The Past and Other Countries
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Vol. 4 No. 2 March 1994 $5.00 The past and other countries South Africa looks forward to democracy: Tammy Mbengo and Maryanne Sweeney Western Australia looks back to separate development: Mark Skulley Stephen Gaukroger and Keith Campbell chase John Carroll through the ruins of Western civilisation Paul Barry chases Conrad Black through the corridors of power Deborah Zion juggles Jewish tradition and the ordination of women rabbis Elaine Lindsay flies to the moon with a post-Christian feminist Ray Cassin watches moral theology try to stay down to earth H.A.Willis is in pain, and asks when it will end In 1993, Eureka Street photographer Emmanuel Santos went to Europe to visit the Nazi death camps. His cover photograph shows David Dann in Majdanek, confronting a past that destroyed his family. On this page Santos catches part of Europe's present: Catholic youth in Warsaw preparing for an anti-Semitic demonstration during the commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The young men claim that Poland should be for the Poles: no Jews, no Russians, no Germans, no immigrants. Volume 4 Number 2 EURI:-KA SJRI:-Er March 1994 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology CoNTENTS 4 28 COMMENT ONTHERACK H. A Willis explores the world of 6 the chronic pain sufferer. LETTERS 33 8 QUIXOTE CAPITAL LETTER 34 10 BOOKS STRIFE ON THE WESTERN FRONT Stephen Gaukroger and Keith Campbell Mark Skulley reports on the lingering sen take issue with John Carroll's Humanism: timent for secession in Western Australia. The Wrecl{ of Western Culture; Paul Barry sums up Conrad Black's A Life In Progress 14 (p38); Max Teichmann reviews Gore Vidal's SOLDIER'S STORY United States Essays 1952- 1992 (p40). Yauka Liria was an intelligence officer in the PNG army who lived to tell his tale. 42 Rowan Callick reviews his Bougainville OBITUARY Campaign Diary. Jam es Griffin pays tribute to Frank Maher. 16 44 BALLOTING FOR A FUTURE THEOLOGY BOOKS Ta1m11y Mbengo and Maryanne Sweeney Elaine Lindsay flies to the moon with post report on South Africa's efforts to educate Christian feminist Mary Daly; Ray Cassin for democracy. reflects on the predicament of m oral theol ogy (p46 ). 18 SPORTING LIFE 48 Andrew Hamilton enters the spirit of long Cover: David Dann at M:1jdanck death THEATRE AND OPERA camp, l'ol:md, where prisoners wnc distance cycling. Geoffrey Milne discusses Australia's most stnpped, gassed ;lnd CITill<lll:d withm two popular playwright; David Braddon-Mitch hours of arriv;ll. Dann's hnnily, from Lmlz 20 ell goes to the Australian Opera's Produc ghetto, all vanished during Hitler's cxtcnnmation cc1mpaign in Poland. RACHEL'S CHILDREN tion of Lulu (pSO). Photo by Emmanuel Santos. Deborah Zion reports on the ordination of women to the rabbinate. 52 Photos pp 2, 20-21, 22 by Emmanuel FLASH IN THE PAN Sa ntos. Cartoons pp 7, 25 by Dean Moore. 24 Reviews of the films In the Name of the Graphics pp 14, 19,28-33, 46 by Tim COUNTERPOINT Father, Naked, Flesh and Bone, La Belle Metherall . Epoque, The Fencing Master, Shadowland s, Eureka Street m agazine 25 Philadelphia and Pandora 's Box. jesuit Publications SOME COSTS NEVER ADD UP PO Box 553 David de Carvall1o questions the agenda of Richmond VIC 3 12 1 55 Tel (03)427 731 1 the Industry Commission's inquiry into SPECIFIC LEVITY Fax (03)428 4450 charitable organisations. [-uRI:-KA srm:-er C OMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology P ETER S TEELE Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Prod uction editor Ray Cassin Consul ting editor In transit Michael McGirr SJ Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway Production assistants: J. Ben Boonen C FC, John Doyle SJ, Juliette Hughes, Siobh<m Jackson, Chris Jenkins SJ. I'm u STOOD TODA'" the inte,ection of 37th •nd 0 Sts, Contributing editors NW, in Washington DC, fac ing clown a gentle slope, the snow Adelaide: Fra nces Browne IB VM would be tuming to mush tmder your feet. This is partly because Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ of a change in the wea ther, and partly because this is the main Darwin: Margaret Palmer entrance to Georgetown University, and at most times of day Perth: Dean Moore or night somebody is ploughing through. Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, At your back would be the meditative statue of John Gerard Windsor. Carroll, fo under of the university, and behind that the first of European correspondent: Damicn Si monis an array of buildings old and new. A plaque on the wall advises US correspondent: Thomas H. Stahcl SJ that the most recent president to visit the place was its alum Editorial board nus William Clinton, and the most remote, George Washing Peter L'Es tra nge SJ (chair), ton. N car that plaque is the university chapel, which is lodged Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, ncar the whimsically- named Red Square. Above the entrance Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, to the main library is the verse from John's Gospel which pro Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, claims that 'you shall know the truth, and the truth will make Kevin McDonald, Joa n Nowotny IBVM, you free', which presumably has more title to be here than it Lyn Nossal, Ruth Pendavi ngh, docs (where it also appears) in the lobby of CIA Headquarters, Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren J across the river in Virginia. Business manage r: Mary Foster Georgetown, like Washington, like most cities of any size, Advertising representative: Tim Stoney is a school of ironies. A temporary expatriate is likely to notice Pa trons these more than a resident does. Mind you, if you suppose that Em el<a Street gra tefully acknowledge the all of us are, in the phrase of the immigration departments, support of C.L. Adami; the tmstecs of the estate 'resident aliens'-a view that has been well rehearsed in our of Miss M. Condon; A. J. Costello; D.M. Cullity; time- then life 's curiosities are there to be seen by all. Last F.G. Gargan; R.J. and H.M. Gehrig; century, Walter Bagebot noted that 'the soul ties its shoes; the W.P . Gurry; J.F. O'Brien; mind washes its hands in a basin', and whatever the thrust of A.F. Molyneux; V. J. Peters; his remark then, it goes on having resonances in modem soci Anon.; the Roche fa mily; Anon.; ety. Here, limousines nose past beggars; a cobbler's is called Sir Donald and Lady Trescowthick; 'Shoe Hospital'; a junk-food outlet faces a bookstore that could Mr and Mrs Lloyd Williams. nourish the spirit for a lifetime. If you were wondering wheth er we really do have two lobes to the brain, two wings to the Em eka Streel magazine, JSSN I 036- 1758, Australia Post registered publi cation VAR 91- 0756, heart, this is a place to confirm the initial view. is pub! ished ten times a year But in the snow, at 37th and 0 , you migh t also refl ect on by Eureka Street Magazine Pty Ltd, the dynamic between process and stasis, fl ow and stand. There 300 Victori a Street, Ri chmond, Victoria 3 121. is more chastening weather on the way, they tell us, and the Responsibility for editorial con tent is accepted by mush will be returning to ice, which will continue to have its Michael Ke ll y, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. on-again, off-again way until spring's thaw takes hold. A few Printed by Doran Printing, blocks away, the Potomac fluctuates between fl owing free and 4 Commercial Road, Highctt VlC 3 190. surrounding the ice. And since the alien climate turns a person © Jesuit Publi cations 1993 though tful, what better place to observe how big a part is played T he editor welcomes letters and u nsolicited manu in our lives, our very identities, by shift and stand and shift scripts, incl uding poetry and fiction . Manuscripts will again? be returned only if accompanied by a sta mped, self In the metropolitan buses, one advertisement ca joles, 'How addressed envelope. Requests for perm ission to reprint to land a better job', and the next, 'Help a boy become a man.' material from the magazine should be addressed in The bus runs, the mind runs, the process runs- or doesn't. writing to: T he editor, Eurelw /reel maga zine, Anywhere you go in Am erica, somebody is trying to precipi PO Box 553, Ri chmond VlC 3 121. tate something, or to wing aboard some wagon going past . 4 EUREKA STREET • M ARC H 1994 The first words I remember hearing from an American pctual watch. Receptors for warmth lie deeper in the abroad were, 'Somewhere to go, something to do'. All skin, and there are fewer of them'; and, 'I've seen people this declares a deep-bred policy, but that in turn comes out walking on a winter's clay wearing layered clothes, from an intuition that this is the way things arc. In the wool sweaters, and bulky clown coats; they look like old contest between Heraclitus, who thought that what freshly made beds on the move.' When you have been ever was flowed incessantly, and Parmenides, who reading her for a while, the world seems to be arriving thought that that was no way to be, there is no doubt daily by special delivery. where the American constituency would be. Whatever The gazing art, cultivated, can issue in some is, sooner or later, streams. remarkable things.