Maundy Thursday, 28 March, 2024
Dear Reader,
I’m writing this on the first day of the Triduum, that three-day climax of Lent and Holy Week that immediately precedes the celebration of the Resurrection at Easter.
Nowadays you won’t see or read much about these things in the ordinary course of your life. The supermarkets will be open for most of the weekend, except perhaps (as a sole remaining token of respect) on Good Friday itself. In many places it’s the start of the footie season. Here in Tasmania our unusually long, dry and warm summer is scarcely over, sports ovals are full of players, mountains are thick with hikers, and everybody’s enjoying the sun.
Fair enough too. There’s nothing wrong with any of that: we are right to enjoy the good and happy things of this world. Indeed it’s a grace to be able to do so and it would be ungrateful not to. But our society is diminished by its blindness to those elements of our existence that are not immediately tactile or at least visible. Many of us live as if such things don’t even exist, or at least we choose to ignore them because the allure of present ‘reality’ is too charming.
It’s interesting to note, however, that even the most materialistic of people ascribe value to immaterial things. Unless you’re a successful pop singer or nightclub performer there’s not much money in music and no practical value, but we love it nonetheless, most of us quite passionately. Paintings and sculptures usually have no intrinsic value – unless, like Mr Fabergé’s eggs, they’re made of solid gold.
The greatest of these intangible treasures is Love itself, that force or virtue or power or whatever we call it, that according to Dante ‘moves the sun and all the other stars’. Inexplicable by human thought (though many materialists have attempted, dismally, to explain it) it is nevertheless the most powerful thing in the universe.
Most of us today manage to persuade ourselves, though, that love has nothing to do with God. We have no need of that delusional hypothesis. It’s too difficult to accept the obligations that that kind of belief could impose on us, so we drift on enjoying the good things that life offers and explaining away the bad by any means other than the sad but unavoidable truth that human beings are deeply flawed and defective. That a society that denies its religious dimension cannot endure and is exposed, as Dawson understood, to every kind of crazy self-deception and tyranny.
Here in the southern hemisphere there is some reason for additional gloom: we’re about to drift into autumn and the cold days are coming soon. Not for us the consolation of approaching spring and the quickening of new life that cheers the spirits of those who live north of the Equator. But I wish all our readers, north or south, whether believers or not, a heightened apprehension of the sovereign power of Love as we celebrate Easter three days hence.
Please find below some information about our 2024 Colloquium, and a Call for Papers.
I close with this short meditation for Good Friday, from The Sacrifice by George Herbert, 1593-1633
Oh all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
Was ever grief like mine?
Without me each one, who doth now me brave,
Had to this day been an Egyptian slave.
They use that power against me, which I gave:
Was ever grief like mine?
With clubs and staves they seek me, as a thief,
Who am the way of truth, the true relief;
Most true to those, who are my greatest grief:
Was ever grief like mine?
See, they lay hold on me, not with the hands
Of faith, but furie: yet at their commands
I suffer binding, who have loos’d their bands:
Was ever grief like mine?
All my Disciples flie; fear puts a barre
Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the starre,
That brought the wise men of the East from farre.
Was ever grief like mine?
Some said, that I the Temple to the floore
In three dayes raz’d, and raised as before.
Why, he that built the world can do much more:
Was ever grief like mine?
See how spite cankers things. These words aright
Used, and wished, are the whole worlds light:
But honey is their gall, brightnesse their night:
Was ever grief like mine?
The souldiers also spit upon that face,
Which Angels did desire to have the grace,
And Prophets once to see, but found no place:
Was ever grief like mine?
O all ye who passe by, behold and see;
Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree;
The tree of life to all, but onely me:
Was ever grief like mine?
With best wishes and thanks,
David Daintree
FOR FURTHER READING
ABORTION: VICE-PRES HARRIS VISITS CLINIC
This is a very good report from Ben Terangi (courtesy of Mercatornet): ‘One might have hoped that by 2024, the world’s most powerful administration would have come up with an argument or two for abortion, rather than relying on euphemisms, denials of scientific fact, smears, accusations and outright inversions of the truth.’
COMING EVENTS
HOBART 4 APRIL: GRAHAM LINEHAN
Irish writer Graham Linehan was to speak in Hobart Town Hall on Thursday 4 April. Linehan is best known as the scriptwriter of the comedy series Father Ted. He has been ‘cancelled’ for his opposition to transgenderism and the Dawson Centre would have been proud to support the Free Speech Union of Australia by 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.
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. All talks will be available online afterwards.
[INSERT FLYER HERE]
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 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.
Proposals should be sent to Dr David Daintree, Director, Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies director@dawsoncentre.org, 0408 87 9494.