General: That old people may be considered as asset to the spiritual and human growth of society. Missionary: That in Africa authentic brotherly cooperation may develop among all those who work for the growth and development of ecclesial Communities.
An icon held sacred by Pope John Paul II has been returned to Russia, the country of its origin, as a gesture of good will intended to help bridge the long-standing divide between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches.
The ornate relic, an 18th-century copy of the Mother of God of Kazan, was delivered to Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, following a liturgy on August 28 in Assumption Cathedral on the grounds of the Kremlin.
The icon was placed on a pedestal to the right of the altar in the legendary gray limestone church, where Patriarch Alexy marked the feast of the Dormition of
Mary, the Byzantine equivalent of Mary's Assumption into heaven.
"This sacred image traveled a long and difficult path across many countries and cities of the world. Catholics and Christians of other confessions prayed before it," the Patriarch, wearing a vibrant blue robe embroidered with gold, told several hundred Orthodox faithful.
For more than a decade the icon - which was spirited out of the country following the Bolshevik Revolution - hung over the desk of the Pope, who had hoped to deliver it personally, but Patriarch Alexy has resisted such a visit.
Instead some 5,000 people gathered on August 25 in the Vatican's audience hall to see off the 12-inch-by-10-inch relic, which was delivered in a special wooden case, sealed with wax, by a Vatican delegation headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. The
Patriarch said that the homage to the Blessed Virgin Mary in both churches "reminds us of ancient times and undivided churches." He added during the three-hour ceremony that he hoped that the overture by the Pope "attests to the firm wish of the leadership of the Vatican to return to sincere relations of mutual respect between our churches - relations that would be devoid of hostile rivalry, but would fulfill the wishes to help each other in brotherhood."
Since the early 1990s Russian Orthodox leaders have accused the Vatican of proselytizing in Russia and failing to stop what they characterize as discrimination against Orthodoxy by Byzantine Catholics in Western Ukraine. Both issues will need to be addressed before the first Slavic Pope in history can set foot in the most important Slavic country in the world, said a Russian Orthodox spokesman.
English edition of pope’s book due in US bookstores September 28
By Catholic News Service
“Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way,” the English edition of Pope John Paul II’s latest book, is due in US bookstores at the end of September.
Published in the United States by Warner Books, the book is an autobiographical reflection on the pope’s 20 years as a bishop in communist Poland, from 1958 to 1978.
Released in the original Polish and several other languages on the pope’s 84th birthday May 18, the book’s title was originally
translated into English as “Get Up, Let Us Go.”
The book, published in hardcover for $22.95, goes on sale Sept. 28.
“Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Pope John Paul’s 1994 book, written with Vittorio Messori, has sold more than 20 million copies in 50 editions worldwide.
Come to Jennacubbine picnic!
Parish
Geoff Aldous would like to see a huge turnout for the Bush Picnic Day at Jennacubbine on Sunday September 19 which is being jointly organized with the Catholic Social Justice Council. Fr Geoff said
the day will be an opportunity to meet new friends from the bush and/or city, enjoy a meal in fresh country air, take a stroll by the Mortlock River and
“This is a day for families and individuals from the city and the bush to come together to enjoy a day in rural surroundings which reflect the peace and beauty of God’s creation,” he said.
The day will close by 3.30pm after the celebration of Mass.
Jennacubbine is approximately 20 km beyond Toodyay on the road to Goomalling.
Those coming for the day are asked to organize their own transport.
A twelve-seater bus will be available, leaving from Whitford Parish Church.
A road map showing the route from Toodyay to Jennacubbine is available.
Interested persons can contact the Parish Secretary at Whitford on 9307 2776
Election timeAustralia's bishops offer principles for voters
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Caritas is advising the public that due to circumstances beyond its control the visit of Cardinal Rodriguez has been delayed. The 2004 Helder Camara lecture series and associated events will therefore not go ahead as previously advertised. Cardinal Rodriguez will be visiting and lecturing on social justice issues at a later date.
Caritas director Anne Fairhead said "We will keep the public informed about the new dates as soon as they become available.”
The Catholic Social Justice Council Requires New members
If you have a commitment to Social Justice issues and are able to attend meetingts of the Council on the first Thursday of the month at 7.00pm then contact us for an application form.
Applications close on Friday 17 September 2004.
The Council. also invites expressions of interest from people who would like to volunteer in the office.
Phone: Julie 9422 7901
Email: manager@highgate-perthcatholic.org.au
Kalgoorlie resident Annette Joyce is currently working in East Timor as a Carer Advisor at the Klibur Domin rehabilitation centre in Tibar, just west of the capital Dili. PALMS have placed her there, as part of the joint initiative Community between PALMS and Catholic Mission.
Annette has worked in and around Kalgoorlie in hospital, community and aged care nursing, including working in Aboriginal communities. She has also been an instructor and trainer in nursing, and previously volunteered for the mobile soup kitchen and parish youth group.
The Klibur Domin rehabilitation centre was established in 2000 and provides care and support for low dependency patients referred from Dili Hospital and elsewhere. It also provides a permanent home for 12 people who are aged or have a disability.
Annette will develop, supervise, teach and mentor the three Timorese staff who are responsible for the overall care and management of residents and patients.
This covers many areas of nursing including administration of medication, dressing wounds, observing and monitoring progress, planning patient care, use of equipment and nutrition. Annette will also network with other health organizations and service groups, and be responsible for documentation and statistics.
PALMS works for sustainable and interdependent development by working alongside local workers and sharing ideas and techniques. Working side-by- side can often be a more effective way of passing on skills.
CommUnity is an initiative established to engage communities in Australia with a community overseas. The Australian community takes responsibility for raising funds for preparing, placing and hosting PALMS participants in overseas communities in need. Communities such as
those in East Timor desperately need the skills of PALMS participants, but are unable to financially afford to host them.
CommUnity was established to address this issue and to expand the number of participants PALMS is able to prepare and send.
The CommUnity program enables you to receive feedback from a participant you sponsor. Annette needs $13,800 to cover her living expenses for two years while she carries out her important work in East Timor.
For more information about CommUnity or to make a donation to help Annette, call Catholic Mission on 1800 257 296 or visit www.catholicmission.org.au.
(CNS) -- Pope John Paul II called on the Catholic community to remember those persecuted for their Christian beliefs.
“Even today, in some parts of the world, the faithful still continue to endure harsh trials for their acceptance of Christ and his church,” he said.
“May these brothers and sisters of ours feel the full solidarity of the entire church community,” he asked Aug. 29 before praying the Sunday Angelus.
The pope made special mention of the “numerous Christians who were victims of religious hatred in different nations of Europe this past century.”
They, like all martyrs of the faith before them, “courageously followed in the footsteps” of St. John the Baptist, who gave his life “for truth and justice,” he said.
“He was beheaded by order of King Herod, to whom he had dared to say it was not right for him to take his brother’s wife,” said the Pope, noting that Aug. 29 was the feast marking
the beheading of St. John the Baptist.
Quoting portions from his 1993 encyclical, “Veritatis Splendor,” on fundamental truths of the church’s moral teachings, the pope said, “The martyr is ‘an illustrious sign of the holiness of the church’ who ‘represents the highest testimony of moral truth.’”
Even though few people are called to this “supreme sacrifice,” all Christians “must be ready every day even at the cost of suffering and great sacrifices” to pay such witness, he said.
Syrian church leaders have put out a desperate appeal to help up to 30,000 Christians who have fled to Syria within three weeks of the church bombings in Iraq. After a long and arduous journey to safety in Syria, entire Christian communities from Iraq have begged Catholic leaders to help them to search for homes, medicine and food. Syria is the destination of the vast majority of an estimated 40,000 Christians who have fled Iraq after the suicide bombings on August 1.
About a dozen people were killed and more than 50 were wounded as they tried to escape six churches targeted by suicide bombers in the capital, Baghdad, and the northern city of Mosul. With huge uncertainty over how many more refugees will make it over the Syrian border, clergy say the Syrian government is struggling to grapple with a sudden refugee crisis, for which the regime has had no warning. In an urgent appeal to the charity Aid to the Church in Need, Monsignor Antoine Audo, Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, north west Syria, wrote: “With the increase in numbers and the cases of sickness, depression and desperation, the Church must do more.”
In response, the Catholic organisation, which supports persecuted and poverty-stricken Christians has announced an emergency
aid package of $25,000 to help Christians struggling to find basic living needs.
Bishop Audo, a Jesuit, has opened up the Chaldean parish in Damascus as a refuge centre in a bid to provide food and shelter for 500 Iraqi families - just some
of the many in the Syrian capital. In his appeal for help from ACN, he wrote: “The number of Chaldean refugee families in Syria is increasing day by day.”
He has set up a working party headed up by a parish priest to provide whatever help the Chaldean
Today there is an urgent need to raise the awareness of the increase of the HIV/Aids virus within our community.
Catholic Youth Ministry (CYM) took the initiative of raising this awareness among youth by taking up a collection during the International Youth Day Mass for the Living Centre Perth, which provides pastoral care and counseling for HIV/Aids patients.
CYM felt it important to donate the collection to the Living Centre, not only because of the important work being done, but also in a bid to see that chastity is promoted among the lives of young people who are becoming more evidently affected by the virus.
Year 12 students in Catholic colleges across Western Australia will receive a specially-designed “good luck” book mark to wish them well in their TEE, courtesy of the University of Notre Dame Australia.
“We know that the TEE can be a particularly stressful time for students and we just like to provide some extra encouragement,” said Liz Beal, Notre
Dame’s Manager of Prospective Student, Admission and Marketin Centre.
“In fact, the book mark was inspired by a similar initiative at the University. A special prayer card has recently been provided for Notre Dame students to reflect on at exam time.
“We hope the book mark for Year 12 students will provide
community can provide. The bishop said that outside the city, refugees are having to make do with temporary accommodation, such as tents, because no hostels were available and Syrian friends and relations of the Iraqis had no more room in their homes for the refugees. While the bishops are struggling to meet the immediate needs of the refugees, concerns are growing for their long-term future with little chance of finding employment in the area.
Underlining Bishop Audo’s appeal for help, the apostolic nuncio to Syria, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Morandini, told Aid to the Church in Need that the bishops were determined to help the refugees who were very “distressed”.
Reports received by Aid to the Church in Need suggest the continued influx of refugees follows small scale targeting of Christian communities in Iraq. They include a man who received 50 percent burns when attackers threw petrol at him in central Baghdad. Meanwhile, Aid to the Church in Need is helping Christian communities in Iraq struggling to recover from the attacks of August 1st.
The charity is giving aid to help rebuild Baghdad’s St Peter’s Seminary, half of which collapsed followed the suicide bomb which exploded nearby. Aid is also
being given to the neighbouring Babel College, a centre for Christian studies.
To make a donation to help Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria, or for more information, contact Aid to the Church in Need, PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148
Tel: 02 9679-1929 or email: info@aidtochurch.org
Enjoying the personal backing of Pope John Paul II, Aid to the Church in Need is a registered charity dedicated to the support of persecuted and oppressed Christians.
Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom the Pope named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world, especially Eastern Europe.
The charity undertakes about 8,000 projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, about 40 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.
similar support at TEE exam time.”
The colourful book mark features a quote from the Book of John, “Let your heart not be troubled”.
It will be mailed to all WA high schools for distribution to Year 12 students plus those who have registered with the Notre Dame Prospective Student Centre.
Question: I am a 16-year-old guy who goes to church, reads the Bible and also holds a black belt in karate. I have recently become interested in boxing and I like the training it involves. Is competing in a boxing or martial arts competition wrong? Does the Church have anything to say about this?
There is no sin in training for boxing or any martial art as long as you use those skills in supervised, amateur competitions or for legitimate self-defence. The discipline learned from these and other forms of sport can help you in life.
Boxing and martial arts have their advantages: development of physical fitness, alertness, poise, confidence, sportsmanship, initiative, and so on. The point of amateur boxing is not to cause serious harm to an opponent, but to test one’s skill in self-defence. Amateur boxing is very regulated, and thus it is generally accepted that any injuries that may occur are accidental to the sport and not central to the moral question.
Boxing as a sport is not condemned by the Church. In fact, the famous ‘Golden Gloves’ tournaments organised by many Catholic youth clubs originated with Catholic laymen who worked with poor inner-city youth.
In the past, it was not uncommon for Catholic boys’ schools to sponsor boxing competitions during recess as athletic entertainment and, sometimes, to allow feuding boys to work out their frustrations in a supervised way rather than beating up on one another after school. Some old classic films like ‘Boys’ Town’, ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’ and ‘Going My Way’ depict Catholic school boxing matches.
