The Record Newspaper - 01 February 2012

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DOWN TO THE RIVER TO PRAY

Benedict XVI warns on faith’s future - Page 6

Pilgrims flock to the Jordan - Pages 14-15

Chief Rabbi says side-by-side discussions are the way forward,

Solving problems together

By Ben Sacks RELIGIOUS difference is no barrier to shared action when it comes to defeating common problems, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks told a forum in Perth recently, echoing words he spoke in Rome last year at the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI. The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth spoke to a room full of Jewish community youth and then to a broader communal forum at the Perth Hebrew Congregation

(PHC) synagogue in Menora.

When asked about the importance of interfaith dialogue, Rabbi Sacks distinguished between ‘face-to-face’ and ‘side-by-side’ discussions.

Face-to-face dialogue was “standard dialogue between religious leaders about religious issues”, while side-by-side action meant identifying common problems – such as youth gangs and drugs – and saying, “let’s get together and solve these problems”.

Rabbi Sacks said he was more concerned with side-by-side dia-

logue because many issues can only be addressed at the street level.

“We should recognise that we all face the same big problems, and not be too worried about why, or too concerned with the small things,” he said.

During the evening talk on 23 January, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks covered a range of issues including the relationship between science and religion, fighting religious intolerance and the importance of faith in a secular and materialistic society.

The leader of Orthodox Judaism in the 16 nations of the Commonwealth also spent an hour taking questions from the audience.

Rabbi Sacks was invited by Pope Benedict XVI to give a lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome on 12 December 2011.

Speaking of his recent visit to the Vatican, Rabbi Sacks said the visit was prompted by problems associated with banking, the ethics of finance and inordinate salaries for executives.

“I thought ‘this is a problem that

faces us all equally’, and that there was an opportunity to work together to face these challenges,” he said.

These community forums were Rabbi Sack’s final engagements during his brief stay in Perth. Earlier, he had been keynote speaker at a function commemorating the 120th anniversary of the founding of the PHC, which was also attended by Archbishop Barry Hickey and local political and religious dignitaries.

Has Europe Lost its Soul? - Rabbi Sacks on the current crisis Pages 9-12

Lumen girls are leading lights

By Robert Hiini LAUREN White is excited at the prospect of following in her father’s science-bound footsteps while Eleanor Moog hopes to gain experience in Melbourne or Sydney before landing an advertising career in New York.

The two girls are among Lumen Christi College’s highest achievers with 10 students receiving ATAR scores over 95 and are now preparing for the future.

Lauren was named the college’s highest academic performer, attaining an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank score of 98.30.

She has been awarded a Science Excellence scholarship which she will use to study chemistry and biochemistry at Curtin University this year.

Eleanor said she was “beyond excited for university to start” having picked up two scholarships; the Curtin Principal’s Recommendation Award and the Business School Excellence Scholarships, which are worth $1,000 and more than $9,000 respectively.

Lauren White, front left, with other high achievers Adele D’Lima, Emily Craig-Wadham, Sherrilynn Wakefield and Emily Bell.

PHOTO: COURTESY LUMEN CHRISTI

‘It’s almost as if authorities don’t want to know’

By Mark Reidy THERE is reluctance in today’s culture to admit children need something better than “unstable relationships and unmarried and uncommitted cohabiting parents”, Archbishop Barry Hickey said in an online video last week.

The archbishop was speaking about the findings of the report, tabled in federal parliament by Kevin Andrews, Shadow Minister

for Families, Housing and Human Services last September.

The report links what the archbishop called “the dramatic deterioration of the welfare of children” over the past ten years to “the rise of de facto couples, violent and unstable relationships and divorce.”

“One would expect some action to help stabilise families and provide better conditions for children,” Archbishop Hickey said.

“Instead, we have silence. It is

almost as if authorities do not want to know what is happening because if they did they would have to challenge the present culture of co-habitation and take measures to help families cope”.

The prevalence of non-marital family arrangements was justified as “some sort of freedom of choice,” the archbishop said.

Since 1998, the number of reported cases of abuse and neglect of children had tripled, the arch-

bishop said, with double the number of children in care and a 66 per cent increase in the rate of hospitalisation for self-harm.

The archbishop warned the situation would deteriorate further if voices advocating true and lasting marriage were not heard above those pushing for damaging alternatives such as same-sex marriage and in-vitro babies for singles.

“Please do not be seduced by the lie that any form of relationship is

suitable for children,” he said.

“Only marriage is the most stable, safe and nurturing environment for bringing up children.” The archbishop made the comments in the second of a series of videos, entitled The Archbishop Speaks, released on the website of the archdiocesan evangelisation initiative, The Faith Centre, each Friday.

Episode three of the series will be released on 3 February at www.thefaith.org.au

Page 2

1 February 2012, The Record

Less aggro for the penitent VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Priests hearing confessions need to replace any negative or aggressive attitudes with meekness and mercy toward the penitent, said a Vatican expert on the sacrament.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation “has led to a unilateral overemphasis on the accusation and listing of sins,” said Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court that handles issues related to the sacrament.

The end result is that “the thing that is absolutely central when listening to sin, that is, the blessed embrace of the merciful Father, is put on the backburner,” he said.

The Italian bishop’s comments, published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, were made in his address to a symposium for confessors held in Loreto, Italy.

“Isn’t it true perhaps that, at times, confession takes on the semblance of a prosecuting tribunal rather than a celebration of forgiveness,” and that the conversation takes on “inquisitorial or, in any case, indelicate tones,” he asked.

A confessor is first and foremost a father who welcomes, listens and engages in dialogue, he said.

People going to confession “are seeking comfort, advice and forgiveness,” he said.

Often, they are dealing with problems in their personal life or in their relationships; concerns about contraception, separation or divorce; or difficulties between parent and child, he said.

“As confessors, we are called to show mercy and hope, to be fathers more than judges, to take on the penitent’s pain and listen with much patience,” he said.

“All of this has nothing to do with being lax or permissive,” he

A senior Italian prelate has called on some priests to adopt a disposition of meekness.

At times, confession takes on the semblance of prosecution rather a celebration of forgiveness. said. “Rather, it focuses on the inner liberation of the penitent,” their feelings of remorse and repentance, and facilitating their reception of judgement, grace and mercy from God. Bishop Girotti said a confessor “would commit a serious injustice” if he dared let his judgement and advice to the penitent be influenced

more by his own personal opinions and viewpoints than by Church teaching and doctrine.

Priests must carefully control their reactions, including facial expressions and gestures, when hearing confession, he said.

The confessor should imitate Christ’s gentleness and never display a sense of shock no matter how

Editor office@therecord.com.au

Journalists Mark Reidy mreidy@therecord.com.au Robert Hiini rthiini@therecord.com.au Sarah Motherwell s_motherwell@hotmail.com Sub Editor Chris Jaques

Jerome enlisted in the Venetian army in 1511. He was captured and chained in a dungeon, but promised himself to God if released.

That he later was able to walk out of his prison was considered miraculous. He was ordained in 1518. When the plague struck, he cared for the sick and opened an orphanage. In 1532, he and two fellow priests formed the Clerks Regular Somaschi, now known as the Somascan Fathers. Jerome was declared the patron saint of orphaned and abandoned children in 1928.

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Monday 6th - Red ST PAUL MIKI, PRIEST (M) 1st Reading: 1 Kgs 8:1-7, 9-13

The Lord’s dwelling

place Responsorial Ps 131 Psalm: The joy of the faithful Gospel Reading: Mk 6:53-56

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grave the sin, he said. The confessor must never pry for personal details, never show impatience or be in a hurry, and should instil a healthy fear of God, but not terror and should condemn the sin, not the sinner, he added.

Penitents open their heart and soul to the confessor because they see him as being “God’s minister, and if instead they find in him severity, not mercy, or doubts and obscurity, and not the light of truth, they will have been truly deceived.”

Sunday 5th - Green 1st Reading: Job 7:1-4, 6-7 Life is a breath Responsorial Ps 146:1-6 Psalm The Lord heals 2nd Reading: 1 Cor 9:16-19, 22-23 Offer the Good news freely Gospel Reading: Mk 1:29-39 Jesus cures many

c. 1481-1537 February 8

Crosiers

PHOTO: CNS

The man who assisted claims of abuse by Church representatives in Western Australia, Peter Messer, has resigned from his position as director of Professional Standards with accolades from Archbishop Barry Hickey. In a letter addressed to Mr Messer, Archbishop Hickey thanked him for the quality of his work and invaluable contribution to Church life. “For many years you have faithfully carried out the healing work of the Church in dealing with people badly hurt by the actions of Church personnel,” he said.

“This area of work exposes the all too human and sinful face of the Church but also its desire to make amends and ensure as far as possible that such behaviour does not occur again.” Mr Messer declined to comment due to the nature of his work with the Church but said he was looking forward to being more involved with his parish and taking some time off.

READINGS OF THE WEEK

Jerome Emiliani

Mat De Sousa

Morley parish is mixing it up in the musical stakes, putting on A Night of Joy on 10 February featuring two very different musical styles.

The Sudanese Gospel Choir will provide lively traditional song while the Julian Singers will perform sacred liturgical music, digging into their repertoire stretching from the 15th century to the present day.

Organisers told The Record that both are guaranteed to be uplifting.

The 6pm event will kick off with complimentary wine and cheese, with acts taking to the stage at 7pm.

The fundraising event will take place at the parish (47 Wellington Road, Morley). Bookings can be made online, with more details of the event at the Infant Jesus Parish website (www.infantjesusparish.org.au). Tickets are $28 ($25 concession).

Now for a time of quiet

SAINT OF THE WEEK

Peter Rosengren

Two times the musical splendour at Morley

Michael Deering 9322 2914

Catholic clarity for complex times CATHOLIC families and those searching for truth need resources to help them negotiate the complexities of modern life, many of which are also active challenges to the desire of parents to lead their children to an encounter with the beauty of the Church. At The Record’s bookshop you can find great books for the family at good prices. Turn to Page 20 for some brilliant deals NOW!!

Tuesday 7th - Green 1st Reading: 1 Kgs 8:22-23, 27-30

God of kindness Responsorial Ps 83:3-5, 10-11 Psalm: The living God Gospel Reading: Mk 7:1-13

Lip service and

distant hearts Wednesday 8th - Green ST JEROME EMILIANI (O) ST JOSEPHINE BAKHITA, RELIGIOUS (O) 1st Reading: 1 Kgs 10:1-10

The Queen of Sheba’s

visit

Responsorial Ps 36:5-6, 30-31, Psalm: 39-40

Trust in the Lord Gospel Reading: Mk 7:14-23

Do you not under

stand?

Thursday 9th - Green 1st Reading: 9 Th Kgs 11:4-13

Solomon disobeys the

Lord Responsorial Ps 105:3-4, 35-37, 40 Psalms: O Lord, remember me Gospel Reading: Mk 7:24-30

Syrophoenician’s faith Friday 10th - White ST SCHOLASTICA, VIRGIN (M) 1st Reading: 1 Kgs 11;29-32, 12:19

God’s people are

divided Responsorial Ps 80:10-15 Psalm: The Lord, your God Gospel Reading: Mk 7:31-37

Be opened Saturday 11th - Green OUR LADY OF LOURDES (O) 1st Reading: 1 Kgs 12:26-32;

13:33-34

The two golden

calves Responsorial Ps 105:6-7, 19-22 Psalms: Idols worshipped Gospel Reading: Mk 8:1-10

Seven baskets full

Want the readings for every week of the year?

Turn to page 18 and don’t miss the chance to get a copy of the St Paul Liturgical Calendar for 2012

1 February 2012, The Record

Page 3

‘Gay panic’ loophole to close thanks to priest

By Sarah Motherwell THE QUEENSLAND government has committed to closing a “gay panic” loophole in the state’s criminal code after an online petition set up this month by Catholic priest Father Paul Kelly was signed by more than 25,000 people.

In 2008, the body of Wayne Robert Ruks was found by a parishioner inside the courtyard of St Mary’s Catholic Church in Maryborough. The parishioner called the church’s priest, Fr Kelly,

who assisted the investigation by providing police with security footage that helped piece together what had happened.

Richard Meerdink and Jason Pierce were convicted of the manslaughter of Mr Ruks. During the trial, section 304 of the Criminal Code was used to argue that the men were provoked after receiving unwanted sexual advances from Mr Ruks.

The loophole, which is known as the “gay panic defence”, was also used last year in the trial of John

Patrick Petersen who allegedly bashed to death hitchhiker Stephen Ward in August 2008 after he made an unwanted advance at him.

“I was really shocked that there was such a common law defence,” said Fr Kelly who followed both cases in the media.

“After the first court case, I started writing letters to various people,” he said.

“Then, after the second murder case, I wrote again to various stakeholders, expressing concern. I didn’t feel that I was getting a response so

I started the petition this month.”

More than 25,000 people signed the petition Fr Kelly posted on the website Change.org. The petition attracted the support of Fr Kelly’s local member of parliament as well as British comedian Stephen Fry. “I was absolutely amazed, it was incredible. I was expecting 500 people at the most,” said Fr Kelly.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced via Twitter last Wednesday that the Criminal Code would be changed to remove doubts about the so-called “gay

panic defence”. Attorney General Paul Lucas said section 304 would be amended to ensure than an unwanted sexual advance would not be enough to establish provocation unless there were exceptional circumstances.

Both of the victims had very few family members but Fr Kelly said he would like to reach out to them, especially Mr Ruks’ mother who had to come forward to defend her son’s heterosexuality. “I felt particularly appalled that a mother had to do that,” said Fr Kelly.

Health not all about the medical PACIFIC health leaders should catch up with their European counterparts and consider the broader social issues affecting health, Catholic Health Australia’s chief executive said in the lead up to the New Zealand Bioethics Conference on 27 January.

Addressing his comments to members of the Pacific Island Forum, Mr Laverty said the European Commission had been pioneers in responding to a 2008 World Health Organisation invitation to develop action plans on social determinants of health such as education, welfare and housing policies.

It was time their equivalent in this part of the world, the Pacific Island Forum, “picked up the ball and ran with it”, Mr Laverty said.

Issues beyond height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels need to be addressed, he said.

“To look at the context I come from, Australians in the lowest socio-economic group die on average three years earlier than people in the highest group,” Mr Laverty said. “Education, employment and housing play key roles in these health incomes.”

Keeping people out of hospitals required better assistance during pregnancies, expanding early childhood development in disadvantaged areas, assisting at-risk children to complete their schooling, helping people gain and maintain employment and adequate housing and supporting people in times of personal crisis.

The ever faithful Prego, a cavalier maltese cross, helps Claremont’s Fr Charles Waddell attend to the notices.

PHOTO: SARAH MOTHERWELL

‘Prego’ shares his canine love with thankful Claremont

By Sarah Motherwell FOR THE past five years Fr Charles Waddell has had a helping paw in reaching out to parishioners.

His pet dog Prego is a bona fide star at St Thomas the Apostle Parish, Claremont most weekends.

Prego is a cavalier maltese cross who makes guest appearances at morning Mass at the St Thomas church.

In his younger years, Prego used to do tricks for parishioners but

now, because of his blindness, he just keeps watch over Mass and parish liturgies.

Fr Waddell said Prego puts a smile on the face of everyone he meets and is an important part of the parish.

“We have a large hospice unit in our parish and Prego regularly makes the rounds there with me and Marg Carman, our pastoral associate,” he said.

“He provides comfort, softness, a lick and a bit of gentle happiness

to terminally ill patients and their loved ones.”

Prego also plays with the children of St Thomas’ Primary School who share their lunches with him and write about him in their essays, and regularly participates in the school’s assemblies.

Every year Prego heads the procession at the church’s annual blessing of the animals on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi.

He is featured in this year’s annual Thomas News Calendar and is

the star of the St Thomas’ parish directory.

Although Prego is Fr Waddell’s dog, he is cared for by the entire community and brings together people from all walks of life into the church.

Email your parish pet story to The Record at office@therecord.com.au

Never too gifted to learn

JOHN HUGHES

Some of the best and brightest Year 12s soak up the wisdom at the Universtiy of Notre Dame’s Cultural DeCoding programmes.

PHOTO: COURTESY UNDA

PHILOSOPHY, archeology and iconography were just some of the subjects covered in UNDA’s new Cultural DeCoding program for gifted and talented Year 12 students. The week-long programme was held in late January and attracted some of WA’s brightest students.

Year 12 John XXIII College student Daniel Hurt said the course was the

most intellectually stimulating that he had experienced.

“I was continually impressed with the passion Notre Dame lecturers had towards their subject ... My eyes have been completely opened to subjects that I hadn’t even considered,” he said.

The course was led by Dr Annette Pedersen and Dr Angela McCarthy.

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1 February 2012, The Record

Don’t count on it, warn Perth medicos

By Sarah Motherwell PERTH family planning professionals are warning women of the risks of using an increasingly popular fertility-tracking necklace to prevent pregnancy.

CycleBeads is a colour-coded string of beads that women use to track the days of their 28-day menstrual cycle and is another form of the family planning method known as the Standard Days Method.

Fertility Care Centres of Australasia co-ordinator Dr Amanda Lamont said the device is not based on the individual woman and counting days methods are not very successful for that many women.

“It sounds purely statistical and counting days doesn’t take into account the woman’s body,” she said.

The Fertility Care Centres of Australasia teaches women to reach their full reproductive health in order to plan or prevent pregnancy. Dr Lamont said, “even a woman with a 28 day cycle will, at least one day a year, have a cycle that will be late”.

The necklace is made up of 32 oblong beads; half brown, half white and one red. Women use a small black cylinder to track their cycle and determine when they are most fertile. The red bead marks the first day of the woman’s period.

Senior teacher and trainer of the Billings Ovulation Method Lynne Anderson said in order to achieve pregnancy there is a window of opportunity so you do not have to be exact but you have to know the

Some women leave the CycleBead necklace on their bed side table while others wear it like jewelry

boundaries when avoiding pregnancy.

“You can have six women menstruating on the same day but there can be as much as a five day difference from when they ovulate,” she said. “That week can be a very big difference if you’re trying to avoid a pregnancy.”

