The Record Newspaper 11 January 2012

The priest who came in from the cold

Meet Fr Brendan Arthur, former schismatic, now parish priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne - and one who celebrates the Novus Ordo

Pages 14-15

Epic in real life

JRR Tolkien’s courtship of Edith Bratt: their love, and the subversive text which brought them to mind.

Pages 10-11

UNDA’s new doctors ready to shine

THE first class of doctors to graduate from The University of Notre Dame’s Sydney School of Medicine would be valuable contributors to the future of medical practice in Australia and the instruments of change in the Australian medical system, said Professor Christine Bennett, Dean of the School.

103 medical students – the first class of students to complete the course since the establishment of the School in 2008 - graduated form UNDA’s Sydney School on 20 December.

Prof Bennett said Notre Dame students not only have outstanding clinical skills, equipping them for a successful career in medicine, but are also well-known for their passion for their vocation and a commitment to lifelong learning and care for patients instilled in them through the University’s curriculum and culture.

Prof Bennett said Notre Dame’s Medicine students are wellequipped to lead the evolution that is occurring in healthcare.

“The doctor’s role in healthcare

is changing. Notre Dame students will have a perspective on health that is holistic. Health care in the future will require medical practitioners to understand health and wellbeing as well as disease, and to work successfully as part of a multi-disciplinary team,” Prof Bennett said.

UNDA’s medical students have the opportunity to study in a range of locations, including several in rural communities, dovetailing with the University’s ambition to produce doctors who will work in

areas of need. “Our graduates have shown a passion for serving the community. Many will be going on to practice medicine in rural areas where there is an urgent need for more doctors. I hope that this will help to close the gap in healthcare provision that exists in Australia, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders,” Prof Bennett said.

“Graduates from the School of Medicine in Sydney see the bigger picture in healthcare and I believe they will contribute to the medical leadership of our health system

that is required to meet the needs of current and future generations,” she said.

The Sydney graduates entering the workforce now join several years of graduates from the Fremantle campus of the university.

The first batch of Fremantle medicine students, 74-strong, graduated in 2008 after successfully completing their degrees.

A UNDA spokesman told The Record a total of 336 students have graduated as doctors from the campus since the first intake in 2006.

Big day: the first cohort of Medicine students, 103 in all, graduated as doctors from the University of Notre Dame’s Sydney campus on 20 December.

PHOTO: COURTESY UNDA

Things you may have missed ...

Choir contrasts Christmas joy with Easter pain

THIS holiday season Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity choir seeks nothing but to glorify God through music and through beauty.

On the night of Monday, 19 December the audience at Holy Spirit Primary School in City Beach were led through the Mystery of the Rosary with beautiful images projecting the epic story of that first Christmas.

The choir sought to contrast the joy of Christmas with the painful side of Mary and Joseph’s difficult journey, said choir leader Sean Tobin.

Formed only a year ago, the choir is looking to grow from its current membership, which includes 11 singers, five instrumentalists and one conductor.

They are an independent group, performing wherever invited, and a relatively youthful group with members ranging from 15 to 58 years of age.

They hope to keep performing at any opportunity and to “lead people to God through music”, Mr Tobin said.

Women out in front

NINETEEN professional women from all walks of life graduated from The Catherine McAuley Award for Women in Leadership and Service during a ceremony on 19 November last year.

The twelve month programme is aimed at providing WA women with the opportunity to explore and develop their potential for leadership and service, grounded in Christian spirituality and con-

cern for social justice. The award, which is supported by St John of God Health Care, Mercedes College and Santa Maria College, is an initiative of the Sisters of Mercy congregation which honours Catherine McAuley’s desire to educate women because, “whatever their station in life, they will always be in a position of influence”.

Executive Director of Mission and Culture at MercyCare Anne Fox described 2011’s award recipients as a talented group of women who, throughout the year, had been able to broaden their leadership skills as well as develop emotionally and spiritually.

“We’re very much looking forward to repeating this journey with participants in 2012,” Ms Fox said.

More than 100 people attended the graduation that is now in its 12th year, with over 300 women alumni.

Emmanuel’s cooking master

LAST YEAR, Alysha Bernard, then in Year 7 at Emmanuel College, reached the top six in Ten’s Junior Masterchef.

She described it as “the experience of a lifetime”.

“There is nothing I can compare it to.

“Going on the show has given me more confidence and I’m not scared to take on challenges,” Alysha said.

“On the show, I met wonderful people and made some great friends and did some amazing things.”

“One of those amazing things was going to America and Disneyland.

“Who thought we would go there?!

“But most of all, I had fun doing

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it and didn’t worry about the pressure. I’m really proud of myself for making it to the top six”

And for people of all ages, she had this advice:

“So just remember that nothing is impossible, it’s ‘I’m possible’ and have a go and take a chance.

“But most of all, enjoy it.”

Her audition dish was a Mini Violet crumble-based cheesecake and she was lauded by the show for her Burmese chicken curry (her dad was born in Burma).

She told the show’s producers that she wanted to be a chef or a singer. She acquired her love of cooking from watching television cooking shows and was excited to be with other young cooks.

Sunday 15th - Green (SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME)

1st Reading: 1 Sam 3:3-10.19, Speak, Lord!

Responsorial Ps 39:2,4,7-10

Psalm: Here am I, Lord

2nd Reading: 1 Cor 6:13-1517-20

One spirit

Gospel Reading: Jn 1:35-42 The Lamb of God

Monday 16th - Green

1st Reading: 1 Sam 15:16-23

Saul is rejected

Responsorial Ps 49:8-9.16-17.21.23

Psalm: Am I like you?

Gospel Reading: Mk 2:11-22 The right time to fast

Tuesday 17th - White ( ST ANTHONY, ABBOT (M))

1st Reading: 1 Sam 16:1-13

David’s anointed

Responsorial Ps 88:20-22.27-28

Psalm: David, my servant

Gospel Reading: Mk 2:23-28 Master of the Sabbath

Wednesday 18th - Green

1st Reading: 1 Sam 17:32-33, 37, 40-51

David triumphs

Responsorial Ps 143:1-2.9-10

Psalm: Blessed be the Lord

Gospel Reading: Mk 3:1-6

Save life or kill?

Thursday 19th - Green

1st Reading: 1 Sam 18:6-9;19:1-7

Saul’s jealousy

Responsorial Ps 55:2-3.9-14

Psalm: The presence of God

Gospel Reading: Mk 3:7-12

Crowds follow Jesus

Friday 20th - Green ( ST FABIAN, POPE, MARTYR (O) ST SEBASTIAN, MARTYR (O))

1st Reading: 1 Sam 24:3-21

David spares Saul

Responsorial Ps 56:2-4.6.11

Psalm: God, our help

Gospel Reading: Mk 3:13-19

The Twelve are appointed

Saturday 21st - Red ( ST AGNES, VIRGIN, MARTYR (M))

1st Reading: 2 Sam 1:1-4.1112.17.19.23-27

David’s lament

Responsorial Ps 79:2-3.5-7

Psalm: God, come to our help

Gospel Reading: Mk 3:20-21

Out of his mind?

Bookshop, 21 Vic ToRia squaRe, peRTh

Successful graduates from The Catherine McAuley Award for Women in Leadership. PHOTO: MERCYCARE

Junior Masterchef’s Alysha Bernard.

PHOTO: COURTESY EMMANUAEL COLLEGE

First Catholic student to crack state’s top award

By Sarah Motherwell

CALUM Braham, 16, is the first Catholic student to receive WA’s top academic achievement, the Beazley Medal.

Education Minister Liz Constable today awarded the former Trinity College student the prize for achieving the top Curriculum Council award score in the state.

Calum’s family describes him as a sensible “all-rounder” who enjoys sports, music and maths but has always been able to “see the world around him”.

Calum said his favourite subject in Year 12 was specialist mathematics because the atmosphere in the classroom was “light-hearted”.

Mother Kate Hammond told The Record Calum was very sick as a baby and was operated on when he was only 16 days old.

Happy faces at farmers’ market

By Sarah Motherwell

LOCALS cannot stop themselves smiling at the low prices of fresh produce available at the Farmers’ Market on Manning Rd at Clontarf Academy in Waterford every Saturday from 7.30am to 12.30pm.

For the past two years, local suppliers of fresh organic and conventional produce have come together to provide south of the river residents with a grower direct one-stop shop. Fresh meat and fish, homemade bread and pastries, farm fresh eggs and much more are available for purchase and, as the holiday season rolled in, festive trinkets and Christmas trees were also on display. The busiest parts of the market, however, are the fruit and vegetable stalls which overflow with ripe produce at low prices.

For many, the Farmers’ Market is a great day out for the whole family, including the pet dog. After filling up their calico bags, shoppers relax in the shade with a yummy crepe and freshly squeezed juice and return the following Saturday to do it all again.

For more information visit: http://www. farmersmarketonmanning.com.au/index.html

She said she was worried that he would not survive but after pulling through it was very clear he was a survivor.

Calum’s first grade teacher at St Paul’s Primary School in Mount Lawley insisted that he be promoted into second grade.

expect to be receiving many phone calls.

Former Trinity student Calum Braham and Woodvale’s Nicole Kerr both receive the Beazley Medal for academic excellence in WA in 2011.

She had given this recommendation only once before in her 30 years of teaching.

His family, who have known about the award since Tuesday, said it was difficult to keep it a secret until today.

They will be celebrating at home tonight with pizza because they

Calum has been offered a Fogarty scholarship to the University of Western Australia where he plans to study a Bachelor of Philosophy majoring in maths and either physics or economics. In addition to the Beazley Medal, Calum has been awarded a General Exhibition, a Course Exhibition in Physics, certificates of distinction in Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics and a Certificate of Excellence.

The medal, named after former education minister Kim Edward

Beazley, is the most sought after award by top academic achievers in Western Australia. It is awarded to the student with the top Curriculum Council award score, based on an average of five scaled scores. Eligible students must complete two humanities or social science subjects and two mathematics, science or technology classes.

Nicole Kerr, 17, of Woodvale Secondary College, also received the Beazley Medal for her achievements in Vocational Education and Training.

“I understand Nicole plans to study commerce at university and, judging by her success in Year 12, there are many more special things to come from this brilliant student,” Dr Constable said.

Last year, more than 21,000 students achieved the Western Australian Certificate of Education.

Archbishop launches a new series

messages

each

The

People lining up to purchase local fresh produce at the Clontarf farmers’ markets.

PHOTO: SARAH MOTHERWELL

A very happy Calum Braham holding the 2011 Beazley medal.

PHOTO: S MOTHERWELL

CHILDREN’S welfare, family interests and the rampant drug culture in Perth will be a few of the topics discussed by Perth Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey in a new video series in an attempt to reach out to the broader public.

weekly video series A Word for Today’s World with Archbishop Barry Hickey will appear online

Friday beginning 20 January via The Faith Centre website. The Faith Centre for Evangelisation and Catholic Culture, the newest centre in the Perth Archdiocese, will produce the video clips and host these on their website www.thefaith.org.au. Transcripts will also be available once the clip is broadcast online.

Archbishop Hickey explaining topics to be covered in forthcoming weekly videos reaching out to all from the Faith Centre.

PHOTO: BRIDGET SPINKS

of online

Saying yes to God has led to full life

By Mark reidy

FATHER Chris Ross has a very simple philosophy of life and it is probably why this octogenarian has the looks, energy and enthusiasm of someone much younger – “Just say ‘Yes’”, he announces with a grin.

Fr Chris, who has been part of the Servite Order for the past 67 years, acknowledges that genes are a contributing factor to his youthful appearance, “at 92, my mother still didn’t have a wrinkle”, but he is adamant that it is a positive attitude and a willingness to step into the unknown that has sustained his age-defying demeanour.

From the moment he first said “Yes” to God when he entered the Servites in his hometown of Chicago as a 16 year old, Fr Chris realised it was a word that opened the door to places and opportunities that he had never dreamed of. One of these was his role as President of Servite College in Tuart Hill, a role he filled for 20 years until his retirement at the end of 2011.

“It was a role that was close to my heart,” Fr Chris reflects. “I was able to be the bridge between the Servites and the school, instilling and maintaining the Servite values, ensuring that they will always remain an integral part of the school community.”

During his tenure Fr Chris had been given an “open ticket” to participate in a number of committees, as well as writing for a weekly column for parents. School principal Dr Philip Cox describes Fr Chris as a stalwart of the Servite community who was a friend to both teacher and student alike.

“His role as president was to ensure that the College’s policies and processes always reflected the Servite charisms and traditions,” Dr Cox said. “He was most present to students through liturgies and Masses and always attended parent meetings where he would open with prayer that would help parents better understand the Servite charisms he held so dear. Often at staff prayer he would describe the early years of the Servite Order. He knew that it was important for the staff to fully understand the origins of the Friar Servants of Mary so they in turn could pass on that knowl-

edge and understanding to their students.”

Fr Chris’ love for the Servite Order has never wavered from his first encounter at high school where he grew close to a particular Servite priest. From his early years of formation he said that it was a place where he always felt he belonged. It was also a journey that, combined with his adventurous tendency to always say ‘Yes’, would lead to extraordinary opportunities.

After his ordination in 1954, Fr Chris was assigned to the Order’s Formation Team in Chicago, before leaving his family behind and heading to Perth in 1964 as Superior of the Foundation. When announcing to his parents where he was being placed he explained, “Let’s just say that if I went any further I’d be coming back home!”

During this post-Vatican II era of great change for the Church, Fr Chris was founding Chairperson for the WA Liturgical Commission which assisted and counselled parish priests in the transition to the new liturgy.

When Australia became a pro-

IMMACULATE  HEART  COLLEGE OPEN  DAY

Saturday 21 January:  10am 2pm

Lot  1,  Santa  Gertrudis  Drive  (Corner Muchea  East  Road)

Please  join  us  for  our first  Open  Day  on  site  at  the  College!

Your  family  will  have  the  pleasure  of  meeting members  of  the College’s  Board, the  Principal ,  and  the  teachers.    You  will also  have  the chance  to  inspect  the  classrooms  and the College’s  layout

Entertainment  for  the  children  will  include:

• Bouncy  Castle

• Face  Painting

• Free  Sausage  Sizzle  (Drinks  for  sale)

It  is  the  p erfect  opportunity  to  see  what  Immaculate  Heart College  will  be  offering  for  your  child’s  education. We  look  forward  to  meeting  you then!

vincial Vicariate, Fr Chris was elected as Vicar Provincial by the friars. It was a role he fulfilled until 1977 when he was elected as Assistant to the Prior General on the Council that oversees the international Servite Order. Fr Chris spent his six year term in Rome fulfilling this role before returning to Australia,

Fr Chris’ propensity to answer in the affirmative has always kept him busy.

which by then he considered home. In 1985, he was again elected Vicar Provincial. During his time in Perth, Fr Chris was also parish priest of St Denis in Joondanna from 1964–68, 1973–74 and throughout the 90s. When he arrived in 1964, parishioners were meeting in a Nissan hut left over from WWII but, by 1968, he had seen to the building of a new

and unique church and priory. He was also involved in the establishment of the nearby Servite Villa for the elderly.