Today there are many fitness clubs that include boxing as a weight-loss regimen and as an exercise in coordination.
The Church has never made an official pronouncement on the morality of professional boxing. However, because of the number of brain injuries and even deaths that have occurred in professional boxing (i.e., prizefighting), an increasing number of moral theologians question the morality of boxing, kick-boxing, etc. at that level.
There are several considerations that theologians examine. One is the concept of the ‘knock-out’. Many fighters aim for this, but is a knock-out justifiable? Directly and violently to deprive oneself or another of the use of reason is morally wrong, except for sufficient cause (such as self-defence), for it is the rational faculties or abilities that distinguish humans from brute animals. Sport, money and fame do not qualify as sufficient reasons.
In amateur boxing, knock-outs are never planned or intended; but it would seem that in professional boxing they oftentimes are. A sport in which this intent is central must be subject to moral questioning.
Professional boxing is the only sport where the immediate object is to damage the opponent. In all other forms of contact sport, including wrestling, the immediate object is to demonstrate superior skill in wrestling holds, handling a ball, etc. in order to score points. But in professional boxing, the direct intent seems to be to harm the opponent.
Intent of injury – a black eye, a sliced cheek, a blood nose – is a signal for some fighters to launch an intensified attack on the vulnerable area. Boxing is supposed to be sport, not punishment. Just as footballers are liable for league penalties if they
purposely injure an opponent beyond what can be expected in normal play, so should boxers be liable for similar penalties.
Some referees seem to wait too long to halt a round. But the ‘blood lust’ of fans can inhibit referees from halting some rounds until a man has suffered more blows than would be necessary to call a halt to the proceedings.
This leads to another problem area – the question of fixed matches. When an outcome is rigged and certain business interests make a profit, both lying and stealing are involved – lying, because it wasn’t an honest match, and stealing, because spectators pay to watch an honest competition. If the outcome is known before the match begins, is that honest?
And did I say ‘man’ in reference to boxing? There is now the phenomenon called ‘Toughman’, billed as ‘brawling for fun that appeals to the uncaged savage in us all’ –and women are participating! Toughman boxing loosens almost every restriction that boxing currently has, and makes it very dangerous. A few weeks ago in Sarasota, Florida a 30-year old mother of two died in the third round of a bout – and she is the 10th contestant to die in this form of boxing! Toughman has been banned in only five US states.
In short: boxing and martial arts can be good physical disciplines, if due cautions are observed and rules are scrupulously followed. But as the probable danger of injury or even death rises, so does the probablility of sin arise. So go on boxing for recreation and physical training, but follow the rules strictly and obey the referees.
Father Giovanni D’Ercole is the BUREAU CHIEF in the GENERAL AFFAIRS SECTION of the SECRETARIAT OF STATE OF HIS HOLINESS THE POPE, and for the past 20 years has been in the service of Pope John Paul II.
He is a Tele-evangelist, Author and is involved in drug rehabilitation especially of the youth. Come and share in his many spiritual journeys, in particular the joys and insights of Pope John Paul II. Come and be a part of this rare visit and join in these spiritual exercises.
SEPTEMBER
Sunday 12th 11.30am St Benedict’s Church, Alness St Applecross: Indonesian Holy Mass/talks.
6pm: Villa Terenzio, Marangaroo Dr, Marangaroo, Italian Holy Mass/talks.
Monday 13th 10am-2pm St Joseph’s Church, Wellington St Northam: Rosary/talks/Holy Mass. BYO lunch.
Tuesday 14th 10.30am – 2pm St Bernadette’s Church, Jugan St Glendalough: Rosary/Holy Mass/talks. BYO share lunch.
Thursday 16th 7.30pm St Bernadette’s Church Jugan St, Glendalough: Rosary/Holy Mass/talks.
OCTOBER
Tuesday 5th 10.30am – 12md: St Anne’s Church Hehir St, Belmont: Rosary/Holy Mass/talks.
SEPTEMBER
Wednesday 15th Mass under the stars at Coalara Park, Coalara Rd Badgingarra.
6.30pm Holy Mass followed by a BBQ around the bon fire. RSVP 7th Sept Geraldine Davies ph: 9654 8056/ 0428 448 839
Thursday 16th Star of the Sea Church Dongara
10.30am Exposition, Confessions, Rosary, Holy Mass Talk. Bring and share lunch.
Friday 17th St Joseph’s Church Albany
11am Rosary/talk 12noon Holy Mass. BYO lunch.
Saturday 18th 11am Rosary/Holy Mass at Bove Farm, Roy Rd Busselton. BYO lunch
If you would like to ask Father Deeter a question, write to:
The Record, PO Box 75, Leederville, WA, 6902
When Bishop Donald Sproxton inducted nine boys into St Mary’s Cathedral Choir last Sunday it was a proud moment in their lives. It may also have been a little awe-inspiring.
For the Choir it was yet another milestone: this induction was the largest that choirmaster Fr Timothy Deeter has seen in the last 10 years.
The boys, ranging in age from 8 to 14, were inducted by Bishop Sproxton after the homily at the 10am Mass. In front of the cathedral congregation the Bishop presented them with their membership certificates and medals.
Each was then formally vested by family members and received a lapel pin of Pope St Gregory the Great, after whom Gregorian Chant was eventually named.
Although St Gregory did not invent the chant – it had been performed in monasteries for hundreds of years already – he did officially adopt it as a form of worship for the Church. After that, Europe was never to be the same again and today it is still regarded not only as a necessary part of any cathedral choir’s repertoire but also one of the most beautiful forms of music ever contrived.
Later, Fr Deeter went over the Sunday performance with the older - and newest - choristers in their practice room behind the cathedral presbytery.
“Everyone can learn to sing” he told The Record after analysing with choir members the good things about that morning’s performance as well as those areas
where a little brushing up might be required.
“When the boys audition for this choir their voices are not perfect,” he said.
“But by studying music they learn how to sing, and to sing in tune.”
After audition there comes another two years of study as part of the choir. In a further two to three years, on average, boys’ voices will break.
However one thing that makes St Mary’s choir unique is that this is not the end of the road for
a chorister. In most other choirs the breaking of a boy’s voice often means a ticket out of life as a cathedral chorister.
“In this choir we allow boys to stay if they want to stay, and help them adjust their voices to the tenor or bass range,” Fr Deeter said.
Places in the choir are hardwon and mean hard work once a member is accepted. Practice takes place every morning from 7.45 to 8.45am at Trinity College. Members not only learn to read music but also study religion and
Latin, meaning that they understand what it is they are singing and the significance of the occasions for which they sing as well.
The choir sings not only on Sundays but also on major occasions such as midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter, ordinations to the priesthood, feastdays such as the forthcoming celebration of Our Lady’s birthday on September 8 and in other parishes by request.
For the last few years the choir has also been singing Vespers on Sunday evenings for about onethird of the Sundays of the year.
On September 12 they will be singing at Government House before the Governor General, the Governor of WA and the Danish ambassador at a function to mark the closer economic and cultural ties between Australia and Denmark which have been, in-part, brought about by the marriage of Crown Prince Frederick and Mary Donaldson.
At the induction ceremony other choristers also received certificates from the completion of a summer school organised by the Royal School of Church Music held in New Zealand earlier this year.
But life as a choirmaster can mean having to do all sorts of things.
Later, after the debriefing and dismissal by Fr Deeter, shouts, yells and general confusion reigned as boys, and one female member, rushed to disrobe and replace music folders to be readied for the next performance
On Sunday August 29, past parishioners from Exmouth to Albany joined with the Narembeen Catholic Community to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Narembeen Church. Blessed and opened by Archbishop Prendiville on August 1, 1954,the Church of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament was filled to capacity for its 50th birthday. From the exterior with the new roof and painted woodwork, the building looked most inviting and visitors, on entering were not disappointed.
The beautiful flowers and other decorations were advantageously displayed against the soft new colours of the interior. Parish Priest and Regional Superior of the Salvatorian Order in Australia, Father Boguslaw Loska SDS, welcomed Archbishop Hickey and all present including two former Parish Priests - Father Christopher Kowalczyk SDS, Parish Priest of Canarvon and Father Bronislaw Pietrusewicz SDS, Parish Priest of Ocean Reef. Father Mariusz Adamczyk Parish Priest of Merredin was the fourth Concelebrant. Five Presentation Sisters who bad served in the area as Catechists and in other Pastoral work were acknowledged as were the two Josephite Sisters stationed at Merredin and working throughout the region.
Members of other denominations were given a welcome also. Pat Hickey and Peter Kiely assisted as Acolytes at the joyous celebration of Mass and in his homily, His Grace spoke of the pioneer Priests and parishioners paying tribute to their hard work and sacrifices in those ear-
lier days. He congratulated the present parishioners for their dedication in caring for their church and their concern for its future.
The children received a special mention and he commended those who care for their spiritual needs. Eilish Bailey delivered the
before rushing off to rejoin family members.
“Father! Father!” chirped one lad tugging on Fr Deeter’s sleeve amid all the confusion.
“What is it?” asked the priest.
“Can’t hang up my surplice” was the plaintive reply.
“Why not?”
“Not tall enough,” came the solemn declaration.
The St Mary's Cathedral Choir Foundation will be launched by Monsignor Thomas McDonald at the 10am Mass in St Mary's Cathedral this Sunday. The Foundation provides opportunities for boys from Year 4 to 12 from Perth Colleges to continue the traditions of the Choir and ensure its ongoing future. The Foundation seeks to raise $50,000 each year. St Mary’s Cathedral Choir is an enduring part of WA's artistic and cultural heritage, contributing greatly to the life of the Church here in Perth and the wider community. It is also an integral part of St Mary's service of the city of Perth.
Anyone interested in supporting the Foundation can contact the Cathedral office on 9223 1350
readings and Brian Bormolini the Responsorial Psalm. Brian Kelly presented the petitions. Irene Walker and Nancy Moppett carried the Gifts with Alexander Bormolini and Carla Hall offering symbols of the district - wheat and wool and a citation of the Patroness, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. Hymns, mostly traditional, were sung with great spirit accompanied by organist, June Hayter.
At the conclusion of Mass a vote of thanks was made and Shannon Knight, representing future generations made a presentation to His Grace. Following Mass a luncheon was held at the Narembeen Club. Parish Council President Pat Hickey invited Councillor Halley Cowan to welcome Archbishop Hickey on behalf of the Narembeen Shire on this inaugural visit to the district.
During the afternoon Archbishop Hickey surrounded by the children, cut the Anniversary cake. Made by Maria Kiely and decorated by Isla Hodges, the cake was in the form of a bible bearing the words "I am the Vine, you are the branches," Reminiscing on earlier Parish life underlined for those present the importance of the fact that we, the people are the Church.
Flame Ministries International are conducting a Parish Renewal Mission at Our Lady of Montserrat Parish Southern Cross on Saturday and Sunday October 23 to 24.
The mission will begin at 7.30pm on Saturday at The Community Complex, Spica Street, with an evangelization rally called, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, that will present the topic of healing and salvation. The Parish Day of Renewal called “FLAME” begins at 9.45 am and concludes at 8.30pm on Sunday October (at The Community Complex). The subjects for the day are, Faith, Love, Adoption, Maturity and Evangelisation. The mission is open to all people and churches in the area and will have Songs of Praise led by the Flame Music Ministry as well as Prayers for Healing and Conversion. Baby sitting is available and bookings for children need to be placed by October 19. Tea, lunch and dinner breaks are part of the program with a BBQ. There is no charge for attending the mission but donations will be received to cover costs. For information please contact Eleanor on 9049 1018 or Email: fmi@flameministries.org.
Record columnist Paul Gray will be in Perth in early September to speak on fatherhood and to launch his book on the world conflict created by a confrontation between radical Islam and affluent societies.
Mr Gray will speak at the 2004 WA Fatherhood Forum organised by the Family Council of WA to be held at Christ Church Grammar School in Claremont on Saturday September 11.
Mr Gray is a journalist and broadcaster based in Melbourne, where he writes for Australia’s largest circu-
By Terrence MurrayPARIS
(CNS)-- Outside a Paris concert hall, a smartly dressed couple hurriedly finishes a sandwich. High school students and young parents with toddlers in tow stream past them.
All converged on one of Paris’ famous rock and blues stages to hear Paddy Kelly, a 27-year-old rock singer.
Inside the Cigale concert hall, by the end of the first set, fans have formed a friendly mosh pit. Some are standing on the venue’s red velvet seats, their raised arms swaying to Kelly’s beat.
