The Record Newspaper 10 February 2010

‘Catholic Losers’

Western journalists have written off God. Raised on television, often ignorant of history and religion, they think a global religion of over a billion people is uninteresting or find it hard to comprehend a father’s advice to his children on virginity. No wonder they consistently miss major stories. But some are beginning to realise religious faith is actually big news ... VISTA 1

THE R ECORD

the Parish. the Nation. the World.

‘New Mass will address current deficiences’

Throughout last week liturgists from across the country gathered in Perth to consider, familiarise themselves with - and argue over - the new prayers of the Mass Catholics will soon be reciting.

One of the most senior liturgists in Australia delivered some straight-shooting talk on its importance, history and process.

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

PERTH, Australia (CNS) - The newly translated Roman Missal to be issued by Easter 2011 in Australian parishes will help address the serious theological problems of the 1973 Mass currently in use, one of Australia’s most senior liturgists has told a 4-7 February national gathering of liturgists in Perth.

In the process, it will more faithfully implement the liturgical vision of the Second Vatican Council and also fulfill the reforms of the much-maligned 1570 Council of Trent, he said, in a hard hitting and often-surprisingly frank speech.

It will have the power to renew the Church to carry out its work in the world, Archbishop Mark Coleridge told approximately 200 liturgists gathered from around the Please turn to Page 5

More reports - Pages 4-7, Vista 4

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

-Bishop Matthew Gibney 1874

Youth called to journey forth

The Archdiocese has launched a vision for where it wants to be and how it wants to work with - and for - young Australians today.

The Archdiocese has launched a new resource to guide all youth groups, parish councils, Catholic schools and Archdiocesan agencies working with youth.

The new resource was launched after a Youth Leaders’ Commissioning Mass on Thursday, 4 February in St Mary’s Cathedral.

The Mass was presided over by Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton at which Parish youth leaders, youth leaders of

Catholic agencies, youth movements or communities were commissioned to carry out their work with young people in the name of the Church.

Approximately 150 young people attended and participated in the evening event.

The resource, which has been developed by the Perth Catholic Youth Network, is entitled The Journey Forth – a youth vision document for the Archdiocese of Perth and aims to develop and apply specifically in Perth an earlier document issued in July

Catechesis for new Missal ready in April

AN Australian company has produced the catechetical resource to help parishes implement the new Missal.

Page 6

last year by the nation’s Catholic Bishops, Anointed and Sent –an Australian vision for Catholic Youth Ministry

Three new Catholic Youth Ministry staff were also commissioned for 2010 at last Thursday’s event.

They are: Tom Gourlay, who will be a Youth Ministry Worker for northern Parishes, Mathew De Sousa, who will work in Information Technology and Graphic Design, and Fr Roman Wroblewski SDS who has become the new CYM Chaplain.

The new guiding document for youth ministry in Perth recommends the development of eight focus areas for those engaged in this kind of work.

These are:

■ Prayer and Worship

■ Evangelisation

■ Catechesis

■ Pastoral Care

■ Community Life

■ Justice and Service

■ Leadership Development

■ Advocacy.

The focus areas represent a Please turn to Page 2

Father Brown turns 100 TONY EVANS considers the wonderful legacy of Chesterton’s priestdetective a century after his creation.

VISTA 2-3

therecord.com.au

Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Perth, Western Australia $2 www.therecord.com.au

Anne Raheb, left, Wojciech Grzech, Michelle and Marie Raheb, Maxine Fabre, Elissa Day, Penelope Kimble and Adrian Brannigan display items they used to animate the eight focus areas of the Archdiocese’s new youth vision document which was launched in St Mary’s Cathedral on Thursday, 4 February.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra-Goulburn addresses liturgists from around Australia gathered in Perth last week. PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Official Engagements

FEBRUARY

12 Legion of Mary Annual Lake Monger Rosary Procession - Archbishop Hickey

14 Project Compassion Mass, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey Personal Advocacy Commissioning Ceremony, Morley - Bishop Sproxton

15 Schools’ Staff Commissioning Mass, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey

16 Schools’ Staff Commissioning Mass, St Mary’s Cathedral - Bishop Sproxton

17 Mass, Curtin University - Archbishop Hickey

Heads of Churches - Bishop Sproxton

21 Mass and Opening of Parish Centre, Wilson, Archbishop Hickey

Thanksgiving Mass for Chinese New Year, Como - Bishop Sproxton

24 YouthCARE Meeting- Bishop Sproxton

25 Premier’s Launch of Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion - Archbishop Hickey Rite of Election, St Mary’s CathedralBishop Sproxton

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Archdiocese launches new

Continued from Page 1 development of three key directions set out by the nation’s Bishops in their own document of fostering the total personal and spiritual growth of young people, drawing them into responsible participation in the life, mission and work of the Catholic faith community and, finally, empowering them to live as disciples of Christ in today’s world.

The resource was distributed to all participants at the Mass, however copies are available from the CYM website www.cym.com.au.

Catholic Youth Ministry director Anita Parker told The Record the new document “will continue to build on the efforts of World Youth Day 2008 to enliven youth ministry across the diocese.”

Bishop Sproxton told those attending the evening event that young people are an important part of the Church community.

“The document Anointed and Sent from the Australian Catholic

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One of the stained glass windows at St Simon Peter Church in Ocean Reef.

Bishop Sproxton speaks to those gathered for the special Youth Commissioning Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral on Thursday, 4 Februar y. The Perth Archdiocesan document continues the vision of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ vision for the Church and young Australians launched in 2009. The Perth document, The Journey Forth, has been in development since 2006.

PHOTO: MATTHEW LIM

Nicole Chamberlain from WA Young Salesians and Leonard Ong from YCW formally launch The Journey Forth.

PHOTO: MATTHEW LIM

vision for working with the young

Bishops Conference and now our local document The Journey Forth emphasise that young people have an active role to play in the Church and that their contribution is welcome,” he said.

“I thank the Catholic Youth Network for their efforts in beginning The Journey Forth and look forward to seeing where the journey leads us as we continue to build the faith community especially for the young people of our local Church.

“The Archbishop and I welcome the development of The Journey Forth and we are confident that this resource will assist parishes, schools and communities as they reflect on the needs of their young people.”

Earlier, Anita Parker told those gathered in St Mary’s that the launch of the new youth document was only the beginning.

“We would love to gather local schools, parishes, priests, youth workers, Church agencies together to workshop this document. When you read it – we hope you will feel inspired and guided in setting out

youth ministry,” she said. Although she was unable to be present on the evening, Catherine Gallo Martinez was also commissioned to work with the southern and eastern parishes, complementing the role of fellow CYM worker Tom Gourlay for northern parishes.

Ms Parker said the year ahead would be exciting for CYM.

Among key events looming in the near future were:

■ University Orientation Days, where either the local on-campus Catholic Society or CYM would be present. She urged Catholics studying at tertiary level to sign up as a member and engage with their local university Catholic events.

■ Forrest Chase – on Sunday, 28 March from 12-3pm there would be an afternoon celebration of WYD 2010, followed by a Cathedral Youth Mass at 5pm.

■ A Sand Sculpture competition will be held on Saturday, 10 April. Ms Parker also urged parishes to organise team entries for a chance to win great prizes and the perpetual trophy.

Mater Christi parish, school start work on new centre

on a new community centre to benefit Catholic school students and parishioners has begun in Yangebup.

Fr Bryan Rosling, Parish Priest of Mater Christi parish and Mark de Kluyver, Principal of Mater Christi Primary, were on site on 2 February to mark the start of nine months of construction.

With a cost of $3 million, the Mater Christi Community Centre project is a joint initiative between the parish and Mater Christi Primary School with the parish providing the land and the school facilitating its funding through the Federal Government’s infrastructure stimulus spending.

Speaking to The Record, Fr Rosling described the project as a win for the entire community.

a “state of the art” early learning centre, a large auditori-

Anita Parker speaks to those gathered in St Mary’s for the Commissioning Mass and launch of The Journey Forth. CYM was ready to help in its implementation, she said.

Mater Christi School Principal Mark de Kluyver, at left, and Parish Priest Fr Bryan Rosling on site where the new Centre will stand. The Centre is expected to be ready within a year and will seat up to 800 people.

Mathew De Sousa, left, Fr Wroblewski, Anita and Tom Gourlay are commissioned by Bishop Sproxton as the CYM 2010 staff. Not present were Catherine Gallo Martinez and Patricia Pejcinoski. Clergy were also present to support the commissioning and concelebrate at the Commissioning Mass. PHOTOS: MATTHEW LIM

ANALYSIS

A Liturgy to take us out of the banal

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

The Holy Spirit is calling the Church to a grand liturgical stocktaking that is causing headaches for hierarchy and deep-seated anxieties for liturgists and priests around Australia, but once they start using the new texts next year officials believe it will soon be a distant memory.

Last week Perth hosted the annual conference of the National Liturgical Council, the arm of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, discussing the newly translated Roman Missal that will hit a pulpit near you by Easter next year, if not a little later.

On day two of the conference, Mercy Sister Adele Howard unveiled the incomplete but comprehensive and impressive resource to help parishes – congregations, liturgists and priests alike – understand the changes both individually and in the context of the continuum of liturgical reform that is an ongoing process for the Church since its earliest days.

It was in this context that, earlier that day, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, 62, chair of the Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, gave a vigorous address as the conference’s keynote speaker.

He has, by his own admission, shed much blood, sweat and tears as chair of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy’s (ICEL) Roman Missal Editorial Committee, along with hundreds of others involved in the

process. He addressed long-held myths about the aims of Vatican II and the misinformed “bad press” regarding the 1570 Council of Trent which had actually begun the current process of liturgical renewal. “We are passing through a critical threshold moment in the ongoing journey of liturgical

renewal that traces its roots not just to Vatican II but the Council of Trent,” he said. He also addressed the motivations behind some of those who oppose the translation process or those who accuse it of being nonconsultative and, most disturbingly for him - claim that the reforms to

be implemented somehow betray the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and, by implication, the Holy Spirit (see main story). Those who should have known better have largely been responsible for what he called “banal” liturgies in parishes that, he said, may as well be in Latin for all the

passion the congregations seem to sometimes display.

Josephite Sr Carmel Pilcher, liturgy director of the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, told The Record that it is likely all liturgists – paid and volunteers – have some kind of qualification in theological or liturgical studies.

The problem for Archbishop Coleridge, however, was whether the formation given to liturgists in recent decades has been sufficient.

The “grand liturgical stocktaking”, he said, contains enormous frustrations and creates a sense of grief as it “involves an honesty that leads to the unsettling of appalling liturgical habits that have taken root, not because of bad faith but because people were clueless, including some who think they know a lot, including, dare I say, priests”.

He also suggested seminary formation in this area during the post-Vatican II reform period could have been better, citing the liturgical training in his own time at Melbourne’s Corpus Christi College as “nothing short of pathetic”.

Now things have changed. With today’s reforms, “we’re trying to ensure that the worship of the Church has such power that it gives her the energy to do what she’s supposed to be doing,” the prelate said.

“We need to keep in mind the purpose of liturgical renewal was not interior decorating. It’s fascinating to me what liturgical studies have sometimes involved. I now think they should involve a most

Archbishop Barry Hickey celebrates the Mass during the opening and dedication of St Mary’s Cathedral on 8 December last year, watched by fellow concelebrant Archbishop Giuseppe Lazarotto, Pope Benedict XVI’s personal representative to Australia. The new prayers of the Mass, a major event in the life of the Church, are due in 2011. PHOTO: PETER CASAMENTO

and lift us up to divine abandonment

rigorous reading of texts, as I’ve been forced to do and have seen the power of the productivity of the exercise.”

For the 200-odd liturgists at the conference from every diocese in Australia, rural and city, it was transforming and liberating for some, confronting and contentious for others. Priests admitted privately they were deeply challenged; while others, including Bishops, asked The Record for digital copies of the 66-minute speech to give to clergy in their own dioceses.

Still, it may take time for the liturgists – many of whom are of the Baby Boomer generation who instituted Vatican II’s reforms as they understood them – to come around.

Fr Peter Williams, secretary of the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Commission, believes “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. That is, once people start using it, they’ll quickly get used to it.

It got ugly for a while there, though.

As Sr Adele went through the resource currently being prepared for distribution to Australian parishes, liturgists voiced their anger and disapproval at parts of it –despite her making it clear that it was only an incomplete version - and of the translation process overall.

At one point, responding to the protests, she called for the delegates to ‘be kind to each other’ – especially to those who have worked hard on the translation process and the resource to help the faithful understand the chang-

es.

with the reforms, they believe they can move forward with it. Fr Williams and Sr Adele said that all involved need to move beyond themselves. Archbishop Coleridge said that above all they need to move beyond politics and ideology, or nothing will change.

“There are some things that I would’ve done differently had it been mine, but it doesn’t belong to me or anyone else. It belongs to the whole Church,” Fr Williams said.

Other signs of change were evident when ICEL executive secretary Mgr Bruce Harbert went to a conference a year ago of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions in the US and noticed there was a marked change in those people.

Fr Williams described their revelation thus:

which produced the resource, said “we’ve been formed and informed” in the process.

Sr Adele said that “in the ’70s, we tried to deconstruct the liturgy to make it easy, but I’ve come to an understanding ... We need to have a sense of the faith community that’s bigger than just me”.

Sr Adele added that the Baby Boomers also need to realise the increasing need among today’s youth who seek truth and an authentic sense of Catholicity, especially in the liturgy.

“Some of us who are perhaps a little older need to realise that we won’t always be in the vanguard or forefront of change; that there are new generations coming along with new approaches,” she said.

Both Archbishop Coleridge and Fr Williams expected this. The prelate admitted that the process, which started in 1988 when Pope John Paul II urged Bishops’ conferences to evaluate translations of their liturgical books, was fraught with the potential for conflict.

Fr Williams told The Record he’d become a “lightning rod” for complaints.

“There are people in this conference in the Baby Boomer generation who, when they were younger, invested themselves in a project of liturgical renewal, some of those people think that what is now happening is a betrayal of where they’ve directed their life’s energies. So as they move into the tail end of their life, some of them think that this is undoing and

somehow rejecting their work,” he told The Record

Fr Williams believes this to be a misreading, as does Archbishop Coleridge. In terms of the trajectory of a continuum, it’s in fact another moment in a stage of liturgical renewal of Vatican Councils “and in 20-30 years if I’m still alive there’ll probably be another shift, and I’d hope I have the capacity not to think ‘my God, they’re destroying everything I put my heart and soul into’ and that I’d have a big enough mind to say ‘on the continuum, this is just another moment in liturgical development’. It’s not the end,” he said.

The changing of hearts is already happening. Some liturgists have privately revealed that while they’re not 100 per cent happy

“The train is leaving the station, and you’re either on the train or you’re left standing on the platform. We’re reaching that point here. I understand that people at this conference have expressed some angst, anger and hurt, but the Church to which we belong is not a democracy; has gone through a process and made a decision and this is what the Church is going to give to us.”

It appears even to have changed the hearts of those involved in the translation process, and those who worked on the resource, including by interviewing Bishops and priests around the English-speaking world for the video streaming sections.

Anne Walsh from Frayneworks, the company set up under the auspices of the Mercy Sisters and

“The younger generation has new desires and hopes in the expression of their faith, so we have to listen to what a lot of young people are saying … they want a sense of the sacred and reflection, they want to participate in a Eucharist that is prayerful and has those moments of silence that are so hard to find in busy, crazy lives, and they seek leadership in that from our Catholic community.”

Mgr Bruce Harbert, executive secretary of ICEL, told The Record that the ideal outcome of these new texts is for people to have a stronger sense of the presence of Christ in the liturgy, and that it would draw them to the liturgy.

“The Mass is Christ’s presence in the world, and people come to Mass to meet Christ, to meet God, and that would be my idea of the best possible result,” he said.

New translations will address ‘deficiencies, bleaching’

Continued from Page 1 nation at the conference which focused heavily, but not exclusively on the issue of the looming implementation of new translations of the Roman Rite, the form of the Mass celebrated in most ordinary Australian Catholic parishes.

In recent decades liturgy has often become a powder-keg issue in the Church and Australia with numerous claims and complaints from baptised Catholics and clergy at novelties and inventions carried out by over-enthusiastic liturgists, clergy and schools on a widespread scale. Archbishop Coleridge of Canberra-Goulburn, a former chaplain to Pope John Paul II, is also one of the most senior liturgists in the Church globally, holding the position of chair of the Roman Missal Editorial Committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL); he is also chair of the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Commission

While he acknowledged that the Missal used since 1973 has made gains in accessibility, participation, Scripture, adaptation and enculturation, he said it also has “serious problems theologically” and “consistently bleaches out metaphor which does scant justice to the highly metaphoric discourse” of Scripture and of the Church Fathers.

