The Record Newspaper 08 December 2005

FAITH

The

LIMBO: Theologians say it was only ever a theory Page 8

Don’t do it, Australia!

US father urges Government not to legalise RU-486, the drug that killed his 18 year-old daughter

EXCLUSIVE

■ By Paul Gray

Californian father Monty Patterson says he owes it to those who have no voice – like his daughter, Holly, who died in 2003 at age 18 after taking the drug RU-486 as a solution to an unplanned pregnancy – to speak out about the medical and health dangers associated with the drug.

After two years of researching RU-486 in-depth, he’s found there are many respected experts practising in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology who are deeply concerned about the drug’s toxic effects.

Can I ask you about your field of expertise in life? What work do you do?

I’m a construction manager. However I studied pre-veterinary medicine in college. I was actually studying to be a veterinarian. So my science background has been renewed as a result of what happened to my daughter.

I’ve got to tell you, I never knew what RU-486 was even up to the point that I was standing over Holly and holding her hand at the time she died. I did not even know there was an abortion pill. So basically I’ve been self-taught as to what this is about. I could not believe that a young, healthy woman like Holly, who was a pinnacle of fitness, could take a drug and die so tragically, and such a horrible death as she died with this infection. I could not believe that these were the things that sometimes happened as a result of a medical abortion with this pill. I was not going to accept that, and I was not going to accept the fact that this was going to happen to Holly by just some co-incidence.

I’m the type of person that has to get the answers and immediately start asking all the questions.

I believed there was something wrong with this drug. Now I have more conviction than ever that

Continued on Page 5

MEET THE ROSARY GANG

Students

Archbishop cancels talk

■ by Paul Gray

Melbourne’s Archbishop Denis Hart has cancelled the speaking appointment of pro-abortion ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, who had been invited by Melbourne’s Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace to deliver its 2005 Rerum Novarum lecture.

The lecture commemorates a landmark papal encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, in which the Church’s teachings in favour of social justice and workers rights were spelt out clearly.

The advertised topic of Mr Stanhope’s talk, which was to have addressed the national terrorism legislation and moves towards statebased bills of rights, was “Now, more than ever, a national bill of rights.”

Anti-abortion groups had lobbied against the choice of Mr Stanhope as the Rerum Novarum lecturer on the grounds that his support for legalised abortion puts him at odds with the Church.

ACT Right to Life Association executive director Jeremy Stuparich had said that Mr Stanhope’s

Continued on Page 10

NEW CHURCH FOR BOULDER

A life cut tragically short: Holly Patterson died at 18 years of age as a result of taking the RU-486 drug. Her father, Monty, top right, now campaigns against the legalisation of the drug and has written to the Australian Government urging it not be legalised and that Australian women be protected from his daughter’s fate.

Photo: courtesy Monty Patterson

Think of the children

Bring a smile to the face of a youngster this festive season by placing a present beneath a St Vincent de Paul Society Christmas tree.

Many disadvantaged Western Australian families will battle to make ends meet this Christmas, let alone have enough money to buy presents for their children.

However, with the generosity of the community, Vinnies’ aim is that every child will open at least one present on Christmas Day. Several shopping centres and businesses have offered to act as collection centres. Presents can be left at:

■ Centro Dianella

■ Kingsway Shopping Centre

■ Woolstores Shopping Centre in Fremantle

■ St John of God Hospital in Subiaco

■ With Derek Boylen

T■ Telstra office - 80 Stirling St, Perth

■ Qantas Holidays - 77 St Georges Tce, Perth

■ The Catholic Education Department – 50 Ruslip Street, Leederville

■ Kellogg, Brown & Route – 1 Adelaide Terrace, Perth

■ Edith Cowan University –Joondalup Drive, Joondalup

■ B-Digital – 1 Adelaide Terrace, Perth (Food hamper collection)

■ Plan B Financial Services – Central Park, Level 28, 152 St Georges Terrace. Meanwhile, St Vinnies reminds everyone that this year’s target for their Christmas Appeal is $500,000, and there’s still a long way to go.

Donations can be made by calling 13 18 12 or visiting www.vinnies.org.au.

Advent and Christmas Celebrating Family

tion of the family but sadly many people are without family each year. If you know someone then make them part of your family on Christmas day.

his week we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah:

“He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.”

We are reminded that not everyone will have a wonderful Christmas this year. The Gospel challenge is for us to reach out to those in need.

As you prepare to celebrate Christmas think of ways that, as a family, you can reach out to others. There are many ways that we can give more as family.

We can give of our time and talents. If your family likes to sing or you know other families that can sing why not visit an aged home or people with disabilities. Give your time singing Christmas carols (it’s good practice for Christmas Mass).

We can give of our space. If you know someone who will be alone this Christmas then invite him or her to your home. Christmas is a special celebra-

We can give of our resources. Organisations and appeals such as Saint Vincent de Paul and the Archbishops LifeLink appeal reach out to those less fortunate in our community year round. They are always seeking support.

This week, while you are doing the last minute Christmas shopping, put some money aside and contact one of the organisations below. Trust me, it’s money that really will make a difference to someone’s Christmas.

Donate to the Archbishop’s Lifelink Appeal at www.lifelink.com.au

Donate to the St Vincent de Paul Christmas Appeal

13 18 12 or visit www.vinnies.org.au

■ By Jamie O’Brien

Perth’s Catholic Youth Ministry has released a 2006 calendar showing the life of priests from around Western Australia.

Some of the priests featured in the calendar are Archbishop Hickey, Bishop Don Sproxton, Fr Tim Deeter and Bishop Justin Bianchini. Seminarians from St Charles Seminary are also featured in the calendar titled Priests for all Seasons

“It gives people an insight into the variety of priests in this diocese,” said Catholic Youth Ministry

Director Fr Don Kettle. As many as 2000 calendars were printed as a fundraiser for World Youth Day 2008, and so far more than 1500 have been sold.

The calendars were designed by CYM workers Paul Bui and Carol Watson, and feature the priests carrying out the duties of their daily lives.

Each page has been sponsored by a business from the Catholic community.

The initiative has inspired. Fr Kettle said many priests have already volunteered to be in a 2007 calendar.

For a copy of the calendar, contact Catholic Youth Ministry on 9422 7912.

parishes of the dioceses of Western Australia and by subscription.

For those who have none: Presents can be left at several places in Perth.

Aids to spiritual progress now available

The three compact discs of meditations by WA woman Norma Woodcock are also available from The Record.

Norma, well-known in WA as a spiritual director and educator, received a remarkable response when she released the resources in the eastern states.

All take the famous method of deepening spirituality developed by the founder of the Jesuits, St Ignatius of Loyola, as their approach to helping the listener encounter Christ.

Norma has spoken in parishes, presented at retreats and provided professional development for teachers and staff in Catholic schools here in WA.

Norma is the founder of the Centre for Catholic Spiritual Development and Prayer and her work has been endorsed by Archbishop Hickey.

Meditation CDs in the Catholic Tradition

Ignatian imaginative guided imagery on Gospel scenes by Norma Woodcock

Great Christmas Gifts!

New CD

JESUS CD $29.95

Three Meditations

• His Passion and Death

• His Resurrection

• The Coming of His Holy Spirit

This CD meditative tool helps the listener to use the power of the imagination to lead into a personal encounter with God. It reaches the heart and provides the potential for deep interaction.

‘I warmly recommend these meditations. They help us to be more than spectators at the Gospel scenes, but to take part in them and there meet Jesus, who is alive to us now as he was to his earliest disciples.’ Fr John Prendiville SJ

MEDITATIONS CD $29.95

Three Meditations

• Jesus walks on the water and with him

Peter

• The Prodigal Son

• The Woman with the Haemorrhage

CHILDREN’S MEDITATIONS CD

$29.95

25 Short Meditations for four age levels

• Pre-Primary, Kindy, Preschool

• Lower Primary

• Middle Primary

• Upper Primary

ALSO AVAILABLE: Activity Book $19.95 (with reproducible pages to accompany the children’s meditation CD)

The Ball of Love Booklet – A parable about God’s love $6.95

ORDERS: The Centre for Catholic Spiritual Development and Prayer PO Box 696, Applecross WA 6153

Phone: (08) 9487 1772

Fax: (08) 9330 2955 email: norma@normawoodcock.com

The Simple Spiritual Life Booklet $4.95. Postage $2.00 single item, $5.00 multiple items. All products have Ecclesiastical Approval.

ALSO AVAILABLE NOW FROM THE RECORD!

Phone Carol on 9227 7080 or email: admin@therecord.com.au

Desire to serve inspires a radical choice

■ By Jamie O’Brien

More than 30 students from Corpus Christi College Bateman have become Eucharistic Ministers in their parishes.

Many also told The Record that the choice to do so has gone against the tide: many of their peers believe that it’s not usually considered ‘cool’ to go to Church, and that to do so is boring.

And many students have no interest because their families don’t take them to Mass, the said when visited by The Record at a preparatory camp at Sorrento.

The students, all entering Year 12 in 2006, hope that by becoming Eucharistic Ministers they will be an example to their family and friends.

Twenty of the group are from St Thomas More Parish in Bateman, while the rest are from the parishes of Riverton, Willetton and Yangebup.

While all the students attend Mass regularly, all agreed that the new service would help them to experience more the importance of the Eucharist.

“The Eucharist is an important celebration because it provides some guidelines for the way that Jesus wants us to be and also something that we should take home with us,” said one student. All of

the group completed an approved Archdiocesan course at the Catholic Education Office over six sessions during their own time and also had to confirm their decision with their parents and Parish Priest.

The course gave students a better understanding of what being a Eucharistic Minister is about with teachings on theology, the sacraments and the Eucharist.

Corpus Christi Religious Education Co-ordinator Simon Keane said the fact that the students had participated in the course was catechetical.

“The fact that they are distributing communion will give them an opportunity to reflect personally on what they are doing and will deepen their awareness of their faith witness,” Mr Keane said.

Bateman parish priest Monsignor Michael Keating said he believes the students will be an excellent example for their younger peers at Corpus Christi and also for the parish.

“I had a meeting with them and let them know how thrilled I was that they had become Eucharistic Ministers,” Mgr Keating said.

“I think they have been helped in their spiritual life and have become a lot more serious about their participation at Mass,” he said.

The students in turn acknowledged that the presence of the priests such as Mgr Keating, throughout the course was of great assistance.

The priests had all been very supportive and had helped them with all the questions they had asked, they said. For some, becoming a

Eucharistic Minister meant that they were not only involved in the Church at school.

“We are able to take our belief

outside school,” one told The Record “It also helps us to realise that there is something bigger than yourself,” they said.

Corpus Christi students: preparing for Year 12 and the important role of being a Eucharistic Minister in their parishes.

Archbishop blesses College

■ By Jamie O’Brien

Archbishop Hickey officially opened Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation last week saying he is sure that the Holy Spirit is using the College to change the face of the earth.

“The Holy Spirit will work through this College so that you will be witnesses to greater miracles yet,” the Archbishop said to more than 150 people that were present for the occasion.

“I would like to congratulate your leaders on this very bold initiative of a “Bible College”, a school of formation, based very much on Holy Scripture and for calling it ‘Acts 2’.”

Acts 2 Principal Jane Borg told The Record it was important Archbishop Hickey officially blessed the premises so that the work of the college would be recognised throughout the Perth diocese.

The College is run by the Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community, who have already

established a Sydney-based Institute for Evangelisation, which opened in 1987.

