The Record Newspaper - 26 January 2006

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Asian conference to address poverty

GOD:

■ By Jamie O’Brien

Christians are taking to the Internet Page 4

IT’S SPREADING: In Perth there are 10 centre of adoration Page 2

Tribunals ‘are sometimes misperceived’ Day of study looks at the divorced-and-remarried ROME, (Zenit) - It’s no surprise that some Church officials think the mission of marriage tribunals is to clear the way for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to gain access to Communion, says a canon law professor.

That was among the pastoral issues highlighted at a day of study organised by the School of Canon Law at the University of the Holy Cross.

In his opening address last Thursday, Monsignor Joaquín Llobell, professor of canon law at the pontifical university, tried to respond to the question: “What role do canonical tribunals assume today in the solution of the problem of remarried, divorced Catholics?”

Monsignor Llobell contended that the 2005 instruction Dignitas Connubii, published by the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, has not been implemented.

In the face of causes of declaration of nullity, he said, “the judge must prove, and have the profound conviction of having reached the truth on the fact that a marriage was valid or invalid at the moment of the celebration.”

The objective of the judicial process “is to prove and declare the truth and not to assess if it Continued on Page 2

Ronald Michael, of Dadajaal Aboriginal Dance Group, performs in front of 200 people at the opening ceremony of the St Vincent de Paul Pan-Asian Conference, or PANASCO 6, last Friday January 20 at the University of Western Australia.

Photo: Jamie O’Brien

More than 200 delegates from 22 countries packed into opening ceremony at the University of Western Australia last Friday January 20 for the sixth Pan-Asian Conference, or PANASCO 6, hosted by the St Vincent De Paul Society.

The opening ceremony commenced with an entrance with flags, aboriginal dancing and a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Barry Hickey.

PANASCO 6 is the gathering of members of the St Vincent De Paul Society from both developed and developing countries of Asia and Oceania.

The aim of PANASCO is to create bonds of understanding, friendship and spirituality.

“And most importantly, to explore practical ways to address and alleviate poverty, wherever it may be found,” said St Vincent De Paul National President John Meahan.

Mr Meahan said he believes the Perth Conference has the potential to be the most effective PANASCO yet.

“Especially in terms of coming up with new creative and workable ways of Continued on Page 3

Research shows school RE scores less than 10% ■ By Paul Gray

The Christian Research Association is expected to release new information later this year which further suggests a low level of interest in religious education classes among students in churchbased schools.

The new information will be widely analysed within religious education circles, following the recent emergence of independent research examining the effectiveness of religious education in Catholic schools.

According to a report in The

Australian, only nine per cent of students said that school religious education classes were very important in helping them to “work out” their lives, in a new study from the Christian Research Association.

The research also found that many young people did not know if there was a God, but were not bothered by their uncertainty.

The new research is based on more than 1500 interviews and a schools-based survey of 2500 students from 20 schools.

The findings are to be released mid-year, the newspaper reports.

In an earlier analysis of youth spirituality published on the

INDEX

A SHAMEFUL MOMENT PAUL GRAY looks at a new book on the internment of Italian Australians during World War II. And there are implications for Australia’s new terror laws and detention.

Vista 2

F-stop: photo essay - Swiss Guard - Page 6 Life, the Universe and Everything - Vista 4 The World - Pages 8-9 Woody bumps into God - Page 10 Classifieds - Page 11

Christian Research Association’s website, a statistically significant number of young Australians gave explanations including “the beliefs and morals of the church,” “time priorities” and “not my thing” as reasons why they do not go to church.

In a finding with significance for debates over attracting young people to church by holding more youth-oriented church services, the CRA analysis also said that only 14 per cent of young Australians (aged 18 to 29) would be prepared to go to church if the church had contemporary styles of worship.

Debate over the effectiveness of

religious education in schools has been intensified by the research of Dr Luke Saker of Edith Cowan University, revealed in The Record late last year.

Dr Saker’s research included the finding that “almost all students who graduate from Catholic education regard the Church as irrelevant.”

This year Victoria’s Catholic Education Office has also referred in the media to two research studies being undertaken to explore the effectiveness of Catholic school education. The Record’s report was voted a top 2005 story by the CathNews website.

ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY From New York to Australia’s Outback: GERALDINE CAPP tells the extraordinary story of Diana Williams life with husband Ron as they ministered to Aboriginal Australians.

VISTA 1-3

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 2

Adoration is spreading ■ By Jamie O’Brien

T

he Perth Archdiocese now has ten Perpetual Adoration chapels in operation 24 hours a day seven days a week.

Six of the parishes are in the metropolitan area while the other four are in country parishes.

In each one of the parishes, every hour of the day, at least one person sits, kneels or stands as they take time out from the routine of life to pray and reflect in front of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Numerous people also enter a perpetual adoration chapel for a short visit, knowing that the Church is open at all times and that all are welcome.

Perpetual Adoration Chaplain Fr Doug Harris said many might comment that it is difficult or a penance to get out of bed in the early hours of the morning.

“But without that act of love, Perpetual Adoration would not be possible,” Fr Harris said.

“When I visit chapels I normally see more than one person present in adoration, and it is a joy to see its practice giving so much peace and fulfillment.

“The sacrifice of those who spend one hour a week in a perpetual adoration chapel makes that possible.”

Fr Harris told The Record that Archbishop Fulton Sheen and Blessed Mother Teresa believed that the answer to all of life’s problems is to spend one hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament... “in the presence of the God, who, at every moment, gives everything to those who come to His Eucharistic Presence.”

“All that is required for perpetual adoration in a parish is for people to do just one hour a week in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

In October 2005, Christ the King

Parish Beaconsfield celebrated their second anniversary of perpetual adoration in their Parish.

At Sacred Heart Parish Highgate, some parishioners are known to volunteer two or three hours of their night every day.

“When I suggested to one person their offer of 4 days at 5am could be a bit too heavy I was rebuffed with “when my dear husband was alive he always woke at 3am to say his prayers,” Fr Harris said.

He added that for many parishes the success of perpetual adoration has grown through the support of neighbouring parishes.

“The adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Beaconsfield parish would not have succeeded if Beaconsfield as a single parish had not invited its neighbouring parishes to participate,” he said.

Interested persons can contact Fr Doug Harris on (08) 9444 6131.

Focus to be on Church’s mission in TV media ‘Tribunals can be Conference for Catholic TV stations is in the works The Archdiocese of Madrid this year will act as host for a World Congress of Catholic television stations to reflect on the Church’s mission in the media.

Leticia Soberón, an official of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and a member of the organising committee for the event, spoke about the aim of the October 11-13 congress.

Q: Is the meeting of Catholic television stations intended to define the identity of Catholic television?

Yes, it is an endeavor to reflect further on the meaning of a Catholic presence in the media, at the same time preserving the enormous diversity of styles and charisms, ways of presence and visual genres that might be present in the constel-

lation of Catholic television initiatives. Another objective of the congress is to discover the new view opened to us by technology which is profoundly transforming the costs and ways of producing television. One must be prepared, as the changes are already under way.

Q: How can Gospel objectives and commercial realities be combined in order to create programs that are financially selfsustaining?

It is certainly a challenge, and there does not seem to be a magic formula that will give us the solution.

It has much to do with the professional quality of the initiatives, dialogue with the various sectors of users, creativity in selecting topics and formats that find an audience and, above all, maintaining the authenticity of the contents.

Despite what is said, the public notices and is grateful for the good quality of television products. The congress will study these and other aspects of the business dimension of these entities.

benefit from what others have to offer, in keeping with the parable of the “common table,” which is made ever easier by the technological evolution but which requires leadership and perseverance.

Q: What are the realistic objectives of a Catholic television channel?

It will succeed if, in its presentation, it plans seriously to serve with love and truth, concrete individuals and the society it addresses, according to the Gospel.

Q: Who can participate in this congress?

Above all the congress will bring together Catholic television entities; willy-nilly, the number of places will be limited.

Otherwise it would be unmanageable, and it is important that it open possibilities for meeting, discussion and collaboration.

Institutions that wish to participate should write to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

We know that this initiative is already generating interest in continental meetings, which are preparing topics and delegates to attend this congress.

- Zenit

Q: How can a greater relationship be established between these television stations, by exchanging programs, ideas, etc.?

The congress’s aim is to respond to the desire of many television stations and Catholic producers to be part of a group, to offer what is their own and to

misconstrued’ Continued from page 1

would be pastorally suitable for the marriage to be declared invalid, to resolve the problem of non-admission to Eucharistic Communion of remarried divorced persons.”

Otherwise, “one would deny that indissolubility is a ‘natural’ element, desired by God and sanctioned by Christ, so that the human person will be happy on earth and obtains eternal salvation,” the monsignor said.

Given the complexity of the matter, he added, “it is no surprise that the bishops who not always know well the objective and method of the judicial processes of marriage nullity, might consider erroneously, though animated by their good zeal for souls, that the pastoral mission of their tribunals is that of eliminating the obstacle that impedes divorced persons, who are remarried civilly, to accede to Eucharistic Communion, that is, to always declare a failed marriage invalid, so that they can marry for the second time in the Church.”

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January 26 2006, The Record

Page 3

Bands battle for Antioch support

PANASCO seeks to address poverty Continued from page 1

■ By Jamie O’Brien

I

t was a battle of bands last Sunday at the Cathedral Parish centre for Antiochers.

The annual event took place this year as part of the drive to reinvigourate the Antioch youth movement.

Nearly 100 youth listened to six bands.

Diocesan co-ordinator Carmel Winton told The Record that Antioch, in conjunction with Catholic Youth Ministry, will this year be consolidating and strengthening the three existing Antioch groups in the Midland, Innaloo and Whitford parishes.

“Through this formation we will be starting three new Antioch groups towards the end of this year with the primary focus areas on parishes in the southern suburbs,” Ms Winton said.

“Antioch has a long and successful history in parishes all around the diocese.

“Many people in leadership roles

of church groups, particularly CYM, have first come to witness the faith in their high school years through Antioch.

Ms Winton said that Antioch targets young people aged 15-24, which is a pivotal stage of development in their lives.

“It is during this time that young people make decisions that dictate their faith direction one way or another.

“It is this stage that young people decide whether to embrace the Christianity they are presented with.”

“In the scripture, the place of Antioch is where the apostles were first called Christian.

“Today Antioch’s aim is to present Christianity in that same environment, where young believers can come together to embrace the beautiful tradition of Catholicism and first call themselves Christian,” Ms Winton said.

For more information contact Catholic Youth Ministry on 9422 7913 or Carmel Winton on 040 784 2407.

Antioch youth battle in the annual Bands contest last week January 22, held to help raise greater awareness of Antioch.

Photo courtesy Scott Simons

Rabbi calls for Pius to be declared a ‘Righteous Gentile’ Rabbi says Pius XII deserves “Righteous” title ROME, (Zenit) - A US rabbi says that the title “Righteous among the Nations” should be conferred on Pope Pius XII for his efforts to defend the Jews during World War II. Rabbi David Dalin, a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University in Florida, makes his case in his book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, published by Regnery.

The work shows that, in the course of history, many popes defended and protected the Jews from accusations and persecutions.

It also recounts many incidents which show how Pius XII saved Jews from Nazi persecution.

Rabbi Dalin quotes authoritative studies by Jewish authors, such as Pinchas Lapide’s Rome and the Jews and Pius XII and the Jews, written in 1963 by Joseph Lichten, a member of the Anti-Defamation League.

The rabbi also quotes Hungarian historian Jeno Levai who, in the

face of accusations of silence against Pius XII, wrote Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy: Pope Pius XII Did Not Remain Silent. Reports, Documents and Records from Church and State Archives, published in English in 1968.

Robert MW Kempner, the deputy US counsel during the Nuremberg trials, wrote the introduction to that book.

Martin Gilbert’s view Among recent books, the American rabbi stresses specifically the works of Martin Gilbert, one of the most authoritative living Jewish historians.

Gilbert is the official biographer of Winston Churchill and author of more than 70 books on World War II and the Shoah.

