The Record Newspaper 01 September 2010

Wednesday,

 THE P ARISH . THE N

Deacon with a guitar Deacon with a

He’ s young, hip, sings like a rock star and is in love with God

He’s young, sings like a rock star and is in love with God -

Vice Chancellor sets out vision of a unique kind of education

Over 1,500 prospective students attended The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle Campus for a day of presentations, activities and interactive workshops on its annual Open Day, on 22 August 2010.

The large turnout appeared to express a solid interest in the distinctive university and what it has to offer among those shopping for a tertiary education commencing in 2011.

Hosting 13 tours, 25 information sessions, seven laboratories, seven forums and 11 interactivity sessions from its growing number of Schools, the Open Day showcased the unique culture of Notre Dame.

In a forum addressing the question: ‘Why Notre Dame?’, Vice Chancellor, Professor Celia Hammond, spoke about the University’s unique approach to its student body and the emphasis placed on the importance of their current and future role as members of the wider community.

“Our approach at Notre Dame is to engage each student through a wider education which caters to the growth of the whole person,” said Professor Hammond.

“Students have a broad range of training options and extra-curricular activities to encourage them to engage in life on campus, including core curriculum training, double degrees, study abroad, student life, pastoral care, volunteering, sports and many other immersive activities.”

Professor Hammond emphasised the University’s goal to produce quality students who would not only contribute professionally in society but would also become valuable citizens of their communities.

“We want our students to get jobs when they finish and to become valuable contributors to the economic health of society. But we want more for them and from them,” said Professor Hammond. “We want them to be able to contribute to society in ways that probably can’t be quantified in purely economic or numeric terms. I believe this feature is what distinguishes us here at Notre Dame.”

THE R ECORD

Notre Dame emphasises the intangibles

Taste, style, dance cards at the Chivalry Ball

She’s young, beautiful and set to become a Saint

Focolare members in Perth are set to celebrate an historic moment. They’d like everyone to join them.

BY TESS LEE

We all know of many saints. Priests, Nuns, Missionaries, Martyrs, Visionaries – most of whom lived hundreds of years ago. Is it possible for a saint to be an ordinary normal person? Someone just like us? Yes!

Chiara Badano was born in Sassello, Italy, in 1971 to parents who had all but given up hope for a child after 11 years of marriage. She was an only child and grew up in a loving family where she received a Christian education. Even as a child, she had a generous

spirit. Once, when she was four years old, Chiara’s mother suggested that Chiara might like to give some of her toys away to the poor children. Her immediate reaction was ‘No’. Chiara’s mother left, but only a few minutes later returned to the room after hearing some noise. She saw Chiara sorting her toys to find the ones to give away. Chiara explained ‘I can’t give broken toys to children who don’t have any’.

At the age of nine, Chiara and her parents met the Focolare movement at a large family gathering in Rome. This was a major step in the life of the family that now followed the Focolare ideal of unity. Chiara became a Gen (the second generation of the Focolare movement) and found a new relationship with God.

Chiara also began corresponding with Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement. Not long after her twelfth birthday, Chiara Badano wrote, ‘I have dis-

covered that Jesus Forsaken (when on the cross He cried out – “my God, my God why have you forsaken me”) is the key to unity with God. I want to choose him as my spouse and get ready for when he comes – to prefer him. I have understood that I can find him in those who are far from God, ... and I have to love him in a very special way’ At the age of 12, Chiara had made the radical decision to love Jesus in all the difficulties that would arise in her life.

Chiara had many friends and interests. She loved music, swimming, tennis and hiking. She was also involved in her parish community. Like many teenagers, she sometimes argued with her parents, like over the time of curfew, but these issues were resolved through discussion and compromises on both sides.

At the age of 17, a painful shoulder was found to be bone cancer – the prognosis

Please turn to Page 4

Prospective students mingle with staff at Notre Dame and consider the options at Notre Dame’s highly successful Open Day on 22 August. PHOTO: UNDA

Perth couples twirl gracefully around the dance floor at the Chivalry Ball held at St Kieran’s parish hall in Osborne Park on 14 August. The event, now in its second year, includes dance cards and emphasises the practise of courtesy and refined manners. It offers a refreshing avenue for the young (16-35) men and women seeking to experience chivalry and be inspired to live chastity. White dresses express purity and help inspire gentlemanly behaviour and conduct to bring a certain expression of dignity to occasion. For full story and more photos, see Page 6. PHOTO: COURTERSY CHIVALRY BALL.

AT A GLANCE

Forthcoming events around the Archdiocese

St Francis Xavier, East Perth

Divine Mercy Healing

Mass will be celebrated by Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM, followed by veneration of First Class Relic of St Faustina Kowalska. Reconciliation in English and Italian will be offered. Enq: John 9457 7771.

Special seminars aim to help leaders of not-for-profits

BY ANTHONY BARICH

The Edmund Rice Institute for Social Justice is hosting two intensive workshops in September to help not-forprofits, managers and board members become more organised and effective advocates for their causes.

government and not-for-profit sectors.

This event provides skills and insights about the unique approaches to organisational capacity needed to build durable and sustainable organisations.

Travel Dream

2915

The Parish. The Nation. The World. Find it in The Record.

When: 2.30pm on 11 September at St Francis Xavier Church, Windsor St, East Perth.

Our Lady of Lourdes, Lesmurdie

Lesmurdie Mental Health Support Group presents a guest speaker from Christian Meditation Community to address the topic, “How meditation can help with mental health”.

Bring a plate of finger food to share. Enq: Ann 9291 6670 or Barbara 9328 8113.

When: 6-8pm on 15 September at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Hall, 207 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie.

The workshops, held at ERISJ headquarters in Fremantle on 11 and 24 September, will tackle the organisational challenges non-profits and charities face, and teach advocacy and media skills.

The 11 September workshop, Between Governance and Mission-Centricity: Challenges for Not-for-Profit Managers and Boards, will be led by Professor David Gilchrist, Assistant Auditor General for the WA Government.

Prof Gilchrist, founding director of the Centre for Not-for-Profit Leadership and Management at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Business School, has held CEO (chief executive officer) and CFO (chief finance officer) positions in the commercial,

in brief

Pope prays for miners

Participants will learn why commerce-centric models traditionally used in planning and management are bad news for non-profits, and how a mission-centric view of strategic planning and management allows both outward-looking ideals and sound internal governance.

Useful take-home models focused on mission outcomes will be studied which are relevant to strategic planning, resource allocation and governance control.

Shared issues and solutions will also be generated from workshop discussions, creating an ongoing professional network.

The 24 September workshop, Advocacy and Media Skills for Social Justice, will be led by one of Australia’s best known and most effective human rights

activists, Phil Glendenning. Mr Glendenning, director of the Edmund Rice Centre in Sydney, is immediate past-President of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation, and the recipient of an Honorary PhD for his international human rights work from the Australian Catholic University.

This interactive workshop provides participants with rich insights into successful advocacy and media techniques for social justice work using extensive case studies and discussions.

Dynamics of the media cycle will be covered, along with important differences between radio, TV and print media.

Participants will learn how to prepare strong advocacy messages and give effective interviews in all mediums.

Tickets for these September workshops are available from $25 for unwaged/student, up to $150 for government and corporate. To book, call the Edmund Rice Institute for Social Justice on 9432 2400 or register online at: www.erisj.org.au.

OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENTS 2010

SEPTEMBER

Editor Peter Rosengren editor@therecord.com.au

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Mark Reidy mreidy@therecord.com.au

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Christopher West Catherine Parish

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THE R ECORD New Contacts THE R ECORD New Contacts

Redemptorist Restreat House, North Perth

Annual Secular

Franciscan Retreat – The Spirit of St Francis for Today. Conducted by Fr John Spiteri OFM Cap for all those interested in learning more of Franciscan spirituality. Enq: Angela 9275 2066 by 31 Aug.

When: 17–19 Sep at Redemptorist Retreat House, North Perth.

Catholic Pastoral Centre, Highgate

Dr Andrew Kania (Ukrainian-Byzantine Rite) will present a talk on the Eastern Catholic Churches, covering areas such as their differences in discipline, theology and spirituality, canonical considerations between East and West, as well as how their spiritual richness can enrich the personal prayer life and the spirituality of the Western Church.

When: 7.30 - 9pm on 17 September in the Seminar Room at Catholic Pastoral Centre, 40A Mary St, Highgate.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI offered his prayers for 33 men trapped underground in a gold and copper mine in Chile. At the end of his Angelus address on 29 August, the Pope prayed the miners remain calm as rescue workers begin an excavation process that could take up to three months to free them. The workers at the San Jose mine near the Chilean city of Copiapo were trapped on 5 August when part of the mine collapsed; rescuers made their first

contact with the miners 17 days later. The men apparently are in good health and supplies are being sent down to them through a narrow pipe. The Pope said, “I entrust them and their families to the intercession of St Lawrence, assuring them of my spiritual closeness and my continual prayers so that they maintain their serenity in the hope of a happy conclusion of the work that is being carried out to rescue them.” St Lawrence is patron saint of miners. Also at the Angelus, Pope Benedict had special words of welcome for the 60 new seminarians beginning their studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.

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3 Confirmation, Bayswater –Bishop Sproxton

5 Confirmation, Bentley –Bishop Sproxton

7 Carnivale – Mgr Michael Keating

8 Mass for Our Lady’s Birthday, Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey

8/9 Bishops’ Commission for Church Ministry, Sydney –Bishop Sproxton

9 Meeting of Diocesan Clergy – Archbishop Hickey

10&12 Parish Visitation, Highgate – Archbishop Hickey

10&11 Confirmation, Morley –Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

11&12 Confirmation, Clarkson –Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

13 Performing Arts Concert –Mgr Michael Keating

14 Opening and Blessing of Holy Cross College, Ellenbrook –Archbishop Hickey

16 Confirmation, Mt Lawley –Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

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Temporary display became a popular event

Major expansion plans are taking shape at the popular Relationships exhibition run in Broome by the Sisters of St John of God at their heritage listed former convent, 10 minutes walk from China town.

Sister Pat Rhatigan said extended opening hours to six days a week were introduced this year, making the exhibition more accessible to Broome visitors, holidaymakers and locals.

A new archive and research centre also opened this year behind the old convent, where much of the work to build the exhibition takes place. And a new building, currently under construction next door, will soon provide extra exhibit space for short-term displays and a much-needed large meeting room for large groups visiting the exhibition.

Sr Rhatigan said the Relationships exhibition was a valuable window into the social history of the Kimberley, charting the Order’s relationships with local Indigenous, Asian and white communities. It is also proving a point of reconciliation through education for visitors and school groups.

The exhibition began as a temporary display in 2007 as part of centenary celebrations of the Sisters’ arrival in the region. They were the first nuns into the Kimberley in 1907, courageously venturing into what was then one of Australia’s most harsh and remote frontier lands.

The founding group included only three experienced nuns, while six were young women just entering religious life. Almost all were from Ireland.

One can only imagine the challenges they faced, arriving with little finances and without even such basics as pots and pans, later generously donated to them by the local Asian community in Broome.

“It was intended to only be a one year exhibition, but we received so many requests from Kimberley people and visitors who felt it should remain as a permanent exhibition. The Sisters made a big decision and commitment to retain the exhibition, and it has expanded substantially since then,” Sr Rhatigan said.

The exhibition has been well supported by local Indigenous people, many of whom volunteer to help. They include Stolen Generation member Daisy Howard, who meets visitors, talks with school groups

and assists Indigenous people to find photographs of their families in the exhibition collection. While Daisy is upset at being taken from her family by government officials, she says she has

nothing but respect for the nuns who cared for her. “A lot of us didn’t have families and the convent was a place we were really looked after,” Daisy said.

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Is it true that from January to December 2008 we sold 16,881 vehicles, which was an all-time record?.

Camillan was a longtime hospital chaplain

BY GLYNNIS GRAINGER

Camillan priest and hospital visitor Fr Sean Bredin OS Cam, 75, died in Ireland last Saturday week. He had leukaemia.

Fr Bredin’s Requiem Mass was held in Ireland last Tuesday week.

He was educated for the priesthood at the Gregorian University in Rome and ordained in Rome in 1961.

He came to WA in October 1963, when the Camillans were a new Religious Order for this State, specialising in hospital work.

With Fr Cleary OS Cam, they were the first two Camillans to arrive and were appointed to the Carlisle parish.

Fr Bredin built Mt St Camillus Hospital at Maida Vale and was chaplain there and became Parish Priest of Maida Vale.

“Even though I know that I won’t find my own family here, it makes me feel good to help others find theirs,” she said.

Sr Rhatigan said the exhibition was an ongoing process, with work currently under way to prepare another 3,000 documents for exhibit next year, including memoirs and letters.

Current exhibits include a significant collection of 35,000 photographs and first hand stories on video, along with original Elizabeth Durack art work.

“We try to have the exhibition fresh each year, with significant changes. People will find more photos added, and more information.

We’ve got people who are working all the time to collect names for photos, add more photos, and to collect stories,” Sr Rhatigan said.

“This exhibition is very much part of the St John of God story up here in the Kimberley. The relationships and trust with people,” Sr Rhatigan said.

“I can see a need for us to stay open for another hour each day, but we depend on our volunteers. It’s something we’d like to do, so volunteers are welcome – even visitors to Broome who can spare some time,” she said.

Entry to the Relationships exhibition is by donation.

Whilst money is needed to support the project, the Sisters will not introduce an entry fee as they want to ensure that Aboriginal people are never denied access to view images of family.

“We promised to always make access available to our archives, so it’s not appropriate to have a set charge,” Sister Rhatigan said.

However, in averaging out entry donations, the Sisters only receive about 90 cents for each visitor – less than the price of a cup of coffee.

Sister Rhatigan said the Lotteries Commission had been very good with two large grants.

The local Billard Aboriginal community near Beagle Bay also surprised the Sisters with a generous donation this month.

“Other than that, the Order itself funds the Relationships exhibition so more donations and assistance are always needed,” she said.

The old convent can be found on the corner of Barker and Weld Streets in Broome.

Opening hours are Mondays to Saturdays from 9am to 1pm. Special viewings can be arranged for schools and groups by contacting 08 9192 3950 or emailing ssjgheritagekimberley@westnet.com.au.

He was chaplain to the Catholic Nurses’ Guild and at various times was chaplain to Princess Margaret Hospital, King Edward Memorial Hospital, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Royal Perth Hospital and St John of God Hospital, for which he blessed the foundations of their new Medical Centre.

He became Parish Priest of Shenton Park as this was close to all the hospitals and later Parish Priest of Subiaco.

In 1992, he was appointed Episcopal Deputy for Health by Archbishop Barry Hickey.

Farewelled in January 2008, he retired to Lathlain.

● Our Lady of the Missions nun Sr Margaret Mary Crock, in her 80th year, died suddenly on 10 August and a Requiem Mass was concelebrated by her brother Fr Kevin Crock and 10 priests at the Redemptorist Monastery on Friday, 13 August.

in brief

Alaskan vote

ANCHORAGE, Alaska

(CNS) - Alaskans passed a ballot initiative on 24 August that requires abortionists to notify a parent before performing an abortion on a minor girl in Alaska. Passage of Proposition 2 was a welcome victory, particularly for parents and Catholics - many of whom had collected petitions, waved signs on street corners and prayed hard to ensure the protection of parental rights.

“I was happy to see that common sense prevailed,” Anchorage Archbishop Roger L Schwietz told the Catholic Anchor, Archdiocesan newspaper after the vote. “Parents, no matter where they are on the abortion issue, understood: to be parent is to be a parent. You have responsibility for your children and therefore you should be able to know what they’re doing, and not have other people take away the right to know.” In fact, keeping parents in the dark about minors’ abortions, he added, amounts to “stabbing at the heart” of family life. In marriage, Archbishop Schwietz said, “God has brought man and woman together to bring forth children out of their love for one another and then to care for those children, to prepare them for life.If their ability to do so is taken away from them, then the State is usurping, it seems to me, the right of parents and the power of God, himself.”