CycleBeads are now being sold in India where there is high demand for family planning education.

The Indian government-owned

manufacturer of contraceptives, HLL Lifecare Limited, brokered an agreement with Cycle Technologies to become a manufacturer of the beads.

The necklace is being used to teach women in India how to use the Standard Days Method that was developed in the late 90s at the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University.

Fertility awareness techniques provide an alternative approach

Child’s Bible - ‘God Speaks to His Children’ The Catholic Church’s most successful Child’s Bible ever!

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Worldwide, the Church is under attack Beautifully illustrated by Spanish nun, from atheistic regimes, militant Islam, Miren Sorne, this delightful Child’s bible is sects and basic ignorance of the Faith. available for a donation of $7.00.

The international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is able to counter these attacks by supplying Child’s Bibles to children and families who simply cannot afford them, in countries where the Church is poor or persecuted.

Since its launch in 1979, ACN has printed and distributed 48 million copies of God Speaks to His Children in 167 languages.

It is the Catholic Church’s most successful Child’s bible ever!

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Simple in design and yet profound in its symbolic significance, the olivewood rosary, handmade in Bethlehem by Christian families struggling for survival, are also available for a donation of $7.00. All proceeds will go towards the work of Aid to the Church in Need for the poor and persecuted Church worldwide.

This inspiring book can also teach the Faith here in Australia: with your family, godchildren, or in your parish or school.

The Child’s Bible is a perfect gift for children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, especially to mark a First Holy Communion. The Bible complements the catechism and children’s rosary booklet also published by ACN and available via our website.

BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED THROUGHOUT 48 Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments Available for a donation of $7.00 A lovely gift idea!

PHOTO: ONLINE SOURCE

for women who do not wish to use artificial contraception because of health, personal or religious reasons.

The Western Australian Department of Health advises there are no health risks or side effects when using natural family planning and it can be quite effective for avoiding or achieving pregnancy if used correctly. However, failure rates in avoiding pregnancy are higher than contraceptive methods.

Conference to guard the children REPRESENTATIVES of most of the world’s bishops’ conferences and 30 religious orders will meet in Rome in early February to launch a global initiative aimed at improving efforts to stop clerical sexual abuse and better protect children and vulnerable adults.

The conference, “Toward Healing and Renewal”, will be held on 6-9 February at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and is being supported by the Vatican Secretariat of State and several other Vatican offices. US Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which deals with priests accused of abuse, will give the opening address.

The conference is designed in part to help bishops’ conferences and superiors of religious orders respond to a 2011 circular letter from the doctrinal congregation requiring all dioceses in the world to develop guidelines on handling allegations of abuse.

After the conference, the Gregorian University and other institutions will launch an e-learning centre - the Centre for the Protection of Children - which will offer online resources in five languages.

The centre will be based in Munich, Germany, and is designed to help Church leaders respond pastorally to the issue of sexual abuse in the church and society as a whole.

WA sex work bills counteract their intent, says AMA

By Elizabeth Dunn

Record WA

THE AUSTRALIAN Medical Association has criticised proposed changes to prostitution legislation as “out of sight, out of mind” and said some of the changes contradict the government’s stated intentions.

The AMA’s Dr David Mountain said new initiatives to help women exit the industry were potentially undermined by the proposal to register sex workers.

At the time of speaking to The Record, he said it was unclear whether members of the public, including future employers, would have access to the register.

If that were the case, Dr Mountain said, “nobody would register”.

While the existing policy of containment was “hard to police and had unintended consequences,” Dr Mountain also criticised plans to shift where brothels are located.

“The move to light industrial areas will cause ghettoisation. It sounds good to suburban people but is poor policy – “out of sight, out of mind,” Dr Mountain said.

He also condemned the move to ban prostitutes’ mobile numbers from advertising, saying it would effectively prevent health officials from contacting sex workers to ensure health and safety.

Different approaches to the vexed question of prostitution have been tried throughout Western Europe.

In 1998, Sweden introduced the Sex Purchase Act which criminalised the purchase of sex but not its sale – penalising clients but not sex workers. Coming into effect in 1999, the law was ridiculed by police and sex worker associations at the time,

but ten years later is regarded as a success by the Swedish government.

Similar laws have been implemented in neighbouring countries with a focus on the ‘pandering’ of third parties who profit from others’ involvement in prostitution.

In Finland, prostitutes are not viewed as victims but legitimate workers who require protection from drugs and organised crime.

Most recently, France, which has taken a relaxed attitude to prostitution in the past, has moved to adopt the “Swedish model”.

Critics of the model believe violence towards prostitutes will increase, the industry will be forced

If employers have access to the register, “nobody will register.” underground and the laws are a guise to present the government in the best possible light.

Reports from the Swedish government indicated a drop in street prostitution but were inconclusive as to whether it was caused by decreased supply or concealment.

Commenting on the Swedish model, Dr Mountain said he was in favour of any model that had been proven to work; however, there existed “no great evaluation of change or benefit” and “no data showed any model to work brilliantly”.

As prostitution can have physical and mental ramifications, he said, the health and wellbeing of all affected remained his paramount concern.

1 February 2012, The Record

Page 5

MILESTONES

moments past, passing and to come

Send your milestones to editor@therecord.com.au

Loving father remembered

By Robert Hiini WHEN Nishan De Saram told his father Damian he wanted to be a priest, his loving father was initially unsupportive.

But in the last four years of Damien de Saram’s life (13 Sep 1943 - 1 Feb 2011), he got an upfront look at the meaning and dignity of his son’s ministry, accompanying Fr Nishan at daily Masses during his postings to Southern Cross and Bullsbrook.

Fr Nishan reminisced about his father to The Record as he prepared to celebrate Mass marking the one year anniversary of his death. The

Mass took place on 1 February at the Holy Trinity Church in Embleton.

Fr Nishan arrived in Australia about 14 years ago and has been working as an ordained priest for the past 10 and a half years.

Back in Sri Lanka, Fr Nishan had studied to be a chartered accountant and was working for Ernst and Young when he told his family he felt called to be a priest.

With an uncle who was the Archbishop of Colombo, and many priests and nuns in the extended family, his parents were sure he was simply trying to conform to an unspoken expectation.

Damien de Saram embraced

his own vocation as husband and father, working as an automobile engineer to support his wife and four children - two boys and two girls. Mr de Saram came out to Australia when he fell ill with a respiratory ailment, eventually succumbing to emphysema.

Fr Nishan and sisters Shayanika and Deduni summed up their feelings for their late father in a poem they composed for his anniversary, part of which reads: “We little knew that morning That God would call your name.

In life we loved you dearly; In death we do the same”.

Damian de Saram died on 1 February last year. His son, Fr Nishan, celebrated a Mass to mark the one year anniversary.

PHOTO: COURTESY FR NISHAN

Benedict blesses couple’s 50 years of love LUCKILY for friends and relatives gathered at the lunch celebration on 2 January for Kath and Michael Jaques’ anniversary, the weather was much kinder than the 41 degree day on which they married 50 years ago.

Their wedding was celebrated by Fr Dan Foley, cousin of Archbishop Foley, at St Joseph’s, Subiaco and followed by a modest dinner with immediate family only in attendance. At their 50th, there were significantly more people to toast and recognise the achievements of the couple’s marriage, including some who had attended their wedding.

They were presented with a framed papal blessing at the lunch and enjoyed a sit down meal with 35 family and friends at their daughter’s home.

Blessings were bestowed on Kath and Michael at Masses at St Mary’s Cathedral on 1 January by Fr JeanMarie Noel and on 3 January at St Joachim’s by Monsignor Thomas McDonald.

Kath and Michael Jaques celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with a blessing from Pope Benedict XVI.

Exhibition marks fifty year anniversary of Vatican II

By Francis Rocca FIFTY years ago this October, Blessed John XXIII and more than 2,500 bishops and heads of religious orders from around the world gathered in St Peter’s Basilica for the opening session of the Second Vatican Council.

Over the following three years, Vatican II would issue 16 major “pronouncements” on such fundamental questions as the authority of the Church’s hierarchy, the interpretation of Scripture, and the proper roles of clergy and laity.

Those documents, and the deliberations that produced them, have transformed how the Catholic Church understands and presents itself within the context of modern secular culture and society.

Vatican II was one of the monumental events in modern religious history. Its golden anniversary will be the occasion for numerous commemorative events, including liturgical celebrations, publications and academic conferences.

A Vatican II exhibition at Rome’s Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls opened in late January and will run

until November 2013. The displays include original handwritten pages from Pope John’s speech at the council’s opening session, and a Vatican passport issued at the time to a young Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. Yet Vatican II is not merely of historical interest; it is very much

Those documents, and the deliberations that produced them have transformed the Catholic Church. a living issue in the Church today.

Scholars still debate to what extent the council’s achievements, in such areas as interfaith dialogue and liturgical reform, were organic developments in the Church’s history or radical breaks with the past.

Clergy and laity alike differ over how expansively to apply the council’s pronouncements, whether sticking closely to the letter of the

documents or following a more broadly construed “spirit of Vatican II.” Pope Benedict XVI has rejected what he calls the “hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture” in the present-day understanding of the council and has called instead for interpreting Vatican II as an instance of “renewal in continuity” with the Church’s 2,000 years of tradition. Exploring and promoting that idea will be a major goal of the Year of Faith that begins this 11 October, exactly half a century to the day since Vatican II opened.

A relatively small but highly vocal number of Catholics reject the council altogether, charging among other things that subsequent changes to worship have undermined the solemnity of the Mass and that a growing openness to other religions conflicts with the need to proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

The Society of St Pius X effectively broke from Rome in 1988 when its founder, late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ordained four bishops without approval from the Pope.

PHOTO: COURTESY CHRIS JAQUES

New regional director brings wealth of experience FR Gary Walker has been elected as regional director of St Columban’s Mission Society for Australia and New Zealand.

He took up his appointment on 23 November 2011, the Feast of St Columban. The term of appointment is for three years.

Fr Gary comes from Brisbane and was ordained in 1972. He spent many years in Fiji and Jamaica, followed by a six-year appointment to Ireland as a member of

the Columban General Council.

For the past nine years he has been editor of The Far East magazine and for part of the time he was the House Superior at Essendon.

One of the biggest challenges ahead, he says, “is to engage young people in the missionary arm of the Church.”

Fr Gary said he was looking forward to working in collaboration with other congregations and lay people.

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1 February 2012, The Record

Oblivion threatens faith

By Carol Glatz

CHRISTIANITY and even religious belief are in grave danger across the globe, risking oblivion, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Across vast areas of the earth, faith runs the danger of extinguishing like a flame that runs out of fuel,” he said. The world faces “a profound crisis of faith, and a loss of a sense of religion constitutes the biggest challenge for the Church today,” he said.

The Pope said the renewal of faith has to be a priority for all members of the Church and said he hoped the upcoming Year of Faith, starting in October, would further

such effort. Pope Benedict met with about 70 officials, members and consultants of the Congregation on 27 January for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office he led for more than 20 years before being elected Pope.

He said integral to helping the Gospel message seem more credible in today’s world was Christian unity - a theme that members of the congregation discussed during their four day plenary meeting.

Pope Benedict said the search for Christian unity requires a solid foundation in truth and Scripture, not the establishment of rules and agreements that are mutually beneficial. “Rather, the heart of true

ecumenism is faith, where people encounter the truth that is revealed in the Word of God,” he said.

“Without faith, the whole ecumenical movement would be reduced to a form of ‘social contract’ that’s adhered to out of common interest,” the Pope said.

Even though dialogue has borne much fruit, in ecumenical talks the Church must guard against the risk of believing all religions are equal, and it must be sure not to distort or obscure Catholic doctrine.

The Second Vatican Council call for the sincere search for full unity with all Christians is a process animated by the Word of God. The truth and faith must be central

to ecumenical dialogue, and those involved in dialogue must face controversial questions with courage, he said.

Ecumenical dialogue cannot ignore “the great moral questions of human life, the family, sexuality, bioethics, freedom, justice and peace,” he said.

“It would be important to talk about these issues with only one voice, drawing on the foundation in Scripture and in the Church’s living tradition” so as to discover God’s logic and plan for creation, he said. By defending the foundational values of the faith and Church tradition, “we defend man, we defend creation,” the Pope said.

One year on: Meeting of faiths at Tahrir square

MEXICO

Prison chapel raided by soldiers and police A prison chaplain in northern Mexico accused soldiers and police of committing sacrilege as they tore apart his chapel during an early morning raid meant to uncover drugs and weapons. Father Robert Coogan, an American priest based in Saltillo, Mexico, 305km southwest of the Texas border at Laredo, said soldiers and police burst into the Christ the Prisoner Chapel, “broke open the tabernacle and threw the hosts to the ground and walked on them.” A statement distributed by the Diocese of Saltillo said, “no possible explanation exists that justifies what happened. We’re deeply outraged by these acts because, in addition to attacking the faith of the majority of the Mexican people, they violate the rights of religious freedom.”

CNS

CANADA

100-year anniversary to mark first bishop When 35-year-old Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Nykyta Budka arrived in Canada in 1912, Ukrainian Catholic parishes, missionaries and monasteries were scattered across Canada, particularly on the prairies. This year, Canada’s Ukrainian Catholics mark the 100th anniversary of their first bishop, who laid the groundwork for a united Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada, gathering the scattered clergy, religious brothers and sisters and laypeople. Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Lawrence Huculak of Winnipeg said it was notable how difficult it must have been to communicate or to travel in sub-zero weather. “It’s quite awe-inspiring how he could carry out his ministry in this country and in the conditions he found himself,” the Archbishop said. CNS

INDIA

Outrage over Christians expelled from court

A demonstrator holds up a crucifix and a Quran during a protest at Tahrir square in Cairo on 26 January. Scores of Egyptian youth protesters marking the oneyear anniversary of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak bedded down in Tahrir Square and pledged to stay put until the ruling military council hands power to civilians.

PHOTO: CNS/SUHAIB SALEM, REUTERS

Gender selective abortions rise in West

By Sarah Delaney ABORTING unborn girls on account of their gender has been a documented trend in certain Asian countries for at least two decades.

Now, according to an Italian biologist and author, the practice is also growing in the West.

Women and couples who emigrate from cultures where male children are deemed more prestigious and economically valuable “will often bring those same values to their new country”, said Anna Meldolesi, author of Never born: Why the world has lost 100 million women.

In 1990, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen calculated at 100 million the number of women who, by the laws of nature, should be part of the world population but are not. The “missing women” in question, Meldolesi wrote, have been the victims of infanticide,

intentional neglect of health and nutrition and, more recently, abortion on the basis of sex.

Inspired by studies of sexselective abortion among Asian immigrants in North America, Meldolesi said she tried to find out if there was a similar trend in her own country of Italy.

Using four years of demographic data from ISTAT, the Italian statistics bureau, she found that the “sex ratio” of first-born children appeared to occur at the natural rate of about 105 males to 100 females, similar to the Italian population and other nationalities.

But when it came to second and third children, figures showed that the number of boys increased markedly - with the disproportion as high as 119 to 100 - indicating that parents had probably aborted female foetuses, Meldolesi said.

She concluded that sex selective abortion, or “feminine feticide,”

has been common among Italy’s Chinese and Indian immigrant populations and also, to a lesser extent, among Albanians.

A review in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, in January gave the book high marks for highlighting a “gigantic drama,” and for recognising that “it is very difficult to fight the battle for safer abortion and against gendercide at the same time.”

Catholic moral teaching forbids abortion under any circumstances. Meldolesi, by contrast, supports legalised abortion. Yet she acknowledged in the interview that, “for those who are ‘pro-choice’ it becomes very problematic to find a coherent solution to this disgraceful phenomenon.”

She said that resistance to limits on legal abortion “should not stop (supporters of legalised abortion) from seeing the consequences and realising that there should be some

changes in the rules.” People on both sides of the abortion issue should put aside differences to find solutions to a long-term problem with “very deep societal and cultural roots,” she said.

Most important would be an effort to educate immigrant communities, many of whom come from highly patriarchal societies in which women are valued “only to have children and be mothers, preferably of boys,” she said. Raising girls is seen as “a waste of time and resources” because they will eventually be married off and will take care of their husbands’ parents in their old age, Meldolesi said.

Meldolesi points to South Korea as an example of a country where gendercide was once a serious problem, but where it has been effectively discouraged through educational campaigns, legislation and even soap operas that depicts the equal value of both genders.

Church leaders criticised an Islamic court’s decision to expel five Christians, including a Catholic priest. A Shariah court in Jammu and Kashmir state ordered the expulsion of Mill Hill Father Jim Borst, who has worked in the region since 1963, after accusing him of “spreading communal disaffection.” Shariah courts have no legal standing in India. “We are really concerned over this,” said Fr Babu Joseph, spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India the day after the ruling.

He said personal laws of religious communities “should not be used against other faiths.”

VATICAN CITY

Praise for plastic cadavers Rome show Many readers of the Vatican’s official newspaper might have been taken by surprise in midJanuary by an article effusively praising a well-known exhibition of “plastinated” human bodies, which was making an extended stop in Rome. “Body Worlds”, which L’Osservatore Romano called a “wonderful ode to respect for the body”, is an exhibition of preserved human corpses, displayed in often sporty stances. The show thus bears many similarities to another show, “Bodies: The Exhibition”, which drew strong criticism a few years back from Catholic bishops in the United States, Canada and England, who expressed concerns over whether the preserved bodies were being exploited or degraded by being on public display. All the cadavers in “Body Worlds” are on display with the prior consent of the deceased.

1 February 2012, The Record

Page 7

Obama-care ignites outrage

By Nancy Frazier O’Brien A WEEK after the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told individuals and institutions who oppose contraception “to hell with you,” as one bishop put it, members of the US Catholic hierarchy were mobilising their followers to fight.

Bishops across the country - including Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans and Bishop Robert Lynch of St Petersburg, Fla - were preparing letters to be read at all Masses during the 28-29 January weekend.

But one of the most strongly worded reactions to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ 20 January announcement that religious organisations could delay but not opt out of a requirement that all health plans cover contraception and sterilisation at no cost came from Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, in a column titled “To hell with you.”