Gilbert recounts all that the Catholic Church did in defense of the Jews, opposing racism and Nazism, and affirms that “Pius XII should be praised and not censured.”

Rabbi Dalin proposes that Pius XII, for his actions in favor of Jews,

addressing poverty,” Mr Meahan said. This year’s PANASCO will discuss eight topics in relation to the theme the Vincentian Vocation in a Globalising World, and will focus on the determination of the SVDP to lessen the ever-widening gap between rich and poor.

Some of the eight topics to be discussed at this year’s PANASCO were: the involvement of youth in the work of the SVDP Society, the emerging problems of refugees, and the problems posed by the spread of HIV/AIDS. Among the keynote speakers at PANASCO were former Australian diplomat John Wicks, who addressed the topic The Challenges in Globalisation in Meeting the Needs of the Poor and outspoken Indonesian priest Fr Armada Riyanto, whose topic was Vincentian Advocacy or Social Justice and Human Rights?

“I have read the key note papers of Fr Armade and Mr Wicks and they are extremely thought provoking,” Mr Meahan said. “The fact that 200 plus delegates from more than 20 countries will be attending creates great optimism that viable ways of addressing the problem of global poverty will be developed,” Mr Meahan said.

“Globalisation has resulted in enormous wealth creation in recent decades, however that growth has not been matched by equitable distribution.

Greater attention will also focus on the final topic to be discussed, Lessons learned from Recent Disasters: Tsunami and Earthquake, with delegates from the affected countries to be the major contributors.

The first PANASCO was held in Sydney in 1968, followed by Singapore, Manila, and Korea in 2001. The Society of St Vincent de Paul was founded in Paris in 1833 and has nearly a million members in 137 countries worldwide.

For more information about a St Vincent De Paul Society group in your parish, call (08) 9475 5400

At prayer: Pope Pius XII.

be conferred the highest Jewish recognition for a gentile, the title “Righteous among the Nations.”

Last November 3, the Internet edition of the Jerusalem Post published a positive review of the book.

Photo: CNS

Invitation TO DINNER WITH

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Small, persecuted, but going strong

Tuesday 31 January 2006 6pm Arrival for 6.30 Meal

The Church was established in the country 75 years ago. Its first priest was ordained 35 years ago.

The cardinal described the ecclesial profile of Chad, where he found “a serene people, even in their poverty.”

“I was very impressed by their sense of peace, their desire to share, their personal discipline,” he said. “I did not see a police presence; they are a very disciplined people.”

Missionaries The Diocese of Moundou, five hours by car from the capital, N’Djamena, was the setting of the National Eucharistic Congress.

The highlights of congress were, in Cardinal Arinze’s words, “the opening on January 5, with the reading of the Pope’s message, the joyful expressions of the faithful, and the bishop’s welcome address.”

At the “White House” (“Isaia House of Prayer”) 18 Teague St (and Harper) Victoria Park, WA 6100

Envoy finds a needy but joyful Church in Chad VATICAN CITY (Zenit) - The Catholic Church in Chad, which just celebrated its first National Eucharistic Congress, is needy but joyful, says Cardinal Francis Arinze.

The cardinal prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments offered that assessment after having presided over the congress as the Pope’s envoy. He spoke with Vatican Radio on his return from the central African nation.

There, he said, communities live the Eucharist “together, sharing life, the joys of life and of being an ensemble as Church.”

The congress Jan. 8 with a Mass.

The collection was for AIDS sufferers.

The Church in Chad “is in great need,” said Cardinal Arinze, 73.

“It does not have, for example, enough priests [or] men and women religious. It needs and receives missionaries.”

The country’s eight dioceses, one is an apostolic prefecture, are headed by seven prelates: three are from Chad, two are Italian, one is a Spaniard and one a Canadian.

Added to these is a French priest, prefect of Mongo.

The population of Chad is 9.8 million. About 51 per cent are Muslim, 35 per cent Christian, and 7 per cent animist. The rest follow other religions. Catholics make up about 10 per cent of the population.

Single, Catholic men, 19 years and older, who are seriously considering the diocesan priesthood for the Archdiocese of Perth are requested to join the Archbishop for dinner and vocation news.

RSVP (To Fr Armando) Tel/Fax: (08) 9470 9113 Email: prvocation@hotmail.com (OR) frarmando@perthcatholic.org.au

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 4

‘In da Bginin...’ Baptising the Internet Baptizing the Internet Where Religion and New Media Meet ROME (Zenit) - The advent of the Internet and other new media technologies is rapidly expanding the ways for churches and religious organizations to promote their message. On January 3 the Fides news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples published the first part of a dossier, The People of God on the Internet.

The report says that in Italy it is almost impossible to count the number of Catholic sites due to the rapid growth in this sector.

The number of links gives an idea of how the Catholic sites are flourishing. Links to one of the most popular sites, www.totustuus. it, can be found on almost 50,000 Web sites.

Another site, www.siticattolici. it, has more than 10,000 Catholic sites from Italy registered. Almost a quarter of the total belong to parishes; another 2,000 belong to private groups and organisations.

Religious and missionary institutes account for 1,222, and sites associated with official Church structures and pastoral activities total 589. In descending order are: personal Web pages of Catholic nature - 589; universities and cultural centers - 403; and associated media sites - 353.

The turnover of sites is notable, with 1,400 sites no longer available compared to two years ago. But the growth rate in the overall number of sites is strong, with an increase of 25 per cent in the last two years.

Growth has been particularly strong in the field of Christian music, an increase of 33.6 per cent; Catholic radio and television, 32.8 per cent; and religious art, 31.5 per cent.

The United States is also home to a flourishing Internet culture on religious matters. Jonathan Last, online editor of the Weekly Standard, gave an overview of the situation in the December issue of First Things magazine.

Blogging In his article, “God on the Internet,” Last cited a 2004 Pew survey that found 64 per cent of users - 82 million people - say they use the Web for religious purposes.

Of these, 32 per cent reported they use the Internet to keep up with

religious news; 17 per cent use it to look for places to worship; and 11 per cent go online to download spiritual music.

And the more recent phenomenon of blogs is not exempt from religious use. A blog - short for Web log - is a Web site in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The total number of blogs in the US is thought to be around 8 million. Last October saw the first religious bloggers convention, GodblogCon, organized by John Mark Reynolds, a philosophy professor at Biola University, a Christian school in California.

Reynolds told Last that there are “literally millions” of religious bloggers. Among these there are a couple of thousand who write for a market that is wider than the immediate family or community. The readership numbers vary widely. A smaller Godblog may only receive about 115 page-views a day, while others can get thousands. Even priests are getting into the act; Last estimates that around 50 priests now have their own blogs.

Last also notes that almost every church in America has its own Web site. Protestant churches generally having more advanced sites compared to Catholic sites, although this disadvantage is partly offset by the enormous popularity and depth of the Vatican site.

The proliferation of activity on the Web is not without its drawbacks, adds Last. Anyone can start up a site or blog - so users need to be wary about the quality of information. Then, the nature of the medium lends itself toward trivialization or polemics on occasion.

Commercialisation is another trend to be wary of, as sites spring up to part users from their money selling all sorts of goods.

Downloading the good word The growing popularity of iPods is opening up new ways to transmit religion. IPods are a type of portable digital audio players. They handle podcasts, a kind of publishing that uses downloadable audio files. Now, podcasts are becoming Godcasts, reported the British newspaper The Telegraph last August.

A growing number of people are using their portable music players to download homilies. The article recounted how an Anglican vicar, Leonard Payne, was stunned when, within a short time, more than 2,400 users had downloaded one of

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his posted sermons. And this was for a vicar in a remote rural parish.

On August 29 the New York Times reported on the growing use of downloading religious audio material in the US. In just one month last year, July, the number of people or groups offering spiritual and religious podcasts listed on one site grew to 474 from 177.

Among all religions, Christian groups have been the most active in the area of podcasts, the Times said. One popular Catholic site, run by a Dutch priest, Father Roderick Vonhögen, already had more than 10,000 listeners for each program.

Vatican Radio also makes available material to download in a number of languages.

Another popular means of communication are SMS - text messages sent via mobile phones. There too religion is finding a space, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported on October 6.

The Bible is now available for sending via SMS. So instead of reading in Genesis how: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” it will now be a case of: “In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth.”

The initiative came from the Bible

Society in Australia which translated all 31,173 verses of the Bible into text. They can then be accessed over the Internet for free and people can send individual verses to family or friends as SMS. “The old days when the Bible was only available within a somber black cover with a cross on it are long gone,” said Bible Society spokesman Michael Chant. It took just one person about four weeks to convert the entire New and Old Testaments to text.

“The idea is that the Bible can be used and be relevant and up-todate, just like getting a verse of the day or reading a horoscope,” said Chant.

Big-screen churches New media techniques are also being used to liven up church services. So far the tendency is more common in Protestant churches.

Last Saturday the Los Angeles Times described how the Santa Margarita United Methodist Church, in Orange County, uses large screens to put up the words for hymns.

When the pastor gives his sermon he uses film clips from movies to accompany his words. Three cameras record everything for use on

What? Little girls sick of Barbie? culture of excess may be behind the rejection of A Barbie doll discovered by researchers from the University of Bath, England. The academics were doing an in-depth study of the role of brands among 7 to 11-year-old children when they discovered that many children hated their dolls and tortured them. No other toy provoked such a negative response.

The researchers put this down to the proliferation of different types of the doll, which range from Fashion Barbie to Queen Elizabeth I Barbie and even a Geisha

the church’s Web site. According to the article, last year more than 60 per cent of the nation’s Protestant churches used a large-screen projection system, up from 39 per cent in 2000.

And the percentage of congregations using video services doubled over the same time, to 61per cent.

Some churches also send out material via e-mail and podcasts.

The technology doesn’t come cheap. The Orange County church spent about US$75,000 in equipment, plus $15,000 a year for staffing and maintenance.

Not all are enthusiastic about the changes. Baptist pastor Ken Uyeda Fong said some people don’t see the new aids as being very religious. Others aren’t keen on people just staring at screens in church, instead of more active and traditional means of participating.

At the individual level multimedia programs are also flourishing.

Annual sales of religious software have reached the $80 million mark, the Boston Globe reported Jan. 2. A multitude of programs exist offering Bible translations, images, commentaries and other material. God’s word, it seems, is indeed spreading fast.

- Zenit

Barbie. “The children never talked of one single, special Barbie,” said Dr Agnes Nairn. “The girls almost always talked about having a box full of Barbies. So to them Barbie has come to symbolise excess. Barbies are not special; they are disposable.”

Dr Nairn added: “On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate. She has lost any individual warmth she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture.”

More simply, she said, the girls had probably grown out of Barbie since “the right age for having a Barbie now seems to be about 4.”

- FamilyEdge e-zine

Join Pope Benedict XVI in prayer - January “That the effort to bring about the full communion of Christians may foster reconciliation and peace among all the peoples of the earth.”

Mission intention: “That Christians may know how to welcome migrants with respect and charity, recognising in each person the image of God.”

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 5

Sister Eugenius raised the hospital bar high ■By Jamie O’Brien

W

ith decades - and decades - of service to Mercy Hospital Mount Lawley, Sr Eugenius Fox last week found herself overwhelmed with wishes from colleagues, fellow Mercy sisters and family at her 96th birthday.

The Mercy sister was the first sister in charge of the former St Anne’s Hospital when it opened in 1937 now known as Mercy Hospital.

Also known as Rose Fox, Sr Eugenius came to Australia from Ireland in 1929.

After joining the Mercies in Perth, she followed on to Brisbane, where she did her General nursing training together with two other Mercy sisters.

She is one of five children originally from County Tyrone and the only girl among four brothers John, Jim, Patrick Michael.

A number of staff told The Record that Sr Eugenius was always very mechanical-minded, with the ability to fix just about anything.

During her time at Mercy Hospital, Sr Eugenius is noted particularly for the opening of the

operating theatre and the X-ray department, where she spent much of her time.