JohnHughes

Sister Pat Rhatigan checks displays at the Relationship exhibition in Broome. Stolen Generation member Daisy Howard, below, assists indigenous Australians to find photographs of their families.

College’s art show to be a spectacular event Sisters gather for Mother’s 100th

BY GLYNNIS GRAINGER

Tickets are selling fast for the exclusive Preview and Cocktail Party on 17 September for the Trinity Old Boys’ Association art exhibition at Gibney Hall, Trinity College, East Perth.

It will be held from 6.30pm to 9pm on the Friday, with general open days on Saturday, 18 September from 11am to 4pm and on Sunday, 19 September from 11am to 3pm.

Sip champagne and nibble on delicious canapés whilst being entertained by the dulcet tones of Jazz singer Dominique Bayens, a Mercedes College graduate.

You can view and perhaps purchase your own art piece as the exhibition has attracted many artists with many different styles.

This year, the feature artist is watercolourist John Ainsworth who grew up in Corrigin in the Wheatbelt.

He is a self-taught artist who considers each new painting to be a challenge. He has a twin brother Rob who is famous for his cartoon books sold by Ashton Scholastic, as well as many other artworks.

Both brothers draw inspiration from the beauty of nature that surrounded them as boys.

Emerging ceramicist Danica Wichtermann is also participating in the art exhibition, influenced by many things including the connection between nature and our internal world; the systems within the body; the way we grow and the changes we go through.

Danica uses the vessel form as a metaphor for the body and transfers the pattern of nature onto her work, keeping the pure white of the porcelain clay.

Take the opportunity to place a bid in the silent auction and preview the exciting clothing range produced by student designer Michelle Ngadino, who attended Mercedes College where she won Belle of the Ball in one of her original creations.

After some time at WAAPA, Michelle will be heading to Melbourne University to study Fashion Design.

Numbers are strictly limited for the Preview and Cocktail Party, so contact Diane Millar on 9223 8132 or toba@trinity.wa.edu.au to book your ticket at $35 each.

Canonisation looms for saintly Chiara

Continued from Page 1 was not hopeful. She wrote to Chiara Lubich – ‘Jesus has sent me this illness just at the right moment. He sent it to me so I could find Him again’.

Chiara had many trips to the hospital for treatments. Each time, Chiara offered everything to Jesus, ‘If you want it Jesus, then so do I.’ Her friends took turns accompanying her. “At first we thought we’d .. keep her spirits up,” one of them said, “but very soon we understood that, in fact, we were the ones who needed her. Her life was like a magnet drawing us to her.”

As the cancer progressed, the pain increased, but the luminous smile never left her face. When Cardinal Saldarini of Turin visited the ward, he asked Chiara, “you have a marvellous light in your eyes. How come?” She replied, ‘I try to love Jesus.’ Her correspond-

ence with Chiara Lubich continued during these trials, and in one of these letters Chiara Lubich gave her the name of Chiara Luce (light). Chiara planned her own funeral as a wedding. She refused to take painkillers that would reduce her

in brief Pope prays for miners

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is “an exemplary model of Christian virtue” who showed the world that an authentic love for others opens the door to knowing and being with

capacity to think – offering her suffering to Jesus. Her last words to her parents were, ‘be happy because I am’ .

Chiara Luce passed away on 7 October 1990. Hundreds of people attended the funeral, celebrated by her Bishop. In 1999, he initiated her process for beatification stating, ‘... you can’t ignore such an important example. There is a need for sanctity today, too’.

Chiara’s story has spread throughout the world, both encouraging and challenging others to make their own choice of God.

On 25 September 25, Chiara ‘Luce’ Badano will be beatified in Rome.

Anyone wanting to join Focolare members and their friends for Chiara’s canonisation is invited to a special Mass to be celebrated at St Mary’s Cathedral on 26 September at 5pm.

Father Anthony Van Dyke OP with Sr Mary Mediatrix MC after the anniversary Mass celebrating Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday held at Santa Clara Parish in Bentley, celebrated by Archbishop Hickey with several other clergy.

PHOTO: BRIDGET SPINKS

Snapshot of a saint: Chiara Badano, above, pictured with unidentified children in this undated photo and during her final illness, below.

John Ainsworth, one of the artists whose works will be in display at the Trinity Old Boys’ Association art exhibition which will run at Trinity College from 17-19 September.

God, Pope Benedict XVI said. Marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, the Pope sent a message to Sister Mary Prema, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation Mother Teresa founded in 1950. The Vatican released the message on 26 August after it was read in Calcutta, India at the end of a special Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth.

Sr Bridie reaches out to offer a hand wherever the need may be

Sr Bridie Quinn’s work at Horizon Houses is typical of the quiet work performed by the Sisters of St John of God, who for more than a century have reached out to people from all walks of life, particularly those who are sick, experiencing disadvantage or marginalisation.

Coming from an Irish farming family who, in her words, were “always sharing and doing things together”, Sr Bridie was used to living in an open house with the constant comings and goings of family, friends and neighbours. This is perhaps one of the reasons she has taken so well to her current ministry at the WA-based Horizon Houses (known as Bendat Houses).

These homes offer a supportive environment for young people who would otherwise be homeless. She visits the four houses – two in Perth, one in Bunbury and one in Geraldton – on a regular basis, sharing meals and her time with young people from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

Sr Bridie reaches out where the need arises: sometimes with a friendly ear or by sharing a joke, but more often by walking with them in their search for a brighter future. She also provides support for the resident caregivers.

Sr Bridie began her journey as a nurse trainee at St John of God Hospital in Subiaco. She described her work in the operating theatres, “as one of the best experiences of my life – seeing the miracle of how the body can heal itself.”

She then worked at St John of God Hospitals in Goulburn,

Ballarat, Rivervale and Bunbury, and after a year’s sabbatical in 1997 decided to move into pastoral care which led her into a challenging area – reaching out to some of society’s most vulnerable in Bunbury Regional Prison.

“We forget that they (the prisoners) all have families who have little in the way of support systems,” Sr Bridie shared. “Often, I had a mediator role working in the home situation with many women who were isolated because of what her husband or brother had done.”

Sr Bridie went on to complete a certificate in Clinical Pastoral Education, something that gave her greater insight into pastoral care. It was at this point that the St John of God Foundation Board

(which formerly ran the Horizon House programme), of which Sr Bridie was a member, realised that the staff and residents of the houses had no one dedicated to continuing the Sisters’ Mission and providing pastoral care. Sr Bridie applied for the position, was accepted and says that she felt at home from her first visit. “The young people come from all backgrounds and religions but I find they are interested in the Sisters and our Mission and Values”, she said. “My approach is to try and find some common ground, often going on instinct. You have to stay with it and wait for a while but, thankfully, they are gradually accepting of me and what I represent.”  POMENGRANATE

Community farewells Father Ari

Moving Forward. This is not a political slogan but Father Agustinus Ari Pawarto OCarm has just completed his two terms (4 years) serving as Indonesian Chaplain in Perth Archdiocese and he will move forward, return to Indonesia where he will be the executive secretary of the Carmelite Institute.

Time flies when you’re having fun! That’s exactly what has happened to both Father Ari and the Indonesian community under the umbrella of WAICC (Western Australia Indonesian Catholic Community), four years felt like only a couple months!

In a farewell Mass last Sunday, 22 August, Father Ari seemed very delighted having an opportunity

to lead the last Indonesian Mass in St Benedict (Ardross) with Father Blasco Fonseca, the Vicar for Migrants, and Fr John Doherty OMI as the co-celebrants.

In front of over 250 parishioners, Fr Blasco also thanked Fr Ari for his many contributions here; promoting Lectio Divina, writing many publications, and nurturing the young generation were just a few of the “fruits that last” according to the Vicar for Migrants.

At the end of the Mass Father Ari delivered each family his 8th book in his four-year assignment entitled Jakaranda, the plantation that stole his attention but also an acronym in Indonesian urging people to continue their task as the Disciples of Christ.

Presentation to Archbishop Hickey

In late June the WA Knights of the Southern Cross paid tribute to Archbishop Barry Hickey for his service to the Church over the past 51 years as a priest and 25 years as Bishop.

In a meeting at the Perth Archdiocese Office, WA State Chairman, Peter Murray and KSC State Chaplain, Monsignor Brian O’Loughlin presented the Archbishop with a financial donation for the Archdiocese, to assist with the concluding celebrations of the “Year of the Priest”, as well as toward the progressive payment for the Cathedral restoration.

Archbishop Hickey was also presented with a book, A Civilisation of Love, What Every Catholic can do to Transform the World written by former Supreme Knight of the American Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson.

The meeting also provided an opportunity for Mr Murray to update the Archbishop on the current activities being undertaken by the Knights of the Southern Cross.

Support for World Youth Day

The Knights of the Southern Cross (WA) are offering 20 grants of $500 to assist Western Australian Catholic youth in attending World Youth Day celebrations in Madrid in August 2011.

In the latest addition of their publication, Knightlife, Tristian Kolay, State Councillor for Youth Development, stated that the WA Knights were looking to support committed Catholic youth who wanted to use the WYD 2011 experience “as a catalyst to deepen their relationship with Christ in order to build the Kingdom of God throughout their Community”.

Applications for these grants are open from 1 September – 5 October 2010 and can be found at kscwa. office@perthcatholic.org.au.

State Executive Officer

32 Hours / week

The Knights of the Southern Cross (WA) Inc The Knights of the Southern Cross (KSC) is a Catholic fraternal order committed to promoting the Christian way of life throughout Australia. Based in Rivervale a senior opportunity exists for an experienced manager to administer the Order’s activities in WA.

As a Catholic layman’s organisation, the Order seeks to develop, and sustainably grow its membership.

The State Executive Officer (SEO) reports to the elected State Chairman.

Fr Ari also passed the message from Archbishop Hickey that Perth Archdiocese’s looking forward to a vocation from the Indonesian community.

As for the new Indonesian chaplain, the visa application has not started yet due to the renewal of the agreement between the Catholic Church and the government.

In the meantime, the weekly Indonesian Mass will be led by several alternating priests who have close connection with the community, such as Father John Doherty. A farewell makes us think. It certainly has made all of us realised what we had, what we had lost and what we had taken for granted.

God bless your new endeavour Fr Ari!

The SEO will ensure Compliance and Regulations are maintained within the Order’s activities. The SEO will also be responsible for the Operational Management of the Order and its Public Relations. Providing Pastoral support where appropriate the SEO will also support the State Chairman, the State Council, Branches and Members.

The successful applicant will hold significant experience in business administration and managing finances. This management opportunity will suit a values-driven individual who can demonstrate initiative and posses high standards of integrity. A remuneration commensurate with this executive role will be negotiated to reward professional and proven performer.

Applicants are invited to view the Position Description on the website www.kscwa.org.au or contact our office (08) 9470 4922 for a copy. Enquiries can also be made to the office, or kscwa.seo@perthcatholic.org.au

Applications should be addressed to – The State Chairman, Box 136. BURSWOOD WA 6100

Knights of the Southern Cross State Chairman Peter Murray and Vicar General Monsignor Brian O’Loughlin present Archbishop Hickey with a contribution to the Archdiocese to assist with concluding celebrations for the Year of the Priest.

Father Agustinus Ari Pawarto OCarm concelebrates his farewell Mass as Indonesian Chaplain in Perth.

Elegance of a bygone era at Perth Chivalry Ball

BY BRIDGET SPINKS

Frances Nahas and Tim Cordina, both 19, were awarded the titles of Belle and Beau at this year’s Chivalry Ball held at St Kieran’s parish hall, Osborne Park on 14 August for the exemplary manner in which they held themselves. Over 100 young people attended the ball for a night of dancing and pure fun. Non-alcoholic beverages such as lemon, lime and bitters were

in brief

available to sip while the young men and women danced the night away; first, waltzing to a 40-minute classical play-list and later to a filtered “clean” mix of contemporary tunes. Six young people, Montana McCann, Sonia Spadaccini, Chris and Sarah Laundy, Chico Tenney and Kayla Roatch, organised the event to create an atmosphere where men and women from as young as 16 could assume the roles of chivalrous gentlemen and fine

Mexican Catholics pray for 72 migrants massacred on ranch

MEXICO CITY (CNS) - Catholics in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas offered prayers for the 72 undocumented migrants from Central and South America whose bodies were discovered on 24 August in what was possibly the largest mass slaying since the country began cracking down on drug cartels and organised crime. Fr Alan Camargo, spokesman for the Diocese of Matamoros, said four priests in the municipality of San Fernando, where members of the Mexican navy discovered the bodies on a ranch, were offering pastoral support to local

ladies. Montana McCann, 17, said that the team organised the event because “there wasn’t anything out there that promoted guys being gentlemanly and girls expressing their dignity”. The Beau was awarded to the “most chivalrous” guy on the night, someone who asked a variety of girls to dance while the Belle was awarded to a girl based on the modesty and elegance of dress and “the way she carried herself on the night,” she said.

residents. The residents, he added, were gathering in private homes to pray. A secretary who answered the phone at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Fernando told Catholic News Service a Mass for the victims would be celebrated on 26 August. An undocumented migrant from Ecuador, who survived the massacre on a ranch near San Fernando and alerted a navy patrol, said the killings took place on 24 August, the newspaper Reforma reported. He said the migrants - who were from Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador and Honduras and included 14 womenwere kidnapped and executed after being unable to pay extortion demands and declining to join forces with a drug cartel formed by rogue soldiers known as Los Zetas. The massacre again highlighted enormous risks run by undocumented migrants transiting the country in desperate attempts to reach the States.

The Chivalry Ball was dedicated to Our Lady, Queen of the Assumption whose feast day it was the next day. The young men proposed a toast in her honour. Since it was the feast of St Maximilian Kolbe that day, all attendees received a prayer card with the Consecration prayer written by St Maximilian.

PHOTOS BY GEMMA MCCANN, SONIA SPADACCINI, SARAH LAUNDY

Thanksgiving Mass marks catechist commissioning

During his homily at this year’s Thanksgiving and Commissioning Mass, Archbishop Barry Hickey affirmed and encouraged 46 new Catechists from the Personal Advocacy and the Catechist Services. The Mass, which was held in the Catholic Education Centre’s Chapel of St Michael the Archangel on 3 August, is an important and joyous occasion and celebrates the vital work of those who educate Catholic children not attending Catholic schools.

Referring to the Gospel of the day (feast of St John Vianney) which told of Jesus going about the towns and villages proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom, Archbishop Hickey reminded the congregation of their Baptismal call to share with others the treasures of their faith, letting them know of the love that God has for them.

Archbishop Hickey identified three tasks that were specific to Catechists: imparting the teachings that Jesus gave the Church; learning

and using good teaching methods and communicating one’s own love for Jesus with sincerity and enthusiasm. Referring to his own experience as a student in Kalgoorlie, the Archbishop recalled the sheer passion of a particular teacher (a Christian brother) which ensured that some lessons remained with him throughout his life.

At the conclusion of the liturgy, another 46 Catechists were acknowledged for completing their Provisional Accreditation as Catechists (the first stage towards Commissioning) and 16 Catechists were acknowledged for acquiring Certificates for ongoing formation.

Catechists and their families were delighted to share the occasion with the ten parish priests who concelebrated the liturgy.

Guest Maureen Burke, a member of the Religious Education and Curriculum Committee, commented: “The Liturgy was a spiritfilled and joyful occasion of committed members of our Church community”. ARTICLE COURTESY CEOWA

Catechists commissioned for Perth Archdiocese

Top: Archbishop Barry Hickey commissions the catechsists for 2010. Above left: Archbishop Hickey with members of the Sudanese Catholic Community including James Row (far left), the community’s coordinator, who all received provisional accreditation at this year’s ceremony. Above (L-R): Joondanna parish catechist coordinator Nola Vinney, Rockingham parish priest Fr Michael Separovich and newly commissioned catechist in Joondanna parish, Maureen Gismodi.

