FAITH ON AIR: Your Catholic TV Guide for the month of March Page 4
The Parish. The Nation. The World.
Western Australia’s Award-winning Catholic newspaper
BOOKS: John Paul II’s Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way surveys a life Page 16
JEHOVAH’S LAW? Why Catholics approve blood transfusion Page 4
Women who are caregivers shouldn’t suffer economically,
says Vatican representative Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law Professor. Radical social changes are needed to support working mums
■ By Tracy EarlyMary Ann Glendon, head of the Vatican delegation to a meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, said on March 7 that women face an unresolved problem of “harmonizing” their “aspirations for fuller participation in social and economic life with their roles in family life.”
Women can resolve the problem, but not without “radical changes in society,” she said.
Glendon, a Harvard law professor and president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, said no society had yet found a satisfactory way to apply the “equality principle” to the situation of “mothers and others who give priority to caregiving roles.”
To do this, she said, policy-makers
would have to pay closer attention “to women’s own accounts of what is important to them, rather than to special interest groups that purport to speak for women but often do not have women’s interests at heart.”
Society should both respect caregiving as “one of the most important forms of human work” and restructure patterns of paid employment so that women do not have to pay for their economic security by sacrificing the caregiving “in which many millions of them find their deepest fulfillment,” she said.
“In sum, the problem will not be solved until human values take precedence over economic values,” she added.
The February 28-March 11 commission meeting, held at UN headquarters in New York, was devoted to a review of the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women and of progress in implementing its declaration and action platform.
Glendon, who headed the Vatican delegation to the conference, told the commission that the family of nations had given significant “encouragement and impetus to women in their quest for recognition of their equal rights and dignity.” Continued on page 3
Centacare Employment and Training is an agency of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Perth that provides services to the unemployed in the areas of finding employment, further education or vocational skills training.
Currently, the organisation is seeking Expressions of Interest from people who may wish to become members of the Board.
Individuals with skills and expertise in any of the following areas – Organisational Development, Business Management, Human Resource Management, Process Improvement, Business Planning or Marketing and who are committed to the principles of social justice, are asked to apply.
Early morning Board meetings are held once per month and last for two hours. Further information on the organisation is available at www.centacarewa.com.au
Expressions of Interest kits are available by emailing probertson@centemploy. com.au or by phoning Pauline Robertson, Executive Director on 9482 7001.
Expressions of Interest should be sent to probertson@centemploy.com.au or posted to P. Robertson, Executive Director, Centacare Employment and Training, 3rd Floor 641 Wellington Street Perth WA 6000
The number of Catholics in Japan has topped 1 million for the first time, said a booklet from the Japanese bishops’ commission for migrants, refugees and travellers.
UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand, reported this week that the pamphlet “Catholic Church in Japan: Church, Living Together With Japanese and Foreigners,” says 2004 began with more than 1 million Catholics in Japan. It breaks this figure down into nearly 450,000 Japanese and
Christians in Iraq are nervous about the activities of mainly American evangelicals who arrived to bring Jesus to the Middle East, even though Christians have been there for centuries.
more than 565,000 foreign Catholics. During the 1999-2003 period, the number of foreign Catholics increased by more than 100,000.
While the number of Japanese Catholics is based on parish registration figures, the number of foreigners is an estimate.
According to the commission’s report, the largest number of foreign Catholics, almost 235,000, come from Brazil.
Catholic medical associations urge US to save Florida Woman’s life from death by starvation
If Terri Schiavo “can be condemned to death,” every person whose life is considered of insufficient quality by a guardian or court could face euthanasia, warns a Catholic organisation.
The World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC) issued its warning last Sunday in regard to the case of the brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband has been in an intense legal battle to stop her artificial feeding.
“She is not guilty of any crime, except to be a burden for her husband and for a selfish society,” said
Dr. Gian Luigi Gigli, president of FIAMC, of Schiavo. “The real core of the problem is the attempt to decide about the right to life of a human being, not on the basis of her/his dignity, but on an external evaluation of the quality of life,” Gigli said.
“The importance of this case goes beyond this deplorable circumstance,” his statement continued. “It will open the floodgates to euthanasia in the United States, at all ages, without even a legislative decision.
FIAMC “strongly appeals to the United States authorities to react immediately and effectively to save Terri’s life” and urges US bishops “to mobilise every resource and influence of the Catholic Church to counteract this impending tragedy.”
- Zenit
NSW guidelines strong on procedure, weak on principle says Bishop Fisher
“Without a principled ethical approach to end-of-life-care, vulnerable people are at risk,” said Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, and spokesman on health ethics for the
SOME OF WHAT YOU’LL FIND IN...
LENTEN VESPERS AT THE CATHEDRAL
Vespers Evening Prayer is sung at St Mary’s Cathedral every Sunday during Lent at 4.30pm, preceding the 5pm Mass. Join members of the Cathedral Choir in
Catholic Church in Sydney. Bishop Fisher, who is Episcopal Vicar for Life and Health in the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, was commenting on the Guidelines for endof-life care and decision-making which were tabled in Parliament yesterday afternoon by the New South Wales Government.
Bishop Fisher said the Catholic
offering this choral praise to God as part of your Lenten program.
CLAREMONT WAY OF THE CROSS
The Way of the Cross will be dramatised by St Thomas’, Claremont parishioners on Friday, March 18 at 7.30pm.
A selection of Marcel Dupre’s Way of the
Church is concerned that the new guidelines are “strong on procedure, weak on principle” and that “they lack the sort of clear safeguards necessary to protect vulnerable patients”. The guidelines are obviously the product of a great deal of hard thinking and do offer some good advice on processes for reaching decisions about patient
Cross will be played on the church’s historic J.E. Dodd by guest organist, Martin Rein. A retiring collection will be taken to cover costs. Last year’s presentation was very well received, so this year the parish is opening this dramatised Way of the Cross to a wider group. For further details, phone 9384 0598.
care towards the end of life, the Bishop suggested. “However, they do not tell us how to make a good decision in this area.”
Health care professionals need guidance on what are ethical reasons for limiting treatments, not just who should be involved in decision making, or how to reach consensus in difficult circumstances.
“Weasel words like ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ care don’t help here,” Bishop Fisher said.
“Although the guidelines rightly oppose euthanasia, assisted suicide and other illegal practices, without sound ethical principles that promote respect for human dignity, people could still make decisions that caring for the unconscious, the severely handicapped, the dement-
ed and the less articulate is ‘inappropriate’. The new guidelines could end up encouraging euthanasist thinking,” Bishop Fisher argued. Patients at the end-of-life and other incompetent patients are the most vulnerable and without clear guidelines about when treatments should be withdrawn they may fall prey to “false compassion and inappropriate judgments that some people are not worth caring for,” he said. “Value free decision making processes do not protect vulnerable patients.”
Why the Catholic Church, unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, accepts blood transfusions:
Fr Walter Black MSC - Page 4 A mother’s experience of life support - Page 8
St Vincent de Paul recognised for efforts on behalf of the mentally ill
The St Vincent de Paul Society won the Most Outstanding Fundraising Project Award at the national Fundraising Institute Awards in Brisbane.
St Vinnies initially won the category of most successful Capital Major Gifts campaign, for the Vincentcare Capital Campaign, then topped off the celebrations when the major award was announced.
The Vincentcare Capital Campaign was a fundraising initiative to allow St Vinnies to expand its ability to accommodate people with a mental illness, experiencing homelessness and/or leaving institutional care.
The money raised through
the Capital Campaign will allow St Vinnies to redevelop, expand and fund ongoing services at Vincentian House, its largest accommodation site in the state.
Vincentcare focuses on individual needs, promotes independence, participation and advocates strongly people’s valued status within the community.
St Vinnies State President Brian Bull says the Capital Campaign was highly successful because of the strong support of volunteers and donors who saw the value of the ‘support with dignity’ approach.
“We have long seen the value of Vincentcare, which provides well rounded support to clients 24 hours each day, 365 days of the year to ensure their wellbeing, when most other agencies and support networks are closed,” said Mr Bull.
“We thank the FIA for their recognition and hope that the community continues to support our programs so we can help those most in need,” he continued.
President of the FIA WA division Margaret Hayden will present the awards to St Vinnies on Monday March 14, 2005 at 10am.
Continued from page 1
When the UN charter affirmed “the equal rights of men and women” in 1945, women did not enjoy social and legal equality in any country of the world, she said.
But she said progress toward realising the UN vision “gathered momentum” in the women’s conferences in Mexico City in 1975; Copenhagen, Denmark, 1980; Nairobi, Kenya, 1985; and in Beijing. “Today, the equality principle is officially accepted nearly everywhere in the world,” she said.
Glendon said, however, that the same years had brought “new forms of poverty” and “new threats to human life and dignity.”
“Even in affluent societies, the faces of the poor are predominantly those of women and children,” she said.
Tying this “feminisation of poverty” to family breakdown, she said that the costs of increasing divorce and single parenthood had “fallen heavily on women.”
Glendon said another growing problem for women was the combination of falling birth rates and increasing longevity that produced a shortage of caregivers and created “tensions between younger and older generations.”
“In a world that has become dangerously careless about protecting human life at its frail beginnings and endings, older women are likely to be at particular risk,” she said.
Poverty today, Glendon said, is not merely a problem but a scandal because humanity “for the first time in history” has the capacity to end it. “The Holy See wishes to take this occasion to reaffirm its own long-standing commitments to the education and health of women and girls, and to pledge its redoubled efforts to awaken the consciences of the privileged,” she said.
In a telephone interview, Glendon said the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women showed some of the same divisions evident in Beijing and at other gatherings, with representatives of the developing world focusing on problems such as poverty and delegates from more affluent areas “still preoccupied with the
Music for Easter: Wednesday March 23, 7.30pm
Fire and Ice: Sunday June 19, 2.30pm
Windows into Heaven: Sunday November 20, 2.30pm All concerts
agenda of the old feminism of the 1970s.” This “old feminism,” she said, was characterised by negative attitudes toward men and motherhood and following a “party line” on abortion and homosexuality.
Glendon said, however, that she found the Vatican received a cordial welcome and a respectful hearing.
The Catholic Church wins respect because it has 300,000 agencies throughout the world actually working in the fields of health, education and other areas important to the advancement of women, she said.
The United States encountered widespread opposition when it sought to amend a declaration issued from the commission meeting to say that the Beijing documents did not create any right to abortion.
Relatively brief for UN documents, the declaration reaffirmed the Beijing declaration and action platform, and called for intensified efforts to implement it on the part of the international community, nongovernmental organisations and individuals.
Glendon said she found the declaration acceptable because lawyers knew such conferences lacked the authority to create new rights. The US representatives said the discussion precipitated by their amendment proposal sufficiently established that no right to abortion was created at Beijing, and they agreed to accept the declaration without amendment. - CNS
More than 20,000 e-mails were sent to John Paul II expressing best wishes and guaranteeing prayers for him as he recovers from his tracheotomy. From March 1 to noon of March 3, the Pope received some 10,000 messages in English, 6,077 in Spanish, 2,012 in Portuguese, 1,134 in Italian, 850 in German and 800 in French.
These statistics do not include messages in Polish, the Vatican press office said in its announcement.
“Most e-mails seem to be from ordinary faithful throughout the world and a few ... are from people who had been away from their faith and now have returned,” the press office said in a statement. The Holy See said that, in general, the messages are brief, “wishing the Pope well, telling him how his suffering is an example to all, or simply thanking him for all he has done and continues to do for the Church, especially in promoting the value of human life and human dignity.”
