The Record Newspaper 01 April 2009

THE R ECORD

“Be indefatigable in your purpose and with undaunted spirit resist iniquity and try to conquer evil with good, having before your eyes the reward of those who combat for Christ.”

-Bishop Matthew Gibney

Ratzinger specialist kicks off the Year for Murdoch’s chaplains, students Benedict appoints two Perth priests as Monsignors

Honours highlight importance of priests’ roles, Archbishop says.

US Bishops say Reiki inappropriate for hospitals

Popular belief in a 19th century Japanese form of alternative medicine has no place in Catholic hospitals, US Catholics bishops declare.

WASHINGTON (CNS)Reiki therapy, an alternative medicine originating in Japan,

is unscientific and inappropriate for use by Catholic hospitals, clinics and retreat centres and people representing the Church, the US bishops’ Committee on Doctrine said on March 26.

“For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems,” the committee’s guidelines said.

“In terms of caring for one’s physical health or the physical health of others, to employ a technique that has no scientific

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Camino looks at the life of a mysterious young girl now up for canonisation.

support (or even plausibility) is generally not prudent.”

The bishops said the technique - which involves a Reiki practitioner laying hands on a client - also is encouraged as a “spiritual” kind of healing, but that for Christians “access to divine healing” comes through prayer to God.

A Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki “would be operating in the realm of superstition,” they said. The US bish-

ops outlined their position in “Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy.” The guidelines are available online at www.usccb.org/dpp/doctrine. htm.

They were approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Administrative Committee on March 24. The Administrative Committee is the authoritative body of the USCCB that approves committee statements.

Continued - Page 6

■ By Anthony Barich

Pope Benedict XVI has bestowed the title of Monsignor on Perth Vicar General Fr Brian O’Loughlin and St Charles Seminary Rector Fr Kevin Long. Fr O’Loughlin has been made a Monsignor, Protonotary Apostolic. He is believed to be the first priest in Perth to be given this category of Monsignor since Mgr Patrick Verling in the 1930s, Vicar General and parish priest of Subiaco who oversaw the conContinued - Page 5

5

Archbishop, West Australian, settle legal case

action against the newspaper

The paper expressed regret at hurt and offence caused by its publication and made a donation to the Daydawn agency established by Archbishop Hickey, which assists Aboriginal people, especially the homeless.

Dr Tracey Rowland, the Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Family and Marriage in Melbourne, centre, in turquoise, speaks to students and staff at Murdoch University’s Worship Centre on March 24. Her address, ‘Christianity in the market-place of faith traditions,’ launched the academic year for Murdoch University’s chaplains. Her visit to the University had been organised by Murdoch’s Catholic chaplain, Fr Joseph Cardoso OCD, and the students of the Murdoch Catholic Society. Later, she took questions from her audience, including Archbishop Barry Hickey. Story-Page 4

PHOTOS: CATHERINE GALLO MARTINEZ

Archbishop Barry Hickey and The West Australian newspaper settled their defamation case last week after Archbishop Hickey took legal

last year.

Newly-named Monsignors Kevin Long, above, also the new Rector of St Charles Seminary and Brian O’Loughlin, below, the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Perth.

2

SAINT OF THE WEEK

7 Chrism Mass, Sacred Heart, ThornlieArchbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton

Easter Vigil, St Joachim’s Pro-Cathedral

LOVE IN ACTION

“So this I say to you and attest to you in the Lord, do not go on living the emptyheaded life that the gentiles live. Intellectually they are in the dark, and they are estranged from the life of God, because of the ignorance which is the consequence of closed minds.”

Aussie sister to help run Mother Teresa’s Order with German

Missionaries of Charity elect German sister to succeed Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa, as Superior.

■ By Anthony Barich and CNS

AN Australian nun has been elected to one of the most senior international roles within Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity religious order.

Sr Joseph Maria, aged 55, has been elected as one of four General Councillors of the order, and, with her fellow Councillors, will assist the new SuperiorGeneral of the Missionaries of Charity, Sr Mary Prema, of Germany.

Sr Joseph Maria was born in Traralgon, Victoria, and celebrated her silver jubilee as a Missionaries of Charity sister in 2006. She has been the Regional Superior of the Australian region for over five years.

The Acting Superior for Sydney, Sr Hannah, said the sisters were delighted at the news of Sr Joseph Maria’s election as a General Councillor.

“We will be sorry to see her go from Australia, but it is a big honour for Australia and for us,” Sr Hannah said.

“In light of World Youth Day which was such a grace-filled time for us, this is something beautiful.”

Sr Hannah said Sr Joseph Maria’s election was particularly special, coming as the sisters celebrate 40 years of the Missionaries of Charity in Australia.

“Bourke was our first house opened in Australia, so now the Australian mission has really come of age,” she said.

The Missionaries of Charity now have 17 houses in the region, including two in New Zealand. They recently opened a house in East Timor.

German-born Sister Mary Prema poses beside a statue of Blessed Mother Teresa in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta on March 27 after she was elected as the new superior general of the Missionaries of Charity. She replaces Sister Nirmala Joshi, who held the office for 12 years following the death of the order’s founder Mother Teresa. Photo: CNS/Jayanta Shaw, Reuters)

tution allows only two six-year terms for the superior. The chapter of 163 delegates from across the world then elected Sister Prema, who for the last six years was

Part of Sister Nirmala’s team of councilors. Sister Prema told UCA News that Missionaries of Charity members are “entrusted with a grave responsibility to take to Jesus broken humanity.”

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There are about 75 sisters in the Australian region.

The three other General Councillors elected were Sr Joseph from India, Sr Joanne from India and Sr Adriana from Italy.

Meanwhile, the newly elected head of the Missionaries of Charity, Sister Mary Prema, said she will continue the work of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta to show God’s compassion to “broken humanity.”

The German-born nun, elected on March 24 to lead the congregation, said she felt “unworthy of the office” held by Sister Nirmala Joshi for the past 12 years and by Mother Teresa before that.

Sister Prema told the Asian church news agency UCA News on March 24 that she felt humbled at taking up the leadership of her congregation’s mission of serving “the poorest of the poor.”

“With God’s strength, I will do this work and be part of this mission,” she said.

Sister Prema was elected at the end of the congregation’s general chapter, which began on February 1.

Earlier, the nuns had elected Sister Nirmala for a third term, but she reportedly withdrew because of ill health. Her third term would have required papal approval since the congregation’s consti-

EDITOR Peter Rosengren cathrec@iinet.net.au

JOURNALISTS

Anthony Barich abarich@therecord.com.au

Mark Reidy reidyrec@iinet.net.au

Robert Hiini cathrec@iinet.net.au

‘Women play crucial role’

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Women have a crucial role to play in promoting human rights, the dignity of life and the family, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Given the distinctive influence of women in society, they must be encouraged to embrace the opportunity to uphold the dignity of life through their involvement in education and their participation in political and civic life,” the pope said in a written message to participants of the Vatican’s first international conference dedicated to women and human rights.

Because of their “unique capacity for the other, women have a crucial part to play in the promotion of human rights, for without their voice the social fabric of society would be weakened,” said the message released on March 20. The March 20-21 conference, titled “Life, Family, Development: The Role of Women in the Promotion of Human Rights,” was organised by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations and the Rome-based World Women’s Alliance for Life and Family.

“The cry of the poor is to be satiated daily as we have to give God’s compassion to all people,” she said.

The nuns are called to work “for unity at all levels and to make the Church present in our world today, through humble means and works of love,” she said.

Sister Prema said that, as a young woman, she had “a very clear call of Jesus” to work for the poor. She said Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1971 book on Mother Teresa’s work, “Something Beautiful for God,” made her aware of the Missionaries of Charity.

She met Mother Teresa for the first time in 1980 in Berlin. When they met again, the young German expressed her desire to join the congregation.

Mother Teresa founded the congregation in 1950 and began her work among the poor in Calcutta. She died in 1997.

The chapter delegates returned to the motherhouse on March 25 and had a thanksgiving Mass at Mother Teresa’s tomb. Sounds of clapping, singing and congratulations could be heard outside the walls of the convent, which was closed to visitors.

A handwritten notice saying “no visitors” was posted at the entrance. A nun at the door explained that the convent had no space for more visitors because nuns had “come from all over.”

Music to mark the mystery

Director of Cathedral Music and Principal Organist

Jacinta Jakovcevic previews the music chosen for this year’s Holy Week ceremonies at St Joachim’s pro-Cathedral. The program, she says, is a feast of music for the risen Lord.

Easter 2009 is our third Easter at St Joachim's Pro-Cathedral although we are eagerly anticipating our return home to St Mary’s Cathedral when it is completed. However, in terms of the music program, it is business as usual: the past two years have seen many changes and additions to the program: some evident already, some still to come. It has been, and continues to be, a period of rigorous and exciting development for the Cathedral Choir and the general expansion of the music program. We are still engaged in much rebuilding and planning – and rehearsing for the upcoming Holy Week and Easter services.

As Director of Music, I always find Holy Week and Easter such an exciting time since music which is selected for these services needs to not only reflect the

great mysteries we are celebrating and commemorating, but it also needs to create an atmosphere conducive to prayer, reflection and rejoicing for our congregations.

Our Holy Week services begin with the Palm Sunday Solemn Sung Mass at 11am featuring music of Schubert, Handel and the traditional Gregorian Introit.

Tuesday evening of Holy Week sees us celebrate the Mass of the Chrism at the Thornlie parish.

During the Cathedral’s restoration, this has been an exciting part of our life: as we move to different parishes to celebrate various events such as ordinations and, of course, this very important Mass. The musical highlight of this service is the very appropriate 'Ubi Caritas' of Maurice Durufle (1902-1986): an ancient text dating back to tenth century France which speaks of Jesus’s lasting gift of unity and love to his disciples and through them to us.

This poignant piece is repeated again on Holy Thursday evening during the ritual of the Washing of the Feet.

Good Friday morning involves the Stations of the Cross at 10am with organ solos of Bach and vocal solos from Messiah and the St John Passion (Bach) reflecting on Our Lord’s suffering and death.

Musical highlights of the Solemn Liturgy at 3pm include Byrd's 'Ave Verum Corpus', the

Gregorian Reproaches arranged for cantors, choir and congregation and a beautifully expressive arrangement of the spiritual 'Were you there?' also for choir and congregation.

The Solemn Liturgy is preceded by the presentation of the ‘Seven Last Words of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ at 2:30pm.

This is a beautiful period of reflection on the last utterances of Our Lord. Numerous composers have set these powerful words to music: this year we have a first for the Cathedral: we will be presenting a contemporary setting by Daniel Mullaney, the Cathedral’s cantor and brilliant young musician.

Easter Sunday’s Solemn Sung Mass at 11am features a feast of music: in addition to congregational Easter hymns accompanied by organ and brass consort, the program includes the Cathedral Choir's first rendition of Schubert's ‘Mass in G’ and Rutter's 'Christ the Lord is Risen Again'.

As is traditional, we salute Our Lady in a very special way with an arrangement of Lotti's 'Regina Coeli' for soprano and baritone solos, choir, brass consort and organ featuring Stephanie Gooch (soprano) and Daniel Mullaney (baritone).

Easter Sunday also features the Cathedral’s parish choir, the Cathedral Singers, singing at the 9:30am Mass.

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How we celebrated WA’s Easter 2009

The week after Easter The Record will produce another special edition showing how Christians gathered to celebrate their faith this year. SEND your Parish stories and photos (hi-resolution) to: production@therecord.com.au

Help us to show everyone the joy of thousands.

Deadline: Monday April 13.

Further info/questions: The Editor, Peter Rosengren (08) 9227 7080

Jesus of Nazareth

Author: Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)

Read by: Nicholas Bell 12hrs 10mins. 10-CD set.

Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI was recently published in audio book format by Bolinda audio. This work is as tender as it is erudite and brilliant. In this bold, momentous work, The Pope – in his first book written as Benedict XVI –seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from recent ‘popular’ depictions and to restore Jesus’ true identity as discovered in the Gospels.

Every week for seven weeks (beginning Wednesday 11th March 2009) The Record Newspaper will be placing one audio CD set token in the paper. To enter, simply cut out and collect all seven tokens, over the seven weeks. Place all seven tokens in an envelope with your name, address and contact telephone number on the back and mail your envelope to:

Jesus of Nazareth CD Competition

The Record PO Box 75 LEEDERVILLE WA 6902

Entries must be received by close of business on Friday, 8th May 2009. All entries received by this date containing all seven tokens (tokens must be originals cut out from the paper and not copies) will be placed in the Friday, 8th May 2009 draw.

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Director of Cathedral Music Jacinta Jakovcevic goes over music before a ceremony in St Mary’s Cathedral.

Murdoch message key to redemption: Archbishop

Australian theologian’s message the antidote to society’s ills: Archbishop.

■ By Anthony Barich

THE message that Australian theologian Tracey Rowland conveyed in her March 24 address at the annual blessing of Murdoch University is vitally important to the redemption of the modern world, Archbishop Barry Hickey said. He said that Prof. Rowland, Dean and Permanent Fellow of the John Paul II Institute of Marriage and Family Studies in Melbourne and author of Ratzinger’s Faith, showed that practising the unique way of Christ in homes and parishes is the alternative that must

be opened to the world to oppose the destruction that is occurring in western society.

Over 100 people attended, including Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton, retired Anglican bishop Brian Kyme, Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop Harry Entwistle, Catholic Education Office WA RE director Debra Sayce, Respect Life Office’s Bronia Karniewicz, Catholic Youth Ministry’s Anita Parker, Redemptoris Mater Seminary Rector Fr Michael Moore and Perth diocesan vocations director Fr Thai Vu. Several seminarians

from both St Charles Seminary and the Redemptoris Mater missionary seminary of the Neocatechumenal Way also attended, plus Murdoch University Catholic youth.

Pope Benedict XVI reveals this concept in the opening chapter of his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is love) which followed on from the late Pope John Paul II’s work Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). The Archbishop said that understanding, love and a call to the realisation of God’s presence is the way to enter God’s kingdom.

To see the complete text of Prof. Rowland’s talk, go to www.therecord.com.au

Key WA artists come together in Stations of the Cross exhibit

PERTH’S Uniting Church is holding an exhibition of paintings by 16 Western Australian artists on the theme of the Stations of the Cross.

Their unique work lends a particularly Western Australian flavour to the looming celebration of Easter in this state, which will be marked by Christians and their communities in almost every locations.

Among those whose works will be on display is Robert Juniper, recently named as the artist who will paint the stained glass windows of the new St Patrick’s cathedral in Bunbury.

The exhibition’s theme is ‘Easter celebration of the Stations of the Cross.’

It will run from April 3-13 and will be open daily from 9-5pm.

For those who wish, exhibition tours will run daily at 10am and 2pm.

The other artists whose works will be displayed are: Merrick Belyea, Godfrey Blow, Tanija and Graham Carr, Sue Cotton, Dale Couper, Jenny Crisp, Ian de Souza, Jillian Green, Michael Iwanoff, Nigel Hewitt, Philippa O’Brien, John Paul, Michael Kane Taylor and Alan Muller.

Easter Celebration of the Stations of the Cross

Wesley Church is located on the corner of William and Hay streets in the city. Further information: (08) 6103 4222 or email: dond@ucic.org.au

What does it mean to be Christian in modern era?

Barry Hickey Archbishop of Perth

Her talk was excellent and conveyed a message that is vitally important for the redemption of the modern world.

The essence of her position was that Christians, especially Catholics, have an alternative understanding of human nature and a perspective on how to confront modern secularism that comes from the teaching of Christ.

For example, a violent response to violent actions does not solve violence.