The Irish singer, who started his showbiz career with his brothers and sisters as part of
lation daily newspaper, the Herald Sun.
He also presents a weekly current affairs program Gray Matters on Christian radio stations around Australia.
His article ‘Father Hungry’ was recently published by the Catholic Adult Education Centre in Melbourne.
Recently, Mr Gray took a break from his fortnightly ‘I Say, I Say’ column in The Record to write his new book Nightmare of the Prophet which was launched in Sydney by Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer.
The book warns of the risk of a totalitarian resurgence in the next 100 years created by radical Islamists bent on dominating non-Islamic societies.
The launch of the book is being organised by the Council for the National Interest and will be held on Friday evening September 10 at 7.30pm at the City West Function Centre in West Perth.
Those interested in attending should contact the CNI on 9321 1925.
The day-long Fatherhood conference the following day
will look at issues such as fatherlessness and the problem of absent fathers, healing past father-son relationships, the complementarity of women and men, and the Family Law Act.
Other speakers on the day will include Warwick Marsh from the Australian Fatherhood Foundation, Dr Bruce Robinson from the University of WA’s School of Medicine and Australian Family Association representative Robert Hicks.
Bookings for the Forum are essential. The Council can be contacted on 9321 2333.
the Kelly Family band, sings rock with an electric sound.
Kelly is a rocker with attitude -- a Christian attitude.
Earlier this summer, thousands gathered to hear Kelly and other bands at an openair festival staged in front of Lyon’s Saint-Jean Cathedral. The show included pop and rock bands and reggae ensembles of different musical styles and languages, all united by a common Christian theme.
In France, a land known for its proud secularism, Christian rock is making a splash and attracting a growing wave of converts.
“It can be challenging to be Catholic here,” said Florent
Pichon, spokesman for Rejoyce, one of the country’s largest Christian rock labels. “With Christian rock, people have a venue to express their faith.”
Halfway into his concert Kelly dedicates a song to his girlfriend, “not the one on earth but the one in heaven: St. Therese of Lisieux,” he announces, pointing his finger in the air. The crowd goes wild; flashes bursting out of digital cameras illuminate the singer’s face.
While the Irish native is one of Europe’s most active Christian rockers, in France local groups are also building strong followings. One of these is local pop rock band Glorious, three brothers whose last two albums sold a combined 45,000 copies.
“For France that’s huge,” said Pichon. “This past year, demand has just surged.”
Aurelien Pouzin, 25, who plays bass for Glorious, said, “For us, music is our way to promote our Christian message.”
Glorious plays at Christian festivals across France and
Europe, but it also performs throughout the year at French high schools. Group members said those performances allow them to reach out to people who might not necessarily attend church.
In the spring, Father Nicolas Guillou booked Glorious to perform in Rennes, in northwestern France. Father Guillou, a priest in the nearby town of Betton, said the band packed Rennes’ most popular concert halls.
“The most impressed,” he recalled, “were the ones who do not regularly attend Mass.”
“Christian rock is a real chance for the church” to connect with youths who otherwise might not be receptive to its message, he said.
Back in Paris at the Cigale, Kelly and his band are on a 15-minute break and JeanCharles Nicolleau, 28, says he is stunned by the singer’s energy. As a bass player, he says, he is also impressed by the band’s professionalism.
Standing next to him, Christophe Joie, 22, a university student attending his first Christian rock gathering, says performers like Glorious and Paddy Kelly show that in France faith can be “hip and modern.”
Anew book by a leading Australian media personality and ex-Protestant Minister claims: "If the world is to be saved from itself it will only be when rational atheism becomes the dominant belief system."
I set aside whether or not Christianity or any other religion is objectively true, but try here to consider briefly the effects of religion and atheism in the world.
The first attempt in modern Europe to institute "rational atheism" occurred during the French Revolution. It led to the Terror, the guillotine, and the Napoleonic Wars which spread death, misery and devastation throughout Europe for 20 years.
The next attempt was called Communism. It lasted from 1917 to 1989 and was wound up after having killed about 100 million people and reduced Russia, Eastern Europe and much of Asia and Africa to poverty, tyranny, squalor and chaos. The 100 million do not include those who died in the wars it produced. Nazism was also a sort of "rational atheism" - the Nazis despised Christianity and put their trust in various aspects of "scientism" such as eugenics.
The record of Christianity compared to "rational atheism" in the 20th Century is rather good. Where, in the holocausts which "rational atheism" produced, there was some mitigating light and mercy, it was often a result of Christian influences. This is borne out by countless testimonies, that of Solzhenitzyn being perhaps the greatest.
Today, the most progressive and scientific nation on Earth, on whose charity much of the rest of the world lives, the USA, is also the most Christian. Unlike the French and Russian Revolutions, the American Revolution, despite some occultist elements among its founders, took as its motto: "In God We Trust." The American genius sees no conflict between Christianity and reason. The second man to set foot on another world, Buzz Aldrin, is a lay preacher.
Northern Europe, where the churches are empty and theologians refer to "The North German Plain of Irreligion" today seems by contrast in a malaise, creating, inventing, standing for and aspiring to little except sterile hedonism, expecting America to pick up most of the defence budgets and unable even to reproduce its own population.
It is believers who tend to run charities, hospitals and clinics, sometimes at great sacrifice. In 800-odd years there has been no atheist equivalent to the Orders of St. Lazarus or St. John of Jerusalem, the latter the greatest ambulance and Hospital Order in the world.
Naturally, our LAMP points to terror and atrocities committed in the name of religion. However, terrorist groups claiming a religious objective are generally not religious at all.
The IRA claims its object is to reunite Ireland under Catholicism, but has been repudiated by the Catholic Church, and its political Party, Sinn Fein, is the only major Irish party to endorse euthanasia. Islamicist terrorists have taken not the whole but highly selected passages of Islamic teaching to justify themselves. Islamicist suicidebombers and hijackers cannot take seriously their own faith, which promises terrifying and eternal punishments for suicides in the next world.
Incidentally, our LAMP wrote during the Iraq war that he wanted "the army of my country to be defeated," so possibly he favours Saddam Hussein's Ba'athism. He also asked "When they say 'Saddam was a very bad man' why should we believe them?" Whether this is "rational atheism" or not I am unclear.
There is one more point: If "rational atheism" is held up as the only hope of the world, will those who fail to become rational atheists thereby be classified as enemies of the world? If so, what will happen to them? Solzhenitzyn tells us.
The trouble with truth-in-government campaigns is that they are run by politicians and/ or journalists, and one could reasonably wonder whether most of the people in either group really understands the nature of truth or has the strength of character to abide by it faithfully.
These are weaknesses they share with all human beings, including the writer of this editorial. However, politicians and journalists live their weaknesses under different and greater pressures than most people.
The instinct for survival is said to be the strongest we have, and it applies to both our physical and our social survival. That is why rejection and the fear of rejection have such powerful effects on people. Some cannot recover from the one or maintain their integrity in the face of the other.
Politicians face the prospect of rejection at every election and they face it on a very public scale. This is obviously true for a Prime Minister and his senior colleagues, but it is equally true and sometimes even more painful for a back bench MP who has served his community faithfully to the best of his ability for 10 or 20 years and then is rejected very publicly at a particular election.
The real challenge of truth for politicians is whether they preserve the integrity of their intellect and motivation when making decisions. Do they, or can they, consistently make decisions on the basis of good government or on the basis of political advantage or on even less admi-
Jerome Gonzalez (letters 22 August) has raised interesting issues concerning infallible, “definitive” and non-infallible teachings.
I see the Catholic tradition as much subtler and broader than Mr Gonzalez’s letter seems to imply. In my view, being a faithful Catholic can never be reduced simply to the individual submitting unquestioningly to every teaching propounded by the ordinary magisterium. It would fly in the face of our own Catholic tradition of “faith seeking understanding.”
The Vatican II teaching regarding the human conscience has been widely understood to affirm the primacy of conscience, together with the infallibility of the Church’s teachings, in matters of faith and morals. I have no desire to do anything that would undermine the indispensable importance of Church doctrine in the responsible exercise of one’s conscience. However, Catholic tradition does not require us to suspend our responsibility to engage in conscientious decision-making. In my view, it is an abrogation of responsibility to submit to non-infallible, perhaps even definitive, teachings without paying due regard to the fact that such teachings may well be undergoing continuing historical development, just as some very important Catholic doctrines have in the past. To illustrate the point: I can recall as a child hearing the prayer on Good Friday
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rable grounds? This is the crucial test of truth in government. It is not always easy for the politician or the public to know the answer in any particular case.
The most obvious example of rank dishonesty in Federal politics in living memory was the deliberate undermining of Prime Minister Bob Hawke by those Ministers who wanted Paul Keating to have the job. In his autobiography “Whatever it takes”, former Minister and Keating supporter Graham Richardson told how that philosophy led him to give false advice to his Prime Minister in the hope that it would lead the PM to make a wrong decision and thus weaken his position in the internal struggle. The revelation did not give rise to a truth-ingovernment campaign.
State and Federal Governments throughout Australia’s history have made many bad decisions, some of them badly motivated, some of them just badly made, and some of them where it is hard to tell the difference. Conversely, there have been many leaders who could
that referred to the “perfidious Jews”. These words reflected the prevailing Church teaching at the time about the culpability of the Jewish people for Christ’s death on the cross. Post-Vatican II teaching, particularly that of John Paul II, has turned this idea completely on its head. If the Church had not reclaimed the truth on this matter during my lifetime, I imagine that I would today be defying such teaching. It taught that every single one of my Jewish ancestors, the last of whom converted to Catholicism a hundred years ago, bore the guilt of Christ’s death. Would my conscientious defiance of such a patently false doctrine render me a “heretic” and lead to my excommunication?
Consider, too, the situation for Catholic servicemen and women today, especially those based in Iraq. We have an unequivocal teaching from Pope John Paul II on whether war is justified. During his visit to England in 1982, His Holiness declared that, “the scale and the horror of modern warfare - whether nuclear or not - make it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations. War should
claim a high level of integrity throughout their careers. Here in WA, for example, former Premiers Sir David Brand and Sir Charles Court opened this State to large scale overseas investment with levels of personal and Government integrity that were admired around the world as a model for governments.
It is very much the task of journalists to keep an eye on the actions and, where possible, on the motivation, of politicians, and sometimes some of them do it very well, as in the days of WA Inc. However, in more recent years there has been a change in the pattern of journalism and it seems to be not for the better.
There was a time when most journalists believed that good government was the best politics, with the result that public life was reported and evaluated that way.
Nowadays it seems that only politics matters. This may be because it is easy to have an opinion about politics, but one needs understanding to evaluate government.
belong to the tragic past, in history. It should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future".
The Pope has more recently repeatedly condemned the invasion of Iraq . Does this teaching imply that Catholics who choose in good conscience to serve their nation during wartime deserve to be excommunicated for defying such a clear papal teaching?
Church doctrine has changed (ie. developed in a radically different way over time) on usury, slavery, religious freedom, ecumenism, and democracy. Would a Catholic politician during the mid-nineteenth century have been demonstrating disobedience towards Pius IX by campaigning for universal franchise within a democratic state?
Lumen Gentium 8 states, “… the Church, embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, and incessantly pursues the path of penance and renewal.” If this were not the case, what need would John Paul II have for making a series of apologies for the sins committed in earlier times in the Church’s name, “including sins committed in the service of truth” (Pope’s jubilee request for forgiveness, 12 March 2000)?
John Paul’s apologies included a request for pardon for the excommunications, persecutions, divisions and sins committed against the Jews.
Given such a record, how can we honestly claim that all teachings of the ordinary magisterium are so immutable in their current form as to be beyond the Church’s holy and incessant pursuit of purification and renewal?
I suspect the future may well tell
An example of how this works in practice was the May Federal budget. The media collectively predicted an early Federal election, and collectively they reported the budget almost exclusively in terms of ‘bribes’ and ‘election sweeteners’ for the predicted July election. It was an exercise in terrible journalism. Last Tuesday, with the election announced for October, the national daily gave front page prominence to a cynical (or cooperative?) Queensland barman who told us that he is now waiting for his bribe. Is this self justification by the newspaper or are they convinced that all voters make their decisions this way?
The problem with this kind of journalism is that it makes it very difficult for people to know what is going on or to evaluate it. If a change in the tax system is necessarily a bribe, can the tax system ever be changed for the benefit of the community? Similarly, we went through the last election campaign with almost incessant banalities about how long the Prime Minister would serve. He served the full term, but we will no doubt be subjected to the same rubbish again this time. It saves dealing with things that matter.