Send your wishes to: john_paul_ii@vatican.va
Wednesday 16 March 2005, starting at 7.30pm
Applications are now invited for admission into Year 8 for 2007 and beyond.
Year 8 2007 Enrolments close
Friday 8 April 2005
To register your attendance and for any other enquiries please telephone Mrs Gay Carroll (08) 9204 9405
To participate in a College tour contact Mrs Carroll on the above number for bookings
There are a limited number of places still available for Year 8 2006.
The recent decision by a Perth hospital to overide the wishes of a young Jehovah’s Witness who agreed with his sect’s teaching against receiving blood transfusions, even in life-threatening situations, received high profile press coverage in Perth. The sect claims its position is biblical. Fr Walter Black MSC, former director of the LJ Goody Bioethics Centre in Glendalough, explains the Catholic position.
■ By Rev Dr Walter K Blackespecially as for a healthy person the blood might be quite speedily regenerated.
Fr Walter Black
Briefly the Church teaches that organ transplants which either put in peril the donor’s health or damage their functional integrity are not morally lawful. However, to donate tissue which may be regenerated, with the intention of saving the recipient’s life, is an act of Christian love and indeed generosity.
To donate one’s blood to be used in transfusion to save another’s life is clearly an act of such generosity,
The teaching is best summarised in the words of Pope John Paul II speaking to blood donors.
“To promote and encourage such a noble and meritorious act as donating your own blood or an organ to those of your brothers and sisters who have need of it … such a gesture is the more laudable in that you are motivated, not by a desire for earthly gain or ends, but by a generous impulse of the heart, by human and Christian solidarity – the love of neighbour, which forms the inspiring motive of the gospel message and which has been defined, indeed, as the new commandment. In giving blood or an organ of your body may you always
have this human and religious perspective: may your gesture be made as an offering to the Lord, who identified himself with those who suffer, either by sickness, accidents on the highway, or mishaps at work. May it be a gift made to the suffering Lord, who in his passion gave himself completely and poured out his blood for the salvation of mankind.
If you also include this supernatural intention, your humanitarian gesture, already so noble in itself, will be elevated and transformed into a splendid testimony of Christian faith, and your merit will certainly not be lost.”
Record readers will be well aware that our own Archbishop has received meritorious mention in the daily press for his readiness to be available as a blood donor for
those who require transfusion of a somewhat rare blood type.
It may also be worth commenting, as was not mentioned in the secular press, that Jehovah’s Witnesses overseas are now reassessing their attitude to blood transfusion.
They had earlier reassessed their attitude to bans on vaccines, organ transplants and such like. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses are now seriously querying their restrictive interpretation of the Old Testament statements in a move towards approving the giving and receiving of blood transfusions for appropriate purposes.
Further information and documentation of Church teaching is available at the L J Goody Bioethics Centre (08) 9242 4066.
Catholic Church Television Australia on Aurora Community Channel 183 Foxtel and Austar Digital.
Sunday 6th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Something for Nothing”
11.00am “Trafficking of Women and Children”
Wednesday 9th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Something for Nothing”
11.00am “Trafficking of Women and Children”
Friday 11th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Something for Nothing”
11.00am “Trafficking of Women and Children” (Check for repeats during the day on the Foxtel or Austar Digital Programme Channel)
“Something for Nothing”
In this programme from Albert Street Productions we meet four people who do a lot for nothing. Three work for agencies support-
For ministry with the mentally ill
For those wanting to know about mental illness this 17 week course will run on Fridays 9am to 3.30pm from 1 July to 21 Oct 2005. This course involves information sessions on schizophrenia, bipolar, suicide awareness, eating disorders etc plus group work and ward visits. Course fee is $100. Applications close 28 May. For information contact Bob Milne, Graylands Hospital Pastoral Centre 9347 6685 (0413325486 mob)
ed by the Church: the St Vincent De Paul Society, on Edmund Rice Camps or within the San Michel Community for people living with HIV/AIDS. The fourth volunteer works with the Variety Foundation. All of them give what they can, and get so much more in return.
“Trafficking of Women and Children”
These days during Lent we’re not only asked to attend to our personal sinfulness, but also to become aware of the sinfulness of our society and world. In this film we look at how our support of the Catholic Aid agency, Caritas, through Project Compassion, assists women who are caught in the dehumanising slavery of sex tourism and prostitution.
Sunday 13th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Responding to Emergencies”
11.00am “MacKillop’s Melbourne”
Wednesday 16th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Responding to Emergencies”
11.00am “MacKillop’s Melbourne”
Friday 18th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Responding to Emergencies”
11.00am “MacKillop’s Melbourne” (Check for repeats during the day on the Foxtel or Austar Digital Programme Channel)
“Responding to Emergencies”
Today’s film describes how the money raised during Lent by the Catholic aid agency, Caritas Australia, empowers local Bishops and people in the third world to set their own priorities, and respond as quickly as possible to emergencies. It shows us how our support of Project Compassion is put to work were it’s needed most.
“MacKillop’s Melbourne”
In the week during which we celebrate the feast of St Joseph, husband of Mary, we reflect on the early life of an Australian woman who found the foster-father of Jesus such an inspiring figure that she named her congregation, the Sisters of St Joseph: Blessed Mary MacKillop.
Sunday 20th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “The Pilgrimage”
11.00am “Food”
Wednesday 23rd March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “The Pilgrimage”
11.00am “Food”
Friday 25th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “The Pilgrimage”
11.00am “Food”
(Check for repeats during the day on the Foxtel or Austar Digital Programme Channel)
“The Pilgrimage”
In this the Church’s holiest week, we make a spiritual journey, or pilgrimage, to Israel - the place where the momentous events we remember this week, all occurred.
“Food”
This film explores how the Catholic Church’s aid agency, Caritas is continuing to share food with the world’s poor in Christ’s name, and on all our behalf. This film shows us that the sacrifices we make away from the Eucharist are connected to the sacrifice we celebrate at it.
Sunday 27th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Easter: Seasons of Light”
Wednesday 30th March
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Easter: Seasons of Light”
Friday 1st April
10.00am “Mass for You At Home”
10.30am “Easter: Seasons of Light”
(Check for repeats during the day on the Foxtel or Austar Digital Programme Channel)
“Easter: Seasons of Light”
This film explores the question “what does Easter mean” and how do social customs like the Easter bunny, Easter eggs and greeting cards fit within the religious traditions of Easter.
stritabooks@webace.com.au
Koondoola’s Mercy College Chapel of St Brigid will be a place where the staff and students will be able to meet Christ, according to Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton.
Bishop Sproxton opened the Chapel on February 27 and said the collge is a place where the Church and spirit of God has achieved great things.
The chapel was designed by
Perth architect Murray Slavin. The celebration started with a symbolic history at the beginning of the celebration.
Kangaroo paws, architectural plans, tools, school books, school register records and a Celtic cross from the Mercy Sisters motherhouse in Dublin, were all brought and placed in front of the altar.
College Principal Dr Tony Curry also brought a jug with water from four sacred wells of St Brigid, Kildare in Ireland, from Blessed
Catherine McAuley’s foundation house in Dublin, St Brigid’s convent in West Perth and from Mercy College Koondoola.
The water was then poured into a water fountain feature inside the Chapel. “What has come here has been a very wonderful work,” the Bishop said.
“It is standing on the shoulders of many great people who have gone before us. Enable us to go out from here into the world with the strength of Jesus.”
■ By Carol Glatz
The Vatican announced that a series of cardinals would be standing in for Pope John Paul II in the celebration of Holy Week events.
For the first time in his 26-year pontificate, the Pope was not scheduled to preside over Holy Week and Easter celebrations, said a March 8 Vatican press statement.
However, the Pope was expected to impart the papal blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city of Rome and the world) on March 27, Easter, following Mass presided over by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state.
Where the Pope would be when he was to offer his Easter blessing “was left purposely vague,” said a Vatican official, since it was still unclear as to what extent the Pope would be able to resume activities following his hospitalisation for respiratory problems and a tracheotomy. Papal spokesman Joaquin
Navarro-Valls said March 7 the Vatican hoped the Pope would be back in the Vatican for Holy Week, but he would decide how or if he would participate in the week’s many liturgies.
Over the past few years, due to his limited mobility, the Pope has forgone performing certain Holy Week rituals, such as washing the feet of priests on Holy Thursday and carrying the cross on Good Friday; instead, he has assigned the task to others.
This time several cardinals, including Cardinal Francis Stafford of the Apostolic Penitentiary, have been asked to preside over the Holy Week liturgies and events.
The Vatican press office published the following schedule of services for Holy Week and Easter:
■ March 20, Palm Sunday: Mass in St Peter’s Square, including the blessing of the palms, presided over by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, papal vicar for Rome.
■ March 24, Holy Thursday:
Volunteer Managers for Epiphany Retreat Centre The management committee is seeking a live-in Catholic couple (or single) to be responsible for the management of the Centre. Some experience in hospitality, catering and ground management. A small allowance will be provided.
Enquiries to Denise 9354 0200.
Apply to: President, Epiphany Retreat Centre 60 Fifth Ave, Rossmoyne 6148
morning celebration of the chrism Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, presided over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops; evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, also in the basilica, presided over by Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
■ March 25, Good Friday: liturgy of the Lord’s Passion in St Peter’s Basilica, presided over by Cardinal Stafford. Later that night, the Stations of the Cross will take place at Rome’s Colosseum.
■ March 26: celebration of the Easter Vigil in St Peter’s Basilica, presided over by German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals.
■ March 27: Easter Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, presided over by Cardinal Sodano. At midday, the Pope was scheduled to impart his blessing, “urbi et orbi.” - CNS
man was saying grace before dinner one Easter Sunday and when he arrived at the words “.. these your gifts which we receive from your kindness ..” his brother muttered sotto voce “but I know where they really come from”. The man let it pass, but for a long time afterwards he wondered why his highly intelligent brother could not see the reality contained in the prayer.
Eventually he realised that this particular piece of blindness is just another example of the way materialism takes over our thinking without our realising it has happened. His brother thought he knew that farmers, market gardeners, food processors, distributors and shopkeepers were the source of the food. His view was true so far as it goes, but no matter how clever a farmer or a gardener is at getting things to grow, he cannot give life to any of his cattle or sheep or fruit or vegetables, or even to the pastures on which his herds graze. He can propagate, he can cultivate, and he can do many things to boost the harvest, and for this we pay him. But he cannot create. For life, he must depend on life itself. And for this we thank the author of life.
That is why the farmer and city dweller alike will thank God for “these your gifts”, gifts which embrace the roles of the sun, the earth, the atmosphere and the seeds and processes of life.
Science can observe and explain many of these roles and relationships, but life itself remains a mystery. It is not science or even a scientific education that gives rise to the blindness. It is materialism, a much lower state of mind and of being in which we do not think beyond what is materially evident. A well-trained scientific mind can recognise the reality beyond the scientific knowledge even if he cannot describe it, but the materialist is far more limited; he cannot recognise that there is something beyond.
PO Box 75, Leederville, WA 6902
Tel: (08) 9227 7080, Fax: (08) 9227 7087
cathrec@iinet.net.au
With the never-ending stimulation and distraction provided for our senses, we are always in danger of falling into the limiting belief that our physical senses will faithfully represent the world to us. They don’t. They are very helpful in communicating much of the world to us, but once we imagine they can tell us all, we are doomed.