Instead, understanding, love and a call to the realisation of God’s presence is the way to healing, reconciliation and inner peace, and the way to enter God’s kingdom.

Recognising that the Holy Spirit is the instigator of the Christian way leads us to the strength that Jesus won for us through his death and resurrection.

The more we contemplate the unique way of Christ, the better we are able to confront any anti-God ‘ism’, including secularism.

We must practise this unique way of Christ in our homes and parishes and open it up to the world as an alternative to the destruction that is occurring in western society. The Christian ideal of marriage and family is an ideal that the world really needs, but we will only succeed in spreading that message if we show it.

Pope Benedict XVI revealed this message in the opening chapter of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is love) which followed on from the late Pope John Paul II’s work Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason).

These fundamental concepts of truth are now being discussed not only among theologians but also in philosophical circles in universities of the highest standing.

This is a tribute to Pope Benedict’s influence in the world, and also an encouragement to everyone to live out this profound but simple Christian message of love.

Key figures within the Chistian churches in Perth identifed the crucial messages in Tracey Rowland’s talk on Christianity in the marketplace.

Bronia Karniewicz

Respect Life Office

It can be difficult to present the Christian message in a public forum. Everyone has a point of view about its relevance and it isn’t always positive. Dr Rowland’s presentation was an injection of hope, a message that our Christian Faith is reasonable and it is beautiful. Many theories and ideologies permeate our culture, Personal Relativism and Darwinism are popular at present, and it isn’t cool to think Christianity has relevance in government or public life. Dr Rowland’s thoughts were a reminder that Christianity isn’t just something personal; it has an important role to play in the public stage and that as the world gets more and more confused and hurt the genuine love, beauty and truth of the Christian Faith will become attractive.

Donald Sproxton

Auxiliary Bishop of Perth

Professor Tracey Rowland has profound insights into the philosophical roots of the values and aspirations of contemporary society which lie in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

She posed the question: What does it mean to be a Christian in our era, and she drew on the theology of Pope Benedict to reveal the true heart of Christianity. The

radical difference between Christianity and the other faiths was illustrated.

Professor Rowland argued that the plan of God has always been to draw humanity into relationship with the Trinity. It is from within this relationship that we become better able to discern the work of God around us, through the encounter with love.

The secure, loving relationship with God enables us to appreciate the dignity in others and urges us to love them for their own sakes.

Harry Entwistle

Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop of Perth

“B elonging comes before believing” nowadays. People are looking to connect and to network, but are reluctant to commit. Tracey was saying that Love draws people into a community, but once embraced by that community they need to be led into faith or the rediscovery of their faith by being educated in the doctrines of the faith.

A Church that is not connected to the supernatural but is content to remain wedded to the natural world will be humanist wrapped around with a ‘religious’ veneer. Tracey sees the Church as having to be connected to the supernatural and the historical faith but must be loving in the Christian sense of working for the good of the one who is loved and what greater good is there than to work for their salvation. She showed that, really, Pope Benedict XVI is spot on.

We’ve got to have not just love but doctrinal teaching, a faith to offer people. Not just ‘let’s all just be loving people and it’s all wonderful’, we need to challenge people with the faith.

Debra Sayce

Catholic Education Office WA Director

Religious Education

She talked about the Pope speaking to young people at the closing Mass of World Youth Day 2008 about truth, beauty and love as foundational. It surpasses all things. It still stays in my mind, as it is powerful and is at the heart of our Christian message. In relation to religious education in Catholic schools, she would have reiterated what is being taught.

When asked by a young man on the day about how to live in a post modern world, she said the key is relationship - when you known someone you develop a trust, as children will remember a relationship with a teacher or a person doing outreach. Evangelisation is not pounding a Bible, but to have a relationship by discovering where people are at. Pope Paul VI said we need witnesses, there at the human level. In catholic education we’re asked with our Catholic teaching to be witnesses of our faith.

Brian Kyme

Retired Anglican assistant Bishop of Perth

I was very impressed with what she had to say. She was emphasising that that the Christian faith can be promoted not by intellectual argument but by beauty and love, quoting scholars from Anglican churches and other churches to support this. She drew a parallel between the thenCardinal Ratzinger and scholars in the Anglican Church, saying that there is a ‘coming together’ to support and promote the Christian faith as being reasonable, having beauty and expressing love. I look forward to reading more of her.

The front cover of Dr Rowland’s book on Pope Benedict’s theology.

Left, Prof. Tracey Rowland addresses the annual blessing of Murdoch University by Archbishop Barry Hickey, right. Audience reactions can be found below.

The cover image of the exhibition shows ‘Jesus Stumbles for the First Time’ by artist Robert Juniper.

UNDA names new Broome Deputy VC

Appointment of New Deputy Vice Chancellor for Notre Dame’s Broome Campus.

THE Vice Chancellor of The University of Notre Dame Australia, Professor Celia Hammond, announced the appointment of Professor Lyn Henderson-Yates as Deputy Vice Chancellor for the University’s Broome Campus.

Professor Henderson-Yates is an Aboriginal woman from the Shadforth family in Derby in the Kimberley. Working in the education sector, specifically in Aboriginal Education for the past 31 years, Lyn has been employed as an Aboriginal teaching assistant, primary school teacher, deputy principal, education officer, Aboriginal studies consultant, researcher, writer, lecturer and manager.

Some of her career highlights include working at Holy Rosary School, Derby, Clontarf Aboriginal College, Perth and the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University of Technology. In 2006, she returned to the Kimberley to take up an Associate Professorship at Notre Dame Broome Campus as Assistant Dean in the School

of Arts & Sciences and Director of Nulungu Centre for Indigenous Studies. Lyn’s teaching and research work include Aboriginal history, education, identity and oral history.

The unanimous decision of the selection committee received the full support of the Chancellor, Professor Michael Quinlan and Trustees of the University

The Vice Chancellor said: “I am extremely confident that Lyn will lead the Campus in the wonderful way of her predecessor, Sister Sonia Wagner sgs, and that the Broome Campus will thrive under her leadership.”

Professor Henderson-Yates will commence in the position at the end of March. She said that she is very honoured to be appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor of the Campus.

“Having worked on the Broome Campus for the past three years I remain very excited and passionate about the teaching, research and community work we are engaged in throughout the Kimberley and further afield.

“I look forward to working alongside the many experienced and talented staff on the Campus and staff on the Fremantle and Sydney Campus.”

Clinical Pastoral Education for Pastoral Practitioners/Chaplains

Applicants are now invited to apply for the following Part-time and Full-time Clinical Pastoral Education Programs.

Monday 4 May 2009.

from:

Clinical Pastoral Education Centre

St John of God Hospital PO Box 14

Subiaco WA 6008

Telephone : 9382 6200

It’s the Trappist life for Fr Kot, still going strong at 97

Trappist Father Luke Kot, aged 97, poses in the rectory of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, in the US on March 9. Father Kot is the last living founder of the Conyers monastery that was to celebrate its 65th anniversary on March 21. He joined the Gethsemani Monastery in Trappist, Kentucky, in 1938.

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Benedict XVI names Perth Monsignors

continued from page 1

-struction of St Joseph’s Church. Mgr O’Loughlin, chosen by Archbishop Launcelot Goody for Canon Law Studies at St Paul Universtiy, Ottawa, Canada, said that Protonotary Apostolic signifies one who has been involved in drafting of Papal Decrees; now it’s a more honorary title.

Fr Long, who was Rector at St Thomas More College since 1995 until taking over from Fr Don Hughes OMI as St Charles Seminary Rector last month, has been given the category of Chaplain to His Holiness.

He was a founding member of the core curriculum at the University of Notre Dame Australia, also addressing clergy groups on Papal encyclicals and important Vatican documents.

When Archbishop Hickey was appointed by the Pope as Relator Generalis - the bishops’ secretary for the Synod of Oceania who coordinated the recommendations presented to the Pope – in 1998, Fr Long accompanied him to Rome as one of his two theological Periti (experts) of the synod.

Archbishop Barry Hickey told The Record that the Pope’s announcement gives much-needed prominence to the roles of Vicar General and Rector of the diocesan seminary.

“The position of Vicar General and Rector of the seminary are two of the most significant ones we have: the Vicar General as I do need someone to represent me and act in my name on many occasions, and the seminary needs to have a high profile to attract vocations for priests for the future,” the Archbishop said.

“Both candidates are very worthy of these appointments, so I think the whole diocese should rejoice and will rejoice.”

The Archbishop said that he petitioned the Pope for the positions in response to many suggestions made to him.

Fr O’Loughlin, who has been parish priest at Embleton, Mt Lawley and Claremont after being assistant at Nedlands and Cottesloe, could have been given the title of Monsignor when made Vicar General.

But he preferred the title Father at the time, as it signifies a spiritual relationship between a priest and his flock, and the title of Doctor as he is a Doctor of Canon Law.

“Some fundamentalists would note that Jesus said to call no one on earth your father, but the Church interprets that as calling no one on earth God,” Mgr O’Loughlin said.

“The title of Monsignor has a similar parallel to the honours conferred on Australia Day – an honorific recognition that the role a priest has in the diocese is worthy of a title, conferred by the Queen.”

PHOTO: CNS /MICHAEL ALEXANDER, GEORGIA BULLETIN

Professor Lyn Henderson-Yates

The newly-named Monsignor Brian O’Loughlin takes in the news of his appointment.

Prayer helped Christians through Orissa horror

Indian Catholic refugees turn to prayer amid continued threats.

■ By Anto Akkara

TIANGIA, India (CNS) - As the sun went down, dozens of Catholics gathered in the refugee camp's vacant tent in the troubled Kandhamal district of India's Orissa state.

While those who came early found space in the tent - large enough for 100 people - others stood outside as a local catechist led the Way of the Cross.

With the Orissa government banning religious practice outside the tent and allowing only private worship, the refugees were forced to pray the stations and Rosary inside the tent. They switched between kneeling and standing for each station.

"Continuous prayer is helping us cope with our trials," catechist Ranjit Nayak told Catholic News Service.

Besides an early morning Way of the Cross and an extra one on Friday afternoons, during Lent Catholics also recite the Rosary together every evening inside the camp.

Extremist Hindu-led rioting and violence that began in Orissa state in August and lasted about seven weeks displaced 50,000 people, mostly Christians.

The violence claimed more than 60 lives.

Seven Christians were killed in Tiangia alone, and most of the

houses owned by Christians in the area were looted and destroyed. Nayak was caught in the violence. After running for his life from a Hindu mob in the mountains, Nayak eventually hid under a rock outcropping.

The mob reached his hiding spot, climbed onto the rock and shouted for the others to search for Nayak.

"I was mortified and started saying (the) Rosary. By the time I finished two mysteries, heavy rain started and they went back," he recalled.

The refugee camp in Tiangia was opened by the Orissa govern-

ment in early February to bring the displaced Christians closer to their villages. But Catholics in the camps say Hindus are telling them they cannot return home unless they convert to Hinduism.

Father Praful Sabapati said the situation in Tiangia "is still very tense." The priest, who works in the parish in Tiangia, spoke to CNS from the refugee camp run by the Missionaries of Charity at Janla, more than 150 miles from Tiangia.

Though Tiangia has more than 180 Catholic families, the first Mass in the area since August was celebrated on February 25, Ash

Life changing pilgrimage journeys...

Wednesday, inside the refugee camp - guarded by federal soldiers. It was also the first time a priest had been there since the August violence, said Father Sabapati.

In late February, Hindus quietly watched as refugees, accompanied by Orissa officials and police, assessed damage to their houses in a village near Tiangia. But as soon as the officials left in their vehicles, extremist Hindus took out weapons and chased the Christians, shouting "You can come back here only as Hindus," said Goliath Digal.

Chandrakant Digal, a Catholic refugee, told CNS, "We thought

our ordeal was over when we were taken (by government officials) back to our village." But the Hindus in the village bluntly told them they could not return, he said.

Half a dozen Catholic families moved to open land near Raikia and pitched tents of torn plastic sheets and leaves.

"We hope God will find a way out for us," said Chandrakant Digal, who wore a Rosary around his bare chest as he hunted for food.

Despite such hardship, the refugees have shown "exemplary faith," said Father Bijay Pradhan, parish priest of Raikia.

"Our Church is still full despite continued threats for our people to become Hindus. They are very firm in their faith," said Father Pradhan, pointing out that the houses of 600 of the 750 Catholic families in his parish had been looted, damaged or burned during the anti-Christian violence.

Deacon Ranjit Pradhan said the violence "has made me more motivated to become a priest." He hopes to be ordained later this year.

"The faith our people have shown in the situation makes me think of the early Christians who were prepared to die for their faith," said Deacon Pradhan, who is from Tiangia.

His house was torched and his mother remains a refugee while his brothers have fled the Kandhamal district.

The Church being built for the ordination has been destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists. The old Church, built in the 1960s, also was destroyed.

NCEC chair to address Church-education link

Therese Temby will address Holy Rosary parish and school community on The History of Catholic Education in WA and its Relationship to the Church. She is qualified to talk on this topic having been a parent of children who attended Holy Rosary, a member of the teaching staff at the school, the former Director of Catholic Education in WA and the current Chair of the National Catholic Education

Commission. All members and friends of the community are invited to attend the hour-long talk at Our Lady of The Rosary Church on Sunday, May 3 at 2pm and will be followed by afternoon tea in the Parish Hall. This is an opportunity to hear from one of the most influential leaders in Catholic Education in recent times. As Mrs Temby is donating her time there is no charge to attend.

US bishops rule out Reiki

Continued from page 1

The guidelines described Reiki as a healing technique “invented in Japan in the late 1800s by Mikao Usui, who was studying Buddhist texts.”

They stated that “according to Reiki teaching, illness is caused by some kind of disruption or imbalance in one’s ‘life energy.’

A Reiki practitioner effects healing by placing his or her hands in certain positions on the patient’s body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki, the ‘universal life energy,’ from the Reiki practitioner to the patient.”

The website of the International Centre for Reiki Training calls it a “technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing.”

But, the bishops’ guidelines said, “Reiki lacks scientific credibility” and “has not been accepted by the scientific and medical communities as an effective therapy.”

“Reputable scientific studies attesting to the efficacy of Reiki are lacking, as is a plausible scientific explanation as to how it could possibly be efficacious,” the guidelines said.

In 2008, after conducting a review of random clinical trials using Reiki, the International Journal of Clinical Practice concluded: “The evidence is insufficient to suggest Reiki is an effective treatment for any condition. Therefore the value of Reiki remains unproven.”

The bishops’ guidelines noted that “Reiki is frequently described as a ‘spiritual’ kind of healing as opposed to the common medi-

cal procedures of healing using physical means”. However, there is a radical difference between Reiki therapy and the healing by divine power in which Christians believe, the guidelines said.

“For Christians the access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as lord and saviour, while the essence of Reiki is not a prayer but a technique that is passed down from the ‘Reiki master’ to the pupil, a technique that once mastered will reliably produce the anticipated results,” they said.

In sum, Reiki therapy “finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief,” the guidelines said. They warned there were “important dangers” in using Reiki for one’s spiritual health.

“To use Reiki one would have to accept at least in an implicit way central elements of the worldview that undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither to Christian faith nor to natural science,” they said.

“Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no man’s land that is neither faith nor science,” they continued.

“While sometimes people fall into superstition through ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the name of the Church to eliminate such ignorance as much as possible,” they said. The US bishops document can be found online at: www.usccb.org/dpp/doctrine.htm.

Christian refugees live in makeshift shelters near their original houses in Badvanga, in the Indian state of Orissa on February 27. Hindus prevented them from returning to the village where their houses had been looted, damaged or burned down. PHOTO: CNS/ANTO AKKARA

Martyr Romero inspired Caritas web tool

Peace tools? Caritas provides nuts and bolts of conflict resolution via the web.