Truth in government is a complex business and it is not well served by this sort of performance by the media.
We have a custom of praying at Mass each Sunday for wisdom and integrity for those in authority. Perhaps we could mentally include the media in that prayer, at least during the election campaign.
a different story about some of those teachings, just as the past has done.
To anyone who engages in the discussion of these things, can I simply ask that we do so in the same spirit which led Blessed John XXIII to say, “See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little” and, on another occasion, “In necessary things unity, in doubtful matters freedom, in everything charity.”
Shane Negus WembleyIt is a great pity that the article on St Francis and nature (The Record 4.08.04) included “Greens” with a capital “G”. As the President of the Sister Nature Foundation is quoted it is not possible to support abortion and invitro fertilisation and be ethically correct in support of the environment. Sen. Bob Brown in his book on the Green’s philosophy fully accepts Australia’s low fertility knowing that it is mainly due to the 100,000 abortions, which take place annually and mostly tax payer funded. Just in case this is not enough guide on how to vote consider the following: Both Green Senators vigorously opposed the Government’s recent attempt to reaffirm marriage. Green members in the WA Parliament are sponsoring a quasi – euthanasia Bill and were deeply involved in lowering the age of consent for same-sex coitus and adoption rights. Finally Senator Brown’s Greens propose to make illegal drugs available to young people.
John R Barich ClaremontLong ago boys and girls went to school, stayed as long as their ability, motivation and parent's income would allow and then went-to-work. In the dim dark ages one grew-up slowly, measuredly, patiently listening to advice from parents, uncles, aunts, grand-parents, the church, until maturity dawned and one passed from youth to adulthood. Over time society has insisted on more and more tests, certificatequalifications, applicable studies for the young, to become acceptably competent to steer a motor car, acceptably competent to perform paid-work in the community, acceptably competent to aspire to achieve their dreams of life. Paradoxically, real life skills got lost on the back-burner.
Well, if certificates are touted to have such power, how about a certificate for Aussie AdultEntrance?
What about a course for the young at, say, 17.5 years of age about how to succeed in life itself?
Units could include:
Handling real-life money - The curse of credit. Using alcohol wisely. Pleasure as a treat not a goal. Courtesy on the road. Unwanted pregnancies. Being caught in controlling relationships. The mobile phone. The need for continuing education. Courage in adversity. 'Sitting' on the internet. Choosing and fulfilling an approved 'good work.' The Community as a sacred'site'. What is Cowardice? Respect for seniors, the wisdom of their views.
Peter Tilley TriggJamie O'Brien and Carole McMillen from The Record recently visited the Diocese of Broome. Their stories and photos will appear in coming editions, highlighting a little-known part of the Church's work.
By Jamie O’Brien
Students from Luurnpa Catholic School in the BalgoWirrumanu Community are being schooled in their own indigenous language.
The school has about 100 students from Kindergarten to Year 10, all from the Balgo-Wirrumanu Community.
Co-ordinator Sr Nola Goodwin, from the Walkala Book Centre, which produces the children’s books in the Kukatja (pronounced koo-ga-ja) language, said the number of books completed is rising.
So far, nearly 200 books have been written in Kukatja.
“It is important for the people of Balgo-Wirrumanu,” Sr Goodwin said. “It is a way of keeping their history.”
The books and other teaching
the Kukatja language. This is because, according to Principal Br Bernard Cooper, students learn best when the learning is modelled by someone from their own culture.
“The students respect the Teacher Assistants,” he said.
Philomena Baadjo, who helps mainly with the Year Six and Seven classes at Luurnpa Catholic School, said she is proud to be involved in teaching students their indigenous language.
“I feel as if I’m looking after the community,” she said.
Sr Goodwin told The Record that English is most often a second language for the students whoattend Luurnpa Catholic School.
“Each one of them is learning little by little,” Sr Goodwin said.
The books are written and illustrated by resident artist Marie Nakarra Mudgedel.
Helen Nagomara Napurrulalu is the narrator and translator on the CD.
is the story of ‘The Bad Pig’. It demonstrates to the students what happens when they make incorrect choices by telling them the effects of petrol sniffing.
Stories from the scriptures have also been translated into the Kukatja language, such as the story of Joseph, which is called Wangka Ngatja Joseph Kurlu. Other books narrate stories of history and the weather.
Sr Goodwin said the stories make a complete difference in the classroom.
“They [the students] quieten down and listen,” she said.
Br Cooper said the Walkala Centre has been a life-giving place that continued to provide imaginative curriculum materials that respond to the special needs of students.
also been placed in the garden for decoration.
Students Jack Kelly, 6, and Kurt Barnes, 11 are very enthusiastic about working in the garden.
“I love doing all the digging,” Kurt said.
resources are being made into a CD. Teacher assistants Cathy Lee, Philomena Baadjo and
Lorraine Baadjo, from the BalgoWirrumanu Community have been helping students to learn the correct pronunciation of
Marie Mudgedel and Helen Napurrulalu are both from the Balgo-Wirrumanu Community, sharing their language and cultural knowledge with the students.
Ngankirr Ngangkirrpa Ngawu
“In addition, the school can only achieve high educational outcomes when they have aboriginal teaching assistants [and teachers] present for long periods of time [to help pass on their knowledge].”
“It is great that they [the books] are being made in a multi-media format that is available as speaking books in the classroom and on the internet,” he said.
By Jamie O’Brien
Community Nurse Esther Liseteli, and her husband, PJ Shinondo, a teacher at the Catholic School have been working at the Ringers Soak community for the past year.
The couple are from Zambia, Africa, and after arriving in Australia, both commenced studies at Notre Dame in Fremantle, where PJ as he likes to be known, completed a Masters Degree in Environmental Management.
During this time Esther also completed additional studies in Nursing.
“It has been a very different experience in comparison to where I come from in Zambia,” Mrs Liseteli said.
Since arriving in Australia in January 2003 Mrs Liseteli said she has become very close to the people of Ringers Soak.
With approximately 120-130 people in the town, Mrs Liseteli said it has been difficult to help the people understand the impor-
tance of their health. “I have to go to their house and encourage them to take their medicines,” she said.
Having met only a few Australian aboriginals in Fremantle before going to Ringers Soak, Mrs Liseteli said she was surprised
to know that these communities existed. “I didn’t know that specific communities existed for indigenous people.” Mrs Liseteli’s husband PJ Shinondo is working as a teacher at the local Birlirr Ngawiyiwu Catholic School.
The couple’s four adult children are living and working in Zambia and other parts of the world.
Mr Liseteli said for him the main difference of living at Ringers Soak to living in Zambia has been the cultural aspects. He admits he didn’t know very much about Aboriginal culture prior to arriving last year, but says he has learnt a lot since then.
“Being African I thought it would be very close,” Mr Liseteli said.
“But I’ve learnt to appreciate and understand the Australian Aboriginal culture a bit more,” he said.
He teaches a mixed aged class of about 15 to 20 students.
Spare time, according to PJ is mainly spent helping students with homework, because the nearest town is not readily accessible.
“Halls Creek is 168 kilometres away and it’s not that easy to get there,” he said.
By Jamie O’BrienS
tJoseph’s Catholic Primary School Wyndham is growing. Growing vegetables and fruit that is.
Last year teacher Andrew Holt and students from the Year 6-7 class constructed and designed the garden bed with the help of the local Community.
When journalists from The Record recently visited the school, the garden was still growing. The design of the garden has been made to replicate the flow of the five major rivers that surround the town of Wyndham, these being the King, Pentecost, Forrest, Durack and the Ord. Fruit and vegetables such as corn, tomato, paw paw, sweet potato, watermelon, chilli, cucumber, rockmelon, lettuce and passionfruit are all growing furiously.
“It has helped students attend school and improved their literacy and numeracy,” said teacher Andrew Holt.
A number of stone murals have
“I like weeding it and my favourite vegetable is corn”. Kurt also added that he has enjoyed learning how to use the garden tools.
Eight-year-old Jocelyn Cigobia felt the same.
“There are more foods in the canteen and we are eating all the right ones,” Jocelyn said.
“Every day two times a day,” she said.
The school is also involved in a Gouldian Finch monitoring team.
About 100 Gouldian Finches have been congregating at the school at about 6.30am every morning.
The school recently emailed Jarred Holmes from the Threatened Species Network in Darwin.
Mr Holmes told the school Gouldian Finches have been declining across northern Australia and are listed as an endangered species.
A monitoring kit will become available to the school in September.
By Jamie O’Brien
Genazzano College FCJ (Faithful Companions of Jesus) in Melbourne has recently given four students the opportunity to live out the experience of the native Australian culture.
Record journalists Jamie O’Brien and Carole McMillen caught up with the four girls while they were in WarmunTurkey Creek.
Anna Cosgrave, Pip McIlroy, Lucy Hart and Saskia Lillywhite believe they had the experience of a lifetime.
Besides spending time in Warmun-Turkey Creek, the 15year-old students also spent time in Broome and the Dampier Peninsula.
In Warmun-Turkey Creek, Anna and Pip assised the teachers in the classroom, while Lucy and Saska assisted in the Warmun Arts Centre, spending time with artists and learning the different
painting techniques. “Before I left Melbourne I had little understanding of indigenous culture,” said Pip.
“However my impressions are very different now.”
Teacher Jennifer Cambridge said it has been a tradition of the school to send students each year to the Kimberley.
2004 is the 16th year the program has been operating.
Selection for the program is based on the students’ involvement in the school community, social justice, willingness to participate in outdoor activities and the fact of coping while being away from home.
”I wanted to go to the Kimberley to meet and live with people who could share with me their knowledge and culture.
“Living a different lifestyle in a different culture was the best way to learn about and appreciate others,” said Saskia.
“My impression of the aboriginal culture now is that it is very rich and diverse,” she said.
The students said they were very happy to have been accepted so well in the community and also spoke about the welcoming ceremony.
This involved a ritual with water for protection, blowing in the eyes by aboriginal elders
and cooking damper in the sand to cleanse their spirits.
Saska Lillywhite said the experience has given her a wealth of knowledge.
“We realise we’ll never be able to give as much as we learn from them [the aboriginal people],” she said.
Upon returning to school, the four girls have shared their experiences with other students and teachers.
Their most memorable experiences during their journey have been the generosity and hospitality of their host family, said Anna.
“The week’s trip to the Dampier Peninsula where we camped and lived the traditional hunting and gathering lives of the saltwater people was an amazing experience,” she said.
“We even tried turtle.”
Each one of the girls believes the lessons they learnt while on their journey have been invaluable.
“The most important lesson I have learned (while in the Kimberley) is that we need to live our lives with respect and acceptance towards all people, no matter who they are, so that divisions between our two cultures will no longer exist,” said Lucy.
A small community by the name of Ringers SoakYaruman exists 1200km from Broome.COCHIN, India (CNS) -- The murder of a Catholic priest who worked with the poor in Kerala, a Christian state in southern India, has shocked church members.
Father Job Chittilapilly, 71, died Aug. 28 from four stab wounds. His body was found on a porch at Mother of God Parish in Irinjalakuda Diocese, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India expressed shock at the priest’s murder. In an Aug. 29 statement, its vice president, Archbishop Jacob Thoomkuzhy of Trichur, urged the government to take urgent
action to arrest the person or people responsible.
As of Aug. 30, police said they had not yet identified the assailants at Father Chittilapilly’s parish, 25 miles north of Cochin.
Bishop James Pazhayattil of Irinjalakuda told UCA News Aug. 30 that the slain priest worked for the poor and needy, so “his murder has put the people of our diocese in deep grief.”
The bishop said Father Chittilapilly was “a good Samaritan who never had any enemies. We do not know what led to his murder. We want the police to investigate it.”
However, a diocesan official
who did not want to be named told UCA News Aug. 30 that people warned the slain priest of “dire consequences” if he continued to visit Hindu families. Parishioners said the priest visited poor families regardless of their caste or religion.
“The threats could not stop Father Chittilapilly, but we really do not know whether these threats have anything to do with the murder,” the diocesan official said.
Deputy Police Superintendent
Thomas Jolly Cherian told UCA News that the parish sexton, Shibu Ambadan, told them he arrived at the church about 5:30
a.m. to prepare for the 6:30 Mass and saw the priest praying his rosary on the porch.
