HOBART 4 APRIL: GRAHAM LINEHAN

Irish writer Graham Linehan is to speak in Hobart Town Hall on Thursday 4 April. Linehan is best known as the scriptwriter of the comedy series Father Ted.  Linehan’s opinion of the Catholic Church is pretty negative, as viewers of Father Ted will quickly gather, but he has been ‘cancelled’ for his opposition to transgenderism and the Dawson Centre is proud to support the Free Speech Union of Australia in co-sponsoring his visit.  LATE NEWS: Linehan’s visa application has been delayed and he may not be allowed in.  We should be surprised to hear that, but sadly we are not.  We’ll provide confirmation and details when we can.

HOBART 5-6 APRIL – LAUNCESTON 12-13 APRIL

SPIRITUAL CULTURAL POLITICAL REFORMATION

These conferences organised by the Christian evangelical organisation Church and State are coming to Tasmania next month.  They have been hugely successful interstate.  The Director will be one of the speakers in Hobart on 4 April.  

BRISBANE SATURDAY 1 JUNE

Seminar and dinner in collaboration with the Australian Classical Education Society. The keynote speaker will be Andrew Kern, founder and president of the US Circe Institute.  We are still finalising details – more information soon.

COLLOQUIUM 2024

The 2024 Colloquium will be on SATURDAY 6 JULY

Topic:  Authentic Humanism and the Crisis of Culture

The after-dinner speaker this year will be Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz AM FASSA, formerly Vice-Chancellor of three universities (Brunel, Murdoch and Macquarie) and currently Senior Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies

21 July, 2022

Last Saturday’s Colloquium was the big event of our year.  It lived up to our expectations and indeed soared beyond: all papers were well and evenly matched in their force and relevance.  

Putting to one side for a moment our due sense of triumph on the conclusion of an intensely engaging conference, I cannot fail to observe that much was said there had the power to depress and sadden us.  The awful truth is that when ten experts in their several fields talk about freedom of speech and religion today, a certain gloom settles upon their audience: traditional rights of expression and even the law itself are yielding to the power of wokery in western countries. 

Not only is free speech curtailed, but being merely suspected of harbouring inappropriate thoughts can be dangerous.  Jobs have been lost, livelihoods destroyed, for the expression of errant ideas.  ‘Sadly, you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home’, said former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Trigg in 2017.  ‘Sadly,’ mark you!  Can this really be happening?  Do many of our nation’s leaders and law-enforcers actually regret that intimate conversation within the family circle cannot be placed under surveillance – yet – and duly corrected or even penalized?  Sadly it appears to be so.  A totalitarian impulse within certain sections of western democratic society looks to be well entrenched, a longing to control, a nostalgia for the powers to which the privileged have always felt themselves entitled.

So much for sadness and depression.  Confidence and optimism overwhelm gloom, and the sun shines more brightly when you can see more clearly what you have to face and have an informed hope of winning the war, even if some skirmishes don’t go our way.  For a start, most of those present at the colloquium have firm confidence in the Grace of God and the certainty of final victory.  Another source of encouragement was the opinion expressed by several speakers that the gulf between actuality and delusion has widened now almost to breaking point, and that the whole woke myth based on the false creed that you are what you think you are will sooner or later implode under the sheer weight of its own nonsense, as ordinary people wake up, speak out and take strength from each other.  

I suppose the longing to see our dreams come true is a perfectly normal human tendency, particularly among children.  But its continuation into adulthood seems to be a peculiar weakness of our own times, helped along perhaps over the last several decades by those sweet, beguiling words of Walt Disney:

‘Makes no difference who you are,

Anything your heart desires will come to you…

…When you wish upon a star

Your dreams come true.’

Brought up on that sort of thing, as so many of us have been, it’s easy to believe that we can be male or female, black or white, or that unborn babies are not really human, or anything else we want –  and that mere wishing can make it so.

For the first time we videoed everything and will soon upload all presentations to our YouTube channel.  The proceedings will also be published in book form later this year.

The Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium,

Saturday 6 July 2024

Authentic Humanism and the Crisis of Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies is an independent, not-for-profit think tank, dedicated to promoting enhanced awareness of the riches of the Christian Intellectual and Cultural Tradition.

Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) is considered to have been the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century.  He is principally known for his powerful defence of the vital role of the Christian religion as a central strand of Western culture, but he also insists –

‘It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’

We in the Dawson Centre believe that every civilisation is shaped by a religious impulse, something fundamental to and inseparable from human nature, and that civilisations wither when this impulse is smothered or suppressed.  In the twentieth century, and perhaps even more now, we have seen that nexus between Religion and Culture, between Faith and Reason, challenged by tyrannical forces of both the Right and the Left. 

Not only is the belief in God as our ultimate reality widely denied, but our confidence in objective truth, goodness and beauty has been dealt a near fatal blow by the soi-disant intellectual elites that dominate the educational high ground.  Our young people must be saved from this.

On Saturday 6 July the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies will host its ninth annual colloquium in Hobart, Tasmania.   The Dawson Colloquium is a conversation, rather than a multi-stream conference.  There are no keynote speeches, as all are considered important to the flow of ideas, and speakers are encouraged to attend all papers.  

The Colloquium will be held again at the Italian Club, 77 Federal Street, North Hobart.  The after-dinner speaker this year will be Emeritus Professor Steven Schwartz AM FASSA, formerly Vice-Chancellor of three universities (Brunel, Murdoch and Macquarie) and currently Senior Fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite submissions from persons interested in addressing the topic.  Speakers should not only identify and evaluate threats to the Christian culture and humanism, our common heritage, but propose practical strategies for its preservation and restoration.  

Total time allocation for each paper will be 45 minutes, which should include time for questions and discussion (the proportion at each presenter’s discretion).  Proceedings will be recorded and posted on the internet, and published late in 2024 or early 2025.  A submission implies consent to online and print publication.

Proposals should be sent to Dr David Daintree, Director, Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies director@dawsoncentre.org, 0408 87 9494.