Sebelius and the Obama administration “have said ‘To hell with you’ to the Catholic faithful of the United States,” Bishop Zubik wrote.

“To hell with your religious beliefs.

To hell with your religious liberty.

To hell with your freedom of conscience. We’ll give you a year, they are saying, and then you have to knuckle under.”

He called on Catholics in the Pittsburgh diocese to “do all possible to rescind” the contraceptive mandate by writing to President Barack Obama, Sebelius and their members of Congress about this “unprecedented federal interference in the right of Catholics to serve their community without violating their fundamental moral beliefs.”

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill, enlisted the aid of St Michael the Archangel in fighting “this unprecedented governmental assault upon the moral convictions of our faith.”

In a 24 January letter to Peoria Catholics, he directed that the prayer of St Michael be recited “for the freedom of the Catholic Church in America” during Sunday Masses

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius with President Barack Obama.

at every parish, school, hospital, Newman centre and religious house in the diocese.

The prayer reads in part: “Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil” and “cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

“I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance,” Bishop Jenky said in the letter.

“While it is primarily the laity who should take the leading role in political and legal action, as your bishop it is my clear responsibility to summon our local Church into spiritual and temporal combat in defence of Catholic Christianity,” he added.

“I strongly urge you not to be intimidated by extremist politicians or the malice of the cultural secularists arrayed against us.”

“We cannot, we will not, comply with this unjust law,” declared

Spread the word of the Gospel, Pope

By Carol Glatz EVANGELISATION must never be a marginal concern for the Church, Pope Benedict XVI said.

From bishops to religious and the lay community, “All elements of the great mosaic of the Church must feel themselves strongly called on by the Lord’s mandate to preach the Gospel, so that Christ may be proclaimed everywhere,” the Pope said in his message for World Mission Sunday.

The annual observance will be marked on 21 October at the Vatican and in most countries.

In his message, released in Italian on 25 January at the Vatican, the Pope said there is a “renewed urgency” for the missionary mandate even as the Church celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity (Ad Gentes).

That urgency is based on the increasing number of people around the world who still have not heard the Gospel message and the growing secularism seen in traditionally Christian countries,

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he concludes his general audience in Paul VI hall.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

he said. “It’s necessary to renew enthusiasm for sharing the faith so as to promote new evangelisation in traditionally Christian communities and countries that are losing their reference to God, and to help them rediscover the joy of believing,” the Pope said.

“We need to recover the same apostolic zeal of the early Christian communities who, small and defenceless, were still capable of spreading the Gospel through proclamation and witness,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges to evangelisation, he said, “is the cri-

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix in a 25 January letter.

“Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God-given rights,” Bishop Olmsted said. “In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.”

The Catholic bishops of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, said in a joint statement that they “cannot stand by silently” in light of what they called “an unprecedented and untenable abrogation of religious freedom in the United States.”

“This is part of a pattern in the United States that has degenerated from the recognition of religion as good and salutary in our society to religion being subjected to punitive sis of faith, not just in the Western world, but among a large part of humankind, which nonetheless hungers and thirsts for God and must be invited and led to the bread of life and living water.”

The message’s theme, “Called to radiate the word of truth,” comes from the Pope’s apostolic letter Porta Fidei (“The Door of Faith”), released last October to formally announce the Year of Faith starting this October.

“Concern for evangelisation must never remain on the margins of Church activity and the personal lives of Christians,” Pope Benedict said.

People of faith need to identify with their faith much more strongly and understand that they are not just recipients but also missionaries of the Gospel, he said.

Given the complexity of the modern world, new ways of communicating the word of God must be found, he said.

Preaching the Gospel effectively in an ever-changing world “requires constantly adapting lifestyles, pastoral plans and diocesan organisation to this fundamental dimension of the Church’s being,” that is, evangelisation, he said.

“Faith is a gift that was given so that it could be shared,” he said; it’s “a light that must not stay hidden, but shine throughout the whole house. It is the most important gift ever given in our lives, and we cannot keep it for ourselves.”

PHOTO: KEVIN LAMARQUE

discrimination,” said the statement signed by Bishops Kevin Farrell of Dallas and Kevin Vann of Fort Worth and Dallas Auxiliary Bishops Douglas Deshotel and Mark Seitz.

“To hell with your religious beliefs. To hell with your religious liberty. To hell with your freedom of conscience. We’ll give you a year ...”

They urged the nearly two million Catholics in North Texas, along with “other people of goodwill,” to join them “by speaking out for the protection of conscience rights and religious liberty that are essential to the common good of our nation and in keeping with the basic human

rights enshrined in our American way of life.”

Archbishop Allen Vigneron of Detroit, in a 21 January statement, called on lawmakers in Washington to “step up, step in, and protect the rights of their fellow citizens from a government mandate that is truly unconscionable.”

“This fight against the federal government’s overreaching exercise of its power is everybody’s fight,” he added.

Archbishop Aymond, who was in Rome for his ad limina visit to Pope Benedict XVI, said on 26 January that he had already sent a letter to members of Congress protesting the HHS decision and now expected the Catholic faithful to take action.

“This is a critical time and one that will call for us to engage in public dialogue,” he said. “We cannot stand by and allow this to move forward without speaking out.”

Archbishop Aymond said Catholics “must be able to live the message of Christ in the US and follow our conscience.”

“We are not demanding that others live our Christian values, but we should have the right to do so,” he added.

Although both Archbishop Gregory and Bishop Lynch had announced that they would write letters to be read at weekend Masses, the texts of those letters had not been made public as of the afternoon of 26 January.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal on 25 January, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the HHS decision rejected the “loud and strong appeals” by “hundreds of religious institutions and hundreds of thousands of individual citizens” since the comment period began last August.

He said it is naive to think that contraception and sterilisation will be “free” under the HHS mandate.

“There is no free lunch, and you can be sure there’s no free abortion, sterilisation or contraception,” he wrote. “There will be a source of funding: you.”

Americans remain a religious people IT IS NOT ENOUGH to be pro-life intellectually and politically, said Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn.

“We must embrace the Gospel of life in the depth of our souls in such a way that it continually transforms us: bringing us to our knees in repentance for our own failures against human dignity; filling us with joy and gratitude for God’s gift of human life; permeating our minds and hearts with bedrock convictions, born of faith and reason, about the inviolable dignity of human life at every stage,” he said.

Bishop Lori was the homilist at a 21 January Mass celebrated in conjunction with the Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life at Georgetown University. The conference is named after the late Cardinal John O’Connor, who was archbishop of New York from 1984 to 2000.

In recalling the Old Testament story of Jonah bringing the ancient city of Nineveh to repentance, which was used as one of the readings for the Mass, Bishop Lori said that Nineveh was an “apt symbol” for the United States.

“In spite of a growing secular-

ity, Americans remain, overall, a religious people,” he said. “Years of pro-life witness have also moved the needle. More Americans account themselves as pro-life today than at any time since the Supreme Court’s toxic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973” that legalised abortion virtually on demand.

“Young people, in particular, are now casting a critical eye on the culture of abortion, maybe asking themselves if they were once considered a choice rather than a person,” Bishop Lori added.

The chairman of the US bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, Bishop Lori said, “the forces of secularism seek to impair and impede the Church’s witness.”

He cited the announcement by the US Department of Health and Human Services made on 20 January mandating most religious employers to include free contraceptive and sterilisation in insurance for their workers if they offer health plans to them.

“Not only are these overt coercions directly aimed against our faith, they are also egregious affronts to our nation’s founding principles,” he said.

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1 February 2012, The Record

Silence the way to knowing God AMID the deluge of information and nonstop chatter in today’s media, the Church needs to help people find safe havens of silence, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Far from being the enemy of calm and quiet, social media and the Internet can lead people to virtual sanctuaries that offer silent reflection, thoughtful dialogue and true meaning in life, he said.

“Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer,

meditation or sharing of the word of God,” he said in his message for the 2012 celebration of World Communications Day. Even brief posts and viral tweets can carry potent messages when people use those tools - not for spamming or scanning the latest gossip - but for sharing a real part of themselves, he said.

“In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives,” he said.

The theme of this year’s day

is Silence and Word: Path of Evangelisation.

In his message, the Pope acknowledged that “silence is often overlooked” but is especially important today.

Silence, words, images and sounds need “a kind of eco-system,” that is, to find a harmonious, symbiotic balance “if authentic dialogue and deep closeness between people are to be achieved,” he said.

Words without reflection and silence without meaning result in confusion, coldness and communication breakdown, he said.

Silence builds meaning, clarity

and creativity since “we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth;” and people have the time to choose how to best express themselves, he said.

Listening to others requires silence, and “we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested,” he said.

Moments of quiet and calm allow people to sift through, process and evaluate the information they’re bombarded with, figure out what is important or secondary, discover connections and “share thoughtful and relevant opinions, giving rise to

an authentic body of shared knowledge,” the Pope said. He underlined the importance of digital media - a theme he has championed in his three previous communications day messages. Search engines and social networks aid people in their innate thirst for answers and truth, he said.

Because many ask online about the meanings of life, it is important for the Church “to affirm those who ask these questions and open up the possibility of a profound dialogue, by means of words and interchange, but also through the call to silent reflection,” he said.

The complete text of the Pope’s message in English is available online at: www.vatican.va.

Sarkozy encourages religious voice

Winning time in UK to evangelise at Olympics

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy rejected calls for secular values to be enshrined into his country’s constitution and urged religious leaders to do more to spread their message in the country.

“A secular society is one which has decided to separate churches from state, so the state doesn’t have to account for its choices to churches, and churches don’t depend on the state to live and organise - this is secularity, a secular republic,” he told religious leaders at a traditional New Year meeting on 25 January.

“But this doesn’t mean churches, respecting the law, are forbidden from speaking. Nor does it mean your words shouldn’t go beyond the walls of your places of worship.

That would be a strange idea of democracy: Everyone has a right to speak, except you,” he told leaders, including Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois.

Sarkozy said France’s status as a “secular and social republic” was “written in black and white” in its constitution, along with its guiding principle of “laicite,” or secularism.

However, he added the country’s religions should also participate in national debates and “creating our cultural identities.” He said it would be a “strange schizophrenia” to preserve France’s religious heritage while insisting religions had “nothing more to say, offer and impart.”

“The spiritual richness you animate, depth of thought you embody, values you bear, all have a vocation to address themselves to those who never cross the threshold of your churches, mosques, synagogues and temples,” he said.

Catholics traditionally make up two-thirds of France’s 60 million inhabitants, although fewer than one in 10 attend Sunday Mass, and 40 per cent denies any faith. Church leaders rejected calls for changes in the application of “laicite” when a

By Simon Caldwell

French President Nicolas Sarkozy greets Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, next to France’s Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, left, at the Elysee Palace after he delivered his New Year wishes to the religious world.

PHOTO: ERIC FEFERBERG/CNS

commission was set up in 2002 by the country’s former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

However, Sarkozy, a Catholic, pledged to improve ties with religious communities before his May 2007 election. Since then he has called for religion to play a more prominent part in public life.

violating the secularism principle by taking part in prayers at Rome’s Basilica of St John Lateran.

In his January speech, Sarkozy defended a controversial April ban on Muslim veils, which he said were “incompatible” with the country’s values and the “dignity of women.”

However, he added he was

ready to defend those who are attacked or threatened because they believe, pray or witness publicly to their faith,” the president said.

“Our republic will intervene immediately if citizens start affronting each other and will be implacable toward all those who seek even once to inflame the furnace

It would be a ‘strange schizophrenia’ to preserve France’s religious heritage while insisting religions had ‘nothing more to say, offer and impart’.

During a December 2007 visit to Rome, he said he believed “laicite,” set out in a 1905 church-state separation law, should be interpreted “more positively” to enable religion to be seen “not as a danger, but as an advantage.”

After another Vatican visit in October 2010, the president was accused by opposition politicians of

also deeply concerned by recent “aggressions against religious symbols,” including attacks on Jewish and Muslim cemeteries, and said the country would guarantee all citizens “the right to practise their chosen faith.”

“Not only does our republic guard against intervening in the religious sphere, it will always be

of religious hatred on its territory.

This ravaging hatred has sometimes been on the point of sweeping France away. Let things be clear: It will not do so again.”

“As I’ve said many times, freedom of conscience is perhaps the most precious good guaranteed by our republican laws,” the president told religious leaders.

BRITISH bishops will use the 2012 Olympic Games to renew interest in the Catholic faith, with initiatives ranging from fighting human trafficking and homelessness to promoting youth ministry and ecumenical dialogue.

Archbishop Nichols, president of the bishops’ conference, called the Olympics and Paralympics “a moment of great opportunity for us all.

“These great sporting events generate all sorts of good ideas and initiatives, reminding us of the importance of good health, dignity of our bodies, care of our physical wellbeing and its spiritual meaning,” he said.

“The example of many who are dedicated to training routines reminds us of the need for good daily habits and routines in our own daily lives if we are to make the most of our God-given talents,” he said.

Twenty-four chaplains have been trained for the occasion.

Training is also being offered to representatives of more than 5,000 Catholic churches who will organise parish events, such as street parties, during the games.

The Church will use the games to draw attention to a range of social issues such as homelessness, fair trade and care for the environment, and to promote Catholic teaching on the human body.

Executive coordinator James Parker said: “We hope to bring the presence of Christ into greater play by teaching the 800,000 pupils in our schools and people within our 5,000 parishes about the goodness of sport, the God-given dignity of the human body, and the untapped talents that lie within each one of us, irrespective of our level of ability.”

Chaput: lives of special needs just as valuable

By Julie Asher EVERY child and adult with special needs, every unwanted unborn child and every person who is “poor, weak, abandoned or homeless” is “an icon of God’s face and a vessel of his love,” said Philadelphia Archbishop Chaput.

“How we treat these persons, whether we revere and welcome them, or throw them away in distaste, shows what we really believe about human dignity, both as individuals and as a nation,” he said at a pro-life conference in Washington.

In his keynote address at the annual conference, the Archbishop talked about “the kind of people we’re becoming and what we can do about it,” illustrating his theme by outlining the current situation facing unborn babies shown by genetic testing for Down syndrome.

He said he has friends who have children with disabilities, in particular Down’s. He noted about 5,000 such children are born in the US each year, and currently there are about 400,000 people in the country with Down syndrome.

But that population “may soon

dwindle,” he said. “And the reason why it may decline illustrates, in a vivid way, a struggle with the American soul. That struggle will shape the character of our society in the decades to come.”

Prenatal testing can detect 95 per cent of pregnancies with a strong risk of Down syndrome, he said.

Studies show more than 80 per cent are aborted “because of a flaw in one of their chromosomes, a flaw that’s neither fatal nor contagious, but merely undesirable.”

“I’m not suggesting doctors hold back vital information from

parents. Nor should they paint an implausibly upbeat picture of life with a child who has a disability,” Archbishop Chaput said. But he suggested expectant parents hear from parents who already have special-needs children, not just from doctors and genetic counsellors. “They deserve to know that a child with Down syndrome can love, laugh, learn, work, feel hope and excitement, make friends and create joy for others,” he said.

Raising such a child, he acknowledged, “can be demanding ... The real choice in accepting or rejecting

a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection ... The real choice is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear,” he said.

That also is the choice society faces “in deciding which human lives we will treat as valuable, and which we will not,” he said.

“Abortion kills a child; it wounds a precious part of a woman’s own dignity and identity; and it steals hope. That’s why it’s wrong. That’s why it needs to end. That’s why we march.”

1 February 2012, The Record

Page 9

Europe Has

Soul? lost its

Rabbi Jonathon Sacks, one of the most respected thinkers on current global issues, delivered this address on the current European crisis at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Rome on 12 December.

A

s the political leaders of Europe come together to try to save the euro, and with it the very project of European Union, I believe the time has come for religious leaders to do likewise, and I want to explain why.

What I hope to show in this lecture, is first, the religious roots of the market economy and of democratic capitalism. They were produced by a culture saturated in the values of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, and market economics was originally intended to advance those values.

Second, the market never reaches stable equilibrium. Instead, the market itself tends to undermine the very values that gave rise to it in the first place through the process of “creative destruction.”

Third, the future health of Europe, politically, economically and culturally, has a spiritual dimension. Lose that and we will lose much else besides. To paraphrase a famous Christian text: what will it profit Europe if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul?

Europe is in danger of losing its soul.

I want to preface my remarks by thanking His Eminence Cardinal Koch for not only inviting me to deliver this lecture, but being so graciously helpful throughout my trip and private audience with His Holiness.

I want to thank Father FrancoisXavier Dumortier, Rector of the Gregorian University, for his kind words of introduction as well as Fr Philipp Renczes of the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies and Dr Ed Kessler of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge for hosting this lecture and for all their support in arranging this visit.

These two institutions represent the best of European thought, wisdom and spirituality. Through collaborative work, my hope is that these two institutions will help build a European platform to showcase and apply the resources that this continent with its rich heritage has to offer to build a better future for the world.

I am also honoured to see a number of Ambassadors and many other distinguished guests join us here this evening; I thank you all very much for coming.

I want to begin by saying a word about the relationship between the Vatican and the Jewish people.

The history of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews was not always a happy or an easy one. Too often, it was written in tears. Yet something extraordinary happened just over half a century ago when, on 13 June 1960, the French Jewish historian Jules Isaac had an audience with Pope John XXIII and presented him with a dossier of materials he had been gathering on the history of Christian antisemitism. That set in motion the long journey to Vatican II and Nostra Aetate, as a result of which, today, Jews and Catholics meet not as enemies, nor as strangers, but as cherished and respected friends.

That is one of the most dramatic transformations in the religious history of humankind and lit a beacon of hope, not just for us but for the world. It was a victory for the God of love and forgiveness, who created us in love and forgiveness, asking us to love and forgive others.

I hope that this visit, this morning’s audience with His Holiness and this lecture, might in some small way mark the beginning of a new chapter in our relationship. For half a century, Jews and Christians have focused on the way of dialogue that I call face-to-face. The time has come to move on to a new phase, the way of partnership that I call side-by-side.

