Mood:
d'ohTopic: local news
We took this image of St Mary's Cathedral from Hyde Park last Thursday night, no flash standard digital camera resting on a local bin with reflections in the foreground. The glare obscures the '12 day' to go gateway heralding 'Catholic World Youth Day' though they leave off the Catholic brand which would give the corporate (albeit religious) welfarism away a tad.
Catholicism - the invisible thread that lets you roam to the ends of the Earth and return to it's side with a twitch of the thread. G.K.Chesterton said that and he was a pretty smart guy judging by that line alone. But what is it exactly? Well it's all things and nothing. For a start it's nothing if not a hierarchy as we noted in our recent review of Brideshead Revisited available on DVD nowdays: It's an alternatively charming and chilling study of a "terrifyingly manipulative" Catholic mother and the emotional wreckage that engenders:
Sunday, 20 January 2008Big Catholic world youth day in Sydney a threat to healthy spirituality?
Mood:quizzical
Topic: culture
Picture: The Apology scene, episode 4 in the ground breaking 13 hour long Brideshead Revisited TV miniseries of 1981 (Granada Television) of the Evelyn Waugh book of the between the world war years of an aristocratic Catholic family in Britain. Broadcast here around that time.
We liked this part of that essay too as it relates to Sydney power politics:
[The institution of Confession is a] device to sanitise any vicious power game much as the highly Catholic NSW ALP Right in NSW practice as their daily bread, especially if it is rationalised as gloriffying the church itself. A power game 'cardinal' Gerry Gleeson was reputed to have played not least in the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority:
At the 11th hour, however, an unknown representative of the authority telephoned Rothschild signalling that a surprise late bid was on its way. IN HIS heyday as Wran's favoured mandarin, Gleeson elicited a mixture of fear and respect among both ministers and the public service. Today, just a fortnight before his 76th birthday, Gerald Gleeson still retains a legendary aura. Renowned for his rigorous Catholicism, commanding presence and steely demeanour, he once said he did not seek to get close to people: "I'm not looking for love. I'm looking for respect."
When Gleeson stepped down on June 10, 1988, after nearly 30 years of senior civil service, he spent the Liberal years collecting a swag of directorships on boards at the big end of town. Among them were Capital Investment Holdings, Catholic College of Education Australia, Commonwealth Bank, Grocon Developments, Amalgamated Holdings and briefly, Transfield.
He remains a director of the Australian Catholic University and is still active in the Catholic community.
In 1995, when Labor was returned to power, one of Bob Carr's first acts was to lure the uber-bureaucrat back to Macquarie Street. In the early years, he quietly acted as a significant Mr Fix-It for Carr, brokering several major deals, including the early forestry agreements and fixing the Olympic hotel bed tax issue.
Gleeson chaired the Statutory and Other Officers Remuneration Tribunal, which sets Senior Executive Service pay packets. And as chairman of the Darling Harbour Authority he oversaw the venue's final construction.
Then, in 1998, he began his increasingly controversial reign as chairman of the newly formed Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. With one stroke of the cabinet room pen, great swathes of Sydney became his turf, including the Sydney Cove Authority, City West Development Corporation, Luna Park and even the Australian Technology Park in Redfern.
Since then the crisscrossing of his growing empire and board interests has become grist for the rumour mill.
Said a senior Government source: "Over the years, he has wanted more and more authority and, at one point, even came looking for Olympic Park." Last October, with the Sydney Entertainment Centre management rights tender fresh on everyone's mind, Gleeson sent a memo to the director-general of the Premier's Department, Col Gellatly.
in Going once, going twice by Paola Totaro May 29, 2004 Sydney Morning Herald
Indeed in terms of youth Big Catholicism is just about opposite to this very popular somewhat chaotic yet practical inspiration in youth friendly format:
It's a message youth can enjoy and embrace without travelling any distance at all from all over the world to Sydney for World Youth Day thanks to the beauty and perils of the internet.And if that's not quite your taste then try this - and why does 'the devil' have the best music anyway?:
It's a case of distortion reflecting reality really. We say this because our memories of the gaudy and frankly unworthy golden trinket display in St Peter's Basillica in Rome in 2002 suggested to us a blatant attempt to impress the uneducated masses with a carnival facade. Rather than clowns heads it was alleged mummified saints turned to stone and South American precious metals obtained God knows where or how.
Speaking as no.8 of 9 son and refugee from that Tribe I felt Jesus wasn't there. I felt sad to see behind a confidence trick, suggesting a feeling of disappointment at meeting your favourite pop star and finding he's got dandruff or bad breath. He might have been at the top of the awesome obelisk constructed by Caligula's slaves in the middle of the Oval expanse at front of the Vatican itself behind ancient massive Roman walls. He was definitely in the small spooky section of Catacombs we visited.