This is the result of a misunderstanding of Vatican II’s reforms, he said.

Occasional claims of the reforms being a “merely political rightwing plot of the Church” to turn the clock back miss the point of reform and of the purpose of the Mass, which is primarily Christ’s action, not just that of the faithful; and that it is a gift from God, not something to be manipulated,” he said.

“Nothing will happen unless we move beyond ideology and reduc-

ing the Church to politics and the slogans that go with them, which are unhelpful,” he said. “Drinking from the wells of tradition passed on supremely in the liturgy is what this new moment of renewal is all about.”

Archbishop Coleridge’s speech came just a fortnight after Fr Anscar Chupungco OSB, a former consulter to the Congregation for Divine Worship, told a Broken Bay Institute event in North Sydney on 22 January that the reforms were part of an attempt to turn the clock back 50 years.

Archbishop Coleridge said that one of the ironies is that “we can fail to attend to history even though perhaps the most fundamental achievement of Vatican II was the restoration of historical consciousness to the life of the Catholic Church”.

“A claim that troubles me is that this initiative is somehow a retreat from all that Vatican II tried to promote and enact, and a betrayal therefore of the Council and, by implication, the Holy Spirit,”

Archbishop Coleridge said. “If I thought that were remotely true I would not have shed the blood, sweat and tears of the last seven years and the thousands who have been involved in this process. We would have saved ourselves a lot of time and money if we’d just stuck with the Latin, but that’s not what the Spirit is saying to the Church.”

He noted that the Vatican II document Sacrosanctum Concilium explicitly affirms Trent and uses the very words used by Pope Pius V in his encyclical Quo Primum that accompanied the Missal of Pius V – including that some rites were to be restored to the original norm of the Church Fathers.

Quoting the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, he said: “If the elements of this tradition are reflected upon, it becomes clear how outstandingly and felicitously the old Missal of 1570 is brought to fulfilment in the new.”

Trent enacted relatively few changes from the 1474 Missal –which in turn looked back to the Missal of Pope Innocent III (1198-

1216) – due to “convulsive cultural change and radical attack” at the time and the lack of manuscripts to look at the norms of the Fathers of the Church to reform the liturgy.

In 1570, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the ministerial priesthood and the real and permanent presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species were under attack in the Reformation, as was the use of Latin and silence – hence why Trent considered but decided against the vernacular and receiving Communion under only one kind, the bread but not the wine.

Vatican II came in the wake of the collapse of Western Christian civilisation after the two World Wars and, by this time, countless hitherto unknown texts became available.

However, the Second Vatican Council’s reforms were not properly implemented and taken too far, he said, after the Latin texts were translated in 1973 with “breathtaking speed”.

Since then, the liturgy has largely lost the sense of the liturgy as primarily Christ’s action, as something received, “not just what we do; a mystery into which we are drawn”.

“We can’t just tamper with it,” he said. “Celebrants sometimes act as if it’s their own personal property to do with what they like. You can’t. You also need to find the balance to make it something we do as well. But it’s not something we control because of our supposed superior liturgical perceptions.”

An overly cerebral approach to liturgy, loss of ritual, over-simplification of rites, loss of a sense of silence, beauty and an unwitting clericalisation have all led to the Mass lacking its full potential to catechise the faithful and renew the Church.

The Second Vatican Council’s “catechetical thrust” that encour-

Problems new Mass will address:

■ “serious problems theologically... [in current texts which] consistently bleach out metaphor which does scant justice to the highly metaphoric discourse” of Scripture and of the Church Fathers. This results from misunderstanding of Vatican II’s reforms.

■ “A claim that troubles me is that this initiative is somehow a retreat from all that Vatican II tried to promote and enact, and a betrayal therefore of the Council and, by implication, the Holy Spirit.”

■ Second Vatican Councils’ reforms were not properly implemented and taken too far, says Archbishop Coleridge, after the Latin texts were translated in 1973 with “breathtaking speed”.

■ Since then, the liturgy has largely lost the sense of the liturgy as primarily Christ’s action, as something received “not just what we do; a mystery into which we are drawn”.

Source: speech of Archbishop Mark Coleridge

aged priests to catechise in the process of celebration has led to the Mass “drowning under the weight of supposed catechetical verbosity”.

There will be an attempt in the new translations, he said, to control “clerical verbosity and, dare I say, clerical idiosyncrasy”. There will also be an attempt to render the texts in a way that’s less overtly catechetical.

“Let the texts stand as (they are) and let catechesis draw out from the texts in a way that communicates to the community, rather than trying to build into the texts a catechesis that runs the risk of corrupting the texts or diluting their power,” he said.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge addresses liturgists in his talk at the national conference in Perth last week.

PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Anne Walsh of Fraynework, the digital media company that has produced the catechetical resource which was overseen by National Liturgy Office Director Fr Peter Williams, at right. The resource, called ‘One Body One Spirit in Christ’ will be available in two months and is designed to help prepare the faithful for the new liturgical texts due in 2011. Mercy Sister Adele Howard, middle, presented the incomplete resource to the national liturgy conference held at the Novotel Langley in Perth from 4-7 February.

PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Catechesis for new Missal ready in April

At least another 20 years worth of translations still to go: liturgy director

CATECHESIS

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

AN Australian company has produced the catechetical resource to help parishes and communities throughout the English-speaking world implement and thoroughly understand the new translations to the Roman Missal.

The resource, called One body, one spirit in Christ, will be available by April and was produced by Fraynework, a digital media company based in Melbourne and established under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy religious congregation named after the Irish nun who founded the order in Australia in 1846, Mother Ursula Frayne.

Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s National Liturgical Office, told The Record during the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Commission’s 4-7 February national conference in Perth that, given its wide availability, he hopes that “ordinary, computer-literate Catholics interested in the Mass” will buy, read and explore it on their own computer at home.

“When the first Missal was introduced in 1973 there wasn’t any substantial preparation of clergy or the laity,” Fr Williams told The Record

“So we said, ‘let us do what we should’ve done 40 years ago’ – provide a comprehensive treatment of the Mass so people actually understand what it is they’re doing when they go to Mass, who they are, what their part is, how they’re constituted as a Eucharistic people and what the Mass really means.”

The newly translated Missal also provides adaptations of Gregorian

Chant into English, he said, and users can listen to these being sung on the catechetical resource DVD.

“There’s lots of music in the Latin Mass, and we’ve replicated all that in English, with samples of it in the resource,” Fr Williams said.

Fr Williams, a former Anglican priest under whose direction the resource was prepared, said it will cost between AUS$25-30 and is not just for the liturgical scholar, priests and Bishops.

The money will go to the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), whose work will continue for at least another 20 years, he said, for other liturgical books that require translation, including rites of marriage, dedication of the altar, ordinations, Baptisms, RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), rite of Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, funerals and the Divine Office.

The resource includes filmed interviews with Bishops and priests from the 11 Bishops’ conferences in the ICEL, and other countries for whom English is the second language, explaining the changes to each section of the Mass, and the music styles recommended for the liturgy. There were about 20 contributors overall.

The resource is an interactive DVD with five main sections:

“Celebrating the Eucharist”, “Living a Eucharistic Life”, “Receiving this English Translation”, “Crafting the Art of Liturgy” and “Exploring the Mass through the Ages”. The latter includes a detailed graphic explaining the history and evolution of the Mass. The resource itself is based on five speciallycommissioned essays by four people “highly respected in the field of theology and liturgy”, Fr Williams said, but ICEL would not allow the publication of their names.

The resource was reportedly launched in London in December 2009 by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, chairman of the Leeds Group formed in 2003 to develop the resource which consists of Fr

Williams, secretary for Liturgy for the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, Fr Allen Morris, USCCB liturgy secretary Mgr James Moroni and Mgr Kevin Irwin, Dean of the Catholic University of America’s School of Theology. Fr Williams had already enlisted Frayneworks to produce the resource in 2001, a year before Bishop Rhodes formed the Leeds Group. The incomplete resource, which is waiting on Recognizio from the Holy See, was also shown at the national conference of the ACBC’s National Liturgical Office and to over 100 priests and liturgists at Perth’s Servite College on 5 February, at which those who viewed it were “completely blown away”, Fr Williams reported. A committee of 25 liturgical consultants will meet mid-year to devise strategies for implementation around Australia. Fr Williams has already been invited by several dioceses to address clergy and Catholic Education offices, including Geraldton, Cairns, Darwin, Bendigo, Ballarat and Bunbury.

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Vatican II the Church’s response to Communism

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE Second Vatican Council was partly the Catholic Church’s response to Communism which was a dominant force in the world at the time, the executive secretary of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy told The Record English Mgr Bruce Harbert said during the Australian Bishop’s National Liturgical Council conference on Perth last week that the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council reacted against Communism’s view of humanity which made too much of the separation between matter and spirit; between the body and the spirit.

“Communism is a materialistic philosophy, and the Council said we Christians love matter and the body but we don’t think they’re the whole story. They’re part of God’s plan but there are other things to consider in God’s plan,” Mgr Harbert said.

Mgr Harbert added that, responding to Communism’s view of the human race as a family, with an emphasis on society rather than the indi-

vidual, the Second Vatican Council re-emphasised that the traditional teaching of the Church which goes back to early centuries is that the Church is indeed a communion, “we’re not just isolated individuals making our way towards God, but we are saved in a Church, in a community”.

The Church, Mgr Harbert said, was effectively saying “yes, humanity is a communitarian reality, but that’s not the end of it because the human community needs to be filled with the Spirit of God”.

“In Communism there is also a huge emphasis on progress, and the Council’s response to that was to reinvigorate the Church’s teaching on eschatology - in the future,” Mgr Harbert told The Record

Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope”), the last of the Council’s documents, is all about human progress and what direction truly human progress should take.

“But (the Catholic Church) also says that ultimately, humans cannot find their own destiny unaided; and the ultimate destiny of the human race and of creation is redemption by God.”

CreativeADM

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Top, the title screen of One Body One Spirit in Christ, the resource produced by Fraynework in Melbourne under the guidance of Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Office in consultation with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. The image above is a cleric giving catechesis during the resource.

PHOTOS: ANTHONY BARICH

New texts need to be phased in gradually

T HE STRAGEGY

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE newly translated Roman Missal expected to hit Australian parishes by Easter 2010 needs to be phased in over a number of months, an expert in “change management” told The Record at a national gathering of liturgists in Perth last week.

Clare Johnson, senior lecturer in Sacramental Theology and Liturgical Studies at Australian Catholic University in Sydney, recommended rolling out the revised texts in several stages, taking up to eight weeks to learn each stage.

“The change should go over six to eight weeks, having prepared and catechised them about why it’s being done and making them understand what their role is, then getting them to practise it within the context of liturgy for six to eight weeks before you introduce the next stage,” she said.

She said the catechesis should start well before the Missal is introduced, with a leader needing to “step up and take some bullets” in explaining the changes and taking questions during a meeting held preferably in a non-liturgical setting.

This should be done with the resource One Body One Spirit in Christ, the interactive DVD to be released in April and produced by Fraynework under the direction of Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Bishops’ National Liturgical Office.

This out-of-Mass meeting can decide how the parish or community will implement the text –either by “ripping off the band-aid by changing everything at once”, or in a phased process.

This meeting can be facilitated by a liturgical specialist provided either by the National Liturgical Council or the diocese.

While admitting it would be hard convincing ordinary parishioners to attend such a meeting outside the Mass setting which constitutes many people’s only interaction with the Church apart from schools, Ms Johnson stressed that “this is the biggest change since Vatican II, and it needs to be taken with seriousness by all people”.

For ‘Generation X’ (born after the Baby Boom ended) and ‘Generation Y’ (born in the late 1980s and in the 1990s), this is the biggest change since the Mass changed from Latin to English in 1973. “I don’t think we can underestimate the grief and pain that my generation will feel with this; but we also need to not dwell too much on that,” she said.

Fr Williams told The Record that the old texts have clearly been “deficient”. “Anybody who knows Latin and looks at the Latin texts and our English texts will see they’re not very good translations. Yet like anything in life, people have come accustomed to them, got used to the cadences, rhythms, and have been part of people’s spiritual prayer for the last 40 years,” he said.

The first step, then, Miss Johnson said, is to advise people that changes are happening, as some Catholics are unaware the new translations are coming.

The few seconds or minutes before Mass, a popular teaching moment where new songs are often explained and briefly taught and rehearsed, is an opportune time to explain the changes to be made at a particular Mass, she said.

Congregations also need to be properly resourced, either by being provided with pew cards, a bulletin insert or a power-point slide.

“It’s going to take repetition before it becomes natural,” she said.

“But if we do it in stages, where they get used to one section in a small bite to digest, then the transition will happen fairly smoothly and it will be done within a matter of some months.

“It needs to take that long to give people a chance to let go of the old translations, and ease into the new ones. People need to be given a chance to own the change in the process. They haven’t been given a chance to do that as they haven’t been consulted about the fact that change is happening.”

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, chair of the Australian Bishops’ Liturgy Commission, told the national conference last week that all Bishops in the English-speaking world were given the texts for suggestions and were open to show it to anyone.

He said it was logistically impossible to show it to everyone. While one liturgist stood up during the conference to say it would still be seen by many as a fait accompli with no consultation, Miss Johnson agreed that “the reality is the majority of people couldn’t be a part of the process simply because they couldn’t have been. It was logistically impossible”.

“Where they can have a say is how it happens in their local parish, saying ‘we have to work out a way together to implement this here’ is absolutely crucial,” she said.

Weekly prayer crucial or parishes will die

STRENGTH IN COMMUNITY

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

RURAL parishes without a priest to celebrate Mass weekly need to organise themselves to gather regularly for prayer with the help of their diocese or they will fall apart, the Archdiocese of Hobart’s liturgy coordinator said.

Ahead of facilitating a workshop on lay liturgical leadership at the Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy national conference in Perth on 6 February, Cathy Murrowood told The Record that many rural dioceses around Australia are planning how to deal with a lack of priests to service their areas in coming years.

Tasmania has one deacon and 14 active diocesan priests, plus four from overseas and about 10 Religious to service 25 parishes, which are clusters of up to seven communities.

About 40 parishes were merged into 25 in the Archdiocese of Hobart a number of years ago. Priests often have pastoral associates where priests visit less than once a week.

In the first national conference where pastoral planning for priest shortages has been discussed in Australia, Ms Murrowood said that communities who come together and pray have a greater sense of

identity and of God moving in them. In Hobart, the diocese is obligated to provide a priest to visit to celebrate Mass occasionally and the community comes together to pray every other Sunday, she said. These communities need to come together on Sunday, she said, to “make the day holy and to give thanks to God”.

“If they don’t gather on Sunday, our experience is that communities that gather together only when they have Mass – which may be once every two months – are likely to eventually fail. The challenge is for communities to take responsibility for their area and community life, and for the diocese

to support them in that,” she said. She acknowledged that life without regular sacraments can be difficult for Catholics, as “we’re a sacramental Church and a sacramental people. Mass is our usual expectation for Sunday”.

The problem is exacerbated by the common problem rural towns face – youth moving to the cities.

Thus, many parishioners are elderly and attending Mass proves difficult, especially in winter in Tasmania, where roads are often winding and steep, plus the added complication of wildlife crossing.

Catechesis, she said, is the key. Hobart Liturgy office representatives visit each community.

Vatican to address liturgical ignorance among Religious

Religious need liturgical training, says Vatican, which is preparing a guide to help them

CONSECRATED Religious

“represent a kind of bridge toward God for everyone they meet,” Pope Benedict XVI said on 2 February as he presided at a Vespers service in St Peter’s Basilica for the feast of the Presentation: the Day for Consecrated Life. Religious life, the Pope said, “is a testament to the superabundance of love which stimulates us to lose our own life in response to the superabundance of the love of the Lord”.

A total lifelong dedication to Christ is a powerful witness to the secular world, he said.

“It has meaning only if He truly is the Mediator between God and us; otherwise it would merely be a form of sublimation or evasion,” the pontiff added.

The Pope offered special praise for cloistered Religious whose role in the Church involves “taking upon themselves the suffer-

ing and trials of others and joyfully offering everything for the salvation of the world”.

In giving his thanks and support to all Religious, he made a special reference to “consecrated people who feel the burden of a daily fatigue that offers scant human gratification” as well as aged, ill, and struggling Religious.

