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Keywords: Spirit Of Religion

  • AUSTRALIA

    He walks among them: Remembering Father Bob

    • Arnold Zable
    • 24 April 2023
    11 Comments

    I spent memorable hours yarning with Father Bob and I accompanied the Father Bob McGuire Foundation food van on some of its nightly forays to parts of the city to provide sustenance to those in need. Invariably Father Bob would turn up at some point in the evening to lend his inimitable presence to the show.

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  • RELIGION

    'How Christianity can grow again in the West'

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 April 2023
    14 Comments

    Greg Sheridan's Easter article in the Weekend Australian argues that a radical, supernatural version of Christian faith may be more persuasive than an accommodating one. However, Christians must show an attractive way of life, balancing high ideals with the reality of failure and forgiveness. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Take this: A story of pharmacy

    • Michael McGirr
    • 14 April 2023
    5 Comments

    What are the implications of widespread use of Metformin, Pembrolizumab, or Nivolumab, and what do they say about us? Featuring a humourless pharmacist and a thick wad of prescriptions, the story of our complicated relationship with pharmaceuticals is a meandering map of the human condition.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In conversation with Helen Garner

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 17 February 2023
    3 Comments

    Arguably Australia’s most celebrated living author, Helen Garner has built a reputation as a fearless and unapologetic writer whose work has remained fresh and relevant for over 45 years. We sat down with Helen to explore the challenges of confessional non-fiction, her fondness for church, and her commitment to unsparing self-analysis. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Faith and doubt in American fiction

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 03 February 2023
    6 Comments

    Through exploring the work of nine Catholic American authors — with special focus on Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo — Longing for an Absent God boldly attempts to discover what it is about faith and the desire for transcendence that exerts such influence over the popular imagination. 

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2022: What did the Plenary Council achieve?

    • Paul Collins
    • 05 January 2023

    The Plenary Council (PC) is over and the time has come for assessments. What did it achieve? In positive terms it brought together an enormously generous group of people whose dedication to Catholicism is extraordinary. It also demonstrated the diverse complexity of the community. 

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council is dead, long live the Synod of Bishops

    • John Warhurst
    • 06 December 2022
    3 Comments

    The Synod of Bishops, to which all People of God in Australia have now had their attention redirected after the Plenary Council, is another gigantic exercise in consultation and discernment undertaken by the Church. The possibilities for progress are inspiring, but also hedged around by enormous pressures of time and capacity. In a sense it is the Plenary Council writ large. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A different logic of encounter

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 30 September 2022

    Too often our society’s approach, and our Church’s approach, to First Nations people is to judge, to destroy, and to impose. But there’s a different logic that sees any encounter between cultures as a gift. That logic seeks understanding rather than offering judgement; it looks for mutual growth rather than destruction; and it gives each person autonomy in choosing their own path forward.

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  • RELIGION

    Queen Elizabeth, the language of Christianity, and the defence of faith

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 15 September 2022
    4 Comments

    The Queen’s life of overt public religion — which led her to become perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest Christian evangelist — was grounded in her conviction in the Gospels’ truth. And she interpreted Jesus’ story generously and ecumenically, broadening her role from the narrow Anglican identity of Supreme Governor of the Church of England to become an advocate by example for faiths of every kind.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why does poetry matter?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 August 2022
    11 Comments

    In most circles poetry doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put bread on the table, nor raise people to revolt nor even make news unless a grizzled footballer is outed for secretly writing poems. Even in churches poems and hymns are altered to improve their orthodoxy in matters of faith, gender, race or modernity, but rarely their poetic quality.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Beyond belief

    • Barry Gittins
    • 12 August 2022

    Journalist and author Elle Hardy spent 15 months researching and writing her 2021 work Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World. She notes the estimation that by 2050, one billion people around the world (one in 10 humans) will be a Pentecostal follower of Jesus (and their pastor).

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  • RELIGION

    War, truth and Christianity

    • Peter Vardy
    • 21 July 2022
    3 Comments

    Pope Francis recognised that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was ‘perhaps somehow provoked’ and said he was warned before the war that Nato was ‘barking at the gates of Russia’. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica the Pope condemned the ‘ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops’ but warned against a fairy tale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.

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