The college, which has been in operation from January this year, gave 26 students the opportunity to study full-time and parttime courses on Scripture and the Church.

The College is open to people who have just left high-school, or are looking for a break from their University or TAFE courses.

Courses aim to provide students with solid biblical studies and Catholic Church teachings, as well as an intimate knowledge of how to deal with life experiences including how to present the Gospel in a wide range of situations.

Mrs Borg said the number of full-time enrolments for 2006 has already increased from this year.

The College is also due to be accredited with the Training Council early next year which would make accredited courses equivalent to a TAFE qualification.

It would also make students

Ready for 2006: some of those studying at Acts 2 Bible College next year.

eligible for Youth Allowance and Austudy.

Teachers at the College include Richard Egan from the Coalition for Defence of Human Life, Reg Firth, founder of Disciples of Jesus, Religious Education teacher Mario Borg, Steve Peake from Flame Ministries, Paul Kelly from Aquinas College and Dr Jennifer Skerrit.

In 2006, a double stream of night classes will also be available with courses on the timeline

of the Bible, and John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Mrs Borg said students have the opportunity to attend the classes as part of their personal development or towards gaining a qualification.

Archbishop Hickey said the College is about developing personal formation according to the mind of Christ. “Your college is about introducing people to the depths of the Word of God, so that power will grip us and change us,” he said.

Better marriages linked with Christian faith

Married people with (orthodox) Christian faith and without a history of de facto relationships or multiple partners experience greater security, intimacy and harmony than people with a secular or Eastern spiritual orientation, according to a new study. Anglican researchers at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, analysed responses to a 350-question survey of 1500 Australians.

They found that nearly one in 10 people who once had a de facto relationship now reported a cold marriage, compared with one in 20 who had not lived together first. Only 7.5 per cent of married people doubted their relationship would last, compared with 21 per cent of de factos. 42.5 per cent of married people said their partners treated them very well, compared with 31 per cent of de factos. Andrew Cameron, one of the study’s authors, said the advantage of the Christian married people was “only partly explained” by their previous sexual history. Christian belief itself was strongly linked with healthy relationships.

~ FamilyEdge

Sisters in Africa call for help to establish clean source of water

■ By Jamie O’Brien

Nearly 20 years after leaving Perth to join the Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Kenya, East Africa, Sr Mary Margaret, formerly of St Gerard’s Parish Mirrabooka, still believes her biggest experience in life is giving up everything to follow Christ.

Sr Mary, whose name was Margaret Talbot before she left Perth, joined the Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Othaya, a village in Kenya, East Africa, in 1986.

She is the only Australian Catholic nun working in the region.

Sr Mary became interested in the religious life after the death of her father in 1981.

In 1985, she decided to go to the Eucharistic Congress in Kenya, which increased her desire to join the religious life.

During a visit to the Cathedral in

Kenya, she came across a pamphlet promoting the Blessed Sacrament Sisters.

The following year, she found herself leaving Perth for good, and took her final vows in 1992.

The more than 15 Sacramentine

Caring Lady Funerals

Sisters, as they are also known, including three from the local town, live a life of prayer and contemplation.

Their mission, said Sr Margaret, is to make Christ known and loved through the Eucharist.

Sr Mary told The Record that sometimes the sisters are able to help street children and other poor people without making too much fuss, because of the situation with the Government there.

Many of the women that have entered the order in the past couple of years have come from very poor families.

“Our aim is to make Christ known and loved and praised through the Eucharist.”

The Sisters also assist the community by making bread for the local churches, and clothes for seminarians and priests.

However, another part of her experience over the past 20 years

1300

has been to live in the harsh conditions of rural Kenya, where there is no clean water. Sr Mary is appealing for funds to help build a well for the Sacramentine community.

Sr Mary’s mother, Crystal Talbot, and sister, Karen Morrissey visited Sr Mary earlier this year. They learnt of the desperate need for a clean and long-term supply of water for the sisters and the village where they are based.

Mrs Morrissey said when she asked her sister whether there was anything she needed, the reply was a request to help her organise a well to be built for use of the religious community.

Since her sister’s request, Karen Morrissey is doing her best to make it a reality.

Together with Sr Mary’s family in Perth and Melbourne, “a friend who is a drilling engineer met us over there earlier this year and looked at the geologists readings

and the approvals,” Mrs Morrissey said. “They started work on the well late last year but the equipment is quite old.”

“Much of the equipment is now broken and work has stopped.”

When Mrs Morrissey visited the village, the poor quality of water astounded her.

“At the moment the sisters strain and boil the water to be able to drink it.

“When we turned on the tap we saw little black worms in the water.

“The sisters don’t have the storage facilities or the rainfall they need.”

Mrs Morrissey said she couldn’t stand back and watch the village live without fresh water.

So far she has raised more than $10,000, however about $40,000 is needed to complete the project.

If you are able to donate to the building of the well for the Sacramentine Sisters, please contact

The Record on 9227 7080.

Join Pope Benedict XVI in prayerDecember

“For all men and women: may they come to an ever deeper understanding of their dignity, granted them by the Creator in his plan.”

Mission intention: “For people all over the world searching for God and truth: may they encounter the Lord Jesus.”

Sr Mary Margaret

Don’t legalise ‘the cemetary walk’: Dad

Continued from page 1

there is a problem with the drug and it is mifepristone that may predispose women to these infections. And it’s not the second drug in the regimen, misoprostol, that the manufacturer wants the medical community believe is the problem.

Why do some people in the medical and scientific community support the use of the drug?

I think the medical community supports it because it provides another option to a surgical termination. I don’t believe that this option is the best choice, specifically because it is a drug, and this drug alters the immune system in such a way that it can predispose women to infection.

So I think that maybe women are looking for an easy choice, as with Holly. I think Holly chose it because for the limited information that she got, that the drug was marketed as safe and effective, she basically felt, that, talking with her boyfriend, who was with her, that they made the drug seem like it was a walk in the park.

“I think Holly chose it because for the limited information that she got... they made the drug seem like it was a walk in the park. And certainly, it wasn’t that. It became a walk to the cemetery with Holly, for us.”

And certainly, it wasn’t that. It became a walk to the cemetery with Holly, for us. And that’s not something that she would ever have thought, that she would have died. When Holly died they didn’t warn of death, or infection. Those warnings are in place now but that is still not enough. This drug should be removed from the market.

So I’m just trying to say they want to make it very appealing to take a pill versus having a surgical termination.

One other thing: it’s easier, I think, for clinicians or prescribers to hand pills out than it is for them to perform a surgical termination.

So there’s an appeal for prescribers as well.

Are you campaigning broadly on the abortion issue?

I am not. This is not about the abortion debate. This is about the health and safety and welfare of women. I’ve never involved myself in the abortion debate.

One thing that I want to make clear is that this drug has problems and it impairs the innate immune response, and that’s something that I have challenged the medical and scientific community to look at very closely, and study the research that is there.

I do have the research available to show that there are properties about this drug that are known in the scientific community that are not being discussed, and it is predisposing women to infections.

Have you had difficulty in getting people in the medical community to give you the information that you need?

No. I’ve spent over 6 months full-time and 2 years part-time along with Holly’s step-mother, Helen, researching the medical aspects of RU-486. There are many, many journals out there, in different areas. You can see the medical research done out there with this drug with AIDS, Cushing’s Disease, fibroid tumours, cancer research, and arthritis. There’s a number of other uses that have been experimented with concerning this drug.

I’ve had to purchase articles, you know, but a lot of the information is there through medical journals. Now we’re studying the microbiology and also endocrinology, as well as how this drug affects your DNA.

What information did Holly have about the drug? Did she get the information from a doctor, or was it information she had picked up from the general environment?

She was given information from Planned Parenthood clinic. And we were told she watched a video. She was also given a hand-out.

And I think she got some information from the internet. It’s different these days than it was two years ago, but if you do an internet search, some of the top sites you may reach will take you to sites like Planned Parenthood or Danco Laboratories [the manufacturer of RU-486.]

I don’t believe she ever thought the drug was unsafe, based on the information she received, because Holly was not the type of girl that would take a drug that she thought might kill her, or give her a serious infection like this.

She was not a real risk-taker?

I won’t say that a teenage girl is not a risk-taker. I mean obviously, she got pregnant, and that was something that was unplanned for her. And I’m not going to put this all on Holly. She had a boyfriend too, who was part of this.

I’m just saying that Holly was an intelligent young woman who would have made an informed decision based on the information that she got.

And right now women are not getting enough information about this drug to make a truly informed choice. That’s what it’s about. It’s about informed choices.

The other part that I think is very important here is this: I do not believe the general medical community has recognised enough of the problematic symptoms with this drug.

They are on a voluntary reporting system [in the United States] and I really don’t believe they are getting the information back to the FDA or the manufacturer.

The FDA admits that only approximately one to 10 per cent of all adverse events are reported. That leaves a 90-99 per cent deficiency in reporting.

Is that in relation to RU-486, or in relation to all drugs?

All drugs. Only one to 10 per cent are reported. So we do not know how many women have died, and certainly, we’re not hearing about the women that have had to have hysterectomies. That’s part of the procedure right now to help save women from these types of infections: hysterectomy.

From what you’ve been saying it seems extraordinary that the medical profession should not be more alarmed about the drug. Why is this?

I think there have been undesirable qualities about this drug known for many years. But I do not think that the medical community has been well-informed by those that are marketing the drug or have a vested interest in seeing it succeed.

It’s difficult for a non-scientific person or a lay person, to grasp these types of things.

For example, they talk about the drug’s anti-progesterone properties, but they don’t talk about its anti-glucocorticoid properties. Glucocorticoids are hormones that are necessary for life and defence for your immune system. By taking RU-486 as an anti-glucocorticoid, you’re basically impairing your immune response.

I’ve studied the infectious aspect of the drug, more than the problems of bleeding. There are a number of women who have had severe bleeding. But I’m focused on the immune response, due to this drug’s impairment of the immune system.

I have many articles from medical and scientific journals that point to the problems that this drug can create. But no-one has really been able to grasp the ‘why’ of it.

That is what I intend, to help

disseminate that information to the scientific community and the medical community, so they can understand the mechanism as to why this drug is causing these type of infections.

That’s why I said, in my letter to the President of the Australian Medical Association, that I challenge the medical community to review the safety aspects of this drug.

Do you have particular concerns about women in rural areas taking the drug?

If they are in a remote area and in trouble, many of the symptoms of these types of infections are very close to the same type of symptoms you get when you take this drug. I don’t know too many drugs that you can take to create adverse events - where you take the drug to experience nausea, bleeding, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, and more. There’s a number of symptoms you get when you take this drug.

If you give this drug to women in remote areas, they may not realise the symptoms that are being exhibited may be the symptoms of a very serious infection like clostridium sordellii, and they will not make it to a doctor in time to combat the infection, because there’s a very short window of time once you

get these infections. Most of the women are dying between five and seven days after taking the drug.

I can tell you there are some big concerns in the United States now about bacterial infections in medical abortion. For example, last week

[December 1] the New England Journal of Medicine published a report titled “Fatal toxic shock syndrome associated with clostridium sordellii after Medical Abortion”

That is of grave concern here.

There are no antibiotics and antitoxins known right now to effectively treat clostridium sordellii. Once this type of bacteria start secreting toxins, then basically there is very little chance of survival.

I’ve got to let you know that some of these deaths took between eight months and over a year to be reported to the FDA. They’re just the ones that we know about.