This becomes particularly evident in relation to human life. Our educational ‘enlightenment’ has accelerated us to the darkness where we cannot see the meaning of life. We have begun to rate the quality of life above life itself, but these days when we talk about the quality of life we talk about the level of material comfort and sensory satisfaction. This inevitably leads to selfishness even to the point of being self-consuming.
A wiser world would define the quality of life in terms of kindness, courage, commitment, selflessness, the qualities that inevitably lead to self-discovery and the freedom to be all of who we are.
The first mind-set is leading us towards the “right” to kill the young, sterilize the adult, and dispose of the handicapped, all because we have deluded ourselves that life interferes with the quality of life. The second sustains us in the qualities it names, leading to the great love that enables us to lay down our life for another, in service or in sacrifice.
Expressed like that, the options appear to represent no choice at all, but even a brief glance at our public institutions, and particularly our parliaments, reveals that we are collectively going blind at an alarming rate.
What is true of life is also true of the modern approach to human sexuality, the gift through which we share in the creation of new life. In our public means of mass communication and in our public institutions it is treated entirely as a physical process – usually for self-gratification – without acknowledgement of the deepest human understanding that the best gifts associated with human sexuality are experienced through marriage and fidelity.
Nowhere is this failure more conspicuous than in the relationships education program produced by the Health Department and inflicted on the youth of our state by the Education Department. It provides no education in chastity as the means for developing the capacity for fidelity in the lifelong family relationship that is the natural goal of most people. It is almost entirely a materialistic education without commitment to the development of the character which is the real measure of human maturity. It fails our children badly.
The wisdom behind grace before meals is that it represents both faith and reason, two gifts that are essential for the fullness of the human person. The materialist response represents neither, or, at its best, no faith and only minimal reason.
For their usefulness, all systems of faith and all reason depend on what they are founded on and how they are developed. For instance, if we believe and reason that the earth is our mother and giver of life, we would eventually have to acknowledge the sun as our father because without the sun the earth would be sterile and barren. We might even end up sacrificing infants to such a father.
On the other hand, if we believe in a totally good God who reveals himself to us, and sacrifices himself for us, we find it easy to place our faith in the goodness he invites us to share.
But faith and reason are not merely systems. They are also qualities that are part of human nature. If we do not live within and by these qualities, it is not merely our thinking but our being that goes astray.
For these gifts we receive from your kindness, we thank you, Lord.
The smoke inhaled by a smoker from his cigarette contains cancer-causing chemicals.
You knew that.
Did you know that the sidestream smoke, which isn’t inhaled but drifts away from the burning cigarette end, contains up to 30 times higher concentrations of toxic substances?
That’s why passive smoking is so dangerous. Passive smoke is a risk factor for childhood croup, pneumonia, glue-ear, meningococcal disease, asthma and cot death. Make your house and car smoke free.
Reinforce this with stickers on your front door and dashboard.
Tell your guests it isn’t good enough to smoke in another part of the house.
They must go outside.
Dr Arnold Jago MilduraSo the elections are over for another four years. How did we shape up as Catholics with our voting power?
I watched Fr Groeschel on Global Catholic Network (Access 31 TV on Sunday 20 February) speaking on the then forthcoming elections in the US and the non-negotiables for Christians voting in those elections.
He emphasised the need for Catholics and all Christians not to endorse any candidate who stood for abortion, stating that
With respect, yes and no...
Fr Deeter’s learned foray into the satirists of the past is interesting, but not to the point. But he is right that generally speaking “The West” and most other media are profoundly ignorant of the Church, and choose to mock and denigrate instead of inquire and clarify. Many of the media’s attempts to ridicule the Church are certainly deserving of censure – but a harmless and pointless survey on whether the Pope should resign? Better left alone – leave the cannon for a larger target. With respect, he is drawing a long bow in his attempt at “reading between the lines” of my letter. My “lament” is not that “The Record is not on the cutting edge of leftist policies”. Rather, it is that we lack a mature journal in which the rich and developing theologies of the Church on the complexities of modern life, religious and secular, are debated and allowed to enrich our churches and communities. I reiterate that this is a very serious deficiency in our local Church in its attempts to educate and inform the public, and to become a significant and sought-after source of wisdom.
For example – in the recent elections, politicians on both sides of the divide were intent on ramping up the stakes in a very one-sided debate on law and order in our cities. The only “solutions” seemed to be removing the discretion of
this is a non-negotiable issue. Not only from the standpoint of the Church. It goes against the natural law and the will of God for the human race.
Fr Groeschel went on to say that in a recent poll in the US it was found that 92 per cent of the people surveyed believe in the presence of God, but only 18 per cent listed moral and ethical issues as the first concerns in choosing a candidate.
He concluded by saying that people who agree with the moral teachings of the Catholic Church and go against it because of the way they vote are creating a dan-
judges to exercise compassion through individual sentencing, more and bigger prisons – and a water cannon! The missing elements in that debate had to do with true justice, with compassion and forgiveness and strong support – for victim and perpetrator too - with addressing grave social disadvantage which spawns unacceptable social behaviour, with better and more education programmes on alcohol and drugs - and surely, with a deeper and wiser insight into the brokenness of the whole human condition – not just of those on the wrong side of the law. Sadly – they were not just missing in the debate in the secular media, but in The Record too, which could have (and should have) led a strong counter-argument to the perceived “wisdom” of the day. The whole community would have benefited from such a wider extension of the debate. It is wholly in the spirit of the Vatican Council that secular society, of every persuasion, should be able to look to the Catholic journals for an alternative and deeper viewpoint; I believe it is incumbent upon The Record to be that alternative voice.
The values I have written of may be “leftist” to Fr Tim. To me, they sound like Gospel values.
Michael Leek OSB North Beachgerous situation. Once we have decided killing people is acceptable, where do we stop?
I ask myself the question: what percentage of Catholics in our recent election made moral and ethical beliefs their first concern in electing a candidate?
Mother Teresa opf Calcutta is quoted as saying that there is no greater poverty than to destroy the life of a child so that one might have more of the world’s goods. And again – no nation that kills its children can survive very long.
Margaret Bowen WoodlandsMore than 150 people, some from Inter-state and overseas, came together on Friday, February 25, to help celebrate the official inauguration of the Joondalup Circle of the Catenian Association. An international organisation, the Catenian Association consists of practising Catholic men drawn from all walks of life who are committed to upholding the traditions and principles of the Catholic Church. The formal inauguration of the Joondalup Circle was performed by the Association’s
Grand President (Brother John Clarke) who was on an official visit from the UK Foundation President of the new Circle, Brother John Manhouse in his acceptance speech recalled that an early membership drive suffered a set back when some prospective Brothers fell by the wayside.
“Nevertheless, we carried on and successfully brought together a group of dedicated Catholic men who had demonstrated a desire to become part of the International Catenian Brotherhood”.
“And tonight we come together, with our wives, to cel-
ebrate that successful outcome,” he said.
“In achieving that objective I recognise the assistance and advice which was so readily forthcoming from Provincial Director (Brother John Lambe)”.
(All circles in Western Australia come under the umbrella of Province 20 in the International Catenian organisation)
Joondalup, and another new West Australian Circle - Bouvard - were inaugurated within a few days of each other, increasing the number of chartered Circles in Western Australia from 10 to 12.
The basic problem with embryonic stem cell research is obvious: to get the stem cells you have to kill the child. The Church has taken its usual consistent, if often unpopular, line while most media and politicians seem to be unconscious of the fact that it also approves alternative methods of collecting other kinds of stem cells with far greater potential. Part of the problem the Church faces is how to explain to society what is ethical - and therefore what is not - when often nobody seems to want to know.
From unexpected places individuals like Patricia Payne are offering a perspective, rather different from that of wealthy Hollywood celebrities like Michael
J. Fox ■ By Nancy Frazier O’BrienAfter 14 years with Parkinson’s, Patricia Payne would give almost anything to be free of the debilitating tremors that are characteristic of the disease and the constant pain caused by bone disintegration around her lower spine.
But as a Catholic and the mother of five, she will not consider any treatment that would involve the destruction of human embryos.
“I don’t want to see cures, even a cure for my terrible disease, to be obtained by destroying a fellow human being at the earliest and most vulnerable stage of their existence,” Payne recently told a joint committee of the Massachusetts Legislature in emotional and exhausting testimony.
“To kill one human being for the benefit of another is never morally justifiable,” she added. “To kill the weak in order to benefit the strong is even more objectionable.”
Still feeling the effects the next day of her appearance before the committee and the more than four-hour
round trip to Boston, Payne spoke with Catholic News Service by telephone from her home in Connecticut. She was joined by her husband of 40 years, Richard, whom she met when both were working for separate offices of the Canadian bishops’ conference.
Before the hearing, “I was extremely agitated and nervous, and I wanted to back out,” Patricia Payne said. “But my husband reminded me that I was not alone, and that it’s better to be a little nervous than to be without any nerves.”
Payne told Massachusetts’ newly created Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies that she has been selected as one of a dozen participants in
Catholic News Service deputy editor and health reporter NANCY FRAZIER
O’BRIEN takes a new look at bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective. The Church sees life - from the embryo newly created in a test tube to the braindamaged patient on his deathbed - as “always human.”
Continued from Vista 1 the next phase of Dr Michel Levesque’s adult stem-cell research and therapy program to treat Parkinson’s. The phase 2 clinical trials were to begin in about eight months.
Levesque, a physician and neuroscientist based at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, has developed dopamine-secreting neurons from patients’ own brain tissue and transplanted them safely back to the brain, greatly reducing the symptoms of Parkinson’s.
After the first phase of the trials, in 1999, Parkinson’s patient and retired nuclear scientist Dennis Turner - who had been unable to use his right arm because of the extreme shaking caused by the disease - was virtually symptom-free for nearly five years and regained sufficient motor control to indulge his passion for big-game photography on safari in Africa.
“Adult stem cells have treated and cured literally tens of thousands of people with almost 100 different diseases,” Patricia Payne told the Massachusetts committee. “How many people have been cured of any disease using embryonic stem cells? The answer is zero. None. Instead, the history of embryonic stem-cell research is replete with monstrous tumors, tissue rejections and immune reactions.”
One of the biggest misconceptions about stem-cell research is that the Catholic Church opposes it, said Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, who studied neuroscience at Yale University and theology at Gregorian University in Rome. On the contrary, he said, the Church supports three of the four ways that stem-cell research currently is being conducted:
● Adult stem-cell research, involving the growth of stem cells from the patient’s own tissue or that of another living donor.
● Stem cells developed from
Fr Joe Parkinson, Director of the LJ Goody Bioethics Centre, said he believed there is no legislation that deals specifically with stem cell research.
Fr Joe Parkinson
However, national and state legislation allow the use of excess In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) embryos for research purposes.
“Obviously stem cell research will be part
umbilical cord blood or placentas after a delivery is completed.
● Cells from fetal tissue derived from miscarriages (also called spontaneous abortions), as long as the parents give informed consent.
Only the use of embryonic stem cells, usually harvested from living embryos five to seven days after their creation in a test tube, is morally unacceptable, because it involves the killing of a human being, he said.
Father Pacholczyk, a priest who is director of education for the US National Catholic Bioethics Centre in Philadelphia, spends much of his time on the road, addressing national conferences, college groups, legislators and church-sponsored gatherings on the stem-cell issue.
“Just getting the basics out is the biggest challenge,” he said. “There are so many people out there who are trying to make the argument that it’s not a human being if it’s created for ‘therapeutic cloning.’