Congregations soon packed the new church, especially for the Sunday evening youth Mass that attracted young people from across Perth. Here, he inaugurated the first youth or folk Mass in Perth with the special feature of allowing members of the congregation to express their own opinions on the designated topic.

Fr Chris’ propensity to answer in the affirmative has always kept him busy. “I have never had only one job at a time,” he announces and, judging by his smile, it is obvious that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

As well as, or in between his role as parish priest, which included times at St Anthony in Wanneroo and St Kieran in late 1983, Fr Chris also became involved with the renewal of the Order’s Constitution, as well as assisting the Indian Servite Sisters to renew theirs. He was also involved in establishing the Servite community in Melbourne in 1967, was Servite representative for the

WA Council for Religious, which involved regularly meeting with all religious congregational leaders across the state, and was Archbishop Foley’s Vicar for Religious, serving as go-between for the men and women of religious congregations of the archdiocese. He also squeezed in a year as Chaplain at WA Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) and was coordinator for the millennium celebrations at Subiaco Oval in 2000.

Fr Chris’ impulsive nature surprised even himself when one day Archbishop Foley’s secretary pulled up beside him as he was walking along the street, wound down his window and asked whether he would organise the Liturgy for the Pope’s visit to Perth in 1986. Without a second thought, he naturally said “yes” and both men continued on their way.

Fr Chris’ zest for life has also served him well in his passion for the Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Music Education early in his life. He has used this gift in areas such as Choir Director at St Denis as well as singing tenor with the University Choral Society.

But one of his greatest passions has been his involvement with the Mandorla Art Award which has been running in WA since 1985. As a committee member, Fr Chris has been part of a team that has injected new life into this biennial religious art exhibition. With St John of God Health Care becoming a major sponsor in 2009 and offering almost $50,000 worth of prizes, this once struggling exhibition for contemporary religious art is now attracting some of Australia’s most wellknown artists. Fr Chris’ involvement in this renewal has given yet another lease on life to a man who didn’t seem to need any more.

So, despite retirement from his role as president of Servite College, Fr Chris is adamant he has not retired from life itself. “I’m not someone who can sit around and watch television,” he explains. “When people ask me why I don’t just retire from all my commitments, I simply tell them, ‘I’m not dead yet!’” Until that time comes, it seems, he will happily continue in his role as God’s “Yes”- man.

Bentley ‘iPadre’ farewelled

By Glynnis GranGer

SANTA Clara parish in Bentley said goodbye to parish priest Fr Francisco Mascarenhas at its annual Christmas party and carol singing on 18 December before he left for Woodvale parish on 27 December.

Fr Francisco, 57, who originally comes from Goa in India, was at Santa Clara for four years and accomplished much in that short time.

He was responsible for the installation of new fans and, lately, airconditioners in the church, and the plastering and painting of the wall behind the altar, with lights installed behind the large crucifix. He also helped with organisation of the building of the new parish and school hall, which was opened earlier this year.

Acolyte Brian Kelly spoke to the gathering at the party and said thank you to Father for giving himself wholeheartedly to parish life, visiting the sick and elderly and bringing hope and healing through the Sacraments of Communion and Reconciliation.

Mr Kelly said: “You have been very approachable and affable to everyone from babies up to us sen-

iors ... for all our parish nationalities from the cradle to the grave.” Fr Francisco told The Record later there was a $1 million loan on St Luke’s in Woodvale, “a good parish coming up, and I am sure they will need somebody to look after them.”

He said: “I had really good years (at Santa Clara) – absolutely peaceful. I try to be nice to people and one good turn deserves another.

“I did what I could. It is our simple things, but people are judged by that.

“You do little things in our memory more than words ... a lot of love from people.

“People gave what they don’t have. I feel like crying. People have been giving quite well to the collections.”

Fr Francisco increased the parish finances by 250 per cent and is considered a good money manager.

In November, he officiated at his niece’s wedding in Goa with seven other priests, with a huge reception at a country club.

The parish presented him with a big “boom-box”, ipod and ipad.

Fr Francisco said in the parish newsletter: “If I learn how to use them, I might as well end up being an ipadre!”

Fr Dennis Sudla, currently at Willagee, will be the new parish priest at Santa Clara, taking up his appointment in late January.

Fr Roy Pereira will be locum tenens from Saturday, 31 December until then.

Fr Chris Ross, retired and relaxed but still very busy serving God.

PHOTO: MARK REIDY

Christmas farewell for popular Santa Clara priest, now moving to Woodvale. PHOTO: G GRAINGER

Sorores Vitae draw women to the Father

IT WAS any religious order’s dream come true: over 300 Catholic women in one place open to hearing their particular good news.

The stunning turnout came when the University of Notre Dame’s Sydney campus chaplaincy hosted one of the newest women’s religious orders in the world in mid-December.

More than 300 mainly young Catholic women converged on the St Benedict’s parish church in Broadway to hear two talks by the visiting Sisters of Life, pray and participate in Mass and adoration.

The Sisters were founded in 1991 by the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York to advance the cause of human life and care for pregnant mothers.

Last month’s visit was not the order’s first trip to Australia. In 2008, it was the Sisters who ran the UNDA’s Life and Love site during World Youth Day in Sydney.

Notre Dame Sydney Chaplaincy Convenor Jessica Langrell said it was exciting to see so many women from all walks of life attend the event.

“Last week we had 150 registrations,” said Ms Langrell.

“And then the Sisters landed in Australia, and just like that, our numbers doubled. We definitely had over 300 attendees, which was wonderful, and people kept pouring in throughout the day as well.”

Sr Antoniana Maria SV said her order was hoping the women who participated in the retreat came away with an understanding of their value in the eyes of God and the importance of their role in the fabric of society.

I was inspired by how much life is about being God’s daughter.

“We just want them to know they are deeply loved by the Father in Heaven and that through the power of the recognition that they are loved by the Lord, they can become beautiful agents of love, first for their families and then for all whom they meet,” she said.

UNDA student Chantal Khoury said she was moved by the presentations given by Sr Mariae Agnus Dei SV - ‘SV’ stands for ‘Sorores

Vitae’, Latin for ‘Sisters of Life’ - and Sr Maria Anne Michela SV. “I was inspired by their discussion of femininity and how much life is about being God’s daughter,” she said.

“We must give God thanks for the strength we have as women and realise how important femininity and motherly care is, especially in today’s society.”

With many women facing complex challenges balancing their roles in modern life, the Sisters emphasise helping women to centre themselves in Christ’s love.

“A woman’s identity rests in loving and being loved and so the challenge of being a saint in this day crosses all boundaries of culture, race and socioeconomic background,” said Sr Antoniana.

“The challenge of being a saint in this world truly is universal, and the universal response is Jesus. He is the answer to the question of every human heart. He provides the grace for us to love as authentic women in any age.”

St Mary’s glitters at Christmas

By Jacinta Jakovcevic

CHRISTMAS was celebrated at St Mary’s Cathedral with a glittering array of music to celebrate the birth of Our Lord. The Midnight Mass was the highlight with the Cathedral Choir in excellent form as they sang Mozart’s Credo Mass with four soloists and small chamber orchestra.

Other highlights were the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah and Malcolm Archer’s motet O Magnum Mysterium

As a prelude, the Cathedral’s traditional ‘Lessons and Carols’ took place as per a decades-old tradition on Christmas Eve at 10.30pm, including numerous carols sung by the Choir and large congregation.

The Choir also sang some sparkling Christmas motets including Durufle’s Tota pulchra es Maria and a special arrangement of Silent Night

The Cathedral’s five cantors were also in fine form at the other Cathedral Masses presenting special Christmas solos from Handel’s Messiah and leading the congregations in carols.

A new tradition for the Cathedral in Christmas Eve Children’s Mass.

A new tradition at the Cathedral is the Christmas Eve Children’s Mass: the music was of a contemporary nature presented by an ensemble of young voices - the highlight was Rutter’s A Star Carol and a composition by the Cathedral’s Principal Cantor especially written for the Christmas season. Contemporarystyle carols were again featured at the Christmas Day 5pm Mass with the Cathedral’s youth group.

The fresh vitality of the Sisters of Life, founded in New York in 1991 to advance the cause of human life and pregnant women, drew hundreds to a women’s afternoon retreat at the University of Notre Dame’s Broadway campus in mid-December. On the agenda? Mass, adoration, prayer and talks.

PHOTO: UNDA, SYDNEY

Priestly life was a joy for Fr Hubert

MY parents lived in Geraldton, Western Australia, where I was born and I began my schooling at Stella Maris under the Presentation Sisters. After moving to Perth we all went to St Joachim’s Convent School, Victoria Park for about three years. I was taught by Sister Alphonsus. Then we moved to Kalgoorlie and went to the Christian Brothers’ College there.

My working days at the Post Office began in Kalgoorlie with several others from The Christian Brothers who also passed the entrance examination. Within a couple of years we graduated to higher things before being sent to train in the Chief Telegraph Office in Perth, to become telegraphists in the Telecommunications Centre.

I enjoyed my life there, gradually becoming efficient in Morse code, typing, telegraphy and operations within the state as well as high speed telecommunication with Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney with the Murray Multiplex System. The things we learned then were staggering to me. Gradually, I learned also about transmission of signals at radio frequencies over telegraph lines.

About this time, I began to feel another urge – to move away from that work to a more spiritual long distance journey. This led me to discuss it with one of my friends. We both found ourselves directed by our parish priest at Subiaco to Archbishop Prendiville for an interview. He directed us to keep studying where we were and to come back in six months if we still felt the call. Later, as it turned out, I was accepted but my friend was not.

In 1941, I entered St Columba’s College, Springwood, New South Wales. Two weeks later I celebrated my 22nd birthday, the eldest of our group of twenty to begin the eight year course. Six of those eight years were spent at St Patrick’s College, Manly.

Archbishop Prendiville ordained me priest on 1 August 1948 in St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth. I celebrated my first Mass the following day at the Lady Chapel there.

Today, I look back over 53 years of my life and ministry, mostly in the Diocese of Bunbury. There have been high and low points.

Firstly, there were the deaths

Obituary

Fr Hubert Kelly

Born: 12 March 1919

Entered eternal life: 25 December 2011

of my father, one of my younger sisters, Bernadette, and, later, my Mother. This made me realise that I too was on the same journey. There were also the deaths of lifelong friends and classmates from the seminary.

Then, departing from parishes in which I served as parish priest was also difficult, as I had no desire to leave each place in which I served.

Finally, there was the memory of the breakdown in relationships with a couple of my classmates and with several priests under whom I served.

But there were joys as well. My first and greatest is being a priest and able to offer the Mass every day and to minister the Sacraments of the Church; then to have been fully supported by my family and friends all my life, in prayer, hospitality and friendship and also to be accepted by fellow priests of the diocese and to have been accepted and nurtured by God’s people in every parish in which I have served.

Then there was having a motor car: What a delight! To be able to move quickly around country places, to visit people, go to other Mass centres, to feel the joy of the green fields, sheep and cattle, the crops, the native vegetation – the whole countryside in each season of the year!

There was also the joy of taking part in the Liturgies of the Church. This began when I was working in Perth. My friends and I used to go to the Cathedral for the Office of Tenebrae, the Lenten Sermons and other Liturgies of Holy Week; then the eight years of liturgies in the seminary and frequently in the Sydney Cathedral with other students.

There are memories of special occasions too. Like being called out at night to minister to a family whose father died tragically. I made a trip of over 200km out and back, returning to the parish in time for morning Mass.

On several occasions I worked as a labourer on a parishioner’s farm

Sr Elizabeth still powering along after 60 years

A

her 60th anniversary of profession in mid-December.

Elizabeth Mary Quirke was born in Ayle, Co Tipperary, Ireland. She entered the Presentation Sisters in Geraldton on 28 January 1949 and was professed on 20 December 1951 in the presence of Bishop Gummer, the fourth Bishop of Geraldton. She taught at a number of schools, mainly in the Geraldton Diocese - Stella Maris Primary School, Nanson, Wonthella, Mt Magnet, Mullewa, Carnarvon, Rivervale and Rangeway.

Sister Elizabeth was foundation principal of St John’s, Rangeway when the school opened in 1969. She spent a total of 21 years as a principal from 1969-1975 and from 1978-1991.

In Geraldton, she worked for some time as the diocesan archivist and helped in the arrangements

in the shearing shed. I also bagged grain and picked up sticks to clear a paddock to prepare for cropping. One time I got bogged on a farmer’s roadway and I was unable to get out. There were no men around so the farmer’s wife got all the gear out herself and was able to pull my car onto dry ground. There was also the joy of celebrating a marriage on the verandah of a farmhouse because the mother of the bride was an invalid.

Looking back over decades of ministry there have been highs and lows. The greatest joy has been priesthood.

I have many joy-filled memories of the many years I spent catechising the children in government schools to enable them to receive the Sacraments. During this ministry I remember having wonderful co-operation from school principals and staff. In one parish, we ministers, usually three, ministered to eight schools.

Then there was the time when I travelled 110km on Sunday for a Mass for three people. Another occasion was when I was with a mission priest and we travelled

out at night to a remote centre to a schoolroom of people, welcoming the mission and sharing the supper afterwards. It was uplifting to find many committed Catholics living in remote areas.

There are, of course, special events in my life. Firstly, the 1953 National Eucharistic Congress in Sydney, celebrating 150 years since the first Mass was offered in Australia. On the opening Sunday night in St Mary’s Cathedral, the overflow crowd filled Hyde Park. On the streets of Sydney there were missioners standing on street corners, on the backs of trucks talking to people about the Gospel, living a Christian life and following the Church.

Another highpoint was my decision to become a chaplain with Catholic Immigration in 1967. I travelled to Sydney by train and across the Pacific by ship, then across America and the Atlantic to London. While waiting for a ship to sail, I worked in a parish in Liverpool for about four or five months.

Another celebration was the Silver Jubilee of my ordination in Sydney in 1973 where we had a good gathering of our classmates and Cardinal Gilroy joined us. That year I also made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to Italy and to Europe. When I left Narrogin Parish for Dardanup, I was given a gift of a passage to Sydney for the Beatification of Blessed Mary McKillop in January 1995.

I began my work at Hosea, House of Prayer in 1995 and celebrated the Golden Jubilee of my priesthood at Dardanup in 1998.

I entered the Charismatic Renewal in 1979 when Fr Bertolucci and Fr McNutt came to WA. I took part in a conference in Perth and returned to Bunbury.

I left Bunbury that same night and went to Pemberton to be parish priest. Eventually we began a prayer group, which is still going. They still have a conference that is held each year.

I was invited to join the Marriage Encounter Movement when I was in Boyup Brook. I was active for many years as one of the presentation priests, giving weekends at various venues. I became involved too with the Healing Ministry

and the Order of St Luke of which I was chaplain for a number of years. Regarding the changes in our Church by the Second Vatican Council, we were very fortunate in our diocese, because Bishop Goody had been to the Council.

