The Record Newspaper 19 January 2011

THE R ECORD

BLESSED

Pope Benedict XVI beatifies predecessor, mentorand friend Pope John Paul II

1 May beatification set for Pope John Paul II after miracle approved

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI approved a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II’s intercession, clearing the way for the late Pope’s beatification on 1 May, Divine Mercy Sunday. Pope Benedict’s action on 14 January followed more than five years of investigation into the life and writings of the Polish Pontiff, who died in April 2005

after more than 26 years as Pope. The Vatican said it took special care with verification of the miracle, the spontaneous cure of a French nun from Parkinson’s disease - the same illness that afflicted Pope John Paul in his final years. Three separate Vatican panels approved the miracle, including medical and theological experts, before Pope Benedict signed the official decree.

“There were no concessions given here in procedural severity and thoroughness,” said Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. On the contrary, he said, Pope John Paul’s cause was subject to “particularly careful scrutiny, to remove any doubt.” The Vatican said it would

begin looking at logistical arrangements for the massive crowds expected for the beatification liturgy, which will be celebrated by Pope Benedict at the Vatican. Divine Mercy Sunday had special significance for Pope John Paul, who made it a Church-wide feast day to be celebrated a week after Easter.

The Pope died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005.

With beatification, Pope John Paul will be declared “blessed” and thus worthy of restricted liturgical honour.

Another miracle is needed for canonisation, by which the Church declares a person to be a saint and worthy of universal veneration.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr

Federico Lombardi, summed up much of the sentiment in Rome when he said Pope John Paul would be beatified primarily for the spiritual gifts of faith, hope and charity that were the source of his papal activity.

The world witnessed that spirituality when the Pope prayed, when he spent time with the sick and suffering, in his visits to the impoverished countries of the world and in his own illness “lived out in faith, before God and all of us,” Fr Lombardi said.

Fr Lombardi said the Vatican was preparing to move Pope John Paul’s body from the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica to the Chapel of St Sebastian in the basilPlease turn to Page 2

Pope John Paul II prays the Rosary in this L’Osservatore Romano photo dated 4 May 1991. The late Pope will be beatified by his successor Pope Benedict XVI on 1 May. This image, captured by a Vatican photographer, is the second most requested photo from the L’Osservatore Romano archives.

PHOTO: CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO

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Continued from Page 1 -ica’s upper level at the time of beatification. The chapel, on the right hand side of the church just after Michelangelo’s Pieta, is easily accessible and spacious, an important factor given the steady stream of pilgrims who come to see the Pope’s tomb.

Fr Lombardi said Pope John Paul’s casket would not be opened at the time of the relocation, and that it would remain closed after it is placed beneath the altar of the chapel. To make room, the Vatican will have to move the tomb of a previously beatified Pontiff, Pope Innocent XI, to another area of the basilica, he said.

In 2005, Pope Benedict set Pope John Paul on the fast track to beatification by waiving the normal five-year waiting period for the introduction of his sainthood cause. That seemed to respond to the “Santo subito!” (“Sainthood now!”) banners that were held aloft at Pope John Paul’s funeral.

Even so, Church experts needed years to review the massive amount of evidence regarding the late Pope, including thousands of pages of writings and speeches.

The process began with the Diocese of Rome, which interviewed more than 120 people who knew Pope John Paul and asked them about his actions and character. Studies were conducted on his ministry, the way he handled suffering and how he faced his death.

In 2007, on the second anniversary of the Pope’s death, the Rome Diocese concluded

the initial inquiry phase. The documents from the investigation were placed in four chests which were latched, tied with a red ribbon, sealed with red wax and delivered to the Congregation for Saints’ Causes for further study. In November 2008, a team

PILGRIMAGE FOR BEATIFICATION OF JOHN PAUL II AND DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY ROME/MEDJUGORJE.

Leaving Perth 28 April 2011, Returning 12 May 2011

Spiritual Director: Fr Bogoni, Guide: Yolanda Nardizzi

This is your chance to be at Beatification ceremony of His Holiness Pope John Paul ll in Rome and visit Italy and Medjugorje.

of theological consultors to the saints congregation began studying the 2,000-page positio, the document that made the case for Pope John Paul’s beatification.

