We don’t need to be following the news for very long without coming to the recognition that evil exists.  However, of course, evil not only exists in the situations of notoriety that occur in the world.  We also know that evil exists in ourselves, even if in more subtle ways:  when we do not treat others as their dignity deserves; when we use others for our own purposes; when we forget the accountability that is placed on each of us to live with integrity and truthfulness. Perhaps when we focus on our own failings, we can tend to underestimate the presence and activity of evil. Evil, though, is a genuine force that we…

The Australian social researcher, Hugh Mackay once gave a reflection on how difficult it is to get other people to hear what we are trying to say.[1]  As he observed, how many times have we said in frustration, “If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a hundred times.  It just seems to go in one ear and out the other!”  As Mackay says, what we may be really saying, of course, is, “Guess what, I know a message that never works.  It doesn’t seem to matter how often I say it; it never has any effect on the people I’m talking to.  But I don’t give up easily.  It’s such a good message that I’m…

On this first week in July the Church in Australia celebrates National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday. This annual celebration is an opportunity to acknowledge the contribution that Indigenous Australians make to our experience of the Transcendent and to faith in this ancient land. As Deacon Boniface Perdjert from Wadeye, in the Northern Territory, and who passed away last year, commented once “Deep down, we Aborigines are religious people. We did not have many material goods, but we are rich with spiritual goods. It is this strong religious side that made us.  It gave us our identity, our dignity, our self-assurance.  My People existed here in Australia thousands of years before Abraham.  In all…

Even the COVID19 pandemic does not seem to have eased negative publicity about the Church. It was curious to see articles recently in the media questioning the Church’s engagement of the Government’s JobKeeper scheme. As a religious practitioner, I am eligible for the Jobkeeper payment. I have also chosen to donate this to our First Collection to supplement the loss of income by the parish suffered because of the pandemic. Though this is entirely legal, ethical and transparent, the media’s attempt to make it into something otherwise shows how the Church struggles both to retain and to promote its credibility in society.  In the face of such negative social scrutiny,…

Some years ago, I had a friend working as a legal assistant in the refugee camps that sprang up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s. Every morning he travelled over by ferry to the islands on which the camps were situated to spend the day explaining international law to the refugees and trying to work out how their story might relate to their cause. Along the way, he wrote to me this moving story: “At Chim A Wan detention centre, Pham van Ai and I interviewed a woman who had been forced into prostitution in Vietnam. In fact, she did this in order to repay a loan she…

The Irish used to have a saying, “It is the Mass that matters.”  For them, recovering particularly from the Great Potato Famine in the 19th century, the Eucharist was the great source of identity in an environment that was incredibly oppressive. The celebration of the Mass was the rock of their existence in a sea of social hostility which threatened to engulf them.  We recall even the famous Mass rocks ‑ those rocks on which Masses were celebrated set out in the countryside away from the detection of the English invaders. The saying, “It is the Mass that matters” followed the Irish Diaspora to our own shores where the Eucharist has continued to…

The architect of the Parliament building in Canberra, Romaldo Giurgola was, apparently, fond of saying “great buildings begin with great ideas.”  In other words, if you can’t imagine the possibilities first, the end result will not be all that significant.  “Great buildings begin with great ideas.”  It’s an observation that underscores the power and the importance of the imagination in our life. “You must give birth to your images,” wrote Rilke. “They are the future waiting to be born.  Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future must enter into you long before it happens.”[1]  The future begins in our imagination, in the images that we carry deep within us.   We are often used to downplaying our imagination.…

There is a perspective in theology that regards the event of Pentecost as the birth of the Church.  On this day, the Spirit is poured out on the disciples.  They are released from their disillusionments and their fears; they are enSpirited and emboldened to go out and to preach the good news that the life of Christ is more powerful than death, that the self-sacrifice of his love has overpowered the forces of selfishness and suspicion, that the future stretches out beyond us as a constant invitation full of possibility.  Our dead ends have become new beginnings; our sunsets have been changed into dawns. Yes, on this day the Spirit overwhelms our timidity,…

I chanced to read recently that there is nothing more intimate nor more remote as the face of a lover.  It brought to mind the observation of the French writer, Jean Mambrino in which he prays, “You wanted me to tell you once more about the interval that brings us together. I need that interval to be, to become. It is the interval which frees you. It arouses your desire, opens your countenance.”[1]  Mambrino was speaking of a core tension in our life, the tension between absence and presence.  We need both in order to understand ourselves and one another.  Yes, in the bonds that join us to each other absence can become a way of…