The issue is being systematically obfuscated.”
The only difference between an embryo created for “reproductive cloning” and one intended for “therapeutic cloning,” the priest added, is that the goal of the former “is to have a baby, walking and talking,” and the intent of the latter is “to strip mine the embryo at its earliest stage for the desired cells.”
of that,” Fr Parkinson said. Federal legislation passed about two years ago enabling research using excess IVF embryos created before April 2002. Each state was required to pass its own enabling legislation.
Western Australia passed legislation in July 2004.
The National legislation contained a sunset clause that automatically removes he protection for post-2002 embryos, and is currently under review.
Fr Parkinson said that Australian Bishops are seeking an extension of the limitations on uses of embryos for stem cell research.
The Federal Legislation allows the use of excess IVF embryos for specific research projects and for the advancement of health
“There’s a failure to understand that both kinds of cloning make a human being by a series of technological steps,” he said.
That’s the kind of information that the National Catholic Bioethics Centre has been trying to disseminate since its founding in 1972 as the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center.
“We were set up while abortion was still illegal in this country,” said John Haas, president of the centre. “No one had ever even heard of HIV/AIDS. No one had ever even heard of stem cells, much less embryonic stem cells.
Back then it was inconceivable that one could clone a human being
or clone a mammal. So we’ve been through a lot.”
But whether the ethical issue relates to cloning, informed consent for clinical drug trials or in vitro fertilization, the centre’s emphasis has always been on defending the dignity of the human person, Haas said.
“And we count all human beings of equal dignity, from the moment of conception until natural death, in whatever state they find themselves,” he added. “If you start excluding certain groups, what are the criteria that you’re using to exclude them? Then it becomes absolutely arbitrary.”
Those favouring adult stem cell research got a big boost from a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation in the US in which researchers at Tufts University isolated a stem cell from bone marrow that they think might have as much potential to become different kinds of cells as embryonic stem cells do.
Dr. Douglas W. Losordo, chief of
knowledge which would include the training of technicians to practise procedures.
On the other hand, Fr Parkinson said legislation is also quite restrictive for technicians to get access to embryos. A couple or a person who has embryos in storage must decide for themselves, without external influence, that their embryos are no longer needed for their own reproductive purposes.Under the Federal Legislation embryos cannot be created except for reproductive purposes.
Once they have determined the embryos are no longer needed they then have three choices - they can choose to donate the embryos to another couple, allow the embryos to succumb, which is allowing them to be
cardiovascular research at Caritas St Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston and lead researcher for the Tufts study, called bone marrow “like a repair kit” and made a prediction that would warm the hearts of those working against embryonic stem-cell research.
“I think embryonic stem cells are going to fade in the rear-view mirror of adult stem cells,” he said.
unfrozen and die, or they can donate to a specific research project.
In order for that to happen the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) requires a researcher to have a project approved before research is carried out.
The researcher has to nominate the minimum amount of embryos required and must offer proof that no fewer embryos can be used. They also have to account for all embryos that they use and are subject to regular audits by a national licensing Committee of the NHMRC.
Fr Parkinson said he believed there is one group in WA who conducts stem cell research and numerous others in the Eastern States.
The foundational cells for all life, stem cells can be coaxed into becoming a wide variety of tissues and even organs, scientists believe.
The US National Institute of Health says in its Web-based fact sheet on “stem-cell basics” that two characteristics distinguish stem cells from other types of cells:
● They are “unspecialised cells that renew themselves for long periods through cell division.”
● Under certain conditions, “they can be induced to become cells with special functions” such as heart muscle or the insulin-pro-
tion has been successfully treated with them.
The only definitive advances in treating humans have come using adult stem cells, such as the bloodforming stem cells in bone marrow, used to treat leukemia, lymphoma and several inherited blood disorders.
In a question-and-answer sheet distributed in 2004, the US bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities calls the claims about the potential of embryonic stem cells “largely speculation.”
“Embryonic stem cells have never treated a human patient, and animal trials suggest that they are too genetically unstable and too likely to form lethal tumors to be used for treatment anytime soon,” it said.
“This kind of exaggerated ‘promise’ has misled researchers and patient
and amniotic fluid; adult tissues and organ systems such as bone marrow, liver, skin, intestine, brain and even fat; and, rarely, postmortem human brains up to 20 hours after death.
Introducing the Stem-Cell Research Enhancement Act recently in the US Congress, politician Michael Castle, called embryonic stem-cell research “the greatest medical hope of the 21st century.”
The legislation would permit federal funding of embryonic stemcell research using embryos “originally created for fertility treatment purposes” which “will otherwise be discarded.”
It has 156 co-sponsors in the House, and an identical bill has been introduced in the Senate.
But Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education for the
ducing cells of the pancreas. Based on successful research on animals, scientists have theorised that stem cells could play a role in preventing or curing a variety of diseases, conditions and disabilities including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injuries, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and burns.
But since researchers at the University of Wisconsin discovered in 1998 how to isolate and develop human embryonic stem cells, no human disease or condi-
groups before - most obviously in the case of fetal tissue from abortions, which a decade ago was said to promise miracle cures and has produced nothing of the kind.”
Embryonic stem cells come from living embryos that have been frozen after creation for in vitro fertilisation procedures or, less frequently, created by cloning specifically for research. Harvesting stem cells from them always kills the embryos.
Adult stem cells come from three sources - pregnancy-related tissue such as umbilical cords, placentas
National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, calls embryonic stem-cell research “the worst kind of medicine” and rejected the argument that it is more acceptable to kill embryos that might die anyway.
“Just because someone might throw away frozen embryos doesn’t mean it’s OK for me to destroy them,” he said.
“For one wrong to be used to justify another is never good moral reasoning.”
- CNS(contemporary human mobility and the stand of the Church)
When I checked in the thesaurus that came with my computer software, I was rather surprised to find only three synonyms for inclusion. (There are a lot more for exclusion.) On further examination I noted that they are used to describe the inclusion of objects, not people. I then checked for synonyms of the verb include. I was happy to discover that there were more choices on offer, but again they only related to objects. After eliminating verbs that refer only to objects, I was left with embody, embrace, encompass, incorporate and involve.
So our language, which reflects our cultural values, is well stocked with expressions for exclusion. But it offers little for expressions of inclusion. And most of these refer to objects, not people. Would I be right in assuming that many of our past efforts to include people have ended up treating human beings as objects to be moved around? As percentages to make our organisation’s record look more acceptable?
Inclusion seems more messy than exclusion. Exclusion is simpler. Once we reject others, we don’t have to deal with them any more. We can go back to business as usual: no change, no worries! Exclusion is clean and doesn’t take much time, money or effort. Inclusion involves a great deal of listening and thinking: people’s backgrounds, stories and feelings
have to be taken into account. Inclusion requires spending a good deal of time and energy after a new group or person has been physically included. It requires readjustments on the part of everyone. And that can be very unsettling. Exclusion is a much more appealing choice when it comes to dealing with people or groups who are different. I suggest we omit the following material which seems obscure to me and labours the point already well made: [We may even mentally and subconsciously approach inclusion by making an all-out effort to adopt non-exclusionary practices. It is to be noted that inclusion is neither a by-product nor the result of the demise of exclusion!]
Every defined organisationand the Church is no exception - is by nature exclusive. Whenever an organisation declares its existence, it defines its boundaries and there-
fore spells out who is in and who is out. These boundaries can be explicit, as in a mission statement or implicit, as in a circle of friends. Boundaries are essential to the identity and survival of the organisation. Most organizations view the area within their boundaries as a safe zone where members feel safe and secure. Only those who pose no threat to the organisation can enter. Immediately beyond the safe zone lies the fear zone. The narrow space between the two provides little time or place to negotiate, explore or engage in dialogue. It has no room for Grace.
As we further explore the concept of an inclusive community, the questions we need to ask are: How does a community act or react when its explicit and implicit boundaries are under challenge? Does it act exclusively or inclusively?
With Derek Boylen
■
Iwill never forget my father’s silly faces and funny rhymes the day after we brought our first son Elijah home from hospital. Even today it makes me happy to watch people being silly and free with our boys. That particular day sticks in my mind for two reasons. The first is simple. I rarely see my father being so silly and having so much fun.
The second reason is a little more insightful. What I was actually seeing was my Dad living fullness of life. When are we called to begin living the Gospel? Eighteen? Twenty-one? It hit me that we are called to live the Gospel message from the moment of conception.
The question for me seemed to be “how do I help my one week old son live the Gospel?” We all have gifts and talents but what does a new born have? There it was, staring me in the face. The gift that my son had to offer was his
innocence, his fragility, his lack of agendas. His tiny being is his gift to the Church. He was living the Gospel by calling me to live the Gospel in meeting his needs.
My relationship with these little people in some ways resembles the relationship God desires to have with us. What occurred to me that day is that our children are a wonderful, often undiscovered, gift to Christian life.
It’s our hope that our sons will become men who will embrace the Gospel and help to create a culture of life. The good news is that I don’t have to wait till they can walk, run, jump and hold a good conversation. They are called to live the Gospel in their lives now and as their parent I’m called to help them.
Karen and I love it when people pick up and cuddle and play with our children. Especially people who don’t have children of their own or whose children have all grown up. In my mind we are empowering our children to use the gift of themselves to enrich and enliven the Body of Christ. After all they are just as much a part of it as the grown ups.
Spending time with children can be liberating, freeing, fun, eye opening. This is the gift of our children to the Church.
Children can also teach us a lot about love. Small children love without restrictions, limits, hidden agendas, prejudice or bias. Small children forgive easily and
i say, i say
■ With Guy Crouchback
Atration of how merciless capitalism destroys the small employee.
Today, however, it is possible to see it something quite different, and something that Miller, I am sure, did not intend. Death of a Salesman can be seen as the story of a man crushed by what are now sometimes called his gender obligations: his duty as a man to work, to win bread for his family, to care for his women and children.
when they do the slate is wiped clean. Small children look upon the world with wide open eyes soaking up the wonder of God’s creation at every opportunity. These are lessons that we as adults can learn again if we have eyes to see it.
In 1994 the Pope in his letter to children noted that “a child represents the joy not only of its parents but also the joy of the Church and the whole of society.” As Catholics we are being called to recognise and celebrate this.
“we
are empowering our children to use the gift of themselves to enrich and enliven the Body of Christ. After all they are just as much a part of it as the grown ups”
A short while ago in our parish at Wanneroo it occurred to me how noisy our Sunday morning Mass was. During the quiet just before the distribution of communion I could hear children all around the Church making noise.
I’ve no doubt that it was an intolerable distraction for some. For me I gave a little thanks to God that I’m part of a parish that has children. We are a parish with a future.
s the new anti-family television series Desperate Housewives was cresting a wave of hype, US playwright Arthur Miller died, prompting retrospective reviews and analyses of his plays in many quarters. There was an interesting crux here that nobody mentioned. Desperate Housewives is basically a resurrection of the argument of Communist-leaning author Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, which in the early 1960s deplored the mindless world of the non-working, non-career, mother and the pap fed to women by the magazines of the day (so unlike the liberated and intellectually stimulating Women’s Day or New Idea of our own times!). The desperate housewives are allegedly terminally oppressed by not having to work. This is a discontent that often occurs in pampered, privileged people who have no idea or experience in their life of what work really means. Queen Marie Antoinette, who suggested, trying to be genuinely helpful, that the starving peasants without bread should eat cake, since she was unable to conceive of ever being without unlimited supplies of either bread or cake, played with her ladies-in-waiting at being a shepherdess and dairymaid in toy farms set up in the palace grounds to relieve the boredom of doing nothing but being waited upon and going to balls. She might be called the desperate housewife par excellence.
