The appointment of George Pell to a position in the Vatican (as a budget-cutting manager) reminds us of the interminable debate about the power of Catholic conservatism in Australia. Back in 2010 I wrote the following for this blog (and it was published on a Deakin site that has since disappeared). Events since then have […]
Tony Abbott and the end of Catholic conservatism?
Much attention has been given to Tony Abbott’s proclaimed Catholic conservatism but in fact this election campaign provides further evidence of the demise of Catholic conservatism in Australia.
Scholarship and pseudo-scholarship
Some recent discussion about the distinction between ‘opinion’ and ‘analysis’ at Larvatus Prodeo. As a historian I see this debate differently, it is an echo of past debates about ‘objectivity’ in history (in the American case beautifully covered in Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream). I see a distinction between scholarship and pseudeo-scholarship. The former can […]