According to the police account, Ambadan greeted the priest and collected the keys to the church. He also switched on the loudspeaker system and played some recorded devotional songs, as is customary before daily Mass. When the priest did not come into the church by 6:15, the sexton sent a parishioner awaiting Mass to call him. The parishioner found the priest lying face down on the porch.
Cherian ruled out robbery as the motive, pointing out that a gold chain the priest wore
was untouched. “The murder has been done very cleverly in minutes. We are investigating it from all angles,” Cherian said.
Archbishop Thoomkuzhy and Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil of Ernakulam-Angamaly led the funeral services Aug. 29.
Irinjalakuda is a diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, headed by Cardinal Vithayathil. The church is one of the two Oriental rites that, with the Latin rite, comprise the Catholic Church in India. The cardinal is based in Cochin, Kerala state’s commercial capital.
Christopher Pearson, columnist with The Australian, went in to bat for the Church after a media campaign over Communion.
George Pell was once again making headlines last week. A priest in his Sydney diocese, John Crothers, published a highly critical essay in the e-magazine Online Catholics. It was headed "It's time to take a stand" and accused Pell of being "exclusive and inflexible" and ignoring "the rights and needs of faithful Catholics".
True to form, The Sydney Morning Herald reiterated those charges in a rather breathless piece on Monday morning. By lunchtime, ABC radio's Eleanor Hall announced on The World Today that there was "a split developing in the Catholic Church" over Pell's leadership. There was no comment from the cardinal's office, but the Herald reprinted Crothers' article on its opinion pages so that readers could judge for themselves.
What was all the fuss about? Crothers tells us that he had just had a painful meeting with a parishioner, Anne, who is a depressive. She also suffers from coeliac disease, a gastrointestinal condition, which means she has a very low tolerance for wheat flour. It fell to Crothers to tell her that the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had ruled that, where previously gluten-free host wafers made from maize had been tolerated, henceforth communion breads must conform to 2000 years of tradition and contain some trace of flour.
In an era where fewer than one in 10 of those who fall into the hands of the Catholic school system will attend Mass regularly in adulthood, wafers with or without flour may seem like much ado about nothing. Perhaps the most obvious analogy is with the Russian synod heatedly debating a minor liturgical question while Bolshevik gangsters were taking over the state. Even so, the church has its reasons and they deserve an airing.
Since the Second Vatican Council, some parts of the church have drifted into a kind of theological modernism that is closer in spirit to Protestantism than to orthodoxy. Instead of the normal
understanding of the mass as a sacrificial offering up of Christ under the forms of transubstantiated bread and wine, it sees the liturgy as a communal meal. Some priests have gone so far as to use damper, Jatz crackers, raisin toast, jam pastries and tacos rather than bread, all in the name of making the mass a cosier, less formal occasion. At youth services, celebrants in Marcel Marceau make-up and dressed in clown suits have been known to consecrate buttered bread topped with hundreds-and-thousands.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had to curb those abuses and to remind clergy that it was not a province where individuals could
please themselves but where the church laid down the law. Crothers' clear obligation was to explain to Anne the duty of obedience to lawful authority. He might also have canvassed with her the range of communicants' options, including the new ultralow flour wafers with a gluten level of about 200 parts per million. Instead he appears to have made matters worse.
"Anne was devastated. She will no longer be able to receive communion in the normal way. She will not be able to receive communion when she is sick, nor at the communion service she attends regularly. She was extremely upset and angry."
Anne's longing to cling to familiar forms and usages is perfectly
understandable. She's entitled to patient explanation and special pastoral attention. She's also entitled to be told what Crothers never mentions, no doubt because it would absolutely undermine his case. Where the sensitivity to gluten is acute, coeliacs have automatic recourse to the chalice at communion. The church holds that Christ is entirely present under either form -- the consecrated bread or wine. Access to either is traditionally regarded as the greatest imaginable privilege.
What neither Anne nor Crothers is entitled to is righteous indignation when they can't have their own way or delusions of grandeur about their place in the church's scheme of things. The Catholic Church is not and never can be a democracy. It has always been run according to its own rules, confidently patriarchal and hierarchical. The clergy and laity have rights and privileges, of course, but the church alone defines them and can suspend them. Even bishops are constrained by higher authority. This last proposition may be at the heart of the matter. Crothers' complaint only begins to make some sense if he assumes that Pell is at liberty to pick and choose which Roman directives he publishes locally and enforces. It should be borne in mind that Sydney has long been governed by liberal authoritarians and prelates who sought peace at any price. Perhaps Crothers has never encountered a bishop who felt obliged to set an example of obedience. Certainly it would make sense of his Luther-like "Here I stand and can do no other" tone.
"I knew at that moment that something had gone seriously wrong with our church. This was the criticism Jesus constantly levelled at the Scribes and Pharisees, letting religion become an end in itself.
I knew in my heart that I had to take a stand, not just about the banning of gluten-free hosts but about a growing tendency in our church to ignore the rights and needs of faithful Catholics in the name of religion.
Over the past few years there has been a concerted effort by some bishops to push the Australian church further to the right. Certainly in Sydney, Cardinal George Pell makes no apology for his ultra-conservative views," Crothers wrote.
Plainly gluten-free flour has become emblematic, in Crothers' mind at least, and grown to stand for a broad ambit licence to rebel against Rome, against his bishop, against any authority other than his own and, let's not forget, against the sinister forces of ultra-conservatism. Reports on Thursday of other clergy from the Paramatta diocese threatening to use gluten-free hosts suggest the emergence of a new cause celebre. However, as Brian Lucas, the secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, pointed out, they would be rebels without a cause. People with coeliac disease could always communicate from the chalice and reports of anyone being denied access to the sacrament were "an outrageous beat-up".
That Pell's real offence is much more likely to be his perceived conservatism doesn't mean that the red herring of gluten-free wafers will go away. Using them illicitly, with varying degrees of ostentation, may lead to displays of public insubordination that can't go indefinitely unpunished and they may become a symbol of clerical resistance. But resistance to what? Pell's allegiances aren't in any simple way to the Left or Right, let alone with any political party. Nor, sadly, are they particularly conservative, as his liturgical preferences and his endorsement of a republic made clear.
Perhaps Pell's distinctiveness, and his great offence, lies in representing what's left of mainstream Catholicism as unmistakably as John Howard represents the political mainstream. How else account for the level of rancour from the Fairfax press, the ABC and the greying Left-liberal clergy -- those embittered old men of Vatican II? The very notion of a mainstream is anathema to all of them, almost as appalling as orthodoxy itself.
Following their Plenary Session of the ACBC in May, the Australian Catholic Bishops offered this statement as a contribution to the democratic process. It is republished now that the election has been called for October 9.
Drawing upon a rich religious tradition and upon the Church’s long experience as a major provider of health, education, and welfare services right across Australia, we identify here some of the crucial challenges now facing Australia which will be key issues in the forthcoming election.
Building a Culture of Life.
Life is God's gift and our responsibility. The making and taking of life in whatever form and in whatever circumstances must always be seen in this perspective. Human cloning and the use of human embryos for stem cell research or other purposes is a violation of human dignity. We have already expressed our grave disappointment at recent bipartisan legislative changes in this area which will be reviewed in the life of the next Parliament.
Deliberately killing the unborn is never justified and laws allowing it deny the most basic human right. Assisted suicide and euthanasia, while presented and perceived as a merciful response, are actually an abandonment of those who need our care.
Building a Culture of Love
Human persons are essentially communal, and our common life is based on the God-given institutions of marriage and family. The commitment of men and women and their openness to children is the basis of every society.
Marriage and family are unique relationships, and nothing may be allowed to undermine them. Family breakdown is a very grave problem today, and therefore marriage and family life need to be supported and promoted, not threatened or destabilised. Tax, workplace reforms, and welfare assistance should help families survive and thrive. The welfare and protection of children are paramount. Through the Church’s own painful recent experience, we are acutely aware of the long term impact of any abuse on children. There is need to ensure that children are protected not only from direct attacks but also from the impact on them of drug and alcohol abuse, gambling, exploitative advertising and internet pornography.
Every Australian should have access to a high quality education. Federal and State funding policies should afford every student equal opportunities for education. Church schools pre-date secular education in Australia. The Catholic education system is
"In making this statement, the Australian Bishops do not wish to be politically partisan nor to compromise the freedom of Catholic voters. Within a democratic process where expediency or party politics can at times obscure key principles and issues, we want to encourage people to consider their vote in the light not only of their personal interests, but of wider concerns as well."
generally co-extensive with state schools. A variety of schooling systems respond to parents’ basic freedom to choose for their children an education which reflects their own values, beliefs and hopes. The public debate demands accurate information on the exact levels of educational funding from Federal and respective State sources and from parent and private contributions.
The Catholic Church has contributed health services from earliest days in Australia. The Church has always understood healthcare as embracing all dimensions of the human person - physical, social, psychological and spiritual. A particular area of need at this time is in the provision of aged care services.
Consistent with statements made by Catholic Health Australia, the largest single grouping of nongovernment owned health, aged and community care services in Australia, we note that the cost burden of caring for aged people has been steadily shifting to residents and their families. Commonwealth support for aged care must be set at levels which guarantee security to the frail and the sick.
Building a Culture of Care
Christ’s compassion was
directed primarily to the poor, the sick and the downtrodden, and any society is judged by how the weakest and poorest of its members are treated. The most vulnerable are our greatest responsibility. We support and encourage Catholic agencies such as Centacare and numerous Catholic groups like the St Vincent de Paul Society, which alone assists a million Australians in need each year. There is an increasing gap between rich and poor. Australia’s religious leaders last year wrote to all political leaders seeking a national forum on poverty, with the aim of developing a national strategy to tackle the problem. The Australian Catholic Commission for Employment Relations has advocated for a higher minimum wage so that workers and their families can live with dignity and security. We stress the particular difficulties faced by Australians living in rural and remote areas who are less well served and whose struggles go largely unnoticed.
Building a Culture of Reconciliation
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples still suffer serious disadvantage compared with other Australians. Experience has taught that the delivery of services to Indigenous peoples is least effective when the peoples themselves play no significant part in the process. Those who have
had little say in what happened in their past must be encouraged and assisted to shape their future. The quest for reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the rest of the Australian community must move forward in a spirit of genuine dialogue which seeks to heal wounds both past and present.
Building a Culture of Hospitality
Australia is a country of immigrants. The Church is firmly committed to the biblical value of welcoming the stranger. While we recognise the need for effective border control, we have spoken often of the need to treat migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in a way that respects their human dignity. We have stated our opposition to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, beyond the need for initial processing. We insist once again that children not be held in detention. People released into the community on bridging visas need appropriate support. The fine work of Church personnel among asylum seekers highlights the need for greater pastoral care in detention centres and better access to them.
The world’s peoples form one human family. Yet like any family the global family has problems, and they are grave at this time. Ultimate and lasting peace is God’s gift alone. However, by striving for a better distribution of the world’s resources and just resolution to international conflicts, national security will be better served and terrorism will be more effectively countered.
Across the world, Australia can best contribute to peace through diplomacy, foreign aid and the
provision of peace-keeping forces. This is a priority in our own now troubled Pacific region.
The Pope has called for ecological conversion which springs from gratitude and reverence for God’s creative love, revealed in the universe. Care for the environment is intimately linked to the well-being of Australia. The effects of climatic extremes and natural disasters are seen across the continent. Policies which deal equitably and effectively with land salination, the degradation of rivers, fair distribution of water, global warming and prudent management of fragile ecosystems are part of caring for God’s created world. We recognise that environmental issues often involve a conflict of values among stakeholders and that policies need to take account of different values and the requirements of justice.
In making this statement, the Australian Bishops do not wish to be politically partisan nor to compromise the freedom of Catholic voters. Within a democratic process where expediency or party politics can at times obscure key principles and issues, we want to encourage people to consider their vote in the light not only of their personal interests, but of wider concerns as well.
This will mean recognition of the need to protect life, to support families and to ensure a fair go for all Australians, especially the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. For the true advancement of the nation depends not just upon material prosperity, but upon building a Commonwealth for the common good.
World War II veterans who helped liberate Paris 60 years ago joined French President Jacques Chirac at a commemorative Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral. Church leaders from the United States, England, Canada and Germany concelebrated the Aug. 26 Mass with Paris Cardinal JeanMarie Lustiger. In his homily, Cardinal Lustiger urged those in attendance not to forget that France's hard-fought freedom has yet to be shared by everyone. "As Europe builds itself as a unified entity, people all over the world are fighting for their liberty and are calling on freed people for help," the cardinal said. At a time of growing economic disparity, the Paris cardinal asked if today "people are still worthy of the freedom others fought for." Veterans, some with sports jackets clad with medals and others carrying French flags, filled the pews. Sixty years ago, many were fighting in the streets of Paris.
