On Tuesday this week, I was very honoured to be invited to speak with the newly formed young women’s discussion group that met at Campion College in Sydney. We unpacked the lapidary term, “the culture of life”, first coined by Pope St John Paul II in his encyclical on the vital interaction between theology, Christian…
In 1994, Pope John Paul II was everywhere. In this year, he shored up his work on the nature of moral theology from the year before, evangelised on the dignity of the person, established diplomatic relations with Israel and underlined the importance of the family (it being the United Nations International Year of the Family).…
There is a sense of national and personal shock around Australia this week. Six people (five women and a man) and their attacker at the Bondi Junction knife attack are dead. Each death, including that of the disturbed attacker, sends ripples of tragedy into their families and friends. Many people, including a nine-month-old baby, are…
“For if you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.” (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Humanitarianism and Strength, c. 1908) This telling comment, like so many by G.K. Chesterton, comes from an article invariably dashed off in haste by him for a deadline for…
Unfortunately, we don’t have Anna writing our newsletter this week. Many of you have written to say how much you enjoy her reflections, and we hope to publish them all on a blog soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to access any of the past newsletters, we’ve put them all in one easily accessible…
I have been surprised and delighted to meet with and hear from some of the first generation of Thomas More Centre participants. Now some of these men and women have growing adolescent and young adult children of their own. They recount memories of their TMC Summer School encounters which ran from 1989 into the mid-2000s.…
St Thomas More, our centre’s titular inspiration and patron saint, was a master of words across a number of tongues. He was a prodigious letter writer, a poet, a composer of prayers, an orator and a legislator. Thomas More was not a mere literary stylist. He had an attention and devotion to the truth and…
“He was shocked by their mediocrity, cultural and spiritual. He could not understand why these young priests were setting out to make a professional career of clerical advancement. He rarely discovered one with an “authentic passion for study. They were so little curious to understand the ways of God in their spiritual lives.”– Fr Peter…
The activity of the Thomas More Centre in the online space is picking up! Two interviews – one with Alex Dee and the other with Larry Chapp – have been posted to our YouTube channel, while three more interviews are due to be posted over the next three weeks. These will be with Kees de Groot…
Our mission at the Thomas More Centre is to promote the enduring tradition of Christian intellectual, cultural, and contemplative thought. To this end, we are fostering open-minded and stimulating conversations about subjects that concern the human condition and the common good. Because personal connection is important, we are establishing physical ‘hubs’ around Australia in which…