Although she officially retired from nursing some time ago, she went into the sewing room and has been active there ever since.

Present for the birthday occasion were her niece, Margaret May Farquharson, grand-niece Bronwyn Lockwood and great-grand nephews Jack, 13, Miles, 5 and greatgrand-niece Emma.

Mrs Farquharson recalled to The Record how as a child she would draw pictures of her great-aunt. “She has always been highly regarded by fellow sisters and medial staff at mercy hospital,� Mrs Farquharson said.

Sr Eugenius was one of the first Mercy Sisters to have a driver’s licence. “She is known for her tireless support to all at the Mercy Hospital, not just the medical staff,� said fellow Mercy Sister Jacinta Messer.

Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Hospital John Burns he has not known anyone that has been more dedicated and more loyal to the hospital than Sr Eugenius. “We will have to keep up her high standards,� Mr Burns said.

Still going strong: Sr Eugenius is presented with a cake to celebrate her 96th birthday. Sister Eugenius has been at St Anne’s Mercy Maternity hospital almost continuously since 1937, with a brief departure for training.

Holy cards album turns into a surprise smash hit for its publishers or those of all ages who treasure F collectibles, now there’s the new and popular holy-card collection kit.

The Album dei Santini is the only holy-card album ever sold and promoted by the official Vatican bookshop.

But the album’s publishers, Pubblicazione Srl., were surprised to see all 60,000 copies of their trial album and 3.9 million cards sold

out since their release just before Christmas. “We’ve already seen the need to broaden our original vision for the international demand,� Roberta Lacchini of the publishing team told me. “We are now publishing more of our English version as the first 5,000 were snatched up in order packs by a variety of priests and catechists around the world.�

Lacchini explains that it is more than just the novelty of the album that attracts sales.

Archbishop on air

“It also seems that both the young and the older people of our communities are interested in this product due to its spiritual and cultural nature,� says Lacchini. “We are living in this materialistic world so the urge for spirituality is increasingly felt and is being renewed.�

Parish priests and catechists welcome the catechetical capacity of the album. It provides talking points for youth, and enables catechists to present scenes of the faith.

Lacchini says the cards were

carefully selected. “We had to be conscious to present 500 years of history in the most ideal manner, being aware that an iconographic theme such as this one had never been presented like this over all this time,� she explained.

To be exacting with the choice of the over 400 sacred 6-by-11cm images, the author of the album, Vittorio Pranzini, consulted the services of his fellow professionals in the Italian Association of Collectors of Sacred Images.

The vice president of this asso-

&+85&+ $)/$0(

ciation, Arenzo ManfĂŠ, told me that “The figurines of this album have been reproduced with chromatic faithfulness to the typological principles of European ‘santini,’â€? he explained. “It goes through all the original styles - from those inscribed on copper, to the precious lace-cut parchment styles produced by the cloistered nuns to assist their livelihood,â€? ManfĂŠ added.

The album can be ordered at an Italian-language site: www.raccoltemagiche.com.

- Zenit

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Be grateful for peace, freedom, health, food family and the beauty of nature everywhere.

Treat Australia well.

Face the problems and challenges we have with sincerity.

Protect families and children; affirm life at all its stages; banish racism, poverty, violence and injustice.

Recognise the special place of our indigenous people in this land.

Be generous, be positive about the future, and always give thanks May God’s peace be with you.

I’m Barry Hickey, Catholic Archbishop of Perth.

Next: Back to School. For current and past talks visit www.perthcatholic.org.au.

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January 26 2006, The Record

Page 6

Little army, big deal ■ By Carol Glatz

I

t may be one of the world’s smallest armies, but the tiny corps of 110 men who protect the successor of Peter is big in spirit, said Pope Benedict XVI at a swearing-in ceremony for new members of the elite organisation in May last year.

This week, on Sunday January 22 to be precise, the Swiss Guard turned 500 years old.

The Guard have been marking the anniversary with books and events for several months.

“This spirit of the Swiss Guards is nourished by the glorious tradition of almost five centuries of a small army with great ideals,” the Pope said in his address to new recruits, their family members and friends last year.

The 31 new recruits met with the Pope several hours before they took their oath as members of the Swiss Guard in a colourful swearing-in ceremony in the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace.

The ceremony is held each year on May 6, the anniversary of the date in 1527 when 147 guards died defending Pope Clement VII during the sack of Rome.

The new recruits swear an oath to “faithfully, loyally and honorably” serve the pope, “sacrificing if necessary” their lives to defend him.

In his speech, Pope Benedict thanked them for their dedication, saying by devotedly protecting the pope the Swiss Guard allow the pontiff to carry out his mission “free of worry for his safety.”

The Pope asked the new recruits to seek out and nourish the spirit that makes the Swiss Guard such a special corps. May it also lead to “a true spiritual bond” among the guards, he said.

Pope Benedict said the Swiss Guard is built upon the “great ideals” of a “firmness of Catholic faith, a convinced and convincing Christian way of life, unshakeable trust and a profound love for the church and for the vicar of Christ.”

He said the guards also represent “conscientiousness and perseverance in the small and great tasks of daily service, courage and humility, attention to others and humanity.”

Swiss Guard recruits are required to be Swiss citizens, unmarried Catholic men between the ages of 19 and 30, and at least 5 feet 8 inches tall. Even though they must have completed Switzerland’s required military service, prospective papal guards still undergo a rigorous selection process and further training in defense and security.

Though Swiss Guards are no longer fighting battles with their broadswords and halberds, their daily life includes 24-hour shifts that often require standing for long periods of time guarding the Vatican’s major entrances or working at liturgical celebrations and audiences.

The guards’ one day off every three days tends to be busy as well, since it is often dedicated to inspections, briefings, marches, additional courses and shooting practice.

At the early evening swearing-in ceremony last year, the Swiss Guard band played Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 dance hit, “I Will Survive.”

Last Sunday, the Guard created a historical re-enactment of the January 22, 1506, arrival of 150 Swiss soldiers at the Vatican marking the start of their centuries-long service to the see of Peter at the request of Pope Julius II. The jubilee will conclude on May 6 this year when some 100 former Swiss Guards attend the swearing-in ceremony after marching from Switzerland to Rome in 26 days - a much swifter excursion than the sevenmonth trek it took the first Swiss Guards to make in 1505-06.

- CNS

Preparing for a big day: New Swiss Guard recruits prepare inside the Guard barracks before being sworn in at the Vatican May 6. New recruits are sworn in every year on May 6, the date on which 147 Swiss soldiers died defending the pope during an attack on Rome in 1527. Photos: CNS

Vista

January 26 2006

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Diana’s Search In search of a better life and possibly love, American missionary Diana Williams arrived in the Kimberly, Western Australia, in search of God, after sacrificing a career at Chase Manhattan Bank in the US. During her stay in the remote Kimberley Diana met and married Ron Williams. For 20 years they devoted their life to WA’s aboriginal people encouraging them to become more involved in the Church and wider society. Today she is the Vice-Principal of Alliance College of Theology in Canberra.

20 years of love: Diana and Ron travelled around Australia in 1986 visiting outback communities, above, Diana stands with Yalata community members near the Nullabor.

Left, Diana leads a children’s talk and activity at Wiluna, WA community.

■ By Geraldine Capp

A

few months after arriving at Laverton in outback WA in 1983, American-born missionary Diana Williams felt very lonely.

She sat on a rock among the flies and spinifex on a hot December day and cried.

“I suddenly realised that my desire was to have a lifelong companion,” she says. “The words that overflowed to heaven were, ‘Just point him out to me God and I will trust your choice.’”

Just a few weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, 37-yearold Diana met the man who was to be her husband Aboriginal pastor and evangelist Ron Williams. By May 1984 they were married and so began their 20 years together as key leaders in encouraging WA’s Aboriginal people to take their place in the Church and wider society.

Now Diana is alone again. Ron died of a rare stomach cancer in Canberra in October 2003. Her grief is still deep and raw. It is always there - in her waking and in her sleeping. Some days, Ron’s death still seems unreal.

“When I’ve been with friends for a games night, a cup of tea or dinner, and I’m driving home, I’ve sometime

found myself crying because there’s nobody there,” Diana says. “Ron and I used to talk about our nights out so what I cry about is the fact that I’m alone and wanting Ron.” Ron died just three weeks after the diagnosis. Diana was in shock for several months. She is now rebuilding her life as a widow, single mother to their teenage daughter Lydia and with study, lecturing, writing and counselling.

Diana is Vice-Principal of Alliance College of Australia (formerly the Canberra College of Theology) and Director and Convenor of the Insight Counselling Centre. She has Masters degrees in counseling and education and a Bachelor of Arts in humanities and social science. She is a speaker for Christian Women’s Communicating International and is studying for a PhD. Diana was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1946.

As a young woman she was hurt by her parents’ divorce and her own broken marriage to a soldier in 1973. By 1977 Diana was living in New York City had a great yearning to reconnect with her family and she wrote to her father, whom she had not spoken to for 10 years.

They arranged to meet in New York and soon after, she Continued on Vista 2

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Sharing faith is love Continued from Vista 1

visited him in Oklahoma. It was there she found out her father and her stepmother had become deeply committed Christians.

On the plane trip back to New York, Diana opened a Bible that her stepmother had thrust into her hands as a last minute gift.

Some verses had been highlighted.

“I read the marker Galatians 2:20. Christ that lives in me and the life I live now. It all came together. I looked out of the aeroplane window and had a vision of the Lord saying, ‘I am the one. All this searching is for me. I am it.’ The despair I felt with my family, and all the searching was over. When I got off the plane in New York I knew a supernatural change had happened within me and that it was Jesus. He had opened by blind eyes and I saw my life in a totally different light.”

Diana became involved in a small charismatic church in New York and eventually turned her back on a high-flying career with Chase Manhattan Bank to work in churchsponsored activities such as educating poor children and counseling heroin addicts. In 1983 she was selected in a group of missionaries to work in an Aboriginal community at Laverton in WA’s central desert. They set up camp and lived in tents among the rocks and spinifex just like the people they wanted to reach.

“I was prepared to live under a tree, and of course we did live under trees,” Diana explains. “Being Americans, people thought we were crazy. But we were there to reach the fringe dwellers. We made the decision that we were not going to live like other missionaries. We were different because we didn’t live in normal houses and we didn’t bring our washing machines and lap top computers. We wanted to live as much as possible as they did.

After her teary experience on the rock, Diana sought respite by going to Kalgoorlie for the Christmas season. On New Year’s Eve she attended a sing-a-long of gospel songs.

Leading the singing was Ron Williams.

Ron was born in 1940 at Albany on WA’s south coast. He did not know the identity of his father and rarely saw his mother. Ron grew up with low self-esteem, little education, prejudice towards white people and alcohol abuse.

Ron became a Christian in 1958 after meeting a white Methodist preacher Frank Cole at Gnowangerup and spent two years studying to be a pastor and missionary. He then travelled Australia helping Aboriginal people in outback missions, churches and stations. He married Marj James, an Aboriginal woman from the Kimberley but she died in 1982. In his loneliness, Ron

continued his travels hoping to find a new wife. At Christmas time 1983 he drove to Kalgoorlie not suspecting the package that had arrived from New York City.

Despite cross-cultural difficulties, Diana and Ron married in May 1984 at Laverton.

They settled at Katanning where they ran the Marribank Famiy Centre, a work of the Baptist Church. In 1989, Diana and Ron moved to Kalgoorlie to start a new phase of their work and in 1999 they moved to Canberra. Diana documented their life together in her 2001 book Horizon is Where Heaven and Earth Meet.

Diana says that a highlight of life with Ron was having their child, Lydia, when she was 42 and he was 48. To achieve this, Diana had surgery to reverse a tubal ligation from 1975. Lydia was born in May 1988 and she now represents Australia in the squad for the Matilda’s soccer team.

“To have Lydia was a miracle. She’s such a gift from God and Ron felt that too,” Diana says. “It was so exciting to see two different people being worked out in one child. She has had equal influence as far as the white, western ways through me and Aboriginal life because most of her upbringing was in Aboriginal communities in the desert.”