Work very often isn’t so nice when you have to do it, day in and day out, often enough, perhaps, in fear and trembling, as a matter of keeping yourself and your loved ones alive - which has been the lot of most of the human race for most of its time on Earth. It is amusing to observe the frequent transformation of languid University students when they discover this.
But some at least of the “Desperate housewives” do have a point. A life revolving round housework, even like the life of Arthur Miller’s antihero, can be stultifying, and the efforts it requires unappreciated by anyone else. The proper role of a mother is a full-time job and lasts for years.
Like Betty Friedan, Arthur Miller had Communist leanings. One of his best-known plays, Death of a Salesman, is assumed to be an illus-
I don’t, however, think the situation of either party must or should be pessimistic, resentful or hopeless. We do not, men and women, in this lucky country and time, live in a state where we can only survive through ceaseless backbreaking labour. None of us even need lives of unremitting dull drudgery.
Almost all of us enjoy opportunities, leisure, and technological power at our command, which previously in history would not have been available to kings and Pharaohs. It was not even available to our own parents. (When my mother bought the house I now live in, there was a manual clotheswring over a chip-heated copper.) What is required all round on this question is a great deal of common sense, goodwill, understanding, ingenuity (for much can be done to mitigate the most boring routine) and, as always, prayer. The dullest tasks can be turned to good.
American evangelical Christians operating in Iraq during the last year or so present an ongoing source of tension – if not real danger – between militant Muslims and the region’s indigenous Catholics and other Christians, say Church officials and others.
“Yes, it is a new tension because the Muslim people judge all Christians as fundamentalist [Protestants] now,” said Syrian Catholic Archbishop Georges Casmoussa of Mosul, Iraq, who communicated with Our Sunday Visitor through e-mail.
Casmoussa had spoken about the interreligious situation during an international conference for the Catholic press held in Thailand late in 2004.
The archbishop said in Iraq it is believed that the US military has allowed wellfunded evangelicals to operate freely in the country, especially in the north (Kurdistan) and in Baghdad, enticing young people and families to obtain travel documents and leave the country while helping the United States consolidate power in Iraq.
“There is a real tension between our apostolic Churches [Catholic and Orthodox] and those intruders.”
Any efforts toward evangelisation in Iraq feed the perception in the Middle East that President Bush and the United States are leading a Christian crusade or spiritual war against Islam, said Father Toma Dawod, an Iraqi and parish priest of the Syrian Orthodox Church in London.
Dawod, who was part of a recent meeting in the British House of Commons on the fate of Iraqi Christians, said that if Iraqis see somebody preaching in Christ’s name, they won’t be inclined to accept it anyway.
“The situation is very bad, and everyone is looking for food, for money, and they [evangelicals] bring money and open new churches. And they are trying to convert our people.”
Statements and denunciations of Islam from American evangelicals at home have only reinforced a perception abroad of a US-led holy crusade under way in the Middle East.
The potential dangers associated with new interreligious conflicts have not gone unnoticed by evangelical leadership. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals in the US, made statements earlier in 2004 challenging evangelicals to be sensitive to the circumstances of Iraq and its people; if evangelicals are perceived as “opportunists” and as using “gunboat diplomacy,” it will only hurt their cause, he said in an article in Christianity Today
“My hope was that our own hot-
‘Yes,
heads might want to tone down their rhetoric.” He said his association is moving forward on humanitarian aid to Iraq, through channels such as the Muslim-affiliated Red Crescent Movement, and with Christian-Islamic dialogue and scholastic programs in the Middle East and in the United States.
Threat to Christians
Cizik said he hopes Iraq’s fledgling democracy movement will include a constitution that fully respects religious freedom and understanding.
“But we can’t just walk in and impose our idea of religious freedoms; evangelicals will have to respectfully enter at their own peril, and that means literally in Iraq. To go in and openly expect to evangelise will only court trouble,” he said.
“We are praying that if we are spending American blood on this, that in the end we have a country that respects religious freedom,” Cizik added.
In Germany, Marie-Ange Slebrecht, head of the Asia-Africa section for the Vatican-affiliated
There is no shortage of the pain, hardship and even death that the US military action in Iraq is causing the civilians of that country, according to the Syrian Catholic Archbishop Georges Casmoussa in Mosul.
“Sometimes by oversight, there are troops intruding in civilian houses, without any warning,” Archbishop Casmoussa said. “Last year, one young person of my dio-
cese was killed by US soldiers. Last January, one of our monks was killed with four others, while another monk was injured and is handicapped for life by an accident caused by a military tank, when they were traveling from Baghdad to Mosul.
There are many other examples of deaths directly or indirectly caused by American soldiers, and without any repercussions. He is also concerned Americans are not well informed about the full human cost of the Iraqi military conflict.
Christians in Iraq number about 800,000, the archbishop said, with Chaldean Catholics at about 500,000. “Yes, Christians are leaving the country as a result of the war, and especially as a result of the actual situation of insecurity, the pressure of Islamic fundamentalism, killing, kidnapping, bombing Christian stores, and pressure to follow the Islamic way of life,” Archbishop Casmoussa said.
Emigrants are going to Syria, Jordan and Greece, in the hopes of reaching such places as the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Aid to the Church in Need, said it is her understanding that the Iraqi government set up a committee that deals with religious affairs for non-Muslims, meaning every new church project has to be submitted to this committee before being approved.
Whereas American evangelical missionaries arrived in large numbers at the end of the heavy military action of the war in Iraq - and began building churches, distributing goods such as televisions and undertaking pastoral works, including job-assistance programs -many have left amid renewed fighting in the streets (even the US bishops’ aid arm Catholic Relief Services has removed its staff from Iraq). Missionaries and humanitarian workers are now afraid of the kidnappings and attacks since they are foreigners, Siebrecht said.
“If the situation gets better, they will certainly come back,’ she added of the evangelicals.
“One priest was telling me that this is also a challenge for the Catholic Church to do more for their people, especially in the pastoral sector, otherwise their sheep could be stolen.”
John Esposito, professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University and director of the university’s Centre for Christian and Muslim Understanding, said he worries about the new theological tensions in Iraq.
Public statements by evangelicals about “bringing Jesus Christ to Iraq and the Middle East” are offensive to Christians communities that have been there for centuries, he said.
“Many Christians there would resent this attitude on theological grounds, as being patronising, but it is also dangerous in terms of the religious and sectarian conflicts we see every day,” he said.
Even if there is not a massive influx of evangelicals, given the sensitivity of the issue, Christian missionaries in the Islamic world will be taken as a threat and a source of anger, a reminder of a more militant Christianity in a place where many don’t distinguish among Christians.
“We could wind up with this feeding more acts against Christians already established there and [with people] not realising that these evangelicals are exacerbating the situation in Iraq.
“If they are real, true Christians, they ought to be concerned about and listening to those Christian leaders there, but probably they don’t recognise mainstream Christianity in the Middle East,” Esposito said.
- OSV
Julia Quinlan learned firsthand about hospice care for the terminally ill when, with the help of hospice professionals, she was able to care for her husband, Joe, at home for nine weeks before he died of cancer in 1996.
“I had my meals with him every day, slept on the couch next to his bed, I prayed the ‘Memorare’ with him every day. He was at peace and so were all of us who loved him, and we were all there with him when the end came, quietly,” she recalled.
Twenty-five years ago, Joe and Julia Quinlan founded the Karen Ann Quinlan Hospice Centre of Hope in Newton. It is named for the daughter who five years before that became the focus of a celebrated “death with dignity” case.
The couple eventually won a landmark legal decision that allowed them to remove the respirator that was believed to be keeping their daughter alive. In 1976, she was taken off the machine and continued to breathe on her own; she died nine years later.
In the early morning hours of April 15, 1975, 21-year-old Karen Ann Quinlan fell into what would become irreversible unconsciousness - she had consumed alcohol after having earlier taken a tranquillizer. Rushed to St. Clare’s Hospital in Denville, she was put on a respirator after she had stopped breathing for an unknown length of time. For the period she had stopped breathing, the cognitive part of her brain apparently suffered a loss of oxygen.
From April until July 31, the Quinlans watched as the condition of their once lively and beautiful daughter deteriorated. Her weight dropped to 70 pounds; she was being nourished through a feeding tube inserted through her nostril. She became physically rigid and contorted in a fetal position. The couple sought in vain for any mental or emotional response from her.
Believing Karen Ann would not want to live
like that, and with the support and advice of the pastor of the Catholic parish where Julia Quinlan was secretary, the Quinlans decided to give doctors at St Clare’s permission to remove the respirator that was assumed to be keeping her alive. They felt they were acting in accord with Catholic teaching.
But they ran into a legal problem. At 21, Karen was no longer a minor, and her parents did not have the right to decide for her as an adult.
A petition to the court to appoint her father as her legal guardian for “allowing her to die with dignity” resulted in weeks of hearings and conferences before the Quinlans’ case came before Superior Court Judge Robert
Loretto Sister Jeannine Gramick was a featured speaker at the “Queer Film Festival” at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana in February, despite the fact that she was censured by the Vatican in 1999 and ordered to cease all ministry to homosexuals.
Additionally, a 2004 documentary film about Sister Gramick’s encounters with the Vatican was shown at the festival, even though she also has been told not to write or speak about the Church’s disciplining of her.
In the film, “In Good Conscience,” Sister Gramick contends that homosexuality is an “innate instinct,” and that a “be, but don’t do” theology is unacceptable. The Church teaches that homosexual orientation is a disorder but not sinful, but that homosexual acts are always sinful.
Sister Gramick also says in the film that one’s own conscience is the ultimate authority; prayer and religion are complicated by rules and rubrics and that Church pronouncements on sexuality are “null and void.” Sister Gramick and
In an interview with The Beacon, Paterson diocesan newspaper, Julia Quinlan took a minute before responding to a question about her memories of those years of private sadness, public worldwide media scrutiny, international travel and meetings with defenders and opponents of their decision.
She also recalled her and her husband’s concern for the well-being of their two younger children, Mary Ellen and John.
Mary Ellen is now married and lives two doors away from her mother, in Wantage, where Julia and Joe Quinlan moved in 1983. John is also not far away, his mother said.
“They would have been a horrible 10 years without our faith and without the unfailing support,” Julia Quinlan said, of the Church, their young attorney who is now a judge, and then-Father Tom Trapasso, now a monsignor, who at the time was pastor of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Mount Arlington.
But the past three decades “have been memorable years for me, as a person, and more importantly, for hospice in general and the Centre of Hope in particular,” she added.
The hospice centre was established with the royalties the Quinlans received when their story was made into a TV movie. The centre, located in a solid brick building purchased in 1995, has a 20-member staff and serves an average of 40 to 50 patients a month regardless of their ability to pay.
Muir Jr. on October 20, 1975, in Morristown. On November 10, Muir delivered his 48-page ruling denying the request.
The Quinlans appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which reversed that ruling in 1976. Their daughter was taken off the respirator in May of that year. She continued to breathe without it and was transferred in June to Morris View Nursing Home in Morris Plains.
The US Supreme Court dismissed the final appeal of the state’s ruling in November 1976. Karen Ann remained in Morris View. She continued to breathe on her own and was fed by a nasal gastric tube. She died from pneumonia in 1985.