He wanted the Diocese of Bunbury to follow the directions given by the Council. As a diocese, we gathered round and behind him as we entered this new era. I appreciated the documents, especially the document on the Church, which he outlined as a wider and deeper and more collaborative ministry in the Church.

Our three bishops have also brought into the diocese the Dominican Sisters who are in Bunbury at St Vincent’s as well as the Carmelite Sisters at Gelorup. I have been very happy with the forward thinking leadership shown by our bishops and found the changes in the Church from Vatican II enriching.

I thank God for the things I have had in my life, the people, priests and bishops I have worked with, and I have great hope for the future. There is new life coming into our diocese with younger priests coming from other countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and Vietnam.

So I have great hope for the future in our country as well as universally. The Gospel of the early Church is the same Gospel we have today and it is coming from Jesus himself. There may perhaps be different ways of living it and working with other people and other beliefs but it is the same and being open to others enriches it too.

This edited account of his own life was written by Fr Kelly in 2001.

for the diocesan centenary celebrations.

In November 2007, she left Geraldton to retire at Iona Presentation Convent, Mosman Park.

Sr Quirke was born in County Tipperary and entered the Presentation Sisters in Geraldton in 1949.

Sr Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebration was a joyous Mass on 17 December celebrated in the chapel of the Presentation Convent at Mosman Park.

Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton was the main celebrant, assisted by a long-time friend of Sr Elizabeth, Mgr John Barden and Fr Neville Faulkner.

After Bunbury Diocese established in 1954: Narrogin (three times); Margaret River; Kojonup; South Bunbury; Mt Barker; Gnowangarup; Bunbury; Pemberton; Boyup Brook; Chaplain – Hosea House of

PRESENTATION Sister who is also a stalwart of Catholic education in Western Australia celebrated

Happy milestone: Fr Neville Faulkner, left, Mgr John Barden, Sr Elizabeth Quirke and Bishop Justin Bianchini celebrate Sr Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee as a Presentation Sister at a special Mass on 17 December at Mosman Park.

PHOTO: SUPPLIED

Parishes Father Hubert has served: Kalgoorlie; Aquinas College chaplain; South Perth; West Perth; Shenton Park; Highgate; Palmyra; Wagin; Narrogin.

Prayer.

Pundits blunder in stillborn comments

US REPUBLICAN presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that only those who “don’t recognise the dignity of all human life” might think that he is “somehow weird” for how he dealt with the loss of his son in 1996.

To those who think a baby is merely “a blob of tissue that should be discarded and disposed of,” recognition of a dead baby’s humanity is something that “should be subject to ridicule,” the former Pennsylvania senator said at a campaign event in Iowa on 2 January.

Santorum was recently criticised by political commentators for his actions following the death of his premature son Gabriel, who died just two hours after he was born.

In a Fox News interview, Santorum explained that he and

French President praises Joan of Arc

By CatholiC News serviCe

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy praised his country’s patron, St Joan of Arc, for helping “forge the national conscience.”

“For the Church, Joan is a saint. For the republic, she’s the incarnation of the finest French virtues, including a patriotism that consists of loving one’s homeland without

his wife, Karen, decided to take their son home “to have a funeral at home and then to bury him later that day.”

They also showed the child to his siblings so they could get a chance to see their baby brother.

Santorum said that it was “a tremendously healing experience for all of us” and it helped “recognise the dignity” of his son’s life and “affirm that memory” for his whole family.

On a Fox News segment on 2 January, political commentator Alan Colmes criticised Santorum for “some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two hour old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple hours, so his other children would know the child was

real.” In a 5 January interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow programme, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson also ridiculed Santorum and his wife for taking their son home “to kind of sleep with it, introduce it to the rest of the family.”

“He’s not a little weird,” said Robinson, “he’s really weird.”

But Robinson and Colmes were “speaking out of a seemingly bottomless well of ignorance,” according to Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre.

In a 5 January article in Commentary magazine, he pointed out that health experts often suggest spending time with a stillborn child as a means of grieving.

The American Pregnancy

Association advises parents of stillborn children that they “can find comfort in looking at, touching, and talking to your baby,” and that they may wish to allow their other children to see the baby as well.

Making memories can also be a natural part of the grieving process, the association said on its website, explaining that this can be done by bathing and clothing the baby, or even reading or singing to the child.

Wehner decried the “particular delight and glee” with which the political commentators showed a “casual cruelty” towards Santorum.

“Robinson seems completely comfortable lampooning a man and his wife who had experienced the worst possible nightmare for parents: the death of their child,” he said.

Wehner said the incidents showed how “ideology and partisan politics” can “disfigure” some people’s minds and hearts, making them vicious in political disagreements.

Santorum said Colmes later called to apologise. Colmes tweeted that he had spoken to Santorum and his wife and that they had “graciously accepted my apology for a hurtful comment.”

Robinson stopped short of an apology when questioned on MSNBC television on 6 January.

resenting others,” the president said on 6 January after attending Mass at Domremy to mark the 600th anniversary of her birth.

Celebrations throughout the year will include Masses, conferences and theatre productions, as well as a national pilgrimage in February.

St Joan, a 19 year old, was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431 after rallying a French army against English invaders.

In a speech at Vaucouleurs, Sarkozy said St Joan had generated “sarcasm from those for whom courage could only be masculine” and scepticism about the voices she claimed to have heard, calling on her to save the country.

“But Joan was really the face of the first French resistance in an era when the national conscience was being forged amid the most terrible ordeals,” the president said.

“Were these voices addressed to the soul of a Christian, or did they come directly from the heart of a little French girl? Noone can answer this question, and I think it’s wisest to leave Joan her mystery, respecting her faith and courage.”

He added that she represented “everything most noble and humble” and did not belong “to any party, faction or clan.”

“Joan embodies the Christian roots of France, but this doesn’t in any way harm the secular values we so much believe in,” Sarkozy said.

Christmas light still burns in chilly church

CNA

Although he said he wished that he “hadn’t said it that way,” Robinson also reiterated his belief that Santorum’s views are “extreme” and said he feels that he has an obligation as a columnist to voice his opinions.

‘Brand Catholic’ pollies taken to task

STEPS toward “radical secularisation” taking place in Illinois pose growing threats to the religious freedom of Catholics, a US bishop warned.

Bishop Daniel Jenky’s comments came in a pastoral letter designed to “raise an alarm among the faithful” at the beginning of 2012.

Bishop Jenky also said he was “especially scandalised” by Catholic politicians who willingly collaborate with efforts to exclude God and faith from the public forum.

“Many of those in office who were taught to read and write in Catholic schools now seem entirely indifferent to the consciences of those Catholics who live their faith,” wrote Bishop Jenky in a teaching document titled Secularism. The text was published in the 8 January issue of The Catholic Post, the newspaper of the Diocese of Peoria, which was mailed to all 60,000 diocesan households.

Calling to mind civil union legislation and court rulings that in 2011 led Catholic agencies throughout the state to dismantle

PHOTO: P HARING/CNS

their adoption and foster care programmes, Bishop Jenky expressed concerns about possible future actions against Catholic health care, schools and other public ministries.

“There are certainly some in our state whose commitment to aes-

thetic secularism is so intense that they may well try to restrict the Church’s role only to the sacristy and the sanctuary,” he wrote.

“On Ash Wednesday some Catholic office holders like to be conspicuous, but the cross of Christ seems far from their minds.”

He called faithful Catholics to “more assertive action in defence of our religion and those public ministries which we hold to be the work of Christ.”

“Eventually it may come to pass that our fidelity to the Gospel of Christ and to Catholic tradition may place us in direct conflict with recent legal definitions by the state of Illinois,” wrote the bishop.

Sadly, he noted, many Catholics

today choose to remain silent when their institutions are attacked or beliefs held up for scorn.

Bishop Jenky warned that “the witness we either offer or withhold will have eternal consequences for each one of us.”

While he names no politician and says he would never tell Catholics how to vote, Bishop Jenky’s words for Catholic office holders who would “restrict the civil liberty of the faith tradition from which they were originally sprung” were especially pointed.

“On Ash Wednesday, they like to be conspicuous with crosses on their foreheads, but the true cross of Christ seems far from their minds,” Bishop Jenky wrote.

“They enjoy parties [on St Patrick’s Day] and wearing green sweaters but in effect are ashamed of St Patrick’s unwavering zeal for the Catholic Christianity.

“Such people certainly need our prayers, but they should no longer be able to take our friendship or our support for granted,” said Bishop Jenky.

A Catholic priest walks inside a church made of snow on 28 December in the Bavarian village of Mitterfirmiansreut.

PHOTO: CNS/PETR JOSEK, REUTERS

France is marking the 600th anniversary of the birth of Saint Joan of Arc who, as a teenager, was burned at the stake after leading a military campaign against English invaders.

PHOTO: CNS/CHARLES PLATIAU.REUTERS

Bishop Daniel Jenky warns of radical secularisation in Illinois.

US winner in Pope’s cardinal picks

POPE Benedict XVI has named 22 new cardinals and announced their formal induction into the College of Cardinals will take place on 18 February.

The Pope announced the nominations to the faithful in St Peter’s Square at noon on 6 January, before praying the Angelus.

Among those named was prominent New York prelate, Archbishop Timothy M Dolan.

“This is not about Timothy Dolan,” the New York cardinaldesignate said. “This is an honor from the Holy Father to the

Word of God, sacraments, the key for parents

By Carol Glatz

POPE Benedict XVI baptised 16 infants and told their parents and godparents that prayer and the sacraments will give them the strength and guidance they need to promote a child’s true wellbeing.

Presiding over the annual liturgy in the Sistine Chapel on 8 January, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the Pope said the sacraments and putting one’s trust in God through prayer offer “that light of truth” that illuminates the right path to take in their child’s education and upbringing.

The Holy Spirit “enlightens the mind, warms the heart of the educator so that he will know how to pass on an awareness of Jesus and his love,” he said in his homily.

Grounded in faith and in communion with God, parents and teachers will know how to be both “tender and strong, gentle and firm, be silent and speak at the right time, to scold and correct in the right way,” he said.

The infants baptised by the Pope were made up of 10 boys and six girls.

“Parents are not the source, like we priests are also not the source” of salvation and the truth, he said. The sacraments and the word of God are the source of salvation and “we are rather like channels through which the lifeblood of God’s love must pass,” he said.

“Parents must give a lot” when raising their children, so if parents don’t receive strength, support and knowledge from the true sources of salvation then they will be left empty and all dried up inside and no longer able to teach others, he said.

One of the intentions read during the prayers of the faithful was “for children who suffer from mistreatment, hunger and disease: May the Lord always call forth men and women able to kneel before them with tireless charity and tenacious hope.” CNS

Archdiocese of New York. ... It’s as if Pope Benedict is putting the red hat on top of the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty, or on home plate at Yankee Stadium.”

The latest additions will bring the US and Canada’s share of the College of Cardinals to 22. The US, which is home to about 5.5 per cent of the world’s Catholics, will provide almost 10 per cent of the 125 cardinals under the age of 80, who are the only cardinals eligible to vote in a conclave for a future Pope.

By contrast, only one of those named, Cardinal-designate Joao

Braz de Aviz, comes from the country with the most Catholics, Brazil.

When the cardinals are inducted in February, only seven of the 22 cardinal electors from Latin America will have been appointed by Pope Benedict.

With his latest appointments, Pope Benedict will have named more than 50 per cent of the current cardinal electors, with the rest having been named by Blessed John Paul II.

The Pope’s latest nominations included 16 Europeans, continuing a trend in his cardinal appoint-

ments since his election in 2005. Seven of the new appointments are Italians, which will bring that nation’s total of cardinal electors to 30 - or 24 per cent - more than any other country.

None of the new cardinals are from Africa, the region where the Church is experiencing its fastest growth, or Australia and the other countries of Oceania.

Ten of the new cardinals are officials of the Roman Curia, whose offices by tradition often entail membership in the college.

Four of the new cardinals are

already over the age of 80 and, therefore, ineligible to vote in a conclave.

The Pope uses such nominations to honor churchmen for their scholarship or other service to the Church. Among the new so-called honorary cardinals is Cardinaldesignate Karl Becker, a Jesuit and former theology professor at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

The Jesuits remain the religious order with the highest representation in the college, with eight cardinals, followed by the Salesians with six. CNS

China expert Hong Kong’s second cardinal

POPE Benedict XVI has named Bishop John Tong Hon of Hong Kong, an expert on China Church affairs, a new cardinal during the Angelus in St Peter’s Square.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said there is generally only one cardinal in a diocese but since he will turn 80 on 13 January, which means he will have no voting rights in a papal conclave, it is reasonable for the Pope to name another cardinal for Hong Kong.

Noting that it is a personal choice of the Pope, the retired bishop of Hong Kong said, “it is to show his goodwill towards China.”

Bishop

Tong, 72, will be the seventh Chinese cardinal in history.

Bishop Tong was born in 1939 and ordained a priest in 1966. He was appointed auxiliary bishop in 1996 and then coadjutor bishop in 2008. He was installed as the ordinary in 2009 after Cardinal Zen retired.

Besides teaching at the Holy Spirit Seminary College, Bishop Tong has served as director of the Holy Spirit Study Centre, a research center specialising in China Church affairs, since its inception in 1980.

In an interview with ucanews. com when he became the ordinary, Bishop Tong said his concern for the China Church will continue, but he will adhere to Church principles in dealing with the mainland.

However, he has adopted a different style from the outspoken Cardinal Zen in showing care for brothers and sisters in China. In his 2010 Christmas message, Bishop Tong asked his Catholics to fulfill their important responsibility of Bridge Church “in a prudent and low profile manner.” UCA

Prelate rejects media take on Nigerian violence

B y E va -M aria K ol M ann and John nEwton

ONE of Nigeria’s leading bishops has condemned the media for portraying recent violence in the country as a civil war between Muslims and Christians.

Archbishop John Olurunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja criticised news reports that describe Nigeria as descending into ongoing religious violence.

His interview with Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need followed five separate bomb attacks across Nigeria on Christmas Day, killing at least 40 people, and clashes between the Nigerian military and Boko Haram, an extremist Islamist group which claimed responsibility for the explosions.

Also more than 50 people were killed when a group of people from Ezza ethnic group attacked members of neighbouring Ezilo group

over a land dispute in the country’s south-eastern Ebonyi state over the New Year – which some reports have described as a religious conflict.

Archbishop Onaiyekan went on to reject calls to divide the West African country into two independent religious states, describing the idea as senseless and set to plunge the country into deeper crisis.

He said: “It is, in any case, crazy to speak of an Islamic north and

a Christian south. “Many families even consist of half Muslims and half Christians. Nigeria cannot be divided according to religion.

“Christians and Muslims go to school, to the market and to work together, and they serve together in the army. The places where they live now are where they grew up.