One Australian politician has said that by legalising RU-486 we’ll be bringing back the era of backyard abortions. Do you think that statement is too strong?

I’m not in this for a scare tactic.

I’m in this for the truth.

I can tell you for me this is not a pro-life or a pro-choice issue.

I have always looked out in the best interests for Holly, and I would say that I’m pro-Holly.

Senator raises backyard abortion spectre over RU-486

■ By Paul Gray

Australia has come “full circle back to backyard abortions, where the woman is left to have her abortion alone, at home” by considering the legalisation of abortion drug RU-486, Senator Ron Boswell has told federal parliament.

Amid intense pressure from sections of the medical profession and the Australian Democrats, the Federal Government has agreed to a conscience vote in parliament next February on whether or not the safety of RU486 is a matter that should be referred to the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Australian Democrats leader Senator Lyn Allison has proclaimed news of the February vote

as “a very big win for women,” and has predicted the ban on RU486 will be lifted.

Both Prime Minister John Howard and the Federal Labor Party have announced that a conscience vote will be allowed, meaning that Government and Opposition members are not obliged to support a continuing ban.

Defending himself against claims by a columnist that he had opposed RU-486 out of ignorance, Senator Boswell quoted the words of pro-choice Professor of Women’s Studies Renate Klein, who said RU-486 operates by starving the foetus of nourishment, and that it takes two to three weeks to complete the abortion process.

During this protracted time, the woman is “walking around

having an abortion,” Senator Boswell said.

“If something goes wrong, as it does in five to eight per cent of cases that need back-up surgery, then the woman must be able to access emergency care.”

Californian man Monty Patterson, whose 18-year-old daughter Holly died from septic shock after taking RU-486 in 2003, has written to the Australian Medical Association, with copies to federal parliamentarians, urging a continuing ban on the drug in Australia.

Holly Patterson was one of four women in the United States in recent years to die after using it.

The Australian bishops last week issued a statement urging Australian parliamentarians to be “radically pro-woman” and not to legalise RU-486.

Monty Paterson at his daughters funeral.

We chose home school

The letters (The Record, December 1) in response to Dr Saker’s findings on Catholic Education were all excellent, and each dealt with the issue intelligently and from a different perspective.

When our family moved to Perth in 1997 the appalling state of Catholic education in WA and throughout Australia was mentioned in The Record on several occasions. I even wrote a letter about it myself.

But it seems that nothing has changed. The most disturbing of the letters, in response to Dr Saker’s findings, was from Fr Bryan Rosling, Parish Priest of Mater Christi. Despite M Graves mistakenly believing that Dr Saker misrepresented the situation, and that practising, believing teachers like him or herself were unrepresented, Fr Rosling’s letter exposed the veracity of Dr Saker’s findings.

We are even aware of one Catholic highschool where some of the novels used in English contain pornographic material. Concerned parents have achieved nothing by appealing along all the necessary channels.

Our own children have been long-removed from the Catholic education system. I have home-schooled since 1998, precisely because of the crisis in Catholic education. I refuse to trust my children’s Faith education to nominal or non-Catholics and using unsuitable materials in other subjects.

Dr Saker has indeed “belled the cat”, and let us hope that the call to action will not just fade away.

It is clear to me that at least some of the remedy lies in putting aside the fact that many parents don’t practise the Faith, and concentrating on using the new RE guidelines to thoroughly educate our children.

This may mean huge shake-ups in the CEO and the teachers employed, but it is essential. At least more students will then know enough to embrace their Catholicism, and this will be the beginning for new, faithful Catholic families and Catholic schools in the future. The balance needs to be tipped, and it has to start somewhere.

We look to our Shepherd, and we are relying on him. May God give him the courage, and strength, to do what is required.

Of Esther Douglas, who believes that the Church has defined itself by sexual negatives, I ask: What would you have the Church do, when the secular world pushes sexuality at every turn, and most strongly through the media? Would you have the Church be silent, or else warn the young away from the dangerous temptations and immoral values extolled so forcefully over and over again? What is more positive than saying: Save your sexuality for Marriage, because that is what God wants for you?

Mrs Carol Phillips Queens Park

IR criticism is valid

I thought Peter Lee of Applecross was a bit harsh towards the Church for speaking out against federal Liberals IR changes. To criticise the ACTU campaigning before the legislation was produced, was also a bit harsh, and I think Mr Lee perhaps fails to see where the real evil has originated.

The fact is that the Howard government spent $50-100 million of our tax money on political advertising before producing any

Perspectives

Archbishop on air

For those who missed Archbishop Hickey’s address on Channel Nine the text is below:

Many Australians appealed for clemency before the execution of an Australian in Singapore last Friday. May he rest in peace.

The strong feeling against the death penalty is a good sign because it says that human life is sacred, no matter what the person has done.

But we must be consistent. The sacredness of human life must be affirmed

legislation on IR changes. Not only is this highly immoral fiscally, it is unconstitutional and unlawful by the specifics of the Australian commonwealth constitution.

On many occassions Our Lord critiqued political and religious leaders in his day for neglecting justice and the love of God. Jesus was a great promoter and practicer of freedom of speech and constantly spoke out where wrong doing and injustice was being done in community and society. In doing so, Jesus was in fact playing a political role in his day.

The Church has a moral obligation to critique leaders as Jesus did, and in doing so, follows the example of our Lord and Saviour.

Students leaving Catholic schools are indifferent to the Catholic Church for a whole host of reasons. A lot of it is to do with pressures in the world and worldly influences. The Church should pray and speak out more, not less, as Jesus did, and this may actually inspire young people to take notice and take a more active role in the future of our nation spiritually, socially, and politically.

Teresa van Lieshout Catholic Teacher, Beagle

Bay

Vive la difference!

T he question in Australian schools and community centres at present is whether Christmas should be named as such and symbols displayed or whether multiculturalism becomes fundamental and eliminates all traces of religious achknowledgement. In fact, religion is a factor of society - any human society. Surely multiculturalism is meant to embrace all factors of society including a diversity of faith & life religions. True, I or you don’t choose all of them, yet in ecumenical situations people have learnt for many years now to find the common beliefs and practices that unite them and to allow the diversity of differences, not as a division, but as another way.

Are we able to enjoy our common ideas and to allow others to pursue their differences, as we would hope to do with members of our families and their different personalities? Provided these differences are not of evil or criminal intent surely they display our marvellous humanity and source of its creation.

Just as ecumenical Christians enjoy the spiritual pursuits of annual festivals of the diversity of Christianity, Orthodox Christians and Judaism, and gradually learn the meaning of beliefs and symbols of Eastern religions, we can respect and encourage each other in our daily lives.

Sometimes it is easier to bring back a

in debates about terrorism, euthanasia, embryo destruction, and the RU486 pill.

I’m appalled that we are discussing the legislation of a pill which makes abortion easier and quicker.

Surely the sacredness of human life applies equally to babies in the womb.

Remember all life comes from God.

I’m Barry Hickey, Catholic Archbishop of Perth.

Next: Youth. For current and past talks visit www.perthcatholic.org.au.

mature sense of love into our families when we continue to learn what a maturing love is outside of the narrow confines of a few people. Each of us is a unique creation, yet also very limited, and in need of the challenges and stimulation we receive from others. Let us rejoice in this - not place it in shackles.

Nola Viney Nollamara

Give, don’t count cost

T he Archbishop’s recent reflection on poverty on Channel 9 was in complete contrast to the Sunday Times article on waste in Australia - over $1000 per family annually. In these days of economic imbalance it is sad to learn that millions of Africans suffer from malnutrition, starvation and death.

A young lady from Uganda has written to me for help. Both parents have been killed and she is trying to care for three other family members and to do a training course in nursing.

Television presents us with some terrible scenes of human suffering, including that of children. Could we not open our hearts to these fellow people and help, through Caritas or St Vincent de Paul? If we do we have a wonderful experience ahead of us: “As often as you did it for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me”. Matthew 25:40.

Fr Henry J McFall OMI White Gum Valley

A wider Record?

T he Record was important reading to me even before I became a Catholic.

As the only Catholic in my household my concern has been the message I’m giving about my Church to the people closest to me.

But I am shy of handing The Record to someone who does not believe because of its lack of consideration for people who are looking for God without a Catholic background, yet have a longing to belong to the Christian community.

Another suggestion: The Record could be more useful in non-Catholic neighbourhoods if its Christmas and Easter publication could cater for larger communities and we parishioners would have spare numbers to deliver it in our neighbourhoods.

R Pirhonen Rockingham

Parent’s trust in Catholic schools wasn’t misplaced

Like, I am sure, many of your readers I read your special report on Catholic education with some sadness for the situation documented by Dr Luke Saker, though as he himself acknowledged he was far from surprised by most of his findings. What seemed to surprise him most was something that has received scant attention in subsequent correspondence: the majority of his respondents saw themselves as people of faith.

The fact that a massive 95 per cent of Dr Saker’s students saw themselves as spiritual people is surely cause for rejoicing. I would be very surprised if the proportion of the general population who see themselves as spiritual is anything like this high.

Far sadder, I felt, was the negative tone of the coverage, and in particular the insistence on apportioning blame.

As a former teacher I would want to distinguish between what students remember of what they have been taught (usually remarkably little) and what they have accepted as their own belief.

I am surprised, as a parent, if Dr Saker considers it abnormal for young people to question and test ideas against their own experience. This questioning is often considerably more painful for the young person than for any observer. But it is surely critical to real spiritual maturity.

I would certainly support any moves to ensure that the content of religious education courses is academically rigorous and that the manner in which it is delivered is sufficiently professional to convey to students that RE is a subject to be taken seriously. This is an issue of knowledge and understanding. And it is obviously of relevance to Dr Saker’s own work as a teacher.

However as a parent of four children who have now spent a total of 48 years in a variety of Catholic schools, I would have to say I did not send them there primarily so that they would emerge with a detailed knowledge of the content of their RE syllabus.

I sent them there for an education that witnesses in every aspect to Christian values, especially to those which are different from those of the society around them.

I sent them there to encounter witnesses to the reality of the power of the Risen Christ to touch and transform every aspect of their lives.

I sent them there to spend their formative years in a community (wider than their family and more intimate than their parish) that fosters and develops not only Christian values but also their innate gift of responding with their hearts as well as their minds to the love of the God who gave them this gift.

I believed that this was what Catholic schools offered.

And my trust was not misplaced. Thank God for Catholic schools. What subsequently happens to their students as they encounter the wider Christian community challenges us all.

Margaret Ker

Mount Lawley

A new

book of prayer-poems and letters by Cardinal Wako of Sudan reveals a portrait of persecution and…

Uncommon Valour

■ By Fr Paul Glynn

Every so often one comes across a book about the Lord that makes you want to pound the table and say, This is true, this is just terrific.

One such book that recharged my spiritual batteries is Five Loaves and Two Fish by Vietnamese CardinalArchbishop Ngyuen Van Thuan of Saigon. When the Viet Cong were victorious in 1975 he was imprisoned in solitary confinement for nine years, without any trial. Catholics managed to get bread and wine into his bare cell, and he writes of the joy and strength that the Mass gave him - Mass on the concrete floor because there was no table in the cell, and without any vestments, using his cupped left hand for a chalice! He kept part of the consecrated Bread in his pocket and would hold Holy Hours at night.