Salvatorian Father Robert Nugent, co-founders of New Ways Ministry, were ordered by the Vatican in 1999 to stop their ministry to homosexuals because “ambiguities and errors” in their approach caused confusion for the Catholic people and harmed the Church community.
After they continued to speak and write about homosexuality, the two were directed in 2000 not to speak publicly or write about the topic or about the Vatican actions.
Father Nugent accepted the discipline and is in parish ministry, Because she defied the Vatican ban and faced expulsion by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, she left the order and joined the Sisters of Loretto in 2001. She made her final vows with her new order in June 2004, and her activities are still associated with New Ways Ministry in Mount Rainier, Maryland.
Three days before Sister Gramick’s appearance at the film festival
at Notre Dame, Bishop John M. D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend said in a statement that the entire festival was an abuse of academic freedom and violated the rights of the Church to have its teachings properly presented and the rights of parents of students who found the content of the festival offensive.
“Presenters who have been scheduled have a history of not supporting, and indeed openly opposing, Church teaching concerning the morality of homosexual acts,” the bishop said, naming Terrence McNally, author of the play “Corpus Christi,” and Sister Gramick.
Bishop D’Arcy said: “The promotion of errors and ambiguities is not consistent with a Christian attitude of true respect and compassion: Persons who are struggling with homosexuality no less than others have the right to receive the authentic teaching of the Church from those who minister to them.”
Julia Quinlan spends most of her time at the centre, busy in her role as board chairman and chairman of the charitable foundation set up to support it.
“I believe Karen Ann’s case really helped introduce a whole new concept to health care in America,” she said. “It was the beginning of the ‘living will’ idea and recognition of patients’ rights to make decisions about their medical care. It also helped us catch up on the hospice approach to care with compassion, humanity and respect for the dignity of the dying patient.
“It has been a wonderful experience, a blessing for me to see that happen, and to know that Karen’s life and death had such great meaning to so many people,” Julia Quinlan added.
Catholic bishops warned of continued political instability and ethnic tensions in BosniaHerzegovina and urged the church to take the lead in peace and reconciliation efforts.
“Bosnia-Herzegovina has no future if an unjust peace persists and equal human rights are denied to the constituent ethnic groups,” heads of bishops’ conferences from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Turkey said in a March 1 statement after meeting in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
“Local political leaders must bring about institutional and economic reforms themselves and encourage ethnic groups to live side by side,” they said. “The churches have the specific task of raising in peoples’ consciousness the sense of truth, justice and
forgiveness.” Their statement listed “serious challenges” posed by youth emigration, poverty, unemployment and corruption, as well as “frightening” rates of abortion, child abandonment and prostitution and unresolved ethnic and religious minority issues.
“Many refugees are still out of their countries, and their return is being impeded, while the issue of returning church properties that were confiscated by the state also remains open,” said the bishops, who were hosted by Cardinal Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo and Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka.
Before Bosnia’s 1992-95 civil war, Catholics made up 18 percent of Bosnia’s population of 4.3 million. Muslims were 44 percent, and Serbian Orthodox 35 percent.
More than 600 Catholic churches were destroyed in the conflict, in which 270,000 people died before the formation of a federation of Serb and Croat-Muslim republics under the 1995 Dayton Peace Accord.
A Vatican archeologist believes he has rediscovered the tomb of St. Paul, buried deep beneath the main altar of the Rome basilica dedicated to the apostle.
The sarcophagus, which lay hidden for centuries, had a hole into which the faithful could stick pieces of cloth to make secondary relics, said Giorgio Filippi, the archeologist and inscriptions expert at the Vatican Museums who carried out the studies.
The tomb lies directly beneath a historic inscription that reads: “Paul Apostle Martyr.” The marble sarcophagus was apparently first placed there during reconstruction of the basilica in 390 AD.
“I have no doubt this is the tomb of St Paul, as revered by Christians in the fourth century,” Filippi said as he stood next to the main altar of St Paul Outside the Walls. He spoke in an interview with Catholic News Service.
Filippi’s discovery was the result of more than five years’ archeological sleuthing. The sarcophagus
lies several feet below the marble structure of the main altar, embedded in a platform of concrete. Filippi managed to reach the back side of the sarcophagus, but he said opening the tomb would be practically impossible without destroying the altar area.
He added that, in any case, it was not essential to check what’s inside the sarcophagus. The important thing is that it was clearly venerated as the tomb of St Paul, he said.
Tradition holds that St Paul suf-
fered martyrdom by beheading in the first century, and that his body was buried in a cemetery along the Via Ostiense, where the basilica was built.
A first church was erected there in 320 AD, and a larger basilica was constructed in 390; it was remodelled several times over the centuries and almost totally destroyed by fire in 1823.
Pilgrims still come to St Paul’s, but not nearly as many as those who pour daily into St Peter’s
Basilica, located some five miles away. On a recent weekday afternoon, no more than 75 people were inside the massive church. Theoretically, experts today could open the hole to the sarcophagus and stick a small video probe inside. But for now, no such examination is foreseen. Filippi said there’s no hurry; as the last 11 years of work has demonstrated, he’s happy to take one archeological step at a time.
The bishop of an Austrian diocese forced to close its seminary after a sex scandal has appealed to Catholics who left the church over the incidents to rejoin and support a “new beginning” in the diocese.
In an open letter posted in early March on his diocese’s Web site, Bishop Klaus Kung of Sankt Polten, Austria, said he was aware that “sad events” in the diocese had caused many Catholics “to doubt the church’s credibility.”
“It grieves me very much that responsible people in the church caused this annoyance, and I apologize for it,” the bishop wrote. “But I can assure you we are working to clear up this disagreeable situation and make possible a new begin-
the world in brief
Bishop urges Austrians to support ‘new beginning’ after scandal
ning for our diocese. I ask you to look on our efforts with good will.”
“I’ve learned that you abandoned the church in the last period or previous year, and I regret this very much,” said Bishop Kung. He said Catholics’ decision to leave was painful to priests and bishops and added, “I invite you to explain your motives to me, so we can learn from them in our work and carry out necessary changes.” Bishop Kung, who previously headed Austria’s Feldkirch Diocese, was appointed in October
Eight members of Opus Dei are now on their way to being recognised by the Church for their holiness. The latest case involved priest and engineer José María Hernández Garnica (1913-1972), whose cause for canonisation recently opened in Madrid.
Born in Madrid, Hernández Garnica was a close aide of founder St Josemaría Escrivá. With doctorates in mining engineering, natural sciences, and theology, Hernández Garnica was one of the first three faithful of this ecclesial reality to be ordained a priest, together with Álvaro del Portillo and José Luis Múzquiz.
A priest since June 1944, Hernández Garnica was entrusted by Monsignor Escrivá
to replace Bishop Kurt Krenn of Sankt Polten, who resigned following the July publication of pictures of priests and students at his diocesan seminary kissing and fondling each other.
Vienna’s Die Presse daily reported in August that the number of Catholics leaving the church by discontinuing “church tax” payments had increased sharply after the scandal, raising fears of a permanent decline in Austria, where Catholics nominally make up 78 percent of the population of 8.1 million.
with fostering Opus Dei’s apostolic life among women. From 1957 until his death, he was sent by the founder to stimulate the development of Opus Dei in England, Ireland, France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Other faithful of the Opus Dei Prelature who are in the process of canonisation are the founder’s successor, Álvaro del Portillo, as well as six laymen. The latter are three Spaniards - Montse Grases, Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri and Eduardo Ortiz de Landázuri; Argentine Isidoro Zorzano; Swiss Toni Zweifel; and Guatemalan Ernesto Cofiño.
The number of Catholics in Japan has topped 1 million for the first time, said a booklet from the Japanese bishops’ commis-
The paper added that departures had jumped 186 percent in Sankt Polten, but had also increased 30 percent in Vienna, compared to the same period in 2003.
A “We Are Church” movement demanded changes, including woman priests and voluntary clerical celibacy, after the 1995 resignation of Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer of Vienna amid allegations he sexually abused minors.
In his letter, Bishop Kung asked Catholics who had quit the church to “bear in mind that the church is composed of people with shortcomings. But its efficacy is founded ultimately on Christ, with his doctrine, his life, his death on the cross and his resurrection. We all need his help,” said Bishop Kung.
sion for migrants, refugees and travellers. UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand, reported on March 8 that the pamphlet “Catholic Church in Japan: Church, Living Together With Japanese and Foreigners,” says 2004 began with more than 1 million Catholics in Japan. It breaks this figure down into nearly 450,000 Japanese and more than 565,000 foreign Catholics. During the 1999-2003 period, the number of Japanese Catholics remained substantially unchanged, but the number of foreign Catholics increased by more than 100,000. In 1999, they were approximately equal. While the number of Japanese Catholics is based on parish registration figures, the number of foreigners is an estimate, based on lists from the Ministry of Justice showing the number of foreigners registered in each part of the country and their nationality. The commission came up with a rough projection
A bill now before Congress would end the “horrible practice” of taking minor girls out of state for secret abortions, a pro-life spokeswoman for the US bishops said as a House subcommittee held the first hearing on the legislation.
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, director of planning and information in the bishops’ Secretariat for ProLife Activities, praised the House Judiciary Committee’s Constitution subcommittee for holding the March 3 hearing on the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act and urged Congress “to pass this law to help to protect vulnerable girls from exploitation.”
The legislation, H.R. 748, would require abortion doctors to notify parents before performing abortions on teenage girls from out of state unless requirements in the girl’s home state related to parental involvement or judicial authorisation have been satisfied.
“It is wrong to take a child away from her parents to another state for a secret abortion, yet abortion advocates support this practice and admit that it happens all the time,” said Ruse in a March 3 statement, adding that “the overwhelming majority of Americans” support parental involvement in the abortion decisions of their teenage daughters.
“This horrible practice exposes teens to the dangers of surgery without the benefit of their medical records or history, and without necessary medical follow-up,” Ruse said.
The legislation was introduced by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, RFlorida, with 105 co-sponsors.
At the hearing, Marcia Carroll of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, spoke about the experiences of her 14year-old pregnant daughter, who had decided to keep her baby but whose boyfriend’s family “planned, paid for, coerced, harassed and threatened her into having the abortion” in New Jersey. “These people did not know my daughter’s medical history, yet they took her across state lines to have a medical procedure without my knowledge or consent,” Carroll said. “Our family will be responsible for the medical and psychological consequences for my daughter as a result of this procedure.” CNS
based upon the percentage of each country’s population that is Catholic.
Catholic and Muslim members of a joint interreligious committee opened their oneday meeting in Cairo, Egypt, with a silent prayer for Pope John Paul II who was hospitalised that same day. The February 24 meeting of the joint committee of the Permanent Committee of al-Azhar for Dialogue with Monotheistic Religions and the Vatican’s Council for Interreligious Dialogue “began with a silent prayer with special intentions going for the Holy Father,” a Vatican official told Catholic News Service on March 7. Pope John Paul was rushed to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on the morning of February 24 after suffering a recurrence of respiratory problems.
If some eyebrows were raised by the Indian elements shoehorned into Mira Nair’s otherwise excellent film adaptation of Thackeray’s classic novel “Vanity Fair,” those little hairs will positively peak when they see what’s been done to Jane Austen in the intentionally daffy, but likable, “Bride & Prejudice” (Miramax).