Left: Archbishop Hickey with (L-R) Applecross parish catechist coordinator Colleen Geldenhuys and Clarkson parish catechist coordinator Michele Pierre.

Below left: Archbishop Hickey celebrates the commissioning Mass for catechists with ten parish priests at St Michael the Archangel chapel at the Catholic Education Office. Below: (L-R) Pina Ford, Linda Howell, Denzil Talbot and Michele Pierre with Archbishop Hickey. Pina Ford is team leader for the Archdiocese of Perth’s Catechist Service Team. Linda Howell and Denzil Talbot are newly commissioned catechists in Clarkson parish.

PHOTOS COURTESY CEOWA

Unique, irreplaceable

The recent electoral success of the Greens will, strangely, exert far more pressure to redefine marriage than it will to bring action on environmental issues. The huge boost to anti-marriage advocacy in the federal Parliament represented by the surge in electoral support for the Greens may yet turn out to be one of the real results of the election.

Why Greens and radical environmentalists will be more concerned about definitions of marriage than they will be about the environment is an expression of what they really represent, which in a nutshell is a significant ignorance of history and culture before, roughly speaking, the advent of television. It is only in this intellectual vacuum that radical environmental sentimentality will be able to prosper. Complicating this greatly is the unending mythology of environmentalists as the only individuals with any moral conscience on behalf of the environment. That sentiment, and it is purely a sentiment, is demonstrably untrue.

That environmentalists partly represent a noble sentiment, however, is hardly doubtful. A sense of wonder and awe at the beauty and majesty of the natural world is an almost universal human sentiment which represents a deep reality of humanity. Concern for the created world follows naturally and quite rightly from this. Christianity understands this extremely well because it accepts quite naturally that human beings have been given stewardship of the earth. Sadly, the phenomenon of contemporary environmental activism is characterised by far more negatives than positives. The tremendous potential for good that it represents is usually obscured by its puritanical and rigidly anti-human doctrinaire character. In a very real sense, the environmental movement represented an enormous possibility for progress beyond radical materialism and consumerism that was squandered because it got its founding principles wrong.

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In fact, the troubling thing about the rise of environmental activism is precisely the victory of sentiment and romanticism over humaneness to the point where concern for the environment often trumps concern for the person. And where the modern phenomenon of popular environmentalism parts company with civilisation is precisely in each’s view of the human person. One views the person essentially as an accident of evolution and therefore an often-malignant growth (problematic, at least) on the surface of the planet; the other sees man and woman as created in the image and likeness of God. For one, the human person is the essence of the problem, for the other the human person is the whole point of creation. At this point it becomes clear that of the two things, the puritanism of the environmentalists and the civilising perspective of Christianity, it is Christianity that is the truly progressive force, made all the more so by its vision of building up the earth rather than seeking to freeze it in indefinite stasis.

On the issue of marriage, the Greens and their sympathisers will be heartened greatly by the knowledge that within both the major political parties there is significant acceptance of the proposition that marriage between any two individuals seems like a reasonable act of tolerance and goodwill. The problem is that this view, now on the cusp of being a widespread sentiment in society and among the highly influential opinion-shapers of the media, depends precisely on not understanding what marriage is or its foundational importance to stable society and the welfare of individuals, especially children.

What supporters of regressing marriage to acceptance of almost any arrangement fail to grasp is that while any two individuals can have a relationship, such a relationship is never equivalent (and does not even come close to approximating) the unique and formalised lifelong relationship between a man and a woman, exclusive of all others and open to the possibility of life. It is this latter form of relationship that is marriage. All other relationships are mimicry. Another key intellectual failure in the campaign to degrade marriage through redefinition is the lack of consideration given to the deep underlying meaning of masculinity and femininity and the unique interplay of their complementarity: the understanding that femininity possesses unique gifts and attributes that masculinity does not possess in the same degree (and vice versa) and that the unique gifts brought to bear in the creation and nurturing of life cannot be replicated by any other form of arrangement. Both are essential components of marriage.

Among the as-yet unconsidered problems of redefining marriage is where one draws the line, if at all. Logically, if two men can ‘marry,’ so can two women. So, also, one man and two women could marry. So could one man and five women. It follows that any other form of arrangement with any number of individuals could be a ‘marriage.’ While bigamy was once considered a crime of betrayal enacted by uniquely weak individuals or an oddity of North American sects, with the unprecedented representation of the Greens and fellow travellers in the two major parties it now has its greatest chance ever in Australian history of being legalised. As usual, it will be women, first, and children who lose from the pseudo-intellectual putsch to redefine marriage according to the foundational moral principles of soap operas. There is also the issue of appropriate emotional welfare and development of children. Two same-sex attracted men may be carers but neither can be a mother, because nobody does that better than a woman. Two lesbian women may also care for children but neither can be a father because only a man provides enduring strength and reliability for his family. One man married to three women may earn enough to support the whole ‘family’ but he divides his love between his ‘wives’ and children. Love is not meant to be diluted, and children are not merely the perfect accessories to desirable lifestyles. They are human beings. One of the undiscussed and really chilling problems with the push to degrade the definition of marriage is that, ultimately, children will only ever be accessories.

BY EMILY COFFEY OF ST JOSEPH’S WORKERS WYD11 GROUP

Earlier this month St Joseph’s Workers WYD group descended on Cloverdale Bushland to do our bit for the environment. It was Sunday 1st August, National Tree Planting Day, and so we came, trowels in hand, ready to kickoff our programme of community service designed by leaders Viviana Boyle and Tristan Kolay, to prepare us for our 2011 World Youth Day pilgrimage to Madrid.

Coordinators from the City of Belmont gave us a quick rundown of the proper way to plant the many hundreds of native trees and bushes waiting for us and then we got down to business.

We joined a dozen other keen volunteers and spent the morning getting to know our fellow pilgrims while we put into practice our promise to be stewards of God’s creation.

After three hours of solid work, the fruits of our labour were evident and so despite our damp knees and sore backs, it was with a great sense of satisfaction that we headed to a well-deserved lunch together in Victoria Park.

St Joseph’s Workers are committed to preparing for our World Youth Day experience by putting our faith into action and so our monthly activities will include a seminar on the plight of the underprivileged in Western Australia as well as serving at the Shopfront Christmas Party. Social dinners

will help us to grow in fellowship and fraternity, while nights of Lectio Divina and Taize worship will plant the seeds of further spiritual development.

Following the theme of WYD Madrid we hope to be, “Planted and built up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith.”

Mary

BY ANTHONY BARICH

Doubleview parishioner Carmel Charlton has produced a CD with WA Josephite Sister Emilie Cattalini with music to be used for liturgies and Masses that celebrate Mary MacKillop in the lead up to and on the day of her canonisation on 17 October.

The CD has five songs, including Calling My Name, the cover title of the CD which has been placed on the Mary MacKillop website (www.marymackillop.org. au) as a recommended song suitable for use at Masses and Liturgies of the Word that celebrate Mary of the Cross, as she will be canonised by Pope Benedict XVI.

While the CD was produced just last week, the main song was written in 1995 when MacKillop was beatified in Sydney by Pope John Paul II, and Carmel has updated it since.

Sr Emilie, who wrote the music arranged by Carmel for Calling My Name, said the words “speak of MacKillop’s spiritual connection with the Australian land and its people and of the same God who today still calls us by name”.

Carmel, a singer-songwriter for over 30 years who has taught privately and in schools and studied classical guitar at the WA Conservatorium of Music, will also

launch on 16 November songs and an accompanying teachers’ manual and a book of full sheet music.

The 16 songs, written for primary school students, are about the environment, Australian history and heritage and Christian values, and include original Christmas songs that speak of a unique Australian experience, as well as Calling My Name Holy Spirit Primary School sang Calling My Name during the

Catholic Performing Arts Festival, while Currambine sang some of Carmel’s other songs at the festival.

The Calling My Name CD and accompanying sheet music are available for parishes in the lead up to MacKillop’s canonisation from The Record Bookshop at 21 Victoria Square, Perth or call 9220 5900. Alternatively, contact Carmel on 9446 1558, email carmel@carmelcharlton.com or log onto www.carmelcharlton.com.

Carmel Charlton, whose new CD, produced with Josephite Sister Emilie Cattalini, features music that the two hope will be used at liturgies celebrating Blessed Mary MacKillop in the lead up to her October canonisation.

St Joseph’s workers, Viviana Boyle, Fred Sim and Benjamin Clarke plant in Faith and do their bit for the environment in Cloverdale.

Carmel Charlton’s new CD, Calling My Name.

The university where the most important thing is ...

Love

Fr Borys Gudziak, an American-born Ukrainian Catholic priest, describes Ukraine as “a country of contrast of heroic witness and profound, social, psychological and physical trauma”.

Fr Gudziak was in Australia last month to build relationships with Australian universities, give lectures and run a clergy retreat. During his visit, he revealed to The Record’s BRIDGET SPINKS what differentiates the Ukrainian Catholic University from other universities.

The UCU in Lviv Ukraine could be the first university in the world to build a dormitory to house a community of mentally handicapped on campus, the university’s rector, Fr Borys Gudziak, told The Record

This compassion for the mentally handicapped - one of the defining features of UCU - is “counterintuitive” for a university, he said.

But breaking the mould is exactly what UCU wants to do.

“We’re trying to rethink what a university is,” Fr Gudziak said.

“Yes, academic achievement is important but what we hope we can pursue is teaching and learning the school of dignity, which at the same time is a school of service,” he said.

Fr Gudziak said that alongside all the complicated intellectual topics, they bring in “guest lecturers in human relations in the school of love; among the best are the mentally handicapped”.

The university is the centre of coordination of 30 “Faith and Light” communities in Ukraine, providing faith and fellowship for parents and their handicapped children, Fr Gudziak said.

For the last ten years, the university has been coordinating these communities through its Centre for Spiritual Support in conjunction with L’Arche, the international organisation founded by Jean Vanier, a Canadian who chose to live with people with an intellectual disability in 1964. This was the start of the worldwide L’Arche community that shows compassion through spiritual and practical support to those living with a handicap.

L’Arche is predicated on the truth that all people are of divine dignity, Fr Gudziak said.

“The heart of L’Arche is that living with the mentally handicapped helps us; they have gifts to share. They can’t put on a mask; they tell it like it is,” Fr Gudziak said. “They want to know if you know how to

love. They ask you, ‘Do you love me? I want to love you.’”

Despite needing another 3-4 million dollars, UCU is taking care for the disadvantaged to the next level.

“The hole is dug,” Fr Gudziak said, for the construction of a dormitory that will house a L’Arche community of mentally handicapped on campus alongside 220 regular students, eight faculty apartments and four apartments for the Institute of Advanced Study.

In a city of 140,000, there are 1,400 students at UCU, 600 of them full-time.

Although founded just eight years ago, the UCU is rooted in an educational tradition begun in 1929 when the Lviv Theological Academy (LTA) was founded with Joseph Slipyj as its Rector. Today, the UCU emerges from an extraordinary history of persecution and Soviet Communism. The LTA was closed by Soviet authorities in 1945 but later reopened in 1994, as the first stage of development for UCU.

Pope John Paul II visited Ukraine in June 2001 to beatify 27 martyrs and a nun. While visiting, he also blessed the future cornerstone of the university, which was later founded on 29 June 2002.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church uses the Byzantine liturgy and has been in full communion with Rome since the 1596 Union of Brest. The Church was described by papal biographer George Weigel as the repository of Ukrainian national identity and aspiration throughout the Soviet period.

However, in 1946, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was “completely liquidated, declared illegal and was in the catacombs,” Fr Gudziak said, referring to the socalled Lviv Sobor, a meeting of Bishops, priests and laymen, who ultimately voted to annul the Union of Brest. Whoever accepted the socalled Lviv Sobor of 1946, became

Russian Orthodox and placed themselves under the canonical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow wrote Weigel.

“Those who did not, became members of the largest illegal religious body in the world,” he said.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was thus in the ‘catacombs’: liturgies were held in forests and houses in secret while someone would keep watch. Any evidence of the Mass had to be hidden since it was illegal to celebrate Mass.

The Ukrainian Catholics who held onto the faith despite these external pressures are a shining witness and this forms part of the foundation of UCU.

The students of the UCU have conducted 2000 interviews with survivors from the underground Church, the catacombs, which reveal how simple people endured suffering and how they maintained the faith even in concentration camps, Fr Gudziak said.

This, combined with the witness of the 27 martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2001, is proof that “there is no place and no situation in which you cannot live a spiritual life,” Fr Gudziak said.

But the fear continues to live in the hearts of the Ukrainian people, “just below the surface”.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 and the independence of many parts of the Soviet Union including Ukraine, Russia has not really accepted the separation of Ukraine from Russia.

It has used many means to try to ensure that Ukraine follows a totally pro-Moscow line.

This was a major issue in the Ukrainian election in 2005 and the newly elected president, Victor Yushchenko, was almost killed by poison. The perpetrator remains a mystery and is yet to be brought to justice.

Fr Gudziak described the fear that continues to exist, as being

similar to the Ukraine’s nuclear reactor disaster that struck in 1986.

“Like the radiation of Chernobyl, you can’t taste it or see it on a sunny day but it is there, just below the surface,” he said.

The martyrs, who were Bishops, priests and men and women of family, “met the greatest challenge of the 20th century of totalitarianism,” he said.

“Totalitarianism wants to negate the fundamental truth about a human person. The scriptures in our faith say we’re created in the image and likeness of God and that we’re free and called to a divine dignity – that was the whole mission of Christ, to call us to a divine life,” he said.

The Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes sought to make a human being a cog in a system, Fr Gudziak said.

The murder was “wanton and systemic” and while there was “tremendous fear” there were also Christians maintaining principles and trying to pass on the Good News, he said.

“People in the whole society were manipulated and everything, even the dignity of the person, was subsumed into a system,” he said.

“Totalitarianism takes away people’s freedom. But the martyrs were as free as people can be; they weren’t holding on to anything,” Fr Gudziak said.

In 1968, the head of the Ukrainain Greek Catholic Church, Cardinal Iosef Slipyj visited Fr Gudziak’s hometown in Syracuse, New York.

Cardinal Slipyj survived 18 years’ imprisonment in concentration camps in Siberia.

“He passed on this profound conviction that the Lord is present and powerful in situations where humans are reduced to what seems like great weakness,” Fr Gudziak said.

“This raises a profound question

for everyone, even for those who live in peaceful Perth,” Fr Gudziak said.

“Can we wake up to this truth?

Sometimes the good things in life lull us into the false sense of security,” he said.

“The fact that we do pass from this life can help us ask the question, what is this life really all about? Is it my car, my iPhone, my facebook virtual relationships? Or am I possessed of a dignity that the Church and the Scriptures speak of?

“Can I be open to the mystery of God’s great love for the world, the world’s great beauty and the miracle of life and human relations?” he said.

Ukraine saw 5-7 million people die of starvation in a deliberate famine created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1932 and another 17 million people die during World War II.

Despite this, and in light of its history, Fr Gudziak is confident that it is possible to “present a fresh model of what a university and the Church can be”.

The UCU began by offering courses in theology, the humanities and education.

Then three leading businesses including a gas and oil company, the biggest software company in the United Kingdom and a clothing manufacturer, approached the UCU to ask them to offer a business school.

“They said, ‘We like your style. There’s no corruption at your university, there’s creativity, a lot of humour and quality in the teaching and education and there’s a sense of beauty in the way you put together your modest buildings.’

“They wanted business managers who would be competent, well trained but who also had an ethical approach to business and for whom culture was important, and not just profit.”

Ukrainian Catholic University Rector Fr Borys Gudziak. Described as one of Europe’s leading intellectuals, he visited Australia last month.