“One cannot suddenly resettle all the Muslims in the north and all the Christians in the south and divide up the country.”

Archbishop Onaiyekan described Boko Haram as “terrorists who cause problems for anyone in Nigeria who stands in their way.

“They claim to act in the name of Islam, but the killing of innocents is contradictory to Islam.”

He told ACN that eight imams from mosques in Abuja visited the Archbishop following the attacks to express their condolences. He said he had also received many letters of sympathy from Muslims. ACN

Pope Benedict XVI baptises an infant in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican on 8 January.

PHOTO: CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO

Bishop John Tong Hon of Hong Kong

Protect life and family: Pope

By Cindy Wooden

POPE Benedict XVI condemned “religiously motivated terrorism” and restrictions on religious freedom during his annual address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican.

Looking both at signs of promise and areas of concern around the globe, the Pope said human dignity, truth and justice demand governments safeguard all human life and recognise the importance of the traditional family based on the marriage of a man and a woman.

But his strongest words on 9 January were reserved for the topic of religious freedom and religiously motivated violence.

The Pope paid tribute to Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic and government minister for minorities in Pakistan, “whose untiring battle for the rights of minorities ended in his tragic death” when he was murdered last March.

“Sadly, we are not speaking of an isolated case,” the Pope told

Top doctrine body issues Year of Faith suggestions

By Carol Glatz

IN AN effort to help Catholics have a better and correct understanding of their faith and become authentic witnesses to Christ, the Vatican issued a list of pastoral recommendations for celebrating the upcoming Year of Faith.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a “note” on 7 January outlining the aims of the special year and ways bishops, dioceses, parishes and communities can promote “the truth of the faith,” the congregation said.

Pope Benedict XVI wanted the Year of Faith, which runs from 11 October 2012 to 24 November 2013, to help the Church focus its attention on “Jesus Christ and the beauty of having faith in him,” it said.

“The Church is well aware of the problems facing the faith” and recognises that without a revitalisation of faith rooted in a personal encounter with Jesus, “then all other reforms will remain ineffective,” it said, citing the Pope’s 22 December address to the Roman Curia.

Critical to renewing one’s faith and being a credible witness is having a firm and correct understanding of Church teaching, it said.

Because the year’s start, 11 October, coincides with the anniversaries of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992, it would be an auspicious occasion to make the work of the council and the catechism “more widely and deeply known,” it said.

The congregation said the Pope “has worked decisively for a correct understanding of the council, rejecting as erroneous the so-called ‘hermeneutics of discontinuity and rupture’ and promoting what he himself has termed the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in continuity” with the Church and its tradition.

Among the initiatives will be various ecumenical events at the Vatican aimed at restoring unity among all Christians, including “a solemn ecumenical celebration in which all of the baptised will reaf-

diplomats. “In many countries, Christians are deprived of fundamental rights and sidelined from public life; in other countries they endure violent attacks against their churches and homes,” he said, mentioning particularly the Christmas

The family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, is no mere social convention, he said.

Day attacks against churches in Nigeria.

“In other parts of the world,” he said, “we see policies aimed at marginalising the role of religion in the life of society, as if it were a cause of intolerance rather than a valued contribution to education in respect for human dignity, justice and peace.” “In the past year,

religiously motivated terrorism has also reaped numerous victims, especially in Asia and in Africa,” he said.

With concerns expressed about creating new power elites or situations where Christian minorities could face more pressure as a result of the Arab Spring, the only way forward toward true democracy and peace “is through the recognition of the inalienable dignity of each human person and of his or her fundamental rights,” the Pope said.

“Respect for the person must be at the centre of institutions and laws,” the Pope said in his address to representatives of the 179 countries that have full diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

Pope Benedict focused particularly on the needs and concerns of the world’s youth.

“The present moment is sadly marked by a profound disquiet, and the various crises - economic, political and social - are a dramat-

ic expression of this,” he said. The Pope expressed his hopes for an end to bloodshed and tensions in South Sudan, Syria, the Holy Land, Iraq and the Great Lakes region of Africa, and urged the nations of the world to take seriously their obligation to protect the environment and fight climate change.

Saying he was looking particularly toward developed Western nations, Pope Benedict urged governments to protect the most basic human right - the right to life.

“I am convinced that legislative measures which not only permit but at times even promote abortion for reasons of convenience or for questionable medical motives compromise the education of young people” in respect for life and hope for the future, which in turn compromises the future of humanity, he said.

Pope Benedict said education in knowledge and in values is crucial today and among educational settings “pride of place goes to the

family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.”

“This is not a simple social convention,” he said.

The family is the basic structure of society and “policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” he said.

Turning his attention to the environment, the Pope said people cannot ignore the natural calamities and “ecological disasters like that of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan” that marked 2011.

“Environmental protection and the connection between fighting poverty and fighting climate change are important areas for the promotion of integral human development,” he said. The Pope asked governments to demonstrate “a great sense of solidarity and responsibility toward present and future generations” as they prepare for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, which will be held from 20-22 June in Rio de Janeiro.

Newlyweds appreciate the papal wave

firm their faith in Christ,” it said.

There will be special Masses at the Vatican to mark the opening and closing of the Year of Faith, it added.

Some recommendations for bishops, dioceses and parishes include ensuring there are better quality catechetical materials that conform to Church teaching; promoting Catholic principles and the significance of Vatican II in the mass media; hosting events that bring artists, academics and others together to renew dialogue between faith and reason; offering penitential celebrations; and putting a focus on liturgy, especially the Eucharist, it said. It also called for Vatican II documents, the Catechism and its Compendium to be republished in more affordable editions and to distribute the texts digitally and via other “modern technologies.”

The text of the doctrinal congregation’s note is online at http://press.catholica.va/news.

Poor stay to eke out living despite dangers

RESIDENTS of a small mining community in the southern Philippines continued mining for gold on 5 January despite a landslide that swept through their village and government warnings to evacuate, a Catholic priest said.

Father Reynaldo Biliran of the Tagum Diocese told the Asian church news agency UCA News

that the government feared the land had become unstable after the predawn landslide claimed at least 25 lives, but villagers refused to budge.

“The Church has not been remiss in reminding them of the danger of mining, but you can’t really blame these poor people for staying there. It’s their livelihood,” he said. More than 100 people were miss-

ing after the landslide, the government reported.

Benito Ramos, head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said heavy rain or a pre-dawn quake were possible causes of the landslide in Pantukan village in Compostela Valley province. CNS

Prelate resigns after disclosing he is father

LOS Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala has resigned after disclosing to superiors that he is the father of two children.

The Vatican announced the bishop’s resignation on 4 January in a one-line statement that cited Church law on resignation for illness or other serious reasons. Los

Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced the “sad and difficult” news in a letter to Catholics in the archdiocese. He said Bishop Zavala had informed him in early December that he is the father of two minor teenage children who live with their mother in another state. Bishop Zavala has not been

in ministry and “will be living privately,” he said. “The archdiocese has reached out to the mother and children to provide spiritual care as well as funding to assist the children with college costs ...,” he said. He asked prayers for all those affected by the situation. CNS

Newly married couples applaud as Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges them at his general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican on 4 January. PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

TTolkien’s best

in the argain

BIN

Lovers, one of them a future great novelist kept apart by a priest, the last thing Robert Hiini expected to find in the bargain bin of an antique shop in Rockingham.

he two lovers had been spotted together once more and the usually cheerful priest was furious at the deception.

The first time, they were cavorting innocently over tea: he, having left their mutual lodging house on the pretext of visiting a sportsground, and she, having cycled to their clandestine meeting place under the guise of meeting a cousin.

The then 17 year old John Ronald Reuel Tolkien promised he would never see Edith Bratt again but the temptation was too great.

He loved his guardian, Fr Francis Morgan, or “Fr F” as he would call him in letters and diary entries.

The priest had taken him into his own heart and was “a father to me, more than most real fathers” Tolkien would write years later.

But such was his sense of kinship with Edith and the ardour he felt for her that Tolkien couldn’t obey his surrogate’s admonition. He hadn’t the strength; at least, not yet.

I sat back from the computer screen, 98 years after the events I had just read about took place. A book which had once been owned by the persecutor of Tolkien and Edith’s young love was open in front of me; the book which led me down this happy but unexpected trail of coming to appreciate the life of an author I had previously loathed.

For I come from a long line of Tolkien atheists, albeit of a laconic rather than virulent variety.

People told me he was the greatest author in the English language - in ‘serious’ Catholic circles, the view is nearly dogmatic - but I felt no fervour for him, until I read about his life.

When I had picked up the book up in that sadly-defunct Rockingham antique store in 2008, it was without any knowledge of the historical treasures it would reveal.

I picked it up for a very different reason.

“Nova et Vetera” (New and Old), I read on the book’s leather spine.

And inside, the subheading which immediately secured my purchase: “Informal meditations for times of spiritual dryness”.

I had been working in the Catholic Church for three years and was ready to walk: not so much over the lumbering mess that is institutional Catholicism but more depressingly, the emptiness and hypocrisy of my own Catholic posturing and the sense that when I was praying to God I was simply doing a pretty average job of talking to myself.

And there, in the bargain bin, was a book which might help to shed God’s light on my own increasing bitterness, written by a Jesuit, no less, back when they had a better name among “orthodox” folks such as myself (the book, a third edition, was first published in 1900). I paid the gent his $4 and made my way home to read and google my find.

The book’s author, George Tyrrell, turned out to be a leading “modernist” of the early 20th century; intent on revisioning the Gospel to fit modern certainties as the more-than-occasionally reductive science of the day delineated them.

An Irish convert from Anglicanism, his views grew increasingly divergent from those of what Pope Benedict has recently described as the then heavy-handed and intellectually stilted Holy See.

Tyrrell was expelled from the Jesuit order in 1906 and excommunicated the following year when he criticised Pope Pius X’s encyclical letter, Pascendi Dominici Gregis , which condemned what it amorphlessly labelled “modernism”.

To read, the book was a disappointment, but inside lay far more interesting tidbits.

On its inside cover there was a book plate with a coat of arms and the words “Franciscus Morgan et Osborne” and “Cong: Orat: Pres apud Edgbaston”.

To my ignorant eyes, this Latin was opaque except for the obvious name of a man and, probably, of a place.

On the title page were written the neat, handwritten words “Francis

Morgan” and “1907” and what looked to me like “theoratory”.

Many google searches later and I had found my man: Fr Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory in Edgbaston, made famous by its saintly founder, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1907 was the year construction began on the

I came from a long line of Tolkien atheists... People said he was the greatest English writer but I would not believe.

Birmingham Oratory Church, built in Cardinal Newman’s honour).

Fr Francis was not an academic, nor a sportsman according to his confrere, Fr Philip Lynch. Born to parents of Welsh and Spanish backgrounds, he was remembered simply as a good and dependable priest, living up to the Latin moto on his family crest “Ut Ameris Amabilis Esto” - “be amiable, and then you

will be loved.” He was evidently appreciated and greatly respected by Tolkien’s mother, Mabel, who listed him as her boys’ legal guardian when she was diagnosed with diabetes, before the advent of penicillin.

Mabel had raised her sons on her own after leaving South Africa and her husband behind in 1895 for a holiday with her boys in England. In early 1896, Tolkien’s father, Arthur, contracted rheumatic fever and died. Tolkien was four years old and his brother Hilary, two.

Ensconced for the next four years in Birmingham, Mabel and her sister, May, angered their families by receiving instruction and entering the Catholic Church in June of 1900.

The disdain meted out to both was swift. After cajoling his wife to desist, May’s husband Walter was determined to bring Mabel back from disgrace and cut the financial help he and his wife had been providing since Arthur’s death. But Mabel would not relent.

It was to her friend Fr Francis that Mabel turned when she knew

Not

a bad bargain: The inside cover and first

she was approaching the end. In November 1904, when Tolkien was 12, Mabel died and the boys passed into “Fr F’s” care.

By all accounts, the Tolkien boys’ surrogate father, Fr F, was a loving and engaged guardian.

But how can one reconcile that image with what was to come and the separation he enforced which threatened to derail Tolkien’s and Edith’s happiness?

After three years lodging with an unloving aunt, Fr F moved the boys to the Duchess Road lodging house of a Mrs Faulkner. It was there that the 16 year old Tolkien met fellow lodger, Edith Bratt, 19.

Both knew devastating loss, Edith perhaps even more than Tolkien. Her mother had died four years prior and her father was unknown, leaving Edith to grow up in a com-

RIGHT: Edith Bratt, wife of JRR Tolkien; MIDDLE: Fr Francis Morgan, JRR Tolkien’s guardian; FAR RIGHT: JRR Tolkien.

PHOTO: COURTESY ONLINE SOURCE

munity which didn’t love “illegitimate” children.

The two became friends almost immediately and, by the end of summer 1909, were firmly in love. Their fraternising was blissfully unhindered until that bicycle ride in the countryside and their visit to the tea rooms in Rednal Village. Their tea attendant mentioned seeing Tolkien with an unknown girl to the Oratory’s caretaker. Fr F got word and forbade further contact.

More illicit, clandestine meetings ensued, further angering Fr F until Edith opted to move away to Cheltenham.

Tolkien biographer Joseph Pearce points to Tolkien’s diary entry of 16 February as a sorrowful expression of Tolkien’s state of mind:

“Last night prayed would see E by accident. Prayer answered.

Saw her at 12.55 at Prince of Wales. Told her I could not write and arranged to see her off on Thursday fortnight. Happier but so much long to see her just once to cheer her up. Cannot think of anything else.”

Fr F’s last admonition was his harshest but was intended for

It was his first contact with her in three years. He asked her to marry him but she was already engaged...

Tolkien’s own good; to protect the future career of a brilliant mind. He threatened to withdraw support for Tolkien’s study for Oxford if he did not agree to suspend contact with Edith until he was 21.

Tolkien wrote of the night of her 2 March departure to Cheltenham:

“At Francis Road corner she passed me on bike on way to station. I shall

not see her again perhaps for three years.”

And that was how it happened. His sense of obligation to the well meaning priest was so great that he finally yielded. On the day of his 21st birthday he sent a letter proposing marriage to Edith, his first communication with her in nearly three years.

She was already engaged but she returned the engagement ring by post. And while more struggles awaited them, Tolkien and Edith were happily joined in marriage on 22 March 1916.

In a roundabout way, my $4 antique shop find delivered on its initial promise of aiding one experiencing spiritual dryness.

What was one hour of then tedium per week at Mass or minutes spent in empty prayer compared with Tolkien’s three years of pained, solitary longing? What kind of man could withstand that?

Only a man as faithful as Tolkien.

Working our family lives to death

Just as one can be married but not really have a marriage, so too can one be in a family but not of it. What are we working for if not for loving relationships which will endure.

Welcome to 2012! Did you have a restful break from work … or did you have a break at all? Did you know that at the end of 2011, Australian workers have stockpiled 129.6 million days of annual leave! It matches the recent conversation I had with a man who admitted he had not taken annual leave for three years even though he has a young family. His response as to why, was that he liked being at work and would not know what to do otherwise (I guess if one had not taken a break for that long, one may forget what to do with the time).