Here, the story has been transposed outright to the remote town of Amritsar in contemporary India, with the Bennets now the genteel, lower middle-class Bakshi family, the overbearing matriarch (Nadira Babar) of which is desperate to find husbands for her four daughters - including the sublimely beautiful and resolutely independent Lalita (Aishwarya Rai). She is pursued by the comedic Mr Kholi (Nitin Ganatra), a California transplant and social climber, and the handsome (but, as we learn later, duplicitous) Wickham (Daniel Gillies), here a hunky surfer.
But it is Will Darcy (Martin Henderson), an American hotel magnate, with whom Lalita feels sparks, in spite of herself. Through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, he finds her disinterested, and she finds him arrogant, superior, and disdainful of her culture.
Lalita’s sister, Jaya (Namrata
Shirodkar), falls for the Indian Balraj (Naveen Andrews) - Mr Bingley in the original - but her heart is broken when he ignores her after showing an early interest, and when the reason turns out to be Darcy’s interference, the budding romance with Lalita suffers another blow. Cultural, as much as class, differences also come into play in this version.
The overbearing Kholi eventually proposes to a friend of Lalita’s. Though the girl doesn’t love him, she decides to opt for a life of easy affluence in California.
The Bakshi family eventually
goes to the wedding in Los Angeles, with a stopover in London, where Mrs Bakshi bemoans the fate of her unwed daughters.
If you know Jane Austen, you’ll figure out how it all ends.
“Pride and Prejudice” was once a short-lived Broadway musical called “First Impressions.” Here, Gurinder Chadha - who directed the frankly superior “Bend it Like Beckham” - has written a screenplay (with her husband, Paul Mayeda Berges) in the form of an all-out Bollywood (the term for the Indian film industry) musical, and the musical numbers - choreographed by Saroj Khan
- have to be seen to be believed. The boys vs. girls response song in an early wedding scene is lots of fun, as each side sings to the other in a sort of vocal challenge. Later, Maya (Meghnaa Khotari), another of Lalita’s sisters, does a campy “cobra dance.” (Interestingly, Bollywood films contain no kissing to avoid offending the sensibilities of audiences and the local censors alike, but often include sensual dance.)
A later love duet, “Take Me to Love,” which starts with Darcy and Lalita scampering through a pool of shooting fountains, then flying over the Grand Canyon, and ends
up on an idyllic beach with a huge black choir serenading the couple, gives new meaning to “over the top.” (Anu Malik wrote the songs, and Craig Pruess the background music.)
Oh, and yes, American singing star Ashanti has a number here, “The Goa Groove,” just for the heck of it. And why not?
The adaptation is not the last word in wit, not all the dialogue sparkles, and the dialect initially takes some getting used to, but the story moves along entertainingly.
New Zealander Henderson and Rai make a handsome couple, and their attraction is plausible. Of the rest, Ganatra, Andrews, and Babar are the standouts. Marsha Mason has a cameo as Darcy’s hard-asnails mother who tries to break up the burgeoning romance with Lalita by flying in Darcy’s former girlfriend.
The production has a lot of bustling exoticism, and is more psychedelically colorful than your typical American films. If you don’t mind your Jane Austen set in a world of saris and cell phones, this otherwise remarkably faithful adaptation may be just for you.
And “Bride & Prejudice” is one of those rare films where there’s no sex or violence - except for some old-fashioned fisticuffs at one point - and just the occasional bit of crude language. The film contains some off-colour remarks, a fistfight, provocative dancing, and some thematic material that make this best for older adolescents on up. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II - adults and adolescents.
‘All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time…’
If you loved Tuesdays with Morrie, take a look at another great novel by Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
The novel’s protagonist is an elderly amusement park maintenance worker named Eddie. On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his – and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it - loved ones or distant strangers - each of whom changed your path forever.
Eddie comes to understand the meaning of his time on earth and what he was supposed to have learned. Dramatic flashbacks reveal scenes from his troubled childhood, his years at war in the Philippines
jungle, and his first and only love, his wife Marguerite. We journey with Eddie through forgiveness, sacrifice as the measure of love, and, most importantly the value of his ‘ordinary’ life as a maintenance worker at a fun park. This last is Eddie’s greatest discovery – his life had the most value when he was just being ‘where he was supposed to be’. The novel is engaging and easy to read, moving but not moralistic. It deals with questions we all have about life, and the mystery of life after death. When you’ve finished, you sense a renewed zeal to invest your own life with more meaning, and more love.
James Brooks’ observant and charming story about a nonEnglish-speaking Mexican mother (Paz Vega) who takes a job as a housekeeper with an affluent California family - an easygoing chef (Adam Sandler), his hypercontrolling, self-absorbed wife (Tea Leoni), two children, and alcoholic mother-in-law (Cloris Leachman) - to support herself and her young daughter whom she endeavoußrs to keep unspoiled by superficial American values.
The immensely appealing Vega projects genuine decency and resolute backbone, and a low-keyed Sandler is a likable mensch.
Leoni is quite funny (if sometimes annoying) in a refreshingly offbeat look at cultural assimilation, relationships and parenting - which is ultimately extremely moving.
Some sexual banter and mild profanity, an instance of rough language, and an unexplicit but rambunctious sex scene between husband and wife.
The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III - adults
Visually dazzling martial arts love story set in ancient China about a lawman (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who finds himself entangled in a web of desire and deception when his superior (Andy Lau) assigns him to infiltrate a gang of antiimperial insurgents by escorting a beautiful blind courtesan (Ziyi Zhang) with ties to the group to the rebels’ secret forest stronghold. Part action adventure, part triangular romance, director Zhang
Yimou’s melodramatic sword saga of passion, betrayal and the conflict between love and duty is full of eye-popping fight sequences, but its story sometimes gets drowned out by the artistic swirl of silk and steel. Subtitles.
Much stylized action violence and associated gore, attempted rape and a sexual encounter. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III - adults.
■ BOOK KEEPING SERVICE
All aspects of small business bookeeping, monthly bank rec, BAS, PAYG, my office or yours. Very reasonable rates. Ph: Margaret 9459 5866, MOB: 0403 778 426
■ BRICK REPOINTING
Phone Nigel 9242 2952
■ GUTTERS/DOWNPIPES
Need renewing, best work and cheapest prices. Free quote. Ph: Ad 9447 7475 or 0408 955 991 5008.
■ PICASSO PAINTING
Top service. Phone 9345 0557, fax 9345 0505.
■ PERROTT PAINTING PTY LTD
For all your residential, commercial painting requirements. Phone Tom Perrott 9444 1200.
■ RESPITE OR LONG STAY
Respite or long stay. I am a qualified carer and have vacancies in my home for frail and aged. Twenty-four hour care. Further information and brochure please contact 9397 7037 mob. 0402 265 952.
■ RETAILER OF CATHOLIC PRODUCTS Specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for baptism, communion and confirmation. Ph: 9456 1777. Shop 12A, 64-66 Bannister Road, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat.
■ WORK FROM HOME
Around your children & family commitments. My business is expanding and I need people to open new areas all over Australia. Training given. Highly lucrative. www.cyber-success-4u.org
■ ALL AREAS Mike Murphy 0416 226 434.
■ DENMARK Holiday House 3bdr x 2bth, sleeps up to 8. BOOK NOW. Ph: Maria 0412 083 377
■ DUNSBOROUGH New 4 x 2, great location, sleeps 9. Ph: 0414 579 2315
■ SUCCEED FROM HOME Call Christine on Tel: 9256 2895
■ RETREAT
From the every-day pressures of life and experience Benedictine hospitality at the Monastery Guest-house. Situated 132 kms north of Perth in the historic town of New Norcia. Twin rooms with en-suites or single rooms. Join the monks for daily prayer and Mass. Directed retreats by arrangement. Tariff by donation, suggested donation $50 full board. Inquiries: Guesthouse sec. phone (08) 9654 8002, fax (08) 9654 8097. Email: guesthouse@newnorcia. wa.com.au Please quote ref. R3
■ RICH HARVEST YOUR CHRISTIAN SHOP
Looking for Bibles, CDs, books, cards, gifts, statues, baptism/communion aparells, religious vestments, etc? Visit us at, 39 Hulme Court (off McCoy St), Myaree, 9329 9889 (after 10.30am, Mon-Sat). We are here to serve.
■ PASCHAL/RCIA CANDLES 2005
Carefully hand crafted by Benedictine Sisters www.JamberooAbbey.org.au
Ph: 02 4236 0011 Fax: 02 4236 0041
■ THE HUMBLE MESSENGER
Shop 16/80 Barrack Street (inside Bon Marche Arcade) PERTH. New Stock
Just Arrived from overseas i.e books, tapes, videos etc. Bus hrs 10am-5pm Mon-Fri Ph: 9225 7199 / 0421 131 716
Friday March 11
AURORA COMMUNITY CHANNEL 183 FOXTEL AND AUSTAR
DIGITAL
10am Mass for You At Home, 10.30am Something for Nothing, 11am Trafficking of Women and Children. Sunday March 13, 10am Mass for You At Home, 10.30am Responding to Emergencies, 11am MacKillop’s Melbourne. Wednesday March 16, 10am Mass for You At Home, 10.30am Responding to Emergencies, 11am MacKillop’s Melbourne.
Saturday March 12
MOVIE PIZZA NIGHT IN AID TO THE UNDERPRIVILEDGED OF PERU AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA
We will be viewing The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima in honour of Sr Lucia the last visionary of Fatima. Viewing from 6pm. Children under 12 free or donation. Enq Vicki 9445 7262, 0404 666 597, Sandra 9244 3425, 0417 963 911. The Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community.
Sunday March 13
SOLEMN PONTIFICAL VESPERS
Archbishop Hickey will preside at 4.30pm in St Mary’s Cathedral. The Cathedral Choir will lead the singing of this Evening Prayer of the Church. All are invited to attend.
Sunday March 13
ETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK ACCESS 31 1PM
Does the devil exist, Fr Shannon, Followed by Five steps to a good Confession, Scott Hahn and Mike Aquilina. These wonderful Catholic programs are brought to you by The Rosary Christian Tutorial Association. Please send donations to keep EWTN on Access 31, requests for tapes, and comments to PO Box 1270, Booragoon 6954. Enq 9330 1170
Sunday March 13
THIRD PART OF QUEEN OF ALL SAINTS BIBLE FORUM
Religious Studies presentation at All Saints Chapel, Allendale Square 77 St. George’s Terrace, Perth: Bible Focus 3pm; Church History 4pm, True Devotion to Mary 5.30pm, 6.15pm Rosary and Benediction.
Monday March 14
LA SALLE COLLEGE OPEN
3.00pm to 6.00pm The Principal Mr Michael Kenny, staff and students of La Salle College invite you to attend from 3pm to 6pm. Everyone is welcome to come and view the extensive facilities of our Catholic co-educational College situated in the Swan Valley in Muriel Street, Viveash-Midland. Year 8 2007 Enrolments applications close on Thursday 24 March 2005. For a prospectus please contact Ms Sabrina Lynsdale-Ross on 9274 6266.