Pope John Paul II strongly condemned the murder of an Italian freelance journalist in late August and pleaded with everyone involved in the ongoing Iraqi conflict to find peaceful means for resolving differences. Enzo Baldoni, 56, was in Iraq reporting for the Italian weekly Il Diario. In addition to his freelance reporting, he worked in the Italian advertising business and was the Italian translator of the U.S. comic strip "Doonesbury." He was kidnapped on Aug. 20 while on his way to the besieged city of Najaf. Italian press reports said he was accompanying an Italian Red Cross convoy. The Arab television news station Al-Jazeera said on Aug. 27 it had received a videotape showing Baldoni's kidnappers killing him. The Italian Foreign Ministry later confirmed his death. Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman, said on Aug. 27 that officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State had offered their deepest condolences to Baldoni's family after hearing of his "barbaric assassination."
Keeping Catholic hospitals Catholic will be an uphill battle, Dr. Eugene Diamond told the Catholic Citizens Forum in Chicago on Aug.13.
Diamond, a professor of pediatrics and acting chairman of the pediatrics department at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, began with good news: There are 600 Catholic hospitals and 700 Catholic nursing homes nationwide. Agencies of the church maintain four of the country's 10 largest health care systems.
While Catholics can be proud of all the services the Catholic health community renders, he said, they can be equally proud of what it doesn't do.
"Catholic hospitals don't kill people," said Diamond, who also serves as director of the Catholic Medical Association's Linacre Institute. "They don't do or refer abortions. They don't provide abortifacient contraceptives. They don't provide services like fetal stem-cell research, cloning or the morning-after pill."
He said the church is not averse to technology, it's just that "we do all things except those which violate the Fifth Commandment."
Diamond, who has held leadership positions in organizations such as the Catholic Physicians' Guild and World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Life, reminded his audience that before Hippocrates doctors were consulted either as healers or to prepare a potion to kill an enemy.
"Twenty-five hundred years later, in almost every medical school in the Western world, graduates were reciting their commitment to Hippocrates' principle: 'First, do no harm,'" he said. His talk covered the current slippery slopes of abortion, mercy killing, assisted suicide, denial of nutrition/hydration for the terminally ill and the fate of comatose patients.
Using the Netherlands' legalized euthanasia as an example, he said thousands of patients were put to death there last year by physicians, as law enforcement looked the other way.
"The number killed turned out to be three times the number of those who applied to be killed," Diamond said, adding that two out of three people medically and legally dispatched there died, "not because they wanted to die, but because somebody else, next of kin, or a doctor, made the decision for them."
Even doctors in the United States can kill "quickly and efficiently and may soon be licensed to do so," Diamond warned.
Some physicians use excuses that sound ethical, he said.
Under "autonomy," a person is said to have a constitutional right to his or her body or life, he said. So doctors agree to end treatment and intentionally poison their patient. With "beneficence," he explained, death is given swiftly by the physician, because the patient's life is "not worth living."
If the patient can't speak up, relatives, a proxy or the doctor himself can say he wouldn't want to live in that condition.
When the law permits doctors to legally kill, Diamond warned, a patient may never know if the yellow stuff slipped into their
IV will put them to sleep for the night or forever.
Diamond said he recognized the anxiety of patients with an incurable illness, and listed their basic fears as pain, catastrophic cost, isolation and loss of control. A patient can stop medical treatment when it merely prolongs dying, he said, and can use pain relief measures "when they may have, as a consequence, an increased risk of death." Simply put, he said, "Doctors may allow one to die, but never kill. Not for love or for money." As for pain, Diamond cited a British Medical Research Council study
of 100,000 patients which concluded there is no intractable pain, only inadequately treated pain. He also said allowing a person to die of dehydration and starvation is not "humane."
The American Medical Association advises food and drink should be discontinued in the care of comatose patients, if the coma is irreversible beyond doubt, Diamond said.
But he added, "We have no way of knowing that -- think of the patient recently reported who awoke after being unconscious for 20 years." - CNS
A New York judge has became the second federal judge in three months to declare the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban unconstitutional.
The Aug. 26 ruling by Judge Richard Conway Casey described partial-birth abortion as a "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized medical procedure," but said that to ban it was unconstitutional because the ban didn't make exceptions for when the procedure might be necessary to protect a women's health.
Casey is one of three federal judges to hear appeals of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban signed into law by President Bush last year. The law was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Abortion Federation and several abortion doctors.
On June 1, a San Francisco judge said the ban was unconstitutional because it violated "a woman's right to choose an abortion" and could "force pregnant women to undergo a procedure that is less safe."
A federal judge in Lincoln, Nebraska, is expected to rule
on the ban later this year. The three judges have suspended the ban while it is being appealed.
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, director of planning and information in the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, said Casey's decision struck down the abortion ban based on "dictates of Roe vs. Wade," the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
"Roe vs. Wade once again made the unthinkable constitutional," she said, noting that the Supreme Court decision made abortion a "constitutional right rather than an act of barbarism."
She also said the "crucial question of medical necessity" for an abortion was "never answered in this trial."
Ruse praised the U.S. Justice Department for its "vigorous defence" of the ban and also urged an appeal of the judge's ruling in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban has been challenged for several reasons, including its lack of a clause providing an exception when a pregnant woman's health would be endangered by using a different type of abortion.
Supporters of the ban say a health provision would have
rendered the legislation virtually meaningless because of the broad definition of maternal health given by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in its decisions to legalize abortion.
The law bars a type of abortion that is usually performed in the second or third trimester. In the procedure, a live fetus is partially delivered, then the skull is punctured to sever the brain stem before the whole body is delivered. Under the law, doctors who perform such abortions, which are also known to physicians as "intact dilation and extraction," are subject to up to two years in prison.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, said he was disappointed by Casey's ruling, but also noted that it "represents only the beginning of a long legal road that will end at the Supreme Court of the United States."
"We remain hopeful that the ban ultimately will clear the constitutional hurdles," he said.
At an Aug. 26 news conference in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department would continue to defend the PartialBirth Abortion Ban and would appeal rulings that call the ban unconstitutional.
- CNS
Catholic news from around the world
Sudan's bishops call for more action, less talk on Darfur crisis
The world must stop talking about the tragedy unfolding in western Sudan's Darfur region; it must act now to prevent more lives being lost, said the Sudanese Catholic bishops.
"We ask all concerned authorities to stop politicking. What is at stake are the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, particularly the children, the women and the elderly," they said in a statement dated Aug. 24.
The bishops, who met in Jinja, Uganda, said that some 35,000 people have died in the last year and a half. Another 2 million people have been internally displaced.
They said more people will die in the next few days as urgently needed relief supplies have been prevented from reaching their destinations.
"There is no room for further statements, discussions or deliberation. This is a time for action to save innocent people," the statement said.
According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 350,000 lives are at risk due to fighting, starvation or other causes unless they receive immediate assistance. The United Nations has described Darfur as currently the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Rebel groups rose up against the government last year, accusing the government of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. The government in Sudan has been accused of backing Arab militias and gangs known as Janjaweed in their fight for control of the region and its resources.
In their statement, the bishops urged the United Nations and the international community to put
pressure on the Sudanese government "not only to halt arming the Janjaweed, but also to immediately disarm them and bring the perpetrators to justice."
"If the government of Khartoum is reluctant to assume this responsibility, then we appeal to the international community to intervene immediately," they said.
The United Nations must
"assume their responsibilities. The holocaust of the African ethnicity in Darfur is ethnic cleansing. ... This means the international community should interfere and offer all necessary assistance," the bishops' statement said.
On June 30, the United Nations threatened sanctions against Sudan if it did not end the violence in Darfur within 30 days, but the deadline for when the
attacks had to end and the Janjaweed had to be controlled was changed to Aug. 30.
"We also plead with the international community to avoid further discussion and compromise," the bishops said.
More time must not be wasted "in order to save innocent and precious lives," they said.
CNS
Khardaga Abdullah Ali is a woman of about 40, she is unsure of her exact age. She is currently living in a tent, which was there when she moved to Al Hisahisa camp, just outside Zalingei. It is not waterproof, and with the rainy season here, Khardaga urgently needs some plastic sheeting.
The Caritas/ACT network, a combination of Caritas and other church agencies, is desperately trying to distribute plastic sheeting to as many people as possible, before the rainy season gets much worse. So far, it has distributed 20,000 in Mershing camp but needs more funds and support to expand its distribution program. In the meantime, Khardaga has built a low brick wall around the outside of her tent to try to stop water seeping in and inside the tent is building a raised area of earth to form a bed.
Outside her tent is a small grass shelter that acts as a store for the cooking pots for her small community.
“I came here after Ramadan last year from my village of Kargula, which is about 20 km from
here,” she told Caritas workers.
“I came here because the Janjaweed attacked us and killed some of my village. We haven't been able to bury our dead because it is not safe to go back.
“There were 64 people killed from our village, and we feel very sad because not only have we lost our friends and neighbours, but we have not been able to bury them,” Khardaga said.
“The Janjaweed are now living in our village, so there is no way that we can return there.
“They came to attack us early in the morning when some of us were still sleeping, so we didn't have any warning that they were coming.
“I was with my five children and my mother and grandfather. My husband was in Khartoum working for the family.
“My eldest child is 15, and my youngest is five months - he was born here, in Al Hisahisa camp,” she said.
Khardaga is very distressed by the number of women who have been raped by Janjaweed when they leave the safety of the camp in search of food or water. She
pointed to a 60 year old woman who was threatened at knife point and a girl no older than 16 who has been raped several times. Some women have been hospitalised while they recover from their injuries.
She is grateful that a water supply has been installed in the camp, so that the women will not be attacked when they leave to search for water. Water pump installation is a high priority of ACT/Caritas’s work. Lack of medicine is a concern for most of the mothers in the camp and Khardaga’s youngest baby, born in the camp is suffering from anaemia.
Caritas Australia has made an initial commitment of $AU 250,000 to contribute to the work of ACT/Caritas provision of food, clean water, shelter, sanitation, mobile health clinics and trauma counselling. But we need more donations to help people such as Khardaga.
Caritas Australia is accepting donations for the Sudan Humanitarian Crisis. Please call 1800 024 413 or go to www.caritas.org.au to make on online donation. Visit us at: www.caritas.org.au
Speaking before its return Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow said the Marian icon Pope John Paul II was sending back to Russia has value "because of the prayers it has received."
The Patriarch, who in recent weeks described the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan as "one of many copies," spoke about the importance of its return in an August 27 interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
A Vatican delegation, led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, presented the icon to the patriarch during an August 28 liturgy in Moscow marking the feast of the Dormition of Mary, the Byzantine equivalent of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Patriarch Alexy told the Italian newspaper that although the icon is an 18th-century copy of the 16th-century original "this image has value because of the prayers it has received."
The prayers of "generations of
Orthodox, of faithful who gathered before it at Fatima (Portugal) and of the Pope" give the icon a value that goes beyond its age, the Patriarch said.
Although Pope John Paul had wanted to deliver the icon personally, the Russian Orthodox repeatedly have said a visit by the Pope is not opportune; they claim the Catholic Church is trying to entice Orthodox believers to become Catholic.
"I am convinced," the Patriarch told the newspaper, "that proselytism is nothing more than an unbecoming pursuit of temporary advantages to the detriment of the good news of Christ.
"Unfortunately, quite often we encounter this attitude on the part of Catholic clergy and religious who work in Russia," he said.
"We are waiting for the Roman Catholic Church to radically change its policy toward the Orthodox and for it to cease its unfriendly, premeditated activities," Patriarch Alexy said. "Only then will it be possible to have the full Orthodox-Catholic dialogue for which our church is essentially open and ready."
Eariler, Cardinal Kasper said the Pope's gift is "a significant ecumenical event."
Reviewed: David DiCerto Catholic News Service
Cartoonist Jim Davis’ popular comic strip about a pudgy puss with a bottomless stomach is cat-apulted onto the big screen in the flat feline farce, “Garfield” (20th Century Fox).
Recently dubbed the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records, “Garfield” today is read in 2,570 newspapers by 263 million devoted fans around the globe.
But, despite some funny moments, director Peter Hewitt coughs up a hairball in trying to stretch Davis’ three-panel strip into a live-action, featurelength film, whose tomcat-foolery quickly grows staler than threeday-old Purina Cat Chow. Bill Murray lends his lethargic larynx to the computer-animated tangerine tabby, who freaks out when his lovesick owner, John (Breckin Meyer), agrees to adopt a stray pup named Odie, as a way of endearing himself to a pretty veterinarian (Jennifer Love Hewitt).
