 'law and order' lines, but enjoy independence from the executive government once appointed. The risky part is the sequence of events associated with the appointment. The naming of Tim Carmody as the state's chief justice has made a mockery of the transparency and openness of this process.
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EUREKA STREET TV
- Peter Kirkwood
- 11 June 2014
8 Comments
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 June 2014
3 Comments
Very few Vatican documents on world events are exciting. But some can be helpful when local response to these events is febrile and anxious. The Vatican guidelines on ministry to forcibly displaced persons provide a helpful mirror to reflect the public Australian response to asylum seekers. It offers a long view of Catholic reflection on refugees and a broad perspective on the human reality of having to seek protection.
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RELIGION
- Paul Collins
- 13 March 2014
12 Comments
The greatest danger is that we expect too much from Francis. He brings a new perspective that has little to do with the preoccupations of the developed world. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that he is a closet progressive. The other danger is that he could turn out to be all show and no substance. His 'Gang of Eight' has not even begun to address the diabolically difficult problems embedded in reforming the curial structures of the Vatican.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 March 2014
5 Comments
The appearance at the end of Francis' first year of Berlusconi's new magazine, Il Mio Papa, is testimony that the Pope is now mythical, a celebrity, and that the myth can be manipulated, marketed and monetised. It is difficult to give an accounting for celebrities, but merely popping their balloon also misses what in them attracts popular attention. So it is with evaluating what is distinctive about Francis and what he has contributed to the Church.
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RELIGION
- Pat Power
- 14 February 2014
49 Comments
Most priests believe the Royal Commission was very much needed to face up to a terrible episode in the Church's history. They also believe that sexual abuse took place in an environment of clericalism which was imposed by the highest authority in the Church, and which they felt powerless to confront. 'Father is always right' operated from the Pope down and any questioning of it was seen as disloyal or even heretical.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Kristin Hannaford
- 11 February 2014
1 Comment
The abattoir to the left funnels steam into the night, a long slow drag exhaled by a thousand beasts, also travelling tonight. Poor cattle, horses, and pigs. Some days, the air is so bloodthick it hinges at the back of the throat, a glottal of rusty muck. Not tonight though. The air is winter clear, glassy.
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