Another highlight for Diana was having her values and views constantly challenged

by a different culture. “Ron grew up with a lot of prejudice. If I were to give an idea about something, he’d turn on me in a way that he did not hear my idea. He just saw my white face. It would come out instantly. It was hard for me to bring up an idea and not have him look at it as a white person’s view.

I would say, ‘Ron, I’m you wife walking with you on this.’ But his gut view was I was a white person telling him what the deal was.

“Most of us live our lives without being confronted. We want people around us who support who we are and who support the way think. But by choosing to marry Ron and to live in his community I also married the culture and the social troubles too. And we made it to death do us part. I counsel at lot of married couples and sometimes I think the problems they have are nothing compared to the cross-cultural difficulties that Ron and I faced.”

Diana says the outstanding thing about life with Ron was sharing in his tremendous faith.

“I miss his calmness the most. Sometimes things shake me and I tend to get a bit anxious. I was always able to share that with Ron and in his calmness and his faith, he always pointed to trusting in God. He had such terrible things to deal with in his own life but he encouraged me and he kept me

Brokeback another film in Hollywood minority ■ Comment by Paul Gray

S

ome Right-wingers might be taking Hollywood too seriously. America’s Steve Bennett, of Straight Talk Radio, for example, fulminated last week that Hollywood “is on a mission to homosexualise America.”

That’s going a bit far, surely. Yet Bennett’s correct to highlight the large, and apparently growing discrepancy between the interests of the general movie-going public, on one hand, and those who make the movies, on the other.

What irked Steve Bennett, and is irking many other vocal citizens on both sides of the Pacific at the moment, is the love being showered on movies like Brokeback Mountain, the gay cowboy movie which won four Golden Globes last week.

There are numerous movies and other pop culture products which highlight minority interest morality themes, and which have been richly rewarded at high-profile entertainment events lately, including: Products like: the movie Transamerica, starring Desperate Housewives’ Felicity Huffman as a transsexual with a gay prostitute son.

The US TV comedy Weeds, starring Mary Louise Parker as a suburban mother turned drug dealer.

The George Clooney movie

Syriana, a complicated political film about the oil business, Western policy and terrorism.

The cranky Steve Bennett says Hollywood is rewarding itself for “pumping out anti-family movies with sexually explicit, twisted and perverse themes that glorify homosexuality, transsexuality and every other kind of sexual immorality.”

Despite a complete lack of nuance in his argument, and a strong hint of personal hostility towards homosexuals in his remarks, critics like Bennett have one thing clearly right.

Hollywood is into minority issues.

And it too often pushes its interests in an in-your-face way which turns off the public.

Contrast the preachiness of the Brokeback agenda with the entertaining treatment of gay themes in Mel Brooks’ movies, like The Producers which opened here last week.

Overtly and unapologetically gay characters (including a campedup “Adolf Hitler”) fit perfectly into Brooks’ stories. There is no discrimination or homophobia about this: it is simply entertainment.

It is also a significant cultural recognition that homosexuality is just another part of a life, particularly of creative life. As Brooks himself opines in (my favourite) To Be or Not to Be: “Let’s face it, without fags and gypsies, there is no theatre.”

Despite its virile lead character played by Heath Ledger, Brokeback

is performing rather floppily at the box office, taking just over $US25m in ticket sales.

This fact tends to support the contention that there is a strong social class dimension to the way movies are received: critics and “the industry,” who arguably represent an intellectual elite, have totally different interests from the general movie-going public.

Gay cowboys? How cuttingedge, says one group. Gay cowboys?

You’ve got to be kidding, says the other.

A small but significant part of this debate should be the way overseas audiences – not just in Europe, Australia and North America but more importantly in the Third World, and particularly Muslim countries – view the values depicted in Hollywood movies.

Hollywood has a global impact.

It is, if you like, the primary propaganda tool that Western society has today for communicating messages about what it believes in, and what it believes is important.

What message do movies that promote gay pride and non-judgmental attitudes towards drug dealers and transsexuals send to more conservative societies and cultures around the globe?

To put the very kindest interpretation on it, it sends a message that the West is a place with vastly different values from theirs.

Hollywood elites, preoccupied with their own pro-minority agendas,

going. “I can’t quite get my head around being a widow and a single mother,” she says. “For the first six months after Ron died I was so busy with life and making sure Lydia was okay that I didn’t allow room in myself for grieving. Because I didn’t want Lydia to see me fall apart, I would wait until she was out and then sit quietly and cry.

“I have been crying more in front of Lydia. Something had shifted in our relationship.

“Lydia had turned 17 and she had her own car. In July she was chosen to go with the Matilda’s squad to Japan, China and Korea.

When she came back she was more of an adult, more independent. She’s on her way to her life and mum now takes a different position. Before, I had to be there for her.

Now I’m watching my child becoming less dependent on me so now I’m on a different level of grief.

“This is a time for me to renegotiate my life. It’s just about asking God what he wants of me in this stage of my life.”

A new start: Ron and Diana got married, above, on December 15, 1984 at Skull Creek, Laverton in a borrowed dress, wildflowers from the Albany region and a backdrop painted by a missionary friend.

Right, Ron and Diana sit near a water hole out from Warburton Ranges, WA, during one of their teaching trips through the desert communities.

Below is a recent photo of Diana and Lydia.

This is an extended version of an article which first appeared in Christian Woman magazine, PO Box 163 North Sydney NSW 2059, Tel: 02 8437 3641. (EDITOR: this acknowledgement is a legal requirement under copyright laws and must be published. Very important.)

A shameful echoe in our new security laws?

■ Book review by Paul Gray

O

Cowboys: Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain.

may see this as a good thing. But at a time of growing hostility between the West and the rest, they should perhaps take a broader view.

The “culture wars” were once just a conflict between Left and Right in countries like America and Australia.

Today, “culture war” is all too often a blood-steeped reality, when terrorists show their hatred of Western values by exploding bombs and killing people in our cities.

It is arguable who, within the West, is more to blame for the fact that we are hated by terrorists: pol-

iticians and oil-men like George Bush, or the promoters of liberalised values like the Left-wingers of our arts scenes.

The Left will always say: it’s them, not us. But I’m not so sure.

Either way, it’s clear that both sides, the Hollywood heavyweights and the heavyweights of the business world, each have heavy responsibilities as Western citizens.

The prime responsibility is to be aware of the picture we are creating of ourselves when we create, highlight and most of all, adore a movie like Brokeback Mountain.

pinion polls late last year showed that most Australians support stronger anti-terrorism laws. One of the main reasons for this seemed to be a fear of what might go wrong.

We live in an era of “suitcase” nuclear weapons – devices small enough to be smuggled into a country. What if a terrorist agent so armed slipped through our national security net?

Now compare and contrast the damage to Sydney or Melbourne from the detonation of a suitcase bomb with the infringement of a few civil liberties by ASIO. Which would you choose? If only betting on the Melbourne Cup could be so simple.

Scenario 1: someone gets wrongly detained and must eat police food for a fortnight. Scenario 2: 100,000 die from a weapons of mass destruction.

That’s the kind of mental equation most Australians were making when it came to judging the heated media controversy over the Howard Government’s next security crackdown.

The principle at work here was entirely rational. Worst-case scenarios rightly play a central role in debates over national security.

Likewise, however, supporters of the Government’s strong national

security line must grant their opponents the right to point out worstcase scenarios of their own.

I leave it to enthusiastic civil libertarians to fantasise over potential abuses of power that may follow from the Government’s proposed changes to security laws.

One area which cannot be classed as fantasy, however, is history. And on the national security issue, Australian history teaches some disturbing lessons about “tough” security laws.

One of these lessons concerns European Jewish refugees from Nazism – including the famous “Dunera Boys” – who were imprisoned here during World War II. Far from threatening our nation-

al security, these people were victims of the same totalitarian forces with which Australia was then engaged in war. Yet our wartime Government’s blanket suspicion of people from “enemy” territory led to their incarceration.

Ironically, many of those émigré Jews later becameAustralian heroes: leaders in the fields of education, the arts and the law. Not bad for a bunch of ‘reffos.’

Their story is told by authors like historian Suzanne Rutland.

In another shameful episode, Australia’s Italian community was also targeted during World War II after the Federal Government passed a National Security Act. From June 1940, Australia was at war with Italy.

A total of 4721 “Italians” were incarcerated by the Government.

Many were Australian citizens.

Some were women. Some were children. A few were not just citizens, but Australian-born citizens.

Their story is told by four writers in the new book Enemy Aliens (Connor Court Publishing.) It shows that per capita, Australia led the world in imprisoning Italians.

Our great ally the USA – also then at war with Mussolini’s Italy – incarcerated only 2100 individuals out of a total Italian American population of 600,000 (0.35 per cent).

By contrast, Australia imprisoned nearly 20 per cent of all Italian Australians.

The book demonstrates that

WWII Italians migrants were mainly of southern Italian peasant and fishing stock who came here to work hard for their families and adopted country. Like the Dunera Boys, many who survived war-time internment went on to become leading citizens and contributors to their new nation. Not all made it, though. Sugar-grower Giuseppe Cantamessa of Ingham in Queensland, for example, never recovered. Cantamessa died, aged 55, soon after the war. He was a naturalised Australian.

He’d lived here for 33 years when war broke out. Cantamessa had led local government and district sugar industry bodies, and chaired local tennis and bowls clubs. A “dangerous citizen,” indeed.

Cantamessa’s son enlisted for military service for Australia early in the war. It wasn’t enough to save his papa.

Even more telling is the story of Australian-born Shell Oil executive Alf Martinuzzi who was interned in 1942. Martinuzzi was as Australian as canned spaghetti, or more so.

But in his appointment at Shell, he had supplanted someone of British origin. At a time of widespread racist attitudes towards Italians on the part of many Australians of British background, this was unfortunate.

During the operation of the National Security Act, anonymous gossip, denunciation and the making of allegations untested in court formed an important part of the

“intelligence” used against Italians by our authorities. Despite their Australian birth, many war-time internees were described on official forms as being of Italian nationality.

This may sound trivial.

But according to Martinuzzi’s daughter, Victoria University lecturer Ilma Martinizzi O’Brien, “incorrectly naming or labeling people” in this way made it easier to intern them.” This is a hot point, with direct relevance to today’s national security debate. We may agree we need tough laws.

But in a secretive system, where security authorities may arrest and detain on the basis of “confidential” intelligence, how can incorrect decisions be prevented? Answer: they can’t be, without effective court scrutiny where evidence against a person can be tested in the light of day.

Just a few decades ago, guards with machine guns kept good Australians like Alf Martinuzzi and Giuseppe Cantamessa locked behind triple lines of barbed wire.

To those who say such injustices couldn’t happen again, I say why not? There is nothing in John Howard’s new security laws to prevent it.

Enemy Aliens is available from The Record $20 plus postage Tel. (08) 9227 7080 or email: administration@therecord.com.au

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January 26 2006, The Record

life, the universe and everything

Recovering the lost art of leisure

■ With Anna Krohn

T

he last days of the long summer hibernation draw to a close. As a kid, I used to want to squeeze every last drop of freedom and space from these ripe and precious days before the grey conformity of school took over.

Have things changed today?

Children shamble through the heat bemoaning boredom, trailing after sour faced and defeated adults.

This is despite the battery of spanking new, X-boxes, plasma screens, I-pods and state-of-the-art, mobile gismos they are plugged into.

Shopping malls are haunted by packs of disgruntled and self-conscious looking adolescents on the loose. Queues to the great Aussie sporting events and beaches reek with a sort of impatient ennui. Is it the weather? Is it me?

The charities tell us they receive more desperate cries for help as

Have we forgotten how to relax?

domestic violence, break-up and substance abuse escalates during the Christmas holidays.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics records that fewer young people are involved in outdoor activities or crafts at vacation time.

Teenagers talk about a great night out as “getting wasted”.