PHOTO: BRIDGET SPINKS

EVANGELISATION

Singing deacon gives God’s love a different kind

BY BRIDGET SPINKS

Deacon Robert Galea is 28, two months away from ordination to the priesthood with a contagious love for God and the ability to communicate this in a fresh way to young people.

“I love psychology,” he told The Record when he was in Perth for Catholic Youth Ministry’s One-YearTo-World-Youth-Day Sunday Sesh at St Mary’s Cathedral and performance at the Cathedral Palace on 22 August.

“During our formation in the seminary, we study the way the human person reasons through philosophy and the way the human person perceives and reasons and makes sense of God through theology,” he said.

“That’s why it takes so long,” said the Deacon, who entered the seminary in 2003.

Originally from Malta, an island 45km by 22km with a population of 400,000, Deacon Rob has been studying for the priesthood for seven years.

He will be ordained a priest in Malta on 5 November and is incardinated for the Archdiocese of Malta but will return to Australia to spend the first years of his priestly ministry on loan for at least six years stationed in the Diocese of Sandhurst.

In Malta, the seminarians either spend their Diaconate year in secular work or they’re given pastoral work overseas.

Since Deacon Rob knew Bishop Joe Grech, he was able to arrange to spend his pastoral year in the country Victorian diocese of Sandhurst. He said he knew when he “landed there,” that this was his place and what he was called to do.

Ministry in Malta where 98 per cent of the population is Catholic is more one of service, he said.

In comparison, the ministry in Australia requires more “reaching out”.

“I’m more a person who likes to evangelise and reach out, especially to teenagers where there is a spiritual poverty,” he said.

Where some see this challenge to evangelise as a threat, he sees the opportunity.

He refers to his path to adulthood as “messed-up” but uses this experience of life to encourage others to surrender who they are totally to God and to develop a personal relationship with Christ.

Not long after he entered the seminary in 2004, he began recording music as a way of reaching out.

He developed a website (thatsworship.com) which began with a blog but today includes a link to his twitter, facebook, youtube feed and even a cache of podcasts.

The podcasts comprise homilies and various mini-testimonies with a fresh angle to the faith: a psychological angle.

They touch on deep aspects of what it is to be human such as feelings of fear and what it means to “commit”.

“I like to reach out to help people be whole as God intends them to be and that includes the psyche,” he said.

When asked whether the attention from fans or the temptation of pride comes with the territory of being a popular musician, he admitted that fame was something that could “batter” his humility but that fame was not something he sought.

“As a secular priest, we have to be with the people, not above the people. No priest who thinks too highly of himself can truly reach out and be with the people,” he said.

“I don’t see myself as famous when I’m among the clergy or seminarians.

“I see myself as one of them. As

a priest, you’re always a public person.”

Deacon Rob said that although his audience will think they know him when he is on stage, “they only know a small part” of him.

Hence, he aims to “integrate” his whole ministry with the goal to evangelise from the preaching to the performance to the one-on-one encounters to the liturgy.

“I bring who I am to the ministry. And ultimately who I am and who I hope to be is someone who is in love with God. And I believe that the love of God is not something that’s taught but that’s caught,” he said.

It’s through his music that Deacon Rob primarily reaches the young people he so desperately seeks to evangelise and inspire to build a relationship with Christ.

“My ministry as a deacon and soon as a priest is to preach the Gospel. It’s a message that needs to reach the mind and heart. Music is also a way that speaks to the heart,” he said.

In 2006, Deacon Rob released his

first album Closer and in 2008, a follow-up album, What a Day. In July this year, he released a devotional CD to help people pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

After Mass at the Cathedral, Deacon Rob played several songs from his repertoire but at one point he encouraged everyone to sit down on the piazza and listen.

He was about to tell his testimony of how he began to turn to cigarettes, alcohol and drug dealers when he did not receive the love he needed from his parents.

“At the age of 11 or 12 I was shocked into the realisation that my parents are not perfect,” he said, adding that he started to rebel, when he felt he would never be good enough for his dad.

“I wanted people to love me and accept me. I needed to be loved. All us here need that,” he said.

Looking into the mirror, he used to hate himself and started to lie about everything, he said.

One day, he lied about one of the rappers he was hanging out with

and they sought out his friend and cracked his head on the hotel door, he said.

“I couldn’t go to sleep, I thought of ways to end my life. I had no friends. Then someone invited me to a prayer meeting, similar to WYD,” he said.

This was the catalyst for his change.

“We’re all called to have hearts of fire. When you’re gathered with two million people with hearts of fire, you’re given hope and the ability to move forward,” he said.

“At the prayer meeting, they were friendly. This guy was talking about God in a way I’d never heard; he was talking about God as a friend,” he said.

That night Deacon Rob went home, closed the door of his bedroom and set out two chairs and said, ‘Jesus I want to talk to you.’

“I started to imagine a person in the chair. I started to say Jesus, why did you allow this to happen? I imagined a tear in this person’s eye. But this person was crying because

they felt the pain and the anger that I was feeling and they could translate it into tears,” he said.

“This person was looking at me and loving me despite the mess,” he said and added that he committed myself to ten minutes of prayer every day.

He began to tell Jesus about the lie and the “dark and cold places” and realised that God didn’t love him any less.

He said his song, “I surrender to you,” was written out of that moment.

Deacon Rob said he shared his story because he was amazed at where God has brought him.

“As I started to pray and surrender my life to God, I realised how much I was loved. I started to love others, but it was because of what God did in my heart,” he said.

At first he did not want to be a priest but then he changed his prayer and asked God to put the desire to be a priest in his heart, if it was His will. Deacon Rob was 21 when he entered the seminary.

Christ’s message was amplified through song when Catholic Youth Ministry flew in singing sensation Deacon Rob Galea to perform music from his albums What a Day and Closer and testify to the ways the Lord has worked in his life. Top left: hundreds of Catholic youth filled the St Mary’s Cathedral Palace courtyard for the August Sunday Session, pictured top left, which also marked the start of the 12-month countdown to World Youth Day in Madrid, 2011. Top right: Deacon Rob with local musicians who supported him on stage (L-R) Leonard Ong (keys), Matt Lim (base guitar), Daniel Lu (electric guitar) and JJ Leong (drums). Above: Deacon Rob with emcee David Busher on the Perth stage. PHOTOS NIGEL CORNELIUS

of voice

“If he can use me, a messed-up teenager, he can use you. All he needs is a life of surrender,” Deacon Rob said.

Several hearts of young people were touched by Deacon Rob’s music and his ability to reach out the night he performed at the Sunday Sesh.

Mufaro Mutika, 27, came to Australia from Zimbabwe to study in 2008. He has been practising Deacon Rob’s song Deeper for the last three weeks in the St Mary’s Cathedral parish youth choir, which has helped him in his faith.

“Rob is awesome. Through his songs I’ve been drawing closer to God than ever before through the words in them. When he sings ‘There must be more, I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong,’ I think about how God gives me stuff, directs me in every way in my life. God has never-ending love,” he said.

During Mass at the Sunday Session, Deacon Rob encouraged the youthful congregation to draw into relationship with Christ.

“Let’s tell Jesus, I’m not satisfied to know about you, I want to know you,” Deacon Rob said in the homily, encouraging them to “invite Christ into their heart”.

Mufaro said this call to encounter God was “another perspective” and has given him something to work on.

“The relationship is what I’m worried about now,” he said.

St Charles first year seminarian, Mariusz Grech, said that Deacon Rob’s “powerful testimony was inspirational for seminarians”.

He said he has the ability “to speak to youth of our time to meet them where they are at”.

“Listening to him has given me confirmation that I should take with me to the seminary all the gifts that God has given me,” he said.

Mariusz, who has played guitar since he was 10 and performed in the school band, praise and worship bands, had not “picked up the guitar” since entering the seminary earlier this year.

“But it’s part of who I am and I have to give everything to God,” he said, resolved to return to the seminary and return to the strings.

When asked what advice Deacon Rob would give to young people, he said, “Seek to fall in love with the person of Jesus and let that love lead you to the Church”.

“As believers, we need to belong to the people who are on fire. We are called to be coals of fire. If you separate the coals from the fire, you turn to dust,” he said.

“We need to let our hearts be enflamed and surround ourselves with those who are enflamed.”

Young artists take up the religious challenge

Since 1985, the Mandorla Art Award, a national religious art exhibition, has attracted some of Australia’s finest artists and 2010 is set to be a landmark year, with the launch of the Mandorla Youth Art Award, a parallel challenge for young artists.

Young artists will interpret the theme “And who is my neighbour?” inspired by the parable of the Good Samaritan, and their work will be exhibited alongside prestigious past Mandorla winners and finalists, including the widely collected Nigel Hewitt, Merrick Belyea and Janis Nedela.

Fr Chris Ross OSM, one of the founding members of the Mandorla Committee, said:

“The youth award adds a new dimension as it enables young artists to interpret the given Biblical theme in their own distinct way. We want to broaden our outreach in order to embrace the insights of the younger generation and encourage young artists to express their vision of the place of Christianity in art.”

Mandorla Curator, Camilla Loveridge, confirmed that nine promising young artists have been selected as finalists: five from WA and two from Victoria and NSW respectively. Based on samples of previous work of the artists, their entries are bound to be varied and will include photography as well as works on canvas.

Many of these young entrants are embarking on their first ever award and all are hoping to win the Mandorla Youth Art Award and receive the St John of God Health Care Prize for Emerging Young Artists of $5,000, with their work acquired for display in one of St John of God Health Care’s establishments.

The existing works of two Mandorla finalists, Conor Ashleigh

and Tim Ronald (shown here) demonstrate their talent, while their words reflect a passion for religious art.

PR Manager at St John of God

Health Care, Fiona Clark, said:

“Our support of the youth award is particularly appropriate given that a major focus of our social outreach and advocacy programme is

the provision of services for young people experiencing disadvantage.”

Judging the nationally acclaimed acquisitive art prize will be Dr Christopher Crouch, widely collected visual artist, writer and renowned academic; Sr Jill O’Brien, a Sister of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, a liturgical design expert who is currently involved in the processes for the construction of a new Cathedral for the Diocese of Broome, and Berenice Rarig, visual artist with a special interest in religious art.

The artists’ work will be displayed at Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, 46 Henry St, Fremantle from Saturday, 2 October to Friday, 17 October from 10am to 5pm (closes 3pm, Friday, 17).

In the picture

Child in Papua New Guinea (at left) by Conor Ashleigh. Conor Ashleigh has grown up with a strong Catholic background. As a documentary photographer, he challenges himself to turn his camera on the Church in order to develop a record which will, hopefully, be looked upon in history as an honest body of religious art. He has worked on international assignments for UNICEF, Oxfam, Catholic Mission and The Asia Foundation.

Three Eras by Tim Ronald (at top).

Tim applied for the Mandorla Youth Award to bring glory to Jesus Christ. He said: “I know that while I am gifted, my artwork is only made by His unfailing Grace. He’s behind every brush stroke.” His interest in the visual began and evolved with his grandmother’s sound nurturing and grew over the years through both independent and school art works.

The New Testament as literary innovation

‘The Literary Novelty of the New Testament’, was the topic for this year’s Slattery Lecture delivered by Father Justin Taylor SM at The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle Campus.

A teacher, researcher and professor in the fields of New Testament and Christian origins, Fr Taylor presented a convincing argument that the New Testament was the first literary work in the ancient world that made ordinary people its central characters.

“The literary treatment of ordinary people in the Gospels was without precedent in Greek or Roman literature and constituted a literary revolution,” said Fr Taylor.

“The Gospels treat the everyday world and ordinary people in a way that is realistic and serious, even tragic.”

Fr Taylor said the importance of reading about everyday people in the New Testament reflected on Christian belief and impacted on later European culture.

“This new aesthetic, different from the classical tradition, reflects a new social reality and

ultimately belief in the incarnation of God in a person of low degree,” he said.

Notre Dame Dean of Philosophy and Theology, Professor Matthew Ogilvie, said Fr Taylor’s lecture highlighted some interesting points about the influence of the New Testament.

“Fr Taylor made it clear that the New Testament was so novel in its treatment of ordinary people, it would seem that the development of modern democracy and the notion that ‘all people are created equal’ would have been impossible without it,” he said.

Brown agreed with Professor Ogilvie, saying Fr Taylor presented an insightful and convincing lecture on the influence of the New Testament on the modern world.

“Fr Taylor presented his argument with a clear genius that made his points seem almost obvious after he had explained them,” he said.

Philosophy and Theology graduate Karl

Fr Taylor was ordained a Catholic priest in 1966, obtaining his PhD from the University of Cambridge in England in 1972. He is also Co-Director of a research seminar in New Testament at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

New take on the New Testament: Fr Justin Taylor SM, who gave the Slattery Lecture at UNDA.

Science begins to take note of Aussie fertility method Bishop frank about the trouble talking fertility to couples

The great Australian success story which is the Billings Method is still little known. That’s about to change with a forthcoming article in a leading fertility journal.

BY ANTHONY BARICH

Oxford medical journal Human Reproduction Update is on the verge of publishing a paper on the work of one of the world’s leading hormonal experts regarding the Billings charting method that will “revolutionise women’s health”.

It is understood that HRU, a Oxford University Press publication, will publish a paper on “Types of ovarian activity in women and their significance: the Continuum (a reinterpretation of earlier findings)” as studied by Prof James Brown whose work on Hormone Analysis helped verify the Billings method. This paper will be available online.

Prof Brown, who died on 31 October 2009, was a good friend and colleague of the late Dr John Billings and his wife Dr Evelyn Billings, who pioneered the Billings Ovulation Method™. Dr Evelyn has said their greatest achievement was the Method’s acceptance by China as a legitimate form of family planning.

Prof Brown, formerly Emeritus Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Royal Women’s Hospital and University of Melbourne, was considered the leading global scientist on ovarian and pituitary hormones.

The subject of the HRU paper will focus on the ovarian variants which occur naturally as a woman journeys from menarche (the first menstrual cycle) to menopause.

The Billings Ovulation Method chart, which reflects the cervical responses to hormonal changes, can effectively be a diagnostic tool, recognising these variants and also alert the woman to abnormalities. These abnormalities can then be investigated medically and treated. Unless the root cause is investigated, a woman may have long-term health effects, for example diabetes or estrogen-dependant cancers.

That a woman’s Billings chart can gauge more than a woman’s fertility “blows away GPs”, say Melbourne-based Billings LIFE Senior Teachers, Joan Clements and Marian Corkill, in Perth on 20 August to give a professional development course for health professionals on Monitoring Fertility: Assisting Conception.

“If gynaecologists and endocrinologists (physicians who deal with organs regarding hormones) take this (paper) on board, it will revolutionise women’s health, as it gives an understanding of why

women don’t always have regular cycles and do not necessarily ovulate every month,” Mrs Corkill said.

A perception among the medical and general community, Mrs Corkill said, is that if a method is cheap, easy and not overly technical, it must not be legitimate. The reality is, Mrs Corkill said, that Billings is based on sound science and can be used effectively in any reproductive situation in which a woman finds herself.

At the Ovulation Method Research and Reference Centre of Australia workshop at the University WA for health professionals, Mrs Clements and Mrs Corkill showed a dramatic chart from a real-life scenario where a woman knew she had something wrong based on her Billings chart.

Medical investigations identified a cervical cancer which, if not detected early, would have killed her had she not acted on the information from her chart.

This information is particularly urgent among the community, they said, as a recent Australian study showed that just 18 per cent of women knew how to recognise their signs and symptoms of fertility.

Many women are simply put on the Pill early in their teens, “so their bodies have never been given the chance to work as they should,” Mrs Corkill said.

“When you cease hormonal contraceptives, there will be a time for the body to recover its fertility.

“Any natural function of the body, when suppressed, can atrophy – such is the case if a woman has been on the Pill for, say, 16 years,” she said.

She added, however, that for some, fertility returns soon after ceasing contraceptives.