For the task ahead of us is not between Jews and Catholics, or even Jews and Christians in general, but between Jews and Christians on the one hand, and the increasingly, even aggressively, secularising forces at work in Europe today on the other, challenging and even ridiculing our faith.

If Europe loses the JudaeoChristian heritage that gave it its historic identity and its greatest achievements in literature, art, music, education, politics, and as

Pope Benedict XVI is greeted by Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, during a private audience at the Vatican on 12 December last year.

PHOTO: CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTERS

we will see, economics, it will lose its identity and its greatness, not immediately, but before this century reaches its end.

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future.

What will it profit Europe if it gains the whole world yet loses its soul?

Europe is in danger of losing its soul.

For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we – Jews and Christians, side-by-side – must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe recover its soul.

That is by way of introduction.

Let me begin with a striking passage from Niall Ferguson’s recent

book, Civilisation. In it, he tells of how the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was given the task of discovering how the West, having lagged behind China for centuries, eventually overtook it and established itself in a position of world pre-eminence.

“At first, said the [Chinese] scholar, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we concluded it was because you had the best political system. Then we realised it was your economic system.

“But in the past 20 years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.

That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

The Chinese scholar was right.

The same line of reasoning was followed by the Harvard econom-

ic historian, David Landes, in his magisterial The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

He too pointed out that China was technologically far in advance of the West until the 15th century.

The Chinese had invented the wheelbarrow, the compass, paper, printing, gunpowder, porcelain, spinning machines for weaving textiles and blast furnaces for producing iron.

Yet they never developed a market economy, the rise of science, an industrial revolution or sustained economic growth. Landes too concludes that it was the JudeoChristian heritage that the West had and China lacked.

Admittedly, the phrase “JudeoChristian tradition” is a recent coinage and one that elides significant differences between the two religions and the various strands within each. Different scholars have taken diverse tracks in tracing the economic history of the West. Max Weber famously spoke about The Continued on Page 10

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Continued from Page 9 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, with special emphasis on Calvinism. Michael Novak has written eloquently about the Catholic ethic. Rodney Stark has pointed out how the financial instruments that made capitalism possible were developed in the fourteenth century banks in preReformation Florence, Pisa, Genoa and Venice.

Those who emphasised the Jewish contribution, from Karl Marx to Werner Sombart, tended to do so in a spirit of criticism. Nonetheless it cannot be pure coincidence that Jews, numbering less than a fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, have won more than 30 per cent of Nobel Prizes in economics and include such contributions as John von Neumann’s invention of Games Theory, Milton Friedman’s monetary economics, Joseph Stiglitz’s development economics, and Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s behavioural economics and the less-than-fully-rational way in which we make market choices.

The biblical Joseph may have been the world’s first economist, having discovered the theory of trade cycles – seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years. The financial state of Europe would be better today if people knew their Bible.

There is, though, enough common ground to speak, at least here, of shared values. First, there is the deep biblical respect for the dignity of the human individual, regardless of colour, creed or class, created in the image and likeness of God. The market gives more freedom and dignity to human choice than any other economic system.

Second is the biblical respect for property rights, as against the idea prevalent in the ancient world that rulers were entitled to treat property of the tribe or nation as their own. By contrast, when Moses finds his leadership challenged by the Israelites during the Korach rebellion, he says about his relation to the people, “I have not taken one ass from them nor have I wronged any one of them.” The great assault of slavery against human dignity is that it deprives me of the ownership of the wealth I create.

Then there is the biblical respect for labour. God tells Noah that he will be saved from the flood, but it is Noah who has to build the ark.

The verse “Six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” means that we serve God through work as well as rest.

Job creation, in Judaism, is the highest form of charity because it gives people the dignity of not depending on charity. “Flay carcasses in the market-place,” said the third century teacher Rav, “and do not say: I am a priest and a great man and it is beneath my dignity”.

Equally important is Judaism’s positive attitude to the creation of wealth. The world is God’s creation; therefore it is good, and prosperity is a sign of God’s blessing.

Asceticism and self-denial have little place in Jewish spirituality.

By our labour and inventiveness we become, in the rabbinic phrase, “partners with God in the work of creation”.

Above all, from a Jewish perspective, the most important thing about the market economy is that it allows us to alleviate poverty.

Judaism refused to romanticise poverty. It is not, in Judaism, a blessed condition. It is, the rabbis said, “a kind of death” and “worse than fifty plagues”. At the other end of the spectrum they believed that with wealth comes responsibility. Richesse oblige. Successful businessmen (and women) were expected to set an example of philanthropy and to take on positions of communal leadership.

Conspicuous consumption was frowned upon, and periodically

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banned through local “sumptuary laws”. Wealth is a Divine blessing, and therefore it carries with it an obligation to use it for the benefit of the community as a whole.

The rabbis favoured markets and competition because they generate wealth, lower prices, increase choice, reduce absolute levels of poverty, and extend humanity’s control over the environment, narrowing the extent to which we are the passive victims of circumstance and fate. Competition releases energy and creativity and serves the general good.

So the market economy and modern capitalism emerged in Judeo-Christian Europe and not in other cultures like China that were more advanced in other ways. The religious ethic was one of the driving forces of this once new form of wealth creation.

Equally, however, this same ethic taught the limits of capitalism. It might be the best means we know of for generating wealth, but it is not a perfect system for distributing wealth. Some gain far more than others, and with wealth comes power over others. Unequal distribution means that some are condemned to poverty. And poverty is not just a physical disaster for those without the means to sustain themselves. It is a psychological disaster. Poverty humiliates. It can also force the poor into a cycle of dependence. They may be forced to borrow. They might in biblical times be forced to sell themselves into slavery.

The Hebrew Bible refuses to see, as an inexorable law of nature, a Darwinian struggle in which, in Thucydides’ words, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” That is the ethics of ancient Greece, not the ethics of ancient Israel.

And so we find in the Bible an entire structure of welfare legislation: the corner of the field, the forgotten sheaves, and other parts of the harvest, left for the poor, together with the tithe on certain years; the sabbatical year in which all produce is available for everyone, debts cancelled and slaves set free; and the jubilee year in which ancestral land returned to its original owners.

This is a highly sophisticated system, aimed at two things: first, that the poor should have means of a livelihood and, second, that there should be, every seven and fifty years, periodic redistributions to correct the inequalities of the market and establish a level playing

The market does not create stability, but creative destruction.

It tends to erode the moral foundations on which it was built. field. And what was done in biblical times in a largely agricultural economy was done in post-biblical times through a vast extension of the tzedakah, the word we usually translate as charity, though it also means justice.

Every Jewish community in the Middle Ages had an elaborate system of tzedakah that amounted to nothing less than a mini-welfare state. There was a chevra, a fellowship, gathering and distributing funds for every conceivable purpose: for poor brides, for the sick, for education, for burial, so that no one was deprived of the means of a dignified existence. What made this structure remarkable, indeed unique, was not only that it was the first of its kind, the precursor of the modern welfare state, but also that it was entirely voluntary, the collective decision of a community with

Above: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 25 November 2008. The financial woes of the year left millions wondering how far down the economy could go.

PHOTO: CNS

no governmental power and often no legal rights.

In a recent and impressive study, Harvard political philosopher Eric Nelson has shown that it was the Hebrew Bible, as read by the Christian Hebraists in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, that was the source of the idea that today we take for granted that it is part of the business of a society to engage in the redistribution of wealth through taxation to ensure the welfare of the poor. Such an idea could not be found in the Greek or Roman classics that inspired the Renaissance. The concept of welfare – distributive justice as opposed to legal or retributive justice – is Judaic in origin and flows ultimately from the same generative principle as the free market itself, the idea that every individual has dignity in the image of God and that it is our task to develop social structures that honour and enhance that dignity.

So, not only is the market the outcome of a Judeo-Christian ethic; so, too, is a keen sense of the limits of the market and the need to supplement it with a system of welfare itself funded by the market.

However, as the critics of capitalism pointed out, the market does not create a stable equilibrium. It engages in creative destruction, or as Daniel Bell put it, capitalism contains cultural contradictions. It tends to erode the moral foundations on which it was built.

Specifically, as is manifestly clear in contemporary Europe, it erodes the Judeo-Christian ethic that gave birth to it in the first place.

Instead of seeing the system as

Adam Smith did, as a means of directing self-interest to the common good, it can become a means of empowering self-interest to the detriment of the common good.

Instead of the market being framed by moral principles, it comes to substitute for moral principle. If you can buy it, negotiate it, earn it and afford it, then you are entitled to it – as the advertisers say – because you’re worth it. The market ceases to be merely a system and becomes an ideology in its own right.

The market gives us choices; so morality itself becomes just a set of choices in which right or wrong have no meaning beyond the satisfaction or frustration of desire.

The phenomenon that uniquely characterises the human person, the capacity to make second-order evaluations, not just to feel desire but also to ask whether this desire should be satisfied, becomes redundant. We find it increasingly hard to understand why there might be things we want to do, can afford

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Left: An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator is arrested by New York City Police during what protest organisers called a ‘Day of Action’ on 17 November last year.

PHOTO: CNS

to do and have a legal right to do, that nonetheless we should not do because they are unjust, or dishonourable, or disloyal, or demeaning.

When Homo economicus displaces Homo sapiens, market fundamentalism rules.

There is a wise American saying: Never waste a crisis. And the current financial and economic crisis affords us a rare opportunity to pause and reflect on where we have been going and where it leads.

Let’s begin with the current crisis

and what led to it. First, the sheer complexity of the financial instruments involved in subprime mortgages and the securitisation of risk, was so great that for many years their true nature eluded the regulatory authorities who continued to give the firms involved Triple A ratings, despite the fact that as early as 2002 Warren Buffett described them as weapons of mass financial destruction. Governments, and sometimes even the bankers themselves, did not fully understand the

risks involved, nor the way in which failure in any part of the banking system could cause the entire system to collapse.

This was in clear contravention of the principles of transparency and accountability. The book of Exodus devotes astonishing space to a detailed set of accounts as to how every item donated to the building of the Tabernacle was spent, to establish the principle that those in charge of public funds must be transparently above suspicion.

Second, many people, especially in America but also in Europe, were encouraged to take out mortgages, often with low initial repayment rates, that they could not repay, and that those encouraging them should have known they could not repay except under the most optimistic and unlikely scenarios of continued low interest rates and continually rising house prices. This is forbidden in Jewish law under the biblical prohibition: “You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind.”

Third, the bankers themselves not only awarded themselves disproportionately high salaries but also, by providing themselves with “golden parachutes”, insulated themselves from the very risks to which they were exposing both their customers and their shareholders. Almost two thousand years ago the rabbis established a series of enactments precisely to avoid the possibility that someone could benefit from failure or dereliction of duty.

Fourth, no one who reads the Bible with its provisions for the remission of debts every seventh year could fail to understand how

morally concerned it is to prevent the build up of indebtedness, of mortgaging freedom tomorrow for the sake of liberty today. The unprecedented levels of private and public debt in the West should have sent warning signals long ago that such a state of affairs was unsustainable in the long run. The Victorians knew what we have forgotten, that spending beyond your means is morally hazardous, however attractive it may be, and the system should not encourage it.

There are larger issues. There is the fundamental question of who can control the modern international corporation and to whom is it accountable. In mediaeval times, however much the owners of land abused those who worked for them, there was an organic connection between them. The landowner had some interest in the welfare of those who worked for him, for if they were well and reasonably happy, they worked reasonably well. Likewise, in the nineteenth century, industrialists may have created appalling working conditions, but at least some enlightened employers, like Robert Owen or the Cadburys and Rowntrees, knew that satisfied employees produced good work. Their example, together with the great nineteenth century social reformers, eventually led to more humane working conditions.

To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often, they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself. As for moral responsibility, it seems that that too can be outsourced. It is someone else’s problem, not mine.

This has profound moral consequences. George Soros writes of how in his early years as an investment manager he had to spend immense time and energy proving his credentials, his character and integrity, before people would do

To whom are the modern corporations accountable? By whom are they controlled? For whom are they responsible? business with him. Nowadays, he says, deals are transactional rather than personal. Instead of placing your faith in a person, you get lawyers to write safeguards into the contract. This is an historic shift from a trust economy to a risk economy. But trust is not a dispensable luxury. It is the very basis of our social life. Many scholars believe that capitalism had religious roots because people could trust other people who, feeling that they were answerable to God, could be relied on to be honest in business. A world without trust is a lonely and dangerous place.

It was precisely the breakdown of trust that caused the banking crisis in the first place. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the market is a shrine to materialism, forgetting that its keywords are deeply spiritual. “Credit” comes from the Latin credo meaning “I

believe.” “Confidence” comes from the Latin meaning “shared faith.”

“Trust” is a word that has deeply religious resonance. Try running a bank, a business or an economy in the absence of confidence and trust and you will know it can’t be done.

In the end, we do not put our faith in systems but in the people responsible for those systems, and without morality, responsibility, transparency, accountability, honesty and integrity, the system will fail. And as it happens, the system did fail.

With this, we come to perhaps the most profound truth of the Judeo-Christian ethic. That ethic, based on justice, compassion and respect for human dignity, took moral restraint from “out there” to “in here.” Good conduct was not dependent on governments, laws, police, inspectorates, regulatory bodies, civil courts and legal penalties. It was dependent on the still, small voice of God within the human heart. It became part of character, virtue and an internalised sense of obligation. Jews and Christians devoted immense energies to training the young in the ways of goodness and righteousness. A moral vision, a clear sense of right and wrong, was present in the stories they told, the texts they read, the rituals they performed, the prayers they said and the standards the community expected of its members.

If you were Jewish, you knew what it felt like to be a slave in Egypt, eating the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery. You knew what it felt like to be homeless for forty years as you wandered through the desert. You knew the call of Isaiah, “Learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” You had social justice engraved in your neural pathways.

When I asked the developmental economist Jeffrey Sachs what motivated him in his work, he replied immediately, tikkun olam, the Jewish imperative to heal a fractured world. Christians did likewise. They did not need regulatory bodies to ensure that they worked for the common good. They knew they were morally responsible, even if they were not legally liable, for the consequences of their decisions for the lives of others.

Economists call this social capital, but it is not a given of the human condition. Societies where self-interest trumps the common good eventually disintegrate. That is why societies at the peak of affluence have usually already begun on the downward slope to decline. The fourteenth century Islamic thinker Ibn Khaldun argued that when a civilisation becomes great, its elites get used to luxury and comfort, and the people as a whole lose their asabiyah, their social solidarity.

Giambattista Vico described a similar cycle: “People first sense what is necessary, then consider what is useful, next attend to comfort, later delight in pleasures, soon grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad squandering their estates.”

This was said first and most powerfully by Moses long ago.

The theme of his great speeches in the book of Deuteronomy is that it is not hardship that is the real trial, but affluence. Affluence makes you complacent. You no longer have the moral and mental energy to make the sacrifices necessary for the defence of freedom. Inequalities grow. The rich become self-indulgent. The poor feel excluded. There are social divisions, resentments, injustices.

Society no longer coheres. People do not feel bound to one another by a bond of collective responsibility.

Individualism prevails. Trust declines. Social capital wanes.

When that happens, you will be defeated.

Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can Continued on Page 12

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Continued from Page 11 be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

At the most basic level, the consumer society is sapping our moral strength. It has produced a society obsessed with money: salaries, bonuses, the cost of houses, and expensive luxuries we could live without. When money rules we forget the value of things, and that is dangerous.

The financial crisis was caused, at least in part, by banks and mortgage brokers lending people so much money at such low interest rates to buy houses, that house prices rose rapidly until investing in a house seemed the best you could make. More people borrowed more money and house prices rose, until everyone felt that they were richer. But in real terms we weren’t.

Ignoring values and concentrating on price, we mortgaged our future to feed a fantasy. Like other historic bubbles, it was a moment of collective madness, of the essentially magical belief that there can be gains without losses; forgetting that the larger the gain, the bigger the risk, and that the price is often paid by those who can least afford it.

In general, the build-up of personal debt happened because the consumer society encouraged people to borrow money they didn’t have, to buy things they didn’t need, to achieve a happiness that wouldn’t last. The sages of the ancient world said: Who is rich? One who rejoices in what he has. The consumer society says the opposite. Who is rich?

One who can buy what he does not yet have. Relentlessly focusing on what we lack and what others have encourages feelings of inadequacy that we assuage by buying a product to make us happy, which it does until the day after, when the next best thing comes along and makes us feel inadequate all over again.

It is no accident that despite the fact that until recently we were affluent beyond the dreams of previous generations, we were not measurably happier. We turned children into mini-consumers, giving them mobile phones instead of our time. The result, in Britain, is a generation of children more unhappy, more prone to depression, stress, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol abuse than they were fifty years ago. The consumer society turns out to be a highly efficient system for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.

It goes deeper still. We know that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.

My late father, coming to Britain at the age of six fleeing persecution in Poland, knew poverty and lived it. But he and his contemporaries had a rich cultural, communal and spiritual life. He enjoyed classical music and the great painters. He loved synagogue and his faith as a Jew. The Jewish communities of the East End, like some Asian subcommunities today, had strong families, supportive networks, and high aspirations, if not for themselves, then for their children.

Of the gifts of the spirit they had an embarrass de richesse. Can we really say that the world of brands and status symbols, of what you own rather than what you are, is better?

What of the future if we really are fated to years of recession?

What will that mean for a culture where happiness is defined by material possessions? It will mean

1 February 2012, The Record

Social decay: looters carry boxes out of a damaged video shop in Birmingham, England, during 2011’s riots.

the maximum of disappointment with the minimum of consolation.

Whether our social structures are strong enough to survive this is wholly open to doubt. A good society has its own ecology which depends on multiple sources of meaning, each with its own integrity. I want to draw attention briefly to five features of Judaism, largely shared by Christianity, whose role over the centuries has been to preserve a space uninvaded by the market ethic.

The first is the Sabbath, the boundary Judaism draws around economic activity. The Sabbath is the day we focus on the things that

have value but not a price, when we neither work nor employ others to do our work, when we neither buy nor sell, in which all manipulation of nature for creative ends is forbidden and all hierarchies of power or wealth are suspended.