Although we anticipate our holidays for so long - all we seem to take away is a deeper and more depressing credit card debt.

Is this evidence that we should scrap the great Australian leisure culture - its sporting tradition, its long holidays and its opportuni-

ties to potter about the outdoors or bookshops and replace it with a more driven and “purposeful” work ethic? Should we aim for workplace agreements with less “unproductive” downtime?

The irony is that the opposite is true.

Despite our “leisure industry” and “life-style consultants”, we are forgetting what leisure really is and how we live it.

The great German Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper wrote his important study: Leisure: the basis of culture (1952), that we forget how to be leisurely and how to rest,

when we are culturally and spiritually impoverished.

Pieper says: “Leisure is a mental and spiritual attitude - it is not merely the result of external factors - it is an attitude of mind, a condition of soul. Leisure is the power of stepping beyond the workaday world and in so doing touching upon the superhuman.”

The ancient Greeks believed in a kind of “sabbath” in which space and time was given over to celebrating the “higher things”. “The soul of leisure… lies in celebration.” says Pieper.

How can we “celebrate” when

we don’t really believe in “higher” things let alone in a loving and personal divine presence in our lives?

When our world is overrun with utilitarian weights and balances, we become mere cogs in our own corporate machines. Rest doesn’t make sense or is infected with “performance anxiety.”

The “useless” arts, higher sciences and humanities are shoved sideways by the more “ecomomically rational” marketing and business studies.

At-home mums, carers and contemplatives are de-valued. We are so busy proving and “asserting” ourselves that we feel guilty and restless if we take time to smell the roses, to daydream, let alone to kneel in a Church before the great mysteries of faith.

Pope Benedict XVI said on Christmas Day, that despite all our material resources..”.. men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart—” Pieper says that without the sense of divine “gift”, holidays become hard work: “a period for mere killing of time and for boredom with its marked similarity to the inability to enjoy leisure.” * Josef Pieper Leisure: The basis of culture has been reprinted by St Augustine’s Press (1998)

Honouring emptiness wasn’t the intention, I think ■ By Hal Colebatch

H

arold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature should at least re-open debate as to what the prize is meant to be about.

It is a pointer - and not the first - to the fact the literature committee and its whole ethos and rationale need overhauling.

Pinter’s most accomplished work in the theatre was written 40 or more years ago. If the Nobel committee wished to recognise a British playwright particularly, then the one real and consistent genius of contemporary British theatre is Tom Stoppard, whose work often finds hope, consolation and sanity beyond the apparent absurdity of life.

Stoppard’s work, apart from being at the highest level of artistic accomplishment, is also in line with what Alfred Nobel had in mind when he decreed the Prize was to be for work of an “idealistic tendency,” a fact of his bequest which the judges have tended to ignore.

In was not, incidentally, meant to be for inaccessible, experimental work.

While the Laureates in the sciences have virtually all been people of genuine high distinction in their various fields, and the science prizes for major achievements, the Laureates for both Literature and Peace have, with hindsight, not always reflected well on the awarding committee’s judgement. No-one could quarrel with the Literature awards in the last quarter-century to V.S. Naipaul, Wole Soyinka, William Golding or Czelaw Milosz,

certainly, and the first 80 years of the prize saw many of the greatest names in literature recognised. W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, Herman Hesse, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Boris Pasternak, Alexandr Solzhentizyn and Saul Bellow are among those who make up a company of which any writer would be proud to be a member. It is laureates like these who are responsible for the unrivalled prestige of the prize. But who are Halldor Laxness, Sigrid Undset or Sully Prudhomme?

Winston Churchill received the prize for literature in 1953, though his main fictional achievement was a single political novel written in youth. It was presumably thought that Churchill, then probably the most respected man in the world, had to have a Nobel prize for something. The Peace Prize had gone to too many unworthy recipients and non-entities for its offer to him to seem anything but an insult (though it had not gone then to gentry like Yasser Arafat or North Vietnam’s Lee Duc Tho) and Churchill’s speeches and histories, if not exactly literature, were at least masterful prose.

Some Laureates, like Pearl Buck and John Galworthy, seem to have been competent and successful journeymen writers rather than true greats. Some, like Ernest Hemingway, John Paul Sartre (one of the philosophical influences on Pol Pot) and Samuel Beckett, and I would place Pinter in this company, seem to me to have been rewarded for exulting emptiness, nihilism and a vision of the void.

Hemingway’s “A clean, well-lighted

place” for example, must be one of the most totally pessimistic visions of the universe and the human condition ever penned.

This does not mean they were not considerable artists, but that to reward such work was the opposite of Alfred Nobel’s intention.

The award to Beckett, in 1969 was criticised at the time as having nothing to do with Nobel’s bequest that the work go to idealistic work.

Defenders of the award claimed that to follow Nobel’s wishes would “exclude most of the great works of literature.” Apart from being factually false (there are plenty of major writers who are not totally pessimistic), this might well provoke the retort: “so much the worse for the great works of literature.”

Nobel, probably already stricken with guilt over having made his fortune from explosives and armaments, wanted to improve and benefit the world, not increase the area of spiritual emptiness by promoting nihilism and pessimism.

If Nobel’s wish that the prize reward fine and serious literature of an idealistic tendency is to be respected, I think the Australian writer Peter Kocan’s recent novel Fresh Fields, plus his previous novels The Treatment and The Cure, and several volumes of poetry, should make him a serious contender and a much more credible candidate than some winners in the past. Kocan, who spent more than ten years in prison and secure mental institutions after trying to assassinate Arthur Calwell in 1966, with only a few old-fashioned books of verse as his friends and teachers, and surrounded by the criminally

Are these prizes being given to the wrong people?

insane of various kinds, amazingly and heroically made a great writer of himself. Les Murray for one has called Fresh Fields “superb.”

His work is splendidly accomplished and, while not overly didactic or shrilly preaching some message, it is infused with a deeply moral vision and purpose, extracting a realistic hope and consolation from often terrible situations. Strangely, and this is one of the mysteries of true literary art, one finished it strengthened and encouraged, and, as with Solzhentizyn’s novels, with renewed faith in the capacity of

the human spirit to triumph over horror. Indeed I judge his work, in this respect as well as others, to be far superior to that of Patrick White, Australia’s only literary laureate so far. If the Nobel committee can get back to respecting Alfred Nobel’s wishes, it could do worse than consider Kocan’s work - if an Australian academic or institution will nominate him. * Hal Colebatch has written several novels, volumes of poetry and other books. In 2003 he received a Centenary Medal for services to Writing, Law, Poetry and Political Commentary.

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 7

Columban priest, and gracious man ■ By Tommy Murphy

C

olumban priest Fr Patrick Kelly, familiarly known as ‘P.J.’ died at Dalgan Park in Navan, Ireland, on January 13. Born on September 16, 1926, in Woodford, Co. Galway, he was educated at Woodford Convent School, Woodford N.S., Derryvoher N.S., and. St. Joseph’s College, Ballinasloe. He arrived in Dalgan in 1944 and was ordained priest on 21 December 1950.

He was a member of the first group of Columbans assigned to Fiji in 1951, and he spent the next eighteen years there. P.J. was a man of many gifts and they are reflected in the variety of appointments that followed. In 1963 he was appointed Spiritual Director at St Columban’s College, Navan and two years later was appointed Director of the Irish Region.

He served six years in this role and was next appointed to Perth, Western Australia, where again he served for six years.

In 1983, he faced a radical new challenge in being assigned to the Pakistan Mission Unit. Most of the Columbans assigned to that unit were younger men.

P.J.’s presence was a gift both to his colleagues and to the people of Pakistan. Ever a gracious and welcoming host, his deep spirituality and outgoing personality enabled him to form friendships among

both Muslims and Christians.

He also provided retreats for many groups of religious Sisters who valued his ministry highly.

In 1991 he was reassigned to Ireland and led the fundraising for the building of the Dalgan Fr Patrick J. Kelly Nursing Home. Later, he served as House Superior in the Dalgan community until his health began to fail.

P.J. was also & gifted musician, composer of more than thirtyfive traditional airs and dances.

He was always happy to be part of any group gathered to make music. During his entire missionary career he developed this gift, and was deeply interested in the music and instruments of the cultures in which he served.

P.J. will be remembered as a gracious gentleman. His transparent sincerity, his gift for affirming others, his reluctance to be negative or critical, won him friends everywhere. He suffered a good deal during his final years and bore it all with patience, resignation, and appreciation for the efforts of those who cared for him. He will be greatly missed.

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May he rest in peace.

The best social security system ever known together to strengthen and support Australian fathers.

Fathers in Families, the policy document currently being serialised in The Record, aims at supporting all dads without distinction to fulfil their role as effective fathers he greatest resource this counT try possesses lies in the families of our nation. At the same time, the strength of our families depends on the quality of the relationships between our nation’s mothers and fathers. The qual- ity of these relationships will determine the destiny of Australia. The future of Australia lies in the character of her children.

Equipping and supporting fathers and mothers in their relationships helps ensure that our children have the best possible future.

The National Fathering Forum believes that every child has the fundamental right to both a mother and a father.

The best way to secure this right is to establish a loving and stable marriage between a man and a woman for life.

This long-term relationship facilitates the rights of grandmothers and grandfathers to continued access and valuable input into their grandchildren.

The overwhelming conclusion of current social science research has shown that the best environment for children is a two heterosexualparent household.

The best way to ensure strong families is to support strong mar-

riages. This traditional family unit - a loving father, mother and their children - is the best way to nurture, educate and protect children. This is the best social security system the world has ever known.

However for a variety of different reasons, many fathers do not find themselves in a marriage relationship.

Therefore irrespective of their marital status, we want to support

all dads to fulfil their role as effective fathers.

Fatherlessness can be defined as the absence of an active, positive father-influence in the lives of children. Fatherlessness is both a natural and spiritual problem. It needs strategic and synergistic partnerships that should involve government, business, church, community, faith-based and secular charities and many others working

History On 10th February 2003, over 35 people gathered for the inaugural National Fathering Forum at Parliament House Canberra.

Twenty-five delegates spoke at the Forum. The delegates represented a wide range of Men’s Groups, Family Law Reform Groups, Education & Training Institutions, Academics, Social Researchers and Psychologists, Drug Rehabilitation Organisations, Prison Charities, Social Reform Networks, Church Groups, Journalists and Media, Family Focused Charitable Organisations and Fatherhood Institutions. All came at their own cost with the common goal to strengthen and support Australian fathers and ‘to turn the tide of fatherlessness’ that exists in Australia.

The forum delegates who presented papers are united by the common belief that fatherlessness and family break- down are major social problems in Australian society.

The following Twelve Point Plan* was agreed upon by a consensus of the delegates. This policy document puts forward some key recommendations to address these problems.

The National Fathering Forum does not see this Twelve Point Plan as a final document. Rather we see it as the first of many proposals to promote discussion and contribute to a coordinated national solution to turn the tide of fatherlessness and strengthen Australian fathers.

We commend the

Parliamentarians from the different parties in both Houses who supported the National Fathering Forum Open Session by their attendance and input on 10th February 2003. We look forward to a National Fatherhood Summit to be held in the near future.

Editor’s note” The Twelve Point Plan will appear in forthcoming editions of The Record.The comprehensive policy document being serialised here which contains the Plan makes an ideal resource for parents, families, schools and advocates of the family in our society. See details below.

Fathers in Families is available from The Record.

Tel: (08) 9227 7080.

Cost $5+postage.

For further information on the Fatherhood Foundation phone (02) 4272 6677 or go to www.fathersonline.org

January 26 2005, The Record

Page 8

The World The basics of faith: God is love God is love: Simple papal message reflects basics of faith ■ By John Thavis

E

ven before the release of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical in late January, it was clear that the theme - “God is love” - reflected an emerging focus of his papacy’s

first year.

From his inaugural Mass in April 2005, to his recent improvised sermon at a baptismal liturgy, in speeches to world leaders and bishops, the Pope has been preaching a basic message - God is good, God cannot be shut out of personal and social life, and God reaches out to humanity through Jesus Christ.