Cardinal Franc Rodé, Prefect of the Congregation for Religious, also disclosed that his dicastery is preparing a new document encouraging proper liturgical formation of Religious.

Emphasising the “absolute necessity of prayer” in the life of Religious, Cardinal Rodé told the Italian-language arm of Vatican Radio that engagement in the liturgy is a pivotal aspect of communal prayer life for Religious.

He said his office had discovered “a certain ignorance, a certain lack of liturgical knowledge and training in young men and women Religious.”

He reported that the Congregation for Religious is working with the Congregation for Divine Worship to prepare a guide to liturgical training for Religious men and women.

Clare Johnson

A young member of a religious congregation prays during Mass. The Vatican has said that because of the importance of Religious in the life of the Church, liturgical training is needed to overcome a “certain ignorance” that has been detected in the training of some young Religious. CNS

On moral displacement

Most people want to “feel” moral. We see it in our own lives and the lives of those around us. Indeed, we see it almost everywhere, especially in the media, where moral judgements are made daily - implicitly or explicitly.

This moral aspect of our identity is not accidental. From the Christian perspective one could argue that the sense of right and wrong is an innate thing, part of the deepest reality of who we are as human beings. It follows fairly logically from what might be called a Christian premise that if human beings really are made in the image and likeness of God, our strong sense of what is right or wrongwhich can often, admittedly, result in an incorrect judgement because of a lack of access to all the necessary information - is still a reflection of the fact that we are like God, who we know is love.

We are created in God’s image and are destined, as St John says, to be like him. Our innate sense of what is moral could perhaps be described as a resonance of our God-like nature. We do not know everything, as God does, but the capacity to perceive and reason and love are essential requirements for making moral decisions and, being like God, our love gives us a desire to do the right thing - by others and by ourselves. Life is the voyage. Being moral is how we navigate.

As mentioned briefly in last week’s editorial on comments made by a father, it is clear that when one comes to speak of a moral sense and moral sensibilities, in a broad and general way things have gone badly askew in our society and our culture. Christians feel increasingly isolated and alienated by the lack of moral consensus which has become the norm of life in one of the most completely secular societies in today’s world and the phenomenon has undoubtedly taken its toll on Christian identity.

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Paradoxically, the problem may be glimpsed by looking at it from the opposite angle. One could, perhaps, say instead that the lack of moral consensus is also a consensus that there is really no morality. This is usually referred to by philosophers as moral or cultural relativism and is often used as a stepping stone to the conclusion that what is right for one person (virtue in relationships with others, for example, especially intimate relationships) is wrong for another who sees nothing particulay wrong or harmful in using as many people as they might like for their own pleasure as long as the others are happy to go along with it.

Interestingly, the effort to do away with what could broadly be described as traditional and Christian values to do with marriage, sex and relationships, which was at the heart of the Tony Abbott affair, can also be described as an expression of the phenomenon of moral displacement.

If important aspects of natural law and Christian morality - especially in the area of sexual ethics - are not acknowledged and lived, there is a tendency to lapse into moralistic positions such as (to give a few examples) anti-smoking campaigns, climate change hysteria (which looks and sounds suspiciously like Chicken Little running around proclaiming that the sky is about to fall down), or marriage for any two individuals or inanimate objects regardless of any other considerations, with, at times, near fanatical fervour.

These may be issues in some measure but they are usually blown out of proportion, seemingly as a subconscious substitution for the loss of other more definite, though more personally challenging, moral concerns such as the sanctity of life, the superiority of chastity, the perseverance and fidelity required in the commitment to marriage and the family and so on.

Here is one conclusion that does not seem unreasonable: to be moral means being prepared to make difficult and unpopular decisions. Moral displacement, however, seems to see people defaulting to fanatical pursuit of ‘motherhood’ positions, looking and sounding in the process almost like the Taliban in their fervour. Such was the case with the media’s thinly veiled efforts to portray federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as some kind of mediaeval Inquisitor.

Moral displacement also appears to be an exercise in identifying one’s self with the majority sentiment where there is minimal risk of being accused, denounced or criticised. One need only think of the number of rock music and movie stars who have so often, over the decades, issued calls to save the children or save the environment or save something in what looks suspiciously like attempts to position themselves conspicuously in relation to motherhood issues with which almost no-one could disagree. In the end, moral displacement leads to inanity and mediocrity and is the deformity of a deeply and innately good thing. One of the most biting recent satires of moral displacement was popular comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s often confronting portrayal of Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion reporter convinced that a wider appreciation of the importance of fashion would help build lasting world peace. Surprisingly, sometimes Cohen’s deliberate gaffes were too much for a media dependent on ratings and too uncomfortable because he satirised something it believed should never be satirised.

In the end, the moralising of moral displacement can become an exercise in pure sentimentality, minus rationality and accountability. After all, who openly supports killing the children or destroying the environment or destroying every living tree on the face of the earth? Actually, nobody. It also eases the conscience by enabling people to avoid consideration or involvement in really serious moral issues - such as abortion and the destruction of marriages. It becomes an escape clause to allow us to feel that we are being moral while we are really avoiding talking about or discussing far more important issues. It is no surprise that moral displacement can become the morality of the mob, for a mob, especially a lynch mob, has very little mind at all. And, in the end, moral displacement really can lead you up a tree.

If it is, then it has a responsibility to be engaged in peer review and professional development, certainly not to remain silent, keeping ‘the lid on’ this human tragedy.

Julie Cook Director Abortion Grief Australia Inc

Blessed Mary MacKillop

GFacebook and Christian Meditation

In last week’s Record a report appeared on statements made on the social networking site Facebook by Eddie Russell about Christian meditation. I have been going to Christian meditation for the past 10 years and it has had a huge impact on my spiritual life and has definitely brought me closer to Our Lord. I am very curious about where Mr Russell obtained his information but I would like to list the errors of his article:

(1) Christian meditation was introduced and taught by such respected teachers as Fr John Main OSB and Fr Thomas Keating OCSO.

(2) Christian meditation is hardly “New Age” as it has been practised and written about since the early desert fathers.

(3) Christian meditation’s roots are at the centre of “Authentic Christian mystical theology” and are found in all the writings of the mystics.

(4) Repressed feelings may arise in all forms of prayer and meditation and is of the healing work of the Holy Spirit.

I think Mr Russell needs to get his facts right before he condemns and criticises a very beautiful and healing practice of the Catholic Church.

Ena Phillips Dianella

This trauma is real

Catholic Health Australia chief executive Martin Laverty’s response to Abortion Grief Australia’s report calling for abortion trauma to be treated as a serious mental health issue lacks accountability and is in need of being more specific regarding his claim of ‘without evidence’.

In March 2008, following media attention on the suicide of a young English artist, The Royal College of Psychiatrists withdrew from its position on the safety of induced abortion, publicly calling for women to be warned of the serious psychological complications.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ shift in policy was inevitable. There is no question of the reality of abortion trauma or its seriousness, only the extent of the problem.

Research based on medical records is particularly damning of abortion with one Finnish study that included 1.1 million pregnancies finding, for under 25 year olds, a twelve fold increased suicide rate associated with abortion compared to women who gave birth.

AGA’s report did not call for ‘reform’ as Mr Laverty implied, but that abortion trauma be treated as would be any other serious health issue.

Either Catholic Health Care is addressing the issue of abortion trauma or it is not. If not, why not?

ood news about Kathleen Evans of Lake Macquarie, diagnosed with lung cancer spread to her brain and told she’d be dead within months - now, 17 years later, alive and well.

This miracle is attributed to her prayers to Blessed Mary MacKillop. What are the sceptics to make of this? We live in a society where believing that kind of thing is considered superstition.

But Christians believe in miracles anyway, saying that the Big Miracle - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after being crucified - also has the evidence of eyewitnesses and merits belief.

The eyewitnesses to that event certainly didn’t make the story up. They persisted in proclaiming what they had seen in the face of persecution, and many were themselves crucified. Others were thrown to the lions, etc. To those who doubt, I say, “Do not close your mind. Do not rule God out. Remember, the one true joy in life is to know that God lives and that God is love.”

Arnold Jago Mildura

The glare of Candlemas

Recently one morning, I attended Candlemas, but first there was a little ceremony in the church porch to bless the candles, of the new-age, folksy kind that liturgical committees feel we should all learn. I and four others, however, remained in the body of the church, preparing ourselves for Mass in a more fitting way. Then one of those angry little old men that are so common in the church down here strode up the aisle and ordered us out. The little ceremony was compulsory. I sat in my place, however, and copped such a glare of rage that I thought the fellow would strike me, or drop of apoplexy. So much for the warm faith community inspired by the ‘spirit of Vatican II.’

Peter Gilet Albany WA

I’ll take Year of the Priest first

With regard to Neil K Smith’s letter, “A Year of the Laity?” (The Record, 3 February 2010), during one of my younger years I asked my mother why we had Mother’s Days and Father’s Days, but no “Children’s’ Days.

She replied that every day was “Children’s” Day. Using the same understanding of service that my mother used, I believe that we can say that every year is a Year of the Laity, during which our priests are available to us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Mr Smith states that Holy Orders does not “augment or change” the “baptismal dignity” a priest has. Whilst possibly true, Holy Orders does raise the priest to a different plane. The famous mystic St Thérèse of Lisieux said that, by their station, priests are above

angels. St Francis de Sales was told by a newly ordained priest, whom God had favoured with being able to see his Guardian Angel, that the Angel, who prior to ordination had walked at his right and preceded him through doorways, now walked at his left side and refused to enter before him: Deference by the angel to the priest.

Having a “Year of the Priest” (note: not a Year for the Priest) in no way denigrates the role of the laity, and if some of the descriptive words applied to the priesthood can also be applied to the laity, so be it. Remember, every priest was a member of the laity first. It is from our ranks that the priests rise. We, the laity, have the important task of nurturing the future priests.

Graham D Geoghegan Stirling WA

Me too

In view of misunderstandings which continue to persist, I should like to point out that the Church is properly referred to as “The Mystical Body of Christ” to distinguish it from His Physical Body. As Pope Pius XII states in his June 1943 Encyclical On The Mystical Body of Christ, paragraph 60: “... the Body of Christ which is the Church, should be called mystical ... for by it we may distinguish the body of the Church which is a society whose head and ruler is Christ, from His physical body, which, born of the Virgin Mother of God, now sits at the right hand of the Father and is hidden under the Eucharistic veils”... The quote above is easy to find using Google.

There, one also sees many other references to the Mystical Body of Christ: eg from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Only an ordained priest can effect the change of Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The lay members of the Mystical Body of Christ (the Church) cannot do this. This is a clear and important difference between the priestly clergy and the laity. The Church was established as a hierarchy and will remain so (as has been pointed out by Archbishop Hickey in the past); one should not try to blur the differences between the ordained members and the unordained.

We have different parts to play and all should pull together towards strengthening the Church on Earth.

MJ Gonzalez Willetton WA

Guy’s take OK ...

Guy Crouchback’s article on atheism’s deficiencies (The Record 4 November 2009) was generally excellent.

As he said: “Without good, as countless philosophers ... have pointed out, evil is simply meaningless. [and] if there is good, there must be a God. Under whatever name that God may go.”

Philosophically, well said. Faith must be underpinned by solid rational foundations.

Some may still make the mistake from this point of assuming that all religions are basically the same.

As an adult convert to faith in Jesus Christ from precisely Richard Dawkins’ type of Darwinian atheism, I point out from personal experience that mere rational–philosophical acknowledgement of ‘a God out there somewhere’ is only the rawest beginning.

Trevor Boardman

Maylands WA

VISTA 1

Journalist DAVID

VINCENT comments on a new book demonstrating the fallacy of the media’s view that religion is in terminal decline

Perhaps one of the best kept secrets in the media of the 21st century has been exposed in a new book by two of the world’s leading journalists - Editor-in-chief of The Economist magazine, John Micklethwait, and the magazine’s former Washington correspondent, Adrian Wooldridge. The book, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, points out that outside a few developed nations, particularly in Europe, religious faith has not only been growing, but growing rapidly.

“If you look around the world . . . throughout America, most of Asia, Africa, Latin America, God is doing well,” Micklethwait told one interviewer. He says the reason he and his colleague wrote the book was because the truth challenges the assumption that many people in developed countries have been brought up with“the more modern a country gets, the less religious it gets, the more secular it gets”.

When you look around the world, says Micklethwait, this view just isn’t true.

“It’s true of Western Europe and it’s true of Australia,” he says, “but it’s not true of most of the world. In most of the other areas of the world, religion is doing very well, and very much following the American model. If you want a brilliant example of that ... go to China. It has close to 100 million Christians now, compared to 70 million members of the Communist Party. It’s a big change and it’s symbolic of

The (slightly) exaggerated demise of God

CHA urges greater support for patients in palliative care

The National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) recent foray into palliative care places too much emphasis on cost and resource containment and not enough on people’s rights to receive essential health and aged care services, Catholic Health Australia has said.

In a formal response to the NHMRC’s discussion paper, “Ethical Issues involved in transitions to palliation and end of life care for people with chronic conditions”, CHA said the paper failed to adequately highlight all the ethical aspects of decisions that people with a chronic condition face towards the end of life.

Nor does the paper address how end of life care is any different for those with a chronic condition, those with a life limiting illness, or older people, CHA said.

what’s been happening around the world.”

Micklethwait is not just talking statistics here. He travelled the world to get a first-hand look at what is taking place. For instance he travelled around China, mixing with those who have had a faith conversion. He visited house churches, including one in Shanghai, to see what was taking place. He came away with the belief that as Christianity spreads throughout China, “really incredibly quickly”, it will certainly become the world’s biggest Christian country. He believes it may even become the world’s biggest Muslim country as well - “there are already more Muslims there than there are in Saudi Arabia”.

Christianity, and even less about the other great religions, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam.

That is not to say that all religious correspondents whom I have known over the years have been ignorant of religion.

Some have been very well informed, including a minister of religion who had very good relations with religious leaders from many other faiths. But in more recent times, this has not been the case.

Essentially, through the book Micklethwait says he is calling on Western intellectuals and journalists to at least recognise the facts: “Religion is there whether we like it or not.”

Why should he need to do such a thing? The reason will be obvious to any experienced journalist - the fact is that the fourth estate has tended to be a breeding ground for cynicism.

Apart from columnists, particularly those dedicated to taking up controversial positions on social questions, to embrace or to promote religion is tantamount to a betrayal of an unwritten code.

In my own experience extending over more than three decades, most journalists know next to nothing about religion.

In one case I know of, a prominent newspaper appointed one journalist as religious affairs correspondent simply because he had a passing interest in Buddhism. The journalist in question knew almost nothing about the largest religion he would be covering

Even the journalists on some radio and television religious programmes have shown little understanding of the subject about which they are meant to have some expertise. Some even appear to be dedicated to disparaging, rather than informing about, religion.

But moving away from those journalists who are meant to specialise in religious reporting to general reporters, the view that I have formed over many years is that their ignorance about religion is nothing more than a form of professional snobbery. It often seems to be based on the conception that all real power in modern democratic societies resides in politics and business.

Journalists from The Economist have not been any different - at the very least, the magazine has had a very secular world view. But the two authors of God is Back seem to be better informed than most of their predecessors.

At the same time, they are in no way espousing religious belief.

They assert that theirs is purely a work of journalism, meant to inform readers about one of the biggest sociological developments of our time. And for those who consider religion as the preserve of backward peasants, they have a clear message. Micklethwait sums it up: “One of the oddest things

is it’s precisely the most modern go-ahead people who are often turning towards religion. Just as in China, you have the prosperous bourgeoisie finding this new thing.”

Even within the Chinese Government, says Micklethwait, views differ: “One bit is keen to have some sort of glue to keep their country together. Another group, though, is very frightened by the fact that churches are the biggest NGO in the country already. You have already got things like the Falun Gong which they were frightened of, you have some of the rebellions of the 19th century led by Christians. And at the most extreme I’ve even heard Chinese people talk about John Paul II bringing down the Soviet Union. So they are worried by this new thing which is growing within them. On the other hand they sometimes want to promote it, because they see it as a glue to bring things together.”

And for those journalists who still believe religion is some kind of aberration which does harm, Micklethwait believes that the opposite view is more consistent with the facts: “Man is essentially quite a theotropic creature,” he says.

“If you leave people to it, give them a decent supply of religions, the chances are they will probably grasp one. It’s true everywhere outside that Western Europeplus-Australian phenomenon. The second reason is there are a lot of sociological reasons why people would want to be religious. There’s a wealth of evidence that religious people are healthier, wealthier and wiser ...”