The wisecracking, lasagna-loving cat soon finds himself vying with the peppy pooch -- who, as in the strip, does not talk -- for John’s affection. But when the hapless hound goes missing, it is up to the finicky feline to spring out of inaction and save the day. With uncharacteristic energy, Garfield pulls himself away from his lazy life of leisure and ventures into the big city to rescue Odie from the cruel clutches of Happy Chapman (Stephen Tobolowsky), a local TV celebrity who will doggedly do whatever it takes to make it big.
Of course, it’s hardly letting the cat out of the bag to reveal that
Reviewed: David DiCerto
Catholic News Service
Eby the end of the film catastrophe is avoided, as Garfield, in a rare meow-culpa, comes to realize that there is room enough on the comfy couch for two -- well, sort of.
Fans of Davis’ comic strip may have mixed reactions to the movie. Murray’s voice provides the pitch-purrfect blend of sarcasm and slovenliness to the curmudgeonly cat, who, thanks to the magic of computer animation, closely resembles the cartoon.
However, while the computer animation gives the film’s Garfield the added advantage of three-dimensionality, the net result of the mediocre script is a much more one-dimensional character than the penned version.
On the other hand, director Hewitt’s decision to use a real dog for Odie -- while adorable- may give some fans pause. The film also sports a talking menagerie of supporting players, a la “Babe,” including a street-smart mouse (Evan Arnold) who helps Garfield in his search-and-rescue mission.
Actors Breckin and Hewitt are appealing -- for humans, that is -- but hardly the cat’s meow. Tobolowsky embarrasses himself enough for nine lives, but perhaps that’s being too catty.
While the film wonderfully maintains the comic strip’s droll sense of sardonic wit, buried under the kitty litter is a family-friendly message about friendship and selflessness.
Still, moviegoers might be advised to follow Garfield’s lead: Stay home and take a catnap.
Due to some brief mildly crude humor, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is AII -- adults and adolescents.
ven if you had the added advantage of living nine lives, you would be hard-pressed to find a more conspicuous marriage of A-list talent and B-movie schlock than the slick but soonto-be-forgotten “Catwoman” (Warner Bros.).
The first red flag comes as early as the opening credits; viewers should always beware of any film whose director pretentiously goes by only one name, in this case, Pitof. Pile on a limp script full of clumsy dialogue and choppy action sequences and Warner Brothers is left coughing up a $100 million hairball.
Loosely inspired by the comicbook character created by Bob Kane, Pitof’s Catwoman bears a name-only relationship to the feline femme fatale who first appeared in the pages of Batman comics during the 1940s. Since then, her slinky cat suit has been filled by the likes of Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt in the campy 1960s’ “Batman” TV series, as well as by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s 1992 “Batman Returns.”
In the new movie, however, the filmmaker has jettisoned all of Catwoman’s “Bat” baggage, giving her a new identity and even a change of address, from crimeridden Gotham to the equally fictitious Lake City.
Halle Berry plays Patience Philips, a mousy graphic designer working for Hedare Beauty, a cosmetic conglomerate run by the demanding and corrupt George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his past-her-prime, ice-queen wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone), recently dethroned as the company’s spokesmodel.
Patience -- which is exactly what you need to sit through this kitty litter -- is killed after she discovers a dark corporate secret about Hedare’s new fountain-of-youth cream.
But in a scene lifted from Burton’s Bat sequel, Patience is revived by a mysterious cat using puss-to-puss resuscitation and she is endowed with supernatural powers, including felinelike agility, senses and stealth. She also finds herself experiencing sudden mood swings, vacillating between sheepishness and selfconfidence.
White Chicks
Painfully inept comedy in which two FBI agents (brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans) go undercover to protect a pair of young white socialites at an exclusive summer resort from kidnappers by pretending to be the women. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans’ preposterous premise quickly grows tiresome as do the unconvincing prosthetics and heavy makeup, while an actual story line is jettisoned in favour of flat jokes, well-worn
Frances Conroy plays an enigmatic former college professor who fills in some of the blanks regarding Patience’s rebirth. As it turns out, Patience is one in a long line of women throughout history who have been chosen (by whom remains unclear) to be liberated from the “prison” of societal mores. The explanation remains vague and includes references to Egyptian cat-goddess cults and is laced with feminist mumbo jumbo about the “duality of women.”
Patience dons a skintight latex outfit and unleashes her newfound feline fury on her murderers, taking time out to rob a jewelry store when a cat-claw diamond necklace catches her eye. Of course, this complicates her burgeoning relationship with a hunky cop love interest, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt).
Comic-book purists may find themselves up in arms over the changes to and politicizing of the Catwoman lore. Parents may be equally alarmed by the film’s hyper-sexualized reconceptualization of the character, which makes Pfeiffer’s leather-clad lynx seem almost virginal. Of course,
gags and a handful of misogynistic jabs.
A few sexual references, fleeting drug content, some scatological humor and fisticuffs, a few crass words and some profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults.
The Village
Well-crafted but predictable film by M. Night Shyamalan about an isolated 19th-century village located in the middle of a forest inhabited by fearsome creatures, discouraging anyone
Berry, cracking her whip as she prowls around in a belly- and bust-baring dominatrix get-up should work like catnip on the film’s intended male audience.
Parents may also find the movie’s moral ambiguity problematic, specifically the blurred distinction between right and wrong. Apparently “catwomen are not contained by the rules of society,” as Conroy’s character says. Viewers looking for character depth along the line of the far superior “Spiderman 2” will be sadly disappointed. Though Pitof displays an undeniable visual flair, the characters in “Catwoman” remain as twodimensional as the comic-book pages from which they sprang.
Berry fills the title role purrrfectly. Stone also seems to make the most of her take-the-moneyand-run performance, especially during her climactic catfight with the feral feline. Still, as far as summer popcorn movies go, “Catwoman” is hardly the cat’s meow. Due to recurring stylized violence and an implied sexual encounter, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults.
from venturing to the outlying towns.
Production values and performances are generally fine, and Shyamalan sustains a reasonably suspenseful mood throughout, but all the fine trappings can’t conceal what is essentially a thin story, with a disappointing payoff. A very short violent episode, some smeared blood, some shots of skinned dead animals, and an intense atmosphere of impending doom.
The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is AII -- adults and adolescents.
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Sunday September 5
Eternal Word Television Network
1 - 2 pm on Access 31. The Marriage Tribunal: Msgr Leonard Pivonka with Mother Angelica (Best of Mother Angelica Series). This program commemorates the Golden Jubilee of St Joseph Pignatelli Parish, Attadale. We gratefully acknowledge the generous sponsorship of Father Geoff Beyer. Next week we will feature Fr Benedict Groeschel speaking about his accident and recovery with Fr Mitch Pacwa (EWTN Live) Please remember our Catholic media apostolate in your prayers. Postal address: The Rosary Christian Tutorial Association, PO Box 1270, Booragoon 6954. Enq: 9330 1170.
Sunday September 5
Gate of Heaven
Please join us this Sunday at 7:30pm on 107.9 FM, Radio Fremantle, for more Global Catholic Radio. This week we will feature: (1) Hail Holy Queen: The Mary We Tend to Miss In the Scriptures with Dr Scott Hahn & Mike Aquilina. (2) G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy with Dale Alquist. (3) Defending Life: Alveda King Tookes, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr with Fr Frank Pavone. Donations toward the program may be sent to Gate of Heaven, PO Box 845, Claremont, WA 6910. Programs subject to change without notice
Wednesday September 8
BULLSBROOK PILGRIMAGE FOR
OUR LADY'S BIRTHDAY
The birthday of the Blessed Virgin will be celebrated at the Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Rd, Bullsbrook, with a Rosary Procession to the Shrine at 10.30am followed by Holy Mass at 11.00am and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Reconciliation is available in Italian and English before the ceremony. All are most welcome to celebrate this holy occasion to honour Our Blessed Mother. Enq: SACRI 9447 3292.
Wednesday September 8
OUR LADY’S BIRTHDAY MASS
Please join in celebrating Our Lady’s Birthday with Holy Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral at 12.10pm. Celebrant Mons. McDonald. Preceded by one hour of Eucharistic Adoration and meditative Rosary (11am – 12pm).Our Lady’s Birthday Rosary Bouquet to be taken up with Offertory Gifts.
Saturday September 11
2004 WA FATHERHOOD FORUM
Come and be informed on this important issue at Christ Church Grammar School, Queenslea Drive, Claremont 9.30am – 4.30pm. Keynote speakers: Warwick Marsh (Australian Fatherhood Foundation), Dr Bruce Robinson (Professor of Medicine, UWA), Paul Gray (Melbourne Journalist and Broadcaster), Robert Hicks (Goldfields
AFA and Mens Health) and workshops. Booking essential: Contact Family Council of WA 9321 2333 by Thursday September 9 for bookings, costs, etc.
Sunday September 11/12
TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS 2004
Volunteers are required to participate in carrying the cross from Midland to Gingin with 14 stations (or change of teams) along the way. The total distance is 69 km. The pilgrimage will begin at 5pm, Sept 11 at St Brigid’s in Midland and arrive in Gingin about 11am on Sunday. Enq and to book seat on bus: Sheila 9575 4023, Conrad 9576 0403 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.
Sunday September 12
FATIMA HOLY HOUR
The World Apostolate of Fatima will hold a Holy Hour of Reparation at St Mary’s Church, Franklin St, Leederville at 3pm. Come and make Eucharistic reparation to our Blessed Lord for the many sins committed against Him. All welcome.
Monday September 13
COUNTRY DAY OF REFLECTION
Please join us in St Joseph’s Church Northam at 10am with Rosary followed by talks, concluding with Holy Mass at 2pm. (Morning tea 9.30am). Speaker:
Rev Mons G D’Ercole (D.O.O.) Theme: Delight in God’s Love. Bring your own lunch, tea coffee supplied. Please wear name tag. Enq: Kathy 9622 5963.
Friday September 17
DYM INFORMATION NIGHT
Want to impact high school students with gospel values in a fun, contemporary, relevant, non-threatening way? Find out how at the Disciples Youth Mission Team Information Night. This night is open to anyone who would like to know more about a work of evangelisation that occurs in high schools around Perth. 8.00pm 67 Howe St Osborne Park RSVP By Thursday 16th September Contact Marty Thorsen 9202 6848, 0417 637 040.
Monday September 20/24
LUISA PICCARRETA & THE NEW AND DIVINE HOLINESS
A week’s retreat presented by Dr John Brown at Casa di Luisa Picarreta, Spearwood. All welcome to hear this dynamic speaker. Daily Mass, talks, prayer, silence and reflection during this week. Sessions: 9am – 3pm and 7.30pm – 9.30pm daily. Live in available. Enq: Michele Grabsch or Jenny Troy 9494 2604. Please phone to register attendance.
Friday September 24
TAIZE SERVICE
7pm at St George’s Cathedral. Enq: Sister Maree 93340933 or 94573371.
All welcome
Saturday September 25
RETAILER of Catholic products specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for baptism, communion and confirmation. Ph: 9456 1777. Shop 12A, 64-66 Bannister Road, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat
TAIZE DAY RETREAT
RETREAT from the everyday pressures of life and experience Benedictine hospitality at the Monastery Guesthouse. Situated 132 kms north of Perth in the historic town of New Norcia. Twin rooms with en-suites or single rooms. Join the monks for daily prayer and Mass. Directed retreats by arrangement. Tariff by donation, suggested donation $50 full board. Inquiries: Guesthouse sec. phone (08) 9654 8002, fax (08) 9654 8097. Email: guesthouse_nn@hotmail. com. Please quote ref. R3
1 – 8pm, led by Brother Ghislain from the Taize Community France. Theme: Come to the wellsprings of joy. Mary Mackillop Centre, 16 York St, South Perth. Cost involved. Enq and registration: Sister Maree 9334 0933 or 9457 3371.
Friday October 15/17
NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING
Is a meaningful and fulfilling ministry. One of our growing needs for NFP teachers is as guest speakers in schools, as well as clinically with couples who wish to manage their fertility naturally and effectively. Training is in 4 parts over 4 weekends, and includes assignments and supervision. The first weekend will be 15-17 October 2004. If anyone is interested in training as an NFP teacher, please contact either Felicity Roux or Ann O’Donnell (Director) at: Natural Family Planning, 29 Victoria Square, Perth Tel 9223 1396.