After their favourable judgement, the Cardinal and Bishop members of the sainthood congregation met in late 2009 and voted to advance the cause.

On 21 December 2009, Pope Benedict declared that Pope John Paul had lived a life of “heroic virtues.”

That meant he could be beatified once a miracle had been approved.

The reported cure of the French nun was carefully investigated by the Vatican’s medical experts over the last year after questions were raised about the original diagnosis. Vatican sources said that, in the end, the experts were satisfied that it was Parkinson’s, and that there was no scientific explanation for the cure.

In 2007, the nun, Sr Marie-SimonPierre, spoke to reporters about her experience.

A member of the Little Sisters of the Catholic Motherhood, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2001 at the age of 40.

In watching Pope John Paul deteriorate from the effects of Parkinson’s disease, she said, “I saw myself in the years to come.”

When the Pope died in 2005, and as Sr Marie-Simon-Pierre’s condition began to worsen, all the members of the Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood in France and in Senegal began praying to Pope John Paul to intervene with God to heal her.

By 2 June, two months after the Pope died, she was struggling to write, to walk and to function normally.

But she said she went to bed that night and woke up very early the next morning feeling completely different.

“I was sure I was healed,” she said.

Not long afterward, she had recovered enough to return to work in Paris at a maternity hospital run by her Order.

Several times during the last two years, rumours have surfaced about delays in Pope John Paul’s beatification cause. Various reasons were reported, most having to do with incomplete documentation.

Italy stay includes 3 nights Collevalenza - the Lourdes of Italy and sanctuary of merciful love, St Rita of Cascia. Special visit to Fra Elia, stigmatist. 3 days, 2 nights in Rome: visiting St Peter’s, Holy Cross Basilica and other shrines and the special Community of the Family of Mary. Leaving Rome 5 May for Medjugorje (the place of alleged daily apparitions of our Lady), staying 6 nights 7 days. All flights, bed, breakfast and evening meals included. Approx price $3,980. Optional extension to Fatima following Medjugorje available for extra cost of $900.

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In 2010, with new revelations of priestly sex abuse in many European countries, some Vatican sources said it was the wrong moment to push the sainthood cause of Pope John Paul, who was Pope when some of the abuse occurred.

But the Vatican’s sainthood congregation continued to methodically process the cause.

A miracle, involving French Sr Marie-SimonPierre said to have been cured of Parkinson’s disease, has been approved by a Vatican medical board.

PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/SERGE PAGANO, REUTERS

The biggest funeral in history: watched also by tens of millions around the globe, a huge crowd of pilgrims, along with dignitaries and church leaders, attends the funeral Mass for Pope John Paul II in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on 8 April 2005. A simple cypress casket containing the body of the Polish pontiff rested in front of the altar. The size of the event, which was truly global, expressed something of the gigantic nature of the man who inhabited the papacy for 26 years.

PHOTO: CNS/REUTERS

hero: John Paul II to be beatified

For

many, beatification confirms long-held

BY CAROL ZIMMERMANN Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON - The news of Pope John Paul II’s upcoming beatification was welcomed by many as a confirmation of something they already felt from the moment the shouts of “Santo subito!” (“Sainthood now!”) reverberated through St Peter’s Square at the Pontiff’s funeral.

Many in the crowd were young people who had a special affinity to Pope John Paul, whose pontificate started and ended with a special greeting to young people. During his installation ceremony in 1978, the newly named Pope told youths: “You are the future of the world, you are the hope of the Church, you are my hope.”

And his last words, reportedly delivered hours before his death, were also to youths, in response to the thousands of young people praying and singing in St Peter’s Square.

“I sought you and now you have come to me. ... I thank you,” said the pPontiff, who died 2 April 2005 aged 84.

Basilian Fr Thomas Rosica, founder and CEO of Canada’s Salt and Light Television, said it was no coincidence that he heard the news of the Pontiff’s beatification while attending a meeting in Spain for the upcoming World Youth Day.

“A thunderous, sustained, standing ovation followed the announcement,” he said in a 14 January statement.

The priest, national director for World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, said the date for the beatification, 1 May, is also no coincidence. Not only is it Divine Mercy Sunday, but it is also the feast of St Joseph the Worker, known as “May Day” on secular calendars.