■ By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The object of arm-wrestling is to get as many points as possible by pushing your partner's fist down on the table - but it doesn't matter how many points your partner gets.

Will players figure out they can amass more points by cooperating and simply make quick, alternating wins rather than by competing and duking it out through brute force?

The game, called Popeye, is one of scores of activities that make up a new web tool kit created by Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based umbrella organization for 162 national Catholic charities around the world.

The tool kit is an online resource for peace-building workshops aimed at helping individuals and local communities overcome prejudice, trauma, fear and hatred bred by episodes of violence or years of conflict.

The "Peacebuilding: Web Toolkit for Trainers" is located online at http://peacebuilding.caritas.org and is dedicated to slain Archbishop Oscar A Romero of San Salvador.

Caritas Internationalis launched the site on the anniversary of his assassination on March 24.

The archbishop was an "outspoken champion of peace, justice and human rights in El Salvador. His life and martyrdom (have) been an inspiration to the work of Caritas

and beyond," the organisation said in a written press release on the eve of the launch.

The more than 200-page Web tool kit is culled from "the best peace-building materials published" and was edited to be Webfriendly and hosted on an interactive Wiki platform, said Patrick Nicholson, head of communications for Caritas Internationalis.

Users can pick and choose from a large selection of activities, handouts, case studies and resources for teaching skills in nonviolence, negotiation and peacefully integrating people from diverse religious, ethnic or other backgrounds.

The tool kit was designed for people involved in grass-roots peace-building, although aid workers in zones of conflict may find the materials helpful, too.

Users can craft their own training workshops and build their own Web sites, as well as "upload new resources, share and rate content, and take part in online discussions," Nicholson said.

"It's the most comprehensive tool available on the Web for designing peace-building workshops" and should be an invaluable resource not just for Caritas members, but all local, governmental and international organisations working for peace, he said.

The peace-building concept has become crucial in an age in which the nature of war and conflict has changed.

Almost two-thirds of all current conflicts are "identity conflicts," Caritas says in "Peace-building: A Caritas Training Manual" - a veritable bible for peace-builders first published in 2002.

In the past, most major con-

flicts were triggered by territorial ambitions and fought in contained theaters of war. Today it's more likely the enemy isn't a far-away, foreign army but a fellow citizen or neighbor.

The shocking slaughters seen in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the 1991-2001 Balkan wars, and 20th-century paramilitary operations in Latin America are examples of how wars can be fought by fellow citizens clashing over divergent ethnic, religious or political identities.

The new reality of war means two things. First, civilians become the primary targets and actors in armed conflicts.

Secondly, traditional methods of high-level diplomatic talks, ceasefires and peace agreements are no longer sufficient for tackling the root causes of conflict and creating lasting peace.

"It is becoming clear that peace settlements reached through negotiation do not necessarily bring about the required change of heart, which is the crux of peace, particularly in complex internal conflicts," Caritas says in its peace-building training manual.

The Rwandan and the Balkan cleansing campaigns were alarming signs that peace-building had to become a priority, it says.

When outward hostilities have ended, the roots of war will remain unless the broken relationships between groups and among individuals are restored, it added.

People need help to come to terms with a tragic and painful past, accept shared responsibility and forge a new mutual understanding, the manual says.

Caritas and its partners, in fact, work on both levels - healing

A girl looks at an image of Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24, the 29th anniversary of his death at the cathedral where he is buried in San Salvador, El Salvador. He was assassinated while celebrating Mass in San Salvador in 1980. CNS

hearts and minds while providing emergency and development aid. For example, in Rwanda the local Caritas agency provided psychological counselling for women raped during the genocide campaign and helped them build new homes.

If the women were to heal from their trauma, they also needed to improve their living conditions and change the setting of where that trauma took place, Caritas

says on its Web site. Besides causing unfathomable psychological damage, war is also the mortal enemy of development, it says, citing a Swahili proverb: "When the elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."

That is why Caritas and the Church have found ways to ground their development projects on a foundation of building peace, justice and reconciliation.

Chances are better that the infrastructure will last when citizens learn how to channel hostile feelings in nonviolent ways and reform unjust systems and institutions that fuel resentment, says Caritas.

Preventing conflicts from escalating out of control is something Caritas and its partners work on, too.

For example, the overcrowded camps sheltering tens of thousands of people escaping violence in western Sudan's Darfur region have become a breeding ground for stress, boredom and personal disputes.

Caritas partners trained groups of camp residents to help peacefully solve problems and arguments between young people, married couples and other individuals, before they erupt into something bigger.

A camp peace-builder named Sheik Ali told Caritas, "We can use the methods we have learned in the training to solve any problem. "We have to use it in the future, such as when we return to our homes, so as to co-exist peacefully again with our neighbours. The training has shown us that if there is respect for opinion, and respect for justice, this will lead us to a safe land," he said.

Droughts, floods ravage Bolivia, but people endure

Caritas helps rural Bolivians deal with increased floods and droughts. As we enter the final weeks of Lent, perhaps we can consider what we can give via Project Compassion.

Caritas Australia is working with local communities in Bolivia to deal with increased floods in the north and droughts in the south to give them the capacity to respond to these forces.

The Pujllay Project involves 30 communities from the mountainous Andes to the tropical regions of the Amazon basin and is a coalition of non-government health agencies aiming to improve food security, the loss of local identity and threats to the rights of children.

“The climatic changes the whole world is experiencing are a reality here in Bolivia. We have floods every year now in the north and a continuing drought in the south, we now have to adjust to this reality, it makes it tough for the communities”, said Pujllay project coordinator, Norma Rivera Munoz.

“When the rains come strongly the health of the community is at risk. Children here suffer very badly from skin diseases and bacterial and respiratory infections,” said Norma.

In a loaned house on one of Chipiriri’s eroded forest hillsides, Maria Gaby lives with her mother, sister and brother. They have no power, running water or sewerage system. The land is cheap and without storm water drainage, they live in an area prone to flooding.

“The seasons are changing. When I was a girl the whole village was planted at certain times, now we have to wait and see”, said Victoria, Maria Gaby’s mother.

Maria, 10, is an active member of the local Pujllay group, attending twice weekly group meetings where they share food, play games and learn about health, hygiene, first aid and organic farming.

Parents join in; learning about recycling, water conservation and crop harvesting and everyone takes part in dancing and singing traditional songs that celebrate their heritage.

“We have learnt how to identify and use the plants that grow in our village for medicine, because sometimes my mum cannot afford to buy the medicines from the pharmacy. My mum is very happy because since we started our garden we have not had to buy vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, radishes, lettuce or parsley,” she says.

The group also sent seeds, plants, clothing and animals to assist their northern neighbours when they suffered from floods in 2007. “We didn’t have much, but what little we had we sent. We all have to work together in times of crisis”, said Maria’s mother. “

Since the start of the project, the health of the participants has improved and parents and teachers say that children are more actively involved in school. Maria now knows what she wants to be when she grows up.

“When I leave school I want to be a guide for the Eco tourism project we have in the village. I know some English like ‘what is your name?’ and ‘how are you?’ but I will have to learn more so that I can be a good guide and speak to our visitors.

OPINIONS

The assault on Pope Benedict continues

Legionaries of Christ - clearly not of his behaviour but the even-handed reporting of the issue. It is encouraging to me to see representation of the shadow and light of anyone.

By and large most Catholic media present ‘aren’t we fabulous’ sorts of takes on Catholicrelated issues.

A- BISHOP HUGH SLATTERY, OF TZANEEN, SOUTH AFRICA.

“It is highly unlikely that World AIDS Day will ever have “abstain and be faithful” as its theme. It is a response that builds character, ensures good family life, costs nothing, and has a 100 per cent guarantee of success.”

s well as containing its own wisdom, the above quote is a masterful illustration of the absurdity and the danger of the untruthful and irrational attacks on Pope Benedict XVI by media around the world. This aggressive attitude towards the Pope is well illustrated in a relatively small article published in our morning newspaper on Saturday March 21 under the heading “Pope’s gaffes a disaster, says Vatican source.”

The article came from Rome and is riddled with personal opinions, but the writer is anonymous and the news service (if there was one involved) was unnamed. The “source” is “one Vatican insider” (a cleaner, perhaps?) The three items most relied on for calling Benedict’s entire four-year papacy “a disaster” were:

● The Pope’s recent statement that AIDS cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problem.

● His ‘previous inflammatory remarks on Islam’ – that is, his famous 2006 Regensburg address.

● His likewise ‘inflammatory’ remarks about homosexuality – that is, comments he did NOT make when addressing Curia officials at a pre-Christmas function.

These three subjects, raised at different times in different places, are closely linked in surprising ways. As well as their own wisdom, they also demonstrate why so many journalists cannot or will not understand the Pope and report him accurately.

Box 75

Leederville, WA 6902

cathrec@iinet.net.au

Tel: (08) 9227 7080

Fax: (08) 9227 7087

During his pre-Christmas remarks to the Curia, the Pope referred to environmental issues facing the world and suggested that while environmental science was important, it was also important to develop a true human ecology. This was not a reference to the ecology of our physical environment, but to the development of an understanding of all aspects of human nature so that people could become fully human.

Although the words ‘homosexual’ or ‘homosexuality’ were neither used nor implied, various English-language journalists and news services interpreted the words as an attack on homosexuality and dashed off stories about angry people rejecting the Pope’s criticism.

Actually, the expression human ecology is an invitation to the Curia and others to look anew at the ideas of moral law, natural law, human community, the spiritual world and divine revelation which have always been the reason for the Church’s existence.

The expression could also be said to put in a nutshell the extraordinary Regensburg address during which Pope Benedict recalled a 12th Century conversation between a Christian and a Muslim which raised the question: “Is it reasonable, or does God will, to spread one’s religion by violence?”

The question was relevant to Muslims in the current times, but it was at least equally directed to Western society, as was the central theme which was to invite all thinkers to establish the grounds on which we approach all religions, cultures and philosophies in the name of their truth, in the name of all truth, including the truth of revelation.

It is an intellectual challenge, which is why it is an academic lecture, not an encyclical. It insists that we face the truth and falsity in any culture on the basis of reason.

Far from being a mark of the “disaster” of this papacy or of its relations with Islam, the Regensburg address has become a wellspring for philosophical and religious discussions around the world. It has added strength and depth to Catholic-Muslim dialogue, and it has given new vitality to internal Muslim dialogue about the two answers (one ‘yes’ and one ‘no’) that the Koran gives to the question of spreading religion by the sword.

The third of the three issues raised, the one about AIDS, is a living, breathing example of the importance of having a true human ecology when dealing with a disaster on the scale of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Catholics should never be perturbed or discouraged by the seemingly endless criticism of the present and previous Popes on the question of AIDS. Even on his deathbed, Pope John II was accused by a Sydney Morning Herald opinion writer of being responsible for millions of deaths.

The quote from Bishop Slattery at the head of this editorial provides the essence of a true human ecology for dealing with this wretched disease. In the first place, it gives people the knowledge that they have the capacity to defeat the disease in their own lives.

The Church also has a true human ecology for its role in the fight against AIDS. As well as teaching people how to take control of their own lives and the lives of their families, the Church continues to walk with people (regardless of religion) at whatever stage they are in relation to the epidemic.

The Catholic Church provides just over 25 per cent of all support for AIDS victims and their families worldwide, but in Africa this proportion is much greater, and in the poorest parts of Africa it approaches 100 per cent.

There have been significant improvements in the rates of infection only when there have been significant reductions in multiple and concurrent partnering (greater fidelity), not where there have been more condoms.

To quote Bishop Hugh Slattery again: “South Africa and the neighbouring countries of Botswana and Swaziland have the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world and also the highest rate of condom distribution.” This information has been known for years, but has not been allowed to dent the blind faith of journalists in their dogma that condoms are the only hope.

The same blind faith guides the programs of public health and public education which see young Australians afflicted by ever-rising rates of sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy and abortion, self-harm and suicide, and mental health prpoblems.

The Record is not ashamed to publicly say that the time has come for a deeper and wiser human ecology.

Behind a teen killer

In the Weekend Australian of March 14-15 there was an article about the teen gunman in Germany who recently went on a shooting rampage killing mainly girls.

One very significant paragraph in the article stated the following:

“Detectives who seized Kretschmer’s home computer discovered violent video games and pornography. Friends said that he regularly played the computer game Counter Strike and had become increasingly fascinated with horror films. His parents insisted, however, that Kretchmer also liked comedies and action films.”

This sort of thing comes up again and again but those who will not see keep on saying that “there is no evidence that violence and pornography influence people.”

Jerome Gonzalez Willetton

Even-handed Maciel coverage

In the March 4, 2009, edition I was heartened by the reportage on Fr Maciel, founder of the

That is really a false or shadowless picture. Without faults, sins or shadows of other sorts we are pretty much one dimensional. Forgiveness and integration are clear spiritual needs.

Pursuant to this would also be two other articles in the same edition: Mary Ward’s recognition as founder of the Loreto Sisters 300 years later or the move from Rome to wonder about the departure of sisters 40 years after Vatican II. Or as Eugene Kennedy said yonks ago: ‘the Catholic Church usually arrives on the scene 30 years late and breathless’. Sad and true.

Your coverage of the Fr Marciel affair was a beam of hope that things may change in the coming years.

In the meantime I will continue to pick up The Register, scan it and buy it if there is something of note I wish to pursue. If not, it goes back on the rack or pile for someone else. It ain’t perfect, but it does help my mental health to not read stuff that is stilted when I know better.

Name

supplied

Priests, promote The Record to defend faith, Pope Benedict

I thank you and congratulate you on informing Catholics re the position of the Holy Father and the hot topic of Aids/HIV and condoms.

Last week I received an email from a friend, originally Catholic,

Students protest media’s coverage of Africa trip

VATICAN CITY (Zenit.org) - Benedict XVI did not hide the joy he felt at seeing numerous young African students gathered today in St Peter’s Square to thank him for the message of hope he brought to the continent.

Young men and women, some religious or seminarians, waving flags that represented various African countries, expressed their appreciation for the Pontiff’s March 17-23 trip to Cameroon and Angola.

Led by Guinean Archbishop Robert Sarah, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the students also gathered to show their solidarity with the Holy Father after he came under fire for saying that the distribution of condoms is not the solution for fighting AIDS.

with an attachment asking for signatures to a petition against Pope Benedict for speaking out against condoms being the solution for Aids/HIV. Of course I did not sign it, but I must admit I only deleted it and took no further action at that time.

The Record this week has provided an educated answer to the outcry, which will help Catholics to defend our Holy Father and his position, as no less an institution than Harvard University has agreed with him.

This morning I have scanned the article and sent 4 emails with attachments in response to my friend (and her friends, hopefully) to state the Catholic perspective - supported by Harvard. I would like to ask Parish Priests to consider keeping left-over copies of The Record, (indeed asking for more), and recommending that parishioners read and be aware of our Holy Father’s position on this hot topic, so that we may defend him in the public arena when and where we are challenged, or feel it is appropriate to state his position, and advise that the media do not give the full picture but only pick and choose what they print.

If Catholics are not educated with the full picture, and I am grateful to The Record many times in this regard, then we are floundering when an issue comes up that we have no definitive answer for. I also think that many times an item in The Record, which we are usually unaware of until after we have left the Church, should be recommended to parishioners to encourage them to purchase The Record and educate themselves with the Catholic perspective, as in this case of Aids/HIV. I will now be able to say “Harvard University, no less, agrees with Pope Benedict” which will silence many critics, I believe. Sheila Shannon Woodvale.

lucid and objective diagnosis of the African reality, a diagnosis that the international community, distracted by the media polemic, did not hear,” he explained.