Now I’ve read another book that stirred me deeply, Roll Back the Stone of Fear by Sudan’s Cardinal Gabriel Wako. The name is pronounced Whacko, and it is a ‘whacko’ of a book! He was born in 1941, went to the diocesan seminary and did brilliantly in his studies. Just after he was ordained at the unusual age of 22, the Muslim Government in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum began the attempted Islamisation of the nation. All 300 foreign missionaries were expelled overnight. Muslim Sharia Law was decreed, with the boast that by the year 2000 there would not be a single Christian left in the land.

You have no doubt read of the two million Sudanese who have died violent deaths since then, and of the 400,000 who have been killed in Darfur. In the last several years the United Nations Organisation has unsuccessfully attempted to stop the killing and raping of mostly non-Muslim people in the South. Nations like Iran have supplied sophisticated weapons to the Khartoum Government with which they armed the militias and set them loose on non-Muslims. A great many Catholics have lost their lives, their villages, churches and schools burnt to the ground and all the while the Khartoum regime has piously claimed they had no control over the marauding militias. It is a repeat, on a far larger scale, of those militias that the Indonesian Military armed and let loose in East Timor after the people there overwhelmingly voted for independence.

Fr Wako was just one year ordained when the Sudanese priest who was his neighbour was killed, and he received the chilling message that he was next on the list. But he did not flee or hide. He knew the Government’s plan was to obliterate the Church and he began a whirlwind ministry on his bicycle, organising his Catholics and training a flying wing of lay leaders. Having instructed them in the essentials of the Scriptures and the Liturgy he sent them out to parishes that had been robbed of their priest. The militia failed to gun him down because he moved like the wind. The spiritual Scarlet Pimpernel was everywhere, lifting the morale of the perse-

cuted Catholics. Aged 33, he was ordained Bishop of Wau, which is pronounced ‘Wow’. Bishop Whacko of Wow!

He poured great energy into setting up a Catholic school system. By 2000 when he was Archbishop of Khartoum he had 70,000 children in his diocesan schools, taught by 1500 trained teachers. That was the very year the Muslim Government in Khartoum had set down as the year when there would be no Catholics left in the nation!.

John Paul II made him a cardinal so he was too international a figure for the Govenunent to murder. But he still had to be silenced. Knowing he was hard-pressed to pay all his teachers their salary every month, the civil authorities in Khartoum came up with a plan: they would find a teacher who hadn’t received the month’s salary and imprison the cardinal for breach of contract.

Cardinal Wako got wind of the Government’s intention. As his cupboard was almost bare he appealed to the international Catholic organisation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

They examined his situation and not only threw their support behind his schools but seeing how shocking his physical health was, flew him to Germany for medical treatment that probably saved his life. In getting to know him they also discovered he had written some truly powerful poetry and some magnificently stirring pastoral letters each Christmas and Easter. The book ACN has just brought out, Roll Back the Stone of Fear, is a collection of his prayer-poems and pastorals. There is also his impassioned, insightful eight page address on the need for dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

I find his prayer-poems deeply moving. They are in the genre of those many Psalms in the Bible that are called Lamentation Psalms. Psalm 88 is a classic example. “Yahweh, I call all day for help, I weep to you all night... I’m alone, numbered among those you have forgotten... in prison and unable to escape, my very eyes are wom out with pain... I have carried your terrors, and am now exhausted.” These cries were the real experiences and sentiments of Jews who saw their Temple and the Holy City reduced to rubble, many of the women raped and old men butchered by the Babylonians ... and the survivors taken off in captivity to a foreign land. Cries of near despair, and yet today part of the Word of God recited the whole world over. The Holy Spirit, the Source of the revealed Word of God, has turned the vinegar back to sweet wine.

At Christmas time 1986, the cardinal writes in his spiritual diary: “But now you confuse us Lord. It is hard to find you.” At Christmas time several years later, brooding over the mothers who have been driven from their homes and given birth to infants in desperate places, the diary speaks of his pain: “Your birth Lord reminds me of the many babies born today in the desert, under the burning sun, wrapped up in sackcloth and straw, victims of human rejection and cruelty.”

The cardinal has found out that Muslim nations like Iran are supplying the unchecked militias with the latest weapons. Christian wives are raped in front of their husbands and children. Then the husbands are taunted and mocked, and shot through the head. Their homes are then burnt to the ground. Knowing

that this tempts his people, and some of his priests to hatred, he writes in his pastoral for Easter, 1993 : “Lord, the guards and the stone could not keep you in the grave, but... the guards have now found their way to the doors of our hearts, and into your Church! Roll back the stone of fear... We pray for new vitality for your Church, for each one of us. Call us out of the tomb, and help us to unbind one another.”

The prayer poem entries into his diary are often like Lamentations Psalms. The pastoral letters, however, written every Christmas and Easter, give no hint of his personal suffering. They are confident, ringing challenges to his persecuted people to walk with Christ who is ever being attacked but never defeated. 1988 was a bad year for the Christians but at Christmas he writes with confidence: “This year also we dare to celebrate Christmas... Because of the Word of God made man, every man is MY BROTHER! MY BROTHER! How difficult it is to say this to the one who has killed your parents and children, has robbed you of your possessions and rendered you homeless. Yet it is the word we must say, for Christmas is the day on which God Himself

reaffirms the dignity of every human being... He became a human being so that no one may hate, despise or maltreat another human being without hating, despising or maltreating God.”

My work at the moment is spiritual director at the Sydney Diocesan Seminary. I tell the seminarians that if they want to be effective priests they must give a decent part of each day to prayer. I also add advice that I was given as a seminarian, and seen verified over the years: if they want their prayer to deepen, and stay fresh and invigorating, they must do some regular reading of books that speak to the heart. I do think the same applies to lay folk who wish to lead a deep spiritual life. This 98-page book, Roll Back the Stone of Fear is a book that speaks to the heart. The book is 98 pages, illustrated throughout with some fine photos of the Church in Sudan, and costs $10, which includes postage.

Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako

A new church for Boulder

About 500 past and present parishioners of Kalgoorlie-Boulder attended the blessing and opening of the new All Saints Church in Burt St, Boulder, by Archbishop Barry Hickey on November 27.

It is the fourth church built in Boulder, all of them called All Hallows, although the first two were short-lived. The most recent, in Moran St, was blessed and opened by Bishop Clune on April 28, 1912.

The opening ceremony for the new church began in the grounds with architect Paul Rossen presenting the plans to Archbishop Hickey and David Robertson, representing major benefactors, the Rew family, presenting the key which Parish Priest Fr Phong Nguyen used to open the door for the clergy and congregation to process into the empty church for Mass.

will have a permanent place in the new church, as will a portrait of the old church.

The singing during the Mass of the first Sunday of Advent featured the choirs of St Mary’s (Kalgoorlie) and All Hallows with the assistance of students from St Mary’s and St Joseph’s primary schools and John Paul Senior College.

Before the final blessing, Archbishop Hickey told the congregation that he was wearing the Bishop’s Ring made of Kalgoorlie gold that was presented to him at the centennial celebration of St Mary’s Church in November 2002.

He also presented to All Hallows a white vestment he had purchased in Rome, with the cross depicted on it in a bright gold colour, signifying the industry which brought the city into existence.

WITNESS TO HOPE

the life of

Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II

By George Weigel

$20.00

Concelebrating with Archbishop Hickey were Fr Phong and Fr Franciso Mascarenhas, and former priests of the parish Frs Tony Vallis, Francis Nguyen, Greg Donovan and Ted Hewitt.

During his homily, Archbishop Hickey said that as well as the Boulder church there would be six new church buildings completed in the Archdiocese during the next 12 months. It was most heartening for him to see such faith displayed in the Goldfields and in other parts of the Archdiocese.

The prayers of dedication of the church included the Litany of the Saints, and the walls were anointed with holy oil “to signify that the church is given over entirely and perpetually to Christian worship.” After the altar was blessed and incensed it was dressed in cloths from the former All Hallows.

The Offertory procession included a Book of Remembrance designed and written by Henry Giblin and Norma Edwards. It contains photos and memories from many families who celebrated baptisms, marriages, first communions and other stages of life in the old church. The Book of Remembrance

Mass was followed by lunch and many hours of reminiscing in the grounds of St Joseph’s school.

Origin of the new Church

Boulder’s new church had its origins in structural problems in the old church, and a generous bequest by the late Arthur and Aileen Rew.

The church was showing signs of age, with large cracks appearing in the walls because of blasting in the mines close by and an underground stream running close to the surface under the building.

It was estimated some years ago that it would cost at least $750,000 to restore the building, with at least $10,000 a year needed to pump water from underground to stop dampness rising into the building.

At the time the cracks were appearing Arthur and Aileen Rew left a substantial bequest to All Hallows Church, and the new St Joseph’s primary school allocated land for a future chapel.

After many meetings, discussions and prayers, it was decided to combine all the circumstances and build a new All Hallows on the school site which is closer to the centre of Boulder, further from the mine and away from the water problem.

The new church is built of brick in a modern triangular style, with a grassed courtyard and covered walkway leading to the kitchen, piety stall and parish centre. The altar, chalices, vestments, linen, large cross, pews, Stations of the Cross, statues, tabernacle, stained glass windows, confessional doors and the foundation stone have all been transferred from the Moran St church to the new one. Several features in the new church emphasise Boulder’s involvement in the mining industry. The tabernacle stands on a polished rock, and the baptismal font is made from a shaped rock which stands in a small pool of holy water. The water is pumped up through a hole in the bottom of the font, causing it to overflow and run down the sides of the rock into the pool. This is located near the front door where it is used as a holy water font.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder Parish Priest, Fr Phong Nguyen, stands outside the new All Hallows Church in Boulder, which was officially consecrated and blessed by Archbishop Barry Hickey on November 27.

Pope John Paul II is a poet, playwright, actor, mystic, philosopher, and pope. Shaped by the terrors of WWII and the subsequent brutalities of the Communist era in Poland, Karol Wojtyla became one of the world’s great defenders of religious freedom and human rights. Filmed on location in Krakow and Rome, this richly-textured documentary traces the personal life and struggles of the first non-Italian Pope in more than 450 years. Based on the book Witness to Hope by George Weigel, this film is the most complete and intimate film ever made on Pope John Paul II.

THE TRUTH OF CATHOLICISM

Ten Controversies Explored

By George Weigel $25.00

The brave new world tells us that we ought to settle for a middling happiness in a life free of trouble. Catholicism tells us not only that we are capable of greatness, but that greatness is demanded of us.

The brave new world is a world of rationally organised self-indulgence. The world of saints is a world of radical, extravagant self-giving.

The brave new world is flat, painless, essentially carefree. The world of the saints is always craggy and sometimes painful; it includes dark nights of the soul as well as moments of ecstatic love.

Which is the more human world?

Which is the more liberated world?

Which is the world on which you would want to bet your life.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG CATHOLIC

By George Weigel $25.00

Long read for his incisive commentary on the Catholic scene around the world, George Weigel here offers his most personal work yet in a book that is at once a profound statement of belief and a remarkable tour of the global Church. Written for young Catholics, notso-young Catholics, and indeed curious souls of any religious persuasion or none, these letters convey the power of a faith that is at once personal and universal, timely and eternal.

For Weigel, Catholicism is about acquiring a “habit of being”, a spiritual sensibility that allows us to experience the world as the dramatic arena of God’s action. As much as Catholicism is invested in ideas, faith is often affirmed in tangibles – distinctly informed by seeing and hearing, touching and tasting. Letters to a Young Catholic will inspire not only the generation of Catholics whose World Youth Day celebrations have launched an era of renewal for the Church, but also the faithful, the doubtful, and the searchers of every age.