This does make me wonder though, why we are not taking breaks. It is good that we like our work but why are we not going home? Could it be that it becomes easier to be at work than to engage with the family?

In our homes and amongst our families we also have work that must be done and it is not mowing the lawn or tidying the house. The real work is that of building up a community, a place where love is received by each member of the family and where each member is able to give love.

At the end of last year I spent one month away leading a residential course for 20 young adults from around Australia. During the month the participants receive many different aspects of formation but apart from everything what makes the event so transformative is the strong community that is formed. These young people who begin as strangers end up as lifelong friends and not only because they lived together for a month, but because they shared their lives at a deep level, their joys and their weaknesses, their hopes and their fears. So close does the group become that by the end it is a challenge for them to settle back into home with their own families. However, if our families were as strong as they should be that month would not seem so extraordinary. In this course, there is no TV, no phones, no internet, no iPods and at each meal we eat together. In free time we play cards, board games and talk to one another. We have events in which each person publicly honours someone else in the community. Much planning goes into this course but everything done there should be and can be done in the family; it is the work of a family. Many of us may be living with our family under the one roof but that does not mean we know anyone in our family. Each time I travel on

Foolish Wisdom

By Bernard Toutounji

the train there are people sitting and reading magazines about the latest celebrity news. I often wonder if they would score higher in a quiz about a celebrity or in a quiz about someone in their own family. How would you score in a quiz about the members of your family?

Just as one can be married but not really have a marriage, one can be in a family but not really have a family. If our family life only exists by default because we live in the same house then perhaps this New Year is the time to address the situation. And the solution is not complicated. It begins by opening up channels when we have opportunities to share in one another’s lives. That is why the dinner table is the most crucial piece of furniture in the house. The dinner table is the place where daily lives are shared, and not necessarily the major events

Would you score higher in a quiz about a celebrity or in a quiz about someone in your own family?

but more importantly the minor ones, the details that only a family really have an interest in. For when we have a place to share our insignificant stories we have room to share the significant crossroads of life. Once the family is secure around the table it begins to make sense to share weekends and holidays together.

When we feel we belong to a family then our weekends and annual leave become valuable time to spend not just with the family but as a family, not doing but being. The work of building up the family then takes on its own joys that put the paid work we do during business hours into perspective. We begin to see that work exists for us; we do not exist for work.

So if you are the owner of some of those 129.6 million days of annual leave, perhaps give some thought to trading them in for time with your family in the coming year.

www.foolishwisdom.com

page of Nova et Vetera, as marked by Fr Francis Morgan, legal guardian of the young J R R Tolkien. PHOTO: ROBERT HIINI

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Headed for Great Snoring. Really.

Ecumenism is alive and well in Walsingham, England, where Anglican and Catholic shrines to Our Lady complement, rather than compete, writes Paul

Maughan

.

Few places on the planet have such intriguing place names as those of the villages of Britain. One of my favourites is Great Snoring in rural Norfolk.

Recently, I visited this tiny village. Imagine my surprise when I discovered one of its senior citizens is named Mr Gotobed. True.

Just 2km up the road from Great Snoring is Walsingham, England’s Nazareth, a major pilgrim site for centuries and my reason for visiting this beautiful part of East Anglia.

According to legend, in 1061 Richeldis de Faverches, Lady of the Manor of Walsingham, was inspired by a vision of Our Lady to build a shrine, a replica of the holy house in Nazareth where the Annunciation took place.

By the Middle Ages Walsingham was one of the four great shrines of Christendom with pilgrims coming from all parts of the known world. Before its destruction at the Reformation, every King of England from Richard I to Henry VIII came on pilgrimage.

Little remains of the ancient shrine today, but its site is marked on the lawn in the abbey grounds in the village centre.

Over 200,000 pilgrims, of all denominations, descend annually on Walsingham in what is England’s national Marian site. Here, there is not one shrine to the Blessed Virgin but two. The Anglican shrine and the Roman Catholic shrine are at either end of what is called the Holy Mile. Both are impressive.

The Anglican shrine and the Roman Catholic shrine are at either end of what is called the Holy Mile. Both are impressive.

The Catholic shrine, centred on the Slipper Chapel, is outside the village and somewhat difficult to find. We were directed there by a helpful Anglican gentleman; so, despite the two sites, ecumenism is obviously alive and well in the village.

In the Slipper Chapel is the magnificent stone statue of the Madonna and Child, which was taken to Wembley to be blessed

by Pope John Paul II when he visited England in 1982. The small chapel, with its clean simple lines and multitude of flickering votive candles, provides a serene atmosphere for devotion.

In 1981, the huge Chapel of Reconciliation was built adjacent

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Little remains today of the once great shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, destroyed by the English Reformation, other than two shrine churches, above and at right, one Catholic and the other Anglican.

to cater for ever larger groups of pilgrims. In the style of a typical Norfolk barn, it dominates its surroundings.

The shrine also has a wellstocked bookshop built off a cloister which surrounds an impressive holy water fountain.

Back in the village of Walsingham is Elmham House, a large Georgian guesthouse that can accommodate over 100 guests, catering for groups as well as individuals. It’s a busy place with a licensed restaurant and two lovely gardens for guests to relax in.

The area around Walsingham is very attractive - a rustic place of gentle slopes and soft light. Of course, nowhere in England is far from the sea and in Walsingham’s case the splendid shoreline is only ten kilometres distant.

Holkham and Houghton Halls, both close by and open to the public, are magnificent examples of Palladian architecture and ornate luxury. The royal estate of Sandringham, which you can also visit provided the Royals are not in residence, is just a half hour down the road too.

The charming seaside resort of Hunstanton, with its famous redand-white striped chalk cliffs and wide sandy beaches, offers a pleas-

ant diversion and is also close. On top of these cliffs, with spectacular views over The Wash, sits a remarkable, historic Wireless/ Observation Tower with links to both World Wars. You can hire it to stay in – we did – uniquely different!

Probably Norfolk’s biggest attraction, though, is the watery world of the Fens and the Broads - Walsingham being equidistant between both. Most tourists to Norfolk enjoy the reward of exploring these gentle waterways by boat, either for a few hours or taking the plunge for a week-long holiday afloat. They are easy to master and it is all very relaxing and picturesque; with the soggy maze of navigable marshlands a virtual haven for birds and wildlife.

We stayed in the heart of the Broads (at Wroxham) in the magnificent Sail Loft Apartments, built out over the River Bure and supplied with our own 22 foot cruiser. Superb!

Once, much of Norfolk was a flooded peat bog but the extensive drainage programme of the Fens and Broads transformed this county into an agricultural giant of flat, rich farmland. Some of the widest horizons and sweeping vistas in Britain are the result. Beautiful!

It’s easy to feel at peace in this glorious part of England with its welcoming rustic charm and gentle waterways. How appropriate, then, that it is also such a popular destination for prayer and reflection for hundreds of thousands of world-weary souls.

Destination Latin America

By Ezra FiEsEr

THE oldest cathedral in the Americas sits just off a busy plaza in this Caribbean city’s colonial district.

However, it’s the nearby bronze Christopher Columbus statue, Hard Rock Cafe and cigar shops that draw the lines of tourists in the plaza.

Yet the faith-based travel portion of the tourism market is worth an estimated $18 billion a year around the globe. The most popular destinations for Catholic pilgrimages remain, by far, the Holy Land and Europe.

Although they receive far less attention than traditional destinations, significant Catholic sites - such as the Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor in Santo Domingo - are scattered throughout Latin America. They range from Mexico’s Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, considered one of the holiest places in the Americas, to breathtaking churches tucked into Andean valleys. Even the iconic symbol of Brazil’s most celebrated city, Rio de Janeiro, is a Catholic monument: Christ the Redeemer, towering over the city below, was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World

in 2007. Within the region, religious travel has long been an important cultural event. Holy Week, marked in many countries by elaborate, sombre processions, remains the busiest travel week for most countries in the region. The Guatemalan colonial city Antigua - population 45,000 - sees about 300,000 visitors that week.

Within the region, religious travel has long been important.

Other places, such as Las Lajas Sanctuary, a nearly 300 foot tall basilica built into a ravine in southern Colombia, attract visitors year-round; many pilgrims to Las Lajas cross the border from Ecuador on pilgrimage.

Las Lajas became the poster child of the Colombian government’s effort to attract more religious tourists when it launched a “Roads of Faith” promotional campaign last year.

The campaign, which highlights events and places throughout the South American country, was aimed at drawing tourists from Spain, Italy and Latin American countries.

UNIQUE PILGRIMAGE OPPORTUNITY FROM 8-28 JUNE 2012

IRELANDFor the Eucharistic Congress

Walk in the footsteps of Bl John Henry Newman

with Archbishop Barry J Hickey

Boats rest on the scenic and timeless waterways of the Norfolk Broads in the UK. PHOTO: 123RF.COM

Lights illuminate the Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor in 2010 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The cathedral is the oldest in the Americas, with construction beginning in 1514 and completed in 1540. It is one of many significant Catholic sites scattered throughout Latin America.

PHOTO: CNS/EDUARDO MUNOZ, REUTERS

Coming home Returns efugee A

Fr Brendan Arthur was formerly a priest of the breakaway Society of St Pius X until the beginning of 2011. After completing his seminary studies in Goulburn and the US, he was ordained in 2002. But, convinced that the Catholic Church was the true church, at the beginning of 2011 he departed the society and has since become a priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He recently answered a series of questions put to him by

Andrew Rabel

Why did you decide all those years ago to become a priest of the Society of St Pius X?

My grandparents and parents were refugees from the sudden liturgical abuses and doctrinal aberrations that so often accompanied the introduction of the Novus Ordo Missae in the 70s. They searched all over Melbourne for priests of proven orthodoxy where the Mass would be offered with reverence and the sermons would contain genuine Church teaching.

When the Society of St Pius X arrived in Australia in 1980, they seemed to have found a body of priests, dedicated to serving the faithful in a traditional way. They offered what is now referred to as the “Extraordinary Form of the Mass”, were not afraid to be seen as priests, and were committed to providing the sacraments not only in the cities, but also throughout the vast rural areas of Australia.

As a child, I attended the Mass in Ballarat but eventually became involved with a youth group run by the Society in Hampton (Melbourne). At that time, I also began to serve the Latin Mass and came to spend the days before Christmas and Easter preparing servers for the ceremonies. The ordered life of the priests with common prayer was something I found attractive, along with their zeal for the things of God. Seeing that they were overstretched in

their ministry, I began to ask myself whether I might not be called to join their ranks. I vividly remember one Easter Vigil feeling that God was indeed calling me to become a priest. As the Society was really all that I knew, it was the natural course for me to apply to enter their seminary in Goulburn. And you know what they say about the rest.

Having had such an interesting career in the Society, particularly being a school principal, what was it that made you decide to leave them?

I have to preface the answer to this question by saying that I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the Society for the excellent seminary training I received. The professors – all Society priests – were excellent priestly role models and taught us not only philosophy and theology, but also to have a deep respect and love for the Church’s perennial wisdom as exhibited in its doctrine, liturgy and praxis. A couple of years after my ordination, however, I began to question the Society’s stance on the Second Vatican Council, the Novus Ordo Missae and the ecclesial position of the Society within the Church.

Over some six or seven years that included a lot of study and prayer, I came to the conclusion that, while much that the Society has to say is fair criticism of the abuses within the Church, there are a number of fallacies in several of its key tenets. I further came to the conclusion that in spite of all the arguments the Society has put forward to support the four episcopal consecrations of 1988 which led to the excommunication of the Society’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, this was an unfortunate and unnecessary act of disobedience under the guise of saving Catholic Tradition.

The Society maintains that at present, it must continue its course of ecclesial irregularity to save the Church from modernism.

I now believe that if the salvation of the Church requires Catholic priests to operate outside the ordinary visible structure of the Church, then the Catholic Church cannot be the true Church of Christ, and this is untenable.

What happened when you approached the mainstream Church and asked them if you could serve as a priest there?

While my departure from the Society came as a shock to its

parishioners, it was not entirely unexpected by the superiors, whom I had kept informed of my doubts. Several of the major superiors of the Society warned that I risked being seen as a pariah were I to seek admission to a diocese and that, even if accepted, the likelihood would be that I would not be permitted to carry on a serious ministry in the Church. In this, at least, they were wrong.

Returning to my home Victoria, I was received very kindly by His Grace, Archbishop Hart. The process of regularisation was begun and a dossier sent to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, now a sub-Commission of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The process only took three months, though, I have to

My own opinion is that the new translation is incomparably better than the old, and that its fruits will be seen with time according to the axiom lex ordandi, lex credendi.

confess, it seemed like a lifetime as, during the wait, I was unable to exercise any ministry. A charitable priest allowed me to stay with him in the presbytery while I undertook a semester of studies in marriage and the family at the excellent John Paul II Institute.

When the necessary rescript was received from Rome, I was appointed as an assistant in an outer suburban parish, where I fully expected to spend at least a year settling in. After six weeks, however, I was appointed as parochial administrator of St Gerard’s Church, North Dandenong. I may be biased, but I do consider St Gerard’s to be one of the best parishes in the Melbourne archdiocese, and I feel privileged to be able to serve our wonderful parishioners in this capacity.

Now that you have been in this new environment for some months, has it been hard to adjust to a new ecclesial culture?

Actually, I am surprised by how easily I have fitted into the archdiocesan scene. While it is natural to differ in opinion with

some confreres on various issues, I have found every priest I have met without exception to have been very welcoming. There is a real camaraderie among the priests and an openness that allows for healthy debate.

Talks have been going on between the leadership of the Society and the Holy See about normalisation of relations. Are you confident this might, in fact, happen?

This is difficult to say. From what I’m led to believe, Pope Benedict is keen to heal past wounds and to regularise the Society’s position. This is in spite of intense opposition from a number of bishops around the world, particularly in Europe.

From the Society’s side, there is a great deal of mistrust and bitterness that has continued to build since its erection in 1970, and with this comes an attitude that regularisation would constitute compromise, and therefore a betrayal of the Faith. Bishop Fellay is admittedly in a very difficult position.

If relations are normalised, I would guess that there would be a very significant percentage of Society priests that would not

follow. And if the status quo continues, the Society risks becoming irrelevant in a Church that is gradually but definitely becoming once more enthusiastic about its dogmatic and liturgical foundations. To return to the question, I am not confident of a rapprochement any time soon, but still hopeful that there will be one before it’s too late for the Society.

Do you think that interest in the Old Mass is growing so much that it competes with the reformed liturgy, now with a new English translation?

That interest in the

“Extraordinary Form” is growing cannot be disputed. It is often supposed that this comes from a sentimental attachment of older Catholics to the pre-1970 liturgy, but this is not the case. The growing attachment is a phenomenon among younger Catholics who find the solemnity, reverence and mystery that is built into the older rite satisfies both their devotional and intellectual needs.