Mansare added that the students wanted to send a message to the Western media: “Don’t talk about Africa without knowing the reality, trampling on its values!”

Another organiser, Mari Anne Mollo of Cameroon, told Zenit that she was disappointed with the coverage of the Papal trip: “The mass media presented the ugly, suffering, disease-filled side of the continent. We had expected that they would talk about a beautiful, welcoming, lively, smiling Africa.”

“Dear friends, you wanted to come to manifest your joy for my apostolic trip to Africa,” Benedict XVI told the students. “I thank you from my heart. I pray for you, for your families and your homelands.”

The head of the Committee of African Students in Rome, Pierre Baba Mansare, explained to ZENIT that the event was organised after seeing the coverage of the Pope’s visit in the media: “Of the Holy Father’s whole pastoral message, the Western media only focused on the statement about condoms with the purpose of starting a polemic.”

“[W]e decided to respond with a small demonstration of gratitude to the Holy Father for his

“Cameroon took two days of holiday to welcome the Pope,” she said. “The journalists reduced the trip to [the statements] about condoms and ignored the Pontiff’s [other] statements.”

Mollo, who is a student at the Pontifical Gregorian University, also noted that her continent also faces other more fundamental challenges: “Africans don’t just die from AIDS, but from other diseases too, due to a lack of hygiene. How can condoms be prioritised when the lack of other basics for survival is felt?”

“The massive promotion of condoms,” she continued, “causes cultural, economic, moral impoverishment because it encourages people to engage in irresponsible behaviour and it goes against our culture.

“Because of this we say ‘no’ to the disparagement of our culture and our traditions. We want to walk with Benedict XVI and follow the lines that he traced for our present and our future, and in this way write a new page.”

Faithful rejoice moments after Pope Benedict XVI arrived to lead an evening prayer liturgy in Yaounde, Cameroon, on March 18. PHOTO:CNS/FINBARRO’REILLY,REUTERS

A new movie currently showing at the Perth International Film Festival tells the story of a littleknown event. In 1940 the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB, massacred approximately half the Polish Army officer corps in Katyn Forest on the border of Ukraine and Russia. All in all, it is estimated that about 20,000 men were shot over the course of a month and their bodies buried in mass graves. Anthony Barich reports.

For Morley parishioner

George Mazak, the atrocities portrayed in acclaimed Polish director Andrew Wajda’s latest offering Katyn brought back his worst nightmares, but also engenders a spirit of reconciliation, not revenge.

George, now 77, was one of many Poles from Soviet-occupied regions of Poland, consisting of military and civilian settler families and families of men executed by the NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB. They were the bulk of deportations to the Siberian and Kazakhstan regions of the USSR in 1940.

The film Katyn is of particular interest to WA’s Polish community, especially descendents of army officers, policemen, intellectuals and Poland’s eastern region’s settlers, murdered by Josef Stalin’s Soviet NKVD at Katyn, and, simultaneously, at Tver, Kharkov, Miednoye and other locations in USSR in the Spring of 1940.

George, a member of the Polish Siberian Society of WA consisting of deportees to Siberia and Kazakhstan, lost his father and uncle to the atrocity at Katyn.

His father, Pawel Jerzy Jozef Mazak, was a chemical engineer in civilian life and before the outbreak of war moved from his position at the Polish Oil Refinery Karpaty in Trzebinia to work in the firm’s Warsaw head office, and was a sub-lieutenant in an army reserve unit stationed at Wadowice in the Malopolska region. George’s uncle Jaroslaw Basili Maksymowicz was a professional soldier who was a veterinary doctor who held the rank of captain with a cavalry regiment believed to be the 7th Regiment at Minsk Mazowiecki.

In January 1940, Pawel sent a letter to his family saying that he and his brother-in-law Jaroslaw were interned at the POW camp in Kozielsk. They were among the 4,421 officers killed, on Stalin’s order.

In 2007 George, his Australian wife Dorothy, youngest daughter Sally and son-in-law Greg visited the Memorial at Katyn near Smolensk, Russia, where they found the Russian personnel “respectful and sympathetic”. There, in Katyn, are also buried about 10,000 Russians, victims of Stalin’s “purges” of the 1930s. His father’s name is inscribed in a wall with all the other victims.

Monsignor Zdzislaw J Peszkowski, a prisoner of war at Kozielsk who survived the slaugher, wrote in “The Appeal of a Prisoner of War at Kozielsk” in 2005 that the victims were shot one by one in the back of the head for more than two months – 250 every night at each venue of Tver,

The Forest of Death

Kharkov and Smolensk. Corpses were loaded onto trucks and removed to the forest where they were thrown into death pits.

Fr Peszkowski wrote demanding that the truth be told, aftere decades of global silence over the matter, assured, he said, by the Tehran Treaty of 1943 negotiated by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin.

“At first thousands of defenceless people were slaughtered and then the truth was slaughtered,” the Monsignor said. Yet, in the face of this, he also advocated forgiveness. Some consolation came when, on Good Friday, 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev declared in the Kremlin that the NKVD bears responsibility for the slaughter, and an investigation was ordered. “Even hatred couldn’t cure this pain,” said the Monsignor, who participated in the 1991 exhumations.

“The question of Katyn – the Holy Father John Paul II says – is always present in our consciousness and can’t be erased from the memory of Europe.”

Regardless, the Monsignor’s conclusion was one of forgiveness and striving for reconciliation. It is an attitude George also takes.

“In the name of God – I forgive,” the Monsignor said. “As a witness I beg only for truth, memory and justice.”

In June 2008 the Polish government posthumously elevated the ranks of the victims at Katyn. For George, it was more closure for the devastating period, brought to life in this new movie.

He says that the new Katyn movie, with English subtitles, is a must for all Poles and their Australian families and friends. The movie Katyn uses stories from authentic diaries and letters to tell the fate of four fictional officers

ARCHITECTS OF EVIL

after Lenin’s death. Responsible for tens of millions of deliberate deaths by execution, starvation and imprisonment - perhaps as many as 60 million people in all.

Pavlovich Beria Stalin’s fearedand loathed - head of the NKVD. In the first days of March, 1940, Beria submitted to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) a recommendation that 25,700 Polish citizens - “obdurate and incorrigible enemies of the Soviet rule” - be executed.

and their families, through whom the film shows the predicament of Poland, attacked from the west by the Nazis on September 1 1939 and on September 17 by the Soviets from the east under a secret deal between Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The disappearance of over 15,000 soldiers was a mystery at first, then revealed in the Spring of 1943 after the Nazis had unsuccessfully invaded the Soviet Union and discovered the mass graves.

The director, Wajda, said that the film “shows terrible truth that hurts, whose characters are not the murdered officers, but women who await their return every day, every hour, suffering inhuman uncertainty.

He said it is a film about individual suffering, which “evokes images of much greater emotional content than naked historical facts”.

Petr Karpovich Soprunenko

As Head of POW Affairs NKVD USSR, Soprunenko organised, then scheduled by signing daily “death lists” and supervised the executions.

Where can you see the movie?

The cemetery at Katyn today. In the background can be seen the plaques placed on the ground which carry the names of all those executed by Stalin and Beria’s secret police, the NKVD. The trees are silent witnesses to the massacres that happened there.

Josef Stalin Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Lavrenti

At Somerville Auditorum, University of WA. April 6-12, 8.30pm.

Scenes from the movie Katyn which focuses on four fictional characters and their families, especially their wives. waiting anxiously for them to come home. The black and white photo shows a victim still wearing Polish army insignia.

The message the media missed (yet

Pope Benedict’s words at the beginning of his trip to Africa regarding the use of condoms in preventing the spread of AIDS generated a media storm. But the Pope’s comments are not the cause for concern that they were reported to be, argues Michael Czerny SJ. Why is the Church’s teaching on this issue not ‘unrealistic and ineffective’, as alleged; but valuable, efficient, and grounded in reality?

Setting out on his first visit as Pope to Africa, Benedict XVI held his traditional press conference with journalists accompanying him to Yaoundé on the plane.[1] The fifth question went like this:

“Your Holiness, among the many ills that beset Africa, one of the most pressing is the spread of Aids. The position of the Catholic Church on the way to fight it is often considered unrealistic and ineffective. Will you address this theme during the journey?”

Any answer would probably have generated headlines. As it was, a fragment of the Pope’s reply instantly launched a media frenzy which has left many perplexed, saddened and even outraged. Let’s take a careful look behind the headlines at what Pope Benedict XVI actually said and try to understand what he meant.

First, a bit of background. According to 2006 figures, baptised African Catholics numbered about 150 million, some 17 per cent of the African population, compared with 12 per cent back in 1978. According to UNAIDS (2007), about 22 million in subSaharan Africa are infected with HIV. This makes up 67 per cent of the world’s HIV-positive people. Of recorded AIDS-related deaths in 2007, three-quarters occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.

In response to the journalist, Pope Benedict gave a brief reply, touching on several dimensions of this highly complex problem.

1. To the question of the Church’s position being ‘unrealistic and ineffective’, the Pope replied: ‘I would say the opposite. I think that the most efficient, most truly present player in the fight against AIDS is the Catholic Church herself, with her movements and her various organisations.’

Religious communities of brothers, sisters and priests, as well as lay communities, ‘do so much, visibly and also behind the scenes’ and ‘take care of the sick’.

Vatican officials estimate that around the world the Catholic Church now provides more than 25 percent of all care administered to those with HIV/AIDS. The proportion is naturally higher in Africa, nearly 100 per cent in the remotest areas. Let an HIVpositive Burundian on antiretroviral drugs explain the service: When we go to other places, they only see numbers in us. We become hospital cases to be dealt with. We are problems. We lose our sense of dignity and worth. Yet we never feel that when we come to our Church program. This is because we get a complete approach to our problems, whether spiritual, medical, mental, social or economic. (Personal testimony)

2. Building on the Church’s important, effective and realistic track record, the Holy Father now raises two critical issues:

2a. I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behaviour] ….’

Without explicitly using the vocabulary, the Holy Father is making a crucial contrast between the Church’s approach (based on human dimension and responsible behaviour) and the typical public policy approaches of governments and international organisations (based on money). Public policy deals with whole populations. It uses statistics to grasp a problem and then tackles it through policies and programs. The hoped-for result is a statistical improvement. In the case of AIDS, public health does what is technically necessary and possible to reduce the numbers infected and the numbers dying.

Not to undervalue this contribution, let us recognise that public policy and programming function as a lowest common denominator, a minimum which every citizen has a right to. Public health policy deals with figures and trends – not with human faces and persons.

The Christian vision includes all that, but goes broader and deeper than policy. With a holistic vision, the Church sees each person as a child of God, as brother or sister, each one capable of both sin and holiness. Now, such unique, whole and holy persons are not readily detectable in tables of averages. But they are the real people of real life. As believers, they are the pillars of communities, the silent agents of deep transformation. So the Church’s work of addressing, forming, guiding and challenging

again):

Benedict’s

persons is more ambitious than public health, deeply different in quality and spirit.

Facing not only AIDS but multiple crises in most corners of the continent, Africans have good reason, based on experience, to believe in the Church’s bold vision for them.

2b. Having pointed towards the Church’s holistic program and taken distance from the necessarily narrower approach of public policy, the Holy Father now critiques the further reduction of public policy to a single means and method: ‘…the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it.’

In Europe and North America, where condoms are culturally accepted by many, people ask incredulously, ‘Why on earth does the Church oppose their promotion?’ Some with muddled thinking have even accused Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI of presiding over an AIDS genocide.

There are two distinct issues here: the moral status of individual acts; and the viability of a strategy targeting whole populations.

Regarding individual acts: according to prevention experts, a condom, when it is correctly used, can reduce the risk of HIVinfection during an act of intercourse, and individuals who use condoms consistently are less likely to give or get HIV. When a man and woman have sex before, within or outside marriage, public health is unconcerned with the morality of what they do in the privacy of

the bedroom. Culturally and legally, in Europe and North America, there is considerable acceptance for sexual behaviour as long as it is consensual, that is, provided the two individuals both agree. In this context, the condom seems common sense. Western opinion makers and media really want the Church to approve of extramarital sex, which is against the religious faith and traditional cultural values shared by millions throughout the world.

The Church understands sexual intercourse as part of a moral vision, permitting intercourse only within a married couple and excluding artificial means of contraception. Doing something wrong might be safer with a condom but safety doesn’t make the act right. The Church cannot encourage ‘safer’ without suggesting that it is somehow right. To say, ‘Do not commit adultery but, if you do, use a condom’ is tantamount to saying: ‘The Church has no confidence in you to live the good life.’

A man and woman, not married to each other, who have consensual intercourse are disregarding the Church’s teaching. They hardly need the Pope to tell them to use a condom. What they badly do need is for the Church to help them live a respectful and responsible sexuality. ‘Abstinence and fidelity are not only the best way to avoid becoming infected by HIV or infecting others, but even more are they the best way of ensuring progress towards lifelong happiness and true fulfilment.’ [2]

In the age of AIDS, there is a

Not served by media ideologies: 1. Paola Ramirez , a prostitute and Nicaraguan mother of three children, left, stands in front of the one-room brothel she rents for US$5 a day in Guatemala City. Ramirez, who turned to prostitution out of financial desperation, said she fears getting AIDS. 2. Orphans whose parents died of AIDS, right, gather around a waterspout in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. 3. Italian Cardinal Renato Martino, next right, visits a child AIDS patient at the Centre Oasis in Abidjan, Ivory Coast run by the Missionaries of Charity. 4. Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Fabian Han Fungxia , far right, briefs a group of US visitors about the HIV/ AIDS ministry in the Diocese of Liaoning in northeastern China. When the diocesan program began in 2005, it was the only religious-based ministry dealing with the health issue in the region.

special case: married couples who are discordant (one spouse being HIV positive) or doubly infected (both being HIV positive). Here, the Church accompanies a couple pastorally in making the most life-enhancing decision about their lives, their family, their marital relationship and their desire to have children. They deserve the same respect and dignity as every other Christian, which includes help to form their consciences, not having a neatly packaged solution dictated to them from the pulpit, much less in the press or on a billboard. You will not find a stauncher champion of the duty to follow one’s conscience than Pope Benedict.

What of the many situations that make Africans, especially women, more vulnerable to HIV infection – poverty, conflict, displacement, abuse and rape (even within ongoing relationships)? It is obviously a total illusion to imagine that a sexual aggressor could ever be persuaded to use a condom by the Pope, the State, an NGO or anyone else. But we can imagine a de-facto discordant couple, where the husband refuses to be tested, insists on intercourse and invokes Church teaching not to use a condom. Involved in several layers of selfdeception, the man is not entitled to claim the moral high ground, putting his wife’s life at risk. But no general solution is going to address the evils at work here. At the parish level the Church can and usually does offer moral formation, encouraging people to get tested and defending the rights of

The press conference that started it all: Pope Benedict XVI talks to journalists during his flight from Rome to Africa on March 17. PHOTO:

wake-up call

women. On the second issue of a strategy for whole populations, there is widespread belief that condom-use programs are effective in reducing HIV infection rates. However, this proves true only outside Africa and amongst identifiable sub-groups (e.g. prostitutes, gay men), not in a general population. There is no evidence that condoms as a public health strategy have reduced HIV levels at the level of the whole population.[3] Indeed, greater availability and use of condoms is consistently associated with higher (not lower) HIV infection rates, perhaps because when one uses a risk reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) because people take greater chances than they would without the technology.

