The whole world is experiencing an “escalation to extremes” because we imitate each other to a profound degree. We should choose our models more carefully. (more…)
Category: Religion
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Stan Grant on Good Friday, Easter, and God’s absence in our suffering world
I never thought I’d see an inspiring Easter reflection in the usually secular, The Saturday Paper. But last Saturday (March 23) there was Stan Grant, writing on the Christian feast. (more…)
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The Cross: What do we bring to the Cross this Holy Week 2024?
The Cross speaks to us of how we find God in places where compassion is needed. (more…)
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We now need, it seems, a Voice for bigots
The best argument against having an explicit legislated or constitutional right of freedom of religion in Australia comes right out of the playbook of the No campaign during the referendum on a constitutional Voice for Indigenous Australians. There’s no particular problem of giving expression to one’s beliefs in this country, and almost any attempt to express such a freedom would end up creating more problems, and possibly more restrictions than it solves. (more…)
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‘The credibility of the Gospel is at stake’: Pax Christi calls on faith leaders to speak out on behalf of Gaza
Faith leaders should stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and should call on the Australian government to condemn all violence that threatens a just future for the people of Palestine, Israel and the Middle East. (more…)
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Thinking about peacebuilding in Australia on St Patrick’s Day
You would think that the suffering we are now seeing, including on and after October 7, would also compel international leaders to negotiate a peaceful future. There is no future in hate. (more…)
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What is Zionism?
One only needs head into the city on a Sunday in order to hear it: loud and vociferous condemnation of Israel and – together with it – the evils of Zionism as a political philosophy. But what is Zionism? I would imagine that many of those who so loudly condemn it would be hard placed to give it a definition. (more…)
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Israel and Judaism part company
Every religion is rooted in core beliefs or dogmas but is judged or weighed by the character it espouses and the values with which it identifies. Belief is verified or condemned by the way life is lived. Christianity is known to espouse “love your neighbour as yourself” or, “do to others as you would have them do to you”, or, “do not judge”, or “forgive others” etc. By those critical of any value in religious expression it is rightly weighed by the lived quality of these characteristics. Often, Judaism has shamefully been characterised in the negative, such prejudicial characterisation rightly called ‘antisemitism’. I wish to do the reverse, to speak of the essential virtue of Judaism which has clearly been abandoned by the State of Israel. (more…)
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Amidst strategic stalemate, Ukraine war remains Vatican priority
Two years since the Russian invasion, Ukraine has faded from the headlines. But not in the Vatican and for the man who might be the next Pope. (more…)
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Here, while others are not: A meditation on peacebuilding
When our father was one of those Australian soldiers fleeing the advancing Nazi army in Greece, an aircraft suddenly appeared. He jumped into a ditch on one side of the road. Others of his mates jumped into a ditch on the other side of the road. The guns in the plane killed all those on the other side of the road. Hence, we are here with our children and grandchildren…and others are not here. (more…)
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Vatican – Israel rupture over Gaza
The invasion of Gaza, described by Pope Francis as ‘terrorism’, is causing strained relationships between Israel and the Vatican. (more…)
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The perfect recipe for a real antisemitism crisis
If I wanted to increase antisemitism, I imagine I’d do a lot of really evil stuff under a Star of David flag while adamantly insisting that my actions are inseparable from the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. I’d kill children by the thousands and commit genocidal atrocities. (more…)
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Pope Francis would find PNG refugee conditions an eye-opener
In December, an impressive young Papua New Guinean named Jason Siwat, the director of the refugee program for the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and the Solomon Islands, travelled to Canberra bearing two important documents. (more…)
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The materialisation of Chinese Christianity
As the Lunar New Year approaches, many Chinese families clean the front door of their home and hang poetry around it. This is a rich and age-old Chinese tradition, both cultural and religious. (more…)
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Why is Christian persecution often met with indifference?