David Vincent is at present a Sydney-based freelance journalist. He has worked on many newspapers and magazines over the past 35 years. This is an edited version of an article which first appeared in Perspective magazine. God is Back is available from The Record Bookshop from mid-March for $28.95.

- This article first appeared on Mercatornet.com

Rather than focusing on implementing clinical pathways at the end of life, CHA said that greater emphasis should be placed on providing better support from family, carers and health practitioners.

CHA recommended the appointment of patient representatives for those facing end of life issues..

Quality and safety: Peer review guide for optimal patient care

Peer review of quality and safety issues should take place out of a desire to improve systems rather than as a punitive exercise, Catholic Health Australia has told the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC).

Responding to the ACSQHC’s draft Peer Review Guide, CHA noted that optimal patient care should always remain the top priority. The Guide is designed to improve the robustness of the peer review process.

Peer review should be professional and objective, CHA said in its response, which was developed in consultation with members.

CHA added that training for the purpose of peer review is time and dollar intensive - with so many competing demands for resources this will become another financial issue for health services to address. Identifying best practice peer review and conducting relevant training should be a priority for Health Ministers when considering this draft document, CHA said.

For many, probably most, journalists operating in the Western media today, God is absent from the picture. But a new book by two leading members of the media illustrates how journalists’ assumptions about the irrelevance of religion to modern life blinds them to major stories. MODIFIED PUBLIC IMAGE

Father Brown’s Birthday

There are some wonderful old black and white movies showing late at night every now and then, not least among them one based on a priest-detective who always got his man - to save his soul. But it’s just one of nearly 50 tales about this remarkable character.

CELEBRATED BY TONY EVANS

Father Brown celebrates his onehundredth birthday this year, although as you might expect of a private eye, the exact date of his birth remains a little obscure.

The first collection of his mysteries was published in 1911 under the title

The Innocence of Father Brown which might suggest that his centenary will occur in 2011. But not so fast. A few of the stories had appeared in magazines the previous year.

Much earlier, in 1904, Fr Brown’s equally famous chronicler, GK Chesterton, first met

Fr John O’Connor who was said to be the inspiration for Fr Brown’s character - if not his appearance. It seems reasonable to suppose that the idea for the priest-detective formed slowly in Chesterton’s mind over several subsequent meetings. In those years Fr Brown might be described as ‘in utero’.

Thus, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, we are confident that the year 2010 is an entirely proper year to hold centenary birthday celebrations. All five books of the Father Brown stories, comprising 49 stories in total, have been continuously in print for a hundred years and, in spite of fierce rivalry and reader loyalties, the priest-detective maintains his prominent place in the pantheon of British private detectives. He is senior to Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and is ten years older than Lord Peter Wimsey. Only Sherlock Holmes takes precedence as the prototype of them all.

Even those with little knowledge of Chesterton but who may have learnt a poem or studied an essay or two at school, will connect him with the Father Brown stories.

Chesterton wrote many other and more profoundly important works but the Father Brown stories remain indelibly linked with the author in the public mind. In a sense, the names GK Chesterton and Fr Brown are almost interchangeable - possibly because there is much in the character and appearance of both author and his priest-detective that is held in common. Chesterton describes Fr Brown as ‘round as a Norfolk dumpling’, and elsewhere as ‘other-worldly,’ ‘simple and impractical,’ prone to drop his parcels, uncertain which direction to take, and which end of his return railway ticket to offer to the porter. He always carried a shabby umbrella and wore an air of distraction as though his mind were elsewhere. This could easily be a description of Chesterton himself in similar circumstances.

Fr O’Connor described Chesterton’s way of working “as if mooning, but he never mooned. He was always working out something in his mind and when he drifted from his study into the garden, and was seen making deadly passes with his sword-stick at the dahlias, we knew he was getting his thoughts in order”.

Another well-known Chesterton story tells how he stopped the traffic in Fleet Street by standing in the middle of the road deep in thought, having momentarily forgotten where he was. In both these and many other similar incidents we may ask, was this Chesterton; or was it Fr Brown?

They could be a description of them both.

But this angelic simplicity and apparent other-worldliness of both Chesterton and Fr Brown veiled a profound understanding of human behaviour and the human tendency to evil, arising from the Catholic doctrine of original sin. According to Chesterton’s first biographer, Maisie Ward, O’Connor “shattered Gilbert with certain lurid knowledge of human depravity which he had acquired in the course of his priestly experience.” Later, arising from these conversations, grew the idea of a simple priest - armed with experience gained both in the Confessional and in close observation of human nature - who could be one jump ahead of the criminal (and the police detective) and would be able to solve the crime.

Paradox too – as one has learned to expect from Chesterton – also plays an important part in Fr Brown’s sleuthing. Chesterton consistently returns to some of his philosophical ideas, first expressed in his more serious works, and uses them as paradoxes in the plots of the detective stories. An obvious example can be seen in the story, The Invisible Man Chesterton was fond of showing that we run

How Chesterton’s hero led Obi-Wan Kenobi into the Church

BY RITA REICHARDT

the risk of drawing the wrong conclusions if we consistently view a problem from one superficial observation. But if we could be persuaded to view the problem from a different angle we might draw a completely different conclusion. As one of Chesterton’s characters says in The Man Who Was Thursday “We see everything from behind. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is hiding a face? If we could only get round in front!”

He uses the same idea in a different context in the Father Brown story, The Invisible Man The hall porter of a block of flats, a policeman on duty and a street vendor, all three posted to watch for a stranger entering the building, swear there was no-one who did so.

Fr Brown realises that they overlooked the postman because they thought someone so familiar didn’t count: they were looking for a possible stranger. As Fr Brown explains: “Have you ever noticed that people never answer what you say? When the lady of a big country house is asked, ‘Is anybody staying with you?’ The lady doesn’t answer, ‘Yes, the butler and the parlour maid and three footmen’. The lady replies: ‘There is nobody’, meaning nobody of the sort you mean.

“The members of staff are invisible. People are telling the truth but it is partial truth, the truth they think the questioner wants to hear.”

A similar theme is the basis of another famous story, The Queer Feet. At an eccentric gentlemen’s club there are supposed to be fifteen waiters attending the club members at their annual dinner. The members swear there is the usual number of waiters – it’s a rule of the club. They each testify that they were aware of fifteen. But in fact there were only fourteen because one waiter was dead upstairs in bed. As Father Brown discovers, a thief who attempted to carry away the precious silver fish knives cleverly impersonated two waiters by changing the character and the speed of his footsteps in the passage from kitchen to dining room. The priest, sitting in an adjoining room, was puzzled by the sound of irregular footsteps, “First came quick, funny little steps like a man walking on tip-toe for a wager; then came careless, creaking steps, as of a big man walking about with a cigar. But they were both made by the same feet, I swear.”

In this and so many other stories, Fr Brown is not as fundamentally interested in the arrest and capture of the guilty man as he is in hearing his Confession and saving his soul – an unfashionable and misunderstood purpose in today’s world.

This ever-present religious dimension to the stories, and the priestly duty that motivates the detective, are the main reasons why the Father Brown stories are not universally popular with film and television producers - as the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes stories are, where no religious point intrudes. Few people nowadays believe in souls and the pressing need to save them. However, this theological point was well made in the 1954 Fr Brown film loosely based on The Blue Cross and starring Alec Guinness. Fr Brown (Alec Guinness) not only recovers the valuable Cross, but pursues the master criminal, Flambeau, to persuade him to repent and save his soul - an idea less foreign to audiences in the post-war period than it would be today. (But evidently not foreign to Alec Guinness who recounts in his autobiography that an incident occurring while making that film helped him decide to enter the Catholic Church).

On a practical level many of the Father Brown stories are likely to stretch our credulity; they rely on fantastic happenings or implausible constructs. But the willing reader will suspend disbelief or objection because of the ingenuity, the spontaneous gaiety of the plots, and the simplicity and insightful wisdom of the priest-detective.

As one reviewer wrote when The Innocence of Father Brown was first published: “The insight of Fr Brown is unclouded by even the faintest interest in himself. His knowledge and estimate of evil is of an accuracy not to be reached except by the unshakably innocent.”

We wish you a Happy Birthday, Fr Brown. And may your stories be told and read, and re-read, by appreciative readers for another hundred years!

“If I have one regret ... it would be that I didn’t take the decision to become a Catholic in my early twenties.”

- Sir Alec Guinness

This “constant interest in religious matters” led the young Guinness to attend Presbyterian services for a time, but the attraction did not last. He wrote in his autobiography that it had never even crossed his mind to step inside a Catholic church. He said his “tolerance for Catholics, unless one personally knew them, was limited to the sympathetic, although condescending” view.

Sir Alec Guinness is considered one of the finest actors of the twentieth century, known for his ability to portray a wide range of characters. His portrayal of Hamlet on the London stage was widely acclaimed, and he won international success in his films. Who can forget his masterly depiction of Fagan in Oliver Twist or the wry humour in the comedies Kind Hearts and Coronets (in which he played eight roles), The Man in the White Suit The Lavender Hill Mob, and The Captain’s Paradise? In 1957, Guinness won an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in

Guinness left school at eighteen and went to work as a copywriter for an advertising agency. He no longer thought much about religion, believing it just “so much rubbish, a wicked scheme of the Establishment to keep the working man in his place.”

He flirted with Communism by distributing Marxist/Leninist literature. He visited Quaker meetings, investigated Buddhism, and had an interest in tarot cards.

Guinness’ career as a copywriter was a failure, so he turned to the stage, realising an attraction he had since childhood. Success came soon.

He was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic when an Anglican priest visited him in his

trustingly accompanied the “priest.” That incident affected Guinness. “Continuing my walk,” he said, “I reflected that a Church that could inspire such confidence in a child, making priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable, could not be as scheming or as creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, longabsorbed prejudices.” Shortly thereafter, Guinness’ son Matthew, age 11, was stricken with polio and paralysed from the waist down. The future for the boy was doubtful and at the end of each day’s work on the film, Guinness began dropping in at a little Catholic church on his route home. He decided to strike a bargain with God: If God would let Matthew recover, Guinness would not stand in the way if the boy wished to become Catholic. Happily, Matthew recovered completely, and Guinness and his wife enrolled him in a Jesuit academy. At the age of fifteen, Matthew announced that he wished to become Catholic. Guinness kept his end of the bargain with God: He readily agreed to the conversion. But God wanted much

The Bridge over the River Kwai. Later films included Star Wars, Little Dorrit, and the television series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Yet in his autobiography, Blessings in Disguise Guinness highlights his conversion to the Catholic Church almost more than the success of his acting career. His was an unusual conversion.

Alec Guinness was born in London in 1914 to Agnes Cuffe, an unmarried woman who cared for him in a haphazard manner. She refused to divulge his father’s identity and he never discovered why the name Guinness appeared on his birth certificate. By the time he was six, the child often was left alone for hours at a time. His mother entered a brief marriage to a brutal man who was hated and feared by young Alec. The boy’s only release from the misery of poverty and neglect came when he was sent away to school. As a teenager, he discovered the enchantment of the theatre.

At the age of sixteen, Guinness was confirmed in the Anglican faith, but he secretly declared himself an atheist. “Certain incidents or sayings in the New Testament,” he wrote, “would pluck me back, from time to time, to something approaching belief, and I retained a constant interest in religious matters while being ignorant of any theology, but for the most part gave in to adolescent cynicism”.

dressing room. The priest complained that Guinness was blessing himself incorrectly in the play. This encounter turned out to be a step back toward Christianity.

On a terrible night during World War II, when London was under a Luftwaffe attack, Guinness sought shelter at Rev Cyril Tomkinson’s vicarage. He was concerned about his wife and their young son who were in a rented cottage in Stratford-uponAvon. Over a glass of claret, the Anglican cleric gave Guinness a copy of St Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life and advised him always to genuflect before the altar. Guinness had no idea what was meant by the “Real Presence,” but with bombs exploding around them, it did not seem the appropriate time for discussion.

Guinness returned to the Anglican faith and often bicycled in the dark of winter mornings to receive Communion in a country church. His friendship with Tomkinson had reduced his anti-clericalism but not his anti-Romanism.

It took Fr Brown to begin that process.

Fr Brown is the drab and delightful Catholic priest invented by GK Chesterton. One of Guinness’ most memorable characterisations was of this humble, crimesolving cleric. The film was being shot in a remote French village. One evening Guinness, still in costume, was on his way back to his lodgings. A little boy, mistaking him for the real thing, grabbed his hand and

more. Guinness began to study Catholicism. He had long talks with a Catholic priest. He made a retreat at a Trappist abbey. He even attended Mass with Grace Kelly while he was working on a film in Los Angeles. The doctrines of indulgences and infallibility slowed him for a time, but his description of finally entering the Church said it all: “There had been no emotional upheaval, no great insight, certainly no proper grasp of theological issues; just a sense of history and the fittingness of things.”

Guinness was received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Portsmouth and, while he was in Sri Lanka making The Bridge over the River Kwai his wife surprised him by also converting. As is often the case with new converts, he felt periods of deep peace punctuated by physical delight. He recounts once running like a madman to visit the Blessed Sacrament in a little nondescript church. Reflecting on that episode, he wrote, “If religion meant anything at all it meant that the whole man worshipped, mind and body alike ... There was some reassurance when I discovered that the good, brilliant, acutely sane Ronald Knox had found himself running, on several occasions, to visit the Blessed Sacrament.”

Sir Alec Guinness died in 2000 at the age of 84, grateful to Chesterton’s Fr Brown, who led him by the hand into the Church, and to a young boy’s recovery, which sealed a bargain with God.

Fr Brown’s creator, GK Chesterton, above, poses for a photograph. His creation, the absent-minded genius-priest-detective, Father Brown, first appeared in print a century ago this year. Since then he has become one of the beloved figures of private detective fiction in the venerable British tradition alongside the creations of other writers such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. However, unlike his fictional peers, Father Brown is less interested in tracking down the criminals than in hearing their confessions and their eternal salvation. Fr Brown, writes Chestertonian specialist and Perth author Tony Evans, may also have been an unconscious fictionalised version of his creator, GK Chesterton, whose gift for paradox and absent-minded genius were legendary.

DOMAIN IMAGES

Father Brown, played by Sir Alec Guinness, moves pieces on the chessboard. But one gets the feeling that he is really thinking about who a particular criminal might be, how they did the crime, and why.

‘Reclaim authentic spirit’

Papal Master of Ceremonies spells out ideals of liturgical reform, and roles of clergy, laity

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE Pontifical Master of Liturgical Ceremonies has urged Australian priests to reaffirm the “authentic” spirit of the liturgy through orientation of prayer, use of music and reestablishing the crucial link between adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the Mass.

At the 4-8 January Year for Priests Clergy Conference in Rome - attended by Perth priests, Frs John O’Reilly, Michael Rowe and Don Kettle and organised by the Australian Confraternity of Catholic ClergyMgr Guido Marini urged priests to promote the concept of an “uninterrupted tradition” of the Church, as continuity is the only criterion to correctly interpret the life of the Church, especially Vatican II documents and their proposed reforms.

He stressed that liturgy must not be a source of conflict for those who find good only in that which came before or, on the contrary, almost always find wrong in what came before.

In a talk titled Introduction the spirit of the liturgy on 6 January, Mgr Marini addressed the priests on the liturgy as God’s gift to the Church, the orientation of liturgical prayer, adoration and union with God, and the proper interpretation of Vatican II’s call for ‘active participation’.

He said the term ‘active participation’ has been widely misinterpreted, and re-aligned it with the Second Vatican Council’s universal call to holiness; that only by a true understanding of the mysteries and allowing them to transform them will the faithful be full and active participants in the liturgy.

The concept of the liturgy as God’s gift to the Church implies it is not open to manipulation, as many priests, he said, have participated in; while the orientation of prayer and music in the liturgy needs to retain the sense of the sacred so that the faithful can be transformed.

● Sacred liturgy is God’s great gift to the Church, Mgr Marini said, and while the Missal indicates the sections where adaptations may be made, “some individuals have managed to upset the liturgy of the Church in various ways under the pretext of a wrongly devised creativity”.

This has been done to adapt to the local situation and the needs of the community, thus appropriating the right to remove from, add to or modify the liturgical rite for subjective and emotional ends.

“For this, we priests are largely responsible,” he said.

It is for this reason, he noted, that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said: “There is need of, at the very least, a new liturgical awareness that might put a stop to the tendency to treat the liturgy as if it were an object to manipulation. We have reached the point where liturgical groups stitch together the Sunday liturgy on their own authority.” While this is done by creative and skilled people, “it is too little”.