“The cervix produces mucus to keep the sperm alive, so if it’s not doing that because it has been put out of action by the Pill”, it is understandable if a woman can’t get pregnant, “even if she’s ovulating beautifully”.

Each case is different. There are some women who, at 25 and having never been on the Pill, have trouble achieving pregnancy. The Billings chart can also help detect the problem in this scenario, Mrs Corkill said.

There’s a profound ignorance among many couples on the relationship between fertility and intimacy, Bishop says

BY ANTHONY BARICH

There is a profound ignorance among Catholics about the role of fertility with intimacy in the communication between spouses preparing for marriage in the Church, Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton said.

When it comes to discussing intimacy as a key part of this communication between a couple preparing for marriage, “it’s like a light goes out”, as “they never thought it’s something they would talk about together”, Bishop Sproxton said in his homily for a special Mass closing Natural Family Planning Week at Highgate on 21 August.

“There is a profound ignorance” of the issue of fertility relating to intimacy, he said, as natural family planning encourages couples to take a shared responsibility in this key part of their relationship.

“There is a great need to give them a sense that this type of communication is so important for the health of a marriage,” he said.

Derek Boylen, director of the Archdiocesan Natural Fertility Services and of Catholic Marriage and Education Services (CMES), told The Record that the Church has an important role to play in today’s world promoting modern methods of Natural Family Planning such as the Sympto-thermal multi-indicator method, Billings and Naprotechnology.

It is often through the work of Church organisations such as premarriage education and schools programmes that people are first introduced to modern Natural Family Planning.

“Couples who use these methods say that the benefits to the relationship go far beyond family planning. NFP helps to improve couple communication and encourages couples to make family planning a shared responsibility. NFP also helps couples who are planning a pregnancy, helping them to fulfill the dream of having children of

Session for Women at NFP Week Celebration

Celebrate Love facilitated a session for women related to “Relationship with Father”.

We reflected on our relationship with our own father at various stages in our lives and how this first relationship with a significant male in our lives affected future relationships with our husbands/ partners. Our relationship with God the Father was also considered and what the impact of our first experiences of father had on this all important relationship. We listened to three women’s experiences of their relationships with their own fathers, mainly during their teenage years. These experiences were completely different and not all were positive. The common thread, however, was that even if God’s goodness could not be seen through our own fathers His grace is still poured on us in our times of need for comfort , love and reassurance.

The session was a way for us to consider our femininity in all its aspects and how we bring this to our husbands and families. It was a time for individual reflection and sharing with other women. Everyone was free to explore their feelings to whatever level they felt comfortable. It was a time to initiate our thoughts and start us on a journey, if we so desire.

Mandie

Bowen

Billings LIFE WA

“The husbands of natural family planning teachers gathered to reflect on the unique masculine and feminine contributions couples make to their married relationship. It was a good opportunity to think about the gifts men and women bring to relationships, reflect on the challenges and the ways we can continue to deepen and enrich our marriages. Each marriage is a unique celebration of diversity and unity.  “The NFP week Mass was a wonderful opportunity for Natural Fertility Services, Billings WA and Fertility Care to gather, reflect and celebrate our common work; calling couples to a deeper, richer way of expressing their love for one another.

Derek Boylen Natural Fertility Services

their own,” Mr Boylen said. He told The Record last month that up to 80 per cent of the couples who go through his CMES office are cohabiting, and therefore likely contracepting. It is also likely that a higher figure are already sexually active before marriage and are also contracepting.

While only two years ago up to 80 per cent of NFS’ clients were non-Catholic, the number of Catholics using the agency has doubled through increased promotion from within the Archdiocesan agencies and among Catholics themselves.

This ignorance of the importance of fertility in family planning and therefore in healthy marriage can lead to workers in the Archdiocesan agencies – over 60 of whom were present at the Mass –to wonder whether their message is getting through, Bishop Sproxton said.

But they can draw strength, he said, from the Gospel of the day – John 21: 15-17, where Jesus asks

Peter three times if he loves Him. The true nature of the dialogue is lost in the translation from Greek, the Bishop said, as Jesus actually firstly asked Peter whether the apostle has that divine love that made it possible to lay down His life for His friends and enemies.

Peter’s humble answer was that “I love you but I know this love is limited as I am only human”. On the third occasion, Jesus asks Peter whether he will love Him with that human love, as Jesus will transform it into that divine love. Jesus did exactly that, he said, as Peter ended up being martyred for his faith in Jesus as the first Pope.

This illustrates a key promise of Jesus’, he said, that “if we ask in this Eucharist to have the love that has the dimension of the Cross (suffering), we will receive it to continue in the tasks He asks of us”.

“He can complete our little effort and make it more potent and an important witness for the Gospel and the truth that we stand for in our faith,” he said.

Natural Fertility Service’s Derek Boylen, at left, together with Perth Auxiliary Bishop Donald Spoxton, FertilityCare’s Dr Amanda Lamont and Mandie Bowen from Billings LIFE WA. PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

The late Professor James Brown, whose work researching aspects of the Billings fertility method is about to feature in the Human Reproduction Update , a leading scientific journal focusing on human fertility.

Amalgamated school launches new vision for future

BY BRIDGET SPINKS

Ron Dullard, director of Catholic Education and Paul Hille, principal of a new two-stream primary school in Cloverdale, launched the new school crest and logo, motto, vision and mission statement at a special function on 26 August.

“Founded on Faith” is the new motto for the Cloverdale Notre Dame Catholic Primary School which, once complete, will have the capacity for 450-500 students.

The school is an amalgamation of two smaller Catholic schools

situated 2.8km from one another, Holy Name in Carlisle and Notre Dame in Cloverdale, which catered for 150 and 250 students apiece.

In 2008, Catholic Education Commission and Archbishop Barry Hickey decided to amalgamate the two schools to “build a bigger school to cater for Catholic families in this region,” Paul Hille, Notre Dame principal told The Record

He said it was a “big thing to shut down a school” because of the emotion involved with a school’s history and spirituality.

In light of this, the Catholic Education Office promised the community that they would build the school “within the year to minimise disruption,” Mr Hille said.

The result has been an unprecedented alacrity in constructing the amalgamated school - something that “has not happened before in this area in Perth”.

“We’ve closed two schools, demolished one and built a new two-stream school in ten months,” Mr Hille said.

He credited all those who have been part of the process, namely the

Catholic Education Commission of WA, the director of Catholic Education, the Bishops who own the schools, the school boards, the local council, the school staff, the community, the architects and the builders.

The construction is due to be completed by January 2011.

The amalgamated school came into effect in January 2010 under the name of Notre Dame Catholic Primary School but operated on two campuses, Carlisle and Cloverdale.

The Notre Dame pupils at the Cloverdale campus are taking lessons this year in demountables and are spending their lunchtimes at the park across the road. They can watch their new school being raised up before their very eyes through the windows of their classrooms.

“The community members have been very positive about the new development,” Mr Hille said.

A combined $2.8 million in government funding from the Building Education Revolution (BER) scheme from both Holy Name and Notre Dame was put towards the new Notre Dame School to build a library and multi-purpose room.

This BER grant combined with a low-interest loan and another Australian government grant has made the construction of the new school on Church owned property possible, and “cheaper”, Mr Hille said.

Schools are normally built in several stages and can take years to complete. But building Notre Dame Catholic Primary School within 12 months, “in one hit,” decreased the overall cost because resources were rationalised, re-tendering at each stage was bypassed and only one building company has been employed to construct the project,

he said. The exciting part of the project, he added, was rebranding the school, forming a new identity and “building a community feel”.

A work party discussed, debated and formalised the new motto and core values.

Integrity, excellence, justice, compassion, courage and innovation are the core values the school wishes to promote and all “with Christ as our guide”.

“As a Catholic School, we’re founded on that. Christ was the example for us to live by. He showed us that example while he lived on this earth and our role as a Catholic school is to pass on that example to our students and parents,” Mr Hille said.

Paul Hille said that it was very important that Notre Dame was identified as a Catholic school.

“To pass on the Catholic faith to children and to help parents is a wonderful honour,” he said.

Enrolments for Kindergarten 2011 are already full, he added.

Bentley parishioner seeks more funding for research

BY GLYNNIS GRAINGER

A total of $2.2 million in State Government grants has been provided to the McCusker Foundation for Alzheimer’s Research to support WA Australian of the Year and Santa Clara Bentley acolyte Professor Ralph Martins’ work at Edith Cowan University, but more funding is needed.

“This funding now positions us at the forefront of the international research community to develop a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s Disease,” Prof Martins told The Record

“Basically, from Australian Imaging Biomarker and Lifestyle (AIBL), we have brought technology to Perth that has enabled us to look into the brains of people during life and definitively diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease.

“Currently, Alzheimer’s Disease is still conclusively diagnosed only after death when the brain is examined for amyloid plaques.

“However, the AIBL study was limited as State Government funding to look into the brains of people only allowed us to study 20% of people – 200 (subjects).

“This State Government funding has provided $1.6 million to study all participants in the AIBL study of ageing.

“This is the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind in the world involving the Perth team and Alzheimer’s researchers in Melbourne in partnership with the CSIRO throughout the country.

“This funding will enable us to follow up these study participants over a period of four years and this will result in placing AIBL ahead of any research organisation internationally.

“This brain imaging study Positron Emissions Tomography (PET) amyloid imaging can only be done in Melbourne and Perth.

“The funding from this PET imaging study will in turn serve as ‘gold standard’ or benchmark that will facilitate the blood test to be detected much earlier.

“Thirty per cent of healthy older people over the age of 60 will have amyloid in their brain and the PET imaging of the healthy ‘controls’

will now allow us to distinguish those people who are at high risk of getting Alzheimer’s from those healthy controls who will not get Alzheimer’s.

“The State Government has also provided $600,000 towards a stateof-the-art machine which will enable our scientists to examine several hundred fats (lipids) in the blood simultaneously and thus allow for the identification of those fats that are unique to Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Prof Martins’ colleague at the National University of Singapore has this machine in Singapore, where there was none before in WA.

This machine will be established at ECU, where the Centre for Alzheimer’s Research and Care is based.

To establish facilities to house and maintain this machine costs over $200,000, which has been kindly given by the Dean of ECU, Prof Tony Watson.

Prof Martins continued: “This, in turn, will greatly contribute to the development of our blood test.

“I am very grateful to the State Government for its foresight and very tremendous support. But there is an urgent need for funding to be made available to employ scientists who will work together to measure the different fats and proteins needed to develop and establish this essential early diagnostic test.

“Furthermore, this outstanding AIBL study, which is leading the world with the progress it has already made, desperately needs funding for its continuation in order to follow up participants so that the productive power of the PET imaging studies and the diagnostic blood biomarkers can be established.

“Hopefully, the Federal Government, or private enterprise, will recognise the significance of this work and provide support to

ensure outcomes are achieved in a timely fashion, eg five years.

“It is important to note that the AIBL study examined 1,100 participants over three years, with funding from the Federal Government of $3 million and $1 million from a pharmaceutical company, as opposed to the research group in the US where $US60 million was provided by both Government and private enterprise to study 800 people over the same period of time.

“Given that the Australian team has clearly demonstrated that it can deliver with virtually limited funding, this should inspire private enterprise to support this initiative to ensure the completion of the study so that this important work gets completed in Australia to benefit all Australians, and will no doubt have worldwide (impacts) which will be enormous.”

Prof Martins’ late father-in-law, George Lewis, had Alzheimer’s Disease in his 60s and was the inspiration for his son-in-law’s research career in this disease.

Mr Lewis had a Law degree in Burma and came to Australia with his family in 1971, and became a psychiatric nurse.

For donations, please contact the McCusker Alzheimer’s Research Foundation Inc, 184 Hampden Road, Nedlands 6009, telephone 9347 4200 or Dr July Edwards, Executive Manager, McCuskerEM.hph@ramsayhealth.com.au or www.alzheimer’s.com.au.

Above: Paul Hille, principal of the new Notre Dame Catholic Primary School in Cloverdale, in one of the demountable classrooms on campus. Right: the unveiled new school crest and motto, Founded on Faith PHOTOS: BRIDGET SPINKS

Prof Ralph Martins, an acolyte at Santa Clara parish in Bentley and WA Australian of the Year, whose research at ECU with the McCusker Foundation for Alzheimer’s Research has received $2.2 million in grants.

Benedict’s UK visit signals rapprochement

BY CINDY WOODEN

VATICAN CITY (CNS) --

The life of an ambassador to the Vatican is filled with meetings, liturgies, conferences, reports and social events.

About a dozen members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican seem to be everywhere -- at every papal event, every big conference and even at the lectures of guest speakers at pontifical universities.

Francis Campbell, the British ambassador to the Vatican, is one member of the group of diplomats who seem to spend every afternoon and evening running from a meeting to a conference and then on to a reception or dinner party.

Somehow, despite the busyness, he and at least one other member of the diplomatic corps find time to plan fairly elaborate practical jokes to play on their colleagues and on journalists.

But for the past year, he has had what he described as being almost another full-time job: preparing for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Great Britain Sept. 16-19.

At its most basic level, the job of an ambassador is to explain his home government to his host government and explain his host government to his own bosses.

Obviously, the people who read his regular reports to London know what the Vatican is, who the pope is and what the main issues of mutual concern are.

But a lot more people from various sectors of government and civil society are involved in a papal visit -- in setting the schedule, inviting the guests and organizing security -- and it’s the ambassador’s job to make sure all of them are up to speed on the relationship between the British government and the Vatican.

The previous time Great Britain hosted a papal visit was 1982 when

Pope John Paul II made the trip. No one who is now in the British Embassy to the Holy See was working there at the time, but there are files of information about the visit 28 years ago.

“This time around it’s a very

different visit for a number of reasons,” particularly because the 2010 visit is a state visit as well as a pastoral one, Campbell said.

Pope John Paul did meet Queen Elizabeth II and various government leaders in 1982, but the

whole atmosphere was restrained because the United Kingdom and Argentina were at war over the Falkland Islands and the Vatican was treading carefully.

The first appointment on Pope Benedict’s calendar Sept. 16 is a meeting with the queen at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, followed by a reception with 450 people, he said.

“The queen will introduce the pope to about 120 people representing different walks of life,” he said.

Campbell said he expects the event will attract a lot of attention in Great Britain, but he also thinks the pope could make a big impact when he speaks Sept. 17 in London’s historic Westminster Hall, a building completed in 1099 and once used for coronation festivities and as a venue for courts of law.

In fact, St. Thomas More was condemned to death at Westminster Hall in 1535.

Leaders of British civil society, including artists, politicians, scholars and business officials, will attend the pope’s speech in Westminster Hall.

Campbell said the fact that the pope was invited to speak in the same place where Thomas More was condemned -- for not siding with King Henry VIII in his debate with the Roman Catholic Church at a time of extreme church-state tensions -- “symbolizes a rapprochement” between British society and the papacy.

“It also says something about where we are as a country, the extent of religious pluralism and of tolerance and acceptance of people of other faiths and other denominations,” said Campbell, the first Catholic to serve at British ambassador to the Vatican since the Reformation.

Campbell said that while many people in Italy, including at the

Vatican, describe Great Britain as “very secular,” 70 per cent of the population identifies itself as Christian and the churches are very active in public debates on many matters.

Britain, he said, “is not a society that is apathetic about religion,” and that can be seen in the media coverage in the run-up to the pope’s visit.

“Some people would say, ‘Well, do you prefer indifference or antagonism?’ and I think I would prefer antagonism because it means you’re relevant,” he said.

In late August, Campbell’s role in the planning process transformed into service as a consultant on the speeches government officials will make to the pope, on finalizing the guest list for government-hosted events and on organizing a working dinner for Vatican officials, British government representatives and leaders of other Christian churches and religious groups.

People who do not understand why Great Britain continues to have diplomatic relations with the Vatican haven’t taken the time to see how many issues of concern to Great Britain are also issues of concern to the Vatican, including international development and showing solidarity with the poor, particularly by providing education and health care, he said.