It is the still point in the turning world, when we renew our attachment to family and community, living the truth that the world is not wholly ours to bend to our will but something given to us in trust to conserve for future generations, and in which the inequalities of a market economy are counterbalanced by a world in which money does not count, in which we are all equal citizens. The Jewish writer Achad Ha-am said that more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. It is the one day in seven when we stop making a living and simply live.

The second: marriage and the family. Judaism is one of the great familial traditions. Many of its supreme religious moments take place in the home between husband and wife, parents and children. Marriage is where love and loyalty combine to bring new life into the world. If Jews have survived tragedy, found happiness, and contributed more than their share to the human heritage, I suspect it is because of the sanctity with which they endowed marriage and the way they regarded parenthood as their most sacred task.

Third: education. Since the days of Moses Jews have predicated their very survival on education.

They were the first civilisation to construct, two thousand years ago, a universal compulsory education, communally funded, to ensure that everyone had access to knowledge.

They even said that study is holier than prayer. Jews are the people whose heroes are teachers, whose citadels are schools and whose passion is the life of the mind. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, once said that he came from one of those Russian-Jewish families where they expected even the plumber to have a PhD. Jews did not leave education to the vagaries of the market. They made the market serve the cause of education.

Fourth: the concept of property.

Deeply embedded in the Jewish mind is the idea that we do not ultimately own what we possess.

Everything belongs to God; what we have, we hold in trust. There are conditions to that trust. As the great Victorian philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore put it, “We are worth what we are willing to share with others”. Hence, the long tradition of Jewish philanthropy that explains how Judaism encouraged the creation of wealth without giving rise to class resentments.

Finally, there is the Jewish tradition of law itself. It was William Rees-Mogg who first drew attention to a connection between Jewish law and economics I had never thought of before. In a book he wrote about inflation, The Reigning Error, he said that inflation – like high levels of debt – is a disease of inordinacy.

It happens because of a failure to understand that energy, to be channelled, needs restraints. It was the constant discipline of law, he says, that provided the boundaries within which Jewish creativity could flow.

It taught Jews self-restraint, and it is the failure of societies to practise self-restraint that leads to inflation or unsustainable debt.

So the Sabbath, the family, the educational system, the concept of ownership as trusteeship, and the discipline of religious law, were not constructed on the basis of economic calculation. To the contrary, they were ways in which Judaism in effect said to the market: thus far and no further. There are realms in which you may not intrude.

The concept of the holy is precisely the domain in which the worth of things is not judged by their market price or economic value. This fundamental insight of Judaism and Christianity is all the more striking given their respect for the market. Their strength is that they resisted the temptation to believe that the market governs the totality of our lives, when it fact it governs only a limited part of it, that which concerns goods subject to production and exchange. There are things fundamental to being

PHOTO: CNS

human that we do not produce; instead we receive from those who came before us and from God himself. And there are things which we may not exchange, however high the price.

When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends. That is the dan-

Among the culprits are an aggressive scientific atheism, tone-deaf to the music of creation, a materialism blind to the human spirit, a fraying of all bonds. ger that advanced economies now face. At such times the voice of our great religious traditions needs to be heard, warning us of the gods that devour their own children, and of the ruins of once-great buildings that stand today as relics of civilisations that once seemed invincible.

I have argued that the market economy originated in Europe in the fertile environment of JudeoChristian values sympathetic to hard work, industry, frugality, diligence, patience, discipline, and a sense of duty and obligation.

Capitalism was seen by its early proponents as a profoundly moral enterprise. It generated wealth, softened manners, tamed unruly passions, and diminished the threat of war. Two adjacent nations could either fight or trade. From fight, both lost. From trade, both gained.

The market’s “invisible hand” turned the pursuit of self-interest into the wealth of nations, and intellectual property fuelled the fires of invention. Capitalism has enhanced human dignity, leaving us with more choices and a longerlife expectancy than any generation of those who came before us.

But there is no such thing as a stable equilibrium in human affairs. There is a natural tendency for institutions in the ascendancy to invade territories not rightly or fully their own, with disastrous consequences. In religious ages, the culprit was usually religion.

At times it sought political power and became an enemy of liberty.

At other times it sought to control the dissemination of ideas and thus became an enemy of the unfettered, collaborative pursuit of truth.

Today, in a Europe more secular than it has been since the last days of pre-Christian Rome, the culprits are an aggressive scientific atheism tone deaf to the music of faith; a reductive materialism blind to the power of the human spirit; global corporations uncontrollable by and sometimes more powerful than national governments; forms of finance so complex as to surpass the understanding of bodies charged with their regulation; a consumer-driven economy that is shrivelling the imaginative horizons of our children; a fraying of all the social bonds, from family to community, that once brought comfort and a redemption of solitude, to be replaced by virtual networks mediated by smartphone, whose result is to leave us “alone together.”

What can we do, we who, because we have faith in God, have faith in God’s faith in humankind?

There is a significant phrase that Pope Benedict XVI has often used: creative minority. If there is one thing Jews know how to be, it is a creative minority. So my proposal is that Jews and Catholics should seek to be creative minorities together. A duet is more powerful than a solo.

Renouncing any aspiration for power, we should seek to encourage the single most neglected source of energy in a consumer-driven, profit-maximising society, namely the power of altruism. We should enlist business leaders to help us teach that markets need morals; that without a strong ethic, there may be short term success but no long term viability; and that conscience is not for wimps, it is the basis of trust and confidence on which business, financial institutions and the economy depend.

We should use this moment of recession to restore to their rightful place in society the things that have value but not a price: marriage, the family, home, dedicated time between parents and children, the face-to-face friendships that make up community, the celebration of what we have, not the restless pursuit of what we don’t, a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving, and a willingness to share some of God’s blessings with those who have less.

These are the true sources of lasting happiness and have been empirically proved to be so.

We should seek to recover the alternative world created by the Sabbath, the day in which we set limits to the power of the market to enslave us with its siren song, and instead give our relationships the chance to mature and our souls the pure air they need to breathe.

We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

Economic superpowers have a short shelf-life: Spain in the fifteenth century, Venice in the sixteenth, Holland in the seventeenth, France in the eighteenth, Britain in the nineteenth, America in the twentieth. Meanwhile, Christianity has survived for two thousand years, and Judaism for twice as long as that. The Judeo-Christian heritage is the only system known to me capable of defeating the law of entropy that says all systems lose energy over time.

Stabilising the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God. When Europe recovers its soul, it will recover its wealth-creating energies. But first it must remember: humanity was not created to serve markets. Markets were created to serve humankind.

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Reining in the brute market ‘Economic liberalism’, based on utilitarianism and materialism, is the root cause of the GFC, writes David Peterson.

A

s 2012 begins, the economic crisis of the last four years shows no sign of subsiding. The present world upheaval is now considered comparable to the Great Depression. The US and Europe are so paralysed by debt that significant recovery looks remote. Plans for social service cuts and hefty tax hikes are provoking social and political unrest. Millions of people in the wealthier countries are suffering serious hardships with the worst damage likely still to come – meanwhile, well over a billion people in the developing countries are forced to get by on little more than US$1 per day.

Recently, religious leaders have spoken out about how to reform the world economy to promote a more humane and ethical system.

The most perceptive and comprehensive example was published last October by the Vatican’s Council on Peace and Social Justice (PCPJ) called Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.

The authors, a team of Vatican scholars led by Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, attribute many of our current ills to the doctrine of “economic liberalism”, which they say is based on “utilitarianism and materialism.” It is a highly readable analysis with a vision for a more integrated and stable financial and monetary system, which the authors believe would usher in an era of sustained and more widespread economic development.

The document was issued to coincide with a crucial meeting of the Group of 20 – the leaders of the world’s largest economies – who stated in 2009 that “the economic crisis demonstrates the importance of ushering in a new era of sustainable global economic activity grounded in responsibility.” The document identifies the devastating role of “financial speculation” and “unlimited credit” which wrecked havoc on the “productive” economy. At present, say the authors, the world economy is so dominated by avarice and corruption that one can speak of an “ethical breakdown”.

Many of the insights into the root causes of the crisis presented by the Catholic Council have been glossed over by most leading economists and financial experts. The critique is very similar to remarks made

by Pope John Paul II. In 1991, he warned of an “idolatry of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.” He continued that we “ought to have a keen sense of belonging to the human family, which means sharing in the common dignity of all human beings.”

The proposal was received by the world financial media with a mixture of indifference and hostility. But, curiously, the bulk of unfavourable comments came from Catholic writers in conservative American magazines and think tanks. They were particularly upset at the criticisms of free trade doctrine, international markets, and also by the statement’s bold recommendation for creating a world financial authority to coordinate and regulate world economic transactions.

Overall, there are ample reasons to applaud the significant achievements of globalisation. From 1980 to 2010, global trade grew fourfold.

As national income rose, countless millions were lifted from poverty;

A man trims a tree in front of his makeshift home in an area demolished in central Beijing in 2009. Inequalities within and between countries have multiplied, say the authors of the Vatican’s Council on Justice and Peace document called ‘Reforming the International Financial and Monetary System.’ PHOTO: CNS/DAVID GRAY, REUTERS

new middle classes arose in Asia and Latin America. Nevertheless, inequalities within and between countries, say the authors, have also multiplied, making far too many families poorer and more vulnerable.

One crucial factor in the crisis is the role played by monetary and financial markets which are increasingly divorced from the production of actual goods and services. “The speculative bubble in the real estate and the recent financial crisis,” say the authors, “has the very same origin in the excessive amount of money and the plethora of financial instruments globally.”

Speculative markets have grown exponentially: “In recent decades, banks extended credit which generated money, which in turn sought further expansion of credit.” The instability triggered a series of crises that led eventually to the US housing collapse. “In material goods markets”, the Pontifical Council stated, “natural factors and productive capacity as well as labour in all its any forms set quantitative limits” which permit an efficient allocation of resources.

However, monetary and financial markets are an exception and without proper regulation can spiral out of control. To cite one example, the former Prime Minister of the UK, Gordon Brown, estimated that the total value of world derivatives (mostly speculative wagers) had grown to an unfathomable figure of over $500 trillion by 2008. That sum is 12 times the entire world’s yearly economic output!

A “liberalist” approach”, which rejects prudent public intervention in the market, says the PCPJ, has had devastating effects on the real economy, employment, production and international trade. Economic liberalism, say the authors, “is a theoretical system of thought, a form of ‘economic apriorism.’ It purports to derive the laws for how markets function from theory, these being laws of capitalistic development, but it exaggerates certain aspects of

markets and downplays or ignores others.” The Council says such an a priori belief in laws, “without measuring them against reality, risks becoming a tool subordinated to the interests of the countries that effectively enjoy a position of economic and financial advantage.”

Exactly three years ago, one of the most lauded free market experts, who served for 18 years as US Federal Reserve Chairman, made a stunning declaration. Alan Greenspan told a Congressional committee that he had found “a fundamental flaw in the edifice of market economics. Greenspan was candid in confessing that much of

Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was candid in confessing that much of what be once believed was now altogether erroneous. what he had always believed was altogether erroneous.

In his recent book, Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation, Gordon Brown admits that the leading authorities “had not fully appreciated that moral norms were not constraining the behaviour of those competing across complex and interlocked global entities.”

According to economist Robert Samuelson, “the 2007-09 financial crisis, having started in the US, discredited American ideas and competence … A world of increasing interconnected economies requires greater cooperation – but everywhere there is a fragmentation of power and purpose.”

Along these lines, the PCJP offered its proposal to establish a world financial authority to permit better coordination of the process of globalisation, and to work

toward a more just, and sustainable path for world economic development. Such a coordinating body would be “the outcome of a free and shared agreement”, designed to incorporate the interests of billions of people around the world, “including nations and cultures that have little influence.”

It would be set up gradually within a suitable legal framework.

It would support free and stable markets including a “well functioning (legal framework) in support of sustainable development and social progress of all, and inspired by the values of charity and truth.”

Beginning with the encyclical Rerum Novarum (on Capital and Labour) in 1893, the Catholic Church has published a series of insightful and influential social encyclicals which apply the moral outlook of Church teachings to contemporary ethical issues and social ills. According to veteran Catholic reporter Paul Likoudis, every theme in the October statement is entirely consistent with “a long line of Vatican appeals.”

Even the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, remarked, “There is help to be had from … a bold statement on our financial situation.” He endorsed its sound suggestions “to minimise the damage of certain current practices and assumptions in the immediate future.”

Only days after its release, a number of wellknown Catholic publications and free market advocates immediately raised a series of red flags. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, commented, “This is a sophisticated economic analysis ... but discerning the disease and finding the cure are very different undertakings.”

He strongly disagreed that there is a need for such a “global financial authority.” Similarly, Phillip Lawler praised the analysis for affirming that “utilitarian standards are inadequate to define the common good” and says “there are many lessons

that financiers could learn from Church teaching.” But he derided the statement as riddled with “flakey leftist theory” and advised authors, “leave economic analysis to the economists.”

The most peculiar retort came from Mark Brumley of Catholic World Report who joked that, “the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace might just as well call for the establishment of Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets. It would have just as much likelihood of providing solutions to our problems.”

Despite the controversy over economics, there are many reasons to welcome the appeal of this insightful document. We need a spirit of confidence to overcome the spread of confusion and despair.

It also furthers the important debate about the limitations of a rigid secularism which sees moral and ethical issues as irrelevant or out of bounds. This can often be seen in utilitarian thinking – the idea that what is best for the individual leads always to the best solution. The authors commented that despite having some validity, “it cannot be ignored that individual utility – even where legitimate – does not always favour the common good.”

Although there is no ideal financial and economic model, the world crisis makes it urgent that we make dramatic adjustments. Certainly, this would mean transparent institutions and improved international relations that provide better opportunity – including a fairer distribution of wealth, and more universal access to economic development.

The economic ‘note’ can be seen as a petition calling on world leaders to consider a greater respect for our Judeo-Christian heritage and other moral-based traditions.

Religious leaders should not be discouraged or remain silent at this critical time.

David Peterson is an author and high school teacher with a degree in economics. He lives in Chicago.

- www.mercatornet.com.

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1 February 2012, The Record

The ritual of baptism in the Jordan River continues to be a testament to the faith of Catholic believers, writes Judith Sudilovsky.

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oung and old, hundreds of pilgrims seek baptism in the Jordan River ritual. With 8-year-old grandson Jamal in tow, Hajeh Mattar made her way across a wooden platform alongside the Jordan River. Her plan: to baptise him in the waters of the river at the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism.

Jamal’s father, Awad, his mother, Manal, and sister Justine, 6, followed not far behind. For Hajeh, 65, it was the opportunity to fulfill a promise she had made at the site almost a decade ago when she prayed to God to see grandchildren from her son Awad, now 35.

It was her way to observe the feast of the Baptism of the Lord on 8 January along with hundreds of Catholic and Orthodox pilgrims who made their way to the site.

Awad was able to persuade his reluctant son to squat by the river as his grandmother cupped her hand into the cold water and poured it over his head and face.

“I came here to thank God,” Hajeh said as Awad gingerly dripped water over Justine’s head as well. “Last time I came here I promised God I would bring my grandchildren here. I thank God for my grandchildren. This has strengthened my faith.”

Hajeh also made sure the children’s legs were dipped into the river before she was satisfied her promise had been kept.

“I hope they will have a good life with lots of success and are happy,” said Manal. “I hope God will protect them.”

Nearby, a Mass celebrated by the custodian of the Holy Land,

Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, gave parents the opportunity to baptise their children by splashing water on their heads and dipping their hands and toes in the

Last time I came here I promised God I would bring my grandchildren.

I thank God for my grandchildren. This has strengthened my faith. river. Adults renewed their baptismal vows by stepping into the river.

In May, the site was reopened to the public after 11 years of planning

and coordination with government officials. Until then, pilgrims were allowed at the site only three times a year, under special arrangements with the military because of the site’s proximity to Jordan - 100m across the river - and the presence of land mines left over from a period when terrorists attempted to infiltrate the border.

Rania Basir, 36, a Palestinian from Jerusalem studying in Cairo, filled empty bottles with water from the river. One would be given to a Coptic Catholic friend in Cairo whose relative has fallen ill and asked for the holy water, she said.

“This is like a blessing,” Basir said.

Greek Orthodox pilgrims, many clad in white robes, streamed down to the river as the Catholic liturgy continued. Despite the coldness of the water, they waded waist-deep

into the river where some Greek Orthodox priests dunked their heads under water three times and blessed them.

A group of Catholic pilgrims from Croatia lined up quietly on the banks as their spiritual leader, Fr Tomislav Planinic, blessed them with water from the river.

Palestinians joined the line to be blessed as well.

Twenty-month-old Andrei Gariseh of the West Bank village of Beit Sahour, held by his father Elias Geriseh, began to cry as the priest sprinkled water on his head.

“For us it is a good sign that he cried,” explained his uncle, Ashraf Geriseh. “When he cries it means something has changed, he has become awakened and aware in a different way.” Jerusalem resident Mary Mishriki, 40, said that when

A woman’s struggle with grief helps Rosa Montegra told Debbie Warrier how God tested her but she never gave up on her faith even when she lost both son and husband within two years.

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hen I awake I offer myself and my day to the Lord. When I am finding the going difficult I offer every moment for my good and God’s glory. My prayer time in the early morning usually includes prayers of praise and praying in tongues, the daily readings of the Church, and snippets from spiritual books, meditation and then some journalling. I have always felt that our spiritual journey

can be compared to riding uphill on a bicycle. We need to keep working at it, otherwise we slide backwards.

During the day I try to listen as well as talk to God and be one with him. I usually tell God that I intend to pray for those who have asked for my prayers, those who need my prayers and for those who pray for me. I also spend some time in prayer in the evenings looking at how the day has gone and where I have sensed God during the day.

Once in bed I pray the rosary until I fall asleep. If I awake in the night I will usually pray intercessory prayers for anyone who needs it at this time. Two to three times a week I attend morning Mass. Once a month I spend time in Adoration.