Mgr Marini added: “The liturgy is not a closed circle in which we decide to meet, perhaps to encourage one another, to feel we are the protagonists of some feast. The liturgy is God’s summons to His people to be in His presence; it is the advent of God among us; it is God encountering us in this world.”

“What casual folly it is indeed, to claim for ourselves the right to

change in a subjective way the holy signs which time has sifted, through which the Church speaks about herself, her identity and her faith.”

● Prayer facing east - more specifically, facing the Lord, is a characteristic expression of the authentic spirit of the liturgy, Mgr Marini said.

The proposal of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and presently reaffirmed during his pontificate, is to place the Crucifix on the centre of the altar so that all during the celebration of the liturgy may “concretely face and look upon the Lord”, so as to orient also their prayer and hearts.

Quoting Pope Benedict’s Complete Works, dedicated to the liturgy, Mgr Marini said: “The idea that the priest and people should stare at one another during prayer was born only in modern Christianity, and is completely alien to the ancient Church. The priest and people most certainly do not pray one to the other, but to the one Lord.

“Therefore, they stare in the same direction during prayer: either towards the east as a cosmic symbol (the sun, which rises in the east, symbolises Christ) of the Lord who comes, or, when this is not possible, towards the image of Christ in the apse, towards a crucifix or simply towards the heavens, as our Lord Himself did in His priestly prayer the night before His passion (John 17.1).”

Mgr Marini also dismissed the claim that a crucifix on the altar, as suggested by Pope Benedict, distracts the congregation’s sight from the priest, “for they are not to look to the celebrant at that point of the liturgy”.

“They are to turn their gaze towards the Lord. In like manner, the presider of the celebration should also be able to turn towards the Lord,” he said.

“The crucifix does not obstruct our view but expands our horizon to see the world of God; the crucifix brings us to meditate on the mystery; introduces us to the heavens from where the only light capable of making sense of life on this earth comes,” he said.

● Mgr Marini also urged the restoration of the link between Eucharistic adoration and Mass. Quoting the Pope’s 2007 post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis (Sacrament of Charity), he said that during early phases of liturgical reform, the inherent relationship between Mass and adoration was unclear, due to the widespread notion that the Eucharistic bread was given to us to be eaten, not looked at.

Mgr Marini refuted this, however, by quoting St Augustine: “No one eats that flesh without adoring it; we should sin were we not to adore it.”

In this way, Eucharistic adoration, Mgr Marini said, is simply the natural consequence of the Eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s

Dioceses called on to expand liturgical resources

RESOURCING

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

DIOCESES need to devote more resources to liturgy to ensure quality is maintained, Josephite Sister Carmel Pilcher told The Record at a national gathering of liturgists in Perth last week.

Sr Pilcher, liturgy director for the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle and consultant to the Australian Bishops’ National Liturgical Council, said that while a recent survey revealed most dioceses have liturgy councils as Vatican II recommended, only about a dozen liturgists would be officially employed by dioceses around Australia, while many, including most delegates at last week’s conference, are volunteers.

She said that over the years, she has witnessed the “whittling down of the number of people who are able to be employed as liturgists, due to finances and a shift in priorities”.

“supreme act of adoration”.

Everything in the liturgical act –through the nobility, beauty and harmony of exterior signs – must be conducive to adoration and union with God, including the music, singing, periods of silence, gestures, liturgical vestments and sacred vessels and other furnishings, as well as the “sacred edifice in its entirety.”

This is why, he said, Pope Benedict has, since the feast of Corpus Christi last year, begun to distribute holy Communion to the kneeling faithful directly on the tongue. The pontiff’s example invites us also to a proper attitude of adoration before the greatness and mystery of the Eucharistic presence of God, he added.

He also addressed what he saw as a widespread misconception of what the Second Vatican Council meant by ‘active participation’ in the Mass.

Linking truly active participation with Vatican II’s universal call to holiness, he said people are only truly participating in the grace of the liturgical act when they adore the mystery, welcome it into their lives and demonstrate that they have comprehended what is being celebrated.

He cited then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy: “Unfortunately the word (active participation) was very quickly misunderstood to mean something external, entailing the need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action.”

The “true novelty” of the Christian liturgy compared to every other form of worship, Mgr Marini said, is that the true action carried out in the liturgy is “the action of God Himself, His saving work in Christ, in which we participate”.

“God Himself acts and accomplishes that which is essential, whilst man is called to open himself to the activity of God, in order to be left transformed,” Mgr Marini said.

The key, then, is to overcome the difference between God’s act and our own, in order to become one with Christ, he said, adding that this is why it is not possible to participate without adoration.

The promotion of active participation does not also necessarily mean rendering everything “to the greatest extent immediately comprensible”.

Neither, he said, should sacred music which must never be understood as a purely subjective experience, but anchored in biblical or traditional texts, as the Council of Trent declared.

He added that the Second Vatican Council “did naught but reaffirm the same standard” set by Pope St Pius X who replaced operatic singing with Gregorian Chant and polyphony from the time of the Catholic reformation as the standard for liturgical music.

“If we could get a tiny amount of staffing that Catholic education gets, for example, we could make a difference,” she said.

Fr Peter Williams, director of the Australian Bishops’ National Liturgical Office, told The Record that after the Second Vatican Council there was a greater focus on liturgical renewal.

At the time, he said, the Church was better resourced and financed, so liturgy offices were established. As priorities changed, some Bishops made decisions for financial reasons to prioritise other areas.

“With the new Missal there will be a refocus again on the liturgy, which is the heartbeat of the Church; if it isn’t beating ... well, there are problems. There could be a requirement of expansion of liturgical resources,” he said.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra-Goulburn told the conference at Perth’s Novotel Langley Hotel on 5 February that he wants liturgical studies to be more rigorous, and that “there is no substitute for a thorough knowledge of the texts, and there is no short-cut to it”.

“The purpose of liturgical renewal of Trent and Vatican II completing it is new energy for mission,” he said.

Reflecting on Archbishop Coleridge’s comments on the standard of liturgy around Australia, Sr Pilcher conceded that “many of us (liturgists) would say we’re only scratching the surface of what the (Second Vatican) Council intended, and that’s partly because we’re short on the ground with liturgy officers.”

Mercy Sister Adele Howard, who interviewed many of the priests and Bishops from around the English-speaking world for the One Body One Spirit in Christ resource to assist the faithful understand the new translations, said liturgists will be crucial in the process.

“As liturgical leaders, the best people will be the ones who grasp the depth of the opportunity of this new translation and run with it for the sake of the people in the parish and faith communities, and will bring the richness of their own liturgical scholarship, experience and spirituality, which will give them the ability to implement these new translations that people will find positive, engaging and deeply spiritual.”

Sr Pilcher said a major challenge for liturgists around the country and in the near future is the significant number of young people who “don’t even have a Catholic culture as such, don’t have the language or the understanding of ritual that some of us grew up with”.

The answer, she said, is an awareness-raising, encouraging families and listening.

“Diocesan officials need to get to know the area and recognise where parishes are coming from and what the needs of the community are,” Sr Pilcher said.

Her survey of diocesan liturgical operations, conducted every two years, also revealed the need for the development of a comprehensive and interactive national website, which she confirmed is now being developed. This website, the survey respondents said, needs to offer easy access to documents, resources, useful commentaries, relevant links, music and web-based resources, available Australian professional personnel and their areas of expertise, courses and study programmes, an e-bulletin and a forum for advice from qualified liturgists. They stressed that such a website would only remain relevant if properly resourced.

The survey findings also recommended a national network to foster communication and support for liturgists, and the development of an association of Catholic liturgists similar to those for Canon lawyers, Scripture scholars and theologians in Australasia.

It also urged stronger links with academic institutions offering liturgy and sacrament courses. Sr Carmel said that the shortage of priests is an issue which especially impinges on liturgists in Australia, which has led to many lay liturgists being trained to lead Sunday services.

The large influx of overseas priests – brought in to top up the needs of the Church in Australia – also bring with them, she said, a “great possibility for enculturation and challenges to assist them to worship with us when they’ve come from another country”.

Sr Carmel Pilcher RSJ

Pope Benedict XVI, accompanied by Mgr Guido Marini, Papal Master of Ceremonies, kneels as he arrives to lead an evening prayer liturgy at the Basilica of Mary Queen of the Apostles in Yaounde, Cameroon, in March 2009.

PHOTO: CNS/FINBARR O’REILLY, REUTERS

Shroud of Turin: are we chasing shadows?

British archaeologist’s find shows Turin shroud not from Jesus’ time

BY JUDITH SUDILOVSKY Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM - Results from studies on the remains of a first century shroud discovered on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem prove that the famous Shroud of Turin could not have originated from the Jerusalem of Jesus’ time, said a prominent archaeologist.

The first century shroud was discovered in a tomb in the Hinnom Valley in 2000 but the results of tests run on the shroud and other artefacts found with it were only completed in December 2009.

“This is the first shroud from Jesus’ time found in Jerusalem and the first shroud found in a type of burial cave similar to that which Jesus would have been buried in and (because of this) it is the first shroud which can be compared to the Turin shroud,” said British-born archaeologist Shimon Gibson, basing his conclusion on the full study results which are scheduled to be published in a scholarly volume within the next year. There are two clear differences between the current shroud fragments and the Shroud of Turin, Gibson, head of the department of archaeology at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and recently appointed to the Centre for Heritage Conservation in Texas A&M University’s School of Architecture, told Catholic News Service.

While the Shroud of Turin is formed from one full piece of cloth, studies on the fragments of the shroud discovered in Jerusalem show that two burial cloths were used for the burial - one made of linen, used to wrap the head, and another made of wool which wrapped the body - in keeping with Jewish tradition of the time, Gibson said. It is likely that Jesus would have been wrapped in a similar manner with two separate pieces of cloth, he said, as described in the Gospel of St John.

In addition, Gibson said, unlike the complex twill weave of the Shroud of Turin that, according to archaeological finds, was unknown in this area during Jesus’ time, the discovered shroud fragments have a simple two-way weave. Gibson said he and Boaz Zissu, professor

of archaeology at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and co-author of the upcoming monograph, “didn’t set out to disprove the Turin shroud.”

Partial details of the molecular research were published on 16 December in the online journal PloS ONE. Gibson told CNS that he and Zissu will include discussion of the Shroud of Turin in the upcoming monograph. He noted that the research had been conducted only on the Jerusalem shroud fragments and not in comparison with the Turin shroud.

The first century excavation site also contained a clump of the shrouded man’s hair, which had been ritually cut prior to his burial.

The hair and the shroud fragments are unique discoveries because organic remains are hardly ever preserved in the Jerusalem area because of high humidity levels in the ground, said Gibson.

Other shrouds have been found in the arid Dead Sea area and in Egypt, he said.

For decades scientists have debated the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the 14 foot by 4 foot linen cloth that tradition holds is the burial shroud of Jesus.

The shroud has a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in His passion and death. It is kept in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, and will be removed from its protective casket for public display this spring, for the first time since 2000. Its origins are unknown.

In researching the Jerusalem shroud fragments, Gibson and Zissu were joined by an international team of molecular scientists and archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario; the University of New

Haven, West Haven, Connecticut; University College London; the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

However, Franciscan Fr Eugenio Alliata, Professor of Archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, said both shrouds needed to be studied for their own merits, and conclusions about one could not be made based on the other.

“One was found in an archaeological excavation and we have an archaeological context; for the other, the Shroud of Turin, we do not have an archaeological context and its history is murky,” Fr Alliata said. “The two objects need to be studied in a different way. You can’t compare one to the other and come up with a conclusion. Maybe the Shroud of Turin is not authentic but the conclusions must be made on studies of the object itself.”

The burial tomb where the Jerusalem shroud was found is part of a first century cemetery known as Akeldama or Field of Blood, next to the area where Judas Iscariot is said to have committed suicide. The tomb of the shrouded man was located next to the tomb of Annas, the high priest, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided at the trial of Jesus.

Bones found in the same burial niche as the fragments were dated to the years AD 1-50 by radiocarbon methods, and DNA tests showed that the man buried in the cave had leprosy and died of tuberculosis.

Perhaps due to these illnesses, the researchers believe, this part of the tomb was completely sealed off and the man did not receive the secondary burial that was traditional for Jewish burials of that period.

Shroud provokes prayer, curiosity, scholarly disputes

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The Shroud of Turin, which many Christians believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus, goes on public display this spring, at a time when experts are debating new claims about the 14 foot long piece of linen.

Pope Benedict XVI has already made plans to view the shroud during a one day trip to the northern Italian city of Turin in early May. Many observers are wondering how the Pope will refer to the cloth: as a sign, an icon or - as Pope John Paul II once characterised it - a relic.

The shroud’s last showing was 10 years ago, when more than a million people lined up to see it in the Cathedral of Turin in northern Italy. Officials are predicting similar crowds for the 10 April-23 May exposition and visitors are being urged to book their visits online at www.sindone.org. Carbon-14 tests in 1988 dated the cloth to the Middle Ages and seemed to confirm the theory that the shroud was a pious fraud. But since then, some experts have faulted the methodology of the testing and said the tiny samples used may have been taken from areas of the cloth that were mended in medieval times.

The shroud has also been chemically analysed, electronically enhanced and computerimaged. So far, no-one has been able to fully explain how the image was transferred to the linen cloth, although experts have put forward theories ranging from enzyme reaction to solar imaging. The shroud has been studied from virtually every scientific angle in recent years. Its weave has been examined, pollen grains embedded in the cloth have been inspected, and red stains have been analysed for hemoglobin properties.

One particular sub-category of debate focuses on enhanced images that, in the opinion of some scientists, reveal the impression of first century Palestinian coins placed on the eyes of the shroud’s figure.

The “jury” on the shroud includes hundreds of experts, some of them self-appointed.

The latest controversy involves a Vatican archivist who claims to have found evidence of writing on the shroud - a hypothesis that has drawn sharp criticism from other Catholic scholars.

The archivist, Barbara Frale, said in a new book that older photographs of the shroud reveal indications of what was essentially a written death notice for a “Jesus Nazarene.” The text, she said, employs three languages used in first century Jerusalem. The book immediately prompted an Internet war in Italy. Several sites dedicated to the shroud ridiculed Frale’s hypothesis, saying it bordered on Dan Brown-style fantasy.

Pope Benedict’s arrival is a big event for organisers of this year’s shroud exposition.

Many Catholics look to Rome for direction on how to evaluate the shroud, as Pope John Paul II discovered en route to Africa in 1989, when he called the shroud a “relic.”

When excited reporters asked whether this meant it was the authentic burial cloth of Christ, the Polish Pope conferred with an aide before answering more cautiously: “The Church has never pronounced itself in this sense. It has always left the question open to all those who want to seek its authenticity. I think it is a relic.” Clearly, Pope John Paul was personally convinced, although when he went to see the shroud in 1998 he carefully avoided using the term “relic.”

Pope Benedict has long been cautious about the value of private signs, apparitions and revelations. But he seems to consider the Shroud of Turin in a different category. In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, thenCardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote that the shroud was “a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable of producing.” In his meditations on the Good Friday Way of the Cross in Rome shortly before his election as Pope in 2005, he wrote regarding the 11th station, Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross: “The Shroud of Turin allows us to have an idea of the incredible cruelty of this procedure.”

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn celebrates Mass at St John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin in 2000, the last time the Shroud of Turin was on public display. The Archdiocese of Turin has said the cloth, revered for centuries to be the burial shroud of Christ, will be displayed again at the Cathedral from 10 April - 23 May 2010.

PHOTO: CNS/NANCY WIECHEC

The Shroud of Turin is shown in this positive, left, and negative combo undated file photo.

PHOTO: CNS/CLAUDIO PAPI, REUTERS

Abstinence programmes effective: new study

A new study has demonstrated that classroom programmes that promote sexual abstinence are successful in reducing the likelihood that students will engage in pre-marital sexual activity. Sex-education programmes that emphasised condom use had no discernible impact on teens’ sexual activity, the study found. The study, which followed adolescent African-American students for two years after they completed the classroom programmes, was published in the February 2010 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

“This new study is game-changing,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnanc y. Abstinence-based programmes received sharply increased federal funding during the Bush administration. Bowing to pressure from proponents of the traditional “safe sex” approach, the Obama administration has trimmed the funding of abstinence programmes. The new study could prompt calls for reversing that trend.

