The German writer, Deitrich Bonheoffer gave us the distinction between what he called, on the one hand, ‘cheap grace’ and, on the other, ‘costly grace.’ Writing in Germany in the 1930s he lamented the way in which the Christian Churches had so accommodated themselves to the prevailing currents as to have lost their genuine sense of discipleship of the Risen Lord. Of course, this is always a tendency for us. we struggle to hear the Word of God with clarity because of the chatter in which we are immersed. We begin to become seduced by many other words and narratives. The Canadian philosopher of religion, Charles Taylor, especially, has highlighted…

In the film, “Emerald City” David Williamson has one of the characters declare, “No-one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life – it’s getting yourself a water frontage. People devote a lifetime to the quest.”  This may be, in part, due to the origins of Sydney itself.  Outside the Sydney Hospital on the Macquarie Street footpath is a small plaque commemorating the site of the first hospital in Sydney, built by two businessmen in exchange for rum licenses.  Thus it began, and thus it continues.  Thomas Kenneally wrote in his early account of the city, The Commonwealth of Thieves: “Both our hedonism and our conservatism . . . derived from Georgian England rather…

On Christmas Eve, the week before last, I gathered the children who were present at our Mass and I told them a story from far away Russia. It was the story of Babouska who, having met the wise men on their search for the newborn Christ, now goes in search of the Christ Child herself: “She travels on and on and on for years and years – but she never finds the little Christ-Child.  They say that old Babouscka is travelling still, looking for Him. When it comes Christmas Eve, and the children are lying fast asleep, Babouscka comes softly through the towns, wrapped in her long cloak and carrying her basket…

At the Law Institute in Melbourne there is a restaurant called, “The Bottle and the Snail.”  It is named after a famous law case in the early 1930s, the case of Donoghue and Stevenson.[1]  A young lady had drunk a bottle of ginger beer and as she was finishing it discovered a snail at the bottom of the bottle.  Within a few days she had fallen sick, but at the time there was no legal apparatus by which which could gain any kind of compensation.  Eventually the case was taken all the way to the English House of Lords which accepted the principle in common law which is now the basis of all compensation…