My faith has helped me overcome all the obstacles in my life. I experienced a powerful moment on the night of my son’s death in a road accident. I was lying there in deep grief and cried out to God. I can’t explain what exactly happened but I seemed to be wrapped in a warm

blanket of love and a presence filled the room. During my deepest desolation God sends his greatest consolation. My son, Bernard was where I had birthed him to be. He had gone home to the Father.

Then my husband Tony developed nerve palsy in his eye and

The night of my son’s death in a road accident I was lying there in deep grief and cried out to God. was diagnosed with liver and bone cancer. His last few months were very painful. I did not know whether to grieve for my husband or son as I had lost them both within two years. I attended a Charismatic prayer meeting and kept silently asking the Holy Spirit to sweep over my soul. The leader

said he had a prophetic word for someone who was hurting from the pain of life. He said, “Jesus is saying to this person that he wants the Holy Spirit to sweep over their soul.” I said to God “I know now that you care and have a plan for my life and that is all that matters.

With your help I will get through this. Please don’t waste my pain.”

Again, my faith was put to the test when my youngest daughter Helena was badly burnt in a fire. I cried out to God, “what good are you going to bring out of this?” During the numerous skin grafts, a malignant melanoma was discovered and had it not been found she would have died. The accident spared her life. I have come to truly believe Romans: 8:28, “All things work for good for those who love God.” It has been said that out of our mess comes our ministry, and that our test becomes our testimony.

That has proved so for me as the ministries I am involved in both relate to women and mothers. In

1997, I founded Women of The Way with Bishop Michael Putney’s approval. Women of The Way hold a monthly meeting offering prayer, praise, teaching and fellowship. We still hold a yearly retreat for women.

In 2003, I decided to go to a Catholic Charismatic Conference in Rome, then to Medjugorje and then visit Star House, home of Mothers Prayers in England which I wanted to know more about as I pray for my children’s struggles in life. While I was there, God prompted Veronica Williams (one of the founders of Mothers Prayers) to do a mini Conference as there were five of us from different countries visiting at the same time.

When Veronica prayed for me, she felt that I was to be the Australian Coordinator for Mothers Prayers.

I heard in my heart the words, “for this you have been born.” I returned to my home in Brisbane and took up my new ministry.

Mothers Prayers started in 1996 when Veronica and Sandra

1 February 2012, The Record

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Balancing pastoral care and the Eucharist Dear Father, I am an extraordinary minister of Communion and sometimes people come forward whom I know should not be receiving it. What should I do?

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Left: Franciscan brothers and pilgrims walk along a road in procession on 8 January to attend a Mass at Qasr el-Yehud by the Jordan River. Above: Russian Orthodox pilgrims go into the Jordan River. Located near the West Bank town of Jericho, the site is believed to be the place where St John baptised Jesus. Bottom: Palestinian Catholics from Jerusalem, Najed Mishriki, 40, and his wife, Mary, 40, sprinkle their son, Khamis, 18 months, by the Jordan River on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

PHOTO: CNS/DEBBIE HILL

her 18-month-old son Khamis, who was baptised for the second time at the Mass, gets older she will tell him about his baptismal renewal at the Jordan River. “I wanted him to

have a special baptism like Jesus,” she said, brushing away long curls from the face of the toddler who was regally dressed in white pants, shirt, a silver sequined bow-tie, a

fluff-trimmed cape embroidered with silver sequins and white satin cap with a white feather and silver sequins. “Maybe it will bring him happiness in his life.”

her connect with God Williams, two grandmothers from England, felt led by the Lord to pray in a special way for their children.

They felt that the Lord wished for all mothers to come together, to bring their worries for their children to Him and trust in his promise, “ask and you shall receive.” They knew that the Lord wanted to take away their pain and bless and heal their children.

Veronica and Sandra could not have predicted how Mothers Prayers would be such a powerful ministry for our times. It has become interdenominational and international and the prayer booklet is printed in many languages.

In 100 countries women now meet regularly to pray and surrender their children to the Lord.

Most often I sense God in and through people. Some people reflect the goodness of God. They are God with skin on. My passion is to see people’s lives change for the better and to watch them grow in their relationship with the Lord.

Rosa Montegra lost her husband and her son within two years. She found relief from the pain of loss in God. PHOTO: DEBBIE WARRIER

his is a very delicate matter.

First of all, who should not receive Communion?

The Code of Canon Law establishes: “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (can 915).

The phrase “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin” includes the people you mentioned eg people living in a de facto relationship, those married outside the Church following a divorce, practising homosexuals etc.

It should be remembered, in addition, non-Catholics, with the exception of the Orthodox in certain circumstances (cf can 844), cannot be admitted to Communion either.

While the person distributing Communion can never judge the subjective guilt of anyone, the fact the person is publicly known to be living in a state which contradicts the law of God and his Church is sufficient to judge that he/she is not to be admitted to Communion.

What is to be done?

On 24 June 2000, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts issued a declaration clarifying that those who divorce and remarry outside the Church do fall under the prohibition of receiving Communion mentioned in Canon 915.

The declaration mentions firstly that the prohibition of receiving Communion when in a state of grave sin “is derived from divine law and transcends the domain of positive ecclesiastical laws” ie the Church merely reiterates what is already forbidden by God. The declaration goes on to say that, firstly, it is the individual who has the responsibility of refraining from receiving Communion when not in the state of grace.

He/she should observe what is written in Canon 916: “Anyone who is conscious of grave sin may not ... receive the Body of the Lord without previously having been to sacramental confession ...”

If someone persists in going up to receive Communion despite the prohibition, often moved by ignorance, it then devolves especially on the priest to speak with them privately and explain why they should not do so: “Naturally, pastoral prudence would

Q&A

By Fr John Flader strongly suggest the avoidance of instances of public denial of Holy Communion. Pastors must strive to explain to the concerned faithful the true ecclesial sense of the norm, in such a way that they would be able to understand it or at least respect it” (Decl n 3).

If, in spite of being told not to receive Communion, the person continues to come forward, pastors “are to give precise instructions to the deacon or to any extraordinary minister regarding the mode of acting in concrete situations” (Decl n 3).

“Anyone who is conscious of grave sin may not ... receive the Body of the Lord without previously having been to confession.”

It then falls to the priest and other ministers to deny the person the sacrament.

In those situations, however, in which these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, the minister of Communion must refuse to distribute it to those who are publicly unworthy.

They are to do this with extreme charity, and are to look for the opportune moment to explain the reasons that required the refusal.

They must, however, do this with firmness, conscious of the value that such signs of strength have for the good of the Church and of souls” (Decl n 3).

This is without question a very sensitive and difficult task but it is truly necessary to safeguard the dignity of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the sanctity of marriage and respect for those many other people in the congregation who struggle to live in accordance with the Church’s teachings, often at great cost, and who are scandalised when when others who do not do so are welcomed to Communion.

THE RECORD

Better than any soap opera AM I imagining things? Look at our leaders and you see, not Abbott and Gillard but Abbott and Costello.

The whole of parliament looks more and more like vaudeville.

Tony and Julia are obviously playing to the crowd, and the other pollies act like their supporting cast. The frustrated, common sense mum and a sort of thin ginger meggs of a son, larrikin to the soles of his bare feet.

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If forced to adopt President Obama’s policy, the Catholic Church in the US will have little choice but to divest itself completely of any involvement in healthcare. This is war.

Geoffrey Jones KALGOORLIE, WA

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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n the other side of the world a political struggle unlike anything seen in generations is shaping up to take place. It will come as a result of the announcement by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the US government’s Department of Health and Human Services, that religious organisations in the US would be forced within a year to offer health insurance plans to their employees covering sterilisation and contraception at no cost to employees.

In effect, the decision announced by Secretary Sebelius on 20 January, the equivalent of a federal Minister for Health in Australian terms, was an open declaration on the part of the administration of President Barack Obama of war against the Catholic Church, a major employer and provider of healthcare in that country. The objective of President Obama’s policy is clearly to force the Catholic Church to come to heel over the issue, despite numerous representations in the lead up to the announcement from the highest levels of the Church in the US that matters such as sterilisation and contraception are ones on which the Church cannot - and will not - compromise.

In many ways, the Obama move is hardly surprising and not entirely unprecedented. For the president and the Democratic administration he represents, issues such as universal access to abortion, sterilisation and contraception are ideological holy grails born out of the cultural revolution of the sixties and seventies when the current leadership of the Democratic party were being formed in their values and beliefs, effectively embracing a general sense of moral relativism. It was at this point in time, roughly speaking the decade from 1965 to 1975, that western countries experienced profound cultural and moral social changes which could broadly be defined as the rejection of the cultural and moral patrimony of western civilisation that began to radically alter the structure of society in the following decades.

The Obama-Sebelius decision to attempt to force the Catholic Church as an employer to begin funding the sterilisation of employees or the desire of employees to contracept their relationships and marriages is, therefore, a natural enough development of an ideological world view which calls for its own enaction, no matter how much political ruthlessness required. In this election year, President Obama has clearly calculated that such a move will not threaten his re-election.

The move is not unprecedented. When Democratic President Bill Clinton, who served as US President from 1993-2001, appointed his wife Hilary to reform the US health system in the first year of his presidency, Mrs Clinton announced plans to force students studying to become doctors in Catholic medical schools to participate PO Box 3075 in the carrying out of abortions Adelaide Terrace as part of their training.

PERTH WA 6832 The Obama administration’s decision has caused dismay office@therecord.com.au within the Church in the US. Tel: (08) 9220 5900 If forced to comply within the Fax: (08) 9325 4580 12-month limit delivered by Ms Sebelius, it will have little option other than to begin, for the first time in centuries in North America, divesting itself of involvement in any field involving health as well as education, infant care, hospitals, charitable institutions and aged care, to name just a few.

To get an idea of the scale of the US Catholic healthcare system, it helps to know (according to that font Wikipedia) that, in 2002, the US Catholic healthcare system consisted of 625 hospitals with an estimated combined revenue of $US30 billion dollars. In that year, the Catholic healthcare system was the US’s largest non-profit healthcare system.

By 2008, the cost of running US Catholic hospitals was estimated to be $84.6 billion, with hospitals contributing $5.7 billion to the community in donations. The possibility of divestment in healthcare is not merely theoretical. Already, a number of Catholic dioceses in the US have been legislatively forced out of the provision of orphanages on the grounds that they have refused as a matter of conscience to provide babies for homosexual couples.

The current effort by President Obama, with the undoubted full backing of a possible future president, Hilary Clinton, to force the Catholic Church to submit is the latest example of a confrontation which has been growing more likely across the globe for decades in affluent societies and which, in the end - and to risk oversimplification - may be defined as a confrontation between the culture of life and the culture of death. It is also an effort to force the Church to do what is impossible: to abandon the Gospel of Life, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to embrace the culture of death. The lesson for Australia, which tends strongly to adopt social and moral changes enacted in Europe and the United States is also clear. In many ways, it seems clear that the possibility of similar moves in this country are not so much an issue of ‘if ’ but ‘when.’ For millennia, the Church has offered charitable care for all, based precisely on its belief in the human person as created in the image and likeness of God, but it cannot be forced to adopt a grossly deficient understanding of human life in order to appease the rulers of this world.

WHILST I share Brian Peachey’s ethical concerns (Missal’s printing cost no excuse, 21 December) about the printing of the new missal in the People’s Republic of China, I am far more concerned about its style and artwork.

If we claim to worship a God who is the epitome of the Good, the Beautiful and the True (which the new, corrected, text renders so well), then why will we be expected to worship him in a book defaced with faux-seventies art that is trite, banal, soulless, drab and downright ghastly?

Indeed, the ease with which it so snugly dovetails with Maoist nihilism is scary.

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Obama’s war on the Church in the US takes shape

Faux-seventies art is trite in Missal

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Letters to the editor They make a good dynamic team and appeal to something buried deep in all our hearts. Better than any soapy on TV. Peter Gilet BELMONT

Two standards for brutal treatment HOW about the heartwrenching episode that was brought to our attention recently; where a little defenceless puppy was ditched from a lofty apartment balcony, ending

Something to say?

Put it in a letter

office@therecord.com.au

up on the concrete footpath below with surprisingly only a broken front leg, bruising and pain.

All children and most adults go into tender ‘meltdown’ when a tiny bundle of trembling and insecure ‘fluff ’ appears on the scene. All want to cradle and embrace without delay. But dare to injure and abuse that puppy and you will be prosecuted and receive more than a smack on the wrist.

On the other side of the coin, the current laws in Australia permit us to not only break legs, but mutilate the conceived baby in the process of abortion.

Is there no robust, corporal or relevant defence established to assist these defenceless and priceless babies, such as exists for dogs, cats and so on?

Prayers and rosaries are recited outside the abortion clinics, but any intervention by individuals is strictly forbidden!

There still exists a vast imbalance in the welfare and treatment of humans versus animals. I am yet to come across a newspaper article that dares to detail the unutterable treatment that’s engaged in with the aborting of a live human child.

Of course there’s many relating to the animal world and I genuinely support that lawful activity, but sadly there’s no regard or support for our babies who undergo an horrific, painful death.

Have I missed something along the way?

John Joyce KALGOORLIE, WA

Could we all survive minus the wonderful internet?

The 24-hour shutdown of Wikipedia on 18 January was a bold gesture which proved what exactly? asks Phillip Elias.

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here are rumblings in Silicon Valley. A simple Google search on 18 January plunged many unwitting surfers into a turf war in the e-jungle. Wikipedia was blacked out for 24 hours in protest against two bills on intellectual property presented to US Congress. The lion roared, and the message was reverberated by chest-thumping geeks around the world.

During the day, the Wikipedia black-out page boasted of the works wrought by this one brief flexion of its e-muscles: so many thousands of articles written, so many millions of messages sent, so much potential … chaos.

I am a great fan of Wikipedia, and I have little to say about the fight they have picked with certain media and entertainment outlets.

But their protest this week highlights a streak of self-righteousness that is increasing in the Wikiworld.

One almost gets the sense that Wikipedians are telling the great unwashed they can’t live without Wiki. The 24-hour shutdown proved, if anything, that this is rubbish. It is something like saying one cannot eat in a foreign country without McDonald’s. I easily found the information I was looking for on another website.

The sentiment mirrors a general sense among computer savants that the world won’t spin without the internet. Doubtless, if the web disappeared tomorrow, there would be some months, perhaps years, of adjustment. But it is safe to say humanity would survive.

Perhaps a more pervasive idea amongst the highly e-literate is that they operate on a moral plane superior to the rest of society.

Wikipedians and bloggers, it seems, are the guardians of the liberty and equality of the new world. If every-

one was as honest, courageous and fair-minded as they were, the world would be a better place, almost a perfect place.

The doyen of this elite is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a Robin Hood-like figure robbing from information-rich governments and corporations and spreading the wealth amongst the information-starved poor.

The Wiki worldview is that up until now information has been chained to the pulpits of the powerful and that only in our age has the key been found to unfetter it.

Fraternité is not achieved merely by more information, and is often what is lacking on the internet.

“And we have the key.”

This self-aggrandising attitude carries more than a whiff of the appropriately named ‘Enlightenment’ of the 18th century. Both movements are characterised by a pervasive mistrust of the past, and a naive optimism about the future.

The Wikipedian view of the past is the 21st century’s ‘Whig interpretation of history’: everything has been building towards a world in which there is open, secure and free internet. Without this resource, is it any wonder that societies of the past were (relatively) despotic and cruel?

It is easy to forget that Wikipedians didn’t invent sharing, or honesty, or even freedom. Facebook didn’t invent friends. We inherited all of these from the Dark Ages before the iPod was even a glint in Apple’s eye.

The new Encyclopaedists make the opposite mistake about the future. Inherent in their world view is the idea that setting up a system where information can be shared quickly, widely, and freely will somehow eliminate corruption, greed and violence from the world.

It is almost as though human foibles were glitches in the software of society. But human vices can never be reduced to social viruses. They come from deep within us and can find their way into the most scientific settings.

Do Wikipedians think themselves immune from the temptation to wield their power towards their own ends? Free access to information for everyone could be said to be the Wikipedian creed.

It encapsulates the Enlightenment values of liberty and equality. But, like the French terror of the 1790s, it neglects that other ideal needed to give them gumption - a genuine concern for other human beings.

But fraternité is not achieved by giving everyone more information, more freedom and more equality.

And it is what is so often lacking on the internet, on blogs, and in other forms of web communication. Online interaction is so often vitriolic it is unreadable, and it is at its worst when the tech-savvy confront each other. I have seen very few geeks who try to love their enemies.

Fraternité comes from empathising with others. This is difficult to learn online. But without it, how can we understand the point of view of those who have different concepts of freedom or equality, or of troglodytes who don’t blog, or of nematodes who don’t have access to the internet. Believe it or not, there is a life offline and wisdom is wider than the web.

Phillip Elias is a Sydney doctor.

1 February 2012, The Record

Page 17

Freedom is a gift, not a licence to squander life The freedom God gives us is a golden opportunity to shape much of our lives. It’s up to us how we use it, for good or for bad.

W

hat are we to make of ‘free will’ in our lives, the ability to choose our own direction?

The classic Catholic response is that human beings are created free because without freedom they could not choose to love God or love others.

I was recently talking to a friend who was questioning how real this freedom was. Her point was that while we may say that we have free will, at the end of the day the choice is to love God or go to hell.

For example, if you ask a child whether they would rather eat chocolate or get stung by a bee, then they would obviously choose the least painful option but can we even call that a choice?

I have certainly thought that same thing at times in my own life, but if I am honest they were always times when I did not feel that life was treating me so well and I began to resent ‘having’ to do the right thing lest I break a commandment.

We can fairly easily fall into the

Foolish Wisdom

“a foolishness wiser than human wisdom” (1 Cor 1:25)

By Bernard Toutounji trap of being a bit tough on God though and legalistic on the concept of freedom. It is an unfair comparison to think that we either love God or go to hell, and I do not believe it is completely true. Those who are in hell are those who have fundamentally rejected truth, beauty and goodness in their lives.

Edith Stein, a Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and was later killed by the Nazis, is quoted as saying, “all who seek truth seek God whether this is clear to them or not”.

Conversely, she is saying that all who reject truth reject God wheth-

er this is clear to them or not. To complain that we are ‘forced’ to choose the right path is akin to complaining that we are ‘forced’ to avoid drinking poison because if we do we will die. In that sense it is true, we are not completely free.