Monday March 14-16
LENTEN MINI MISSION
Free presentation by Norma Woodcock at St Jude’s Church 20 Prendiville Way Langford. 7.30pm-8.30pm, second rite of Reconciliation on Wednesday 16 from 8pm. Enq 9458 1946
Monday March 14
CATHOLIC MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT GROUP CARERS
Meetings held on the second Monday of every month from 7.30pm at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Marda Way, Nollamara. Enq Pat Mahoney 9275 2809
Tuesday March 15
LENT PUBLIC LECTURES
EVERY TUESDAY 4pm-5pm Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community’s new Catholic Bible College, Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation, 67 Howe Street, Osborne Park, Tuesday 15th March, Da Vinci Code Exploded AD – 1000 AD by Paul Kelly, Tuesday 22nd March, The Trial and the Crucifixion of Jesus by Dr Jennifer Skerritt, Tuesday 29th March, Thorny Issues 1000 AD - 1500 AD by Paul Kelly, Tuesday 5th April, Age of Mary, 1500 AD - 2000 AD by Paul Kelly. Attendance fee $5/lecture. Enq Jane 0401 692 690
Wednesday March 16
GROWING CIRCLES OF TRUST
With Fr Justin Belitz OFM, will be held at St Francis Xavier Church, corner of South Western Highway and Third Road from 7.30pm. Fr Justin will discuss strategies such as sharing God’s Word, sharing our story and respecting others. To book ph 9399 2143
Thursday March 17
ANNUAL ST PATRICKS DAY MASS
At 10.30am St Josephs Church 1 Salvado Road Subiaco. Main concelebrant Bishop Don Sproxton.
Friday March 18
SHAKE A CAN
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad. We desperately need more people to give even an hour to this collection, for Africa and for the tsunami victims. Collection Location, Wesley Centre, Cnr Hay and William St between 8am and 3pm, and 3pm until 5.30pm at Mission Australia in Wellington Street to left side of Horseshoe Bridge near bus station. Identification is required for security reasons eg Drivers Licence, Student ID or Health Card. Must be 16 years of age or over. Enq Sheila Shannon, 9309 5071/ 0408 866 593/ askforafrica@optusnet.
com.au
Friday 18 March
NEW AND DIVINE HOLINESS PRAYER GROUP
All night Eucharistic vigil at St Bernadette’s Church, Jugan Street, Glendalough commencing 9pm. Readings and reflections on the Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ with hourly rosaries and hymns. Concludes Saturday morning with Parish Mass at 7.30am followed by Rosary and Benediction. All welcome. Enq 94446131
Saturday March 19
MEETING JESUS IN JOHN’S GOSPEL
A morning retreat. Presenter Fr John Prendiville, Jesuit Priest Donation only. Multi Purpose Room, John XXIII College 9.30am-12.30pm. Enq and registration Murray 93830444
Saturday March 19
SEVEN CHURCHES WALK
This year’s walk commences with Holy Mass in the Cathedral at 8.30am. The walk starts from the Pro Cathedral at 9.15am and visits All Saints Chapel, Greek Orthodox Cathedral, St. Brigid’s, W. Perth, Redemptorist Monastery, Sacred Heart, Highgate and finishing at the Cathedral. BYO lunch. Enq Tony 9450 2627 or Fred 9245 4843
Saturday March 19
SCHOENSTATT PILGIMAGE
9 Talus Drive Armadale at the Shrine from 3pm Divine Mercy Novena followed by Adoration and Devotion to honour St Joseph on his feast day. We will also say the Stations of the Cross using writings of St Theresa of Liseux .
Saturday March 19
MONTHLY NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF GOOD HEALTH
VAILANKANNI
Novena will be held at 5pm followed by the Vigil Mass at 6pm in the Holy Trinity Church Embleton. Enq 9272 1379-9272 4180
Saturday March 19
DAY OF PRAYER FOR YOUNG MEN
On the Feast of St Joseph and the eve of Holy Week, Fr Hugh Thomas will conduct a day of prayer and reflection for young men considering their vocation. Redemptorist Monastery 190 Vincent Street North Pert 9am-5.30pm Enq 9328 6600
Saturday March 19
HOLY HOUR FOR VOCATIONS
Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at Redemtorist Church 10am-11am.
Sunday March 20 ST JEROMES SCHOOL PARISH FETE
Stalls, rides, hot food, refreshments, raffles from 9am-2pm. Auction at 12noon and much more. Corner Rockingham Road and Troode Street Munster.
Friday March 25
GOOD FRIDAY CEREMONIES
Catholic Agricultural College, Bindoon 11am Stations of the Cross, 2.30pm Solemn ceremony. The Lord’s Passion. Confessions from 10.30am & after Stations of the Cross. All are welcome! Those who require transport please contact Francis Williams ph: 9459 3873 mob 0404 893 877. For more details contact Fr Paul 9571 1839 or Christine 9576 1040
Friday April 1-4
CATHOLIC FAITH RENEWAL RETREAT
Fr Vincent Lee will be in Perth to conduct a Sin and Repentance Retreat at Advent Park, 345 Kalamunda Rd Maida Vale. Fr Lee is well known for his evangelical mission. Come and experience the power of the Holy Spirit. Cost Includes meals and accommodation. Enq 9272 1765, Gertrude 9455 6576, Rose 0403 300 720
Monday April 4
CATHOLIC FAITH RENEWAL
Praise and Worship evening followed by Holy Mass at Holy Family Church Como. The main Celebrant is Fr Vincent Lee. All welcome
Monday April 4 COUNTRY DAY OF REFLECTION
St Anne’s Church, 2549 Great Northern Hwy, Bindoon, Feast of the Annunciation, 9.30 am - 3pm. Holy Mass 2pm. Guest Preacher Fr Hugh Thomas CSsR. Enq 9571 1839 or Jean 9576 0006.
Saturday & Sunday April 16 &17
DREAMS AND SYMBOLS WORKSHOP
With Sr Pat Quinn Director Portiuncular Centre, Toowoomba, Queensland. Enq: Pauline (08) 9528 3647
Sunday May 1
THE BOVE FARM MAY ROSARY RALLY 25th Anniversary Celebration in Honour of Our Lady to be held at the Queen of the Holy Rosary Grotto, Bove’s Farm, Roy Road, Jindong. Hymn singing commences at 12.30pm. Holy concelebrated Mass led by Bishop Gerard Holohan commences 1pm, followed by Rosary Procession and Benediction. Afternoon tea provided. All welcome bus bookings from Perth to Bove Farm can be made with Francis Williams ph 9459 3873.
‘Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way’ offers inspiration to bishops and faithful
■ By Mgr Richard AntallWhen someone asked the Holy Father about retirement, he suggested that if Jesus had been able to retire from the Cross, he might do the same. It looks like he will not be hanging up the mitre anytime soon, as a friend said to me.
Nevertheless, Pope John Paul II has been engaged in an activity that recalls what great and famous people do when they leave office. He has been writing his memoirs by installment. The first book,”Gift and Mystery,” was about his vocation to priesthood. A second part has now been published with the title “Rise, Let Us Be on OurWay’ (Warner, $22.95), a quotation from Mark 14:42 -Jesus’ words in the Garden of Gethsemane when his persecutors were about to arrive.
The dramatic title hints that the Pope wants to say certain things before it is impossible for him to do so. He also seems to be directing the words to a specific audience. The book is really like a pep talk for bishops, a meditation on his episcopal ministry interspersed with interesting autobiographical details.
The Pope mixes genres easily, as Father Richard Neuhaus noted, writing about Pope John Paul’s encyclical Centesimus Annus (“The HundredthYear”). Even in the formal theological style of the encyclicals and other exhortations, there are spots of deeply personal writing. Here we have memoir as reflection, exhortation, theological meditation, history, poetry and prayer.
There is much in this slender volume that is humanly appealing. The Pope recounts, for instance, how he came to know that he was being called to the episcopacy. He had to interrupt a canoe trip he was making with some friends to go to Warsaw because he had been summoned by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, primate of Poland. He took the night train and asked someone to wake him at the station. This was unnecessary, he writes, because he did not sleep at all.
‘I felt strange’ When Father Karol Wojtyla told Cardinal Wyszynski that he thought he was too young to be a bishop (he was 38), the venerable archbishop told him, “That is an imperfection from which you will soon be free.” The bishop elect then went to Krakow to speak with his ordinary and requested permission to return to his vacation. His archbishop thought it was an unusual request and discouraged the priest. Nevertheless, after praying the stations in a Franciscan church close by, FatherWojtyla asked again and was granted permission. Going back to his friends, the Pope mentions that he was reading a popular novel, the Ernest Hemingway classic “The Old Man and the Sea.” The few lines he writes about his thoughts make one feel that these are confidences of an
old friend. “I read all night in the train and could sleep only briefly. I felt strange.” Just as he does in his many public Masses and audiences, the Pope knows how to make contact through his words.
of the Catholic Church with an understated but clear tone of “lest we forget.” Pope John Paul II is also grateful to all who helped him and is aware of some of the most important experiences that shaped him.
What’s most striking is that the Pope is always his own man. His patriotism, which extends even to his piety (he prays the Litany of Polish Saints every day), is admirable and shows his respect for his roots. These are the reflections of someone who is trying to remember his life prayerfully and not to please others or to defend himself, like a certain US leader who recently published a 900-page valentine to himself.
“Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way” settles some scores, like all memoirs. He mentions both the Nazi and the Communist persecution
The book interlocks meditations on the Rite of Ordination of Bishops with memories of his years in Krakow and personal litanies of thanks. Particularly touching is the respect he shows for the man who ordained him, the Cardinal Prince Adam Stefan Sapieha, who is a figure of Polish history. Called Prince Valiant by some of his flock, he confronted both the Nazis and the Communists in his time as archbishop of Krakow.
Pope John Paul II admired Cardinal Sapieha because in the first place “he was a pastor.” Of more interest to most of us is his role in the vocation of Father Karol Wojtyla. “Perhaps,” writes the Pope, “they are correct who say that he was grooming me to be a bishop.
“ If for nothing else, the cardinal deserves the grateful memory of the universal Church, and not just that of his most famous protege.
But the Pope is not only grateful to the dead. The Holy Father who says - revealingly - that he has never felt lonely in his ministry, has a genius for friendship. One encounters lists of unpronounceable Polish names on certain pages, co-workers whom the Pope remembers fondly. It is no wonder he has so many friends because he is such a grateful man. I was glad to see, for instance, that the Pope singles out Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a friend and an especially valuable help in his ministry. The Pope has prized the friendship of the German cardinal since the days of the Second Vatican Council.
Along with last year’s Pastore Gregis, the Pope’s exhortation to the world’s bishops about their ministry, and this year’s instruction from a Vatican congregation about the vocation of bishop, “Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way” represents the third installment of a kind of magisterial blitzkrieg about the office of bishops. I wonder what US publishers think about the “market” for inspirational books for bishops. Nevertheless, the episcopal minis-
try is so crucial for the life of the Church that we do well to read all three documents, although, of course, the memoirs are the most touching. - OSV
I set off in search of the source of my vocation. It is beating there ... in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. I thank God that during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, I was able to pray - precisely there - in the Upper Room (Mk 14:15), where the Last Supper took place. I transport myself in thought to that memorable Thursday, when Christ, having loved His own to the end (cf. John 13:1), instituted the apostles as priests of the New Covenant. I see Him bending down before each of us, successors of the apostles, to wash our feet. I hear Him, as if He were speaking to me - to us - these words: “Do you realise what I have done for you? You call Me Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet. I have given you an example to follow, ‘so that as I have done for you, you also should do” (Jn 13:12-15).
Together with Peter, Andrew, James and John . . . let us continue to listen: “As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you. Remain in My love! If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. I have told you this so that My joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is My commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you” (Jn 15:9-14).
- excerpted from “Rise, Let Us Be on Our Way,” by Pope John