“Communists and socialists around the world commemorate May Day with marches, speeches and festivals,” he said, adding that it was fitting that “the man

A year ago, a book revealed some of the spiritual and penitential practices of Pope John Paul, including self-flagellation and spending entire nights on a bare floor with his arms outstretched.

The book was written by Mgr Slawomir Oder, postulator of the late Pope’s sainthood cause, and it prompted some displeasure among

Church officials because it was based on supposedly confidential material gathered in the investigation process.

Pope John Paul’s death and funeral brought millions of people to Rome, and Vatican officials said they would begin working with the City of Rome in logistical planning for the beatification.

sentiment

who was a unique instrument and messenger in bringing down the Iron Curtain and the deadly reign of Communism and godlessness will be declared blessed” that day.

Fr Rosica said the announcement is “the formal confirmation of what many of us always knew as we experienced the Holy Father in action throughout his pontificate,” particularly among youths, noting that one of the Pope’s gifts to the Church was his establishment of World Youth Day.

Tim Massie, the chief public affairs officer and adjunct professor of communication and religious studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, called the news of Pope John Paul II’s upcoming beatification a “morale boost,” especially for Catholics in the United States “where sex abuse scandals, financial crises and disagreements with Church hierarchy have dramatically affected parishes, dioceses and the faithful in the pews.”

Because of the Pope’s extensive travels in the United States, he said, “there are literally millions of people who were touched by his charisma and holiness.” The Pope visited the United States seven times and in each visit urged Catholics to use their freedom responsibly and to preserve the sacredness and value of human life.

In an e-mail to CNS, Massie said the “general public already considers John Paul II a saint and those who saw him, listened to him, prayed with him, already believed they met a saint - not a future saint, but someone who, like Mother Teresa, lived out the Gospel message in his everyday life.”

Michele Dillon, who chairs the department of sociology at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, said she believes most American Catholics will welcome John Paul II’s beatification. She described him as the “first cos-

mopolitan Pope for a cosmopolitan age, and his warm, energetic, and telegenic personality served him well on his many trips to all parts of the globe.”

Dillon remarked that it would “be interesting to see whether his beatification, at this time of uncertain commitment among the faithful, will reignite a new spark of Church engagement especially among the generation who as teenagers turned out in force” for World Youth Day events.

Dennis Doyle, University of Dayton religious studies professor, noted that many US Catholics didn’t understand the Pope and wondered how he “could be liberal on social issues but yet so conservative on Church issues. He was consistent in a way that was difficult for some people in the US to understand. “But ultimately, he is being beatified because he was loved throughout the world and is recognised iconically as a holy person,” he added.

Tony Melendez, the armless guitarist whose embrace by Pope John Paul electrified an audience during the Pope’s 1987 visit to Los Angeles, said he had always considered his encounters with the Pontiff “like I got to meet a living saint.”

Melendez, in a phone interview with CNS while en route to his Missouri home, said he got to see Pope John Paul six more times, including a private audience at the Vatican about a year and a half after the 1987 US pastoral visit. “He remembered me,” Melendez remarked. “And he said, ‘Oh! My friend from Los Angeles!’ without me saying anything. He hugged my head after I was (done) playing a song. To me, he was a wonderful man who did great things.” Told of the 1 May beatification date, Melendez said, “If I can be there, I want to go. I’ll make some time to go. He was a living saint, in my heart.”

Newly installed Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski of Poland embrace at the Vatican in this 1978 photo. The Pope chose the congregation of Poles living in Rome to be his first large audience. During an emotional moment, Cardinal Wyszynski knelt in front of the Pontiff and was joined by the Pope who also fell to his knees. The Cardinal, who had been a mentor and ally to Cardinal Wojtyla, had endured with him decades of, first, Nazi, then Communist persecution together with millions of their fellow countrymen.

PHOTO: CNS/ARTURO MARI

Pope John Paul II leans against his crosier, a symbol of his pastoral role, during Mass celebrated in Central Park in New York in October 1995.

