Spring 2016

Homo homini lupus – ‘man is a wolf unto man’ – is one of those lapidary phrases that has been passed down to us in a most interesting lineage. Originating with Plautus, the Roman poet, and approvingly cited by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, and later by his spiritual heir Sigmund Freud in his Civilisation and its Discontents, it is a phrase that captures a deeply pessimistic, and sadly, popular view of human nature

When I first arrived in Darwin, my family took me for fish ‘n’ chips at Cullen Bay. We sat in the grass before the beach and ate golden snapper. As I watched the sun go down, the sky went from blue to pink to a dark purple: God the artist at his canvas

Anne Lanyon, Coordinator of the Centre for Peace Ecology and Justice, had been running the formation program Growing a Culture of Peace for about seven years when Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment was published. ‘I’ll tell you what it felt like,’ said Anne of the moment when Laudato Si’ was unveiled. ‘It felt like pushing a barrel of bricks for years, and then suddenly you’ve got someone helping you push it.

Meet the Carter family. Parents Oberon and Lauren and their three daughters live on an 850-square-metre, flat, suburban block, 15 minutes outside of Hobar

One of the qualities I most appreciate about Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’ , is his commitment to the very Ignatian belief that everything is connected. Everything belongs. Unsurprisingly, the Pope reveals his Jesuit connection by linking all of us to creation: ‘We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it (LS 139).

‘Praise be to you’ is the English translation for the title of the Pope’s encyclical (Laudato Si’) a 184-page document that was released on 24 May, 2015