Therefore at the public level, an aggressive condoms policy ‘increases the problem’ as it deflects attention, credibility and resources from more effective strategies like abstinence and fidelity – or in secular language, the postponement of sexual debut and a reduction in the proportion of men and women reporting multiple sexual partners. Abstinence and fidelity win little public support in dominant Western discourse, but they are vindicated by solid scientific research and are increasingly included, even favoured, in national AIDS strategies in Africa.

The promotion of condoms as the strategy for reducing HIV infection in a general population is based on statistical probability and intuitive plausibility. It enjoys considerable credibility in the Western media and among Western opinion makers. What it lacks is scientific support.

Some specialists in the prevention of HIV assume that, since vast numbers of people do not know whether or not they are infected, condom use should be automatic, mandatory and universal. Yet 95 per cent of Africans between 15 and 49 years of age are not infected (UNAIDS 2007). Knowing your status is a crucial step towards taking responsibility for your actions. Several Africans have told me that once they tested positive, they made a firm option for abstinence, rather than risk infecting someone else.

Thus, as the Bishops of Kenya said:

“Even if HIV did not make premarital sex, fornication, adultery, abuse of minors and rape so terribly dangerous, they would still be wrong and always have been. It is not the risk of HIV or the sufferings of AIDS, which make sexual licence immoral; these are violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments which are sinful, and today in Kenya surely the

Living with HIV

There are about 33 million people

eign and strange, and the values it embodies alien. A Jesuit in South Africa wrote to me, ‘Most people here think that “the Pope and condoms” is a side-show, stoked up by the media, and not an issue on which we want to spill more ink or destroy more forest.’

So when Benedict XVI affirmed that ‘the distribution of prophylactics … increase[s] the problem,’ it was not a casual remark or a gaffe; he had good grounds for saying so.

3. ‘The solution must have two elements:

3a. firstly, bringing out the human dimension of sexuality, that is to say a spiritual and human renewal that would bring with it a new way of behaving towards others … our effort to renew humanity inwardly, to give spiritual and human strength for proper conduct towards our bodies and those of others.’

The Church and global AIDS care

25%

Vatican officials estimate that around the world the Catholic Church now provides more than 25 percent of all care administered to those with HIV/AIDS. The proportion is naturally higher in Africa, nearly 100 per cent in the remotest areas.

HIV Treatment

This sexuality is based on faith in God, respect for oneself and the other, and hope for the future. Compare this vision with reliance on condoms. Everyone must recognise that ‘condoms all the time for everyone’ goes with a notion of ‘sex as fun without consequences’. Deep down, we know what a lie that is. It means treating another human being as a vehicle for my own pleasure. As public policy, it is to treat people as rapacious, unable to control themselves, incapable of anything beyond immediate self-gratification. Such an attitude is horribly pessimistic about humankind in general and, when imposed by public and international agencies on Africans, it also represents unconscious but abhorrent racism. This is not a route that the Church can take.

3b. ‘Secondly, true friendship offered above all to those who are suffering, a willingness to make sacrifices and to practise selfdenial, to be alongside the suffering … this capacity to suffer with those who are suffering, to remain present in situations of trial.’

reality on the ground. A Congolese Jesuit wrote to me, ‘Over here we are following the visit of the Pope with great interest, as well as the speculation in the press about the question of condoms arising from the Holy Father’s wise statement before touching down in Africa. What a shame that so far people don’t realise that the solution to AIDS won’t come with distribution of these things, but by handling the whole question as a whole.’ 4. The Holy Father concludes by answering again the journalist’s allegation of ‘unrealistic and ineffective?’: ‘It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so.’ According to my experience, most Africans, Catholic or not, agree. To them, what the Holy Father said is profound and true. He is reiterating what they have been experiencing for years and what they continue to expect. They too thank those who implement the Church’s strategy.

Michael Czerny SJ is Director of the African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN).

worst of their many destructive consequences is HIV and AIDS. The Church does not teach a different sexual morality, when or where AIDS poses no danger. But this teaching is not easy for ‘the world’ including the media to understand, much less accept.”[4]

The fact is that culture counts. A condom is more than a piece of latex; it also makes a statement about the meaning of life. While in Europe and North America the idea is quite acceptable (although not to all), in Africa fertility is prized and the condom seems for-

Such compassionate and generous service has been the lived African experience, practically from the beginning. Those afflicted by AIDS have usually found acceptance, solace and assistance from the Church whether they are members or not. Moreover, the formation of conscience (3a) and the selfless care (3b) go together.

A Church who tirelessly serves those in need is also credible in the teaching and formation which she offers. ‘And so,’ the Holy Father sums up, ‘these are the factors that help and that lead to real progress’ in the fight against AIDS.

Springing up out of Catholic faith and tradition, the Pope’s whole and indeed holistic message is for the people he is visiting. It connects thoroughly with the human

This article first appeared in Thinking Faith, the online journal of the British Jesuits - www. thinkingfaith.org

[1] In English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese as of 25 March 2009.

[2] Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, October 2003

[3] Prof. Edward C. Green, director of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project, Interview in Christianity Today posted 20/3/2009 citing research published since 2004 in Science The Lancet British Medical Journal and Studies in Family Planning http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/marchweb-only/11153.0.html (24 March 2009).

[4] Kenyan Episcopal Conference, This We Teach and Do, Volume One, 2006, http://www.kec.or.ke/viewdocument. asp?ID=19

Also - Catherine Parish - Page 12

Catholics coming home over the web

Media effort draws 92,000 inactive Catholics back home to Church.

■ By Ambria Hammel

PHOENIX (CNS) - Maybe TV isn’t so bad after all.

An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics in the Phoenix Diocese have come back to the Church in the last year thanks in large part to a groundbreaking television advertising campaign called Catholics Come Home.

The promotional spots featured people and locations from around the Phoenix Diocese to promote the Church during prime-time television.

The cornerstone of the campaign, the Catholics Come Home website, addresses often misunderstood aspects of the faith.

“For those who had fallen away from the practice of their faith, it let them know that we want them to come home,” Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said.

The commercials, which ran during Lent in 2008, detail the good works of the Catholic Church throughout history.

They also offer real-life testimonials of local fallen-away Catholics explaining what turned them away and what drew them back.

“Phoenix was supposed to be this quiet little test,” said Tom Peterson, a former resident of Phoenix who is president and founder of Catholics Come Home, which is now based in Georgia.

“Word went worldwide as soon as you launched,” he said in an interview with the Phoenix diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Sun.

More than half a million different visitors from all 50 states and 80 countries have visited the website catholicscomehome.com since the spots first aired.

The response was so positive that other dioceses around the country are looking

to Phoenix for ideas on bringing Catholics back to the Church. The Diocese of Corpus Christi in Texas recently launched different versions of the television spots in English and Spanish. Each parish supplemented the commercials at Ash Wednesday services with a brochure for everyone answering common faith-related questions and listing Mass times and ministries.

The Catholics Come Home spots will appear in more than a dozen other dioceses around the country later in 2009 or early 2010. By the time Advent rolls around in 2010, organisers say they’ll go national on major networks.

“Our family is made up of every race,” begins the longest of the spots. “We are young and old, rich and poor, men and women, sinners and saints.”

The two-minute ad highlights the vital

Bishops to host St Paul conference in cyberspace

An initiative that the great Gospel communicator would be proud of.

THE Catholic Church in Australia is to embark on a landmark “E-conference” on St Paul on June 30, with church groups and parishes encouraged to gather over the internet for the innovative conference.

Registrations have now opened for the Year of St Paul National E-Conference, entitled, “Paul – The Man, the Mission and Message for Today: igniting his purpose and passion”. The E-conference is an initiative of the Broken Bay Institute, a Christian learning centre seeking to empower people for discipleship in the Third Millennium, and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

It will be hosted by Australian television identity Mike Bailey, the ABC weatherman who unsuccessfully challenged the previous government’s Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey for a Senate seat in the 2007 federal election.

It will feature sessions from worldrenowned Scripture scholars Brendan Byrne SJ, Michele Connolly RSJ and film, media and communication scholar Richard Leonard SJ.

These sessions will be web-cast live to sites across Australia, and will be interspersed with opportunities for local gatherings to discuss the sessions with the guidance of a trained facilitator.

Bishop David Walker, a member of the Australian Catholic Bishops Commission for Mission and Faith Formation, said the format of the day would be a first for the Church in Australia.

“Every parish in Australia will have the opportunity to get involved, either by hosting a web-cast site themselves or by joining with another group nearby,” Bishop Walker said. “This is a wonderful opportunity for people from Broome to Broken Bay to be able to join in this very exciting program

‘’The Beheading of St Paul’’ in a panel in the Pauline Doors at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. CNS

of world class speakers. It is a fitting way to mark the end of the Year of St Paul in the Church and we feel it is an initiative of which St Paul, the great Gospel communicator would surely have been proud.”

The Director of the Broken Bay Institute, Dr Gerard Goldman, said that local communities need only a broadband connection, a projector and a screen to be involved in the E-conference, and incurs no cost.

Parishes and church groups can register to take part in the Year of St Paul National E-Conference by following the link to Year of St Paul on the Broken Bay Institute homepage, www.bbi.catholic.edu.au.

To register for facilitator training, to be held at Mary Mackillop Place, North Sydney on May 4 and 5, the faithful need only follow the link to Year of St Paul on the Broken Bay Institute homepage and download the forms.

part the Catholic Church has played in establishing hospitals, orphanages and schools in addition to its role in science, marriage, family life, Scripture and sacraments.

“If you’ve been away from the Catholic Church, we invite you to take another look,” the announcer says toward the end. “We are Catholic; welcome home.”

Another two-minute ad shows men and women alone watching the best and the worst scenes from their lives play back before them on an old movie reel.

The final ad that aired - Peterson has dozens more like it ready to go - featured snippets of testimonials about why Catholics left the Church and what they found upon their return. Peterson said the Catholics Come Home campaign has “the potential of re-Christianising our society and even catechizing the world.”

Much pro bono production, nearly $1 million from various donors and foundations, and a grant from the Catholic Community Foundation helped put the ads on the air.

The Diocese of Phoenix has witnessed increased interest in the Church, which leaders are attributing to last year’s campaign.

“It’s exciting to see the fruits that continue to grow from this,” said Ryan Hanning, coordinator of adult evangelisation for the diocese. According to Hanning, a number of the faithful have found a renewed passion for the Church, while fallen-away Catholics rejoined parish life.

Hanning worked closely with Peterson on the Catholics Come Home campaign and ensured that parish leaders, especially those in faith formation, were ready to welcome back Catholics and resolve sacramental and doctrinal issues. More than 25 parishes created programs to welcome Catholics back to the Church.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Tempe was one of them. It showed a video before Easter Masses and held a six-week program for returning Catholics.

“The commercials helped (fallen-away Catholics) realise that they were missing something in their lives,” said Father John Bonavitacola, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. He noticed that Catholics who had grown lax in their faith or who felt hurt by the Church, or who had divorced and remarried, returned. Many had their marriage validated in the Church while others joined for the first time.

Six months after the media campaign ended, a comprehensive analysis of its impact revealed a 22 per cent increase in Mass attendance at nine sample parishes. Throughout the diocese, the average increased Mass attendance - returned and new Catholics - was 12 per cent. That’s despite a flat population growth in the diocese during that period.

“Wherever they’ve been, they can come back home. It’s a message that resonates,” Hanning said.

The week after Easter The Record will produce another special edition showing how Christians gathered to celebrate their faith this year. SEND your Parish stories and photos (hi-resolution) to: production@therecord.com.au Help us to show everyone the joy of thousands. Deadline: Monday April 13. Further info/questions: The Editor, Peter Rosengren (08) 9227 7080

This is a screen grab, filmed in St Mary’s Basilica in Phoenix, from one of the Catholics Come Home television spots which aired last year. An estimated 92,000 inactive Catholics have come back to the Church in the diocese in large part because of the campaign. PHOTO: CNS/COURTESY CATHOLIC COME HOME

Kids bitz & puzzles

colour ARTIST WEEK

OF THE

PUZZLE:

Unscramble the following words that are people or things you would find at Mass:

PUZZLE:

Answer the questions based on the books of the Old Testament:

1. The second book of the Old Testament.

2. The first book named after a person.

3. The first book that is named after a woman.

4. A collection of 150 songs and poems.

5. The book whose title uses the letter K three times.

6. The book whose title starts with the letter A.

7. The last book of the Old Testament.

Eloise Bogoni, aged 7 years, is our Artist of the Week with this beautiful drawing titled “Jesus is Alive!”

CATHOLIC WORD GAMES Available

1. Stripe 2. Shot 3. Crelot 4. Largoi 5. Deerc 6. Steuricha 7. Mean

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico City, Mexico, A.D. 1531) Juan Diego said this image looks exactly like the lady he saw.

Answers: 1. priest, 2. host, 3. lector, 4. Gloria, 5. creed, 6. Eucharist, 7. amen.

Answers: 1. Exodus, 2. Joshua, 3. Ruth, 4. Psalms, 5. Habakkuk, 6. Amos, 7. Malachi.

On the day of Our Lord’s Passion, will you protect

■ By Anthony Barich

Heroic Christians who choose to stay in the Holy Land to live out their vocation and identity cannot survive in the Islam and Judaism-dominated region without material and spiritual support of the universal Church, Australia’s Commissary of the Holy Land said.

Friar Carl Schafer OFM of the Holy Land Commissariat said that the collections, taken up at Good Friday services throughout the Western world, helps Christians who make up two per cent of the population in the Holy Land.

“For them, survival as a minority in the midst of people of other faiths is not easy, especially because of ongoing political and religious conflict,” said the Friar, part of the Franciscan Order that has custody of the Holy Land.

He said that each day “unspeakable suffering” is caused by the area’s political and economic crisis. “This situation impresses upon all of us that there is an absolute and urgent need to support our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land,” he said.

“Despite their countless difficulties, these Christians offer day by day, and in silence, an authentic witness to the Gospel. They need the support of Christians in other parts of the world.”

The Catholic Church’s annual Collection for the Holy Land helps maintain Christian sites in the Holy Land, provides care for aged religious who spent their lives ministering in the land of Jesus and supports projects that help native Christians remain and thrive in the region.

The Friar noted that the Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem, when he resigned in March 2008, urged Christians not to leave the Holy Land, despite the persecution.

“We are not crushed between two realities (Islam and Judaism,” he said. “Rather, we belong to these realities. We are Palestinians and there are also Christian Jews.

“A Christian aware of his vocation in the Holy Land does not feel crushed but feels at home. Christian emigration is dramatic.

“We tell people: ‘By going you leave behind your land and your vocation. You have received the vocation to be a witness to Jesus in his land’.”

The collection is spent, for example, giving Catholics opportunities for work to support their families, “so they can live with dignity in their own native land and not be forced to emigrate, leaving the shrines frequented only by pilgrims and tourists”.

On behalf of the residents of the Holy Land, the Friar said he was “particularly grateful” to the Catholics of Australia “who give so generously each year to support the

missionary work of the Church in the Holy Land”.

The Archdiocese of Perth was ranked third behind Melbourne and Sydney in the Good Friday collections of 2008, amassing $110,468.75 for the upkeep of churches and shrines in the Holy Land and to help the everyday existence of Christians who live in the region, despite the political and economic turmoil.

Of the other dioceses in Western Australia, the Diocese of Broome contributed $1981, Bunbury $10,350 and Geraldton $4445.

Franciscan Friars have been caring for the churches and shrines of the Holy Land as part of their everyday pastoral ministry for centuries.

But supporting the upkeep of churches and shrines in the area is fruitless, the Friar said, if its Christians were not looked after.