Many were expecting a rule-tightening papacy from Pope Benedict, who headed the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation for 24 years. But instead of loading his talks and texts with Catholic magisterial pronouncements, the Pope has used scriptural, philosophical and anthropological sources to stir an awareness of the transcendent purpose of human affairs.

As a teacher, the Pope is taking a lessdogmatic approach in order to reach a wider audience. He is inviting individuals and modern society to change their relationship with God - a relationship, he argues, that is often one of indifference or antagonism.

“God does not hide behind clouds of impenetrable mystery. ... He has shown himself, he talks to us and is with us; he

Pope Benedict XVI at a recent General Audience.

lives with us and guides us in our lives,” the Pope said in a sermon in early January.

Two months earlier, speaking to academics at the Vatican, he warned of a tendency for modern men and women to withdraw into a “suffocating existential microcosm, in which there is no place for the great ideals that are open to transcendence and to God.” The encyclical’s theme was clearly on the

Photo: CNS

Pope’s mind last summer, when he confided to a group of priests: “We believe that God exists, that God counts; but which God? A God with a face, a human face, a God who reconciles, who overcomes hatred and gives us the power of peace that no one else can give us. “We must make people understand that Christianity is actually very simple and consequently very rich,” he said.

That would seem to be one of the goals

Islam not alone in persecution Muslims could learn from past persecution of Catholics.

C

atholic history could be relevant to Muslim struggles The story of the Catholic Church’s embrace of religious liberty may have relevance to the current internal struggles of the Muslim world, said a US expert on Church affairs.

Scott Appleby, director of the Joan Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, told a Rome conference on January 17 that internal pluralism exists in Islam and “this is good news.”

“It’s good news for Islam that there are competing traditions and voices and interpretations of what ‘jihad’ might mean and how it might be applied,” he said.

He cited the emergence of courageous Muslims who speak about the options of nonviolence in Islam, about democratisation and about acceptance of a pluralistic society.

It’s a long process, but this kind of internal debate ultimately opens up alternatives to violence, he said.

Ultimately, he said, demographic and economic pressures favour the pluralists in the Islamic world.

Appleby’s speech detailed the internal evolution within the Catholic

“Its good news for Islam that there are competing traditions and coices and interpretations of what ‘jihad’ might means and how it might be applied...”

Church that led to the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (“Dignitatis Humanae.”)

That document said religious liberty is a human right and that people should not be forced to act in a way contrary to their beliefs.

Appleby noted that an 1832 encyclical by Pope Gregory XVI described religious freedom as “madness.”

But dialogue continued in the Church, and the Vatican II decree can be described as the product of internal pluralism at work, he said.

“By any reasonable assessment, ‘Dignitatis Humanae’ was a striking reversal, by which the Church abandoned its previous claims to political privilege, renounced the theocratic model of political order, and laid the groundwork for its new role as global proponent of religious liberty and universal human rights,” Appleby said.

The conference, sponsored by the US Embassy to the Holy See, also featured speeches by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick

of Washington and James Towey, director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Cardinal McCarrick said two fundamental premises of “Dignitatis Humanae” were the dignity of the human person and the proposition that constitutional limits should be set on the powers of government to prevent encroachment on religious freedom and practice.

He praised a succession of steps by the US government and Congress to protect religious freedom at home and abroad.

But, responding to a question, the cardinal also identified a new danger to religious freedom in the United States: legislative attempts to impose on church institutions “that which we cannot morally do. I see this as a growing threat,” Cardinal McCarrick told the Rome audience.

He said one example was trying to oblige Catholic hospitals to offer abortion procedures; another was an effort to require church agencies to provide spousal benefits to unmarried employees.

-CNS

of his first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”), to be released on January 25. “God Is Love” strikes some as more fitting for a ‘60s poster than the cover of a papal document, especially one written by an intellectual like Pope Benedict XVI. The phrase, taken from the First Letter of John, may be a simple one. But it’s the starting point for what the Pope hopes will be a deeper conversation with contemporary society, one that involves the nature of love and its relation to freedom, truth and Jesus Christ.

In the Pope’s view, unless people understand how “God is love,” they will never overcome the age-old tendency to mistrust God. In his sermon on the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, Pope Benedict said that from the Garden of Eden to modern times humans have suspected that “God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside.”

In short, he said, man often believes God’s love creates a limiting dependency.

For the Pope, the challenge facing the Church is to make people see that “love is not dependence but a gift that makes us live” and that “God’s will is not a law for the human being imposed from the outside” but something intrinsic to human nature.

The Pope followed up on this theme in an address to the new British ambassador to the Vatican on December 23, when he spoke about respect for the truth and its implications for civil society.

“Above all, it directs us toward a proper understanding of human freedom which can never be realised independently of God but only in cooperation with his loving plan CNS for humanity,” the Pope said.

HIV affects all: Nigeria Health workers say AIDS in Nigeria claim that the disease affects more than just health.

In Nigeria, the saying goes, if you aren’t infected with HIV/AIDS, you are affected.

“We don’t look at AIDS primarily as a health issue,” said Dr Chidi Marume, minister of health in Orlu.

“We look at AIDS as a social-cultural malaise. It affects our people in so many ways. It gets to the heart of the people, increases the poverty level, creates a lot of social problems, orphans. It costs a lot economically because we lose a lot of manpower because it affects the most productive segment of society, who incidentally are also the most sexually active.”

Kelechi Azuike, chairman of the management board of Imo State University Teaching Hospital in Orlu, said, “We have a problem here because of the stigma.

“I heard of someone who died from AIDS in one village, and because they thought that person would infect everybody if they touched the corpse, they tied a rope on the person and dragged him into the grave,” Azuike said.

“AIDS Is Real” signs are found on billboards, in newspaper ads and on building fronts in Orlu and most other Nigerian cities. AIDS has hindered the economy and the health of more than one generation.

It ranks second to malaria as the greatest killer of Nigerians.

The Joint UN Program on HIV/ AIDS says that although Nigeria has the highest real number of infected adults in West Africa, in proportion to its population Nigeria has a low infection rate due to “political commitment” and efforts toward a unified national response.

But statistics on HIV/AIDS are only estimates.

In a country of nearly 130 million people, “we’re saying 3.4 million to 3.5 million Nigerians have AIDS,” said Dr. Joseph Ana, commissioner of health for Cross River state. “If you check on the streets, it’s probably a higher figure.”

Record keeping is in its very early stages and sporadic at best.

So is diagnosis. Many clinics routinely screen for HIV when treating patients, but that leaves millions unchecked.

Health workers say it is nearly impossible to keep track of those infected, since many go back to their villages and never return to the clinic where they were diagnosed. While there is no concrete way to keep track of the cases, there is no denying their impact.

Marume said he knows of one village that lost up to 10 percent of its population in a two-year period because of AIDS. He said one of his own relatives died in his early 30s.

“The Catholic diocese is the first organisation that has given us direct relief in the treatment of AIDS,” he said.

-CNS

January 26 2005, The Record

Page 9

The World Remember the Holy Land

Nigerian priests confront AIDS ■ By Marylynn G. Hewitt

Bishop Michael Okoro of Abakaliki, Nigeria, is focused on difficult work - ministering to those affected by AIDS. The toll it has taken on his flock and his priests is devastating, he said.

“It is spreading everywhere very fast. There is nowhere that is immune,” he said. “It is everywhere.” In this diocese of 331,000 Catholics, the average priest serves nearly 4,600 Catholics.

AIDS is “very hard and very painful for the priests,” said Bishop Okoro.

He said he estimates every priest spends part of each week caring for and anointing those with AIDS. And when patients die, “we bury them, too.” Bishop Okoro said he has anointed “very many” in their last moments.

“We need to keep talking about it,” he said. To ensure that the conversations continue, he has asked each priest to preach about it during the Sunday homily at least once a month.

“In our diocese, we care for them - somehow. We also try to get people to be sympathetic, because the very first thing is that when you have it there is a stigma, and that stigma also means people don’t want to have an association with you. So those who have it are very lonesome people,” the bishop said.

While government campaigns preach condoms as making sex safe, “we preach abstinence as the best protection,” said Bishop Okoro.

While it is impossible to ensure that a condom is 100 percent protection, “we say being chaste is.”

“We are not asking people to abstain for the rest of your life - only until you get married. And when you are married, be faithful to your wife,” the bishop said.

In the Diocese of Makurdi, Bishop Athanasius Usuh said he tells people, “You can prevent it, but there is no cure.”

Each parish in his diocese has a counsellor to help people living with HIV or AIDS. “Many who are infected feel neglected, and people run away from them. Some of them do not go to Church,” he said, but the

Nigerian children pray at a makeshift shrine inside St. Paul’s Church in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, April 11.

counselors will work to help them anyway. In this diocese of nearly 1.4 million Catholics, there are more than 11,000 Catholics per priest.

Sunday Mass is on a rotating basis for the outstations.

“It is not possible” for a priest to visit every week, the bishop said.

But Bishop Usuh said he makes sure to celebrate Easter and Christmas Masses with those living with AIDS. “I try to give them hope,” he said, adding he has known “many, many, many” who have died from AIDS. As the pandemic continues, the number of orphans increases.

“I have identified 38 orphans in my parish of Sts Peter and Paul in Nyanya,” said Father Sam Tumba, chairman of the HIV/AIDS committee of the Archdiocese of Abuja.

“Every parish has them. This is a global problem.”

Part of his work is getting parishes to determine how best to help the orphans and keep them in a home rather than an orphanage.

the world in brief Give God a good name If Catholics do not believe their public presentations of the faith deserve the best of their time and talent, the world will think their message is unworthy of belief, said the head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

“We can give God a bad name,” US Archbishop John P. Foley told participants in a Jan. 20 meeting to plan a World Congress on Catholic TV. “Unfortunately, when our efforts are viewed as poor or amateurish, what we believe is sometimes viewed as poor and amateurish.”

The congress is scheduled for October

“We have support groups to make home visits to help. For the orphans, we encourage them to get to school,” and parishes sometimes help pay school tuition, the priest said.

Father Innocent Jooji, vicar for social services for the Archdiocese of Abuja, said: “The Church is trying to appeal to the generosity of the people of God in getting a prevention and care structure in place.

The AIDS impact has been tremendous. ... This is a continuation of the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.”

He said he has no idea how many times he has done that, or how many in his diocese have HIV or AIDS. “That is one problem in Africa - we haven’t gotten to that yet,” the bishop said, but he added that the lack of record keeping does not stop him from remembering.

One man he remembers in particular was 26. After the man was diagnosed with AIDS, said the bishop, “he was full of anger that

in Madrid, Spain. Archbishop Foley told participants in the planning meeting that the congress is important because there are many Catholic television initiatives taking place around the world, but better coordination and cooperation are needed.

Gay resolution has agenda A European Parliament resolution condemning homophobia is a thinly veiled attempt to pressure European countries to grant legal recognition to gay unions, said the secretary of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences. Msgr. Aldo Giordano told Vatican Radio on January 19 the Catholic Church opposed discrimination against any person, but the resolution was an attempt to

Photo: CNS

this had been passed on to him by somebody. He came home, sold all his things and divided them into three portions. One portion went to his mother. He was the only son, and this was to look after her. Another portion was so she could bury him properly. He used another portion to avenge himself.

So he went to meet and have sex with nine girls - nine different girls - and to buy them fineries. “The day I went to meet him, he said what was paining him now is what he did. They (nine girls) weren’t the one who caused the problem - he was. He asked me to keep telling his story and to tell others that, if you get it, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself.”

Four days later, the young man died. Bishop Okoro had two prayer requests: One, “that we may be open about this. If you are open, I think it helps very much. They say that the biggest disinfectant is sunlight.”

His second request was “for the CNS strength to bear all this.”

“equate the homosexual experience with the family.”

The resolution passed on January 18 by a vote of 468-149, with 41 abstentions.

It called on countries belonging to the European Union and on European institutions to adopt measures to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation.