PHOTO: CNS/MICHAEL OKONIEWSKI

Brothels 200m from schools ‘laughable’

Leading family lobby highlights closeness of brothels to homes and schools under Porter reforms

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE WA State Government’s proposed prostitution laws could see brothels in close proximity to schools and churches and are a serious slight on the government’s credibility, the Australian Family Association has said.

In following up a 2008 election promise, the Attorney General, Christian Porter, said last November that all forms of prostitution would be banned from residential areas with police to be given expanded powers to shut down illegal brothels under the proposed reforms.

The AFA said that while this appears to represent a tightening compared with the previous Labor government’s position – which allowed prostitutes to operate in suburban streets – major flaws appear when the detail is examined in Hansard.

“For brothels existing prior to the reform legislation, it will be business as usual; new brothels will be permitted within 100m of

a dwelling, or 200m of protected places (schools, churches, and so on). These distances are laughable, especially when it is remembered that they represent short sprints at athletics meetings,” the AFA said.

A further relaxation is extended to mixed business/residential areas where a distance of only 50m is necessary, the AFA said in a statement.

“Clearly, if the government is to have any credibility in this matter they need to consider distances in excess of 1km,” the AFA said.

This, and other related matters, will be emphasised in the submission the AFA is preparing to present to the Attorney General as it urges concerned West Australians to do likewise.

According to Mr Porter’s 25 November statement, prostitution will be banned from residential areas in WA under the proposed laws and clients caught on unlicensed premises could face fines or jail.

Police will also receive extra powers to shut down illegal brothels under the proposals, under which clients having sex with persons coerced into prostitution would face jail whether they knew the person was coerced or not.

Mr Porter said that the reforms would also include measures that would encourage and support pros-

titutes to leave the industry, though he did not specify what the measures would be.

He said State government, not local government, would take ultimate responsibility for who was licensed to run a brothel or to be a prostitute and where those ‘businesses’ would be located.

Mr Porter added that the penalty for clients caught entering or leaving an unlicensed brothel would be a fine of up to $6,000 or up to one year in jail.

In a 5 October 2010 letter written

Portuguese celebrate St Benedict’s protégé

A CROWD of people gathered at Holy Cross Parish in Hamilton Hill on 16 January to celebrate the feast of Santo Amaro, or Saint Maurus.

The Mass was celebrated by Fr Julian Carrasco, Fr Nicholas Nweke and Fr Joe Cardoso.

The church was decorated with flowers throughout its walls in celebration and blessed with beautiful hymns sung in Portuguese by the choir made especially for this feast of Santo Amaro (Saint Maurus).

Following the Mass, the people were led out to the streets as they processed around the suburb with banners and vestments specific to their devotion while praying the Rosary together.

Following behind was a group of pole bearers carrying a statue of St Maurus decorated with flowers in a way to show the reason for the procession to those who looked on.

After the procession and adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament those who took part went to the WA Portuguese Club in Fremantle to have a meal together and share in the celebration of this saints life and incredible faith.

PHOTOS: MAT DE SOUSA

Who was St Maurus?

SAINT Maurus, Abbot and deacon, a nobleman of Rome, was born about the year 510 and died in 584.

When he was about 12 years old, his father placed him under the care of St Benedict at Subiaco, to be educated in piety and learning. When he had grown up, St Benedict chose him as his coadjutor in the government of the monastery.

He was a model of perfection to all his brethren, but especially in the virtue of obedience. St Maurus

was favoured by God with the gift of miracles. One miracle which was used as an example in the Homily was the miracle in which St Placid, one of his fellow disciples, was going one day to draw water and fell into the lake. St Benedict saw this in spirit in his cell and bade Maurus run and draw him out.

Having asked and received the holy Father’s blessing, Maurus hastened down to the lake, walked upon the waters, thinking he was on dry land, and dragged Placid out by the hair, without sinking in the least himself.

to Mr Porter before this announcement, AFA WA vice president Gilian Gonzalez urged further restrictions to brothels approved in non-residential areas:

● Only persons who are owner/ managers and WA residents should be able to obtain a licence;

● The full address and name of the brothel owner, as well as trade name, to be shown at the entrance of the brothel;

● Details of all clients to be registered. This would make it easier to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and would discourage violent clients. It could also make it easier for the Australian Taxation Office to make checks and potentially deter sexual trafficking;

● Sexual services to be provided only on licensed premises or (if providing an escort service) in private accommodation owned or rented by the client;

● Restrictions on the nature of sexual services promoted and provided by brothels.