If I walk out in front of a moving train, I will die. If I pull off my fingernails with a pair of clippers, it will hurt (a lot).

Our freedom is certainly limited but to go down the path merely thinking ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’ will only lead to complete frustration and eventual insanity.

We do need to recognise that we are only human and that it does have its restrictions but unfortunately we live in a time when we are told that we can do anything we want or be whoever we want to be and this is a dangerous lie.

We would be better to stop worrying about what God does or does not want and focus on what it means to be – a man, a woman, a husband, a wife, a single person, whichever is applicable – living in

the 21st century. These characteristics are also ‘restrictions’ but the only choice we have is what we will do with them. If a person prefers to not even have these restrictions they will eventually fall into depression or even take their own life.

It is true that our freedom is

If you want to walk into a hive of bees, God won’t stop you – nor if you want to eat 10 kilograms of chocolate. given to us that we might choose the good, but it is not the good for God’s sake, it is the good for our sake. If you want to walk into a hive of bees, God will not stop you. If you want to eat 10 kilograms of chocolate in a day, God will not stop you. Similarly, if you want to put on protective gear to visit the

bees or eat that 10 kilograms of chocolate over the course of a year, God will not stop you. It is up to us, and it has very little to do with God. However, for many people, at some point in their life, they have felt a yearning for more than bees and chocolate, a yearning for something that will last longer and be more substantial.

That yearning can point to God, in his presence in the world and in a person’s heart. The usual response is to pray, to receive the sacraments and to put oneself under his laws revealed in our hearts and through Christ and his Church.

When we break it down it becomes obvious that these are genuine choices but if those choices become only an option between heaven or hell, then perhaps we have forgotten why we chose to walk a certain path in the first place.

The simple truth of freedom is the pursuit of goodness, everything else is incidental and not worth getting caught up in. www.foolishwisdom.com

Knives come out for one of the sisters Some feminists have gone feral as they go on the attack against a leading anti-porn campaigner, writes Patrick Byrne.

I

nte r ne t bl o g ge r and psychotherapist Dr Jennifer Wilson has unleashed the old feminist sisterhood into a sustained, malicious, anti-Christian attack on pro-life feminist and antipornification activist, Melinda Tankard-Reist.

On her blog site, Wilson attacked Melinda, for being “deceptive and duplicitous” in not declaring her “fundamentalist” Christian religious beliefs underpinning her prolife feminism and her campaign against the “so-called epidemic of ‘sexualisation’ and ‘pornification’” of children and adults.

The attack spread from Wilson’s blog (10 January 2012) into the mainstream media and Twitter a week later, when Melinda had a legal letter sent to Wilson for claiming Melinda was a Baptist (she’s not) and for accusing her of being “deceptive and duplicitous”.

Twitter support for Wilson came from Leslie Cannold, a campaigner for legalisation of abortion to birth; from stand-up comedian, television host, writer and podcaster, Wil Anderson; and from comedian Catherine Deveney.

Fiona Patten also attacked. She is leader of the Australian Sex Party and CEO of the Eros Foundation, the lobby organisation for the lucrative porn industry.

Columnist Jill Singer attacked Melinda’s “perceived dangers of abortion, pornography and the sexualised images of females”, and for “running roughshod over the interests of most women with her views on abortion” in the Herald Sun on 18 January.

Feminist Anne Summers joined the feeding frenzy, asserting it’s impossible to be feminist and prolife. To be a feminist you had to be independent, be able to “support oneself financially and [have] the right to control one’s fertility” through abortion. Dr Kate Gleeson joined in by attacking Melinda’s pro-life feminist record, namely, working for former independent Senator Brian Harradine.

Why the spite and vitriol?

In part, Jennifer Wilson objects to Melinda’s campaign against the sexualisation and pornification of the culture. Wilson vacillates between saying that “women are

Melinda Tankard-Reist: now facing a fight on two fronts, one from the porn industry, the other from feminists.

PHOTO: PETER CASAMENTO

objectified by some media and by some men, and this can be detrimental to everyone”, while saying that if you want to be a “sex worker or perform in porn”, it’s your choice.

She says Melinda has a “motley crew of feminists and middle class moralists” as supporters.

do with freedom of expression: it is primarily business, a ruthless impersonal industry …

“It uses and abuses not only the boys and girls who provide the imagery, but also the fantasyridden sub-potent public, mostly male, that pays for its product …

humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain.”

“Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other,” she says.

Moreso in the US than Australia, outspoken feminist groups have fought the porn industry.

Women Against Pornography (WAP) was a radical feminist group based in New York and an influential force in the anti-pornography movement of the late 1970s and the 1980s. It was instrumental in the founding of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.

Two leading figures in the US anti-porn campaigns were feminist lawyer Catherine MacKinnon (Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality, 1988) and lesbian feminist Andrea Dworkin (Pornography: Men Possessing Women, 1991).

They defined pornography as “the graphic, sexually explicit subordination of women” and argued strongly that pornography was the “institutionalisation of violence” against women. In 1980, MacKinnon and Dworkin both appeared with Linda Boreman, who played Linda Lovelace in the pornographic film Deep Throat, when Boreman publicly stated that her ex-husband Chuck Traynor had beaten and raped her, and violently coerced her into making that and other pornographic films.

Germaine Greer says at the end of her Guardian article that in July 2000, the UK reclassified the Deep

The attack against Reist is part of the ongoing attempt by the secular atheist lobby to purge Christians from the public square in Australia.

It seems to have bypassed Wilson and her antipodean cabal that the matriarch of Australian feminists has expressed similarly strong views as Melinda’s on the pornification and sexualisation of the culture.

“The spread of pornography into the mainstream is not, as liberal voices argue, a victory for freedom of expression but a poison in our culture – and we develop a taste for it at our peril …

“Pornography has nothing to

As far as male sexual fantasy is concerned there is no too far.”

These statements come not from Melinda Tankard Reist but Germaine Greer, writing in the 24 September 2000 edition of The Guardian.

One of America’s feminist matriarchs, Gloria Steinem, has similarly attacked pornography, which she distinguishes from erotica: “Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from

Throat film to make the uncut versions available for sale for the first time since its release in 1972.

Ironically, the biggest issue confronting women’s health centres and shelters in Australia is violence against women.

Women’s Health Victoria says that studies in Australia and internationally consistently indicate an emphatic association between partner violence and abortion.

WHV cites the Australian

Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health as showing that women aged 22 to 27, reporting abortions either as teenagers or later in their 20s, were more than three times more likely to have been abused by a partner as those who didn’t terminate their pregnancy.

In Canberra, Melinda TankardReist set up a house for pregnant women in crisis and wrote the book Giving Sorrow Words, giving women’s testimonies as to the tragic effect of abortion on their lives.

Three of her books – Defiant Birth, Big Porn Inc and Getting Real – were published by the Australian feminist publishing house, Spinifex Press. Yet Wilson and friends lambaste her for both her stand against pornification of the culture and for being a pro-life feminist.

Why haven’t Wilson and friends poured out their vitriol on the likes of Greer, Steinem and many others who have campaigned against the violent nature of porn and the global industry behind it?

Wilson says that her particular concern with Reist is her Christian “religious beliefs” and how they “determine her beliefs about human sexuality.” Wilson’s parody of the Christian view of sexuality is an exercise in anti-Christian malice.

“The followers of the doctrine of the virgin birth believe that sex filthies the human female, and renders her impure … The boy god needed a pure vessel, unfilthied by sexual experience.

“The Virgin Mary was in fact coopted as a dehumanised life support system for a foetus.” In the middle of Wilson’s article is a photo of two women on a street holding a banner: “If Mary had had an abortion, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

In the one article defending Melinda to date, Miranda Devine (Herald Sun 22 January) says that Melinda has never hidden her religious beliefs but, like most Australians, doesn’t wear her heart on her sleve.

“I just want my work considered on its merits,” comments Melinda.

This attack is part of the ongoing attempt by the secular atheist lobby to purge Christians from the public square in Australia.

Patrick Byrne is Vice President of the National Civic Council

Page 18

1 February 2012, The Record

PANORAMA

What’s on around the Archdiocese of Perth, where and when

NEXT WEEK

(France) robnron@optusnet.com.au or 9354 5023.

FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY

A Reunion for Holy Cross Primary School, Kensington Any ex-students or family members, please contact Julie Bowles (nee O’Hara) on 9397 0638 or email jules7@iinet.net.au.

Catholic Faith Renewal Evening 7.30pm at St John and Paul’s Parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Songs of Praise and Prayer, teaching

by Fr Ted Miller: “ Vatican II changes Catholic worship”. Followed by Thanksgiving Mass and light refreshments. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913 or Ann 0412 166 164 or catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

SATURDAY, 4 FEBRUARY Day with Mary 9am-5pm at Holy Spirit Church, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. A day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima messages. 9am video; 10.10am holy Mass; reconciliation, procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic adoration, sermons on Eucharist and on Our Lady, rosaries and stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq – Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Eucharistic Healing Experience 9.30-5pm at Holy Family Parish, Lot 375 Alcock St, Maddington. One day retreat focused on the Blessed Sacrament. Teachings on Holy Eucharist and prayers for inner and physical healing and deliverance. Enq: Melanie 0410 605 743.

UPCOMING SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY St Brigid’s Day Celebration 3pm at Irish Club Theatre, 61 Townshend Rd, Subiaco. Annual celebration of Ireland’s female patron saint, feast day 1 February, presented by The Australian-Irish Heritage Association. Writer, poet and artist Mary O’Byrne presents a discourse on Women and the Trinity in an examination of the relationship between the male and female idea of Trinity, with music and an Irish afternoon tea.

Admission $10. Enq: 9367 6026.

Divine Mercy 1.30pm at Francis Xavier Parish, 25 Windsor St, Perth. Main Celebrant: Fr Johnson Malayil. Homily on St Jerome Emilani. Refreshments afterwards.

Enq: John 9457 7771.

TUESDAY, 7 FEBRUARY Rosary Cenacle - MMP 10.30am at St Paul’s Parish, 106 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Confessions available followed by holy Mass. Celebrant: Fr Deeter. Bring lunch to share.

Enq: Margaret 9341 8082.

Spirituality and The Sunday Gospels 7-8pm at St Benedict’s school hall, Alness St, Applecross. How can we be open to the power of God in our lives, our relationships, our families and our workplace? Presenter: Norma Woodcock.

Accredited- CEO- Faith Formation for ongoing renewal. Cost: collection. View a weekly short segment broadcast: www.thefaith.org.au. Enq: 9487 1772 or www.normawoodcock.com.

THURSDAY, 9 FEBRUARY Healing Mass in Honour of St Peregrine 7pm at Sts John and Paul Parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. St Peregrine is the patron saint of cancer. Enq: Jim 9457 1539.

FRIDAY, 10 FEBRUARY Lake Monger Rosary Procession for Our Lady of Lourdes 7pm starting from the Dodd St carpark. All are welcome to attend. An altar for those who are unable to do the walk will be set up and the rosary prayed. Further enquiries to Judy Woodward 9446 6837.

SATURDAY, 11 FEBRUARY St Padre Pio Day of Prayer 8.30am-12pm, 69 Morrison Rd, Midland. Begins with DVD in parish centre; 10am exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, rosary, divine mercy and benediction; 11am holy Mass: St Padre Pio liturgy – confessions available. 12pm lunch – bring plate to share. Enq: Des 6278 1540.

Divine Mercy 2.30m at St Francis Xavier Parish, Windsor St, East Perth. Divine mercy healing Mass. Main Celebrant: Fr Doug Harris – Reconciliation in English and Italian offered. Followed by divine mercy prayer and veneration of first class relic of St Faustina Kowalska. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: John 9457 7771.

SUNDAY, 12 FEBRUARY The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missons 150th Anniversary Celebration Our Lady of the Missions High School/Sacred Heart School, Tuckfield St, Fremantle. As part of celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, an inaugural reunion for all women who attended the school will be held on Sunday, 12 February at Melville Bowling Club, Canning Hwy, Alfred Cove from 2-6pm. Cost: $10 per person. Contact: Christine Binks (Martinovich) 9331 3886; Veronica Stratton

SATURDAY, 25 FEBRUARY

Thanksgiving and Healing Mass 12 noon at Holy Cross Parish, 1 Dianne St, Hamilton Hill. Archbishop Hickey will be celebrating Mass for all VOV and new members. As usual, bring a plate to share. Enq: Frank 9296 7591, 0408 183 325.

SUNDAY, 26 FEBRUARY Secular Franciscan Order 2pm at the Polish Franciscan Community House, 35 Eighth Ave, Midland. We are lay people who live a life in Christ inspired by the life of St Francis of Assisi, the first recorded stigmatic. We are called to live simply, humbly and peacefully, recognising God in creation. We are inviting you to the monthly fraternity meeting to discover the richness of Franciscan spirituality for life today. Enq: Angela, 9275 5658.

SATURDAY, 3 TO SUNDAY, 4 MARCH ‘Life in the Spirit Seminar’ John Paul Prayer Ministry 9.30am-5pm at Orana School Hall, Querrin Rd, Willeton (off Vahland Ave). Presented by John Paul Prayer ministry of Sts John & Paul Parish.

Fr Varghese and his team will be leading this seminar. BYO lunch. Refreshments provided. Cost: offering. Enq: Michelle 9456 4215.

TUESDAY, 6 MARCH ‘Set My People on Fire’ Catholic Bible Seminar 7.30pm at The Faith Centre, 450 Hay St, Perth.

Runs every Tuesday until 12 June. See programme and details: flameministries.org/smpof.html. Enq: Flame Ministries International 9382 3668 or fmi@ flameministries.org.

Vespers and afternoon tea follows. Enq: Secretary 9457 5758.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood, Religious Life 2-3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington St, Morley. The hour includes exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray that those discerning vocations can hear clearly God’s call.

EVERY MONDAY Evening Adoration and Mass 7pm at St Thomas Parish, Claremont, cnr Melville St and College Rd. Eucharistic adoration, reconciliation, evening prayer and benediction, followed by Mass and night prayer at 8pm. Enq: Kim on 9384 0598 or email to claremont@perthcatholic.org.au.

The Life and Mission of St Mary MacKillop 9.30-11.30am at Infant Jesus Parish Centre, cnr Wellington Rd and Smith St, Morley. Cost: $15.

Enq: Shelley 9276 8500.

LAST MONDAY OF THE MONTH Be Still in His Presence – Ecumenical Christian Programme 7.30-8.45pm at St Swithun Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie St, Lesmurdie (hall behind church).

Begins with songs of praise and worship, silent time, lectio divina, small group sharing and a cuppa at the end. Enq: Lynne 9293 3848 or 043 5252 941.

EVERY TUESDAY Bible Teaching with a Difference 7.30pm at St Joachim’s parish hall, Victoria Park.

Exciting revelations with meaningful applications that will change your life. Bring Bible, a notebook and a friend. Enq: Jan 9284 1662.

EVERY FIRST TUESDAY Short MMP Cenacle for Priests 2pm at Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor St, East Perth. Enq: Fr Watt 9376 1734.

Group Fifty – Charismatic Renewal Group 7.30pm at the Redemptorist Monastery, 150 Vincent St, North Perth. Includes prayer, praise and Mass. Enq: Elaine 9440 3661.

Priest Cenacle Every first Thursday at Legion of Mary, Windsor St, East Perth. Enq: Fr Paul 0427 085 093.

EVERY FIRST FRIDAY Communion of Reparation - All Night Vigil 7pm-1.30am at two different locations: Corpus Christi Parish, Lochee St, Mosman Park and St Gerard Majella Parish, cnr Ravenswood Dr and Majella Rd, Westminster (Mirrabooka). In reparation for outrages committed against the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Enq: (Mosman Park) Vicky 040 0282 357 and Fr Giosue 9349 2315 or John 9344 2609.

Healing Mass 7pm at St Peter’s Parish, Inglewood. Praise and worship, exposition and Eucharistic adoration, benediction and anointing of the sick, followed by holy Mass and fellowship. Celebrants Fr Dat and invited priests. 6.45pm reconciliation. Enq: Mary Ann 0409 672 304, Prescilla 043 3457 352 and Catherine 043 3923 083.

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life 7pm at Little Sisters of the Poor Chapel, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Mass followed by adoration with Fr Doug Harris. All welcome. Refreshments provided.

Catholic Faith Renewal Evening 7.30pm at Sts John and Paul Parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Songs of praise, sharing by a priest followed by thanksgiving Mass and light refreshments afterwards. All welcome to attend and bring your family and friends. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913, Ann 041 2166 164 or catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

Healing and Anointing Mass 8.45am Pater Noster Church, Evershed St, Myaree.

Begins with reconciliation followed by 9am Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, anointing of the sick and prayers to St Peregrine. Enq: Joy 9337 7189.

Inner healing retreat (Live-in) 7.30pm at St John of God Retreat Centre, 47 Gloucester Cr, Shoalwater. A time to be healed and renewed. The retreat is led by the Vincentian Fathers. Registration and Enq: Melanie 0410 605 743 or vincetiansperth@yahoo.com.

Novena to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal 6pm at the Pater Noster Church, Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Mass at 5.30pm followed by benediction. Enq: John 040 8952 194.

EVERY FIRST SATURDAY OF THE MONTH Healing Mass 12.35pm at St Thomas Parish, cnr Melville St and College Rd, Claremont. Spiritual leader Fr Waddell.

Enq: Kim 9384 0598, claremont@perthcatholic.org. au.

EVERY WEDNESDAY

EVERY LAST SATURDAY

SATURDAY, 31 MARCH

Holy Spirit of Freedom Community 7.30pm at The Church of Christ, 111 Stirling St, Perth. We are delighted to welcome everyone to attend our Holy Spirit of Freedom praise meeting.

Enq: 042 3907 869 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

Novena devotions – Our Lady Vailankanni of Good Health 5pm at Holy Trinity Parish, 8 Burnett St, Embleton.

Followed by Mass at 6pm. Enq: George 9272 1379.