Wednesday October 27 50 YEAR REUNION
Loreto – Nedlands. Seeking students from the 1952 Junior to 1954 leaving years for a reunion. Please reply ASAP to Val Witton (nee Shields twin) 9244 3138.
Monday November 22/25
BRIDGES TO UNDERSTANDING
Multi-faith Perspectives on Spirituality and Disability. Novotel Homebush Bay, Sydney. You are invited to the 5th trans-pacific Spirituality and Disability Conference. The conference aims to acknowledge the importance of people having the opportunity to express their spirituality and build bridges into their own spiritual communities. There will be a mix of plenary sessions, workshops and multi-faith panel presentations. Enq: Christie 02 8752 3777 or www. btu.com.au
CROSSROADS COMMUNITY
Healing Masses: 1st Monday of month
7pm Church of East Fremantle, 2nd Monday of month 10am St Jerome’s Munster. Term 3 – 26th July to 1st October for: Family & Friends Support Groups of Substance Abusers on Wednesdays 7 – 9pm, Substance Abusers Support Groups on Tuesdays 5.30 – 7.30pm & Fridays All day Group for Substance Abusers on Fridays 9.30am – 2pm, Bible Night: Tuesdays 7– 9pm & Healing Mass: Fridays 12.15pm.
DIVINE MERCY
The Divine Mercy Apostolate invites you all to come and join us by rolling out the red carpet for Jesus in the following Churches: St Mary’s Cathedral each first Sunday of the month 1.30–3.15pm, with a different priest each month. St Francis Xavier Church East Perth, the main centre for Divine Mercy Devotions, each Saturday 2.30–3.30pm. Divine
THANKS Dear Heart of Jesus. In the past I have asked for many favours this time I ask you for this special favour. Take it dear heart of Jesus and place it in your own broken heart where it will become your favour not mine. Amen
MONISSE – Anthony BORN 22-2-1939, born into eternal life 21-8-2004. Dearly loved husband of Teresa. Much loved father of Anthony, Gerard, Paul, Andrew, Matthew & Anne. Respected father in law of Carolyn, Leonie & Chereissa, adored grandpa of 12 grandchildren. On 278-2004 the funeral Mass was celebrated by Fr Jim Petry in St Mary’s Church Leederville followed by burial at Karrakatta cemetery. R.I.P.
Mercy Holy Mass each 2nd Saturday 2.30– 3.30pm, including Sacrament of healing. Main Celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM. All Saints Chapel, Allendale Square, Perth, Monday & Friday 1.35pm. Our Lady of Lourdes Church Rockingham, every second
Sunday of the month, 2.15-3.15pm. Sts John & Paul Church Willetton every
Wednesday 11am-12noon. Our Lady of Mercy Church Girrawheen, every Wednesday 1.30-2.30pm. St Francis of Assisi Parish Maida Vale every Monday 7.30-8.30pm. St Bernadette’s Church Glendalough every Sunday 34pm. St Joseph’s Church Bassendean every Thursday 3-4pm. Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament Church 175 Corfield St, Gosnells – every first Sunday 3-4pm. St Anne’s Bindoon –every day 4.30-5.30pm. St Catherine’s Gingin – every Tuesday 7.30-8.30pm, Church Presbytery 39 Brearley Ave Bullsbrook, Wednesday 7-8am. Edith Cowan University – Blessed Sacrament Chapel, near Car Park 9 – every Friday 2.30-3.30pm. All enquiries John 9457 7771.
CFC YOUTH FOR CHRIST MINISTRY
Young adults between the ages of 12-21, are invited to join this youth group and experience fun, meet new friends, enjoy fellowship and interaction with other youth, and also to have the chance to develop your Christian faith. Enq: Jose D Bayan on 0409 109 992.
CATHOLIC FAITH EXPLORATION
(CaFE) FOR YOUTH - MODULE 2
Are you ready to find more answers?
Youth CaFE Module 2 invites the youth of Perth to explore their faith and the Catholic Church. 7:30pm at the Catholic Pastoral Centre Seminar Room, 40A Mary St, Highgate. Eight weekly sessions. Ages: 16 to 35. Cost: Free. Enq: Christine 0411 273 572 or Daryl 0402 223 563 or info@youthcafe. org. Website: www.youthcafe.org.
MERCYCARE Is holding a fete in October and is seeking donations of fruit and vegetables to make jams, pickles etc to be sold at the fete. MercyCare can arrange collection or they can be dropped off to main reception at Catherine McCauley Centre, 18 Barrett St, Wembley. Enq: Jessica 0438 909 670. MercyCare is a non-profit organisation that provides community and health services.
HAPPENINGS AT THE SCHOENSTATT
SHRINE - SEPTEMBER
9 Talus Drive, Armadale, 9399 2349
Saturday September 11
TWILIGHT RETREAT FOR YOUNG
ADULTS
3pm till midnight. God’s Answer to Our Ground Zeros. Adoration, Stations of the Cross by torchlight, Holy Mass, discussions, activities and of course food.
Monday September 13
AN EVENING FOR MR’s (fathers) Sharing in God’s Fatherhood from 7.30 – 9pm.
REFLECTION DAYS FOR WOMEN
Are you tired, overworked, stressed out and your well is dry? Treat yourself with a day at the Shrine to recharge your batteries! Monday 13th, Thur 16th 9.30am – 2pm. Wed 14th 7.30 – 9pm.
Tuesday September 14
REFLECTION EVENING FOR WOMEN
7.30pm talk by Fr I Allies followed by discussion. Supper at 9pm, Cost by donation.
EXPECTING MOTHERS
CONSECRATE THEIR CHILD TO OUR LADY
10am Holy Mass, reflection and activity, byo lunch.
Saturday September 18
PILGRIM MOTHER DAY
Annual Pilgrimage. Mary, my Mother, with you I will go. 10am – 2.30pm byo lunch.
Saturday September 25 to Sunday
September 26
FAMILY FORMATION WEEKEND A 2-day conference: Catholic Families Making a Difference. Children are most welcome.
COUNSELLING DRUG/ALCOHOL
Cross Roads Community is looking for an experienced Counsellor to do 20-25 hours a week. Must be practicing catholic. Wages to be negotiated. Please send CV/Resume to Fr Paul Baczynski, 6 Council Place, East Fremantle, 6158.
Parishioners from Holy Family Kalamunda are being asked to help celebrate its 50th Anniversary.
The parish is hoping to create a collage of photos, video footage and stories. Parishioners past and present can do this by sending the photos of past parish activities, weddings, baptisms, and important family occasions with the details on the back.
These will be returned as soon as possible.
For more information please contact Lou or Sue Conti on 9291 7078.
A Catholic psychologist explains how you can resist materialism
DrRay Guarendi, author, radio host and father of 10, tells ZENIT how Christians in the West are plagued by consumerism, what damage greed can do to Christian marriages, families and individuals - and how to overcome it.
Question: What would you say are the major areas where consumerism has deeply affected Christians' behaviour - without them realising it?
Guarendi: Consumerism seems to me to be the Number 1 corporate sin of Christians. We are simply so deep into it we don't see it anymore.
Our desire for stuff supersedes everything. We are distracted, owned, tempted and seduced by it. We simply think less of God and more of "it" - it consumes more of our waking moments than God. That may be why our Lord spoke more of greed in the New Testament than anything else.
Part of the problem is that American culture views consumerism and stuff as part and parcel of normal living. It just is; it's how people get by. How can that be wrong? But it goes to the core of who we are. Consumerism equates with selfself-centeredness, self-fulfillment, self-satisfaction, selfish desires.
Virtually everyone lives to the limit or above what they can afford. That leaves no margin to give of money, to give of time and to simply have extra. Often, when missionaries come into parishes and take a second collection, the number of $1 coins is pathetic.
Catholics are the richest religious group in the country.
Unfortunately, we don't see it because we're like fish that don't sense the water around us. We need to make an effort to sense consumerism and try to resist it in our society.
If we gave to the Church the amount of money we spend eating out and shopping - or how much we pay on interest for things we don't really need - the Church would be able to help so many more people.
In our culture, being a consumer is seen as the good life - but it distracts us from the infinitely good life.
Question: How have you seen this phenomenon play out in Christian families?
Guarendi: As a therapist, one of the first things I do with a child who has a behaviour problem is ask the parents to reassess the child's goodies, activities and privileges. Kids are awash in things and leisure opportunities, and it affects their behaviour.
One of the top three stresses in marriages and families is finances. We are the wealthiest culture the world has ever seen, but our discontent over our finances is sky-high.
Because of the degree we want stuff, we have to work. That means that Daddy and sometimes Mummy are away from home all day so that they and their kids can have everything they want. This leads to what I call the "working parent compensation system."
Mums often don't want to work, but think they have to work because of spending habits in the family. They are tired when they come home, they feel guilty about not spending enough time with their children and they are hesitant to spend that little time punishing their kids for misbehaving. That affects their resolve to discipline and be, in effect, parents.
Husbands often pursue their toys more than wives because they believe these make life enjoyable. At a superficial level, guys want the newest, best stuff, and sometimes that includes wives.
When you learn to want things, your wants don't just stop at inanimate objects. You want other people and relationships that seem better than your current ones. When you are dissatisfied with what you have, it doesn't stop with consumer goods. This often leads to affairs and an overall pattern of discontent.
Question: How has increased affluence affected a Christian's ability to commit to a lifelong vocation, especially to the religious life and the priesthood?
Guarendi: The gap between what religious accept as their lifestyle and the available lifestyle in the West is large and has grown wider in the last few generations. African vocations are exploding in part, it seems, because religious life in Africa is an educated and appealing life compared to others' lives in that culture.
In the West, compared to the rest of society, religious life has very little perceived "payoff." The gap is huge, so the commitment is bigger. Commitment to priestly or religious vocations has to be fostered daily, because daily one is reminded of what he or she is
to give.
■ How much margin is there in my life? Do I have free time? Do I have free money? Free energy? I'm too busy to do anything for anyone? Look at busy-ness and look how much is necessary. You have to look at what demands your time and if you can justify it. Even if you can afford things, you don't have to have them. Look how much you use things, especially your toys and big things. Ask yourself: Am I neglecting others in order to take care of all my stuff? What kind of time do I spend with my kids and family?
If you own a big home, even if you can pay for it, maintaining it eats up a lot of your time. God won't ask how big your house was. He will ask you how much time you spent with your family.
■ How much stuff do my kids have? Kids need about five toys, if that. They can draw, read and make up things. I use as a rule of thumb: Get rid of 90 per cent of what kids have. It improves your frustration level with them, and it improves their gratitude and behaviour. Give it away. I am not saying live like St. Francis; just get down to a healthy level.
■ Does my stuff interfere with my ability to help and have relationships with people? The more you own, the more you are owned by it.
Question: How can Christians respond to and combat consumerism?
Guarendi: There’s a very simple way to deal with it: Give it away or don't buy it. Go through your house; count all of the things that are just sitting there. They serve no purpose but to adorn our lives.
giving up. Kids these days have a lot of stuff. For them to respond to a call to religious life, it has to be pretty strong. They have to turn their back on a lot of the "good life" to commit solely to Christ.
We live in the culture where the attention span is short. We define the goodness of life by its variability, its progressiveness and change. Committing to something for life, such as marriage, can be looked at as psychologically suffocating. We can't commit to just one thing. Tradition, commitment and stability are looked down on.
Question: How can we gauge how much consumerism influences our lives?
Guarendi: Here are some things you can ask yourself.
■ If I am asked to give to the workof the Church, can I do it? Or do I say that I would love to, but I can't financially? That is an indication that we are living at or beyond our financial limits.
■ How many things do I need? People often think they can't give to the Church because they have too much stuff to buy, too many payments; they don't have extra
Look at how you spend your money. If someone is hurting and needs your help, are you contributing only $5 to help them? Why are you not giving them more?
Most Christians see tithing as the standard of generosity. Tithing in the Old Testament is a small percentage. In the New Testament, the standard is to give your second coat to anotherthat's giving 50 per cent of what you have.
Consumerism does not help in the life of virtue. It is a subtle corroder of Christian virtue. It is devastating to a Christian's walk with the Lord because it flows in tandem with preoccupation with self.
Consumerism is a continuation of self-absorption - life is to get, not to give. Materialism is completely antithetical to Christian living and the giving of ourselves, our belongings and our lives. We need to look at ourselves, our homes and how we live with an objective eye. Look at what is helping you get to heaven, and what is keeping you from walking with God.