The working dinner, which the pope will not attend, will cover “themes that are of importance in the state-to-state relationship between the U.K. and the Holy See. Those include climate change, disarmament, ethics in the economy, levels of international development spending, interfaith dialogue (and) ecumenism,” he said.

Campbell will complete a five-year term at the Vatican in December “and to finish with a visit is something fantastic, but it’s like a completely different fulltime job,” he said.

Stem cell ruling hailed as ‘a victory for common sense’

BY NANCY FRAZIER O’BRIEN

WASHINGTON - Cardinal Daniel N DiNardo praised a federal judge’s recent ruling that temporarily stopped federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but the U.S. Department of Justice said it would appeal the decision.

The cardinal, who heads the Archdiocese of GalvestonHouston and chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, called the Aug. 23 decision by Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia “a victory for common sense and sound medical ethics.”

“It also vindicates the bishops’ reading” of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, approved by Congress since 1996, which prevents federal funding of research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed, Cardinal DiNardo said in an Aug. 25 statement.

In congressional testimony in 1999, the bishops’ conference argued that “a mere bookkeeping distinction between funds used to destroy the embryo and funds used to work with the resultant cells is not sufficient” to comply with the amendment.

In his 15-page ruling granting a temporary injunction, Lamberth said Drs. James L. Sherley and Theresa Deisher, both adult stemcell researchers, had standing to challenge the Obama administration’s guidelines on stem-cell funding because they faced the pos-

sibility of losing funding from the National Institutes of Health when NIH funding for embryonic stemcell research was expanded.

The lawsuit had originally been filed on behalf of the two doctors; Nightlight Christian Adoptions, an adoption and counseling agency that facilitates international, domestic and embryo adoptions; embryos themselves; two couples; and the Christian Medical Association. Lamberth ruled in 2009 that none of the plaintiffs had legal standing, but an appeals court overruled him only in the case of the two doctors.

The Aug. 23 ruling said the researchers’ attorneys had shown that the Dickey-Wicker amendment “demonstrates that “the unambiguous intent of Congress is to prohibit the expenditure of federal funds on ‘research in which a human embryos or embryos are destroyed.’”

“By allowing federal funding of ESC research, the guidelines are in violation of the Dickey-Wicker amendment,” Lamberth wrote.

He also ruled that “the guidelines threaten the very livelihood of plaintiffs Sherley and Deisher” because their “injury of increased competition ... is actual and imminent.”

Supporters of the Obama administration’s guidelines for funding embryonic stem-cell research have argued that no embryos will be created and destroyed for the research since only already existing embryos created for in vitro ferti-

lization and later discarded would be used.

In a conference call with media Aug. 24, Francis S. Collins, NIH director, said the Lamberth ruling “pours sand into that engine of discovery” at a time “when we were really gaining momentum” with embryonic stem-cell research.

“This decision has the potential to do serious damage to one of the most promising areas of biomedical research,” he said.

But Cardinal DiNardo said he hoped the decision would “encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem-cell research.”

“A task of good government is to use its funding power to direct resources where they will best serve and respect human life, not to find new ways to evade this responsibility,” he said.

Steven H. Aden, senior legal

counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the decision “is simply enforcing an existing law passed by Congress that prevents Americans from paying another penny for needless research on human embryos.”

“Experimentation on embryonic stem cells isn’t even necessary because adult stem-cell research has been enormously successful,” he added. “In economic times like we are in now, it doesn’t make sense for the federal government to use precious taxpayer dollars for this illegal and unethical purpose.”

The Catholic Church strongly supports adult stem-cell research but opposes any research that involves the destruction of human embryos.

Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, said in an Aug. 23 statement that “the Obama administration has attempted to skirt the law by arguing that they are only funding research after the embryos are destroyed.”

“Today’s sensible ruling reconfirms what we already knew, that administration policy is in violation of the law,” she added.

But Dr. Irving L. Weissman, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, told The New York Times that the decision would be “devastating to the hopes of researchers and patients who have been waiting so long for the promise of stem-cell therapies.”

Francis Campbell, the British ambassador to the Vatican, is pictured in Rome in 2005.Photo: CNS/ALESSIA GIULIANI, CATHOLIC PRESS PHOTO

US Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on ProLife Activities, praised a recent ruling that temporarily stopped federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

PHOTO: CNS/NANCY WIECHEC

China’s Catholics still face complicated scene

BY BARB FRAZE

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The controversy surrounding a bishop in a Catholic diocese about 100 miles outside of Beijing illustrates the problems facing Chinese Catholic communities trying to follow Pope Benedict XVI’s instructions to unite.

Coadjutor Bishop Francis An Shuxin of Baoding, who spent 10 years under house arrest for refusing to join the governmentapproved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, agreed last year to join his local patriotic association -- a move he hoped would foster unity between Catholic communities who have registered with the government and those who have refused to register.

In August, the government conducted an installation Mass to make Bishop An head of the Catholic community in Baoding. However, the move caused controversy because the Vaticanrecognized head of the diocese, Bishop James Su Zhimin, was detained in October 1997 and has not been released. He surfaced briefly in a hospital in November 2003, but there has been no news about him since then.

The ceremony provoked much dissension in the Catholic community that Bishop An hoped to unify.

Catholic newspaper becomes Poland’s top-selling weekly

BY JONATHAN LUXMOORE

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A national Catholic newspaper has become Poland’s top-selling weekly, outstripping its secular competitors.

Gosc Niedzielny (Sunday Guest), a 92-page tabloid owned by the Archdiocese of Katowice, was confirmed Aug. 23 as the country’s highest-circulation weekly with more than 144,000 copies.

Father Tomasz Jaklewicz, deputy editor, told Catholic News Service Aug. 26 that the paper had benefited from a vigorous chief editor, Father Marek Gancarczyk, and youthful editorial team, as well as from support by Catholic parishes nationwide.

He said the staff had made sure the paper is “contemporary and up-to-date in form and content and addresses the issues most preoccupying people here in an open, approachable way.”

ZKDP, the association that controls Poland’s press distribution, said Gosc Niedzielny, which runs local editions in half of the country’s 34 Catholic dioceses, had boosted sales by 5.5 percent in the past year, overtaking its nearest secular rival, Polityka, whose circulation fell by 2 percent to 142,000.

Father Jaklewicz said Gosc Niedzielny offered a positive sign to counter media claims that the Polish Catholic Church faced decline with falling priestly vocations, Mass attendance and ageing congregations.

“Although the church has its problems and weaknesses, there are many good, hopeful things happening as well,” he said.

“The mainstream media generally paints a negative picture of church life and also reflects the secular perspective of Warsaw and other large cities.

“By contrast, we’re closer to the majority of society and not affected by anti-church pressures,” he said.

Much of the controversy centers on instructions in the 2007 letter from Pope Benedict and a followup Vatican document issued in 2009.

One priest who operates in the open or registered Catholic community in Baoding told the Asian church news agency UCA News that Bishop An’s installation Mass was “just a formality required by the government to recognize him. His own decision is most important. For me, he is my bishop, installed or not.”

But UCA News reported that one of the 40 unregistered priests who chose not to attend the ceremony said there is “no more space for reconciliation” with the registered community -- at least for the time being.

“At a meeting in June, we reminded Bishop An to be loyal to the church, his faith and the pope’s letter. It is he who has not followed the faith, not we who are refusing to reconcile,” he said.

A canon lawyer who preferred to remain anonymous told UCA News that an installation ceremony is not restricted to bishops only.

“Even a priest can have an installation when he is transferred to a new parish,” he said. “So Bishop An’s installation does not mean there is any change to his status, if he understands his own situation.”

The Vatican still regards Bishop An as coadjutor.

“The canonical status of His Excellency Bishop Francis An Shuxin is that of coadjutor bishop of Baoding,” Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican press office, told Catholic News Service in mid-August. “The bishop of Baoding is His Excellency Bishop James Su Zhimin.”

Belgian Missionhurst Father Jeroom Heyndrickx, who directs the Verbiest Institute at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and is one of the most authoritative experts on Catholicism in China, told Catholic News Service in an e-mail, “It is well-known that Bishop An insisted with Chinese authorities that he considers Bishop Su ... the bishop of Baoding and himself as coadjutor. Authorities did not contradict that, but they did insist on having such an ‘installation ceremony.’”

Pope Benedict’s 2007 letter to Chinese Catholics urged reconciliation between the two Catholic communities which, in some parts of China, such as Hebei province where Baoding is located, operate in the same cities and sometimes even the same parishes. The letter emphasized that some aspects of the government’s religious policies were incompatible with church teaching and said the Holy See

“leaves the decision to the individual bishop,” having consulted his priests, “to weigh ... and to evaluate the possible consequences” of joining the association.

Last November, Bishop An spoke to UCA News about his decision to become one of the five vice chairmen of the local branch of the Catholic Patriotic Association and director of the Church Affairs Committee.

“I refused to join the CPA at first after I was released in 2006,” he said. “I changed my mind after reading the pope’s letter.”

Bishop An told UCA News he felt helpless over the divisions in the Catholic community in his diocese and hoped that by taking positions in the government-sanctioned bodies, he could “facilitate the diocese’s development.” His decision is similar to that faced by thousands of Catholics who suffered after the communist government closed churches in the late 1950s and during the 196676 Cultural Revolution. They kept their faith alive under persecution and later had to decide whether or not to openly worship and work within the system under restrictions imposed by the government.

Since his installation, Bishop An has been criticized -- including in an article from Baoding in the Rome-based AsiaNews, which

referred to Bishop An as “a puppet” of the government.

Father Heyndrickx told CNS that those who call Bishop An a puppet “have not properly read and understood the letter of the pope.”

In a statement, he said many readers of the papal letter overlook a phrase in which Pope Benedict “expresses his full trust in the bishops who bear the heat of the day inside China and who, in a situation of extremely limited freedom, do their best to deal with it in faithfulness to the Holy See. He fully trusts the decisions they take in conscience in order to face the very controversial requests from civil authorities.”

“The letter of the pope teaches us all to trust the bishops in China rather than to criticize them,” he emphasized.

In the United States, Maryknoll Sister Janet Carroll, who founded and led the U.S. Catholic China Bureau for 20 years and continues to work with Chinese priests and nuns who have come to the United States to study, said Chinese Catholics have “grown in the faith, grown in maturity, grown in confidence” and are “willing to stand their ground.”

“They are more willing to stand up and not be manipulated by the forces around them,” she added.

Mother Teresa modeled Christian virtue

BY CAROL GLATZ

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is “an exemplary model of Christian virtue” who showed the world that an authentic love for others opens the door to knowing and being with God, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, the pope sent a message to Sister Mary Prema, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation Mother Teresa founded in 1950.

The Vatican released the message Aug. 26 after it was read in Calcutta, India, at the end of a special Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth.

In Calcutta, most of the Missionaries of Charity nuns gave up their regular seats in the moth-

erhouse chapel to accommodate hundreds of pilgrims and volunteers who arrived for the early morning Mass.

After the Mass, the bishops, priests, nuns and visitors processed to Mother Teresa’s groundfloor tomb. Sister Prema handed Cardinal Telesphore Toppo of Ranchi a lamp, and he lit a candle to mark the beginning of the centenary celebrations.

Dozens of Missionaries of Charity novices gathered around the tomb and sang “Happy Birthday.”

In his message, Pope Benedict said celebrating Mother Teresa’s birth centenary “will be for the church and the world an occasion of joyful gratitude to God for the inestimable gift that Mother Teresa was in her lifetime, and continues to be through the affectionate and tireless work of you, her

spiritual children.” The pope said Mother Teresa was a living example of St. John’s words: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection.”

He asked the order’s sisters, brothers, priests and lay members to let God’s love continue to inspire them to give themselves “generously to Jesus, whom you see and serve the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the abandoned” and to draw constantly from Mother Teresa’s example and spirituality.

After the visit to the tomb, Sister Prema read a message from the congregation, and the group processed to the motherhouse’s L-shaped courtyard. Sister Prema and Sister Nirmala Joshi, retired superior general of the order, released white pigeons and blue

and white balloons amid cheers from those packing the balconies on the three floors surrounding the courtyard.

Similar events were planned worldwide, including at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Archbishop Lucas Sirkar of Calcutta said anniversary celebrations being held throughout India had brought “a ray of hope and joy to thousands of poor, underprivileged, disadvantaged, and marginalized in India,” especially as the nation struggles with violence, injustice and natural disasters.

The events were receiving wide media coverage, which was helping make the Gospel message better understood in India, he said in an Aug. 26 interview with Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

Pope calls for tolerance as French expel Gypsies

BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy

(CNS) -- As France continues its campaign to repatriate foreignborn Gypsies, Pope Benedict XVI called for greater acceptance of cultural differences and urged parents to teach their children tolerance.

Speaking in French to pilgrims gathered in the courtyard of the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo Aug. 22, the pope said the day’s Scriptures were “an invitation to learn how to accept legitimate differences among human beings, just like Jesus came to unite men and women from every nation and every language.”

After praying the Angelus, he urged families to teach tolerance.

“Dear parents, may you be able to educate your children about universal fraternity,” he said in French.

The pope’s invitation came amid a government-led campaign to expel foreign-born Roma, or Gypsies, from France and dismantle illegal camps.

French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said that by Aug. 31, approximately 950 Roma from 88 camps would have been sent back to Romania and Bulgaria.

The expulsions were part of a voluntary repatriation program in which the government paid each adult about $380 and each child about $130 to return to his or her country of origin, even though the Gypsies are members of the European Union.

The French government, however, demands that the Gypsies have work permits and prove they are able to support themselves.

Some human rights groups questioned the voluntary nature of the program since those who do not choose to return now will face a government order to leave the country with no monetary compensation.

After a new round of deportations Aug. 26, Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois said he would explain the Catholic Church’s objections to the deportations during talks with French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux.

The cardinal told France’s Europe1 radio he would “remind him there are a certain number of limits which shouldn’t be transgressed.”

“I think an unhealthy climate has developed in our society, with a kind verbal bidding between different positions, a sort of competition over who can appear the most security-minded and who can seem the most moral. In a civilized, peaceful society, this opposition should be managed in a calm way, not in the heat of the moment,” he said.

The expulsions have been occurring for a number of years; in 2009, more than 10,000 foreign-born Gypsies were deported, according to the France-based advocacy group Romeurope.

France’s Interior Ministry stressed that the country was enforcing current rules against occupying land with no authorization.

Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, criticized the dismantling of about 51 illegal Gypsy camps in early

Relic of Cross stolen from cathedral turns up in Vermont

BY JIM LOCKWOOD

BRAINTREE, Mass. (CNS)

-- One of the Archdiocese of Boston’s most cherished relics, missing for more than a month, has been returned.

The relic of the true cross, which had been housed in a reliquary in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End, was turned into the Vermont State Police. Officials from the cathedral retrieved the relic Aug. 15.

The relic, a splinter of wood believed to be from the cross on which Jesus was crucified, was returned to its original reliquary at a prayer service Aug. 18 at the cathedral.

“I think we’re thankful it’s been returned,” said cathedral pastoral associate Bob Travers before the prayer service. “We want to get it back to where it was originally so people can venerate the cross and pause and reflect in prayer.”

August, which pushed residents into “a precarious situation” that certainly impacted their decision to accept the monetary aid connected to their deportation.

“The ‘Gypsy Question’ is a serious issue for Europe because it involves the largest minority group in Europe: at least 12 million people, including 5 million children who must go to school,” he said in an interview with Vatican Radio Aug. 20.The archbishop said the European Union forbids collective expulsions and that the European Commission was studying the situation.

EU rules state “there can be no expulsions if there is no serious danger to security,” he said.

French law also obligates towns with more than 5,000 inhabitants to create special areas that are available to itinerant peoples, like Gypsies, he said.