The same can be said of younger priests who, by offering the classical rite, find that their identity as a priest offering sacrifice is reaffirmed. Proportionally, though, there are many more

The Church’s structure has meaning and a purpose

Dear Father, can you tell me what is meant by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? I have heard the phrase used in different ways and I am not sure exactly what it means.

As you say, “hierarchy” is used in several different ways. When used in the phrase “hierarchy of the Church”, it refers to the structure of government of the Church and to those who exercise governance. This is certainly the most common meaning of the term and, in this sense, usually refers to the Pope and the bishops in communion with him.

In another sense, the term can refer to the three degrees of the sacrament of Holy Orders: bishops, priests and deacons. And in still another usage, the word is sometimes used to refer to the “hierarchy of truths” where some truths are considered more central or fundamental to our faith than others. The phrase was used by the Second Vatican Council in the Decree on Ecumenism which advised theologians engaged in ecumenical dialogue: “When comparing doctrines, they should remember that in Catholic teaching there exists an order or ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relationship to the foundation of the Christian faith” (UR 11).

Q&A

By Fr John Flader

even though he works in close collaboration with them.

The Pope governs the Church along with the college of bishops just as St Peter did with the other Apostles (cf Can 330). Whereas the Pope can govern the Church on his own, the bishops have power only in union with him. One of the ways the Pope governs the universal Church along with the bishops is in an Ecumenical Council, the last of which was the Second Vatican Council held between 1962 and 1965.

The Pope also works with bishops in governing the universal Church when he consults on doctrinal or disciplinary matters or seeks their input

attending the “Ordinary Form”. While there seems to be a division of opinions among priests as to the improvement of the Mass texts through the new translation, my experience has been a more or less smooth transition. My own opinion is that the new translation is incomparably better than the old, and that its fruits will be seen with time according to the axiom lex ordandi, lex credendi [you believe the way that you pray].

It is clearly not the intention of the Holy Father that the relationship between the two forms of the Roman rite should be viewed as a dichotomous competition, but one of mutual enrichment. It is especially by returning a greater formality and reverence to the Roman Mass, and perhaps something of the mystery of the “Extraordinary Form”, that the “Ordinary Form” will be established as was envisaged by Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s document on the liturgy.

In general, “hierarchy” has come to mean an ordered system with various grades or ranks, some more important than others. This is the sense in which we speak eg of a “hierarchy of truths” or a “hierarchy of values”.

In its original sense, the word comes from the Greek words for “sacred” and “rule” or “government”. Thus it means rule or government by those with sacred powers, just as “monarchy” means government by one person, and “oligarchy” by few persons.

In the Church, this “sacred rule” is vested in the Pope and bishops in communion with him. At the head of the hierarchy is the Pope. In founding the Church, Jesus chose Peter to be the head of the Apostles and thus the head of the whole Church. Quoting the Second Vatican Council, the Code of Canon Law says of the Pope: “He is the head of the College of Bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the Pastor of the universal Church here on earth. Consequently, by virtue of his office, he has supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church, and he can always freely exercise this power.” (Can 331; cf Lumen gentium, 22).

That is, the Pope has full power over the whole Church, and can exercise this power independently of the bishops

By virtue of his office, (the Pope) has supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church, and can always freely exercise this power.

in drafting such documents as the Code of Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church etc.

Another way the Pope works with the bishops is in a Synod of Bishops meeting where a selection of bishops from the whole world meets in Rome for several weeks to discover matters of interest for the Church.

The last general assembly of the Synod of Bishops met in late 2008 to discuss the role of the Word of God in Church life.

In their own dioceses, bishops have full pastoral care of people entrusted to them. Indeed, the Council refers to the bishops as “vicars of Christ” (cf LG 27).

Thus the word “hierarchy”, as applied to the government of the Church, refers to the Pope and bishops in communion with him.

They have joint responsibility with the Pope for the universal Church and they also govern the particular diocese entrusted to them.

Fr Brendan Arthur, left and above, celebrates Mass in the Norvus Ordo, above. Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St Pius X, blesses people after ordaining priests for the schismatic Society in Switzerland. PHOTOS: TOP: A RABEL; RIGHT: CNS

A message of peace that invites Christian hope

POPE Benedict XVI, in his annual World Day of Peace message, captures the ambivalence of the present moment but also the appropriate Christian response when he writes: “I invite you to look to 2012 with this attitude of confident trust. It is true that the year now ending has been marked by a rising sense of frustration at the crisis looming over society, the world of labour and the economy, a crisis whose roots are primarily cultural and anthropological. It seems as if a shadow has fallen over our time, preventing us from clearly seeing the light of day.”

There is a great unease through our land. In the United States, we remain divided ideologically, culturally, economically. In many ways, the stalemates that have plagued our government for the past year reflect a broader stalemate on a host of issues.

Around the world, and particularly in the West, the economic crisis of Europe has unnerved people. Governments have fallen, but whole economies may be next. In Africa, elites battle for power while masses of people suffer terribly in countries from Somalia and Sudan, to Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

New dangers await on the Korean Peninsula, and war continues in Afghanistan, strife in the Middle East, and an uneasy new era begins in Iraq with the final withdrawal last month of US military personnel.

How difficult it is to have hope. Yet the Pope finds reason for hope in the world’s young, that “with their enthusiasm and idealism (they) can offer new hope to the world.” He calls it a real duty of all - and not just a matter of expediency - to be attentive to young people, listen to them and appreciate them. Addressing them, he calls them a “precious gift” to society and to the Church, and “an example and an inspiration to adults, even more so to the extent that you seek to overcome injustice and corruption and strive to build a better future.”

At the same time, he underscores the common responsibility of those of the present generation to train the future generation to “be people of peace and builders of peace.”

“If we are to teach the next generation the joy that comes from the daily exercise of charity and compassion, we first must live it.”

Pope Benedict XVI

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Several of his recommendations include:

l Parents, see presence to your children as one of the greatest “treasures” you can give. “This presence makes it possible to share more deeply in the journey of life and thus to pass on experiences and convictions gained with the passing of the years, experiences and convictions which can only be communicated by spending time together.”

l Americans, be on watch against modern cultural currents like individualism that detach our understanding of justice from its roots: “charity and solidarity.”

l Christians, work on a spiritual maturity makeover. “In order to be true peacemakers, we must educate ourselves in compassion, solidarity, working together, fraternity, in being active within the community and concerned to raise awareness about national and international issues and the importance of seeking adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth, the promotion of growth, cooperation for development and conflict resolution.”

Because if we are to teach the next generation the joy that comes from the daily exercise of charity and compassion, we first must live it, the Pope notes:

“Today, more than ever, we need authentic witnesses, and not simply people who parcel out rules and facts; we need witnesses capable of seeing farther than others because their life is so much broader.”

May your 2012 be broader, more joyful and more confident.

The above editorial entitled Trust in 2012 appeared in the 1 January edition of Our Sunday Visitor, a US Catholic newsweekly.

Render unto Caesar ...

OUR archdiocese, along with Sydney and three others, has invested in a commercial tourist accommodation place, ‘Domus Australia’ in Rome. It appears to be a nice little tax-free earner!

Dr Piero Moraro’s article in The Australian newspaper on 12 December discloses that many such like places, owned by the ‘Vatican’ and Church agencies, are exempt from paying Italian income and ‘ICI’ property taxes because the inclusion of chapels, even small ones, deems them to be religious establishments.

Rome is full of churches already and chapels put in tourist accommodation seem to be driven by the seeking of tax exemptions.

Moraro says there are estimates that the Church is being exempted from Euro 2 billion pa. The Church receives a levy of 0.8% of the taxes on Italians worth another Euro 2 billion pa. It is argued by some that this should be halved and the ICI tax exemption removed. It would then produce Euro 3 billion for the hard-pressed Italian State. Is this not the moral thing to do?

Should not our Perth Archdiocese lead the way in rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s?

Gerard Tonks FCA, (retired Chartered Accountant) KALAMUNDA, WA

A birth and a miracle

I READ with interest Father John Flader’s article about Jesus being born not in the usual manner but in a miraculous way.

I have always taken the words of Isaiah in Psalm 22:9 “It was you who drew me from the womb and

Something to say?

Put it in a letter office@therecord.com.au

soothed me on my mother’s breast.

On you was I cast from my birth, from the womb I have belonged to you.” (New Jerusalem Bible) as a prophecy of Jesus’ miraculous birth, that God himself “drew” Jesus from Mary’s womb. Something to ponder here as well is that when God “does” something, it is an action of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in unison, even if God may “create” through the agency of the Son, or “sanctify” through the agency of the Holy Spirit, etc.

Daniel

Regnard

RIVERTON, WA

Protect true marriage

FOR centuries, marriage and family have been the bedrock of society. Same sex attracted individuals are already able to enter legal partnerships, to jointly own property, make wills, assign superannuation benefits and adopt or conceive children by IVF or surrogacy.

Governments must protect traditional marriage as the true norm and ideal and promote it and family life by favourable legal and tax policies and by restricting benefits to families, not alternative arbitrary lifestyles.

Brendan Keogh President, Australian Family Association EAGLEHAWK , VIC

New evangelisation must be a whole-Church effort

A Melbourne debate highlighted forces working against the “New Evangelisation”, but also showed the way forward, writes David

Schutz.

ON 15 NOVEMBER 2011, I attended the “Intelligence Squared Debate” sponsored by the Wheeler Centre and the St James Ethics Centre on the topic The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world Melbourne Town Hall was filled with both old and young. This was obviously a topic in which people were interested. I wondered if the same number would have turned up if the topic had been The Baptist Church is a force for good in the world. I don’t mean to pick on the Baptists; I am just saying that whichever way you cut the question, there is recognition the Catholic Church is a “force”. It has been around for 2,000 years and continues to stir up emotion today as strongly as it did right at the very beginning.

Speakers “for” the proposition came at the question, as expected, from the perspective of the immense amount of good the Church does in charitable works, welfare and social justice. They argued these works outweigh whatever failings might be attributed to the Church, so that on balance the proposition must stand. Julian McMahon, however, rightly began by mentioning the “God” word: the Church is the People of God. The Church “is what it is” because we believe in Jesus who was divine, and “Jesus’ central theme was that love is the driving force behind the authentic development of the person and society”.

The second speaker, Sr Libby Rogerson, spoke powerfully of her own experience and work in East Timor, Africa and other places. But this raises a question. It is true the love of Christians has always been the greatest witness to the truth of the Gospel (“See how they love each other”), but do we wrong-foot ourselves when we present this char-

ity towards our neighbour as the Gospel itself? Speakers against the motion based arguments on three themes: feminism (Summers), anti-authoritarianism (Kennedy), and sexual libertinism (Marr). Summers’ arguments were that the Church caused poverty by its teaching on abortion and birth control. Kennedy demanded the Church be run by “the people”. Marr’s caustic presentation twisted the Church’s position on sexual morality into a parody of authentic Church teaching.

These three arguments were not about whether “the Church is a force for good in the world”; rather, they were about the degree to which I as an individual might feel in any way restricted in my personal life by the teachings of the Church. There was nothing new here. Such objec-

Thjis effort will require vigour, determinationand no illusions.

tions to Church teachings have been part of the Zeitgeist since the 60s and appeal strongly to a great number of people today.

The debate convinced me that Catholics do themselves, the Church and the Gospel no favours when they fail to defend the Church when her teachings are under attack. At one point Marr asked the affirmative panel point blank: “Put up your hand if you think it is a sin for someone who has AIDS to use a condom.” Of course, the phrasing was designed as a trap but I take my hat off to Julian McMahon for stating he agreed with Church teaching that it is a sin to use artificial contraception. But the other affirmative speakers publicly rejected this teaching. They made a false distinction between the Church “of the hierarchy” and “of the people”,

arguing it is what “the people” do that makes the Church a force for good in the world.

Such a false distinction ignores the fact it is precisely because of the unified governance and teaching of Church pastors it is able to act at a global level for good. We live in a dream world if we think all the good which the Church does in the world would still be possible were everyone simply left to do what they felt best in their private conscience without the assistance of “the hierarchy”.

Finally came the vote. A “preevent poll” resulted in 35 per cent for, 34 per cent against and 31per cent undecided on the motion. The vote after the debate resulted in 34 per cent for, 59per cent against and 7per cent undecided. Basically, Catholics (or Catholic sympathisers) made up about one third of the crowd and did not find the “against” arguments convincing. On the other hand, those “against” beforehand were not dissuaded by the Catholic side’s arguments. Most devastatingly, those undecided were convinced by the arguments (such as they were) of the “against” side.

If this year’s combined Year of Grace and Year of Faith is to mean anything, or achieve anything, for the Church in Australia, then we all will need to embark upon the “New Evangelisation” with a vigorous determination and without any illusions about the battle before us.

There are forces, very influential forces, aligned against the Church.

If it were not for the promise of Christ – that the “gates of hell” will not prevail against his Church built upon the Rock of Peter – then I would indeed be fearful for the future of the Catholic Church.

But instead we hear Christ’s words: “Do not be afraid; put out into the deep.”

David Schutz’s blog sentire cum ecclesia can be found at www.scecclesia.com

God is present in every moment of our time

Worried by the fleeting nature of time? Don’t be. God created time and it is on our side, writes Mariette Ulrich.

December wasn’t long enough; it never is. How I wish I’d done less rushing around doing the necessary evils (shopping, office parties, meetings, recitals), and spent more time with loved ones: more time with ageing parents, with the aunt in the seniors home, with the friend who has cancer, with our daughter who has now travelled 500km back to university, not to be seen again for months— more ‘quality’ time with my husband and younger children, whom I see every day, but sometimes don’t “see” at all. More time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Having just rung out the old year and ushered in the new, “Time” may be on our minds these days. What did I accomplish last year? Did I meet all my goals? Did I meet any of them? What do I hope to achieve in the New Year? We make resolutions, surely one of which is better time management.

For some, especially those who are suffering, elderly, or lonely, time may drag interminably—it doesn’t need to be managed so much as endured. For others, time goes by all too quickly. Those of us who are living through the double-whammy of being middle-aged and far too

“God is in charge, and everything will unfold according to His plan.”

busy with family life and community activism can sometimes get confused—as I remarked to my sister a month or so ago: “I can hardly believe 2010 is coming to a close.” There’s nothing like momentarily losing an entire year to make one

sit up and take notice that perhaps things have gotten away from you.

We are (quite naturally, in a fast-paced world) obsessive about time: we wear watches, carry datebooks, calendars and schedules (if not the archaic paper variety, then in digital form: iPads and iPods and iPhones and iThings too numerous to name). I’ve even programmed my new laptop to tell me (out loud, in a semi-human voice) what time it is, on the hour, every hour, so that I don’t waste too much time on the computer. Since I have relatives, friends, and even editors (groups not mutually exclusive) living in various time zones all over the planet, my laptop also displays clocks telling me the time in the UK, Prague, Australia, New Zealand.