Photo: courtesy of The Kalgoorlie Miner

At the service of Sacred Art since 1891

MADRID CHICAGO - MIAMI - LONDON - SYDNEY

LITURGICAL ARTS

An occasion for the old, the in-between and the young: Two of those participating in the celebration of the consecration of All Hallows, at left, stand outside the new Church. A glimpse of the Church, above, from a different angle.

Archbishop Hickey, fellow clergy and altar servers celebrate the consecration of All Hallows.

Replace the dark night of fear with faith

■ With Mark Reidy

Anyone who has experienced extreme fear would agree that it has an almost tangible presence. It grips your throat, tightens your stomach and imprisons the air in your lungs. I had such an encounter in 1995 in a small village on the outskirts of Sarajevo during the final days of the Bosnian war.

I had been working as a volunteer in a refugee camp and was invited by a family of Croatians to accompany them in the first sanctioned return to their home town. It was a nervous bus ride that crossed through several active sniper lines and, by the time we arrived at their relatives’ place to stay overnight, I was on edge.

With the conflict in Sarajevo still raging less than 20 kilometres away I found that sleep was evasive. Around midnight the eerie silence was violently broken by machine

the family is the future

gun fire, grenade explosions and yelling. As the chaos drew closer I felt myself becoming paralysed in fear.

By the time it was outside the house I was lying flat on the floor expecting bullets to come smashing through the window. I anticipated the worst. But eventually the noise passed by and disappeared into the distance. I was to learn later that the commotion had been caused by the local army who were returning from a victorious mission. I had been terrified by their celebrations.

I was reflecting on this moment recently in the light of a description of fear that my wife shared with me. She had heard it referred to as an acronym for ‘False Expectations About Reality,’ and in my Bosnian experience this had been true.

I had responded to a perceived, rather than an actual threat. My thought process had triggered a reaction that trapped me in a place of powerlessness.

It is why St Paul implores Christians not be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewal of their minds (Romans 12:2). If our minds are not focussed foremost on Jesus then we become instinctively guided by urges such as self preservation. Our peace is dependent on external influences and consequently we become puppets of our environment. We are held captive by our fears as we involuntarily react to the perceived threats that we encounter each day.

Whether it is terrorism, financial security or being bitten by the neighbour’s dog, we become prisoners of our perceptions.

When Jesus repeatedly told His disciples, “Be not afraid” He wasn’t expecting them to not feel fear, but

rather to follow Him despite their feelings.

Faith is the opposite of fear. Faith is being obedient to the Word of God and trusting in His promise. It is the only path to true freedom.

“If you make My word your

home you will indeed be My disciples; you will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

It is a choice we need to make each and every time we confront our fears.

Advent: a connection of memory and hope

■ With Derek Boylen

Research tells us that 70 per cent of families end up having a major argument during the Christmas season. They happen over any one of a billion issues: what Santa will be bringing the children, the state of the credit account, whose family we will be going to for dinner. The season of joy turns into the season of dread.

It’s a pity that Christmas in Australia has become such a commercial enterprise. That being said, I still think that gift giving is an important part of Christmas. Giving is a key element in the Christmas story: the innkeeper gives his stable, the wise men give their gifts, the shepherds their praise.

Last Sunday Fr Joseph Tran, at Our Lady of the Mission (Whitfords) had some wonderful advice for parents, though it could apply to anyone. He suggested that when we are thinking about the kind of gift that we will purchase for someone we should stop and pray for them. Take a moment to think about them and ask God’s blessing on them this Christmas season. I think it’s a great idea. It helps our gift giving to become an expression

of love, as in the story of old rather than a commercial transaction.

Another way to try to steer clear of Christmas dread is by taking a small amount of time each day to read some scripture. It is a centuries old, tried and true, method for growing closer to Christ. It is difficult to be close to Christ and not want to be close to others too. My advice is to start with Luke (at the Christmas story).

Another source of inspiration I’ve found are the writings and reflections of the saints and popes on the true meaning of Christmas. In 1986 Pope Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, had this to say:

“Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope… It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.”

This Christmas make that special effort to avoid the usual hassles and join the memories of your family, experiencing the joy of Christ’s coming, with the Church’s “great history of memories.” Make it a celebration that “opens the doors of hope.” I pray for Christ’s blessings on you and your family in this season of joy.

Responses or suggestions: production@therecord.com.au

Re-thinking Church-indigenous bond Book Reviews

Patrons and RidersConflicting Roles and Hidden Objectives in an Aboriginal Development Programme at Kununurra, Western Australia

By Peter Willis

Post Pressed, Flaxton, Qld

bi a obi a

From Patrons to Partners and the Separated Children of the Kimberley - A History of the Catholic Church in the Kimberley, WA

By Margaret Zucker.

2nd Edition, Uni. of Notre

Dame

Press, Fremantle, W.A.

■ Reviewed by Noel McMaster, SJ

Iread the first of these two books, Patrons and Riders, over 20 years ago when it was an author’s manuscript. It stayed such for quite some time, but now fortunately it has been published (2003); I was lucky to snare the only copy left in Boab Books towards the end of 2004.

We have here in this lately published volume a valuable contribution to Kununurra’s early history. It tells two stories from 30 years ago, but is truly history with the author’s critical commentary bringing insight to the dynamics of cross-cultural relations between himself as a nonindigenous Catholic priest and the traditional owners of Miriwoong country then reduced to life on the local Aboriginal Reserve.

In Patrons and Riders Peter Willis, formerly of the Pallottine Society of the Catholic Apostolate once widely represented in the Kimberley, tells a tale about a truck and relates the story of a garden. Both the truck and the garden were projects undertaken in an effort to advance independence and self-

development for the Miriwoong people. Both projects failed, and Willis honestly assesses the reasons why, as he saw it.

In his introduction he states:

“As Parish Priest […] I wanted to coax the Aborigines on the Kununurra Aboriginal Reserve (most of whom identified as Catholics) out of what I saw as a dependent lifestyle as ‘riders’ in the white world, into a posture which was more overt and assertive.”

(Page 1.)

In a footnote to the text of the same page, he writes:

“‘Riding’ in the Eastern Kimberleys (sic) most often referred to ‘hitch-hiking’ on another (usually white) person’s vehicle. In this book, I expand this term to refer to a strategy used by Aborigines by which, while ostensibly collaborating with whites in some common enterprise, they also seek to pursue their private objectives by selective participation in the activity.”

Willis’ tool of interpretation is therefore in the title, the notions of being a patron and being a rider. For the more academic readers, and at page 150 when well into his critical reflection, he observes:

“As we have seen, ‘kinship/riding’ was the Aboriginal response to my would-be patronal bestowals. It effectively turned the tables on my strategy, by recoding my bestowals as presentations made in response to presumed claims. They interpreted my acts within the reciprocal kinship idiom. These did not require return presentations or the acknowledgement of indebtedness but rather filial satisfaction and the acknowledgement of belonging.”

As well as the two case-studies/ stories which are the body of the work, there are two early interesting chapters on life in Kununurra at the time of the projects, and five appendices relevant to the author’s theme.

Appendix 5 comprises four press cuttings, one of which is headed, “60 join faith in Kununurra”.

From the projects and the study which arose from them, and generally from his tenure as parish priest in the East Kimberley, Peter Willis became the subject of a particular item in local Catholic folklore. It is said that the-then bishop, John Jobst, hoped for the day when Willis would be a kind of resident anthropologist for the Catholic Church in the Kimberley.

As it happened, Willis’ gifts over the last 30 years have for the most part influenced lives far from the Kimberley.

During the same time local expertise in anthropology, at least in the East Kimberley church, has not flourished. Arguably too, without much of a guiding anthropological and sociological awareness to draw on from this period, the second of the books under review here, From Patrons to Partners, offers more of a narrative than a critical history.

From Patrons to Partners (2nd edition) has two new chapters of interest in this review. The first of these is on the Stolen Generation (author Margaret Zucker prefers to call them Separated Children).

Like the official Bringing Them Home document, From Patrons to Partners has poignant snatches from now-familiar stories told by individuals who suffered under the regimes of assimilation.

There is telling testimony from Church personnel who maintain deep mutual affection with not a few of those they served within institutions. And there are official, eloquent expressions of sorrow and regret from Church leaders.

The second newly added chapter is an informal reflection on evangelisation and ministry among indigenes by the incumbent bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Broome, Christopher Saunders. As such it would seem to belong more appropriately with the appendices provided, one of which is an account by Daisy Bates of her trip to Broome as guest of Perth’s Bishop Gibney.

To this time, therefore, a critical and thorough assessment of the Church’s cross-cultural evangelising among indigenous people of the Kimberley is yet to be seriously undertaken; the tools of anthropology and sociology, and then theology, as these might be subsumed in missiology, are not yet turned to steady professional use.

Perhaps Willis’ Patrons and Riders could provide the trigger that is needed here.

Indeed Willis, and Fr Werner Kriener formerly of Halls Creek parish, do rate a mention from Zucker in From Patrons to Partners for their efforts with inculturation of the Christian faith in the East Kimberley.

In this there could be something of the promise carried by the biblical ‘cloud as small as a hand’. A correction is to be found in the second edition of From Patrons to Partners. Enculturation, misused for example at pages 177-8, first edition, has been corrected to read inculturation at pages 155-6 of the second edition.

Then in From Patrons to Partners’ new chapter on the Separated Children an ethnocentric model of mission is introduced and acceptably identified as a deficient early approach to evangelisation in the

Kimberley. The evangeliser’s way of life was superior in every human dimension. Life in total, corporal and spiritual, was taken as an uncomplicated call to be Christian.

From Patrons to Partners’ (2nd edition) unchanged account of the way Christian faith was later brought to indigenous life, especially in the East Kimberley, may thus suggest a better, though anthropologically implicit, model of mission. Ritual dance and song together with art are said to have been developed and inculturated by Indigenes, especially East Kimberley Gija and Jaru, in partnership with religious sisters and pastors during the eighties’ into the nineties’. But such partnership, and, indeed, the inculturation itself, await explicit critical assessment.

There is, of course, much more to East Kimberley Catholic mission than this. The East Kimberley has shared in the establishment of a vast educational project as an instrument of evangelisation.

Today in schools this project delivers the social majority’s controlling ideology, secular and religious, to an Indigenous minority which struggles both with change and the attempt to preserve its stake once enshrined in a so-called 2-Way (cultural) approach to education.

Again with continuing reference to the East Kimberley, From Patrons to Partners’ time frame stops just short of this Indigenous struggle. Willis’ notion of riding would probably suggest that latterly Indigenes have been dislodged from their educational saddle in the ideological rodeo of which the Church is part patron.

The long-time chairman of the Mirima Council in Kununurra, David Newry, comments in his foreword to Patrons and Riders, “education of local children is a significant issue and Mirima Council has had

a major influence in the development of the Barramundi School - the alternative education program for Miriwoong and local Aboriginal high school students.”

In this respect there is a question mark over a substantial component of the Church’s extended project of evangelising through schools. A further application of Peter Willis’ interpretive tool is therefore sometimes suggested for this aspect of the Church’s mission. Besides identifying the Patrons and Riders, it could profitably address any possible pretence of partnership.

Riding as described in Patrons and Riders was not without value, though it was not what Willis as patron wanted from his projects. He came to see that choosing to be patron was a mistake on his part because it guaranteed dependence rather than wholesome partnership towards independence. There was no point in pretending.