Over 20,000 attend funeral of Chinese Bishop loyal to Holy See

A congregation estimated at over 20,000 people gathered for the funeral of Bishop Raymond Wang Chnglin of Zhaoxian on 8 February. The Bishop, who died at the age of 88 from a brain haemorrrhage, had spent 21 years in prison for his loyalty to the Holy See. He was eventually recognised by the Beijing government, although he never wavered in his allegiance to Rome. The funeral took place primarily in the Cathedral church of Biancun (Hebei) for the Mass, then there was a moment of prayer in the birthplace of the Bishop and then the burial.

Throughout all ceremonies, hundreds of policemen controlled the situation.

Catholic colleges ‘weaken US students’ faith’

Catholic students who attend Catholic colleges and universities in the US are more likely to move away from the Faith than to deepen their commitment, a new study shows.

The study found that 32 per cent of Catholic students at Catholic schools attend Mass less frequently by the time they graduate, while only seven per cent attend more frequently.

Roughly eight per cent of the graduates reported leaving the Catholic faith during their college years, while students who had entered the Catholic Church during their college years accounted for only four per cent of the graduates. The survey found a strong trend away from accord with Church teachings on issues such as abortion and same-sex unions. The new study by Georgetown’s Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) largely confirms previous reports from the Cardinal Newman Society calling attention to a “crisis in Catholic higher education.”

“Catholics should be alarmed by the significant declines in Catholic practice and fidelity at many of America’s Catholic institutions,” said Patrick Reilly, the president of The Cardinal Newman Society. The authors of the CARA report agreed: “Regardless of where students begin their college journey, Catholic colleges should be helping students move closer to Christ, and certainly doing a better job of moving students toward the Catholic faith than secular colleges do.”

Vermont diocese to sell US$6m headquarters for abuse settlement

Vermont’s sole diocese has decided to sell its 32-acre headquarters - valued at US$6 millionand other property in the hope of funding settlements for 25 pending lawsuits.

Most of the lawsuits stem from Bishop John Marshall’s decision to allow notorious abuser Edward Paquette, now laicised, to minister in the diocese. Bishop Marshall, who died in 1994, governed the Diocese of Burlington from 1971 to 1991.

Canadian Bishops warn of trafficking at Olympics

Canadian Bishops condemn trafficking, expected to be issue at Olympics

BY DEBORAH GYAPONG Catholic News Service

OTTAWA - Members of the Canadian Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission have called for prayers for victims of human trafficking, noting that they expect it to be a problem at the 12-28 February Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A pastoral letter issued on 26 January said major sporting events often see “systems put in place to satisfy the demand for paid sex.”

“As pastors of the Catholic Church in Canada, we denounce human trafficking in all its forms, whether it is intended for forced labour (domestic, farm or factory work) or for sexual exploitation (whether it be prostitution, pornography, forced marriages, strip clubs, or other),” the Bishops wrote. “We invite the faithful to become aware of this violation of human rights and the trivialisation of concerns about prostitution.”

The Bishops urged Catholics to become aware of human trafficking, so “we can share in the suffering of the victims and change the behaviours and mentalities that foster institutionalised violence in this new form of slavery.”

Prostitution is illegal in Canada. However, the Bishops said, trafficking does occur, and “we need to recognise it, talk about it with others, and take action in our communities to stop it.”

Pointing out that the demand for sexual services fuels human trafficking, the Bishops asked how a majority-Christian country like Canada could tolerate this form of “institutionalised violence that destroys the physical, psychological and spiritual integrity of other human beings.”

The scale of human trafficking is “alarming,” they wrote, citing International Labour Organisation estimates of 2.4 million victims of trafficking, including 1.3 million caught up in sexual exploitation, worldwide.

The Bishops also pointed out that according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 79 percent of trafficking vic-

tims - mostly women and children - are used for the sex trade.

“This area of organised crime brings in billions of dollars for pimps and for owners of strip clubs, massage parlours, and legal and illegal brothels” the Bishops said.

“This figure does not include taxes paid to governments that often turn a blind eye to this activity.”

They put human trafficking in the context of economic globalisation and the increasing gap between rich and poor countries, noting that “impoverished populations of the South and the East remain vulnerable to trafficking.”

“When hunger threatens their family’s lives, people are more likely to believe the promises of unscrupulous smugglers or to succumb to the attraction of earning money through sexual tourism.

Today, the speed of Internet and cell phone communication makes it easy to recruit people who may find themselves in another country just a few hours later.

“Often, they cannot speak the language, their passport has been taken from them, and they are at the mercy of pimps who demand to be reimbursed for the victim’s transportation costs,” they said.

“Women and children, usually under the influence of drugs, must then engage in prostitution under the vigilant eye of pimps who pocket the profits. If the vic-

tims try to run away or stand up for their rights, the pimps threaten to kill them or members of their families back home.”

The Bishops highlighted the plight of Canadian Aboriginal women and girls who “disappear from their villages and are never seen again.” They wrote that young immigrants to Canada often get caught up in the “living hell” of work in street prostitution, massage parlours or escort services.

“To help women break free of prostitution, as they are generally the victims, we must provide concrete assistance, including health care, psychological counselling, detoxification programmes, safe housing, decent employment and spiritual support,” the Bishops wrote.

The Bishops urge Canadian Catholics to support organisations that work with victims of human trafficking and to urge the government to create programmes to help them. The Canadian Religious Conference and the Catholic Women’s League have been fighting trafficking and prostitution. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, where prostitution is legal, officials estimated an additional 40,000 women were engaged in prostitution. Before the World Cup began, Polish nuns, anticipating an increase in human trafficking, issued anti-prostitution leaflets in multiple languages for circulation during the competition.

Religious Orders in a modern crisis: Cardinal

Vatican official says Religious orders are in modern ‘crisis’

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - A top Vatican official said Religious orders today are in a “crisis” caused in part by the adoption of a secularist mentality and the abandonment of traditional practices.

Cardinal Franc Rode, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said the problems go deeper than the drastic drop in the numbers of Religious men and women.

“The crisis experienced by certain Religious communities, especially in Western Europe and North America, reflects the more profound crisis of European and American society. All this has dried up the sources that for centuries have nourished consecrated and missionary life in the Church,”

Cardinal Rode said in a talk delivered on 3 February in Naples, Italy.

“The secularised culture has penetrated into the minds and hearts of some

consecrated persons and some communities, where it is seen as an opening to modernity and a way of approaching the contemporary world,” he said.

Cardinal Rode said the decline in the numbers of men and women Religious became precipitous after the Second Vatican Council, which he described as a period “rich in experimentation but poor in robust and convincing mission.”

Faced with an ageing membership and fewer vocations, many Religious orders have turned to “foreign vocations” in places like Africa, India and the Philippines, the Cardinal said. He said the orders need to remember that quality of vocations is more important than quantity.

“It is easy, in situations of crisis, to turn to deceptive and damaging shortcuts, or attempt to lower the criteria and parameters for admission to consecrated life and the course of initial and permanent formation,” he said.

In any case, he said, “big numbers are not indispensable” for Religious orders to prove their validity. It’s more important today, he said, that Religious orders “overcome the egocentrism in which institutes are often closed, and open themselves to joint projects with other institutes, local churches and lay faithful.”

Cardinal Rode, a 75 year old Slovenian, is overseeing a Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation of institutes for women Religious in the United States to find out why the numbers of their members have decreased during the past 40 years and to look at the quality of life in the communities.

He spoke on 3 February to a conference on Religious life sponsored by the Archdiocese of Naples. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published the main portions of his text.

Cardinal Rode said it was undoubtedly more difficult today for all Religious orders to find young people who are willing to break away from the superficial contemporary culture and show a capacity for commitment and sacrifice.

Unless this is dealt with in formation programmes, he said, Religious orders will produce members who lack dedication and are likely to drift away.

The challenge, however, should not be seen strictly in negative terms, he said.

The present moment, he said, can help Religious orders better define themselves as “alternatives to the dominant culture, which is a culture of death, of violence and of abuse,” and make it clear that their mission is to joyfully witness life and hope, in the example of Christ.

Christian US speedskater Derek Parra competes in a 1,500m race at the World Cup speedskating finals in Heerenveen, Netherlands. Canada’s Bishops have condemned trafficking of women, expected to be a big issue of concern at the Winter Olympics this month.

PHOTO: CNS

Church teaching not a list of noes: Pope

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church has a positive vision of human life, marriage and family which must not be presented as a list of things the Church opposes, Pope Benedict XVI told the Bishops of Scotland.

The Church’s “positive and inspiring vision of human life, the beauty of marriage and the joy of parenthood” are “rooted in God’s infinite, transforming and ennobling love for all of us, which opens our eyes to recognise and love his image in our neighbour,” the Pope said.

“Be sure to present this teaching in such a way that it is recognised for the message of hope that it is,” he told the Bishops on 5 February as they were finishing their ad limina visits to the Vatican to report on the status of their dioceses.

Too often, he said, “the Church’s doctrine is perceived as a series of prohibitions and retrograde positions, whereas the reality, as we know, is that it is creative and lifegiving.”

Protecting human life at every stage of existence is a key concern for the Church, he said, and “support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life.” The End of Life Assistance Bill was introduced in the Scottish Parliament in January and several polls showed that a majority of Scots favour allowing assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

“The increasing tide of secularism” in Scotland and modern

Pope Benedict XVI arrives to celebrate vespers concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome on 25 January. His comments over the Church’s right to defend Catholic truth have born fruit, with the British government backing down on Equal Rights legislation. CNS

approaches to medical ethics and to biotechnology, especially those involving human embryos, “give cause for great concern,” the Pope said. “If the Church’s teaching is compromised, even slightly, in one such area, then it becomes hard to defend the fullness of Catholic doctrine in an integral manner,” he said.

The Pope, who is scheduled to visit Scotland in mid-September, said one key to defending human life and the family in society is to help lay Catholics understand the teaching and their role in promoting it. “Sometimes a tendency to confuse ‘lay apostolate’ with ‘lay ministry’ has led to an inwardlooking vision,” where lay people

think that if they are not employed by the Church, they do not have a role in the Church, he said.

The Second Vatican Council taught that “wherever the lay faithful live out their baptismal vocation - in the family, at home, at work - they are actively participating in the Church’s mission to sanctify the world,” he said.

The Pope said he hoped the people of Scotland would prepare for his visit by praying that “it will be a time of grace for the whole Catholic community,” and he asked Bishops to use the next seven months “to deepen (the people’s) faith and to rekindle their commitment to bear witness to the Gospel.”

JPII practised self-mortification

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Pope John Paul II always took penitence seriously, spending entire nights lying with his arms outstretched on the bare floor, fasting before ordaining priests or Bishops and flagellating himself, said the promoter of his sainthood cause.

Mgr Slawomir Oder, postulator of the late Pope’s cause, said Pope John Paul used self-mortification “both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself.”

The monsignor spoke to reporters on 26 January at the launch of his book Why He’s a Saint: The Real John Paul II According to the Postulator of His Beatification Cause

Earlier in the day, two Italian news sites reported that an October date had been set for Pope John Paul’s beatification, but Mgr Oder said nothing could be confirmed until physicians, theologians and Cardinals at the Congregation for Saints’ Causes accept a miracle credited to the late Pope’s intercession and Pope Benedict formally signs a decree recognising it.

Mgr Oder’s book, published only in Italian, is based largely on what he said he learned from the documents collected for the beatification process and, particularly, from the sworn testimony of the 114 people who personally knew Pope John Paul and testified before the Rome diocesan tribunal investigating his fame of holiness.

Due to the reticence surrounding the process, the witnesses who served as the source for particular affirmations in the book are not named, although some are described loosely as members of the papal entourage or the papal household. “When it wasn’t some infirmity that made him experience pain, he himself would inflict discomfort and mortification on his body,” Mgr Oder wrote. He said the penitential practices

were common both when then-Karol Wojtyla was Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, as well as after he became Pope. “Not infrequently he passed the night lying on the bare floor,” the Monsignor wrote, and people in the Krakow Archbishop’s residence knew it, even if the Archbishop would mess up the covers on his bed so it wouldn’t be obvious that he hadn’t slept there.

“As some members of his closest entourage were able to hear with their own ears, Karol Wojtyla flagellated himself both in Poland and in the Vatican,” Mgr Oder wrote.

“In his closet, among the cassocks, there was a hook holding a particular belt for slacks, which he used as a whip and which he also always brought to Castel Gandolfo,” the papal summer residence south of Rome.

In the book, Mgr Oder said Pope John Paul firmly believed that he was doing what St Paul professed to do in the Letter to the Colossians: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.”

He also said that the Pope, who had a notorious sweet tooth, was extremely serious about maintaining the Lenten fast and would lose several pounds before Easter each year, but he also fasted before ordaining priests and Bishops and for other special intentions.

Mgr Oder’s book also marked the publication for the first time of letters Pope John Paul prepared in 1989 and in 1994 offering the College of Cardinals his resignation in case of an incurable disease or other condition that would prevent him from fulfilling his ministry. For years there were rumours that Pope John Paul had prepared a letter instructing Cardinals to consider him resigned in case of incapacity.

But even a month before his death in April 2005, Canon law experts in

Benedict scores victory in Britain

The British government last week backed down from pursuing parts of its Equality Bill after Pope Benedict XVI condemned it as a threat to religious freedom.

The legislation would have removed the Church’s right to refuse employing certain lay staff including, for instance, the right of a Catholic school to employ a Catholic as a head teacher. The government’s decision came after a furore in Britain following the Holy Father’s remarks to the Bishops of England and Wales over such legislation.

A British government source told the Daily Telegraph that following Pope Benedict’s comments, the government will withdraw the controversial provisions of the “Equality Bill” that threaten to undermine religious freedom.

“We are clear that these parts of the Equality Bill should not go forward,” said the source. “The Pope’s intervention has been noted.”

According to The Times newspaper: “Ministers were astonished on Monday when the Pope said that the Bill violated “natural justice” and urged

Rome and elsewhere were saying the problem with such a letter is that someone else would have to decide when to pull it out of the drawer and apply it.

Church law states that a Pope can resign, but it stipulates that papal resignation must be “made freely and properly manifested” - conditions that would be difficult to ascertain if a Pope were already incapacitated.

Mgr Oder wrote that in Pope John Paul’s 1994 letter the stressed syllables in spoken Italian are underlined, making it appear that the Pope had read it or was preparing to read it to the College of Cardinals.

The 1989 letter was brief and to the point; it says that in the case of an incurable illness that prevents him from “sufficiently carrying out the functions of my apostolic ministry” or because of some other serious and prolonged impediment, “I renounce my sacred and canonical office, both as Bishop of Rome as well as head of the holy Catholic Church.”

In his 1994 letter the Pope said he had spent years wondering whether a Pope should resign at age 75, the normal retirement age for Bishops. He also said that, two years earlier, when he thought he might have a malignant colon tumour, he thought God had already decided for him.

Then, he said, he decided to follow the example of Pope Paul VI who, in 1965, concluded that a Pope “could not resign the apostolic mandate except in the presence of an incurable illness or an impediment that would prevent the exercise of the functions of the successor of Peter.”

“Outside of these hypotheses, I feel a serious obligation of conscience to continue to fulfill the task to which Christ the Lord has called me as long as, in the mysterious plan of his providence, he desires,” the letter said.

Bishops to fight it. But that attack, along with the strength of opposition in the Lords and the limited time left to get Bills passed before the election, has sapped the Government’s enthusiasm to continue the fight.”

The Times also reported that although Harriet Harman, the minister responsible for the legislation, made no mention of the Pope’s visit to Britain this year, “it is understood that the Government did not want the dispute to overshadow preparations”.

On 1 February, the Pope told the Bishops that the Bill and other types of similar legislation would “impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed. I urge you as pastors to ensure that the Church’s moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended.”

The Holy Father’s words caused outrage in sections of the media, with some arguing that the Pope should not meddle in British politics.

Others had drawn up a petition to protest against his visit which is expected to take place in September. A senior official said the reaction took many by surprise as the words of the Pope were to be expected.

Desire for sacraments not sufficient for annulments

VATICAN CITY (CNS)

- True pastoral charity and concern can never lead the Church to grant an annulment to a Catholic whose marriage is valid according to Church law, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“One must shun pseudo-pastoral claims” that look only at the desire of divorced Catholics to return to the sacraments, the Pope said on 29 January in his annual speech to officials of the Roman Rota, a tribunal that mainly deals with appeals filed in marriage annulment cases.

The Pope said helping Catholics be able to go to Confession and receive the Eucharist is important, but it cannot be done without taking into account the truth about their Church marriage.

The Church cannot act charitably toward its faithful without upholding justice and truth, he said.

Charity without justice is “only a forgery because charity requires that objectivity that is typical of justice and which must not be confused with inhumane coldness,” the Pope said.