We follow friends and celebrities on Twitter and Facebook for minute-by-minute updates on their every thought (and bodily function). Constantly online, we don’t

bother reading news that’s more than six hours old. We even like to remind God what time it is: bold reformers in the Church constantly tell the Holy Father that he should change Church teaching to ‘get with the times.’

I am grateful for the season of Advent, now past (and all too quickly, alas), which tells us, in the bustle and frenzy of Christmas preparations, that Christ is Lord of all eternity, and sooner or later, we will be joining Him there. That God exists outside of time, and therefore, at least on a certain level, so must we.

Time is on our side, because God created it; it is there to serve us, and in turn we must use it to serve Him. We shouldn’t seek to conquer it, slow it down, speed it up, pass it, waste it, much less kill it. In every moment, God is eternally present to us. Whether our lives consist of empty loneliness or harried activity, we must, mind and soul, be eter-

nally present to Him, because we know neither the day nor the hour when he will call us physically to Himself.

We don’t need New Year’s resolutions or the strength to carry them out, because inevitably they ask more of us than we seem to have (hence, the abandonment of such resolutions by the third week of January). What we need is to remember that God is in charge, and everything will unfold according to His plan. Mainly we need to repent of our stubbornness in cooperating with Him, and have a firm purpose of amendment to do a better job of knowing, loving and serving Him—not in the next decade, or year, or upcoming week, but during the next sixty minutes of our life. He’ll take care of the rest.

Happy New Year.

Mariette Ulrich is a full-time homemaker. She lives in Saskatchewan, Canada with her husband and six of her seven daughters. She blogs at dumboldhousewives.blogspot.com

Bishop Fisher ‘graduates’ from UNDA

There are good reasons why the ethics of graduates and practising professionals must be high, writes Bishop Anthony Fisher.

As a reformed lawyer myself, a student of philosophy and theology, and then a teacher of doctors and nurses, it is a special pleasure to be joining the graduates in those very disciplines today. Your subjects are precisely my academic passions and so I feel very much at home with you.

Some of you might have seen last week’s reports of unethical medical experiments conducted by Americans in Guatemala after the Second World War. Dr John Cutler, who eventually rose to US Assistant Surgeon-General, led this project and was associated with a parallel one in Tuskegee, Alabama. To study the course of venereal diseases and the effect of penicillin, the US Public Health Service deliberately infected soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis, without their knowledge or consent.

The 1997 film, Miss Evers’ Boys, brought the Alabama part of that story to public attention and led to an apology by President Clinton. But only last week did the Commission of Inquiry report the full horror of the Guatemalan phase of the study: instead of the few dozen or few hundred victims previously acknowledged, there were in fact at least 2,000 healthy men deliberately infected, many of whom in turn infected their wives and children. Instead of treating them with penicillin, they were all given placebos so researchers could observe the course of the disease as it took its terrible toll on their bodies and minds and eventually killed them.

Such research is obviously monstrous. But what shocked many people was that it was still going on in 1970s America. The international legal instruments and World Medical Association declarations that came after the terrible Nazi experiments of the 1930s and 40s were supposed to prevent such things occurring again. No doctor was ever again intentionally to torture or kill, and no government or profession was ever again to sponsor such practices. For sensitive doctors, lawyers and ethicists –such as are graduating today – this must raise deep questions. Why would some people fail to abide by the most basic principles of morality, known not only to the world’s

great religions, but to sound medicine, the common law and good philosophy?

Today, some of you will swear a modern version of the Hippocratic Oath known as ‘The Declaration of Geneva’. It is one of those crucial post-war documents intended to help medicine recover its soul. It lays down certain non-negotiables for ethical practice, whatever the fashions of the age, pressures of government or insurers, or interests of professionals. Yet at the very time American and Australian Medical Associations were signing on to this Declaration, the world’s leading ‘free’ nation was sponsoring the syphilis experiments.

will practise: hospitals and aged care facilities, parliaments, courts, bureaucracies and academies. If our highest values are to survive, it will require young men and women of intelligence and courage. From my brief encounters with Sam and from what I’ve heard from his teachers, his pro-life commitment is much more than a theory or slogan: he cares passionately for people and this will serve him very well as a young doctor.

If medicine – and law and other professions, for that matter – are to be worthy of the reverence and rewards they receive in our community, if people are to continue to trust them, their practitioners must

achieve results for their clients at any cost, even to justice and ethics. Journalists can be rewarded for invading people’s privacy, endangering national security or exposing people to public humiliation just to up the sales or ratings. Athletes can be drawn into doping or match fixing to maximise medals and kickbacks. Philosophers and theologians can become window-dressers for the ideologies or convenience of the age. Yet ordinary people still count theology and philosophy, medicine and law, amongst the highest human pursuits and still look to their professionals for moral leadership. Here’s one reason why.

If medicine, law and other professions are to be worthy of the reverence and rewards they receive, their practitioners must be principled.

So declarations of principle are never enough: eternal vigilance is required and we need practitioners of good character ...

Last week I saw an article entitled Euthanasia Goes Against All We Stand For. In it, one of those graduating today, Samuel Birch, made an excellent case for doctors maintaining the ancient ethic that distinguishes them from witch doctors and hired guns. In the struggle for the soul of our culture, the battlegrounds are increasingly the very places where our graduates

be principled. We must understand, for instance, what healthcare is for and how its internal goals might reasonably be pursued. The therapeutic and research imperatives to get results ‘no matter what’; the technological imperative to pursue the technically possible even if morally impossible; the demands of patients, administrators and financiers, feelings of impotence and fantasies of omnipotence: all can militate against ethics in practice. Doctors are not alone in this. Lawyers can be pressured to

When the best pagan doctors sought to follow Hippocrates or the best Christian doctors the Good Samaritan, when Jews and Muslims brought the wisdom of Maimonides and Avicenna, when moderns reconsecrated themselves according to the Geneva Declaration, all swore an oath. Not an employment contract or protocol, but an oath: a prayer and promise to God, or the gods, or whatever people hold most precious. That is a humble act, acknowledging that both goodness and health ultimately come from

a source greater than ourselves. Solemnly to consecrate my life to the service of humanity; to say I will put the life and health of my patients first and always respect their dignity and privacy; to resolve to save and heal and care, never kill or harm or abandon; to promise to honour my teachers and build up my profession – to commit to such things requires all that is best in the human spirit and God’s help also. That is something our Catholic university understands and hopefully conveys.

Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania and Chair of the Guatemala Commission, said last week these experiments “should shock the conscience not in spite of their medical context, but precisely because of it”. We rightly expect more of our professionals and so of today’s graduates. We expect our medics to be protectors of life and health and dignity, as we ask our lawyers to defend public order and private justice and our philosophers and theologians to guard truth and culture. We hope for this from you not just because you will swear an oath today, but because this university has tried to form you as people of character and ideals, of practical wisdom, compassion and fairness.

Amidst the pride and joy of today’s ceremony there is sadness, as one of our medical students will graduate posthumously. His death makes us all the more conscious of the vulnerability and preciousness of human life and health. With his family and friends we grieve him. We pray that Christ the Physician of bodies and souls now holds Dr Joshua Scott-Paul close to his heart.

Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and friends all: I am deeply honoured by the distinction conferred upon me today by the University of Notre Dame Australia. I am glad to graduate beside Sam and Joshua and all these fine young people whom I congratulate from the bottom of my heart. I pray they will make the University proud and that this University will continue, as it has, to go from strength to strength. Thanks be to God!

The above address was given on 20 December by Bishop Anthony Fisher, the Bishop of Paramatta, on receiving an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney.

Bishop Anthony Fisher, centre, with Notre Dame Vice Chancellor Celia Hammond and Professor Haydn Ramsay, UNDA’s Chair of College, Philosophy and Theology, in Sydney.

PHOTO: COURTESY UNDA

SUNDAY, 15 JANUARY

75th Celebration St Theresa’s Parish

11.30am at St Theresa’s Parish, 678 North Beach Rd, Gwelup. Begins with Mass followed by lunch at Croatian Club, Wishart St, Gwelup. Tickets $35 with drinks available at the bar. Tickets may be purchased from Margaret Pavicic, 9448 7708, Gloria Cicci, 9446 6215 or Paul and Judy Woodward, 9446 6837.

NEXT WEEK

TUESDAY, 17 JANUARY

Spirituality and The Sunday Gospels

7-8pm at St Benedict’s School Hall, Alness St, Applecross. How can we open to the power of God in our lives, our relationships, our families and our workplace? Presented by Norma Woodcock, Accredited CEO - Faith Formation for ongoing renewal. There will be a collection. Everyone is welcome. Enq: 9487 1772 or www.normawoodcock.com.

UPCOMING

WEDNESAY, 25 JANUARY

Marist/New Norcia Annual Mass and Reunion

4.30pm at Newman College, Empire Ave, Churchlands. Mass will be celebrated by Marist Old Boy priests in the Champagnat Chapel in memory of deceased brothers and students. A reunion will follow in the college courtyard at 6pm, BYO “everything”, BBQ available. SIC and Marist old boys most welcome - please spread the word. Enq: Ambrose 0419 912 187 or Frank 9446 6435.

THURSDAY, 26 JANUARY

Australia Day Ecumenical Service - The Australian-Irish Heritage Association 10am at St David’s Anglican Church, corner Simpson and Bombard Sts, Ardross. Principal celebrant Rev Andrew Williams will be joined by ministers of mainstream churches in a service of readings, hymns and a keynote address. A procession of representative items of the Irish contribution to Australia will open and close the service. Complimentary refreshments will follow. Enq: 9345 3530.

FRIDAY, 27 JANUARY

Medjugorje Evenings of Prayer

7pm at Infant Jesus Parish, 47 Wellington Rd, Morley. Medjugorje Evening of Prayer with Our Lady Queen of Peace will be commencing with Eucharistic adoration, rosary followed by Mass. Concluding at 9pm. Enq 9402 2480 mob 0407 471 256 email medjugorje@y7mail.com.

SATURDAY, 4 FEBRUARY

Day with Mary

9am-5pm at Holy Spirit Church, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. A day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima messages. 9am video; 10.10am holy Mass; reconciliation, procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic adoration, sermons on Eucharist and on Our Lady, rosaries and stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq – Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY

Saint Brigid’s Day Celebration

3pm at Irish Club Theatre, 61 Townshend Rd, Subiaco. Annual celebration of Ireland’s female patron saint, feast day 1 February, presented by The Australian-Irish Heritage Association. Writer, poet and artist Mary O’Byrne presents a discourse on Women and the Trinity in an examination of the relationship between the male and female idea of Trinity, with music and an Irish afternoon tea. Admission $1. Enq: 9367 6026.

FRIDAY, 10 FEBRUARY

Lake Monger Rosary Procession for Our Lady of Lourdes 7pm starting from the Dodd St carpark. All are welcome to attend. An altar for those who are unable to do the walk will be set up and the rosary prayed. Further enquiries to Judy Woodward 9446 6837.

SUNDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

The Sisters of Our Lady of the Missons 150th Anniversary Celebration

Our Lady of the Missions High School/Sacred Heart School, Tuckfield St, Fremantle. As part of celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, an inaugural reunion for all women who attended the Tuckfield St school will be held on Sunday, 12 February 2012 at Melville Bowling Club, Canning Hwy, Alfred Cove from 2-6pm. Cost: $10 per person. Contact: Christine Binks (Martinovich) 9331 3886 or Veronica Stratton (France) robnron@ optusnet.com.au or 9354 5023.

SATURDAY, 25 FEBRUARY

A Reunion for Holy Cross Primary School, Kensington

Any ex-students or family members, please contact Julie Bowles (nee O’Hara) on 9397 0638 or email jules7@iinet.net.au.

REGULAR EVENTS

EVERY SUNDAY

Gate of Heaven Catholic Radio

Join the Franciscans of the Immaculate from 7.309pm on Radio Fremantle 107.9FM for Catholic radio broadcast of EWTN and our own live shows. Enq: radio@ausmaria.com.

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

EVERY FIRST SUNDAY

Divine Mercy Chaplet and Healing Prayer

3pm at Santa Clara Church, 72 Palmerston St, Bentley. Includes adoration and individual prayer for healing. Spiritual leader Fr Francisco. All welcome. Enq: Fr Francisco 9458 2944.

St Mary’s Cathedral Youth Group –Fellowship with Pizza 5pm at Mary’s Cathedral, 17 Victoria Sq, Perth. Begins with youth Mass followed by fellowship downstairs in parish centre. Bring a plate to share. Enq: Bradley on youthfromsmc@gmail.com.

FIRST AND THIRD SUNDAYS

Latin Mass

2pm at The Good Shepherd Parish, Streich Ave, Kelmscott. Enq: John 9390 6646.

EVERY THIRD SUNDAY

Oblates of St Benedict Meeting

2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, South Perth. For all interested in studying the Rule of St Benedict and its relevance to everyday life. Vespers and afternoon tea follows. Enq: Secretary 9457 5758.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood, Religious Life

2-3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington St, Morley. The hour includes exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray that those discerning vocations can hear clearly God’s call.

EVERY MONDAY

Evening Adoration and Mass

7pm at St Thomas Parish, Claremont, cnr Melville St and College Rd. Eucharistic adoration, reconciliation, evening prayer and benediction, followed by Mass and night prayer at 8pm. Enq: Kim on 9384 0598 or email to claremont@perthcatholic.org.au.

The Life and Mission of St Mary MacKillop

9.30-11.30am at Infant Jesus Parish Centre, cnr Wellington Rd and Smith St, Morley. Cost: $15. Enq: Shelley 9276 8500.

LAST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

Be Still in His Presence –Ecumenical Christian Programme

7.30-8.45pm at St Swithun Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie St, Lesmurdie (hall behind church). Begins with songs of praise and worship, silent time, lectio divina, small group sharing and a cuppa at the end. Enq: Lynne 9293 3848 or 043 5252 941.

EVERY TUESDAY

Bible Teaching with a Difference

7.30pm at St Joachim’s parish hall, Victoria Park. Exciting revelations with meaningful applications that will change your life. Bring Bible, a notebook and a friend. Enq: Jan 9284 1662.

EVERY FIRST TUESDAY

Short MMP Cenacle for Priests

2pm at Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor St, East Perth. Enq: Fr Watt 9376 1734.

Novena to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal 6pm at the Pater Noster Church, Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Mass at 5.30pm followed by benediction. Enq: John 040 8952 194.

EVERY WEDNESDAY

Holy Spirit of Freedom Community

7.30pm at The Church of Christ, 111 Stirling St, Perth. We are delighted to welcome everyone to attend our Holy Spirit of Freedom praise meeting. Enq: 042 3907 869 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

Bible Study at Cathedral

6.15pm at St Mary’s Cathedral, 17 Victoria Sq, Perth. Deepen your faith through reading and reflecting on holy scripture by Fr Jean-Noel. Meeting room beneath Cathedral. Enq: Marie 9223 1372.