But it also said “unjustified and unreasonable limitations” of the rights of homosexuals “are often hidden behind justifications based on public order, religious freedom and the right to conscientious objection.”

Calling courageous priests Today’s world needs courageous, caring priests who are not afraid to bring God’s love to all people, especially to those languish-

European and North American bishops called on Catholics worldwide to remember the Church of the Holy Land in prayer and to come to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage.

“We call upon the faithful in our nations to ... support generously the Church’s institutions here and to promote initiatives to bring peace and justice to all the peoples of the land,” the bishops said in a statement released at a Jan. 19 press conference following the conclusion of their sixth annual meeting in Jerusalem.

During the five-day meeting, the bishops expressed their solidarity with the Church of Jerusalem and made pastoral visits to local Catholic parishes.

The also met with members of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land.

Because of the upcoming Palestinian elections and the political situation in Israel following the brain haemorrhage of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the bishops did not meet with Palestinian or Israeli leaders this year. Instead, for the first time, they travelled to Jordan and met with King Abdullah II to discuss the importance of the Christian presence in the region and the need for Christian unity.

In their statement, the bishops said they “recognise the legitimate right” of Israel to take “appropriate security measures,” but said those measures should “protect the dignity, human rights, lands and water of the Palestinian people.”

“Security for Israel is linked to justice for Palestinians,” they added. While justice is certainly an important component, said retired Archbishop Lucien Daloz, the concepts of brotherhood, reconciliation and comprehension are equally important.

Though they do not have political power, they were issuing a “moral call to the public authorities to work for a just peace” and would encourage their respective communities and governments to “help create a just resolution of the conflict so that each individual across the Holy Land can live in dignity and fulfil his or her human potential.” CNS

ing in poverty or struggling with difficulties, Pope Benedict XVI told members of a Rome seminary.

But pastors must also be mature, lead holy lives and faithfully comply with the Church’s teaching authority if they are to be effective evangelisers and bring hope to the world, the Pope said.

The Pope made his remarks Jan. 20 during an audience with some 60 members of Almo Capranica College, a diocesan seminary of Rome.

“In order to respond to the expectations of modern society” and be part of the enormous task of evangelisation.

“Prepared and courageous priests are needed, who without ambition and fear, but convinced of Gospel truth, make proclaiming Christ their first concern,” the Pope said. CNS

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 10

Movie Reviews Woody just keeps bumping into God Despite its trademark nihilism, Woody Allen’s latest film ends up showing that there is order in the universe.

Match Point (DreamWorks)

■ Reviewed by William Park

W

oody Allen on the set of Is life governed by Providence or Chance? In the Book of Genesis, Joseph, the Grand Vizier of Egypt, tells his brothers, a pathetic group of starving Israelites, that “God did send me before you to preserve life,” a statement which contains the primary theme of the Bible. Providence guides history.

God will bring good out of seeming evil, so that the harm done to Joseph by his brothers results in their salvation. Had they not sold him into slavery, they would not, many years later, have food to eat.

Likewise, Adam’s transgression is called “the Fortunate Fall” because the sin that he committed resulted finally in the Resurrection of Jesus and the salvation of all mankind.

Many great authors have taken up this providential paradox, namely that ill fortune turns out to be a benefit. Dante, Spenser, Milton all treat it directly. My own favourite version is Fielding’s Tom Jones, the divine comedy of novels. Like Genesis, Tom Jones illustrates Providence by natural means; there’s no direct divine intervention, no vision of heaven where

the earth’s difficulties and contradictions are resolved. Instead, the world, which appears to be at the whim of Fortune, chance, luck, and accident (and Fielding pretends that as author he believes this to be so), by a series of double ironies and reversals, turns out to be governed

by Providence after all.

Fielding published Tom Jones in 1749. Since that time, many of the best authors have looked elsewhere for meaning and coherence. The “forces” of history may determine events and lives; human will or imagination may provide the only coherence, or, as the enemies of intelligent design would have it, life is the result of chance and mechanical processes. To this latter group belongs Woody Allen and his newest film, Match Point.

Let me say at once that I thoroughly enjoyed this film. So, I am confronted with a dilemma. Did I enjoy it because secretly to myself I hold the same nihilistic worldview as Woody Allen? Or did Woody Allen, perhaps secretly to himself, make a film that is not cynical but edifying? I confronted this dilemma once before in my review of The Man Who Wasn’t There. That film, like Match Point, employed the plot of irony, the one in which the characters remain trapped in what Northrop Frye termed a “mad world,” which is an analogy of Hell.

Such stories serve moral ends by acting as warnings - There but for the grace of God go I - or as catharses that purge of us of the desires which led to the character’s downfall. The only trouble with these arguments is that they don’t quite apply to Match Point. In this film, thanks to luck, the protagonist succeeds in his crime, escapes

justice, and sets out on a more than comfortable life among the English upper classes.

So what we have here, not unusual for Woody Allen, is a black comedy, a kind of theatre of the absurd.

Such works also employ the plot of irony. But instead of a tyrannical blocking figure, a corrupt economic and political system, or a malicious fate keeping the characters from the “green world” of fertility and joy, his protagonist reaches that world on terms so criminal that every audience will reject them. And by this manoeuvre Allen turns the “green world,” on its head and satirises it.

Allen is not a Machiavell who advocates “whatever is necessary,” but a moralist who is mocking the way of the world, the way the cookie crumbles, or in this case, the way the ball bounces. He’s never been happy with the status quo.

Yet the best argument in favour of this film arises from its art. It’s an old fashioned drama of class, adultery, and crime, not too distantly related to Theodore Dreiser’s American Tragedy (best done on film in the 1951 version, A Place in the Sun). Wonderfully acted - it features Scarlett Johansson, our brightest new star, as well as an accomplished British cast headed by the Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.

Set in opulent London, it provides an uncrowded tourists’ dream of the city, of luxurious, still functioning country houses and private tennis clubs. It’s all a bit unreal, a slightly abstract vision of the social game with only two sides to the net, the insiders and the outsiders. Needless to say, Allen provides intelligent dialogue and a coherent plot, all unified by the key word and concept - “luck.” That motif

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Scarlett Johannson star in Match Point.

Photo: Icon Film Distribution

plays in and out with others, all of them having to do with games, with sport, and with the arts: primarily grand opera, but also theatre, musical theatre, acting, painting, and architecture. And then these in turn relate to the human game of courtship, copulation, and the chances of fertility. This film provides so much “organic unity,” as the New Critics used to say, that one suspects it will be the one Woody Allen picture canonised in future film history courses.

In retrospect, the entire film is a game Woody Allen plays with the audience, sitting there waiting on his next serve. They both know the rules of the game, that crime should not pay, but there’s no

Production Code Administration around to call “fault!” when Woody violates expectations. Yet, herein we discover the paradox of Mr Allen’s art. For no matter how much the author insists on a world governed by accident, his work only proves that behind every chance event, there’s an artful design. Where does that come from, and why do we expect it? So while Woody Allen consciously asserts one thing, his work of art - and he must know this - countermands him. He shows us what he imagines the world to be; his achievement argues that despite unfortunate results, the game still has rules.

William Park is a veteran film reviewer and the author of Hollywood: An Epic Production.

2005 gave public some healthy cinema entertainment as well ■ By Harry Forbes and David DiCerto

Amid the outcries of concerned viewers over the prevalence of sex, violence and vulgarity on the screen, 2005 also gave moviegoers much to smile about in the form of wholesome entertainment.

Here - in alphabetical order - are our top 10 picks for best family films of the past year, followed in parentheses by their US Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film & Broadcasting classification.

■ Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story - a heart-tugging crowdpleaser set in rural Kentucky about a dispirited racehorse trainer, his young daughter and his estranged father, who nurse an injured thoroughbred back to championship form and in the process mend their own broken relationships through the healing power of love. (A-I)

■ Because of Winn-Dixie - a gentle and disarming story about a Baptist preacher and his young daughter who move to a small Florida town, and - with the help of a stray dog - change the lonely lives of several of the town’s misfits.

(A-I)

■ Howl’s Moving Castle - a marvelously imaginative and deeply moral Japanese animated fable about a young girl transformed into an old lady by a witch’s curse who becomes the housekeeper to a handsome, but reclusive, wizard who lives in a dilapidated fortress that moves around on mechanical legs. (A-II) ■ Oliver Twist - director Roman Polanski’s handsome version of Charles Dickens’ timeless classic about an orphan boy’s misfortunes among a gang of thieves in 19thcentury London. (A-II) ■ Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - the whimsical clay-animated adventure about a cheese-loving inventor and his faithful pooch who are hired by a batty blueblood to catch a monstrous rabbit terrorizing neighborhood gardens on the eve of the town’s annual vegetable competition. (A-I)

■ Pride & Prejudice - a fine retelling of Jane Austen’s evergreen romance concerning five unmarried sisters whose mother is strenuously determined to marry them off in class-conscious Georgian England. (A-I)

■ Duma - a first-rate coming-ofage adventure set in Africa about a headstrong young boy who embarks on a journey of self-discovery when he resolves to trek across hundreds of miles of treacherous terrain in order to return his pet cheetah -

which he raised since it was an orphaned cub - to its rightful home in the wild. (A-II)

■ Little Manhattan - a warm and winning romantic comedy set in New York City about a 10-yearold who thinks that girls are “icky” until he falls for an apple-cheeked cutie and finds himself adrift in a befuddling sea of newfound emotions as he sweetly experiences the agony, ecstasy and magic of first love. (A-II)

March of the Penguins - an exceptional nature documentary which details the annual mating migrations of emperor penguins ■

in Antarctica, during which they endure treacherous treks across inhospitable terrain, facing subzero temperatures and starvation to insure the survival of their species.

(A-I)

■ Zathura: A Space Adventure a fancifully entertaining and visually dazzling adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s children’s book about two bickering brothers who play a magical board game that transports their suburban home into outer space, where they learn tender lessons about family and forgiveness. (AII) Honorable mentions go to “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” (A-II), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (A-I) and “Madison” (A-II).

Full reviews of all these films are available online at: www.usccb. org/movies.

Editor’s Note: Following is the key for the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classifications and Motion Picture Association of America ratings for the above movies. USCCB: A-I - general patronage; A-II - adults and adolescents.

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 11

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OFFICIAL DIARY JANUARY 29

Chinese New Year Mass, St Brigid’s, W Perth - Bishop Sproxton

31

Archbishop’s Dinner for Vocations Enquirers - Archbishop Hickey

5

50th Anniversary of Profession of Sr Roma RSM, Leederville - Archbishop Hickey Mass to celebrate Golden Wedding Anniversary of Fr and Mrs Beyer - Bishop Sproxton

7

Visit of Archbishop Kiet to NDA - Archbishop Hickey School Commissioning Mass, Queens Park - Archbishop Hickey School Commissioning Mass, Willetton - Bishop Sproxton

8

School Commissioning Mass, Fremantle - Archbishop Hickey School Commissioning Mass, North Perth - Bishop Sproxton

9

Council of Priests’ Meeting, Glendalough

FEBRUARY 1

Mass for Knights of the Southern Cross, KSC Offices, Rivervale - Archbishop Hickey

3

Mass for Year 12s, Trinity College - Bishop Sproxton

5

Mass to celebrate 50th Anniversary of Sacred Heart Church, Karragullen - Archbishop Hickey

PANORAMA Wednesday February 1 HOLY MASS AND HEALING SERVICE  ALAN AMES Touch of Heaven (Alan Ames Ministry). 7pm Mass followed by talk and healing service. St Bernadette’s Parish, cnr Jugan and Leeder Streets, Glendalough.

Enq: Loretta 9444 4409.

Friday February 3 PRO LIFE PROCESSION The first Friday Mass, Procession and Rosary Vigil will commence at 9.30am with Mass celebrated at St Brigid’s Church, Midland. The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate will lead us. All are invited to witness for the sanctity of life and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

February 3-4 TWO HEARTS DEVOTIONS, ALL SAINTS CHAPEL 77 Allendale Square, St Georges Terrace, Perth.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart on the first Friday of the month with Mass at 9pm followed by Rosaries, Hymns, prayers on the hour through the night concluding with Mass on Saturday morning at 7am in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Ph: 9409 4543.