For the Catholic Church, he said, a marriage celebrated with the full consent of the couple and following the correct form is always presumed to be valid, and a valid marriage is indissoluble. Pastors and those who work in Church tribunals

must beware of “the widespread and deeply rooted tendency” to see justice and charity as totally competing values, the Pope said.

Within the Church, he said, the idea leads some to think that “pastoral charity could justify any step” taken to grant an annulment for a couple who want to return to the sacraments.

Defending the permanent bond of a valid marriage is a matter of both justice and love, he said, because it is designed to protect the human and spiritual good of the couple and “the public good of the Church,” which teaches that marriage is forever and does not use annulments as a sort of Church-sanctioned divorce.

“It would be a fictitious good, and a serious lack of justice, to nevertheless smooth the way toward their reception of the sacraments,” the Pope said.

Pope Benedict told members of the Roman Rota that those who work on Church marriage tribunals must cultivate the virtues of prudence and justice, but especially the virtue of fortitude, especially “when the unjust way appears easier to follow because it means condescending to the desires and hopes of the couple. Both justice and charity require love for the truth and essentially lead to a search for the truth”.

An advocate made by living like Christ

Robyn Hoffman

I was christened in the Uniting Church. When I was five, my family and I moved to Tibooburra, a small country town in NSW. It had a population of one hundred. Mum and Dad were Christians and before the move we used to go to church every Sunday. At Tibooburra there was a multidenominational church and every six weeks or so, we would have a visiting minister. One minister would be from the Salvation Army; another would be Uniting Church, another Catholic and so forth. Everyone in the town would go. Mum always made sure I did a monthly correspondence Sunday school to keep up with my Christian faith.

I went to a Catholic high school when we moved to Broken Hill. It was probably my first real introduction to Catholicism. I began to go to church regularly through school and it was the beginning of a journey, so to speak.

Why I became Catholic

with Debbie Warrier

In my last two years at high school I transferred to a Catholic boarding school. I was very homesick. Mass every Sunday was familiar and comforting. It made me feel that I was a part of something. During that time my mum became a Catholic. She had made some Catholic friends who influenced her decision to convert. My father did not convert but was always very supportive of my mum.

When I went to university I abandoned my faith. Then I met my husband who is Catholic and we married in a Catholic Church. I promised to bring up my children as Catholics. Our children were later christened and we always went to Church as a family. In 2000 we moved to Southern Cross. We got very involved in the Church. I helped with the children’s liturgy even though I was non-Catholic. It was part of my faith journey because of the beautiful community spirit I found there.

When we moved back to Perth in 2005, I was very homesick for Southern Cross. Then I heard one of the Personal Advocacy Service (PAS) members give a talk at our parish, All Saint’s Church in Greenwood. PAS is an outreach of the Catholic Church, providing one-to-one friendship and advocacy support for adults with varying degrees of intellectual disabilities.

All leaders and advocates are professionally trained and monitored by the Personal Advocacy resource staff. Each Personal Advocacy network group is sponsored by a local church community and its members are offered opportunities for emotional, spiritual and social development through participation in community activities. I told my husband, “I think I can do that.”

I found the people who did PAS lived out their faith and were so genuine and beautiful. That was the community spirit I was looking for. My PAS friend’s name is Debbie. She is aged 43 and has autism. We just kind of clicked. Debbie doesn’t talk to me but she touches me and occasionally she sings a few words. We understand each other. Before I joined PAS I did not feel the need to convert to Catholicism. Even though my children were receiving their sacraments I just wasn’t ready yet. After becoming involved with PAS I later joined the RCIA and became a Catholic last Easter. It is true what the RCIA coordinators said about Holy Communion. You feel like Jesus has become a part of you. I feel very honoured.

No mystery in sex with robots Body Language

By Christopher West

A friend who knows I like to stay informed about disturbing trends in society recently sent me an article announcing the world’s first life-size sex robot complete with artificial intelligence and “flesh like” skin.

Douglas Hines, its creator, explains that she’s more than a sexual play-thing: “She’s a companion . . . She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch . . .We are trying to replicate a personality.”

Those willing to pay $7,000-$9,000 (depending on options) can detail their preferences in a mate at the company web site, much like online dating. When Roxy the Robot arrives in the mail, she’s programmed to suit. “She knows exactly what you like,” says Hines. “If you like Porsches, she likes Porsches. If you like soccer, she likes soccer.”

Despite Hines’ attempt to “personify” these robots, what we see here, of course, is the epitome of the modern depersonalisation of the body and sexuality. It’s the sad result of a new outbreak of an ancient and deadly disease: Manichaeism – that tenacious heresy that ruptures body and soul, the physical and the spiritual.

In his 1994 Letter to Families, Pope John Paul II diagnosed the problem as follows: “[T]he human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition. . . . Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object.”

It is precisely this “objectification” of the human body that allows one even to conceive of the idea of a robotic “girl-

friend.” John Paul continues: “This neoManichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’ (Gen 2:23). This same wonder is echoed in the words of the Song of Songs: ‘You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes’ (Song 4:9).”

All one need do to see how far we have fallen from Eden is contrast Adam’s delight in Eve on the day of creation with the neurotic “excitement” of desperate-Joe as he pulls his pre-programmed robotic doll from the cardboard and bubble-wrap on the day of her UPS delivery.

As John Paul II exclaims: “How far removed are some modern ideas from the profound understanding of masculinity and femininity found in divine revelation!” Ain’t it the truth. Contrary to this modern depersonalisation of

sexuality, divine revelation “leads us to discover in human sexuality a treasure proper to the person, who finds true fulfilment in [marriage and] the family but who can likewise express his profound calling in virginity and in celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God” (Letter to Families 19).

Both vocations – marriage and celibacy for the kingdom – flow from the same truth of our creation as male and female: the call to live the sincere gift of self, that is, the call to love in the image of God.

Obviously, only persons can love in the divine image. Robots that “replicate personality” are not persons. They are replicas. And, as I write this, I find it difficult to fathom that such a point even needs to be made. Robots aren’t persons: Isn’t that just commonsense?

Then again, in an age when teams of highly skilled technicians spend their careers engineering sex robots, we can conclude that commonsense isn’t so common.

The whole enterprise is yet another indication that, as John Paul observed, we live in “a society which is sick and is creating profound distortions in man. Why is this happening? The reason,” he concluded, “is that our society has broken away from the full truth about ... what man and woman really are as persons. Thus it cannot adequately comprehend the real meaning of the gift of persons in marriage, responsible love at the service of fatherhood and motherhood, and the true grandeur of procreation” (Letter to Families 20).

If civilisation is to survive, it is absolutely critical that we recover the “great mystery” of God’s glorious plan for human sexuality (see Eph 5:31-32). John Paul II’s stupendous Theology of the Body unfolds it for us. Take it up. Study it. Live it. Share it with everyone you know and we will not fall short of renewing the face of the earth.

www.theologyofthebody.com

Cameron diatribe misses the mark

In clear view

By Guy Crouchback

The film Avatar by James Cameron has been released with a double irony: first, it depicts Americans and, in particular, the US military as wicked villains, bent on exploiting and destroying the peaceful and beautiful world of the Na’vi people at the behest of US Capitalism (having already, naturally, wrecked their own world previously).

The heroes and heroines are the handful of treacherous Americans who betray their side and join the Na’vi. By astonishing coincidence, such as any real science fiction editor would have rocketing into the reject-pile, the mineral which the Americans want (with a name similar to “Uranium” just happened to be buried beneath the Na’vis’ scared Tree of Voices.

While the US Marines are Bad Guys, there are also US scientists and others who change sides because they are more sensitive.

Not a cliché of political correctness is missed – except for the odd fact that the wickedest and most brutalised marines tend to include blacks – don’t ask me why; maybe Cameron thinks the Obama presidency has made black part of the Establishment.

The Na’vi, after futilely (and stupidly) firing arrows at the Americans’ high-tech armour, call in Eywa, the mother-Goddess, to their aid, with

whose help they defeat the wicked Christian soldiers. The Noble Savage and Noble Paganism win again. Those who choose Nature are capable of all things: the technological West is doomed.

As another commentator put it: “The actual moral lesson seen in Avatar is that what the corporate lackeys and their military mercenaries did to the indigenous Na’vi people of the planet of Pandora was an atrocity in the bloodiest, most morally repulsive traditions of 16th century imperialism.

With far more technologically advanced military weaponry, the corporate interests commit mass murder in attacking the Na’vi to impatiently force them to move off the valuable mineral deposits underneath their ancestral homeland.”

He continued: “the movie seeks to apply this plain, straightforward, moral lesson of the story line to other situations where it does not apply.

“In particular, a couple of references in the movie suggest that what we are witnessing is analogous to the War on Terrorism. The point about ‘16th Century imperialism’ is relevant – nothing like this has existed in the West, and certainly not in America, for centuries.

“Bad timing for this confused, misleading propaganda line. Because just a few days after the movie’s appearance on theatre screens, America watched a real world morality play on its television screens, as the terrorists we are at war with from Al Qaeda sent one of their trained assassins to commit mass murder in attempting to blow 300 innocent

Americans out of the sky on a flight to Detroit.

“The Islamist extremists who have been attacking and murdering Americans for almost two decades now are not in any way analogous to the peaceful Na’vi people subject to attack by the military forces in Avatar.

“These extremists have been at war with their neighbours for almost 1,400 years now, originally conquering an empire to impose their religion by force, and now threatening to do the same today.

In that pursuit, it is they who have committed mass murder of the innocent worldwide, from India, to Indonesia, to Thailand, to Israel, to Spain (which they ruled by force for centuries, lest we forget).”

Avatar, he continued, can be seen as part of a broad propaganda civil war pursued by some death wish-riddled American Liberals against efforts to protect their country, and the West, from the terrorist Jihad.

While this is not spelt out in so many words, it is the unmistakable message of the film.

The second irony is that just as this anti-American diatribe was being unleased, it was the Americans, and virtually the Americans alone, who were sending aid by the aircraft carrier load to the victims of the Haitian Earthquake while the UN dithered and embezzled, as was the case with the boxing-day Tsunami, and as, it seems, will always be the case.

Meditations, reflection, inspiration.

Reflection on the Lord’s Prayer For People With Cancer DVD

This series of meditations on The Lord’s Prayer with Ken Curtis builds upon his previous series, Reflections on Psalm 23 for People with Cancer. Ken was diagnosed with advanced cancer with little prospect for survival. He pursued a combination of traditional and alternative medicine, undergirded by a strong spiritual dimension and prayer support team. While made particularly for people facing the crisis of cancer, the reflections are relevant for any health crisis.

$16.95 + P/H

Ken Curtis was diagnosed with advanced cancer with little prospect for survival. He pursued a combination of traditional and alternative medicine, undergirded by a strong spiritual dimension and prayer support team. Psalm 23 was a vital part of his spiritual component and, for this video Curtis went to Israel, home of David and the Psalm, to be with the shepherds, travel “through the valley of the shadow of death,” and explore and enjoy the healing powers of the green pastures and still waters. The resulting meditations provide a combination of candid personal experience of what it means to battle cancer and some of the spiritual resources available through this time-honoured Psalm.

Reflections On Psalm 23 For People With Cancer DVD

St Monica

The power of a mother’s love

By Giovanni Falbo

Giovanni sheds new light on St Monica’s patience, sweetness and unwavering determination. This mother never yielded in her effort to see her beloved son find comfort and peace in God, and she endured countless sacrifices and health risks in her quest to help Augustine embrace the faith. Monica’s quiet wisdom and courage, coupled with her earnest tears and prayers to God, bore fruit she could only have dreamed of.

$23.95 + P/H

Little Beauty

$14.95 + P/H

Voices of the Saints

By Mandy Varley

The touching tale of a blind seahorse, Beauty, who endures bullying but chooses to forgive. Presented in rhyming verse, it is a multi-layered story that also deals with friendship, fear, overcoming adversity and recognising the giftedness in others.

$12.95 + P/H

By Bert Ghezzi

Provides readers with many convenient ways to look up 365 Catholic saints: chronologically, alphabetically, by feast day, even by theme. The saint’s patronage is also listed when available, as is the date of beatification or canonisation. The voice of each Catholic saint comes through clearly in quotations drawn from their own writings, the recollection of witnesses and the careful work of biographers. A prayer or Scripture verse concludes each entry.

$34.95 + P/H

God and me

365 Daily Devotions

By Penny Boshoff

God and me aims to help children find out all about God: what he is like, how he cares for them, and how he wants them to live in his world. Familiar situations and everyday experiences encourage the child to think about Christian values. Each day includes a Bible reference for a story or passage linked to that day’s topic, and a prayer or prayer idea to help the child develop their relationship with God.

PANORAMA

A roundup of events in the Archdiocese

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

Email to administration@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9227 7087, or mail to PO Box 75, Leederville WA 6902. Events charging over $10 will be put into classifieds and charged accordingly. The Record reserves the right to decline or modify any advertisement.

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

Torchlight Rosary Procession Around Lake Monger Commencing at 7pm. Congregate at the northwest corner at park end of Dodd Street. Procession is in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes, with Rosary and hymns. Invitation is open to everyone. Paths are wheelchair and stroller accessible. Please bring torches, no naked flames allowed. Enq: Judy 9446 6837.

SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

8.30am at St Brigid Church, corner Fitzgerald and Aberdeen Streets, Northbridge. St Padre Pio DVD, followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary, Divine Mercy, Silent Adoration and Benediction. 11am Holy Mass, celebrant Fr Tiziano Bogoni using St Padre Pio Liturgy. Confession available. Bring a plate for 12pm shared lunch. Tea and coffee provided. Enq: Des 6278 1540.

Divine Mercy Healing Mass

2.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, Perth. Main Celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meliak OFM. Reconciliation in English and Italian available. Divine Mercy prayers followed by refreshments. Enq: John 9457 7771.

SUNDAY, 14 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

12 noon at St Catherine’s Catholic Church, Gingin. BYO lunch. 1pm Holy Rosary, Exposition, hymns, Benediction and blessing of the sick. 1.30pm Marian Procession, 2.30pm Holy Mass at the Grotto. Tea provided later. For transport, Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877. Enq: Sheila 9575 4023 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

TUESDAY, 16 FEBRUARY

Laurence Freeman OSB Talks

Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation. 9am at Notre Dame University, Mouat Street, Fremantle. Talk on Making the Most of Crisis: How a Contemplative Mind Grows. Enq: ccreedon1@nd.edu.au or 9433 0580. 7.30pm at St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Salvado Road, Subiaco, talk on Hope and Change; Christian Meditation in Troubled Times. Charge is $5. Enq: christianmeditation@iinet.net.au or 9444 5810.

Faith Enrichment Series - Fr Joseph Parkinson STL PhD, Director L J Goody Bioethics Centre

7.30 - 9pm at St Benedict Parish, 115 Ardross Street, Ardross. Talks on ethics, Faith and conscience and discuss how to apply ethics to our daily lives, bringing our Faith to life, explaining the role of conscience in decision making and giving us strategies for living a moral life. The presentation will be followed by coffee and tea. Enq: Wim 0421 636 763.

Adventures in Revelation

8 San Miguel Drive, Leeming. This intriguing look at one of the most talked-about books in Scripture explores Revelation to demonstrate how the Kingdom established by Christ in His Church is intimately connected with the Kingdom of Heaven, especially through the celebration of the Mass. For young women from18 to 35 years. Enq: Sr Ann 0409 602 927.

Caritas Australia Shrove Tuesday Pancake Lunch

12 noon - 1.30pm at the Catholic Pastoral Centre Seminar Room, 40A Mary Street, Highgate. Parking available through gates off Harold Street. Cost, donation. Enq: 9422 7925.

WEDNESDAY, 17 FEBRUARY

Ash Wednesday Latin Masses Perth

10am at St John’s Pro-Cathedral, Victoria Avenue, Perth. 10am Low Mass preceded by Holy Hour 8.45 - 9.45am. 12.10pm Low Mass and 6.30pm Sung Mass. Ashes will be distributed at all Masses. Beginning 19 February, Stations of the Cross on Fridays in Lent at 5.30pm followed by Holy Mass. Enq: Fr Michael Rowe 9444 9604.

Ash Wednesday Latin Mass Kelmscott

4.30pm at Good Shepherd Parish, 40-42 Streich Avenue, Kelmscott. All welcome.