“Certainly, the stone fabric of the precious shrines needs constant attention, but what will they be without the continued loving presence and Christian witness of the ‘living stones’, the indigenous Christians?” he said

The Eastern Churches, he said, share the Franciscans’ concern and “stand in solidarity with Christians of the Holy Land and those through the Middle East”.

Cardinal Luigi Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, also appealed to bishops around the world to encourage parishes in their dioceses to support the cause. The Catholic communities in the Holy Land face serious problems, especially “the first is the absence of peace,” the cardinal said in his letter, which was published in Italian in the March 25 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. In the past year, he said, “the joy of Christmas was wounded by the violent resurgence of hostilities in the Gaza Strip. Among the numerous victims were many completely innocent children.”

Pope Benedict XVI is among the first “to constantly comfort the Christians and all inhabitants of the Holy Land with words and gestures of extraordinary care,” the cardinal said, and “his desire to go on pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jesus” is a clear sign of how important the Holy Land is to the Church.

“The open wound caused by the violence worsens the problem of emigration, which inexorably deprives the Christian minority of its best resources for the future. The land that was the cradle of Christianity risks ending up without Christians,” the cardinal wrote, noting that, in an October general audience talk about the writings of St Paul, Pope Benedict spoke about how almost 2000 years ago the apostle initiated a collection for struggling Christians in Jerusalem.

“The collection expressed the community’s debt to the mother church of Palestine, from which they had received the ineffable gift of the Gospel,” the Pope had said during the audience.

A Palestinian boy looks around a pillar in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank. PHOTO: CNS DEBBIE HILL

A Christian pilgrim prays at the large marble slab believed to be where Jesus Christ’s body was washed after being removed from the cross. The stone is housed inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

PHOTO: CNS/YANNIS BEHRAKIS, REUTERS

Pope John Paul II touches the Western Wall in Jerusalem on the final day of his Holy Land pilgrimage in this March 26, 2000, file photo. Israel clarified that it will allow Pope Benedict XVI to visit the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, with his pastoral cross visible. Pope Benedict XVI will visit the Holy Land from May 8-15.

those who remain to witness to His Resurrection?

Projects funded with help from the annual Good Friday collection, taken up in dioceses around the world in Catholic Churches, include:

● The restoration, maintenance and improvement of visitor facilities at the Shrine of the Visitation in Ain Karem, at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and at the archaeological site of the ancient town of Magdala.

● Improvements to a home in Jerusalem for aged religious who have dedicated their lives to serving Christians and pilgrims in the Holy Land.

● Providing 300 scholarships for students attending the Catholic-run Bethlehem University in the West Bank or Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israeli universities in Haifa or Bir Zeit, or the university in Amman, Jordan.

● Continuing a program that helps new university graduates enter the job market by teaming up with companies and paying part of the new graduates’ salaries during their first year of employment.

● Retraining workers who have lost their jobs and supporting artisans.

● Supporting the Franciscan Family Centre in Bethlehem and its work with poor families, with children experiencing a variety of difficulties and in the field of health care.

● Assisting parishes in the region restore their churches or build classrooms and meeting facilities.

● Helping young Catholic families buy or remodel apartments as an encouragement to stay in the Holy Land.

● Supporting the Franciscan Biblical Institute, the Franciscan Media Centre and the Magnificat Institute, a school of sacred music, in Jerusalem.

● Restoring the Convent of St Lazarus, including areas for welcoming pilgrims.

● Supporting a seismic survey on the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre and installing a new lighting system for Holy Calvary; complete restoration of services in the zone of the Sanctuary of Gethsemane; restore the Cedron Valley between the Sanctuary and the ancient walls of Jerusalem and the preparation of spaces for prayer.

● Restoring a girls’ school in Bethlehem, as extra classes were added during rebuilding.

● Restoring the boundary wall of a kindergarten in Jericho that caters for 100 infants.

● Complete overhaul of the façade of the Emmaus-Queibeh pre-school (250 students).

● Restoring about 300 houses in the Old City of Jerusalem dating back to the Ottoman period which residents have been forced to abandon.

Bethlehem Today

Christians in the Holy Land: a breakdown

THE approximately 180,000 Christians who live in the Holy Land (Israel and Palestine) are divided into the various Churches:

● The Greek Orthodox Church: 80,000 faithful. The separation from Rome took place in 1517, when the Turks occupied Palestine and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem became an ethnic Greek. Thus, whilst the faithful and the parish priests are Arabs, the majority of the high clergy and the monks (about 250 people) are Greek.

● The Greek Catholic Church: 60,000 faithful. Founded in about 1682-1697 and officially established in 1730, through the union in Rome of some Greek Orthodox from Lebanon and Upper Galilee.

● The Latin Church: 27,000 faithful, without counting the thousands of Latin Catholics from Asia, Africa, Latin America etc. who live in the country, legally or illegally.

● The Maronite Catholic Church: 5500 faithful, especially in Galilee.

● The Syrian Orthodox Church: 2000 faithful, especially in Bethlehem.

● The Syrian Catholic Church: 300 faithful.

● The Armenian Orthodox Church: 2000 faithful, especially in Jerusalem.

● The Armenian Catholic Church: 400 faithful.

● The Coptic Orthodox Church: 700 faithful.

● The Coptic Catholic Church: 100 faithful.

● The Ethiopian Orthodox Church: 100 faithful, or perhaps more.

● The Lutheran and Anglican Churches group together about 3,700 faithful.

NB: These Churches are considered the “official” churches of the Holy Land, whereas the myriad of Churches that were born from the various currents of the Reform are not; however; many of these do not have more than a few dozen members.

- Information courtesy of custodia.org

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, Austria, visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. PHOTO: CNSYONATHAN WEITZMAN, REUTERS

Clergy process around the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Easter Mass in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is on the site where Jesus is believed to have been buried.

PHOTO: CNS/DEBBIE HILL

Franciscan friars carry palms along the traditional procession from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem to mark Passion Sunday, popularly known as Palm Sunday, in 2004. The procession commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before his death. Franciscans have been caring for Christians in the Holy Land and maintaining sacred sites for centuries. PHOTO: CNS

PERSPECTIVES

Every Holy Communion is a conversion War of the Worlds hits home

@home

I’ve always believed that family should pray together. Originally I belonged to the High Church of England and then I met and married a Catholic. The difference between the two religions seemed minimal to me. Obviously there are differences, like in leadership. Catholics have the Pope as their head and the Anglicans have the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, the responses and liturgy are very similar. In the end I decided to convert.

Why I became Catholic

with Debbie Warrier

Prior to my conversion, I had been interested in the Catholic Church. I’d read about it a bit. Of course I had never considered that I was going to be a Catholic. However, my husband Eddie and his family’s faith were attractive.  They had this attitude that no matter what was going on you went to Church.  Even if life was difficult for them, they still went. In some ways it propelled me towards looking at the Catholic Church deeper.

Growing up I had a learning disability. I was someone who could not communicate, speak up or join in. Consequently, I found myself often alone. I wasn’t worried by this, it was just who I was.  I spent a lot of time in the bush exploring and looking at nature.

My childhood was complicated. When my parents’ relationship disintegrated I was awarded to my father by the courts. Unfortunately, my father was unable to look after me. During this time in my life I experienced deep despair. In the end I was raised mostly by my grandmother. My grandmother wasn’t religious but had a spirit about her. Through her I learnt acceptance and love.

My faith has changed my life phenomenally. In my parish I coordinate the liturgy. I also do catechesis for the state school program as well as the RCIA process. I’m on the Archdiocese RCIA team and assist the Liturgy office.

In the parish I sing with the choir, do the flowers in the church and creative parts of liturgy. I also coordinate the Christmas Vigil Mass and the Outdoor Way of the Cross.

I was asked to be the support person for one of our parishioners who had cancer. She was a great friend. When she told me about the cancer I thought, “How can I fix this?” Then I realised the only thing that can fix this is the love of God. I can’t thank her enough for giving me the experience of being there for her. It removed the fear of death from me. It was a wonderful gift to travel with her on her final journey.

Like everything else in life I have had to grow and mature into my faith.

You are responsible for your own getting of Wisdom, for listening to and acting on the Word of God. You are responsible for taking your giftedness and giving it to the Church and the wider community. Most importantly, you are responsible for going to the Eucharist and being strengthened. Every time I go to Communion I have a conversion experience. At times I have physically felt the presence of Christ. My spirit is elevated. The Eucharist is the source and summit of my life.

If you have a story to tell please contact Debbie via debwarrier@hotmail.com

The war between truth and ideology has broken out again, this time in the field of management of the AIDS crisis, particularly in Africa.

The Record can quite easily, it seems, find a whole double page spread of clear and factual information in support of Pope Benedict’s words; but very few other papers, magazines or television news services appear able to do so. Reading the full text of his speech, it becomes clear that he is extremely well informed, and compassionate, and speaks out in an attempt to cut through the ideology and get people to recognise that pursuit of particular agendas is needlessly prolonging the epidemic and causing avoidable suffering to millions of people.

The Holy Father seems to have a better grasp of the epidemiology of AIDS in Africa than many other ‘experts’; it is programs focusing on monogamy and chastity that have worked most successfully in Africa to very significantly bring down the numbers of new AIDS victims.

These types of programs have underlying them a belief in the ability of not necessarily highly educated people, firstly to understand the nature of the problem they are faced with, and then to take personal responsibility for the solution.

Unlike the ideology peddlers apparently, the Pope believes that human beings can change their behaviour in the ways that have been proven to significantly lessen the spread of AIDS.

He is preaching nothing more than what was, until comparatively recently, understood as very achievable (in fact, expected in most western societies) human behaviour – abstinence from sex until marriage, and fidelity to one’s spouse. This was not just an expectation among religious people; it was a generally accepted norm of social behaviour. It is only recently that upholding fidelity and chastity has become ‘hard-line Catholicism’.

Catholic teaching and human truth are not mutually exclusive, as it would seem many PC ideologues believe. Pope Benedict is not necessarily preaching hard line Catholicism but a simple human truth that monogamy and chastity are positive human goods that bring physical as well as spiritual benefits to those who adhere to them. He is upholding the dignity of the person as manifested in their ability to control their own behaviour rather than give in to every physical urge that might cross their mind.

It is a particularly appropriate message for Lent, but also for all times

and seasons, and for everybody. It is moments like these when the Pope looks most Christ-like to me. He says nothing but the empirically supported truth about what is happening in Africa, and is pilloried for it by all and sundry. He stands up for the poor and helpless whose suffering is being prolonged by heartless agenda pushers who appear to care more for political correctness than human mercy, and rouses the very public and vocal ire of these barrow pushers.

Just like Our Lord, he accepts that his words are hard and inevitably will make him enemies. But when some he may have expected to support him do not do so, that makes him REALLY Christ-like – Jesus too was left with comparatively few who stuck with him through the bewilderment, fear, agony and humiliation of the Crucifixion.

The Pope is the guardian of God’s truth in this world; he chooses to tell it without spin doctoring. The world needs to hear the truth about AIDS in Africa and about a lot of other things. Long may he keep telling it.

Indulging in Our Lord’s Passion

By Fr John Flader

Stations of the Cross and Indulgences.

I have two questions about the Stations of the Cross. When I make the Stations on my own, are there any set prayers I must use? And what must I do in order to gain whatever indulgences are attached to the Stations?

Iam sure many people wonder about the matters you have raised.

The first thing to remember about the Stations of the Cross is that this traditional devotion does not form part of the liturgy of the Church.

The liturgy is the Church’s official forms of worshipping God. It includes the Mass, the Sacraments, funeral rites, Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, etc.

In all of these forms of worship there is an official rite or set of prayers approved by the Church which must be followed.

Since the Stations of the Cross are not part of the liturgy, there is no official rite for them. As I mentioned in an earlier column, the Church has approved the devotion of the Stations and has recommended the traditional 14 Stations, but there are no official prayers that must be said.

Over the years, various saints and

others have composed prayers and reflections on the different Stations that the faithful have found helpful. Some of them, like the Stations of St Alphonsus Liguori and those of St Josemaría Escrivá, have proven especially popular.

When parishes and other groups do the Stations together, they usually choose one or another of the many published versions.

These usually begin with the announcement of the Station, followed by the prayer “We adore you O Christ and we bless you”, which is answered by “Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world”. Then a reflection on the Station is read, which may include a prayer, after which an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be are said by all.

When someone does the Stations on their own, they are free to reflect on the Stations in whichever way they prefer. Many people will have a booklet with a version they like, and will say the same prayers that would be used by a group.

Others may prefer to read only the reflection, followed by their own prayers, or simply to meditate silently on each Station. Since the Stations are a matter of popular piety, each person can live the devotion in the way that most suits them.

In regards to your second question, over the centuries the Church has granted numerous indulgences for those who make the Stations of the Cross. Indulgences were first granted for those who made the Stations in Jerusalem itself, but later they were extended to the devotion done wherever the Stations were erected in churches throughout the world.

At the present time, according to the fourth edition of the Enchiridion

Indulgentiarum, or list of indulgences, published in 1999, a plenary indulgence is granted under the usual conditions (cf. J. Flader, Question Time, Connor Court 2008, n. 81) for those who make the Stations of the Cross.

In order to gain the indulgence the following norms must be observed.

The pious exercise must be made before Stations of the Cross legitimately erected. For the erection of the Stations 14 crosses are required, to which it is customary to add 14 pictures or images, which represent the Stations of Jerusalem.

According to the more common practice, the pious exercise consists of 14 pious readings, to which some vocal prayers are added. However, nothing more is required than a pious meditation on the Passion and Death of the Lord, which need not be a particular consideration of the individual mysteries of the Stations.

A movement from one Station to the next is required.

But if the pious exercise is made publicly and if it is not possible for all taking part to go in an orderly way from Station to Station, it suffices if at least the one leading the exercise goes from Station to Station, the others remaining in their place.

Those who are legitimately impeded can gain the same indulgence if they spend at least some time, for example a quarter of an hour, in pious reading and meditation on the Passion and Death of our Lord.

The Church, by granting a plenary indulgence for this devotion, is obviously encouraging the faithful to practise it regularly. It is truly a source of many blessings.

Fr Flader: director@caec.com.au

Helen Medina

with Catherine Parish

The unsung Religious heroes

Historical study of Jewish children hidden from Nazis has some gaps

“Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews From the Nazis.”

By Suzanne Vromen.

Available by order from the Record Bookshop $24.95.

In researching Hidden Children of the Holocaust, Suzanne Vromen studied Church and Jewish records, and interviewed 16 women and 12 men who were hidden as children in Belgian convents, and eight nuns and one priest involved in the rescues.

While the number of Religious and priestly rescuers is relatively small compared to the laity, the number of children rescued by them makes up a large percentage of the total rescued. This, of course, is because the nuns and priests had access to institutions such as convents and schools in which to blend the Jewish children with the Catholic children already there.

The introduction sets the rescues within the larger context of the time and place. In Chapters 1 and 2 Vromen describes what she learned from her interviews with those rescued as children and from the now-elderly nuns. One fascinating aspect of this approach is the differences in the memories of the two groups.

Nuns do not think discipline was a problem, for example, but the children, not schooled in dealing with nuns in the classroom or dormitory as Catholic children would be, sometimes felt it too authoritarian, though they were aware of the loving concern with which the nuns cared for them. The children, similarly, do not remember food being a particular problem, except in a few cases, but given the rationing of the times it is a major issue with the nuns.

Neither the nuns nor the children remember instances of forced conversions. But many Jewish children found the Catholic faith attractive and meaningful. Both children and nuns realised as well that being baptised and taking on at least an external Catholic persona would enhance their safety.

So many were baptised. Vromen seems to feel that the nuns were motivated to do so as much by the desire to save souls as by humanitarian concerns. But I wonder at the lack of citations from her interviews that might support this allegation.

