Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
Last week at the Plenary Council Second Assembly, it seems many of Australia’s bishops, for whatever reason, wanted to bury the talents available to them. They voted down motions related to the equality of dignity between men and women. The reaction according to commentators was visceral with members, not just women, upset and angry. It is likely the anger was more potent for the fact that the motions had become so anodyne that many assembly members are probably regretting the parsing and pruning.
A basic principle was laid down in the pope’s recent Apostolic Constitution entitled Praedicate evangelium that is profoundly important with far-reaching consequences for the whole church. This principle states that any baptised Catholic ‘can preside over a dicastery,’ that is run a Vatican department. Previously only ordained clerics could do this.
After four years, the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia is nearly at a close with the second and final assembly in July. So what has been the significance of the Plenary Council so far, and what can we expect from the final session? In this Roundtable, Geraldine Doogue, John Warhurst, Greg Craven and Julian Butler reveal their hopes and expectations for the process and discuss likely outcomes.
The centre of the political system did not so much hold as desert. The vote was a furious, determined and tenacious shout from the estranged centre, a shivering of the timbers. The calibre of individuals elected — many from professions, many with public service outside the traditional party hierarchy of patronage and promotion, and most, women — has not been previously seen in this country’s politics.
In the election campaign the need for an integrity commission has been a minor issue. Many independent candidates have supported it, but the major parties seem to have concluded that it will not significantly shape the way people vote. Yet given the evidence of a lack of integrity in behaviour by and within governing parties both at Federal and State level, the nature and importance of integrity in the processes of government deserve reflection.
The quality of Niall’s writing is evident in An Accidental Career, though easily unnoticed. It lies in the clarity of her thought, her exact choice of words, the alternation of anecdote and reflection and the self-effacement that creates a direct link between the reader and the work itself. Her writing has the rare gift of simplicity. The precision of the title is characteristic of the book as a whole.
People who understand more about international affairs than I do tell me that the Ukrainian/Russian matter is complex, but to me the matter seems simple enough, involving the obsessions of a powerful man, and the suffering of an innocent population. As usual, it is the women and the children who are bearing the brunt of the conflict, while President Putin remains supremely indifferent to their fate. And, as so often, I wonder what makes him tick.
Prior to the conclave that elected Pope Francis, the Cardinals who met together identified the need for a reform of the Vatican finances and a broader reform of the Roman Curia. Shortly after Francis was elected, work began on the reform of the Roman Curia. There was wide consultation including with the various bishops’ conferences around the world.
Any program of church reform will have soon to ask Chernyshevsky’s question, What is to be done? It is a dangerous question — he wrote his novel from jail and spent much of his life in exile or imprisonment. Discussion of Church matters is mercifully less perilous today, but the question does invite a radical repiecing of the connections and tradition and energies that constitute Catholic life.
Like the trusting frog, voters have in the backs of their minds the inkling that when a government achieves power, they lavish time, energy and resources on staying in power. Promises are non-core, or open to interpretation, or de-prioritised as new issues bob up to the surface.
Most of us accept that over the last twenty-odd years, something has shifted in the way politics in Australia is conducted, and not for the better. Notably, our government (and media) are seen by most voters as a dividing force within society rather than a uniting one.
One of the most memorable scenes in Russian literature relates the thoughts of a man lying on the ground staring at the sky in the middle of a major European battle. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is wounded. He is placed in a situation where, instead of running, fighting, and thinking every moment might be his last, he is suddenly met with silence, grandeur, tranquillity.
61-72 out of 200 results.