Lesmurdie Mental Health Support Group

Normal meeting occurs on Ash Wednesday. Those who might have planned to come are encouraged to attend Mass at 7.30pm at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Lesmurdie. Next formal meeting will be on 17 March from 6 - 8 pm at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, 207 Lesmurdie Road, Lesmurdie. Guest Speaker Gerry Smith will talk on guilt and its benefits. Please bring a plate.

Enq: Ann 9291 6670 or Barbara 9328 8113.

MONDAY, 22 FEBRUARY

Study Course

4pm at the Resources Centre for Personal Development, Fremantle. The study will be on pastoral care, prayer and the study of relationship principles in the New Testament.

Enq: 9418 1439 or 0409 405 585.

Eucharistic Celebration

5.30pm at St Catherine’s House of Hospitality, 113 Tyler Street, Tuart Hill. All invited to this Mass celebrated by Fr Gregory Carroll. Supper to follow. Cost $10. Enq: Margaret 9390 8365 or Maranatha 6380 5160.

FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY

Medjugorje – Evening of Prayer

7 - 9pm at St Simon Peter Parish, Prendiville Avenue, Ocean Reef. Thanksgiving Prayer for Our Lady’s reported apparitions at Medjugorje takes place with Adoration, Rosary and Benediction concluding with Holy Mass. Free DVD on Fr Calloway’s conversion. All warmly welcomed. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480.

SATURDAY, 27 FEBRUARY

St Ildephonsus College - SIC New Norcia Reunion

3pm at Atrium Room, Mt Henry Tavern, Manning Road, Como. Students who attended as first years in 1946 to leaving Certificate in 1950 are invited to a 60 year reunion. Still looking for Bob Flynn, Brian Gelfi, Peter Lee, Ron McCann, Desie Mulcahy, Ray Strickland, Pat Walsh, and Noel League Blake. Enq: Berni 9924 3214, Colin 9887 1054 or Barry 9450 2232.

SATURDAY, 27 FEBRUARY - SUNDAY, 28 FEBRUARY

Prayer Weekend

8.30am at the Redemptorist Monastery, North Perth. Christ sees the urgent need for intercession and invites you to spend this Lenten weekend with Him in prayer. Come and experience the healing and saving power of Christ through the Holy Spirit and let Him renew and transform you to be His powerful intercessor like Mary His Mother. Sessions will be led by Fr Hugh Thomas CSSR. Enq: Gertrude 0411 262 221, 9455 6576 or Rose 0403 300 720.

SATURDAY, 27 FEBRUARY - THURSDAY, 4 MARCH

Retreat - Eucharist and The Word of God - For Healing Life’s Hurts and Guilt

6pm, 7.30am, 9.30am Weekend Mass and 7.30 - 9pm Monday to Thursday at Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament Church, 175 Corfield Street, Gosnells. Conducted by Fr Gilbert Carlo, Divine Word Missionary, focuses on faith, hope, love, forgiveness, personal and family prayer, Bible reflection.

SATURDAY, 6 MARCH

Day with Mary

9am - 5pm at Good Shepherd Church, 44 Streich Avenue, Kelmscott. Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima message. 9am Video, 10.10am Holy Mass, Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Peace Vigil 6 - 9.30pm at the Redemptorist Monastery. Come and light a votive candle for peace, join us in praying for peace in our country and for war-torn parts of the world. An evening of prayer and reflection with a different presenter, each half hour in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Come for one or more sessions or stay for the evening, supper provided.

SUNDAY, 7 MARCH

Divine Mercy

1.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, Perth. Divine Mercy Prayer, Reconciliation, Rosary and Fr Shamber Maria FFI will give homily on St John of God. Enq: 9457 7771.

FRIDAY, 12 MARCH - SUNDAY, 14 MARCH

God’s Farm Retreat

Fr Tony Chiera VG will lead a prayerful weekend retreat on God’s Farm, 40km south of Busselton. The topic will be Walking with the Saints, Lent 2010. For hired bus bookings, return trip Perth to Farm phone Yvonne 9343 1897. Other bookings and enquiries phone/fax, Betty Peaker sfo 9755 6212 or Mary.

TUESDAY, 23 MARCH

Open Day – La Salle College

Co-educational secondary college for Years 7-12. Tour times are 9.30am, 11.30am and 1.40pm. No bookings are necessary.

FRIDAY, 26 MARCH

Medjugorje Evening of Prayer

7 - 9pm at St Aloysius Parish, 84 Keightley Street, Shenton Park. An evening of prayer with Our Lady Queen of Peace, consisting of Adoration, Rosary, Benediction, Reconciliation concluding with Holy Mass. Free DVD on Fr Donald Calloway. All warmly welcome. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480.

MONDAY, 17 MAY - FRIDAY 28 MAY

Tour of the Holy Land

12 day tour with Fr Roy Pereira visiting Sea of Galilee, Jericho, Masada, The Dead Sea, Bethany, Jerusalem and Cana. For cost, itinerary and more details, please contact: Francis Williams (Coordinator) T: 9459 3873 M: 0404 893 877 E: francis@perthfamily.com.

GENERAL NOTICES

Ecumenical World Day of Prayer

The service has been prepared by the World Day of Prayer Committee of Cameroon. The theme for the service is ‘Let everything that has breath praise God.’ We invite you to join in a service in your area. Contact your nearest church or check your local paper close to 5 March for the time and place of your local service. The city service will be held at McNess Hall adjoining St Andrew’s Uniting Church situated at the corner of St George’s Terrace and Pier Street, Perth commencing at 1pm.

La Salle College Enrolments and Academic Scholarships Year 7, 2011

Enrolments for Year 7 in 2012 - current Year 5 students are being finalised. Enquiries please contact Ms Linda Balcombe, Enrolments Officer, at the College on 9274 6266. Interview process commences from 9 March 2010. Applications for scholarships are being invited. Full tuition through to Year 10. Examinations on 9am, 27 March at La Salle College. Registration Scholarship Selection Test accepted online only at www.lasalle.wa.edu.au under Parent Resources for fee of $60. Closing date is 12 March 2010. Enq: Ms Angela Johnson 9274 6266.

Perpetual Adoration

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

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

The Church of St Jude in Langford is seeking to put together a visit to Jordan, the Holy Land and Egypt, leaving mid-August 2010. Expect the pilgrimage to be for circa 19 days and could accommodate 28-30 people. Fr Terry Raj will be the Spiritual Director. Enq: Matt 6460 6877, mattpicc1@gmail.com

EVERY SUNDAY

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation 2pm at Shrine, 36 Chittering Road, Bullsbrook. Commencing with Rosary followed by Benediction. Reconciliation is available before every celebration. Anointing of the Sick administered during Mass every

second Sunday of the month. Pilgrimage in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation, last Sunday of the month. Side entrance to the church and shrine open daily between 9am and 5pm. Enq: SACRI 9447 3292.

Latin Mass

2pm at the Good Shepherd Parish, 40-42 Streich Avenue, Kelmscott, according to the 1962 missal, with Rosary preceding. All welcome.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life Sunday

2 - 3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington Street, Morley, commencing 28 February. The hour includes Exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray together that those discerning vocation to the Priesthood or Religious Life hear clearly God’s loving call to them.

EVERY MONDAY

Lunchtime Meditation

Christian Meditation comes to the city. 12.1512.45pm, Wesley Uniting Church, corner William and Hay Streets, Perth. Ecumenical Christian meditation in the tradition of the desert fathers and mothers. All welcome. Enq: christianmeditation@iinet.net.au, www.christianmeditationaustralia.org or 9444 5810.

EVERY TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY

Adventures in Matthew

Commencing 2 February at 7.30pm and 3 February at 9.30am at St Jude Church, Prendiville Way, Langford. Come and enjoy this lively study into how Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth, building on the foundation laid in the Old Testament. 24 easy to follow sessions. Enq: Dominic 0447 053 347, 08 6253 8041 celestialorchids@gmail.com.

EVERY 2ND WEDNESDAY

Year of the Priest Holy Hour

7 - 8pm at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, 2 Keaney Place, City Beach. Reflections on St John Vianney, Patron Saint of Priests. Light refreshments later in the Parish Centre.

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Road, Bateman. Commencing 10 February, a beautiful, prayerful, sung devotion accompanied by Exposition, and Benediction. All are welcome. Enq: George 9310 9493 home or 9325 2010 work.

EVERY 3RD WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

Oblates of St Benedict

2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York Street, South Perth. Oblates affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey New Norcia welcome all who are interested in studying the rule of St Benedict and its relevance to the everyday life of today for lay people. Vespers and afternoon tea conclude meetings. Enq: Secretary 9457 2758.

EVERY THURSDAY

Group 50 Charismatic Group

7.30pm at the Redemptorist Church 190 Vincent Street, North Perth. During these meetings messages from Lalith Pereira who gave the Four Step Retreat recently will be broadcast by satellite from Sri Lanka. The first of these will be 18 February. Other broadcasts will be on 25 February, 8 and 22 March.

EVERY 1ST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Taize Prayer

7.30 - 8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Parish, 3 Kitchener Street, North Beach. As we enter into our 4th year, all are invited to share in this prayer and meditation using songs from Taize. In stillness and candlelight we make our pilgrimage. Spend some quiet time with the Lord.

Holy Hour

11am to 12 noon Sts John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Road, Willetton. Please come and pray for a vocation in the parish. Enq: John 9457 7771.

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

ESPERANCE 3 bedroom house f/ furnished. Ph: 08 9076 5083.

GUADALUPE HILL TRIGG

www.beachhouseperth.com Ph: 0400 292 100.

HOUSE TO SHARE for clean living male, $120p/w Riverton. Ph: 0449 651 697.

YALLINGUP BEACH Front Cottage. Three bedrooms from 2-14 March. Phone 9272 3105.

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

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

OTTIMO Convenient city location for books, cds/dvds, cards, candles, statues, Bibles, medals and much more. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade (Terrace level), 671 Hay Street, Perth. Ph: 9322 4520. MonFri 9am-6pm.

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

KINLAR VESTMENTS

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

BUILDING TRADES

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph: Nigel 9242 2952.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd For all your residential, commercial painting requirements. Ph: Tom Perrott 9444 1200.

PICASSO PAINTING Top service. Ph: 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505.

COUNSELLING

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHOTHERAPY

www.peterwatt.com.au, Ph: 9203 5278.

WANTED

Glory & Praise Songs for Christian Assembly Vol 1 and Eagle’s Wings Scripture in Song Everything I Possess, about 25 of each, more if possible. Please ring 9641 1477 or email stpatsyork@westnet. com.au to arrange pickup and payment.

PREMISES REQUIRED FOR BILLINGS LIFE WA INC We are looking for premises north of Perth where we can hold daytime clinics for our clients. We require premises, preferably with a waiting room, for a period of three to four hours during one day of the week; where we can see clients privately. A doctors’ surgery would be ideal. Similar offers would be appreciated. Our teachers are fully accredited to teach the Billings Ovulation Method of Natural Fertility Management and are experienced in Fertility Education. Please contact billings LIFE WA Inc: Marilena Scarfe: 0409 119 532.

THANKSGIVING

PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN MARY

(Never known to fail) Oh most beautiful Flower of Mt Carmel, fruitful vine and splendour of Heaven, Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity. Oh Star of the Sea, help me and show me herein you are my Mother. Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and Earth. I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to succour me in my necessity (make request). There are none that can withstand your power. Oh Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee 3 times Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands 3 times Amen. D Nelson.

FOR SALE

WHITE PLASTER STATUES of Virgin Mary. 60cm tall $60 and 50cm tall $40 each. Phone Angela 9276 9317.

FURNITURE REMOVAL

ALL AREAS Mike Murphy Ph: 0416 226 434.

BUSINESS

HOME based Business Partners for Australia, India, and Philippines. www.dreamlife1. com.

HEALTH

LOSE WEIGHT STAY HEALTHY Herbalife. Free support. 02 9807 5337.

Mt 6:1-6.16-18

18 Th

Ps 1:1-4.6

19

20 S

Ps 50:3-6.18-19

Mt 9:14-15

Ps 85:1-6

Lk 5:27-32

The diaconate: the wind beneath the Church’s wings

Emerging Ministry

By Anthony Paganoni CS

The permanent diaconate: Its genesis, growth, issues.

This week, Scalabrinian Father Anthony Paganoni begins a series for The Record revealing hitherto unknown, intriguing facts about that relatively new concept in many parts of Australia, the permanent diaconate. This week he focuses on its genesis

Although the ministry of the diaconate goes back to the early times of the Church, permanent Deacons are a relatively recent phenomenon in the Catholic Church.

The “International Centre for the Diaconate” (ICD) is the hub, the focal point of convergence of this growing ministry as well as the launching pad for many projects for the promotion and clearer understanding of the diaconate.

It is based in the diocese of Rottenburg/ Stuttgart in Germany.

The ICD seeks to maintain contacts worldwide with those involved in supporting this ministry.

In cooperation with similar other agencies, it organises meetings and symposia to monitor its progress; it offers and disseminates information to Episcopal Conferences or deacons’ fraternities wherever they exist. It has an ecumenical outlook, inviting representatives of other Christian denominations to the meetings,

particularly Anglicans and Lutherans. ICD emerged in the year 1951 in Freiburg (Germany) from a group of deacons mostly involved in caring for needy persons.

That was ten years before the opening of the Second Vatican Council in Rome. To understand this particular form of ministry, we must remain in Germany.

For some time in Germany, the words diaconate and deacon had already become part of the local tradition.

By 1933 the deacons in the Lutheran Church had already celebrated their 100th anniversary in Hamburg.

In Catholic circles, Gustav von Man, director of the German Caritas, had, on several occasions, voiced the need for a diaconate of charitable services.

But it seemed clear that in the training of deacons the twin value of theological/ecclesial insights and charitable service had to be fostered. The initial nucleus of German deacons was enriched by other groups in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. In 1959 a centre for the International Diaconate was opened in Fribourg (Switzerland) and this paved the way for a concrete proposal to be presented to the Council Fathers in Rome.

In 1965 a conference The Ministry of Deacons in the Life of the Church and in the World Today” was held in Rome.

In 1966, the first issues of the journal Diaconia Christi further boosted the expansion of the diaconate in the world.

The most up-to-date map of deacons in the world reveals that there are 34,033 of them (29,720 belonging to the diocesan clergy and 4,313 to other Religious organisations), distributed across 132 countries.

The Second Vatican Council had anticipated that the ministry of deacons would develop in Third World countries to emphasise the presence of the Church among the poor.

This expectation has not been realised, since 82 per cent of deacons are working in the industrialised countries of the world, particularly in North America.

Early Apostles showed what flawed men can do with God’s grace: Benedict

God’s grace makes it possible for weak men to answer ‘divine call’:

Benedict XVI

VATICAN CITY (CNA) - Pope Benedict XVI tailored his message before his 7 February Sunday Angelus around the “divine call” of the Lord presented in today’s Liturgy, teaching that, through the examples of Isaiah, Peter and Paul man can realise his “call” regardless of the limitations.

First, said the Pope, there is Isaiah, who responds, “Here I am Lord, send me”, after being fearful and feeling undeserving before the Lord.

Then, there are Simon Peter and the other disciples who cast their nets at the bidding of Jesus and find fish where there were none. When the “overabundant catch” is landed, Simon Peter tells the Lord, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” but the Lord invites him and the others to leave everything and follow him as “fishers of men.” Paul is also struck by his unwor-

thiness to be called an Apostle due to his history of Christian persecution, but he recognises the changes that have taken place in him due to the grace of God, the Holy Father pointed out.

With the grace of God, St Paul dedicated himself to preaching the Gospel, despite his limitations, the Pope said.

“In these three experiences we see how the true encounter with God brings man to recognise his own poverty and inadequacy, his own limits and sin.

“But, regardless of the fragil-

ity, the Lord, rich in mercy and forgiveness, transforms the life of man and calls him to follow Him,” the Pope said. The humility of these three witnesses in Sunday’s Liturgy “invites all who have received the gift of the divine vocation to not concentrate on their own limits, but to keep a fixed gaze on the Lord and on his surprising mercy, to convert their hearts and continue, with joy, to ‘give up everything’ for Him,” Benedict said.

The Lord sees the heart of man, and makes “intrepid Apostles and

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announcers of salvation” of weak and poor, but faithful, men.

Noting the Year for Priests, the Holy Father prayed to “the Patron of Masses” to send workers who know how to respond to the Lord’s invitation to follow him with generosity, “not trusting in their own strength, opening themselves to the action of His grace.”

“In particular,” he finished, “I invite all priests to revive their generous availability to respond each day to the call of the Lord with the same humility and faith of Isaiah, Peter and Paul.”

Right: Deacons pray during the opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on 21 January. CNS