Holy Hour - Catholic Youth Ministry

adoration, followed by $5 supper and fellowship. Enq: cym.com.au or 9422 7912.

EVERY FIRST WEDNESDAY

Holy Hour Prayer for Priests

7.30-8.30pm at Holy Spirit Parish, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. All welcome. Enq: Linda 9341 3079.

Novena to St Mary of the Cross MacKillop

7-7.45pm at Blessed Mary MacKillop Parish, cnr Cassowary Dr and Pelican Pde, Ballajura. Begins with Mass, novena prayers and benediction. Followed by healing prayers and anointing of the sick. Enq: Madi 9249 9093 or Gerry 041 7187 240.

EVERY SECOND WEDNESDAY

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Parish, Dean Rd, Bateman. A beautiful, prayerful, sung devotion. It will be accompanied by exposition and followed by benediction. Enq: George 9310 9493 (h) or 9325 2010.

EVERY THURSDAY

Divine Mercy

11am at Sts John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Pray the rosary and chaplet of divine mercy and for the consecrated life, especially here in John Paul Parish. Concludes with veneration of the first class relic of St Faustina. Please do come and join us in prayer. Enq: John 9457 7771.

St Mary’s Cathedral Praise Meeting

7.45pm every Thursday at the Legion of Mary’s Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor St, East Perth. Includes praise, song and healing ministry. Enq: Kay 9382 3668 or fmi@flameministries.org.

EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Prayer in Style of Taize

7.30-8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Parish, 3 Kitchener St, North Beach. Includes prayer, song and silence in candlelight – symbol of Christ the light of the world. Taize info: www.taize.fr. Enq: secretary 9448 4888 or 9448 4457.

Group Fifty – Charismatic Renewal Group

7.30pm at the Redemptorist Monastery, 150 Vincent St, North Perth. Includes prayer, praise and Mass. Enq: Elaine 9440 3661.

Priest Cenacle

Every first Thursday at Legion of Mary, Windsor St, East Perth. Enq: Fr Paul 0427 085 093.

EVERY FIRST FRIDAY

Communion of Reparation - All Night Vigil

7pm-1.30am at two different locations: Corpus Christi Parish, Lochee St, Mosman Park and St Gerard Majella Parish, cnr Ravenswood Dr and Majella Rd, Westminster (Mirrabooka). In reparation for outrages committed against the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Enq: (Mosman Park) Vicky 040 0282 357 and Fr Giosue 9349 2315 or John 9344 2609.

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s Parish, Inglewood. Praise and worship, exposition and Eucharistic adoration, benediction and anointing of the sick, followed by holy Mass and fellowship. Celebrants Fr Dat and invited priests. 6.45pm reconciliation. Enq: Mary Ann 0409 672 304, Prescilla 043 3457 352 and Catherine 043 3923 083.

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life

7pm at Little Sisters of the Poor Chapel, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Mass followed by adoration with Fr Doug Harris. All welcome. Refreshments provided.

Catholic Faith Renewal Evening

7.30pm at Sts John and Paul Parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Songs of praise, sharing by a priest followed by thanksgiving Mass and light refreshments afterwards. All welcome to attend and bring your family and friends. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913, Ann 041 2166 164 or catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

Healing and Anointing Mass

8.45am Pater Noster Church, Evershed St, Myaree. Begins with reconciliation followed by 9am Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, anointing of the sick and prayers to St Peregrine. Enq: Joy 9337 7189.

EVERY FIRST SATURDAY OF THE MONTH

Healing Mass

12.35pm at St Thomas Parish, cnr Melville St and College Rd, Claremont. Spiritual leader Fr Waddell. Enq: Kim 9384 0598, claremont@perthcatholic.org.

au.

EVERY FOURTH SATURDAY

Voice of the Voiceless Healing Mass

12pm at St Brigid Parish, 211 Aberdeen St, Northbridge. Bring a plate to share after Mass. Enq: Frank 9296 7591 or 040 8183 325.

EVERY LAST SATURDAY

Novena devotions – Our Lady Vailankanni of Good Health 5pm at Holy Trinity Parish, 8 Burnett St, Embleton. Followed by Mass at 6pm. Enq: George 9272 1379.

GENERAL

Free Divine Mercy Image for Parishes

High quality oil painting and glossy print – Divine Mercy Promotions. Images are of very high quality. For any parish willing to accept and place inside the church. Oil paintings - 160 x 90cm and glossy print - 100 x 60cm. Enq: Irene 9417 3267 (w).

Sacred Heart Pioneers Is there anyone out there who would like to know more about the Sacred Heart pioneers? If so, please contact Spiritual Director Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or John 9457 7771.

St Philomena’s Chapel 3/24 Juna Drive, Malaga. Mass of the day: Monday 6.45am. Vigil Masses: Mon-Fri 4.45pm. Enq: Fr David 9376 1734.

Mary Mackillop 2012 Calendars and Merchandise

2012 Josephite Calendars with quotes from St Mary of the Cross and Mary MacKillop merchandise. Available for sale from the Mary MacKillop Centre. Enq: Sr Maree 041 4683 926 or 08 9334 0933.

Saints and Sacred Relics Apostolate – Latin Feast of all Holy Relics

SSRA Perth invites interested parties: parish priests, faithful association leaders etc to make contact to organise relic visitations to their own parishes, communities etc. We have available authenticated relics, mostly first-class, of over 200 Catholic Saints and Blesseds, including Sts Mary MacKillop, Padre Pio, Anthony of Padua, Therese

11

What’s on around the archdiocese of Perth, Where and When Subscribe!!! Name: Address: Suburb: Postcode: Telephone: I enclose cheque/money order for $85 For $85 you can receive a year’s worth of The Record delivered to your house Please debit my Bankcard Mastercard Visa Card No Expiry Date: ____/____ Signature: _____________ Name on card: I wish to be invoiced Send to: The Record, PO Box 3075, Adelaide Terrace WA 6832

5.30pm at Catholic Pastoral Centre, 40A Mary St, Highgate. Begins with Mass, 6.30pm holy hour of

of Lisieux, Maximilian Kolbe and Simon Stock. Free. Enq: Giovanny 047 8201 092 or ssra-perth@ catholic.org.

Financially Disadvantaged People requiring Low Care Aged Care Placement

The Little Sisters of the Poor community - set in beautiful gardens in the suburb of Glendalough. “Making the elderly happy, that is everything!” St Jeanne Jugan (foundress). Registration and enq: Sr Marie 9443 3155.

Resource Centre for Personal Development

The Holistic Health Seminar ‘The Instinct to Heal’’, every Tuesday 3-4.30pm; and RCPD2 “Internalise Principles of Successful Relationships and Use Emotional Intelligence and Communication Skills’, every Tuesday 4.30-6.30pm, 197 High St, Fremantle - Tuesdays 3-4.30pm. Beginning 21 Feb. Enq: Eva 0409 405 585. Bookings are essential.

Group Fifty – recess for January

No events until 2 February 2012. Enq: Elaine 9440 3661.

Our Lady of Grace Parish – Taize nights

Just a reminder there is no TAIZE service in January. There will be NO service in January; we look forward to gathering again on Thursday, 2 February.

Courses held at the Faith Centre 2012

450 Hay St, Perth

1. Christian Foundations - This course is designed to guide you to a greater understanding and deeper appreciation of the foundational beliefs of our Catholic faith. (Maranatha Lecturer: Sr Philomena Burrell pvbm). Thursdays: 1.00–3.30pm, from 16 Feb – 22 Mar. For enquiries or bookings ph 9241 5222.

2. RCPD2 - Internalise Principles of Successful Relationships and Use Emotional Intelligence and Communication Skills - This course provides knowledge of principles that if applied, will improve all relationships. Skills of self-analysis are taught as well as communication skills. Mondays: 5-7pm, from 20 Feb – 10 Dec. For enquiries or bookings ph Paul 0402 222 578.

3. RCPD4 – Increase Personal and Spiritual Awareness and Improve Relationships - This course promotes self-awareness and spiritual growth. Emotional development is explained in order to improve understanding between persons. Study of Psychology and Theology. Mondays: 10am–12.30pm, from 20 Feb–10 Dec. For enquiries or bookings ph Eva 0409 405 585.

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

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

RICH HARVEST YOUR

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

KINLAR VESTMENTS

Quality handmade and decorated vestments: albs, stoles, chasubles, altar linen, banners, etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph Vickii on 9402 1318, 0409 114 093 or kinlar.vestments@gmail.com.

FOR SALE

CATHOLIC AND OTHER CHRISTIAN BOOKS FOR SALE. All donated. Donations appreciated. Balcatta. Call Colourful Dave: 9440 4358.

OPPORTUNITY TO BUY

SHARES in a West Australian based (international), business. Has a worldwide patent for people and animal health products, new innovative products for which export grant has been accepted. First shipment has already been sent to Dubai. Interested? For more information: licebustersrd@optusnet.com.au or Tel 08 9258 5233, Mob 0408 474 520, Veronica.

MISSION ACTIVITIES

LEARN

TRADE SERVICES

BRENDAN HANDYMAN SERVICES

Home, building maintenance, repairs and renovations. NOR.

Ph 0427 539 588.

PROPERTY MAINTENANCE

Your handyperson. No job too small. SOR. Jim 0413 309 821.

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph Nigel 9242 2952.

PICASSO PAINTING Top service. Ph 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505. 9440 4358.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd

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

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

CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

FRIDAY, 3 TO SUNDAY, 5 FEBRUARY CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

SET FREE Inner Healing Retreat. A 3-day live-in Inner Healing Retreat conducted by international presenters Diana Mascarenhas and Fr Elias Vella OFMc. An opportunity through prayer and ‘Christo-therapy’ to be ‘set free’ from the bonds and baggage of life’s hurts and addictions. Held at airconditioned St John of God Retreat Centre, Shoalwater Bay. All inclusive cost of $350/person. Queries and registration to Martha 0419 242 172 or Martha. KALAT@dmp.wa.gov.au.

MONDAY, 6 FEBRUARY

CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

Inner Healing Workshop 9am–5pm, conducted by international guest Diana Mascarenhas (Dip Spiritual Formation and Counselling). Participants will be ministered to, and receive healing prayer for various issues of inner conflict and past wounds. Held at the Holy Family Church, Thelma St/Canning Hwy, Como. Cost for the day is $25. Bring your own lunch. Please register to Martha, 0419 242 172.

THANKSGIVING

THANKS TO INFANT JESUS, MOTHER MARY, ST JOSEPH, ST JUDE, ST ANTHONY, ST RITA, PADRE PIO, ST MICHAEL AND ST CHRISTOPHER for obtaining my urgent requests.

MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS may your name be praised, worshipped, honoured, loved and glorified throughout the world now - now and forever, Amen. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus please have Mercy On the sick person (name).

THANKS JESUS for healing two sick people and restoring them back to their original health.

CONCERTS IN THE CITY

A NIGHT OF JOY CONCERT

- JULIAN SINGERS AND SUDANESE CHOIR Infant Jesus Parish, Morley invites all to come and experience these two very different choral groups and the power they have to lift the heart with the magic of song.

Where: Infant Jesus Church, at 47 Wellington Road, Morley. When: Friday, 10 February starting at 6pm with wine and cheese. Concert commences 7pm. Tickets $28, conc $25 (incl wine/cheese and refreshments) available online at http://www.trybooking.com.au/BARL or email anightofjoy@gmail.com or phone Sue on 9276 1485/0415 449 691.

PILGRIMAGES

PILGRIMAGE TO PARIS (3) NIGHTS LOURDES (5) NIGHTS MEDJUGORJE (7) NIGHTS.

Leaving Perth end April/May. All flights (Emirates) accommodation, bed/breakfast, evening meals, transfers and guides. Spiritual Director Rev Fr Bogoni. Cost approx $5,395. Contact Eileen 9402 2480, mob 0407 471 256, email medjugorje@y7mail. com.

PILGRIMAGE TO OUR LADY OF VELANKANNI, ST FRANCIS XAVIER, ST PHILOMENA, ST MOTHER THERESA OF KOLKATA. The tour covers all the main cities in India like Chennai, Pondicherry, Velankanni, Bangalore, Mysore, Cochin, Goa, Delhi, Thaij Mahal, Kolkata, Darjeeling and many more places. For more details contact Charles Donovan 0400 216 257 or F Sam 0426 506 510.

OPTION ON 25 DAYS –PILGRIMAGE TO HOLY LAND - ROME - COLLAVALENZA - DUBLIN (IRELAND FOR EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS) KNOCK AND MEDJUGORJE.

Departing 22 May, from $7,790, includes flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide and taxes. Spiritual Director Fr Ronan Murphy. Leader Yolanda Nardizzi. Tel: 9245 2222, Mob 0413 707 707.

OPTION 2: 19 DAYS, PILGRIMAGE TO ROMECOLLAVALENZA – DUBLIN (IRELAND FOR EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS) KNOCK AND MEDJUGORJE. Departing 29 May, from $5,990, includes flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide and taxes. Spiritual Director Fr Ronan Murphy. Leader Yolanda Nardizzi. Tel: 9245 2222, Mob 0413 707 707.

PILGRIMAGE DEPARTING

13 Notre Dame nickname, “The Fighting ___”

14 Words added at the beginning of a Scripture reading in the Lectionary

15 There are four

17 Catholic Oscar-winning actress of “The Country Girl” fame

19 Abraham, in the beginning

21 Old Testament hymn

25 Simon of ___

27 A Doctor of the Church

29 He walked with God (Gen 5:24)

30 Babel edifice

31 Dinah, to Esau

32 Religious instruction, formerly (abbr)

34 Land in which Cain settled

LAST

WEEK’S SOLUTION

TAX SERVICE

QUALITY TAX RETURNS PRE-

PARED by registered tax agent with over 35 years’ experience. Call Tony Marchei on 0412 055 184 for appointment. AXXO Accounting & Management, Unit 20/222 Walter Rd, Morley.

FURNITURE REMOVAL

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

THANKS ST JUDE, PADRE PIO AND ST RITA for obtaining through your intercession and prayers impossible and hopeless favours for which I thank you.

THANK YOU BLESSED MOTHER for obtaining my request and being there for me in time of distress and need.

20

PERTH 30 APRIL, RETURNING 17/18 MAY (early hours) for Paris (3 nights) visit Lisieux (St Therese), Notre Dame for Relics of The Passion, Sacre Coeur, Miraculous Medal Shrine, St Vincent De Paul. Flight to Lourdes for 5 nights stay, flight to Split for 7 nights stay in Medjurgorje. Spiritual Director Fr Bogoni. Costs $5,395 which includes all flight transfers, bed, breakfast, evening meals, guide, tipping and taxes. Contact: Eileen 9402 2480 Mob 0407 471 256, or medjugorje@y7mail.com.

BOOK BINDING

NEW BOOK BINDING, general book repairs; rebinding; new ribbons; old leather bindings restored. Tydewi Bindery 0422 968 572.