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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Sean O'Conaill

    #8 Hegel "thought civil order emerges (or evolves) out of violent origins but heals and overcomes them." So how are we to explain the obvious decay and 'fraying' of e.g. the constitutional stability

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Joe O'Leary

    Sean, what you say about status anxiety and the violent origin of states might chime with Hegel on “the battle for recognition” as in his “master and slave dialectic”; he thought civil order e

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Sean O'Conaill

    Thanks, Joe, for that very useful historical summary of different views of what the state should and could be. The Exodus story surely identifies the Pharaonic state as that-which-enslaves and that-f

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Joe O'Leary

    I notice that Trump’s devotees make religious noises all the time, using vehement piety as a substitute for thought, and I wish that church teachers would give a good example of how to speak soberly

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  • 17 Dec 2023 – 3rd Sunday in Advent, B

    December 17 2023
    Thara Benedicta

    Key Message: "Who am I?" "I am who God has called me to be." Homily: When John the Baptist was asked "Who are you?" He explained "who He is" as per God's plan for h

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Sean O'Conaill

    The state's claimed 'reason to be' is, of course, that it protects its citizens and preserves order via its monopoly of lawful force. The trouble is, Joe, as you well know, that states can devolve i

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Joe O’Leary

    “That, in the end is what distinguishes the state from all other organisations - it reserves to itself alone the lawful use of force in a given area of jurisdiction.” One might equally well say:

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  • ‘If Christ were born today, he would be born under rubble, Israeli bombing’

    December 10 2023
    Soline Humbert

    Christ IS being born, and dies, under rubble today: "What you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me". War is always a terrible scourge and a tragic failure, but what is now happeni

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  • Seán Walsh: The Innkeeper’s Story

    December 12 2023
    Sean O'Conaill

    #2 By 'the state that rests ultimately upon force and violence' I meant those states that do indeed 'act out' the paranoia and jealousy of their rulers, even today. I am sure everyone could list a few

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  • COP28 UAE update – deal agreed: THE UAE CONSENSUS

    December 13 2023
    Joe O'Leary

    80 years of peace in Europe, Japan, Australia, and the USA (domestically) should put us in a strong position to act against the climate crisis. Why are we dithering so much? The horrendous grip of a r

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