Then again, “filial satisfaction and acknowledgement of belonging” as consequences of riding are not without significance into the present. For its part, a patron Church could be easily tempted to an acceptance of unqualified satisfaction with education in its continuing mission, and even to a pretended experience of homogeneous belonging for both Patrons and Riders

The two subjects of this joint book review challenge the local Church to attend closely to the presence of continuing patronage and riding in its on-going mission.

That the title of the second edition of From Patrons to Partners remains unchanged is problematic. There can be no value in pretending that partnership between non-Indigenous Church agents and Miriwoong, Gija and Jaru people is long since cemented.

The World

Limbo only ever a theory: theologians

Closing the doors of limbo:

Theologians say it was hypothesis

■ By Cindy Wooden

An international group of Vaticanappointed theologians is about to recommend that the Catholic Church close the doors of limbo forever.

Many Catholics grew up thinking limbo - the place where babies who have died without baptism spend eternity in a state of “natural happiness” but not in the presence of God - was part of Catholic tradition.

Instead, it was a hypothesis - a theory held out as a possible way to balance the Christian belief in the necessity of baptism with belief in God’s mercy.

Like hypotheses in any branch of science, a theological hypothesis can be proven wrong or be set aside when it is clear it does not help explain Catholic faith.

Meeting November 28 - December 2 at the Vatican, the International Theological Commission, a group of theologians led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until his election as Pope Benedict XVI, completed its work on a statement regarding “the fate of babies who have died without baptism.”

A press release said the commission’s statement would focus on the question “in the context of God’s universal saving plan, the uniqueness of the mediation of Christ and the sacramentality of the Church in the order of salvation.”

US Archbishop William J. Levada, president of the theological commission in his role as prefect of the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith, told Pope Benedict on December 1 that he hoped the statement would be published soon. Archbishop Levada said the question is important because “the number of babies not baptized has increased considerably” and the Church knows that salvation “is only reachable in Christ through the Holy Spirit.”

But the Church, “as mother and teacher,” also must reflect on how God saves all those created in his image and likeness, particularly when the individual is especially weak “or not yet in possession of the use of reason and freedom,” the archbishop said.

Redemptorist Father Tony Kelly, an Australian member of the commission, told Catholic News Service “the limbo hypothesis was the common teaching of the Church until the 1950s. In the past 50 years, it was just quietly dropped. “We all smiled a bit when we were presented with this question, but then we saw how many important questions it opened, including questions about the power of God’s love, the existence of original sin and the need for baptism,” he said. “Pastorally and catechetically, the matter had been solved” with an affirmation that somehow God in his great love and mercy would ensure unbaptised babies

enjoyed eternal life with him in heaven, “but we had to backtrack and do the theology,” Father Kelly said.

A conviction that babies who died without baptism go to heaven was not something promoted only by people who want to believe that God saves everyone no matter what they do. Pope John Paul II believed it. And so does Pope Benedict.

In the 1985 book-length interview, “The Ratzinger Report,” the future Pope Benedict said, “Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally - and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation - I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.

“It formed part of a secondary thesis in support of a truth which is absolutely of first significance for faith, namely, the importance of baptism,” he said.

In “God and the World,” published in 2000, he said limbo had been used “to justify the necessity of baptising infants as early as possible” to ensure that they had the “sanctifying grace” needed to wash away the effects of original sin. While limbo was allowed to disappear from the scene, the future Pope said, Pope John Paul’s teaching in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” and the encyclical “The Gospel of Life” took “a decisive turn.”

Without theological fanfare, Pope John Paul “expressed the simple hope that God is powerful enough to draw to himself all those who were unable to receive the sacrament,” the then-cardinal said. Father Kelly said turning away from the idea of limbo was part of “the development of the theological virtue of hope” and reflected “a different sense of God, focusing on his infinite love.”

‘Narnia’ the realisation of a dream Disbelief threat to freedom

Stepson sees ‘Narnia’ author as humble, humorous man of courage

C.S. Lewis, popularly known as the 20th century’s “apostle to the skeptics” and author of 38 books that have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, was a humble man who never thought highly of his own skills, according to his stepson.

Douglas Gresham, whose divorced mother married bachelor Lewis in 1956, shared insights about his stepfather during a November 14 panel discussion following a screening of “C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia,” a onehour television program.

The docudrama’s television premiere was to coincide with the highly anticipated theatrical release of Walt Disney Pictures’ “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” based on the book of the same name penned by Lewis.

“Beyond Narnia” explores Lewis’ personal life and spiritual struggles, including his journey from atheism to Christianity and his crisis of faith following the death of his wife, Joy, from cancer in 1960. Gresham disputed the myth that Lewis, an Oxford don, was an introverted professor-type uncomfortable around children.

“He was a fascinating conversationalist and very witty man,” said Gresham, who travelled to England from America as a boy of 8 to meet Lewis with his mother and older brother, David, in 1952. He said he never resented his stepfather’s relationship with his mother, a poet who converted from Judaism to Christianity after being influenced by Lewis’ writings. In Lewis’ personal life, according to Gresham, he exhibited qualities of chivalry, duty, honour and responsibility. As the only one of four friends who survived serving in World War I, Lewis took responsibility for looking after the teenage sister and mother of his deceased roommate, “Paddy” Moore. The Moore women lived with Lewis and his historian brother, retired Maj. Warren Lewis, for years in a twostory, six-bedroom brick cottage near Oxford.

Gresham witnessed an example of Lewis’ chivalry firsthand when, in 1956, Lewis proposed a “paper” marriage to his mother to prevent the family from being deported. Lewis soon realised how much he loved his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer just a few months later, and the two were married by an Anglican priest in 1957. Three years after his wife died, Lewis died on the day President John F. Kennedy

was shot: November 22, 1963. Asked to recount his favourite memory of Lewis, Gresham told a story illustrating his stepfather’s “immense physical courage” as well as his mother’s plucky personality. Plagued with trespassers on their estate, the couple were confronted one day with an interloper who rose out of the bushes aiming a bow and arrow at them. Lewis immediately stepped in front of his wife, who, with some consternation, told her husband: “Get out of my line of fire.” The trespasser turned and ran when he saw Joy Lewis’ raised shotgun.

Eighteen years old when Lewis died, Gresham said he was “moved to tears” while reading Lewis’ letters expressing fondness for his stepchildren. “It was enormously emotional when I realised he loved me as much as I loved him,” said Gresham, who considers his stepfather to be the best Christian he has ever known. A co-producer of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Gresham has recently written a book titled “Jack’s Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis,” published by Broadman & Holman. Gresham, who viewed the final cut of the theatrical movie in Los Angeles just three days prior to the “Beyond Narnia” screening, said it is the realisation of a lifelong dream. CNS

Culture of disbeief a threat to religious freedom

Pope Benedict XVI said religious freedom is threatened in parts of the world, sometimes by religious and political factors and sometimes by a prevailing culture of disbelief.

The Pope made the remarks at his Sunday blessing on December 4, speaking to thousands of pilgrims from his apartment window above St. Peter’s Square.

He noted that 40 years ago the Second Vatican council issued its Declaration on Religious Freedom (“Dignitatis Humanae”), which said religious freedom is a right that stems from the dignity of each person.

The council, the Pope said, was reaffirming traditional church teaching that every person, as a spiritual being, has the right and duty to seek the truth and that religious freedom must be given to each individual and community.

“After 40 years, this teaching of the council remains of great relevance today,” the Pope said.

“In fact, religious liberty is far from being effectively guaranteed everywhere: In some cases, it is denied for religious or ideological reasons; at other times, although recognised on paper, it is obstructed in reality by political power or, in a more deceitful way, by the cultural domination of agnosticism and rel-

ativism,” he said. “Let us pray that every person can fully realise the religious vocation that he carries inscribed in his being,” he said. The Pope did not name countries where religious freedom is not respected, but recent publicised cases have involved Catholics in China.

Three days before the Pope made his remarks, the Vatican strongly condemned the beating of several nuns in central China and the continued arrests of underground Catholic priests.

In greetings to pilgrims in several languages, the Pope noted that December 9 would mark the 30th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons.

“I invite everyone to always make efforts to favour the integration of disabled persons in society, in the world of work and also in the Christian community,” he said.

The Pope said people need to remember that every life is worthy of respect and should be protected from conception to its natural end.

The pontiff also encouraged Christians to use the Advent season to “prepare a way for the Lord” in their hearts and lives.

Gazing down at the spot in the square where workmen had begun erecting the Vatican’s annual Christmas creche, he added: “We can see how the Nativity scene is growing. Christmas is getting closer.”

San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada.

Photo: CNS

The World

Chinese nuns beaten in attack No inquiry for now

Vatican condemns nun beatings, arrests of priests in China

■

By Carol Glatz

The Vatican has condemned “two regrettable incidents” in China - the beating of several nuns and the continued arrests of underground Catholic priests.

“The violence used against several defenceless religious women in Xi’an” in central China must “be firmly condemned,” said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

“Even the detention of six priests from Zhengding, as with previous cases involving various priests in other locations, is reason for serious concern.”

“As on previous occasions, the reasons for the coercive meas-

the world in brief

Hong Kong protest

ures taken against (the priests) are unknown,” the spokesman said in a November 30 statement.

Navarro-Valls said that even though it was not possible “to verify the exact extent of the circumstances” surrounding these incidents the news of the beatings and arrests nevertheless “prompts grief and disapproval.”

At least 16 sisters of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sacred Heart Missionaries in Xi’an were badly beaten - two severely - by “dozens of hoodlums,” said a November 29 report by UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.

About 20 sisters were protecting an abandoned building, adjacent to their convent, that had been the property of the local diocese, the report said. On November 23 some 40 young men “stood outside the convent shouting and mocking the nuns,” UCA News reported.

Hundreds of Catholics of all ages sang hymns, chanted prayers and carried banners as they joined a pro-democracy march calling for more autonomy in Hong Kong elections which they say is missing from the government’s proposed political changes.

Police estimated that about 63,000 people joined the December 4 march through the downtown area. Organisers put the number at 250,000, while analysts estimated more than 100,000, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. Hong Kong, which came under Chinese control in 1997, has been given only partial freedom to govern itself. Currently, citizens of Hong Kong do not have universal suf-

The building had been a school run by the nuns, but was confiscated by the state during China’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and was turned into a state-run school.

The Chinese government eventually determined that buildings seized during the revolution should be returned to their legitimate owners, but school authorities sold the land in 2003 without consulting the church, UCA News said.

Coadjutor Bishop Anthony Dang Mingyan of Xi’an reached an agreement with government officials that the property be returned after the church pays more than $800,000.

Meanwhile, the Stamford, Conneticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reported on November 28 that six underground priests were arrested on November 18 and that two of them had been severely beaten.

The detained priests were all from the Diocese of Zhengding,

frage - the chief executive is picked by a Chinese-backed committee and only half the legislature is directly elected. Just before the march began, Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong and a Protestant pastor led about 800 Christians in a prayer session. The bishop, an outspoken democracy advocate, also addressed the Christians.

Society’s great crime

Abortion is a crime of aggression not only against the unborn, but also against society, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Children have the right to be born and to grow in the midst of a family founded on matrimony, where the parents are the first educators of children in the faith and where they can grow to full human and spiritual maturity,” the Pope said on December 3. Meeting with the presidents

whose bishop is also still under arrest. Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo was arrested on November 8. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Joseph Kung, president of the foundation, said the arrests showed that an “intensified horror campaign by the Chinese government to force the underground Church religious and faithful to register with the official patriotic Church is actively ongoing.”

