In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh McKay, the Australian social researcher outlines the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1]  Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly.  So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be.  And all of his means 90%…

Jesus was a great storyteller, and as a storyteller of his time in 1st centrury Palestine he knew the means that a storyteller used to convey the meaning of what he wished ot share.  One of those techniques is hyperbole: something is overstated to make a point. It was an excellent technique in an oral culture, used to the art of storytelling. The hyperbole, itself, is not to be taken literally. People would go away and remember the over-statement and in time understand what was being said underneath. The use of juxtaposition is another technique: two statements are put aside each other, one informing and opening the meaning of the other. We…

The famous anthropologist of the 20th century, Margaret Mead was once asked what sign we had about when civilization began.  The expectation was that her reply would concern the discovery of some ancient artefact such as a tool, or a weapon, or a segment of art.  Instead, she simply replied, “a healed femur.” A healed femur bone is the sign we have of the beginnings of civilization.  Why did Mead claim this?  She claimed this because for the first time we had an indication that a community had cared for someone.  Previously, there would be no evidence of a healed femur, for the person who had experienced a broken femur would be left to die. There comes…

Many years ago there was quite a popular film that was made called, “Dead Poets Society.”  It starred Robyn Williams as a slightly eccentric schoolteacher – if ‘slight’ can ever be used to describe Robyn William’s eccentricity.  At this school, though, he mentored a group of students into realising their potential.  The catchcry of the film, Carpe Diem, “Seize the Day”, became somewhat famous in itself and got to be widely used.   The film was very much a portrayal of the philosophy of Henry Thoreau.  Thoreau was a well-known American humanist philosopher of the 19th century. His famous work was called, Walden, and was an account of him leaving the city and retiring to the side of…

How would we describe the most precious, the most valuable thing in our possession?  What would be the thing that we would not exchange for any amount of money or satisfaction?  In other words, what is of the greatest value for us?  Years ago, there was a wealthy man who, with his devoted young son, shared a passion for art collecting.  Together they travelled around the world, adding only the finest art treasures to their collection. The widowed man looked on with satisfaction as his only child became an experienced art collector.  One winter though war broke out and the young man left to fight in battle.  Only after a few short weeks, his father…

If we were to ask ourselves what personal characteristics we would most value about ourselves, I doubt that many of us would answer ‘dependency’.  We live in a culture which prizes anything but dependency.  Independence, autonomy, self-reliance are the things that we aspire to for ourselves and that we like to see in other people.  Further, in recent times we have coined a whole lot of phrases and words that make us even more suspicious of the experience of dependency:  we speak of ‘dependent relationships,’ of people just acting out of their dependencies, and we speak of the phenomenon of ‘co-dependency’ and all it variations. In short dependency does not have much sale value…

Some twenty-five years ago I completed my Master’s thesis in Theology.  When the title of the thesis was read out at the Graduation Ceremony everyone laughed. I don’t think that they were laughing at me in particular, but the title of the thesis was so incomprehensible to everyone that it certainly drew a chuckle from the audience.  The title was “Manifestation of the Other: A Study of David Tracy’s Heterology.”  Perhaps it is no wonder it drew a gasp of incomprehension.  What was the thesis all about?  Well, through the 1980s and 1990s David Tracy was a philosopher of religion writing out of Chicago.  He was a writer who sought to address the question of how…

One of the most important things we can learn about the gospels is about the nature of the language that the writers use.  It is the language of parables – a language, it seems, favoured by Jesus himself.  Jesus was a great teacher as we know.  He was a great storyteller and he constantly uses stories to communicate his message.  But the parables are not simply stories.  A parable is very particular kind of story:  it is a story that is designed to confuse us, to unsettle us, even in some cases, to shock us.  This tendency to confuse, to unsettle, to shock is at the heart of the parables.  The point in the confusion is that a…

As most weeks draw to their end, we can often feel somewhat fragmented.  It’s been a difficult week at work; we haven’t achieved all that we would like to, there have been issues at home, at school.  The world is full of dismay!  In our own way each of us asks, “Where is the Spirit of God in all of this?”  Where is the Spirit which Jesus has promised us?  Where is the Gift of God’s life that we celebrate in this great festival of Pentecost?  How is the Spirit of God given to us in the daily struggle of our lives, and in our effort to make sense of all that threatens to fragment our life?” If only the Spirit…

One of the lines that we often hear in political life is the claim that an action or a particular policy was pursued because, “it was the right thing to do.”  The assertion seems to justify all manner of decisions and it is given out in such a way to counter all opposing arguments such that the alleged rightness being claimed is simply given as fact.  The process by which the determination that something has been right’ is arrived at is, of course, never explained.  “I did it because it simply was the right thing to do, and I require no further justification,” seems to be the implication. Hearing this assertion a number…