It has never been more dangerous to be a Christian than today. According to the newly released 2024 World Watch List – an authoritative survey by Open Doors, an organisation that supports persecuted Christians – 365 million Christians, or one in seven, are at high or extreme risk of persecution every day because of their faith. (more…)
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The agony of Michael Gawenda
Michael Gawenda, former editor of The Age and Walkley award-winning journalist, published his memoir ‘My Life as a Jew’ last year. Actually, it’s only part memoir, since much of it is reserved for polemics against Jews and Gentiles who are critical of Israel. The rest traces his life journey from an anti-Zionist Bundist youth to his current “familial” love for Israel and the Jewish people. (more…)
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Division, terrible suffering, and learnings about peacebuilding
Amplified by the terrible sufferings in many places, and by the divided voices, especially as regards Israel/Gaza, we have some learnings about peacebuilding that it might be timely to reflect on. ‘Cease-fire,’ of course, is just a less vivid way of saying ‘we will stop killing people we don’t know.’ (more…)
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Efforts to suppress Palestinian history defeated
From the first days in their Jewish day schools and youth organisations, young Jews are drilled with the lie that Palestine was ‘a land without people for a people without a land’. From its inception, the Zionist movement has sought to suppress Palestinian history and narratives. Whenever there are exhibitions or events or publications featuring Palestinian artists, writers or speakers, there is a huge geschrei from the usual suspects in the Zionist propaganda machine, protesting at this example of ‘antisemitism’. (more…)
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The need for theological reform
In the mid-1980s when I was at Boston College, a Jesuit university, one of the lecturers commented that the Catholic Church hierarchy was fearful of a schism in the church. Too late, he remarked, it is already here, informally. He pointed out that the majority of students at that Catholic university no longer believed the traditional story of a heavenly deity who locked people out of heaven because of the first humans’ disobedience. He also observed that they no longer attended the Church’s liturgy because its imagery and language are steeped in that story. (more…)
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Blue Christmas
A Meditation for Those who are Grieving Loss during this Christmas Season, 2023 (more…)
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Suffer the little children to come unto me…
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children that Israelis keep killing time and time again. It is part of what Israelis calls ‘mowing the grass’. (more…)
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Losing my religion
Theology has long been used to justify war. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it’s happening again in the Middle East. (more…)
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The relational consequences of October 7
Overhead, suddenly, there was a noisy helicopter. I didn’t look up. Then I noticed that I hadn’t looked up. If I was in a place of terror from the sky, I would have looked up. (more…)
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The day after: Destroying Gaza will only yield future war
At the core of the cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine is “the studied blindness of two people to see the other, to accept that they have a legitimate place on the landscape”. Without such acceptance, this horrific war in Gaza will not be the last. (more…)
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Enemy twins: Israel and Hamas unite to massacre innocents
Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel as a state is as absurd as Israel’s belief that the current massacre of Palestinians will destroy Hamas. If all this were mere stupidity it would be bad enough, but the consequent violence against innocent people is extreme and it is accelerating. (more…)
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Israel does not have the right to ‘defend itself’
Over the last few weeks we have been bombarded with a number of assertions,advanced firstly as mere mantra, but then appearing as axioms, or self-evident truths.Israel has a right to defend itself; and Israel has a right to exist. I wish to question whether these two statements are as axiomatic as our Prime Minister and our Foreign Minister apparently assume. (more…)
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Massacre of the Innocents
The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most. What we see on our TV screens every night is impossible to watch. Did Netanyahu see the young lad who had just carried the decapitated body of his friend from the rubble. If so, what did he think? He almost certainly thought the same as Natali Bennet the former Israeli prime minister who said to a reporter on Sky News: “Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? We’re fighting Nazis”. (more…)
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Hoping against hope: The Synodal process and prospects for equality for women in the church
The most pressing challenge for the Catholic Church remains addressing women’s inequality in its ranks. The current Synod on Synodality offers some hope, but there are huge roadblocks. The likelihood of equality for women in the Church requires a leap of faith, extremely long-term thinking, and hoping against hope. I cannot see it happening in my lifetime. (more…)
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Israel has “Form” and much of it is brutal
Albert Einstein once said that Palestinians (Jews, Christians and Muslims alike) lived in peace and worked together before the European Jews were sent to Palestine. He also said that if Jews could not co-exist peacefully with Arabs “then we have learnt nothing in 2000 years of civilisation”. (more…)
