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4Christ’s name is often taken in vain, but not in this book title. It is at once a prayer and a cry of anguish. Robinson was deputed to deal with the whole abuse problem in the Archdiocese of Sydney and knows horrid things at first hand: abuse and clerical cover-ups, both.Bishop Robinson’s book is practical—if perhaps at the time of publication unduly sanguine. He calls, in chapter 13 for ‘A New Council for a New Church’ to enable to get the problem of sexual abuse fixed and for the Church to get…Read more
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33Listening to picturesSophia 46 (2): 193-198. 2007.A review of Peter Steele’s: The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry, in which Steele writes poems on and to paintings and the sculpture Black Sun (By Inge King) in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Each work on which there is a poem is reproduced. In this book Steele writes more to the ‘contour’ of the topic-work than he did in Plenty. His poems – as ever sidenoted – are tensed between the topicality of the work of art in question, and Kant’s aesthetic which involves ‘the f…Read more
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38Hans Küng, Can We Save the Catholic Church!? London, William Collins, 2013, 345 pp. An Open Letter to Pope Francis? or ‘Sleepers Awake!’ (review)Sophia 53 (3): 401-410. 2014.Hans Küng is a well-known, and harsh, critic of doctrine of papal infallibility declared at Vatican I, 1870–1871. It leads—he argues—not to transparent certainty, but away from it. A propos ‘infallibility’ and the still-running scandals of child sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy, he writes:…While Rome no longer dares to proclaim formally infallible doctrines, it still envelopes all of its doctrinal pronouncements with an aura of infallibility, as though the Pope’s words were a direc…Read more
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34Review of Kirk varnedoe, pictures of nothing: Abstract art since Pollock (review)Sophia 46 (3): 313-314. 2007.
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McCloskey, M. A.: "Kant's Aesthetic" (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (n/a): 467. 1990.
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Barnett Newman: The 'Zip' and Specious Presents, or Presence. What Am I Doing Here?Literature & Aesthetics 13 (1): 71-87. 2003.
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16Antonello da Messina: l’ opera completa (review)Sophia 48 (1): 59-76. 2009.Antonello da Messina’s Annunciation with the Blessèd Virgin sola breaks with iconic convention, so inviting new interpretations of the theme. The Rome exhibition of 2006 allowed one to compare Antonello with van Eyck: Antonello seemed pre-modern. This review discusses three important essays on the Annunciation (see the last three keywords). All three perceptive essays raise theological and phenomenological issues directly related to the almost unique iconic representation which Antonello gives u…Read more
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13Booknote on Johann August Eberhard and Immanuel Kant, Preparation for Natural Theology: with Kant’s notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript, Ed. & Trans. Courtney D. Fugate & John Hymers: London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2016, ISBN: 978-1474213837, hb, 328 pp (review)Sophia 56 (3): 537-538. 2017.
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31A Note on ‘Heidegger’s Temple: How Truth Happens when Nothing is Portrayed’, by Shane Mackinlay, in Sophia 49, No.4 : 499–507 (review)Sophia 53 (1): 145-150. 2014.He’s a terrible fellow, but at least he’s got substance.—Erich Auerbach on HeideggerMy esteemed colleague Purushottama Bilimoria drew my attention to Shane Mackinlay’s ‘Heidegger’s Temple: How Truth Happens when Nothing is Portrayed’. My friend wondered whether my piece on ‘The Origin of the Work of Art: Heidegger’ in Sophia 51, no.4 (2012): 465–478 was a reply to Mackinlay. It was not.I had not in fact read Shane Mackinlay’s elegant essay. Having read it now, I do not entirely agree with it: No…Read more
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45Book reviews (review)Sophia 42 (1): 125-126. 2003.Book Review. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2014.929720