My last public appearance for the Thomas More Centre in 2024 was a joyful one. It started with an invitation from Katrina Currell (from St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Timboon) to talk about the vision and the work of the Thomas More Centre with representatives from Christian churches in the southwestern Victorian town of Timboon. It…
In an intriguing and lyrical short poem, the Nobel Prize-winning, Anglo-Irish, Celtic-revivalist poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) in The Seven Sages grazes over the passing on of tangible wisdom, humility and narrative from one generation to the next. In the poem Yeats published in 1933 after the bloody Civil War in Ireland, he sets up…
The weeks in the wake of the American celebration of Thanksgiving are always salutary for us in Australia. We so often think of ourselves as self-made or we take our good fortune lazily for granted. Actually, it is impossible to take the life of the Thomas More Centre for granted. There have been so many…
In 1989, the writer Paul Gray published an intriguing interview in the AD2000 journal in which he asks the great agnostic late 20th-century Polish philosopher, Leszek Kołakowski (1927-2009), to comment upon the state and role of the Catholic Church. He answered plainly that the role of the Church was “the salvation of souls” and that…
In a simple brochure about the Thomas More Centre, we try to convey something of a potted overview of the mission and aims of the TMC. We explain that the TMC is a “formational movement” that aims to foster “the common good” in the development of an “integrated and balanced Christian humanism and social ethics”. Some people…
Great public intellectuals are not common in the self-consciously pragmatic culture of Australia. Even rarer is it to find a philosopher who draws from an unapologetically faith-informed mind and hope-guided experience of long-term chronic pain and illness. The late, widely revered Catholic ethicist, Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini (July 5, 1956 – November 7, 2014) was a…
This week, we’re taking the opportunity to provide an update concerning TMC events, courses, and interviews. UPCOMING EVENTS BRISBANE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27 – TALK ON COURAGE. Dr Craig Heilman will be giving a TMC talk at Indooroopilly Library entitled, “The Virtue of Courage: Can it Still be Found?” Dr Heilmann received his doctorate from Duke University,…
A series of original and helpful travel books include those written by the artist, photographer and writer, the English-born Siobhan Wall. The books are all headed by the word “quiet” – hence her books include: Quiet London, Quiet New York, Quiet Barcelona and variations on that theme. What is so refreshing about the series is…
The most recent Thomas More Centre event in Melbourne had a positively festive air. For so many years, many of our friends in Melbourne have lived under a type of existential pall. So many factors have come together to weave this cloth. To name but a few of these: the depressing economic and social consequences…
Realistic hope has been a feature of the early years and founders of the Thomas More Centre. It was a hope carried on by the pursuit of deep faith, intelligent discussion and rich friendships. We aim to carry that on today. Sometimes, that involves working hard to build up scarce resources and to run events…