The underground Church has been in existence since the 1950s, when China tried to force Catholics and other Christians to join government-approved “patriotic associations.” Although the government-approved church officially spurns ties with the Vatican, church sources say up to 85 percent of the government-approved bishops have reconciled with the Vatican. In many sections of China there is some mingling of the two churches.

of Latin American bishops’ committees for the family and for life, the Pope urged them to work together, sharing the programs and approaches that are most successful in their countries.

“Children are the major richness and the most precious good of a family,” he said. “For this reason, it is necessary to help all people to be aware that the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion, which attacks human life at its beginning, is also an aggression against society itself,” the Pope said.

Some hope for AIDS

AIDS is not the death sentence it used to be, according to Brother John Mary Kaspari. When the Franciscan Brother of Peace started ministering to AIDS patients in the early 1990s, the house he and the other brothers

No church inquiry, for now, into statue of Mary some say is weeping

The Diocese of Sacramento has no plans to investigate an alleged apparition in which a statue of the Virgin Mary outside a Catholic church has been reported to weep blood.

The statue has drawn hundreds of visitors to Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento since parishioners first noticed reddish streaks near the eyes of the white concrete statue in mid-November.

Father James Murphy, rector of Blessed Sacrament Cathedral, said he had discussed the matter with Sacramento Bishop William K. Weigand and told local media that the diocese was “letting it sit for now.”

An inquiry involving field investigators and lab analysts could be initiated later, Father Murphy said, if the phenomenon continues.

“There’s no rush,” he told The Sacramento Bee newspaper. “The Church thinks in terms of centuries, not tomorrow’s news.”

In Catholic teaching, an apparition is a supernatural manifestation of God, an angel or a saint to an individual or group of individuals. Church investigations into reported apparitions usually focus on the moral, spiritual and psychological character of the visionary or visionaries, the consistency of any messages with Church teachings and other spiritual effects connected with the event. If the Church makes an affirmative judgment on an alleged apparition, it says it is “worthy of belief,” but it does not require Catholics to accept any such private revelations as a matter of faith.

ran for those who had the disease was a hospice setting. Today, people with AIDS are living longer, healthier lives. World AIDS Day was on December 1.

On the eve of the observance, Pope Benedict XVI urged the world community to persevere in its fight against HIV/AIDS. He also expressed his solidarity with those suffering from the disease. As the face of AIDS has changed during the past 20 years, ministry to those who live with the virus is also evolving.

“The support system (today) is really very positive, and it’s because of the community of people,” said Sister Joanne Lucid, a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the director of AIDS ministry in the Archdiocese of St Paul, Minneapolis, which in 1986 was the first archdiocese or diocese to establish an office of AIDS ministry.

Nuns from the Congregation of the Franciscan Sacred Heart Missionaries protest in northwestern China on November 28 to demand an investigation into an attack on their convent. Photo:CNS

Siblings become company on a mission

Close encounters with terminally-ill peers inspired children to set up a homebased scapular company that aims to strengthen families

■ By Theresa Laurence

Like many families who visit the Holy Family Chapel, a log cabin nestled in the hills of rural middle Tennessee, the Wilsons of St Henry Parish in Nashville draw strength from the example of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

To help “spread the message of family,” Joe Wilson, a junior at Father Ryan High School in Nashville, and his five siblings recently started a Web-based business, the Holy Family Scapular Co. (www.holyfamilyscapular.com).

Their aim is to help a wider audience rediscover the values of faith, love and sacrifice needed to preserve families.

A scapular is made up of two small pieces of cloth joined by ribbon or cord, and is worn on the chest and back beneath one’s clothes as a sign of religious devotion.

The Wilsons’ scapular is bigger than a traditional scapular; one side is embroidered with the image of Joseph and Mary holding the infant Jesus and the other contains an Irish prayer dedicated to the Holy Family.

The Holy Family scapulars were originally commissioned to be given to terminally ill children when they visited the Holy Family Chapel, a small Civil War-era cabin that has

In Brief

been transformed into a peaceful and holy retreat for its guests.

Over the last five years, the privately owned, nondenominational chapel has hosted hundreds of people, including more than 500 children, seeking respite from the rigors of medical treatments.

The Wilsons - Steve, Sarah and their six children, ages 6 to 19serve as the primary caretakers of the chapel and the 100-acre property that surrounds it. They are one of the few families who have visited who have not been facing serious illness.

Visitors learn of the cabin’s remote location only through wordof-mouth referrals, which have spread through the halls of local hospitals.

“We’ve talked about opening it up to the general public, but that would take away from the atmosphere,” said Steve Wilson, a restoration contractor who was asked to renovate the 145-year-old log cabin five years ago.

Keeping the cabin’s whereabouts known to few people, he said, “has helped preserve this place.”

Through their involvement with Holy Family Chapel, the Wilson children have seen up close “how people’s lives are messed up from sickness, and it makes you grateful to have a close family to hold onto if you can,” said Nick Wilson, 14, a freshman at Father Ryan.

Wearing the scapular reminds him that “families are really important and will always be there when everyone else shuts you out,” he told the Tennessee Register, newspaper of the Nashville Diocese.

The Holy Family scapulars have always been offered free of charge

Fate of India’s girls depends on religious leadership

Selective abortion of girls in India has become such a problem the government has appealed to religious leaders to change the way people think about the girl child. During the first half of November a caravan of 25 vehicles and 200 people travelled through northern states with some of the worst gender ratios in the country - less than 800 girls for every 1000 boys.

The campaign was headed by the Hindu leader Swami Agnivesh who says there is “no other form of violence that’s more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful” than female foeticide.

He was joined in the march by Christian, Muslim, Jainist and other leaders. The sex ratio in India varies according to religious affiliation. Among Christians there are 964 girls for every 1000 boys; among the Buddhists, 942; among the Hindus, 925; among the Jains, 870; and among the Sikhs, 786.

The practice of female infanticide has a long history in India where, as in other agrarian societies there has been a cultural preference for sons. In recent times the ultrasound machine

to chapel visitors, but so many people had begun requesting them for extended family and friends that continuing to give them away was becoming too costly.

So the Wilsons started the Holy Family Scapular Co. to meet increased demand, but the business is a labour of love for the children.

Last spring the Wilson children sat down together to hammer out a business plan that would get the scapulars into the hands of anyone who wanted them.

The four boys - including Jake, a freshman at the University of Notre Dame, and Jim, a sixth-grader at St

has been used to detect female babies so they can be aborted.

It is estimated that 50 million girls are missing from Indian society, and already girls are being trafficked from neighbouring countries and sold as brides to Indian men who cannot find a spouse.

“A nation without women” is the name of a film that opens with a mother drowning her newborn daughter in a bucket of milk.

- BBC News, Nov 12; Chiesa, Nov 24

Downsizing of high schools can go too far

What is the ideal size for a high school?

The question has arisen because of the huge size of some American schools and the US $1 billion promotion of small schools by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Most new high schools enrol fewer than 500 students and advocates for small schools would like them to be around 300.

But New York University education professor Diane Ravitch says that while high schools can be too big and anonymous, they can also “be too small to provide a solid curriculum and to offer advanced courses in mathematics and science and foreign languages”.

Henry School in Nashville - took care of most of the grunt work, while the two girls, Mary Grace, 10, and Isabelle, 6, helped out in smaller ways.

At times, 17-year-old Joe Wilson said, “it was pretty intense, but overall it brought us closer together.”

From brainstorming to ongoing maintenance of the company Web site, the siblings have learned along the way “how difficult it is to get started,” he said.

While not everyone can visit Holy Family Chapel, the Wilson children hope the scapulars will help sick people and healthy fami-

Although there is little research on the matter, says Ravitch, a study by Michigan academics Valerie Lee and Julia Smith came up with an ideal size of 600 to 900 students.

In this range academic performance peaked for both advantaged and disadvantaged students.

- Washington Post, Nov 6

Mentally ill kids

Ten per cent of 2- to 5-year-olds have a serious psychiatric illness, Professor Adrian Angold of Duke University told a psychiatry conference in London. He said conditions like ADHD, anxiety and depression begin very early in life, even in the womb, and mental health services should be geared towards early detection and treatment.

Another speaker, Professor Peter Jones of Cambridge University, said there was good evidence that factors in early life influenced a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia and that intervening early, before adolescence, might help. In particular, early use of cannabis is associated with a two- three-fold increased risk of schizophrenia.

- BBC News, Nov 28

lies alike draw on the strength of its message. The Wilsons are not in business to make a profit, but to “spread the news about Jesus while helping other children,” as Jim Wilson puts it.

One dollar from the sale of each US $5.95 scapular is given to charities such as a summer camp for burn survivors; Hannah and Friends, which aids autistic children; and a Catholic school affected by Hurricane Katrina. In the company’s first six weeks, the Wilsons received nearly 400 orders through their Web site.

- CNS

Archbishop Hart said that although a bill of rights was worthy of discussion, “the Church’s teachings on sanctity of life and the rights of the unborn in particular are not matters for debate in a church sponsored lecture,” he said.

“Rights cannot be seen as something that apply only from the point of birth and abortions cannot be justified by the notion of a right to make reproductive decisions without limitations or sanctions,” Archbishop Hart said.

“I am obliged to ensure that there is no ambiguity or confusion in respect to the Church’s teachings on these matters.”

The Wilsons: the children founded the Web-based Holy Family Scapular Company in Nashville, are, clockwise from upper left, Joe, Nick, Jim, Mary Grace and Isabelle.The oldest sibling, Jake, a student at the University of Notre Dame, is not pictured. Inset, is one of the scapulars produced by the children’s company.

Photo: CNS

ACCOMODATION WANTED

■ ACCOMMODATION NONSHARED

For mature age Masters student pref Fremantle for February 2006. Can Pay $135 pw. PH Thomas 0429 026 089.

BUILDING TRADES

■ BRICK REPOINTING

Phone Nigel 9242 2952.

■ PERROTT PAINTING PTY LTD

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

■ PICASSO PAINTING

Top service. Phone 9345 0557, fax 9345 0505.

CATHOLICS CORNER

■ RETAILER OF CATHOLIC PRODUCTS

Specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for baptism, communion and confirmation. Ph: 9456 1777. Shop 12, 64-66 Bannister Road, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat.

CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER

■ WORK FROM HOME

Around your children & family commitments. My business is expanding and I need people to open new areas all over Australia. Training given. Highly lucrative. www.cyber-success-4u.org

EMPLOYMENT

■ EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

The Young Christian Workers (YCW) is a movement run by, for and with young people. The YCW has part-time openings commencing in January 2006, and 18 to 30 year old applicants are being sought to extend and support the movement. Applicants need to demonstrate the ability to communicate well with young people, self-motivation, commitment to a Christian life and values, openness to learning the principles of the YCW and a willingness to work flexible hours including some evenings and weekends as required. For further information or a job description, please contact Marie after 4pm on 0422 510 816.

ENTERTAINMENT

■ FIRE ENGINE PARTIES

Children of all ages. Child care, kindy and Santa visits includes rides and squirting. Discount to readers. Call fire Chief David 0431 869 455.

FUNERALS

■ FUNERAL PRESENTATIONS

Celebrating life with a collection of photos/video set to music and projected on a big screen. An ideal complement to reflection time. Call Paul on 9244 9719 for more details.

