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Keywords: Penance

  • MEDIA

    Journalistic ethics in transgender tragedy

    • Ellena Savage
    • 24 January 2014
    4 Comments

    Last week a troubling story broke on sports journalism site Grantland. While investigating the background of Dr V., an avowed physicist who had invented a revolutionary golf putter, journalist Caleb Hannan discovered that Dr V. was a trans-woman. In the course of the investigation, Dr V. committed suicide. This tragic case raises questions about journalistic ethics, not least of which is if journalism is, by its very nature, unethical.

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  • RELIGION

    Church and ordained ministry in the 21st century

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 May 2013
    2 Comments

    Fr Frank Brennan's keynote address at the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Clergy Assembly, St Clement's, Gaylong, on 22 May 2013

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  • RELIGION

    A pope for hard seasons

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 18 February 2013
    27 Comments

    One of the major challenges facing the new pope will be to find creative and compassionate ways of addressing the issue of clergy sexual abuse. A proper response will require a change in heart and mind, to see the world through the eyes of the suffering and humiliated. Can we expect anything less from the next pope?

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  • RELIGION

    Confessional debate is a Royal Commission red herring

    • Chris McGillion
    • 29 November 2012
    43 Comments

    It is inconceivable that Catholic authorities would countenance the state interfering in the sacramental life of the Church. And any attempt to do so would quickly turn into an issue of freedom of religion. If the Royal Commission were to go down that path it could quickly find it had bitten off much more than it can chew.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Canary in a nursing home

    • Louise McKenna
    • 31 July 2012
    3 Comments

    At times the music holds him still, and a jonquil light beams through two pinholes in his brain, singing of a caged soul.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Xanana on the wall

    • Tessa McMahon
    • 26 June 2012
    9 Comments

    The bed on which I lie is scientifically sprung, approved by chiropractors ... and blessed from on high by Klimt ... Made by a woman Timor-thin, cross-legged on concrete.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The other side of suicide

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 10 May 2012
    4 Comments

    When I was 15 I decided not to kill myself. I am still sometimes prone to baseless bouts of depression, but that ragged dark hole has never engulfed me. The main characters in two recent films are notable for deciding to live, rather than lie down and be overrun by dark emotions and events.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Last-ditch confession

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 May 2011
    2 Comments

    First he built a church, an act of penance and a bribe to God. Next came 40 years in self imposed isolation. Neither act could replace the course he needed to take: to confess and accept responsibility; the only true salve for guilt.

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  • RELIGION

    Twelve Steps to healing an abusive Church

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 23 March 2011
    32 Comments

    I received a letter from a former student. Ten years ago, he had suddenly vanished without warning or further communication. Now he was about to reveal the reasons for his disappearance. It was the sort of story I had heard often before.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Faith in the dark

    • Alex Skovron
    • 08 March 2011

    Once omnipotent night slid over the campsite to reveal nothing beyond a black more dazzling than any darkness could contain, all we could do was inhale an immense presence touching everything, which we called faith.

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  • RELIGION

    The trouble with iPad Confessions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 March 2011
    9 Comments

    New communications technology is shaping Church practices, and in the process is raising more fundamental questions about them. The Church holds that faith should be expressed in bodily and communal ways, but it is increasingly difficult to argue this.

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  • MEDIA

    Oprah and WikiLeaks

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 December 2010
    14 Comments

    Winfrey's style is confessional in therapeutic mode. Wikileaks is confessional in a heroic mode. Winfrey will be feted in Australia, while Julian Assange's enterprise will, one way or another, be brought to an end. The grace he offers is not cheap enough. 

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