15 April, 2021
COLLOQUIUM 25-26 JUNE 2021 REGISTER HERE
Dear Reader,
This Dawson Centre newsletter appears every two weeks or so. We try not to crowd your inbox, and our content is deliberately kept brief and, I hope, snappy. Nor do we seek to charge a fee or subscription.
Our brief is to champion and advance the good name of the Catholic intellectual tradition, but not to evangelize (that is the proper métier of others). We insist instead that there is no conflict between Faith and Reason, and we point to the vast number of people throughout history – scientists, philosophers, artists and thinkers of all kinds – who have been faithful Christians. While our foundation has been linked to the Catholic Church we are proud to include among our readership people from the Protestant and Orthodox Christian traditions, from Judaism and Islam, as well as people who have no religious faith but who nevertheless value the inherited wisdom and experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
We go further than this, and insist as Christopher Dawson and many others have done, that an authentic and moral civilization cannot survive without religion. Religion is not an impediment to living a Good Life; it is essential. The civilization that loses its soul is doomed to a shadowy fate. It is true that Christianity is no longer the dominant influence in Western life, that there is growing hostility to it, and that many good men and women insist that they can live full and ethical lives without it, but we have all inherited a great deal of moral capital – instinctive standards of decent behaviour – from our faithful predecessors. We are likely to find that a faithless age cannot replace capital that has been squandered. No amount of mere legislation or funding or tinkering with our institutions or re-writing our curricula is going to solve the woes of the West. There is a deep need at the heart of mankind for radical amendment: St Augustine got it in one: ‘you made us for yourself, o Lord, and our hearts are troubled till they find their rest in you.’
With best wishes at Eastertide to all our readers,
David Daintree
BIAS IN THE NATIONAL BROADCASTER
Gerard Henderson takes a critical look at the ABC. The Dawson Centre is conservative, but sharply disassociates itself from any political affiliations, either of the left or the right. But we deplore the lack of balance in reporting and commend this article.
BEING THE PARENT OF A TRANSITIONING BOY
This article from Quillette examines in depth (it’s the first of four) and with great empathy the difficulties faced by parents in that situation.
IMPORTANT NEW WEBSITE
Politics & Civilization is the name of a website established this month by former state and federal Labor politician Peter Baldwin. It aims to ‘explore the interplay between current political debates and the broader changes affecting liberal-democratic societies, what are often termed civilizational issues’.
COMING EVENTS in HOBART
BOOK LAUNCH
Senator Claire Chandler will launch Kevin Donnelly’s new collection of Essays Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March at dinner, 6.00 pm, Thursday 20 May, Hotel Soho, Davey Street, Hobart. BOOK HERE NOW. Copies of the book are now on sale here.
COLLOQUIUM 2021
Our annual conference originally scheduled for 2020 will now take place on 25–26 June 2021.
Venue: Jane Franklin Hall, South Hobart.
The theme will be secondary education, with a particular focus on the development of the spiritual and religious dimension of human nature.
Papers include:
Kenneth Crowther
Whose Culture, Which Liberal Arts?
This paper discusses the obstacles experienced by a P-12 school in attempting to implement a Liberal Arts approach to education.
Kevin Donnelly
Virtues not Values
School education, especially education involving Christian schools, must reassert the central importance of virtues within an an increasingly secular, materialistic age where too many students leave schools morally and spiritually adrift.
Fadi Elbarbar
See, Judge, Act: A Lens for Remembering and Living the Good News.
This paper will argue that the best way to introduce (or reintroduce) adolescents to the Church is through social justice, but that social justice without a proper framework may ‘feel good’ for a time but lacks staying power.
Gerard Gaskin
Catholic Education and the Ascendance of Christian Culture.
Where Catholic education returns to its biblical roots and acknowledges its immense cultural patrimony it always becomes a leaven in human society.
Cheryl Lacey
Faith and Family: The Fundamental Principles of an Educated Nation
For decades, all Australian schools have been nurturing the rejection, even deriding of Judeo-Christian values. This paper will bring to light the danger of accepting these naive views.
Eamonn Pollard
Who are adolescents today? The case for a holistic formation of the head, heart and hands.
This paper will suggest that one way to effectively form teenagers in the Faith is through a mix of formation of the head, heart and hands. Religious Education teachers ideally are people of Faith, with some theological understanding and generally good pedagogical practitioners.
Peter Robinson
How Firm a Foundation? Governor Bourke’s vision for Eastern Australia based on common Christianity and its current fruit in state school faith education.
This paper seeks to connect Bourke’s seminal contribution to building modern Australia with the continuing operation and development of RE in Australia’s state schools.
Ben and Julianna Smith
Seeking the right balance of family, Church and school for passing on the faith
Passing on the faith in a post-Christian culture necessitates a strong and fruitful partnership between the family, the parish and the school. This paper will examine the wisdom of the Catholic Church and other Christian writers to establish some benchmarks for this triple play of elements
Karl Schmude
Transmitting a University Tradition: Edmund Campion and John Henry Newman.
Two figures in different eras, the 16th century scholar and martyr, Edmund Campion, and the 19th century theologian and founder of the Oxford Movement, John Henry Newman, shed light on the nature and purpose of university education.
Wanda Skowronska
The Late Fr Paul Stenhouse’s writings: persistent educational ‘smelling salts’ confronting the Gramscian Reset
From his earliest years as a priest, Fr Stenhouse’s writing had a pedagogical purpose, whether providing Catechetical Supplements for Secondary Schools or in his historically focused books. While Gramscian critique of the Western Christianity was seeping through educational institutions, Fr Stenhouse’s clarity was applying cultural ‘smelling salts’ to them and persistently reminding us all of our extraordinary legacy.
Robert van Gend
Tasting the Transcendentals: Augustine Academy
This paper will compare two education projects, Augustine Academy in Australia and the Pearson Integrated Humanities Institute in Kansas, both involving stargazing, poetry recitations, music and vegetable gardening…