FURNITURE REMOVAL

■ ALL AREAS

Mike Murphy 0416 226 434.

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

■ BUSSELTON

Geog Bay, Park Home sleeps UP TO 6, winter rates apply. Ph Elizabeth 0408 959 671.

OFFICIAL DIARY

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

■ DENMARK

Holiday House 3bdr x 2bath, sleeps up to 8. BOOK NOW. Ph: Maria 0412 083 377.

■ FRANCE

3bdrm, 2brm, apartment with views to Med, sleeps 6, in bustling fishing port between Nimes and Narbonne. $800pw. Email: ruegarenne@yahoo. com.au or tel: 0407 957 259.

■ SHOALWATER

Holiday units, self contained, sleep up to 6, walk to the beach, near Penguin Island, very affordable rates. Bookings Ph: 0414 204 638 or bluewaterholidayu nits@dodo.com.au.

REAL ESTATE

■ LUMEN CHRISTI HOMES

Augusta Life Time Lease. Enquiries Catholic Diocese of Bunbury 9721 0500.

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

■ REPAIR YOUR LITURGICAL BOOKS

Tydewi Bindery offer a reliable service to repair your Liturgical books, missals, bibles and fine bindings. Ph. 9293 3092.

■ WATCH REPAIRS

A Swiss watch specialist with 38 yrs exp on Omega, Rolex, Longines and Rado also Seiko and Citizen. Ph: Jim 9250 6545.

WANTED

■ CARER

P/T Mt Lawley. Mature woman reqd to provide companionship and prepare meals for elderly Italian lady.

Ph: 9444 2929.

■ ORGANIST REQUIRED

Urgent: St Joachim’s Victoria Park requires an organist immediately for long term position. Ph 9361 7116.

10

12

13 St Lazarus’ Day Service and Dinner - Bishop Sproxton

14 Discernment Retreat, Toodyay - Archbishop Hickey

cedes devotions. At 2pm there is Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Rosary and Benediction. Holy Mass follows. Al are most welcome to come to the Pilgrim’s Mass and devotions celebrated at the Shrine on every Sunday at 2pm. Enq: SACRI: 9447 3 3292.

Monday December 12

FULTON J SHEEN SOCIETY CHRISTMAS CONCERT

Celebrate Christmas with the MOST REV BARRY J HICKEY AS VOCAL SOLOIST and other artists including Paul Wright (Kashtney Duo) as violin soloist and much more at Trinity College Trinity Ave East Perth starting at 7.30pm. Tickets are available (discount for seniors and students) and include refreshments. For bookings and further details ring Daniel on 92918224. Credit card facilities available.

Monday 12 – Friday 16 December

ADVENT MISSION AT FLOREAT/WEMBLEY

Redemptorist Fathers David Hore and Gerard

Neagle will be conducting an advent mission at St Cecelia’s Church Cnr Grantham St and Kenmore Rd, Floreat. The mission starts on Monday 12 December and concludes on Friday 16 December. There will be a special mission session each evening at 7.30pm and Mass and short talk each day at 11am. On Thursday 15 December there will be a second rite of reconciliation. Everyone is most welcome to this Advent Mission. Please make it your spiritual preparation for Christmas. For further information: 9387 1158.

Thursday December 15

HEALING MASS

A Healing Mass in honour of St Peregrine, patron of Cancer sufferers and helper of all in need, will be held at the Church of SS John and Paul, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton at 7pm. There will be Veneration of the Relic and Anointing of the Sick. For further info: Noreen Monaghan 9498 7727.

Sunday December 18

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF CHURCH OF THE IMMACUILATE CONCEPTION  KWOLYIN

Friends and ex parishioners are invited to celebrate the occasion at Kwolyin on Sunday. Mass will commence at 11.30am followed by a bring and share lunch. Further information: Joan Cosgrove 9064 1173, Pat Coakley 9064 1176.

Sunday December 18

50TH ANNIVERSARY  BROOKTON

Our Lady of the Rosary Brookton parish is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Church. Mass will be at 10am with a bring and share lunch to follow. All past and present parishioners are most welcome. Phone Talma: 9887 1316.

CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY

Term 4 until 16th December for: Family & Friends Support Groups of Substance Abusers are on Wednesdays 7–9pm, Substance Abusers Support Groups are on Tuesdays 5.30 to 7.30pm & Fridays All day Group for Substance Abusers is from 9.30am to 2pm including Healing Mass on Fridays @ 12.30pm during term. Ladies Groups are on Tuesdays 11am to 1.30pm. Rosary is from Tuesday to Thursday at 12.30 to 1pm.

TUESDAYS WEEKLY PRAYER MEETING

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

BULLSBROOK SHRINE SUNDAY PROGRAM

Shrine of Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Rd. Bullsbrook. 2pm Holy Mass, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Holy Rosary. Reconciliation available in Italian and English. A monthly pilgrimage is held on the last Sunday of the month in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation. Anointing of the sick is administered for spiritual and physical healing during Holy Mass every second Sunday of the month. All enq SACRI 9447 3292.

SCHOENSTATT FAMILY MOVEMENT: MONTHLY DEVOTIONS

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

ST CLARE’S SCHOOL, SISTERS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD

A short history of St Clare’s School is being prepared to celebrate 50 years of its work in WA. Any past students, staff, families or others associated with the school - from its time at Leederville, at North Perth, at East Perth or at Wembley - are invited to contact us with photographs, or memories. Privacy will be protected, in accordance with your wishes. Please contact Nancy Paterson on 0417 927 126, (email npaters@yahoo.com.au) or St Clare’s School, PO Box 21 & 23 Carlisle North 6161. Tel: 9470 5711.

ALL SAINTS CHAPEL

CONFESSIONS: 10.30 to 11.45am and two lunchtime MASSES: 12.10 and 1.10pm Monday through Friday. Easy to find in the heart of Perth, ALLENDALE

14 Reconciliation, Willetton - Bishop Sproxton

15 Farewell for Ann O’Donnell - Archbishop Hickey Board Meeting of The Living Centre - Archbishop Hickey

17 Shopfront Christmas Party - Archbishop Hickey Graduation Mass, NDA - Archbishop Hickey

18 Graduation Ceremony, NDA - Archbishop Hickey Feast of St Lucy, Spearwood - Bishop Sproxton

20 Reconciliation, Bateman - Bishop Sproxton

SQUARE, 77 St. George’s Terrace. Exposition: 8am - 4pm. Morning Prayer: 8am (Liturgical hours). Holy Rosary daily: 12.40pm. Divine Mercy Prayers and Benediction: Mondays and Fridays 1.35pm. St Pio of Pietrelcina Novena to the Sacred Heart and Benediction: Wednesdays 1.35pm. Lending Library of a thousand books, videos, cassettes at your service. Tel: 9325 2009. www.allsaintschapel.com

INDONESIAN MASS

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

PERPETUAL ADORATION

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

PERPETUAL ADORATION AT ST BERNADETTE’S

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

BLESSED SACRAMENT ADORATION

Holy Family Church, Alcock Street, Maddington. Every Friday 8.30 am Holy Mass followed by Blessed Sacrament Adoration till 12 noon. Every first Friday of the month, anointing of the sick during Mass. Enq. 9398 6350.

SUNDAY CHINESE MASS

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

9197, Peter 9310 1789.

CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

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

First Sunday of each month

DEVOTIONS IN HONOUR OF THE DIVINE MERCY

Fr Douglas Hoare and Santa Clara Parish Community welcome anyone from surrounding Parishes and beyond to the Santa Clara Church, Bentley. The afternoon commences with the 3 o’clock prayer, followed by the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Reflection, and concludes with Benediction.

THE DIVINE MERCY APOSTOLATE

St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth – each first Sunday of the month from 1.30pm to 3.15pm with a different priest each month. All Saints Chapel, Allendale Square, 77 St George’s Tce, Perth - each Monday and Friday at 1.35pm. Main Celebrant Fr James Shelton. St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, East Perth - each Saturday from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, main celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak, OFM. Saints John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Drive, Willeton - each Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm. All Enq John 9457 7771.

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY WALKERS

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

The Record’s special report on Dr Luke Saker’s study of senior students emerging from Catholic schools generated plenty of responses. However Sister Anthony Macdonald, of St Lawrence’s school in Bluff Point, Geraldton, sent in these thoughts from Primary students who are part of a Rosary-making group at her school. Next week we will carry the thoughts of St Lawrence students who are altar servers. The students, says Sr Anthony, show all is not

lost!

Production in full swing: students from St Lawrence’s school at Bluff Point, Geraldton, proudly display their hand-made rosaries. “It feels special making rosary beads because you are doing something that will raise money for those who are not well off,” says Year 6 student Amy Dransfield.

I have been making rosary beads for about a year now and I think it is a lot of fun because it gives me something constructive to do at lunch time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

I feel special because I am helping people to pray and the money raised by selling rosaries is going to help people who are not as well off as we are and need help to improve their communities.

I made a pair for my mum and when my gran saw them she wanted a pair too.

She has gone on a cruise and took the rosary beads with her and told me she would pray for me when using them. That made me very happy.

Making rosary beads has brought out my creative side. It has also made me more skilled.

So you see, I think this experience of helping other people will stay with me for life.

I feel it is important to use my fortunate life to help others less fortunate.

I love doing rosary bead making as it helps others and has also helped me.

Marlee Starcevich Yr 6

I have been making rosary beads for the past year and have learnt many interesting things, not just about the construction side but also about the background story of the rosary.

It feels special making rosary beads because you are doing something that will raise money for those who are not well off. The rosary also gives us a way to pray for them. When things get tough you can always pray to Jesus and Mary.

I feel privileged to be able to help others and it gives me something constructive to do at home and during lunch times.

Rosary bead making is fun and helpful to others.

If everyone prayed our world would be a more peaceful place.

Amy

Dransfield Yr 6

There are about 21 girls in our ‘Rosary Gang’ and we meet twice a week at lunch time to make rosary beads and sell them for the missions. I especially enjoyed making them in the colours of the AFL footy teams and we sold a lot. Most people wanted Eagles colours but lots ordered Dockers ones too. Our teacher sent a pair to Chris Connelly and he wrote back.

I like the idea that we are helping others as well as enjoying ourselves.

Annie O Brien Yr 7

I like making jewellery so making the rosary beads was a bit like that. You could choose lots of bright colours and even make them in footy colours. You know you are also helping people to pray or even remind them about Jesus and Mary when they see the rosary.

We enjoyed the wind up during lunch at the beach down the road.

Brianna James Yr 7

Why Marriage Matters...

Domestic violence remains a serious problem both inside and outside of marriage.

While young women must recognize that marriage is not a good strategy for reforming violent men, a large body of research shows that being unmarried, and especially living with a man outside of marriage, is associated with an increased risk of domestic abuse. One analysis of the US National Survey of Families and Households found that cohabitors were over three times more likely than spouses to say that arguments became physical over the last year (13 percent of cohabitors versus 4 percent of spouses). Even after controlling for race, age, and education, people who live together are still more likely than married people to report violent arguments. Overall, as one scholar sums up the relevant research, “Regardless of methodology, the studies yielded similar results: Cohabitors engage in more violence than do spouses.” Selection effects play a powerful role. Women are less likely to marry, and more likely to divorce, violent men. However, scholars suggest that the greater integration of married men into the community, and the greater investment of spouses in each other, also play a role. Married men, for example, are more responsive to policies such as mandatory arrest policies, designed to signal strong disapproval of domestic violence.