By John Bottomley The Australian church and the nation both face difficult times. National reconciliation, the place of worship in contemporary mission, injustice at work through work-related death, grief, and bullying, the tension between business and theological understandings of corporate governance, and the suffering brought by post-traumatic stress to victims and perpetrators of violence – [...]
Bishop Vincent Long launched Social Justice by Fr Bruce Duncan on 1 March at the Cardinal Knox Centre in Melbourne. Bishop Long studied with Bruce at Yarra Theological College more than 20 years ago. Speaking to an audience of about 60 people, Bishop Long said: “This book shows how concern for social justice is central [...]
A review by Kevin Peoples of Frank Mount’s book, Wrestling with Asia: A Memoir Astonishing account of Santamaria organisations in South-East Asia Frank Mount’s account of working for B A Santamaria in Asia will surprise many people greatly by the extent and influence of this anti-communist network. In Wrestling with Asia: A Memoir (Connor Court [...]
A review essay by Len Puglisi. If you’ve ever had doubts about what (1) the economic rationalist / neoliberal ethos, or (2) corporate-consumerist capitalism might mean for an Australia inside a mining boom as the dominant driver, look no further than this book by Sharyn Munro. Munro has undertaken a wide-ranging spread of on-the-ground interviews with [...]
By Kevin Peoples. Melbourne John Garrattt Publishing 2012. Bruce Duncan at Albert Park 29 April 2012. Kevin Peoples has written a truly remarkable book, shedding light on one of the most perplexing periods in our nation’s short history and on its religious and social movements. Kevin writes that in his youth he was “prone to [...]
Joseph E Stiglitz et al, The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis (New York: Free Press, 2010) pp. xxxii + 204. Joseph Stiglitz has emerged as one of the foremost economists today and in this 2010 Report has detailed what needs to be done [...]
Among the many analyses of the Global Financial Crisis, Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall is one of the most outstanding. It traces how the crisis occurred, despite urgent warnings from himself and others (including Nouriel Roubini, George Soros and Robert Shiller), and gives a stinging indictment of the ideology behind the free-market policies that impelled the economic [...]
Reviewed by Dr Bruce Duncan CSsR This is an important book about how Catholic Social Teaching could or should adapt to the vastly different cultural and social situations in diverse parts of the world. Though not entirely new, the current processes ofglobalisation have pressed this adaptation urgently. While the book focuses on Catholic social thought, [...]
With no hint of regret or apology, former Prime Minister John Howard has defended his decision to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In John Howard: Lazarus Rising (2010), Howard argues that the US Administration believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that he could supply to terrorists. In other words, the decision was [...]
by Jeffrey Sachs UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, appointed Sachs to coordinate the very large group of economists working to develop and detail the Millennium Development Goals. Despite the problems with climate change, Sachs argues that the world can still make unprecedented progress in eliminating hunger and the most acute poverty. Click here to read [...]