Chapter 3, titled “The Escorts and the Resistance,” presents the organisation, activities and key people in the Committee for Defence of Jews, which included both Catholic and Jewish participants who risked their lives to take the children from their homes, at the request of their parents, and transport them safely, under the eyes of the Nazis, to the Catholic institutions which would take them in, which Vromen estimates to be at least 200 in number.

A theme running through the book is whether the hierarchy was actively involved in the rescue. The very number of Catholic institutions involved would indicate the hierarchy must have been well aware of what was going on and supported those saving efforts. Indeed, Vromen herself narrates how the Committee for Defence of Jews would regularly visit the cardinal’s secretary, who would give them names of institutions willing to take in more children.

Unlike the bishops of the Netherlands, the bishops of Belgium never issued a ringing condemnation of the deportations of Jews. The only thing accomplished by the Dutch declaration was a major intensification by the Nazis of the roundups of Jews.

A far higher percentage of the Jews in Belgium were saved than were saved in Holland. The final chapter centres on the commemoration by the Church and

the Jewish people of the rescuers, which Vromen finds stronger among the latter than the former, though she strains to blame the Catholic hierarchy for this.

In this section, too, she raises the fact that a number - perhaps as many as 84 Catholic individuals and some institutions - initially resisted releasing the children to the Jewish community, if they had been baptised and if no close relatives showed up to claim them. This is a topic that deserves a full study in its own right, which might resolve some of the questions she raises.

Needing more study, too, are some of her speculations on the attitudes toward women in the culture of Belgium and in the Church, which Vromen simply conflates without distinction.

Reviewed by Eugene J Fisher, a retired associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. -CNS

Destroying the barriers to barbarism

By Guy Crouchback

The great Catholic poet James McAuley once said that the program of the modern world was to kill Christ. I think this could be put in a much more secular but still valid terms: the program of modernity is to destroy the mental barriers against barbarism.

By “modernity” I don’t mean things like science and technology, which, properly used, helped lift us from barbarism and may yet, with God’s help, save us from it again. Christianity endorses science and the use of Reason implied in the scientific method (St Paul tells us to use the things that are visible to discover the things that are invisible).

Where we see the mental barriers against barbarism being attacked is in things like arts, morals and even manners and etiquette.

I realise now why, as a callow youth in the ’70s, I found that deep down I disliked the art and music of the day and of the day before that – the Beatles, Hair and so forth, the art of Picasso and Jackson Pollock and the poetry of, well, almost everyone around at that time.

It was not necessarily because it was pagan (I was in some ways rather pagan myself) but because it was, ultimately, barbaric, like the worse music we have today, and the meaningless or nihilistic art and literature which dominate much of both high and low culture today.

It was to do with the ultimate overthrowing not only of all traditional values, but also of all beliefs and of eradicating from the human consciousness the concept of meaning.

And I have no doubt that at least some of those promoting that culture were –and are – doing it with a conscious objective of destroying civilised society.

In that curiously prophetic novel The Flying Inn, written early in the last century, GK Chesterton had a Nietszchean villain, Lord Ivywood, state: “I see the breaking of barriers. Beyond that I see nothing.”

The evocation and celebration of meaningless has come to practically monopolise art today, epitomised in things like the works of Damien Hirst and Professor Tracey Emin. You can see it in both huge and petty aspects of our culture and society. It goes into almost every part of life. We are often told of the wickedness of prejudice – yet it is prejudices of a certain sort that keep the barbarians at bay. We are a viable civilisation because, apart from, largely deriving from, and also in addition to, the direct teachings and directions of the Church, we have widespread prejudices against pornography, and euthanasia, and recycling the dead as pet-food and a number of other things.

There are plenty of people in the modern world to tell us either directly or by implication that certain things are OK if we keep an open mind and put aside our prejudices and pre-conceptions, and we are kept civilised because we, and at least many of our non-Christian neighbours, have a prejudice that tells us these things are abominations. Even good manners – the idea that some things “are done” or “are not done” are a real part of this.

Setting aside adult world for youth

Fr Anthony Paganoni, Scalabrinian, continues his series on a long-running successful initiative in youth ministry in the province of Lombardy, Italy.

The ItalianWay

Informality: the magic bullet.

Informality, the threshold syndrome, marginality, life on the street, a sense of precariousness…. yes, all this and more. But also risk-taking, waiting for a better offer, solidarity with the peer group, supporting each other…yes, all this and much more, if the perspectives of the adult world are to be set aside in favour of the aspirations of youth. Informality can be the key to opening young people up to a fuller world, but gradually and without in any way restricting their new appetites, their thirst for adventure.

Well seasoned youth leaders will bring a modicum of formality into their daily contacts with adolescents negotiating their threshold syndrome, while never forgetting that informality is really the magic bullet. New horizons will open out before the young person, and the new insights will prove invaluable for the resource person, well connected with the Oratorio.

The most succinct refutation of atheism I have encountered is in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”

It is clear that the commitment to informality needs the whole-hearted support of the whole parish community. Complaints by the local establishment and well entrenched parishioners can seem endless: “Why should parish properties be vandalised by people who don’t even know what the inside of the church looks like? Why throw some of our best people into a ministry where results are so chancy?”

These and similar objections - with their ring of truth - completely misunderstand the world their young people live in, the future shapers of any Catholic community. The Parish Pastoral Council, the directors of the Oratorio and other parish groupings are continually challenged to step out of their comfort zone.

The never-outmoded Gospel invitation is to share the Good News with all people, particularly the ones on our doorstep. This community effort will avoid, by all means, setting up a distinction between those who believe and those who don’t.

At the centre of the community’s concerns, its liturgical celebrations and all its activities, no matter whether carried out on parish property or out in the streets or the shopping plaza or a bar, there will always be the same person: Christ.

The parish community as a whole will address its energies to people, regardless of their status in life, without preconceived prejudice and with a large dose of the spirit of evangelisation, with its ever-present elements of reckless grace and unfolding understanding.

Whenever and wherever this occurs, the world of adult and practising Catholics receives a shot in the arm. Life is like an open gospel. The Christian announcement does not depend on any highly structured and overly organised institution (the Church sometimes gives that impression, particularly to young people!). It needs a core group of people who, like the apostles, set their minds and hearts on helping other people to see things previously unseen and hear messages never heard.

To be continued...

Tony Paganoni, Scalabrinian Intriguing developments in Youth Ministry

Pablo Picasso’s The Dream.

PANORAMA

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday. Contributions may be emailed to administration@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9227 7087, or mailed to PO Box 75, Leederville, WA 6902. Submissions over 55 words will be edited. Inclusion is limited to 4 weeks. Events charging over $10 will be a put into classifieds and charged accordingly. The Record reserves the right to decline or modify any advertisment.

Saturday April 4

WITNESS FOR LIFE

8.30am, Mass at St Augustine’s, Gladstone Road, Rivervale followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at abortion clinic, led by Columban Missionary, Fr Paul Carey. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Saturday April 4

DAY WITH MARY

9am to 5pm at Saint Bernadette Church, Leeder Street and Jugan Street, Glendalough. 9am Video on Fatima. Day of prayer and instruction based upon the Fatima message. Reconciliation, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Sunday April 5

ROME: WYD09 CROSS AND ICON HANDOVER BROADCAST

6pm, Mass at St Thomas More, Bateman and St Simon Peter, Ocean Reef, 7pm supper, followed by delayed telecast at 7.30pm. Live telecast 6pm, at Integrity House, 67 Howe Street, Osborne Park. Watch Australia handing over the WYD Cross and Icon to Spain. RSVP: Bateman: youth@ batemancatholic.org, Ocean Reef: dan@reedeng.com. au or for live ceremony, mario.borg@disciplesofjesus.org

Sunday April 5

DIVINE MERCY

1.30pm at St Joachim’s Church, Shepperton Road and Harper Street, Victoria Park. An afternoon with Jesus and Mary, Rosary and Reconciliation. Sermon with Fr Johnson Malayil CRS on the Passion of Jesus and St Francis of Paolia followed by Divine Mercy prayers and Benediction. Refreshments followed by a Video/DVD Come Back Home Part 1 with Fr Corapi. Enq: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Wednesday April 8

CHAPLETS OF THE DIVINE MERCY

7.30pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Road, Bateman. Experience the Chaplets of Divine Mercy and make it a beautiful and prayerful prelude to the Easter Triduum. All are welcome. Enq: George 9310 9493 home or 9325 2010 work.

Thursday (Maundy) April 9 - Holy Saturday April 11 HOLY WEEK TRIDUUM IN THE TRADITIONAL LATIN RITE

7pm at City Trinity College Chapel, Trinity Avenue, East Perth, Maundy Thursday, Latin Mass followed by Adoration. 1.30pm, Good Friday, Stations of the Cross. 3pm Solemn Liturgy of the Passion and Death of Our Lord. Fast and abstinence. 7pm Ancient Ceremonies of Tenebrae. Holy Saturday Vigil at 9.30pm Ceremonies of Mass of Easter. Enq: Fr Michael Rowe 9444 9604.

Good Friday April 10

ANCIENT CEREMONIES OF TENEBRAE IN HOLY WEEK

7pm at Trinity College Chapel, Trinity Avenue, East Perth, sung at close of day, in order to signify the setting of the Sun of Justice and the darkness of those people who knew not our Lord and condemned Him to the Cross. Candles are extinguished gradually as the office is a funeral service commemorating the death of Jesus Christ, as indicated by singing Lamentations of Jeremias. Enq: Fr Michael Rowe 9444 9604.

Good Friday April 10

DESOLATA SERVICE

7.30pm at St Denis Parish, Osborne and Roberts Streets, Joondanna. The Desolata commemorates the sorrow of Mary as she witnessed the death and burial of her Son, Jesus. Each year the Sorrows of Mary first experienced over 2000 years ago, are related to our lives of today. The Desolata makes a wonderful closing to Good Friday.

Good Friday April 10

PASSION PLAY

9.45am at Holy Spirit Church, Bent Street Oval, City

Beach. Dramatic re-enactment of the Lord’s passion and death. An opportunity to reach family and friends who may not normally be involved in their faith. Enq: Janny 0420 635 919.

Good Friday April 10 to Easter Monday April 13

HOLY WEEK TRADITIONAL LATIN RITE

10am at St John’s Pro-Cathedral, Victoria Avenue, Perth, Stations of the Cross. Holy Mass Easter Sunday at 7.30am, 9.15am and 11.15am and Easter Monday at 10am Holy Mass. Enq; Fr. Michael Rowe 9444 9604.

Friday April 10

CATHOLIC AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE – BINDOON

GOOD FRIDAY CEREMONIES

Commence 10.30am with Confessions, 11am Stations of the Cross, followed by Confessions again. 2.30pm Solemn Ceremony, The Lord’s Passion. All are welcome. Enq: 9576 1040 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

Good Friday April 10 to Sunday April 19

DIVINE MERCY FEAST DAY

3pm to 4pm every day at Holy Family Church, Lot 375, Alcock Street, Maddington. Divine Mercy feast celebration will start with 9 days of Divine Mercy Novena. Enq: 9493 1703.

Thursday April 16

ST PEREGRINE HEALING MASS

7pm at SS John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Road, off South Street, Willetton. Healing Mass in honour of St Peregrine, patron of Cancer sufferers and helper of all in need. The celebration will include Veneration of the Relic, and Anointing of the Sick. Enq: Noreen 9498 7727.

Sunday April 19

SOUTH SUNDAY SESH

7pm at Riverton Parish. Mass, followed at 8pm Sunday Sesh. Guest Speaker, Bishop Don Sproxton on Why Believe in God? The largest youth night returns in 2009. Open for youth from ages 15-35. The night includes: music, activities, prayer time and group discussions. Bring money for supper. Enq: www.cym.com.au or call 9422 7912.

Sunday April 19

FEAST OF DIVINE MERCY CELEBRATION

1.30pm at St Joachim’s Parish, Harper Street and Shepperton Road, Victoria Park. Holy Rosary and Chaplet of Divine Mercy Prayer. Reconciliation available. 2.30pm Holy Mass, Main Celebrant Monsignor Thomas McDonald and preacher Fr Hugh Thomas, C.S.s.R. Other priests are invited to concelebrate. Benediction 3.30pm followed by Veneration of Saint Faustina’s First Class relic. Enq: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Sunday April 19

WASIMH LADIES CHOIR

VIVALD I’S GLORIA

7pm at Holy Family Church, Como. Director, Veronica Moylan, Organist, Helen Edmonds.Tickets are $15. Proceeds to Fr Marcelino Malana’s Children’s Home in Sto Phillipines. Enq: Veronica 9498 7484.

Saturday April 25

ST PADRE PIO PILGRIMAGE – BULLSBROOK-

BINDOON AND GIN GIN

8am Buses depart from pick up points. 9.30am Station of the Cross, at Bullsbrook. 11am Holy Mass and BYO lunch Bindoon. Tea and coffee provided. 2pm, Eucharistic Procession, Rosary, Divine Mercy and Benediction at Gin Gin. 3.34pm Depart for Perth. Enq: Midland Catrina 9255 1938, Bassendean Ivana 9279 7261, Morley Patsy 9444 3617, Balcatta Rosa 9276 1952, Glendalough Mary 6278 1540, Victoria Park, Girawheen and Mirrabooka Nita 9367 1366.

Sunday April 26

NORTH SUNDAY SESH

6pm at Morley Parish. Mass followed at 7.15pm Sunday Sesh. Guest Speaker, Bishop Don Sproxton on Why Believe in God? The largest youth night returns in 2009. Open for

youth from ages 15-35. The night includes: music, activities, prayer time and group discussions. Bring money for supper. Enq: www.cym.com.au or call 9422 7912.

Sunday April 26

AWAKENINGS

DYNAMIC RETREAT WITH A DIFFERENCE

8.45am to 4pm at Patrist House, 7 Warde Street, Midland. Attendance for full day is necessary. Bring your own lunch, light refreshments provided. Must Book 9250 5395.

Monday April 27

DIVINE MERCY PILGRIMAGE TO ST ANNE’S BINDOON

12pm BYO lunch. 1.30 pm Holy Rosary, Benediction and Way of the Cross. 2.30 pm Holy Mass followed by Divine Mercy Devotions and Benediction. 3.45pm tea. 4.30pm return to Perth. All Divine Mercy Prayer Groups are welcome. Transport, Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877. Enq: Sheila 9575 4023 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

Sunday May 3

THE 2009 BUSSELTON MAY ROSARY CELEBRATION IN HONOUR OF OUR LADY

12.30pm at Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine, Bove’s Farm, Roy Road, Jindong, Busselton. Hymn singing. 1pm Concelebrated Mass led by Fr Tony Chiera, followed by Rosary Procession and Benediction. Tea provided. All welcome. Note: Roy Road runs off the Bussell Highway, approximately halfway between Busselton and Margaret River. Bookings: Francis 0404 893 877 or 9459 3873.

Friday May 15

CELEBRATION OF 50 YEARS OF NORBERTINE CANONICAL LIFE IN WA

Solemn Pontifical Mass 7.30pm at Church of St Joseph, 135 Treasure Road, Queens Park, followed by supper and an exhibition at the Fr O’Reilly Centre of St Norbert’s College. The exhibition will be made available at the Priory’s Chapter Room followed by the Parish of York. To help with catering, RSVP to parish @norbert.wa.edu.au or 9458 2729 ext 246.