“Therefore France itself is found to not have been following a law that was created precisely to protect these people” and to prevent the building of camps illegally, he said.

According to Amnesty International, about 20,000 Gypsies from Eastern and Central Europe are estimated to be residing in France, many of them in illegal camps.

However, in a July 23 statement, Amnesty reminded French authorities that international law mandates that evictions, even from illegal settlements, should only take place after all other alternatives have been exhausted, affected residents have been consulted, and adequate alternative accommodation has been offered.

According to an incident report released by the Vermont State Police, the relic was recovered Aug. 9 after they received a call about a domestic argument at a Royalton, Vt., trailer park involving Earl Frost, 34. Frost, a transient who turned the relic over to Vermont State Police, claimed he received it from another person in Rhode Island.

According to the incident report, Frost said he had wanted to give the relic directly to the cathedral instead of to law enforcement.

Because Vermont State Police did not have confirmation of the relic’s authenticity at the time they received it from Frost, they did not have enough evidence to hold him for possession of stolen property. Once cathedral officials confirmed the relic’s authenticity, the Vermont State Police determined they had enough evidence to arrest Frost.

On Aug. 17, Vermont State Police learned that Frost was filling a prescription at a Hanover, N.H., pharmacy. Frost was subsequently arrested by the Hanover Police Department. Vermont police later learned there was an unrelated warrant for his arrest in New Hampshire.

As of Aug. 20, Frost was being held on the New Hampshire warrant, but a warrant was still being sought in Vermont.

“We are grateful for the great work of the Boston Police Department in their search for the relic,” said Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese, in a statement.

“Their professional and diligent work made this effort successful. We also extend our appreciation to the Vermont State Police who assisted in the recovery effort,” Donilon added.

Corrections:

The Oblates leaving the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lesmurdie were reported to have served the parish “since 1964,” the year they were officially entrusted to the parish. However, the Oblates have cared for the parish long before this. In 1955, Fr Felix Gavin OMI was looking after the future parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes before the church was built. He

When cathedral officials arrived at police barracks, they were asked to confirm the relic’s authenticity and place a dollar value on the artifact for legal purposes. While cathedral officials estimated the relic’s worth to be between $2,300 and $3,800, they also said its value is “priceless,” since the papal ring that stamped the wax seal on the rear of the relic’s encasement was destroyed after the pope’s death. That seal and the red cord that attaches to it, Travers said, verifies the authenticity of the relic.

The relic of the true cross was believed to have been taken from the cathedral June 30. It was discovered missing from its reliquary at the base of a crucifix in the cathedral’s Blessed Sacrament Chapel by a staff member on the morning of July 1.

There were no signs of forced entry, so it was believed the relic was removed during the day when the cathedral was open.

Since then, the cathedral had hosted prayer services every Wednesday with the intention of recovering the relic, Travers said.

With the relic having been recovered, the previously scheduled Aug. 18 prayer service was dedicated to thanking God for the safe return of the relic, Travers said.

Aug. 18 was also the feast day of St. Helena of the True Cross, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, who is credited with originally finding relics of the true cross in Jerusalem.

The cathedral’s relic was brought from France in the 1800s, a gift from the cathedral’s first pastor, Father Claude de la Poterie, the French priest who celebrated the first public Mass in Boston on Nov. 2, 1788.

In his statement, Donilon also expressed the local church’s willingness to forgive the perpetrators.

“God has blessed us with his love and capacity to forgive,” he said. “We prayerfully carry on his call for forgiveness for those responsible.”

would say Mass in the convent chapel of St Brigid’s Lesmurdie. The parish comprised 30 families at this time, but grew and in April, 1958 the church of Our Lady of Lourdes was opened and blessed by the presiding Archbishop.

Deacon Cyprian Shikokoti ordained to the diaconate on 20 August, has been assigned to St Mary’s Cathedral (not St Mary’s Star of the Sea, Cottesloe as previously reported).

A Red Cross worker collects personal data from a Roma family at a camp on the outskirts of Rome July 21. City officials and the Italian Red Cross began a census of the Gypsy population as required by law, but a city official said Gypsies would not be fingerprinted unless they are suspected of a crime. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi drew criticism from religious groups, the European Union and human rights advocates after announcing in June that it wanted to fingerprint tens of thousands of Gypsies in Italy.

PHOTO: CN S/MAX ROSSI, REUTERS

A stolen relic believed to be of the true cross has been returned and is pictured on August 18.

PHOTO: CNS/GREGORY L. TRACY, THE PILOT

PERSPECTIVES

A deafening Catholic silence

version, not certainly to silence.

Confronting the crisis

Dissecting the issue which has brought the Church to its knees.

By Anthony Paganoni CS

Church authorities and the Catholic media have in general overlooked the international extent of the problem of abuse. Why should I hide the fact that I have a problem with this “silence”? We, as a church, have been called to con-

There would be no evangelisation and no conversion of the heart, unless the message were uttered loud and clear.

Or does the Church leadership prefer to uncover or allow the media to uncover painfully its seamy side and call for punitive and redeeming action, without worrying about the very many who are in similar situations all over the world? Is the Church called to just protect its rank and file members or is the mandate of the Founder rather more embracing and universal?

This silence in Australia and elsewhere may have had the unwanted effect for the average reader (and Catholics are no exception!) that the Church’s weakness in responding to the many accusations, even

We are not very good at forgiving ourselves...

How I pray

with Debbie Warrier

Jenny Shier

When I wake up each morning I commit whatever is on my mind to the Lord. I pray to be open to His will and Presence for that day. My whole life is a prayer and I try to make it a life of thanksgiving, although it isn’t always easy to be thankful. I live within my faith and have learnt to pray contemplatively. I silently sit in God’s presence before Rublev’s icon of the Trinity and mentally bring the people I pray for with me.

I am part of a local team that provides a healing ministry for women and men who have experienced abortion in their life. We run a weekend retreat called Rachel’s Vineyard which has over 8,000 volunteers internationally. Participants can be the woman, her partner, siblings who have a brother or sister who was aborted, grandparents, aunts and uncles. A maximum of five can attend the retreat and the accommodation is subsidised by the Archdiocese. There is no attendance fee. We accept donations and seek sponsorship for the in-between retreat work.

Abortion attacks all relationships. The motherchild relationship is about the most intimate one there is. When people have an abortion they very often are not anticipating that there might be negative consequences for themselves or their loved ones.

Some people find that after having an abortion they suffer Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS) a type of Post Stress Traumatic Disorder. They experience the same symptoms as someone who has been through a bank robbery or the Vietnam War. They might have disturbing flashbacks, avoid children, hospitals or doctors because these trigger symptoms associated with their trauma. Relationships suffer as a result. Post abortive women are at a higher risk of depression and suicide than those who carry the pregnancy to full term.

PAS is a psychological and spiritual problem when victims suffer in silence and isolation. They

when proven to be inaccurate or false, was due to the fact that the accusations were believed to be correct in the first place. And that the sex scandals were eminently a Catholic story!

Some will espouse the approach that before cleaning up somebody else’s backyard, we have to ensure that our own is tidy. That’s fair enough.

But that does not prevent a Catholic Community founded to serve the world to completely forget, as the Vatican Council suggests, “the joys and sorrows, the pains and aches, the problems and dilemmas” faced by other members of the human family.

Particularly when, as problems have been identified in a series of United Nations Reports, a perfect silence and oblivion have removed

may go to confession many, many times. Sometimes they go from one priest to another because even though they hear that they’re forgiven, it is difficult to forgive oneself. Others may avoid confessing the abortion, stay away from Mass or go to Mass as regularly as before but feel guilty.

It is isolating out in the community because it is not politically correct to suffer after an abortion. Some are told their child was just a bit of tissue or a clump of cells. In their heart, they know the truth. For some women, it violates their core values. The women that come on the retreat are very courageous. Some have never talked about their abortion before.

Participants find that they’re not the only ones to be suffering like this. They listen to each other’s stories and a real trust builds up. The retreat is all very confidential. At its heart are the Living Scripture exercises where, in meditation, we enter into the gospel readings. We also enact simple gospel related rituals and the result is profound. One actually “experiences” an intimate encounter with Christ and one’s child or children. In silent meditation the soul is invited to speak its pain to Christ who is present through the Word.

The theological framework for the retreat is to unite our suffering to Christ’s which began on Good Friday – travelling the paschal mystery of our own lives, suffer with Him, recognise the death caused by sin in our lives, grieve the death of the aborted children, and unite our sorrows so that when the work is finished, we may arise with Christ on the Sunday. The retreat includes the Mass, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and a memorial service.

We are all human, we all have problems and we are not very good at forgiving ourselves. People who come are very honest with the group because they went to be healed. On our team we have a priest - a beautiful, non-judgemental man. We have a trained psychotherapist who provides professional counselling. We also have a lovely lady who provides spiritual support. Then there is me and I have training in these areas too.

Last year was the first time we ran the retreat in Perth. We run two a year but due to the number of enquiries we’ve had this year we may run three. The support doesn’t happen just on the retreat. I’m taking calls virtually all the time. I advertise the retreats in the Church bulletins.

The retreat started in 1986 in America by a Catholic psychologist called Dr Theresa Burke. She was running groups for women and found they would often disclose they had an abortion. After much research she developed Rachel’s Vineyard which is the most successful model for post-abortion reconciliation, healing and evangelisation in the world. My first vocation was as a mother of five. My volunteer work is also a vocation and gives me a sense of purpose.

I pray for the women and men who are thinking of coming to Rachel’s Vineyard as well as those who are coming to the retreat and those who have already attended. I pray for those who are considering an abortion that they will have the courage to have their babies. It is a fallacy that only unwanted babies are aborted. Babies are aborted because circumstances force their mothers into it. They believe they have no other choice. They are vulnerable and are often pressured by their partner or parents to do so. Men have a natural instinct to provide for and protect their families. When this is prevented by abortion (whether it is their choice or not) they too can experience PAS symptoms. Rachel’s Vineyard acknowledges the love and the grief. It brings the heart of Christ to people suffering in isolation. The Holy Spirit does the healing.

For enquiries please contact Jenny Shier on (08) 9445 7464 or email: rachelsvineyardwa@gmail.com

a disproportionate number of fallacies from public knowledge and consciousness.

With the exception of very few, Church leaders may be very quick in lamenting the deleterious effects of negative and biased reporting by the media, but they seem to be ill-prepared to comprehensively engage with it.

In a society where the media is known to set the agenda and set it persuasively, either by focusing or by obscuring important information, individual bishops’ conferences need to equip themselves, preferably on a national level, with professional communication offices and astute professionals.

Along with a very competitive media office, needed also is a national database of cases reported, investigated and substanti-

ated, in much the same style as the Resource Sheet published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS). It would then be possible to compare the numerical extent of the problem experienced by the Catholic Church within the context of civil society. All abuse of children and adolescents is a crime to be considered by civil as well ecclesiastical law.

Meanwhile, a recent interview with Fernando Keuleneer, a lawyer of the Malines Bruxelles Archdiocese, aired by Vatican radio, has revealed the following.

Due to the highly irregular procedures followed by the Belgian police during a much publicized raid, all documents confiscated will not be utilized during the ongoing inquiries into sexual abuse of minors.

Where did the good souls go before Christ opened Heaven?

Q&A

By Fr John Flader

Limbo of the Fathers

Q: I have always wondered where good people from the Old Testament like Abraham or Moses went after they died. It seems they could not go to heaven because Christ had not yet redeemed them from original sin, but they should not have gone to hell either.

This is a frequently asked question and the answer given by the medieval theologians is that the good people of the Old Testament went to what they called the “Limbo of the Fathers”. The word “limbo” means a border and is used here to refer to the border of hell.

As you say in your question, as a consequence of the original sin of our first parents it was not possible for anyone to go to heaven until Christ came to redeem humankind. That is, Adam and Eve lost for themselves and for their posterity the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace, which was a sharing in God’s own life and a state of intimacy with him.

That loss deprived the descendants of Adam and Eve, all of humanity, of the Beatific Vision of heaven. This is a dogma of faith defined in two ecumenical councils, the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Florence (1438). Those councils declared: “The souls of those who die in original sin as well as those who die in actual mortal sin go immediately into hell, but their punishment is very different.”

The word “hell”, as used here, is a translation of the Latin word “infernum”, meaning the “lower region” or the “realm of the dead” in general, not the hell of the damned. It means the state of deprivation of the Beatific Vision of heaven.

That is why the councils say “but their punishment is very different”. The souls of the just who were in original sin but died in God’s friendship suffered only the loss of the Beatific Vision and were very happy, while the souls of the damned suffered in addition the eternal pains of hell.

Before Christ’s redeeming death on the cross, then, no one could go to heaven. But it is clear that while some people may have deserved to go to the hell of the damned, there

were also many who deserved to go to heaven, but were unable to do so.

Among them would be the many figures of the Old Testament like the ones you mention, but also people from the time of Christ like St Joseph and St John the Baptist.

All of these souls remained in that state of natural happiness known as the “Limbo of the Fathers”, awaiting Christ’s death and resurrection.

After Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from original sin, his soul too passed into the realm of the dead while his body remained in the tomb. It is of this that we speak when we say in the Creed that “he descended into hell” or “he descended to the dead”.

According to the Tradition, while he was in the realm of the dead, or the “Limbo of the Fathers”, Jesus announced the good news of redemption to the souls detained there.

For example, St Ignatius of Antioch, who died in 107, writes to the Magnesians that Christ “awakened the prophets from the dead, who were his disciples in spirit, and who awaited him as their teacher on his arrival” (Magn. 9, 2).

St Irenaeus, later in the second century, quotes an apocryphal passage from the prophecy of Jeremiah, in which he sees Christ’s descent to the dead foretold: “The Lord, the Holy God of Israel, thought of his dead who slept in the earth of the grave, and He went down to them in order to announce to them the salvation” (Adv. haer. IV, 33, I, 12, and V, 31, I).

In the thirteenth century, St Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa Theologiae: “Consequently, when Christ descended into hell, by the power of his Passion he delivered the saints from the penalty whereby they were excluded from the life of glory, so as to be unable to see God in his essence, wherein man’s beatitude lies, as stated in the I-II, 3, 8. But the holy Fathers were detained in hell for the reason that, owing to our first parent’s sin, the approach to the life of glory was not opened. And so when Christ descended into hell he delivered the holy Fathers from there (STh III, 52, 5).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up this teaching: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell” (CCC 633).

- Got a question for Fr Flader? Email director@caec.com.au.

PANORAMA

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

Contributions may be emailed to office@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9325 4580, or mailed to PO Box 3075, Adelaide Terrace, Perth WA 6832.

FRIDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER

PRO-LIFE WITNESS

9.30am at St Brigid’s Church, Midland. Mass followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at nearby abortion clinic, led by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. All welcome to come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary

9pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Glendalough. Commences with the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Reflections, Rosary and alternating with healing sessions. Vigil concludes with the Holy Mass at midnight. Come, be healed and be part of the Lord’s Mighty Work for He is “Building a People of Power”. Enq: Fr Doug 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

SATURDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER

WITNESS FOR LIFE

8.30am at St Augustine’s, Gladstone Rd, Rivervale. Mass celebrated by Fr Paul Carey, followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at nearby abortion clinic. All welcome to come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Day With Mary

9am–5pm at St Paul’s Church, 104 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima message. 9am Video, 10.10am Holy Mass, Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

SUNDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER

Divine Mercy

1.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, Perth. An afternoon with Jesus and Mary. Main celebrant (to be decided) will give homily on the Birth of Our Lady. Enq: John 9457 7771.

SUNDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER TO TUESDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER

48 Hours Perpetual Rosary Bouquet

Commencing 6pm, Rosary can be said anywhere during the 48 hours. Birthday Gift to our Lady, phone or e-mail your time for saying Rosary, or fill in roster from Record, 4 August. All intentions are for Her. Scroll to be taken up during Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral on 8 September at 12.10pm, Celebrant Archbishop Hickey. Meditative Rosary, 11.30am led by Fr Paul Carey. Enq: Margaret 9341 8082, bowen@iinet.net.au, Legion of Mary 9328 2726, perthcomitium@bigpond.com.au.

MONDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER

Divine Mercy Mass and Healing Service

4pm–6.30pm at St Jerome’s Church, 36 Troode St, Munster. Celebrated by Vincentian Priests Fr Joshi Kochukudiyattil VC Director of Tabore Divine Mercy Centre, Mumbai, India and Fr Antony Parankimyalil VC Kenya, includes preaching, praise, worship and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Enq: Connie 9494 1495 or Edita 9418 3728.

WEDNESDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER

The Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary –Pilgrimage to Bindoon

9am bus departs at St Jerome’s Church. All Divine Mercy Groups, other Religious groups and everyone invited. Fr Paul Fox will be Mass celebrant and guide the day retreat, Exposition and Benediction. Tea provided, lunch BYO. Enq: Connie 9494 1495 or Edita 9418 3728.

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Rd, Bateman. A beautiful, prayerful, and sung devotion accompanied by Exposition and followed by Benediction. All are welcome. Enq: George 9310 9493 home or 9325 2010 work.

Greenwood Prayer Group - Finding New Life in the Spirit

7.30pm at All Saints Catholic Church, 7 Liwara Pl, Greenwood. Accept your own Pentecost. Come on a 7 week journey. Enq: Des 9447 9343 or Frank 0417 852 977.

THURSDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER TO SUNDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER

Feast of Our Lady Maria Santissima Del Tindari

7.30pm at Basilica Saint Patrick, Adelaide St, Fremantle. Triduum celebrated by Fr Giovanni Gandini. Sunday at 9.45am concelebrated Mass, principal celebrant, Fr Gaetano Nanni, followed at 2pm with procession through the streets of Fremantle. Enq: Joe 0404 801 138 or 9335 1185.

Kelmscott Mental Health Support Group

12 noon at Good Shepherd Parish Hall, 42 Streich Ave, Kelmscott. Talk on Our Lady of Sorrows. Sandwich lunch provided. Enq: Ann 9291 6670 or Barbara 9328 8113.

SATURDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER

Divine Mercy

2.30pm at St Francis Xavier’s Church, Windsor St, East Perth. Healing Mass, main celebrant will be Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM, followed by veneration of First Class Relic of St Faustina Kowalska. Reconciliation in English and Italian will be offered. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: John 9457 7771.

SUNDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER

The World Apostolate of Fatima – Eucharistic Hour

3pm at Sacred Heart Church, Coolgardie St, Mundaring. The National Pilgrim Virgin Statue of our Apostolate will be there. All welcome. Enq: 9339 2614.

WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER

Lesmurdie Mental Health Support Group

6-8pm at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Hall, 207 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie. Guest Speakers from the Christian Meditation Community Inc. will address the topic:“How meditation can help with mental health”. Please bring a plate of finger food to share. Enq: Ann 9291 6670 or Barbara 9328 8113.

FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER TO SUNDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER

Annual Secular Franciscan Retreat - The Spirit of St Francis for Today

6.30pm at the Redemptorist Retreat House, North Perth. All those interested in learning more of Franciscan spirituality are invited. Fr John Spiteri OFM Cap will conduct the retreat. Enq: Angela 9275 2066 by 31 August.

SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER

Feast of the Stigmata of St Francis of Assisi

2.30pm at Redemptorist Retreat House, North Perth. All are invited to join the Secular Franciscan Order in celebrating the Feast with the readings of the Stigmata of St Francis. Tea provided. Enq: Angela 9275 2066.

FRIDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER TO SUNDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER

Inner Healing Retreat

7.30am at the Redemptorist Retreat House, North Perth. A live in retreat for a closer encounter with Jesus and experience spiritual, physical and emotional healing. Enq: Holy Family Church Maddington 9493 1703.

FRIDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER

Medjugorje – Evening of Prayer

7–9 pm at St Columba’s Parish, 20 Almondbury and Roberts Sts, Bayswater. In thanksgiving for Our Blessed Mother’s reported daily apparitions at Medjugorje with

Adoration, Rosary, Benediction and Holy Mass. Free, inspirational DVD on Fr Donald Calloway’s conversion from drugs and self-destructive lifestyle to the priesthood available on night. All warmly welcomed. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480 or email medjugorje@y7mail.com.

SUNDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER

The Sudanese Gospel Concert

2-4pm at the Redemptorist Monastery Church, 190 Vincent St, North Perth. Presented by the Sudanese Catholic Community and hosted by the North Perth Social Justice Group. Tea included. Cost: $12, children half price. Everyone welcome.

FRIDAY, 1 OCTOBER TO SUNDAY, 3 OCTOBER

Spirituality Praying

7pm at God’s Farm. Praying in the Spirituality of St Francis, Brother Andrew and Immaculee Illibagiza. Daily Holy Mass, prayers of the Church and Reconciliation. Enq: Betty or Mary 9755 6212. Bus bookings, Cheryl 9409 8747 or Yvonne 9343 1897. Map available. God’s Farm PO Box 24, Cowaramup 6284.

TUESDAY, 12 OCTOBER

Alan Ames Healing Service

7pm at St Joseph’s Church, 19 Hamilton St, Bassendean. Mass followed by talk and healing service. Enq: George 9275 6608.

GENERAL NOTICES

Perpetual Adoration

Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is in its seventh year at Christ the King Church, Beaconsfield. Open 24 hours except at Mass times. All welcome. Enq: Joe 9319 1169.

Perpetual Adoration

Sacred Heart Church, 64 Mary St, Highgate. All that is needed is for each one of us to be willing to spend one hour a week with Jesus so that all the hours are covered with one person in the Chapel. Available times, Monday 2-3am, 4-5am, Saturday 11am-12 noon, Tuesday 11am12 noon, Sunday 2-3pm, 3-4pm; Thursday 7-8pm. Enq: Helen 9444 7962.

EVERY SUNDAY

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation 2pm at Shrine, 36 Chittering Rd, Bullsbrook. Commencing with Rosary followed by Benediction. Reconciliation is available before every celebration. Anointing of the Sick administered during Mass every second Sunday of the month. Pilgrimage in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation, last Sunday of the month. Side entrance to the church and shrine open daily between 9am-5pm. Enq S 9447 3292.

EVERY SUNDAY AND MONDAY

Extraordinary Form of Latin Holy Mass 11am Sunday and 7.30pm Monday except 3rd Monday of the month, at St Joseph’s Parish, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean.

EVERY 3RD SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Oblates of St Benedict 2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, 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. Enq: Secretary 9457 2758.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood, Religious Life 2-3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington St, Morley. The

hour includes Exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, Scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray that those discerning vocations to the priesthood or Religious life hear clearly God’s loving call to them.

LAST MONDAY OF EVERY MONTH

Christian Spirituality Presentation

7.30-9.15pm at the Church hall behind St Swithan’s Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie. Stephanie Woods will present The Desert Period of Christianity, 260 to 600AD. From this time period came the understanding of the monastic lifestyle and contemplative prayer. No cost. Enq Lynne 9293 3848.

EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT

Novena and Benediction to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

6pm at the Pater Noster Church, Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Mass at 5.30pm. Enq: John 0408 952 194.

EVERY WEDNESDAY

Holy Spirit of Freedom Community

7.30pm at The Church of Christ, 111 Stirling St, Perth. We are delighted to welcome everyone to attend our Holy Spirit of Freedom Praise Meeting. Enq 9475 0155 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

EVERY THURSDAY

Catholic Questions and Answers

7-7.30pm at St Joseph’s Parish Centre, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean. Catechesis learned easily with questions and answers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Adult learning and deepening of the Catholic Faith, with Fr John Corapi DVD series, 7.30-9pm.

Divine Mercy

11am at St John and Paul Church, Pine Tree Gully Rd, Willetton. Pray the Rosary and Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and for the consecrated life especially here in John Paul parish, conclude with veneration of the First Class Relic of Saint Faustina. Please do come and join us in prayer. Enq: John 9457 7771.

EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Taize Prayer and Meditation

7.30-8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Church, 3 Kitchener Street, North Beach. All are warmly invited to prayer and meditation using songs from Taize. In Peace and Candlelight we make our pilgrimage. Enq: Joan 9448 4457.

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigil

All warmly invited 7pm-1am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park. Mass, Rosary, Confession and Adoration. Enq Vicky 0400 282 357.

Mass for Vocations

7pm at the Sisters of the Poor, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Celebrated by Fr Doug Harris, followed by Holy Hour and Benediction, refreshments will follow.

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s Church, 93 Wood St, Inglewood. Benediction, Praise and Worship followed by Mass with Fr Sam and Fr Joseph Tran as celebrants, later fellowship. Enq: Priscilla 0433 457 352.

EVERY FRIDAY LUNCHTIME

Christian Meditation comes to the City

12.15-12.45pm at The Wesley Uniting Church, William and Hay Sts, Perth. Ecumenical Christian meditation as taught by Fr Laurence Freeman. All welcome. Enq: CMC WA 9444 5810, Anne 9335 8142 or christianmedittion@ iinet.net.au or www.christianmeditationaustralia.org.

KINLAR VESTMENTS Quality hand-made and decorated vestments: Albs, Stoles, Chasubles, altar linen, banners etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph Vicki 9402 1318 or 0409 114 093.

SETTLEMENTS

ARE YOU BUYING OR SELLING real estate or a business? Why not ask Excel Settlements for a quote for your settlement. We offer reasonable fees, excellent service and no hidden costs. Ring Excel on 9481 4499 for a quote. Check our website on www.excelsettlements.com.

SINE

FURNITURE REMOVAL

ALL AREAS. Competitive Rates. Mike Murphy Ph 0416 226 434.

FOR SALE

PEEK-A-BOO CORNER

Good quality & affordable branded kids’ clothing. For boys & girls 0 to 6 years. Don’t miss out 20% discount for first 20 customers. Errina: 0401 454 933. Email: peekaboo.corner@gmail.com or visit www.peekaboo-corner.blogspot.com.

ORGAN FOR SALE Old fashioned chamber organ. Wilcox and White. Meridian Gonn USA. Photo and details email:gschaefer@ amnet.net.au or call George on 08 9386 1695.

WEED SPRAYING Garden clean ups and rubbish removal. Get rid of bindii, jojo and other unsightly weeds. Based in Tuart Hill. Enq 9443 9243 or 0402 326 637.

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

CATHOLICS CORNER Retailer of Catholic products specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. Ph 9456 1777. Shop 12, 64-66 Bannister Rd, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat.

OTTIMO Convenient city location for books, CDs/DVDs, cards, candles, statues, Bibles, medals and much more. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade (Terrace level), 671 Hay St, Perth. Ph 9322 4520. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm.

RICH HARVEST YOUR CHRISTIAN SHOP Looking for Bibles, CDs, books, cards, gifts, statues, Baptism/Communion apparel, religious vestments, etc? Visit us at 39 Hulme Ct (off McCoy St), Myaree, Ph 9329 9889 (after 10.30am Mon to Sat). We are here to serve.

ART FOR THE CATHEDRAL www.margaretfane.com.au.

CHURCH KNEELERS

Pair of splendid jarrah three metre kneelers. Photo and details email: gschaefer@amnet.net.au or call George on 08 9386 1695.

MAZDA 626 TURBO 1990 229,000km, regularly serviced, auto, $2,200 ono. Hamilton Hill. Tel 9418 7497.

MAZDA 3 Max 63,000 km, manual, gunmetal grey, 6 CD stacker. Drives really well. $14,500. Lady driver. Ph 0400 809 833.

WANTED

“The Woman Shall Conquer” by Don Sharkey.

Photograph of Pope John Paul celebrating Mass in WA. Contact: email rodway@iinet.net. au.

URGENT – PIANIST sought to back Jazz singer for function. Please ring Leanne 94721505.

THANKSGIVING

THANKS TO ST JOSEPH OF CUPERTINO for a great favour granted.

Prayer to “St Joseph of Cupertino” for success in exam

O St Joseph of Cupertino who by your prayers obtained from God to be asked at your exam the only preposition you knew, grant that I may like you succeed in the (here mention the name of Exam eg Science). In return, I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked.

Sacred Head of Jesus, Seat of Divine Wisdom have mercy on me

Holy Spirit enlighten me

Our Lady of good studies pray for me

St Joseph of Cupertino pray for me

In your mercy, please pray for the soul of Robert Barich, 55, who died in Queensland on 25 August 2010. May Perpetual Light shine upon him.

RE-UNION

ST JOSEPH’S SCHOOL WAGIN RE-UNION

16th October, 2010. For all past students. 11.00 am start at the old school grounds. Call Ronnie 9861 1422.

EVENTS

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE SUDANESE GOSPEL CONCERT Presented by the Sudanese Catholic Community and hosted by the North Perth Social Justice Group. To be held at the Redemptorist Monastery Church 190 Vincent Street North Perth. 2.00pm – 4.00pm Sunday 26th September 2010. Cost: $12.00 (afternoon tea included) Children half price. Tickets available at the front door of the monastery. Everyone welcome.

ON SALE

DO THIS IN MEMORY

Very popular new CD of music for church, home and school, featured in The Record 11 Aug, recorded by Filipino priest Fr Robert Romano, Pat Leahy and Jeff Bruce MeGinn. For orders, ring Pat Leahy 9733 1201 mobile 0408 254 603 email: leahyspd@ bigpond.com. $20 each plus $2 postage. $10 for pensioners. Other concessions available.

They’re new. They’re different. They’re growing.

New release

TSo who are they?

he emergence of the new ecclesial movements must be seen within the context of the whole Church and within the context of our times. What is often said of them is that they are not simply human efforts to do something in and for the Church, but they have emerged as a work of the Spirit of God. They are testimony that the Holy Spirit poured out on the Apostles at Pentecost is still a present and active force in the Church, blowing where He will. The new movements are one of the “surprises” of the Spirit. This extraordinary action of God in our time confirms the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Is, 43:19-21) Many ask about the place of the new movements in the Church. Are they a completely new reality or is there an historical precedent? How does the Church view the movements? This book examines the emergence of the new movements in the Church in recent times and their significance for the life and mission of the Church.

“This is the most complete, best researched, and most up to date presentation of the New Communities I have read. In a few pages Bishop Julian manages to introduce us to this new springtime for the Church in a worldwide perspective, giving a pastoral vision of the strengths and of the points of attention he has observed. The book helps us to discover a wonderful hope and a great trust in the Holy Spirit who constantly renews the Church.”

- Jean-Luc Moens,

Emmanuel Community, Paris

“In his reflection on the Ecclesial Movements in the life of the Church, Bishop Porteous opens a window on the creative and transforming power of the Holy Spirit working in the Church in our day. In many different and unique ways, the message is the same – lives are transformed and in the process a new missionary energy is ignited.”

-

Ralph Martin, a founder of Word of God Community, Ann Arbor

“This is the book for those wishing to understand the significance of the emergence of “ecclesial movements” in the Church. Bishop Julian has a profound grasp of the international scope of this development and provides a remarkably helpful description of the main movements as well as a nuanced historical, theological and pastoral interpretation.”

- Shayne

Bennett, Moderator of Emmanuel Community, Brisbane

“Bishop Porteous has done us a great service. This book explains well how the new ecclesial movements are a precious gift to the Church, and shows clearly their significance for the Church’s mission today. His insights will help us all reflect more deeply upon the grace of the movements, and will assist the members of the movements to situate themselves confidently within the whole life of the Church.”

- Fr Ken

Barker, Founder of Missionaries of God’s Love

“There is little doubt in my mind that the New Movements are from the Holy Spirit. The unique feature seems to be the lay inspiration and leadership. The Church will be renewing itself from below.”

-

Archbishop Barry Hickey, Perth, Western Australia