Saturday February 4 WITNESS FOR LIFE PROCESSION The next first Saturday Mass, Procession and Rosary Vigil will commence with Mass at 8.30am at St Anne’s Church, Hehir St, Belmont. We proceed prayerfully to the Rivervale Abortion Centre and conclude with Rosary, led by Fr Paul Carey SSC. Please join us to pray peacefully for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Sunday February 5 DIVINE MERCY Fr Douglas Hoare and the Santa Clara Parish community welcome anyone from surrounding parishes and beyond to the Santa Clara Church crn of Coolgardie and Pollock Streets, Bentley, on the first Sunday of each month for devotions in honour of The Divine Mercy. The afternoon commences with the 3 o’clock prayer, followed by the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Reflection, and concludes with Benediction.

Saturday February 4 DAY WITH MARY St Bernadette Church, Cnr Leeder and Jugan Streets, Glendalough. 9am – 5pm. A video on Fatima will be shown at 9am. A day of prayer and instruction based upon the messages of Fatima. Includes Sacrament of Penance, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons, Rosaries, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Station of the Cross. Please BYO. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250

8286. Next “Day with Mary” 4 March 2006, is at St Anne’s Church Bindoon. Bus services – contact Nita on 93671366.

Sunday February 5 DIVINE MERCY An afternoon with Jesus and Mary at St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth at 1.30pm. Program: Holy Rosary and Reconciliation. Sermon: With visiting priest in attendance, homily to be advised followed by Divine Mercy prayers and Benediction.

Enq: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Friday February 14 ST THOMAS THE APOSTLE MONICA AND AUGUSTINE PRAYER GROUP If you are concerned that your adult sons & daughters have lapsed from the faith you are invited to attend. Meeting Tuesday February 14 at 7.30pm.

Parents are invited to bring their bible and rosary beads. There will be a period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and the evening will conclude with a cup of tea or coffee at 9pm. RSVP to Fr Brian O’Loughlin on 9384 0598 or email claremont@perthcatholic.org.au

CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY Term 1 begins Tuesday the 31st of January 2006 for: Family & Friends Support Groups of Substance Abusers are on Wednesdays 7–9pm, Substance Abusers Support Groups are on Tuesdays 5.30 to 7.30pm & Fridays All day Group for Substance Abusers is from 9.30am to 2pm including Healing Mass on Friday’s @ 12.30pm during term. Ladies Groups are on Tuesday’s 11am to 1.30pm. Rosary is from Tuesday to Thursday at 12.30 to 1pm.

BULLSBROOK SHRINE SUNDAY MASS PROGRAM 2pm every Sunday Pilgrim Mass is celebrated with Holy Rosary and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at the Shrine of Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Rd. Bullsbrook. Reconciliation is available in Italian and English before every celebration. A Monthly Pilgrimage is held on the last Sunday of the month in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation. Anointing of the sick is administered for spiritual and physical healing during Holy Mass every second Sunday of the month. The side entrance to the Church and the Shrine are open daily between 9am and 5pm for private prayer. For all enquiries contact SACRI 9447 3292.

CATHOLIC BIBLE COLLEGE Enrolments are now open for fulltime and parttime study at Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation. Orientation commences 13 Feb, Term 1 commences Monday 20 Feb. Day courses (9.30 -12.30): Bible Timeline (Mon); Saints of God/ Actions of the Holy Spirit (Tues); Life Skills (Thurs);

a roundup of events in the archdiocese Pastoral Ministry 1 (Thurs); Gospel of Matthew (Fri).

Night Courses: Finding New Life in the Spirit (Mario Borg, Wed); Apologetics (Thurs, Paul Kelly); Bible Timeline (Thurs, Jane Borg). Contact Jane Borg 9202 6859; 0401 692690. Website: www.acts2come. disciplesofjesus.org

at East Perth or at Wembley - are invited to contact us with photographs, or memories. Privacy will be protected, in accordance with your wishes. Please contact Nancy Paterson on 0417 927 126, (email npaters@yahoo.com.au) or St Clare’s School, PO Box 21 & 23 Carlisle North 6161. Tel: 9470 5711.

TUESDAYS WEEKLY PRAYER MEETING

PERPETUAL ADORATION AT ST BERNADETTE’S

7pm at St Mary’s Cathedral Parish Centre, 450 Hay Street, Perth, WA. Take time to pray and be united with Our Lord and Our Lady in prayer with others. Appreciate more deeply the heritage of the Faith. Overcome the burdens in life with the Rosary, Meditation, Scripture, praise in song, and friendship over refreshments. Come! Join us! Mary’s Companion Wayfarers of Jesus the Way Prayer Group. Experience personal healing in prayer.

Adoration: Chapel open all day and all night. All welcome, 49 Jugan St, Glendalough, just north of the city. Masses every night at 5.45pm Monday to Friday, 6.30pm, Saturday and the last Sunday Mass in Perth is at 7pm.

ALL SAINTS CHAPEL Lending Library of a thousand books, videos, cassettes at your service. Tel: 9325 2009. www.allsaintschapel.com

SCHOENSTATT FAMILY MOVEMENT: MONTHLY DEVOTIONS An international group focussed on family faith development through dedication to our Blessed Mother. Monthly devotions at the Armadale shrine on the first Sunday at or after the 18th day of the month at 3pm. Next event: January 22. 9 Talus Drive Armadale. Enq Sisters of Mary 9399 2349 or Peter de San Miguel 0407 242 707 www.schoenstatt.org.au

INDONESIAN MASS Every Sunday at 11.30am at St Benedict’s church Alness St, Applecross. Further info www.waicc.org. au.

BLESSED SACRAMENT ADORATION Holy Family Church, Alcock Street, Maddington.

Every Friday 8.30 am Holy Mass followed by Blessed Sacrament Adoration till 12 noon. Every first Friday of the month, anointing of the sick during Mass.

Enq. 9398 6350.

SUNDAY CHINESE MASS The Perth Chinese Catholic Community invite you to join in at St Brigid’s Church, 211 Aberdeen St (Cnr of Aberdeen and Fitzgerald) Northbridge. Celebrant Rev Fr Dominic Su SDS. Mass starts 4.30pm every Sunday. Enq Augustine 9310 4532, Mr Lee 9310 9197, Peter 9310 1789.

CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT The Confraternity of the Holy Spirit has been sanctioned in the Perth Archdiocese, our aim is to make the Holy Spirit known and loved, and to develop awareness of His presence in our lives. If you would like more information please call WA Coordinator Frank Pimm on 9304 5190.

PERPETUAL ADORATION

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY WALKERS

Christ the King, Lefroy Rd, Beaconsfield. Enq Joe Migro 9430 7937, A/H 0419 403 100. Adoration also at Sacred Heart, 64 Mary St Highgate, St Anne’s, 77 Hehir St Belmont. Bassendean, 19 Hamilton St and Mirrabooka, 37 Changton Wy.

MPH walkers - walking across Perth Outdoors wearing the White band is a message that we want poverty to be stopped. For info on the walk contact Teresa at tgrundy@westnet.com.au or tel. 9458 4084. For info on the worldwide campaign and what is happening this week in Perth look at www. makepovertyhistory.com.au.

THE DIVINE MERCY APOSTOLATE St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth – each first Sunday of the month from 1.30pm to 3.15pm with a different priest each month. St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, East Perth - each Saturday from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, main celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak, OFM. Saints John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Drive, Willeton - each Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm. All Enq John 9457 7771.

ST CLARE’S SCHOOL, SISTERS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD A short history of St Clare’s School is being prepared to celebrate 50 years of its work in WA. Any past students, staff, families or others associated with the school - from its time at Leederville, at North Perth,

Please Note The Record reserves the right to decline or modify any advertisment it considers improper or not in unison with the general display of the paper.

January 26 2006, The Record

Page 12

The Last Word Two giants and Lionel, the pushy cat Two stained-glass windows of John Paul II and St Mother Theresa have been completed at Yangebup Parish

T

here is an old adage that suggests “good things come to those who wait” and that is exactly the case for the Mater Christi Parish in Yangebup that had extra reason to celebrate over Christmas following the completion of the stained glass windows in the Sanctuary and Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

Originally commissioned in the Year of the Great Jubilee when the church was built, the windows had to be put on hold until sufficient funds became available. Through the generosity of parishioners, various fundraising initiatives and individual donations, the money was eventually raised.

Parish Priest, Fr Bryan Rosling, said there was now a sense of completion in the church as “the great tower that houses all the stained glass is now finished.”

The windows are the work of talented local artist Dana Quinn of Windsor Stained Glass who also created the prominent Great Window that presides over the whole church.

Catching the rays of the rising sun, the east window depicts Pope John Paul II. His right hand points to his heart and his left presents his life-long motto Totus Tuus – All for You. Accompanying the Pontiff in the set is the Holy Eucharist that commemorates the Year of the Eucharist and the crest of the

Presentation Congregation that recognises the presence and work of the Sisters in the parish since its inception. The floral emblems of the Irish founded order (oak and acorn) and Poland (cornflower) complete the set.

The setting sun illuminates the west window and its powerful depiction of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Tightly clasping a young and wounded life, the image appears to be protecting and recognising the child’s dignity and right to life.

Mother Teresa is accompanied by the symbol of the Loreto Congregation in which she originally began as a religious and who are also present in the parish. The west set is completed by the symbol of the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, along with the floral emblems of India (lotus) and Western Australia (kangaroo paw).

Asked about the cat featured in the east window that can be seen rubbing against the Pope’s cassock, Fr Bryan explained, “we had no choice but to include Lionel, the presbytery cat, as he is so pushy and likes to keep an eye on all that is going on. Besides, the Holy Father was well known for his love of animals.”

The tradition of including cats in stained glass windows dates back to medieval times.

“We could not have chosen better subjects for our church that was built in the Holy Year of the Great Jubilee and at the end of the twentieth century,” Fr Bryan added.

“Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa were two of the giants of that century and are saints for our time. They have much to teach us in the new millennium.”

New York’s Metropolitan art museum buys icon for $45 million ■ By Elizabeth Pappas

A

rt often expresses through the visual what words cannot and for many, this is especially true of Christian icons and paintings. It is therefore fitting perhaps that greater attention be given to art that brings forth a divine presence and assists in creating a little piece of heaven down here on earth. In one way the Metropolitan Museum in New York has achieved this. After its most successful exhibition, one that featured early Byzantine liturgical artifacts, the Metropolitan Museum purchased its most expensive object to date. The purchase is a small wooden tempera and gold image of the Madonna and Child,

no bigger than an A4 sheet of paper painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna.

This small icon is now referred to as the Stroganoff Madonna “…after its first recorded owner, Count Grigorii Stroganoff…”(Vogel, 2004). The tiny icon is dated around 1300AD and was purchased at between forty- five million and fifty million American dollars. According to Vogel (2004), “As one of the most important painters of the early 14th century, Duccio, along with his Florentine contemporary Giotto, blazed a path from the Byzantine style to early Italian Renaissance painting”. The image of the Madonna and Child certainly represent a significant period in art history; it is a time when, for artists in parts of the West, Christian art was being redefined and as such

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Madonna and Child, ca. 1300

By Duccio di Buoninsegna Italian, Sienese, active by 1278, died 1318 Tempera and gold on wood, with original, engaged frame; 11 x 8

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unified elements of Byzantine symbolism into a neo vision of Christian artistic expression.

Rare artworks such as this create excitement around the world not only for art collectors and art historians alike but also iconophiles.

Two burn marks have been identified at the bottom of the frame of the Madonna and Child and are very likely the result of candles lit for devotional purposes by previous owners. Purchases such as the Stroganoff Madonna send a poignant message to those who doubt the ability of traditional historic Christian art works to continue to inspire and provide viewers with precious moments of peaceful contemplation in an often complex and challenging modern world.

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