Saturday May 16 - Sunday May 17

WEEKEND RETREAT – CATHOLIC FAITH RENEWAL

A weekend Retreat by Fr Gino Henriques, CSsR of the Redemptorist Congregation, on Joy of Christian Living. He is an international speaker who has preached to bishops, fellow priests, religious and laity through retreats, seminars and conferences. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913, Rose 0403 300 720 or Maureen 9381 4498.

Every Tuesday

BIBLE TEACHING WITH A DIFFERENCE

7.30pm at St Joachim’s Parish Hall, Shepparton Road, Victoria Park. Special topic, Games People Play. Come and see. Light refreshments will follow. Bring along your Bible, a notebook and a friend. Enq: Jan 9284 1662.

Every Wednesday Night

CATHOLIC YOUTH MINISTRY MASS AND HOLY HOUR

5.30pm at the Catholic Pastoral Centre, 40A Mary Street, Highgate, followed at 6.30pm by dinner. Cost donation $5. Enq: www.cym.com.au or call 9422 7912.

CHANGE OF WEEKEND MASS TIME

OUR LADY OF LOURDES – NOLLAMARA PARISH

From 18 April 2009, Weekend Mass times will be as follows: Saturday Vigil 6pm and Sunday 9am. Weekday Masses remain the same. Enq: Catherine 9345 5541.

Every Sunday

SHRINE OF VIRGIN OF THE REVELATION

2pm at 36 Chittering Road, Bullsbrook. Pilgrim Mass, with Rosary and Benediction. Reconciliation is available in English and Italian. Anointing of the sick is every second Sunday of the month during Mass. Honour of the Virgin of the Revelation is on the last Sunday of the month and side entrance is open daily between 9am and 5pm. Enq: SACRI: 9447 3292.

Every Tuesday NIGHT PRAYER MEETINGS

7pm at St Mary’s Cathedral parish centre, 450 Hay Street, Perth. Overcome the burdens in life making prayer your lifeline with Jesus. Personal healing in prayer, Rosary, meditation, Scripture, praise in song, friendship, refreshments. Be united with Our Lord and Our Lady in prayer with others. Appreciate the heritage of the faith. Recess, April 7 and 14.

LA SALLE COLLEGE

ABORIGINAL SCHOLARSHIPS YEAR 7 AND 8 2010

La Salle College is now accepting Aboriginal Scholarship Applications. The two scholarships for Years 7 and 8 in 2010 are funded by the College and offer full tuition for a period of up to three years. Closing date 30 April 2009. Enq: Ms Linda Balcombe 9274 6266 or email lba@lasalle. wa.edu.au

LA SALLE COLLEGE ENROLMENTS YEAR 7, 2011

La Salle College is now finalising enrolments for Year 7 in 2011- current Year 5 students. For an enrolment package, contact Ms Linda Balcombe, 9274 6266.

Every 1st and 3rd Sunday of Each Month

ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL SINGERS CHOIR

9.30am at St Joachim’s Pro Cathedral, Victoria Park. We are seeking new members to join us – be part of singing at the refurbished St Mary’s Cathedral. Full training provided. Enq: Michael 041 429 4338 or michael@ michaelpeters.id.au

Every Tuesday THEOLOGY OF THE BODY FOR TEENS

6.30pm to 7.30pm at Holy Spirit, City Beach. DVD by Christopher West will be shown for 12 weeks, with breaks over Easter. Young and experienced facilitators will assist discussion in small groups following each DVD viewing. Cost, free. Intended age group, 16-18. Enq: 9341 3079, HolySpirit.Parish@perthcatholic.org.au

Every Wednesday THE JULIAN SINGERS

7.30pm to 9.30pm at the Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor Street, East Perth. Inviting any interested people for rehearsals to see if they may like to join the choir. We are a liturgical choir and also perform an annual charity concert. Enq: Chris 9276 2736 or Angela 9275 2066.

Every First Friday of the month

ST PADRE PIO - LATIN MASS

7.30pm at St Joseph’s Church, 22 Hamilton Street, Bassendean. Latin Mass according to the 1962 missal will be offered in honour of St Padre Pio. The Latin Mass is also offered every Monday evening - except the third week of the month - at 7.30pm. All welcome.

Third Sunday of the Month

OBLATES OF ST BENEDICT

2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York Street, South Perth. Oblates affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey New Norcia welcome all who are interested in studying the rule of St Benedict and its relevance to the everyday life of today for lay people. Vespers and afternoon tea conclude meetings. Enq: 9457 5758.

Every Sunday

DIVINE MERCY PRAYER AS NOVENA

3pm St Aloysius Church, 84 Keightley Road, West Shenton Park. An opportunity for all to gather once a week and say the powerful Divine Mercy, Eucharistic Adoration, healing prayers followed by Holy Mass at 4pm. Enq: 9381 5383.

WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR EVENT?

Panorama is the best place to put it - it’s one of the most read pages in The Record. You can also get your notice on to our website. BUT if you don’t make our deadline, your event will not get a run!

CLASSIFIEDS

Vatican releases details of papal trip to Holy Land

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- On his first trip to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI will meet with Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders, stop at the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and visit a refugee camp in Bethlehem, West Bank, the Vatican said. The May 8-15 visit will take the pope to holy sites in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. The schedule, published March 26, said the pope would visit the new King Hussein Mosque in Amman, Jordan, stop at Jesus’ baptism site at the Jordan River, and make a pilgrimage to Mount Nebo, where Moses once looked out at the Promised Land. The pope’s program calls for encounters with Israeli political leaders, Christian leaders, Jerusalem’s most prominent rabbis and the city’s leading Muslim cleric, the grand mufti. Pope Benedict also will visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and celebrate public Masses in Amman, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Nazareth, Israel.

Anti-abortion activist

vows daily protest of Notre Dame’s Obama invite

WASHINGTON (CNS) - Antiabortion activist Randall Terry March 25 announced plans to open up an office in South Bend, Indiana to launch a vigorous daily protest of President Barack Obama’s scheduled May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. Terry, 49 - who became a Catholic in 2006 and is the founder of the antiabortion group Operation Rescuetold a small gathering of reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he sent an envoy to South Bend that day to find one or two houses to rent near the campus to serve as his organisation’s protest headquarters. Terry and other critics of Notre Dame’s choice of Obama have said the president’s support of legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research makes him an inappropriate choice to be the commencement speaker at a Catholic university.

Catholic official says church-state relationship fine in Russia

Walking with Him Daily Mass Readings

5 S PASSION SUNDAY (PALM SUNDAY)

Red Isa 50:4-7 No resistance

Ps 21:8-9.17-20.23-24 They cast lots Phil 2:6-11 Death on a cross Mk 14:1-15;47 Am I a brigand?

6 M MONDAY OF HOLY WEEK

Vio Isa 42:1-7 The cause of right Ps 26:1-3.13-14 Hold firm, take heart Jn 12:1-11 Kill Lazarus as well

7 T TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK

Vio Isa 49:1-6 Called before birth

Ps 70:1-6.15.17 A rock to save me Jn 13:21-33.36-38 Lay down your life?

8 W WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK

Vio Isa 50:4-9 Withstood insult Ps 68:8-10.21-22.31.33-34 I suffer taunts Mt 26:14-25 Thirty silver pieces

CHRISM MASS: Thursday of Holy Week (Morning) or another day towards the end of Lent Wh Isa 61:1-3.6.8-9 The Lord’s anointed Ps 88:21-22.25.27 David anointed Rev 1:5-8 Sins washed away Lk 4:16-21 Jesus anointed

EASTER TRIDIUM

9 TH HOLY THURSDAY: EVENING MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER Wh Ex 12:1-8.11-14 The flesh to be eaten Ps 115:12-13.15-18 Cup of salvation 1 Cor 11:23-26 I passed on to you Jn 13:1-15 Jesus’ perfect love

10 F GOOD FRIDAY: CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S PASSION

Red Isa 52:13-53:12 A man of sorrows

Ps 30:2.6.12-13.15-17.25 I take refuge

Heb 4:14-16;5:7-9 Not let go of faith Jn 18:1-19:42 Jesus’ passion

11 S HOLY SATURDAY

12 S EASTER SUNDAY EASTER VIGIL

Wh Gen1;1-2:2

Let there be light Gen 22:1-18 A burnt offering

Ex 14:15-15:1 The pillar of cloud

Isa 54:5-14 Everlasting love

Isa 55:1-11 Seek the Lord Bar 3:9-15.32-4:4 Walk in God’s way Ezek 36:16-28 I shall cleanse you

Rom 6:3-11 Alive for God

Mk 16:1-7 Jesus has risen

MASS DURING THE DAY

Acts10:34.37-43 Recent happenings

Col 3:1-4 Hidden life

[Alt. 1Cor 5:6-8 Sincerity, truth] Jn 20:1-9 Failed to understand

[Alt. Mk 16:1-7 Jesus has risen]

[Alt. in evening: Lk 24:13-35 They recognised him]

ishes were not legally registered and some parish priests would be unable to celebrate Easter Masses because they were unable to renew their visas.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Classifieds: $3.30/line incl. GST Deadline: 12pm Monday

ACCOMMODATION

■ RIVERTON

Male to share house, rent $120 plus half expenses, 0449 651 697.

■ ACCOMMODATION SOUGHT

For student (17) from the country, preferably within easy travelling distance of Subiaco. Phone Ellis 0413 383 497.

■ DUNSBOROUGH

Beach cottage, 3 bedrooms, sleeps 7, 300m to Quindalup beach. Great price for Dunsborough! Tel: Sheila 9309 5071 / 0408 866 593 or email: shannons3s@optusnet.com.au.

■ SHEKINAH FOUNTAIN B&B & beachside homestay. Quiet area. Lovely garden. Opposite beach, 2 bedr, sleeps 5. Disabl bathr. Special rates F/T clergy, missionaries, pensioners & off peak. Richard & Ann Pether, Ph/Fax 08 9751 1126, Mob 0488 267 165, Email: richann@ westnet.com.au

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BUILDING TRADES

■ BRICK RE-POINTING

Phone Nigel 9242 2952.

■ PERROTT PAINTING PTY LTD

For all your residential, commercial painting requirements. Phone Tom Perrott 9444 1200.

■ BRICKLAYING

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■ PICASSO PAINTING

Top service. Phone 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505.

■ MAINTENANCE

Guttering/down pipe replacement. Qualified tradesperson. Quality of work guaranteed. Call Peter 0449 651 697.

BOOK REPAIRS

■ REPAIR YOUR LITURGICAL BOOKS

General repairs to books, old bibles & missals. 2ndhand Catholic books avail. Tydewi Bindery 9293 3092.

HEALTH

■ FREE

Sample pack for Extra energy and Weight loss. Call - 02 98075337 or 0432 274 643.

■ COUNSELLING/PSYCHOTHERAPY www.christianpsychologist.info Tel: 9203 5278.

■ EDUCATION & COUNSELLING

Invest in your relationships and happiness for the whole family. RCPD courses beginning in Fro also family counselling and Austudy Appr. ADV. Dip in Christian counselling. 0409 405 585.

SINGLES

■ CHRISTIAN SINGLES

OXFORD, England (CNS) - Although a Russian Catholic editor has questioned the lack of Catholics on a key state council of the country’s major religions, the secretarygeneral of the Russian Catholic bishops’ conference said it is nothing to worry about.

“Both our archdiocese and the state administration have recently undergone personnel changes, and that’s why we didn’t take part,” said Father Igor Kovalevsky, secretarygeneral. “But the Russian state is conducting dialogue with the Catholic Church at both international and local levels, so this isn’t a serious problem.” He told Catholic News Service on March 26 that the Church in Russia hoped to take part in future meetings. Viktor Khroul, editor of Russia’s Catholic Svet Evangelia online news agency, criticized the church’s absence on the Presidential Council for Cooperation With Religious Associations. He said the council offered an important opportunity to raise Catholic issues at a time when half the Church’s par-

Kenyan bishops urge Christian leaders to stop calling for elections

ELDORET, Kenya (CNS) - Bishop Cornelius Arap Korir of Eldoret has urged his country’s Christian leaders to stop calling for new general elections. Bishop Korir said the 2007 elections are no longer an issue for the country, and he called on the National Council of Churches of Kenya to work for peace. The Catholic Church is not a member of the council. “We are still reconciling after the postelection violence and now the issue of elections is not a priority in the country,” Bishop Korir said, adding that President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga are in a position to lead the country until 2012 when their terms expire. More than 1,200 people were killed and 350,000 were displaced.

Widowed, divorced or never married. All age groups. Meet-for-Drinks, Dinner Seminars and Individual Dates. Phone 9472 8218. Tues-Fri 10am - 6pm. www.figtrees.com.au

FURNITURE REMOVAL

■ ALL AREAS Mike Murphy 0416 226 434.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

■ GROTTO

The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate need volunteers to help build a limestone Grotto for our Blessed Mother. Please contact Fr Joseph Michael Mary at (08) 94372792.

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 Road, 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 Court (off McCoy St), Myaree, 9329 9889 (after 10.30am Mon to Sat). We are here to serve.

■ OTTIMO

Shop 108, TRINITY ARCADE (Terrace Level) Hay St, Perth. Ph 9322 4520. Convenient city location for a good selection of Christian products/gifts. We also have handbags, fashion accessories.Opening hours Monday-Friday 9am-6pm.

SETTLEMENTS / FINANCE

■ EFFECTIVE LEGAL Family owned law firm focusing on property settlements and wills. If you are buying, selling or investing in property, protect your family and your investment, contact us on (08) 9218 9177.

■ FOR EVERYTHING FINANCE

Ph. Declan 0422 487 563, www.goalfinancialservices.com.au Save yourself time, money and stress. FBL 4712

WANTED

■ SEEKING BOOKS

Any number of copies of The Catholic Worship Book or The New Living Parish Hymnal are sought by St Mary’s Parish, West Melbourne. Contact Jeremy 0429 395 484.

CONCERT SERIES

■ COLLEGIUM SYMPHONIC CHORUS

Conductor: Margaret Pride SUBSCRIPTION SERIES 2009 - 20% Discount Book in advance for a 2 or 3 concert series. Masters & Friends of St Mark’s Venice - Sun 7th June at 3 pm - Government House Ballroom. Haydn’s The Creation - Sat 29th Aug at 8 pm - Winthrop Hall. Handel’s Messiah - Sat 19th Dec at 8 pm - Perth Concert Hall. Phone: (08) 9252 0002, ww.collegiumchoirs.com.au

PASTORAL CARE COURSE

■ FOR MINISTRY WITH THE MENTALLY ILL

For those wanting to know about mental illness this 17 week course will run on Fridays, 8.45am to 3.30pm from 5th June to 25th Sept. 2009. This course involves information sessions on schizophrenia, bipolar, suicide awareness, eating disorders etc plus group work and ward visits. Course donation of $100 is invited. Applications close 8th May. For information contact Bob Milne, Graylands Hospital, Pastoral Centre 9347 6685 0413 325 486.

MISSION MATTERS

Missionary reflections on this Sunday’s Gospel; Mark 1: 41-42

“…Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him… and the leprosy left him at once and he was cured…”

Despite the availability of multi-drug therapies that successfully cure leprosy, there are between 450,000 and 700,000 new cases of the disease still being diagnosed each year throughout the developing world. On top of this there are over 3 million people world-wide suffering from serious and chronic disabilities caused by the disease. I remember quite vividly the first leper I had to treat with foot massage at a Mission clinic in Africa. I remember the revulsion and fear I felt at the sight of her feet. I remember the shame I felt as she smiled gently at me. It was a smile that was so forgiving, so understanding, so healing. At the end of our session together it was me that was cured of the ‘leprosy’ in my heart.

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 9am - 2.30pm on (08) 9227 7080 or via bookshop@therecord.com.au 587 Newcastle St, West Perth