25 April, 2024
Dear Reader,
‘You just couldn’t make it up!’
How often we hear that remark spluttering from the lips of some acquaintance who has just learned of the latest absurdity from one of the groups or agencies charged with the reform of our allegedly corrupt post-colonial society.
In reality, though, you could make it up, and many comedians actually did. Here is the Monty Python team making out a case for ‘gender transitioning’ as early as 1979. The same sort of language is in use today, though stripped of any whiff of levity. And here isthe cast of Yes Minister (1986) considering the ideal qualifications of a bishop in the poor old Church of England. There’s more of the same here. It’s wicked satire, too cruel and unkind in parts, but satisfying when we sense, as we often do, that at least some of the mockery is justified.
Foretelling the fantasies of social restructuring has always been well within the range of human imagination, but what we could never have predicted 40 or 50 years ago was that a time would come when a minority of people, having forgotten or perhaps never having understood humour and irony, could so control public opinion as to try to turn fantasy into reality.
THE COLLOQUIUM 6 JULY
We have firm offers of papers from Steven Schwartz, Karl Schmude and Anna Krohn. Others are under consideration but we are keen to attract more submissions. The detailed Call for Papers document is the final item of this newsletter.
MAKING ENDS MEET
The Dawson Centre has never made strident financial demands on its readers and supporters. Our newsletters are free and always will be for anyone who cares to read them. One of the reasons for our restraint in this matter is the generosity of our Patron and donors in keeping us afloat. But we must be more proactive: we need to think to the future and to recognise that old-fashioned face-to-face summer schools have declining attraction in a digital world, especially when they are taught in remote Tasmania! We need to consider doing more work on the mainland and beyond, and to teach some courses online. Travel is expensive, and online teaching must be technically perfect and polished if it is not to look amateurish.
We have tried unsuccessfully to claim tax deductibility, so can offer no benefit there. But even without that incentive we ask you to consider supporting us if you are not already doing so. Here are some options:
- Donate, using the charitable site GiveSendGo.
- Donate by choosing one of the options on our own website.
- Become a Friend of Christopher Dawson by making a single one-off donation – write to me for more details.
- Vigorously encourage your friends and colleagues to subscribe (free of charge) to our newsletter.
- And if you are a believer, pray for an increase of wisdom and respect for truth in public life that would make much of what we do redundant!
I write this on ANZAC Day. Observing this day with gratitude and due reflection is the best and most inclusive Recognition of Country there is.
Lest We Forget!
With best wishes for all,
David Daintree
FOR FURTHER READING
‘RESISTING WOKENESS’
Andrew Doyle (aka Titania McGrath) interviews Douglas Murray, at the Battle of Ideas Festival, London November 2019.
A REVOLUTION IN THOUGHT?
Iain McGilchrist is an academic, psychiatrist and a profound original thinker who thinks that a better understanding of the relationship between the left and right hemispheres of the brain may be the most effective means of surviving the current cultural metacrisis. This talk is challenging in length and content, but surprisingly easy to understand. That’s the mark of a very good teacher.
‘OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND SUCKLINGS’
… and of atheists and lesbians too? Camille Paglia is the author of The Joy of Presbyterian Sex, a sharply witty critique of liberal protestant ethics in which she shows herself to be, though not a believer, a firm intellectual ally of orthodox Christianity. We tried to find it online, but could discover only this useful review.
THE ANTI-MALE AGENDA
This site is a useful corrective to prevailing opinion on domestic violence.
QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT BACKS OFF HOME-SCHOOLING
A plan to intervene to ban ‘gendered language’ and enforce adherence to the national curriculum has been thwarted by home schooling parents. This is evidence that ordinary people can still push back against excessive interference by government in family life.
COMING EVENTS
MELBOURNE TUESDAY 21 MAY
FREE SPEECH UNION OF AUSTRALIA
Symposium on Intellectual Freedom in the Academy
The symposium will be held in conjunction with a speech by Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Prof Salvatore Babones will chair the event.
BRISBANE SATURDAY 1 JUNE
Classical Education: Making a Comeback. Seminar and Dinner in collaboration with LOGOS AUSTRALIS and the Australian Classical Education Society. The keynote speaker will be Andrew Kern, founder and president of the US CIRCE INSTITUTE. FULL DETAILS AND BOOKINGS HERE. Discounted early-bird rates are available until 6 May.
…AND IN SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE –
Andrew Kern and Katerina Hamilton will present a range of talks in Sydney and Melbourne as well as in Brisbane. They will lead Classical teaching seminars for teachers/home educators in all centres. DETAILS HERE.
HOBART, LATE JUNE
Toby Young, British controversial social commentator, founder and director of the UK Free Speech Union, associate editor of The Spectator is hopefully coming to Hobart in late June. Details are being worked out – more news soon.
FOR NEXT YEAR’S DIARY: ROME, JULY 2025
We are in conversation with Campion College about holding a joint residential Summer School in Latin and one other discipline in July next year. The duration is likely to be about two weeks. Previous Campion Rome summer schools have offered a choice of two parallel courses: the first option being Latin, or an alternative in Literature, History or Philosophy. The second option for 2025 is still to be determined. Watch this space!
HOBART SATURDAY 6 JULY
COLLOQUIUM 2024
The Ninth Dawson Centre Colloquium, Saturday 6 July 2024
Authentic Humanism
and the Crisis of Culture
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-disantintellectual 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, propose practical strategies for 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. Those intending to offer a paper should supply the following:
- The title of your paper
- A brief abstract (50 – 150 words)
- A brief bio or CV (50 – 150 words)
- A hi-res passport style photo
Proposals should be sent to Dr David Daintree, Director, Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies director@dawsoncentre.org, 0408 87 9494.