FRIDAY, 23 TO SUNDAY, 25 MARCH

Love Ministry healing 6.30pm Mass at St Brigid Parish, 69 Morrison Rd, Midland. Begins with Mass, followed by healing rally. Love ministry healing team includes Fr Nishan and Fr Watt. Come and be prayed over, healed from the past or present issues or stand in for a loved one who may be ill or facing problems at this time. Enq: Gilbert 0431 570 322.

REGULAR EVENTS EVERY SUNDAY Gate of Heaven Catholic Radio Join the Franciscans of the Immaculate from 7.309pm on Radio Fremantle 107.9FM for Catholic radio broadcast of EWTN and our own live shows. Enq: radio@ausmaria.com.

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation 2pm at Shrine, 36 Chittering Rd, Bullsbrook.

Commencing with rosary followed by benediction.

Reconciliation is available before every celebration.

Anointing of the sick administered during Mass every second Sunday of the month. Pilgrimage in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation last Sunday of the month. Side entrance to church and shrine open daily between 9am-5pm. Enq Sacri 9447 3292.

EVERY FIRST SUNDAY Divine Mercy Chaplet and Healing Prayer 3pm at Santa Clara Church, 72 Palmerston St, Bentley. Includes adoration and individual prayer for healing. Spiritual leader Fr Francisco. All welcome. Enq: Fr Francisco 9458 2944.

St Mary’s Cathedral Youth Group – Fellowship with Pizza 5pm at Mary’s Cathedral, 17 Victoria Sq, Perth.

Begins with youth Mass followed by fellowship downstairs in parish centre. Bring a plate to share.

Enq: Bradley on youthfromsmc@gmail.com.

FIRST AND THIRD SUNDAYS Latin Mass 2pm at The Good Shepherd Parish, Streich Ave, Kelmscott. Enq: John 9390 6646.

EVERY THIRD SUNDAY Oblates of St Benedict Meeting 2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, South Perth. For all interested in studying the Rule of St Benedict and its relevance to everyday life.

Panorama Deadline Friday 5pm

Bible Study at Cathedral 6.15pm at St Mary’s Cathedral, 17 Victoria Sq, Perth.

Deepen your faith through reading and reflecting on holy scripture by Fr Jean-Noel. Meeting room beneath Cathedral. Enq: Marie 9223 1372.

Holy Hour - Catholic Youth Ministry 5.30pm at Catholic Pastoral Centre, 40A Mary St, Highgate. Begins with Mass, 6.30pm holy hour of adoration, followed by $5 supper and fellowship.

Enq: cym.com.au or 9422 7912.

EVERY FIRST WEDNESDAY Holy Hour Prayer for Priests 7.30-8.30pm at Holy Spirit Parish, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. All welcome. Enq: Linda 9341 3079.

Novena to St Mary of the Cross MacKillop 7-7.45pm at Blessed Mary MacKillop Parish, cnr Cassowary Dr and Pelican Pde, Ballajura. Begins with Mass, novena prayers and benediction.

Followed by healing prayers and anointing of the sick. Enq: Madi 9249 9093 or Gerry 041 7187 240.

EVERY SECOND WEDNESDAY Chaplets of the Divine Mercy 7.30pm at St Thomas More Parish, Dean Rd, Bateman. A beautiful, prayerful, sung devotion.

It will be accompanied by exposition and followed by benediction. Enq: George 9310 9493 (h) or 9325 2010.

EVERY THURSDAY Divine Mercy 11am at Sts John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Pray the rosary and chaplet of divine mercy and for the consecrated life, especially here in John Paul Parish. Concludes with veneration of the first class relic of St Faustina. Please do come and join us in prayer. Enq: John 9457 7771.

St Mary’s Cathedral Praise Meeting 7.45pm every Thursday at the Legion of Mary’s Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor St, East Perth. Includes praise, song and healing ministry. Enq: Kay 9382 3668 or fmi@flameministries.org.

EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH Prayer in Style of Taize 7.30-8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Parish, 3 Kitchener St, North Beach. Includes prayer, song and silence in candlelight – symbol of Christ the light of the world. Taize info: www.taize.fr. Enq: secretary 9448 4888 or 9448 4457.

GENERAL Free Divine Mercy Image for Parishes High quality oil painting and glossy print – Divine Mercy Promotions. Images are of very high quality.

For any parish willing to accept and place inside the church. Oil paintings - 160 x 90cm and glossy print - 100 x 60cm. Enq: Irene 9417 3267 (w).

Sacred Heart Pioneers Is there anyone out there who would like to know more about the Sacred Heart pioneers? If so, please contact Spiritual Director Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or John 9457 7771.

St Philomena’s Chapel 3/24 Juna Drive, Malaga. Mass of the day: Monday 6.45am. Vigil Masses: Mon-Fri 4.45pm. Enq: Fr David 9376 1734.

Mary Mackillop 2012 Calendars and Merchandise 2012 Josephite Calendars with quotes from St Mary of the Cross and Mary MacKillop merchandise.

Available for sale from the Mary MacKillop Centre.

Enq: Sr Maree 041 4683 926 or 08 9334 0933.

Saints and Sacred Relics Apostolate – Latin

Feast of all Holy Relics SSRA Perth invites interested parties: parish priests, faithful association leaders etc to make contact to organise relic visitations to their own parishes, communities etc. We have available authenticated relics, mostly first class, of over 200 Catholic Saints and Blesseds, including Sts Mary MacKillop, Padre Pio, Anthony of Padua, Therese of Lisieux, Maximilian Kolbe and Simon Stock.

Free. Enq: Giovanny 047 8201 092 or ssra-perth@ catholic.org.

Financially Disadvantaged People requiring Low Care Aged Care Placement The Little Sisters of the Poor community - set in beautiful gardens in the suburb of Glendalough.

“Making the elderly happy, that is everything!” St Jeanne Jugan (foundress). Registration and enq: Sr Marie 9443 3155.

Resource Centre for Personal Development The Holistic Health Seminar ‘The Instinct to Heal’’, every Tuesday 3-4.30pm; and RCPD2 “Internalise Principles of Successful Relationships and Use Emotional Intelligence and Communication Skills’, every Tuesday 4.30-6.30pm, 197 High St, Fremantle - Tuesdays 3-4.30pm. Beginning 21 Feb. Enq: Eva 0409 405 585. Bookings are essential.

Group Fifty – recess for January No events until 2 February 2012. Enq: Elaine 9440 3661.

Our Lady of Grace Parish – Taize nights Just a reminder there is no TAIZE service in January. There will be NO service in January; we look forward to gathering again on Thursday, 2 February.

Courses held at the Faith Centre 2012 450 Hay St, Perth 1. Christian Foundations - This course is designed to guide you to a greater understanding and deeper appreciation of the foundational beliefs of our Catholic faith. (Maranatha Lecturer: Sr Philomena Burrell pvbm). Thursdays: 1-3.30pm, from 16 Feb–22 Mar. For enquiries or bookings ph 9241 5222.

2. RCPD2 - Internalise Principles of Successful Relationships and Use Emotional Intelligence and Communication Skills - This course provides knowledge of principles that, if applied, will improve all relationships. Skills of self-analysis are taught as well as communication skills. Mondays: 5-7pm, from 20 Feb–10 Dec. For enquiries or bookings ph Paul 0402 222 578.

3. RCPD4 – Increase Personal and Spiritual Awareness and Improve Relationships - This course promotes self-awareness and spiritual growth. Emotional development is explained in order to improve understanding between persons. Study of Psychology and Theology. Mondays: 10am–12.30pm, from 20 Feb–10 Dec. For enquiries or bookings ph Eva 0409 405 585.

4. Higher Certificate in Biblical Studies - The Higher Certificate of Biblical Studies is a distance education programme that can be followed in your own home at your own pace with periodic face-to-face contact workshops. Tutorial assistance is available as required. It is equivalent to a one-year tertiary course, although it is recommended that you aim to complete it in two years.

For enquiries and enrolment, ph The Faith Centre on 6140 2420.

Is your son or daughter unsure of what to do this year?

Suggest a Certificate IV course to discern God’s purpose for their life. They will also learn more about the Catholic faith and develop skills in communication and leadership. Acts 2 College of Mission & Evangelisation (National Code 51452).

Enq: Jane 9202 6859.

February Latin Mass 2pm at Good Shepherd, Streich Ave, Kelmscott.

Wednesday,15 and Wednesday, 29. Enq: John 9390 6646.

ST PAUL LITURGICAL CALENDAR Popular pocket-size calendar, indicating readings and themes for Mass every day of the year.

Presented in two-colour format.

ONLY

$5

Classifieds

1 February 2012, The Record

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CLASSIFIEDS RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS CATHOLICS CORNER Retailer of Catholic products specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. Ph 9456 1777.

Shop 12, 64-66 Bannister Rd, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat. RICH HARVEST YOUR CHRISTIAN SHOP Looking for Bibles, CDs, books, cards, gifts, statues, Baptism/Communion apparel, religious vestments, etc? Visit us at 39 Hulme Ct (off McCoy St), Myaree. Ph 9329 9889 (after 10.30am Mon to Sat).

We are here to serve.

KINLAR VESTMENTS Quality handmade and decorated vestments: albs, stoles, chasubles, altar linen, banners, etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury.

By appointment only. Ph Vickii on 9402 1318, 0409 114 093 or kinlar.vestments@gmail.com.

FOR SALE OPPORTUNITY TO BUY SHARES in a West Australian based (international), business. Has a worldwide patent for people and animal health products, new innovative products for which export grant has been accepted. First shipment has already been sent to Dubai.

Interested? For more information: licebustersrd@optusnet.com.au or Tel 08 9258 5233, Mob 0408 474 520, Veronica.

MISSION ACTIVITIES LEARN HOW TO MAKE ROSARY BEADS for the missions and special rosaries for family and friends. Phone: (02) 6822 1474 or visit our website: OurLadysRosaryMakers.org.au.

FURNITURE REMOVAL ALL AREAS. Competitive rates.

Mike Murphy Ph 0416 226 434.

TAX SERVICE QUALITY TAX RETURNS PREPARED by registered tax agent with over 35 years’ experience.

Call Tony Marchei on 0412 055 184 for appointment. AXXO Accounting & Management, Unit 20/222 Walter Rd, Morley.

SETTLEMENTS ARE YOU BUYING OR SELLING real estate or a business?

Why not ask Excel Settlements for a quote for your settlement.

We offer reasonable fees, excellent service and no hidden costs.

Ring Excel on 9481 4499 for a quote. Check our web site on www.excelsettlements.com.au.

MISSIO IMMACULATAE THE FRANCISCAN FRIARS OF THE IMMACULATE MARIAN CATECHETICAL MAGAZINE $36 for five issues Ph 08 9437 2792 or ffimunster@gmail.com.

All for the Immaculate.

IN MEMORIAM KIRKWOOD (MAUREEN) In loving memory of my wonderful Mother, who died on 3 February 1985. With the passing years your love remains ever in my heart, Mother Darling. Thank you so much for all the loving things you did for us, and for your ongoing prayers. May God be with you always, and with dear Pappa also. Love is forever, and treasured memories bring comfort until we are again together with God. Moira May they rest in peace.

Deadline: 11am Monday PILGRIMAGES CHARISMATIC RENEWAL PILGRIMAGE TO PARIS (3) NIGHTS LOURDES (5) NIGHTS MEDJUGORJE (7) NIGHTS. Leaving Perth end April/May. All flights (Emirates) accommodation, bed/breakfast, evening meals, transfers and guides.

Spiritual Director Rev Fr Bogoni.

Cost approx $5,395. Contact Eileen 9402 2480, mob 0407 471 256, email medjugorje@y7mail. com.

PILGRIMAGE TO OUR LADY OF VELANKANNI, ST FRANCIS XAVIER, ST PHILOMENA, ST MOTHER THERESA OF KOLKATA. The tour covers all the main cities in India like Chennai, Pondicherry, Velankanni, Bangalore, Mysore, Cochin, Goa, Delhi, Thaij Mahal, Kolkata, Darjeeling and many more places. For more details contact Charles Donovan 0400 216 257 or F Sam 0426 506 510.

OPTION ON 25 DAYS – PILGRIMAGE TO HOLY LAND - ROME - COLLAVALENZA - DUBLIN (IRELAND FOR EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS) KNOCK AND MEDJUGORJE. Departing 22 May, from $7,790, includes flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide and taxes. Spiritual Director Fr Ronan Murphy. Leader Yolanda Nardizzi. Tel: 9245 2222, Mob 0413 707 707.

OPTION 2: 19 DAYS, PILGRIMAGE TO ROME COLLAVALENZA – DUBLIN (IRELAND FOR EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS) KNOCK AND MEDJUGORJE. Departing 29 May, from $5,990, includes flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide and taxes. Spiritual Director Fr Ronan Murphy.

Leader Yolanda Nardizzi. Tel: 9245 2222, Mob 0413 707 707.

PILGRIMAGE DEPARTING PERTH 30 APRIL, RETURNING 17/18 MAY (early hours) for Paris (three nights) visit Lisieux (St Therese), Notre Dame for Relics of The Passion, Sacre Coeur, Miraculous Medal Shrine, St Vincent De Paul. Flight to Lourdes for five nights stay, flight to Split for seven nights stay in Medjurgorje. Spiritual Director Fr Bogoni. Costs $5,395 which includes all flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide, tipping and taxes. Contact: Eileen 9402 2480 Mob 0407 471 256, or medjugorje@y7mail.com.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE TARIS ENGINEERING is a family run and owned business situated in Malaga. We have been operating for over 15 years specialising in servicing the mining, oil and gas industry. We are looking for experienced machinists and fitters who are willing to join our expanding business. Above award rates and extended hours available. Please contact Patrick Talbot on 0438 306 308 or send your resume through to sales@ tariseng.com.au.

THANKSGIVING THANKS TO Jesus, Mother Mary, Sts Joseph, Jude, Anthony, Rita, Padre Pio, Christopher and Michael for Special Intentions granted to me every day and never failed.

BOOK BINDING NEW BOOK BINDING, general book repairs; rebinding; new ribbons; old leather bindings restored. Tydewi Bindery 0422 968 572.

FRIDAY, 3 TO SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL SET FREE Inner Healing Retreat.

A three day live-in Inner Healing Retreat conducted by international presenters Diana Mascarenhas and Fr Elias Vella OFMc. An opportunity through prayer and ‘Christo-therapy’ to be ‘set free’ from the bonds and baggage of life’s hurts and addictions. Held at airconditioned St John of God Retreat Centre, Shoalwater Bay. All inclusive cost of $350/person. Queries and registration to Martha 0419 242 172 or Martha.

KALAT@dmp.wa.gov.au.

MONDAY, 6 FEBRUARY CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL Inner Healing Workshop 9am– 5pm, conducted by international guest Diana Mascarenhas (Dip Spiritual Formation and Counselling). Participants will be ministered to, and receive healing prayer for various issues of inner conflict and past wounds.

Held at the Holy Family Church, Thelma St/Canning Hwy, Como.

Cost for the day is $25. Bring your own lunch. Please register to Martha, 0419 242 172.

TRADE SERVICES BRENDAN HANDYMAN SERVICES Home, building maintenance, repairs and renovations. NOR. Ph 0427 539 588.

PROPERTY MAINTENANCE Your handyperson. No job too small. SOR. Jim 0413 309 821.

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph Nigel 9242 2952.

PICASSO PAINTING Top service.

Ph 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505.

9345 0557.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd For all your residential, commercial painting requirements. Ph Tom Perrott 9444 1200.

LAWNMOWING AND WEED SPRAYING Garden clean ups and rubbish removal. Get rid of bindii, jojo and other unsightly weeds. Based in Tuart Hill. Enq: 9443 9243 or 0402 326 637.

C R O S S W O R D

ACROSS 3 Catholic United States Supreme Court justice 9 Commander of the army who was made king over Israel (1 Kings 16:16) 10 Second word of a Latin hymn 11 The Diocese of Phoenix is found here 12 “I fear no ___; for thou art with me” (Ps 23:4) 14 “It ___ upon a midnight clear…”

16 Monasticism began here 17 St Martin of ___ 18 Catholic portrayer of Alexander Graham Bell 20 It can rescue us from troubles (Wis 10:9) 22 Meetings of bishops 24 Diocese in the Province of Perth 26 Third century pope 27 Aquinas’ opus, for short 30 Luke has these with his Beatitudes 32 Son of Seth 34 What the serpent did to Adam and Eve 35 Patron saint of servants 36 “Cheer, cheer for ole Notre ___…”

37 Assisted at Mass DOWN 1 By the end of the 20th century there had been 265 of these 2 “Urbi et ___” 4 Poor ___ (religious order)

INTENTIONS St Jude Thaddeus and St Rita Worker of Miracles and Help of Hopeless causes and My saviour Jesus Christ and Mother Mary I ask you to grant me (say your personal request HERE) and for all the sick in the world, depressed and all who are in need of prayers.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen Oh most beautiful Flower of Mt Carmel, fruitful vine and splendour of Heaven. Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in my necessity. Oh Star of the Sea, help me and show Yourself a Mother. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of heaven and earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to succour me in my necessity (make request). There are none that can withstand Your Power. Oh Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to Thee (3x) Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands (3x) Amen.

W O R D S L E U T H

5 6 7 8 13 15 17 19 21 23 24 25 26 28 29 31 33

Not clergy Denial of faith Patron saint of cab drivers Lenten foliage St ___ Bertrand First woman Genesis structure “Heavenly ___ sing alleluia…”

Slave of Philemon Biblical tree According to Paul, at the name of Jesus every knee should do this Nihil ___ Votive light “___ Dolorosa” Palms are burned to make these The Diocese of Youngstown is found here ___ occasion of sin

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION

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TheTRecord he Record LastBookshop W in ord 1911 The

11 January 2012, The Record

New Stock for 2012 INSPIRATIONAL READING FROM

$19

BOOKS TO ANSWER PROBLEMS FROM

$20 BIBIANA KWARAMBA Bookshop Manager

Telephone: 9220 5901 Email: bookshop@therecord.com.au Address: 21 Victoria Square, Perth 6000