The AFA added that it is common knowledge that an increasing number of brothels now offer “services” which, while not illegal in WA, could pose health and safety risks, particularly to the most vulnerable members of the community.

Some of these “services”, involving prostitutes described as “sub-

missives” in sado masochistic fantasy games, are advertised quite openly in the relevant columns of our State and local newspapers, the AFA said.

“They involve whipping and bondage, among other humiliating practices. There is the danger that this could promote violence and abuse against women in the wider community as acceptable practices,” the AFA said.

“Even more worrying are advertisements offering prostitutes with child-like looks and/or demeanour.

“Apart from promoting sexual fantasy with children, there is the danger of such ads and services being used to identify potential clients for real child sex.

“There is also evidence from exprostituted women of some brothels providing sex with pregnant and lactating women for men who have such a fetish. Such practices, apart from exploiting vulnerable women, pose a definite health and safety risk.”

The AFA said all advertisements which suggest that such services are provided should be prohibited.

Submissions on the proposed laws may be directed to: Department of the Attorney General: Prostitution Reform Area, GPO Box F317, PERTH 6841. Phone 9264 1600, Email: prostitution_reform_feedback@justice.wa.gov.au

Procession gives witness to faith

Annual procession of Our Lady of Lourdes growing every year

BY DAVID C HUA

THE annual Lake Monger torchlight procession of Our Lady of Lourdes is set to draw up to 700 this year. The procession, held in the week in which the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes falls, is now in its 12th year.

The procession to be held this year on 11 February at 7pm, has drawn a plurality of Catholics to public Marian devotion. Procession founder Judy Woodward told The Record that the event draws a mix of young and old, lay people, clergy and members of Religious

congregations. She said that prayer and public Catholic witness, which constitute the heart of the Marian procession, have drawn increasing numbers over the years.

“There’s a great need for deeper prayer. We show the world that Catholics still believe in their faith,” she said.

Beginning at Dodd Street, participants traverse the border of the lake with prayer and hymns, with priests and Religious leading groups in Rosaries.

Lake Monger’s location, adjacent to Grantham Street and the Mitchell Freeway, has made the torchlight procession a prominent event, ideal for a public witness to the faith.

For more details, contact Judy on 9446 6837.

WA Attorney General Christian Porter

Parcitipants process with a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in 2010.

Priests urged to defend marriage from attack

BY ANTHONY BARICH

ARCHBISHOP Barry Hickey has asked for “the ready cooperation” of all Archdiocesan priests and deacons when the Australian Family Association approaches them to promote a petition in parishes urging MPs to protect marriage.

Archbishop Hickey has mobilised the Australian Family Association to manage the distribution and collection of the petitions, the wording of which was approved by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in November.

‘’As this is a most important matter for the Church and for Christian marriage, I ask for your ready cooperation when approached,”

Archbishop Hickey said as quoted in a letter dated 13 January that his Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton sent all Archdiocesan priests accompanying the petition.

Bishop Sproxton said in the letter that, “as Catholics, we believe marriage to be the foundation of society and so worthy of every support and help. We also believe that Christian marriage is a Sacrament and a means of Grace and Blessing between husband and wife for life”.

“Let us embrace this opportunity to witness to the basic institution of our society, perhaps enlisting the help and support of our permanent Deacons and their wives.

“May Jesus, Mary and Joseph

pray for the success of the defence of traditional marriage between a man and a woman for life.”

The Australian Family Association will also arm priests with two documents to help them discuss the issue in their parishes and to distribute: Marriage: Myths and Realities and What marriage is: Some discussion points for meeting with MPs

These two documents were both published in the 15 December edition of The Record.

Western Australia’s three regional dioceses have also joined Archbishop Barry Hickey and the nation-wide mobilisation of Catholics to urge federal legislators to defend marriage.

The Bishops of Broome, Bunbury and Geraldton have distributed the petition, which Archbishop Hickey co-wrote.

Bunbury Bishop Gerard Holohan personally emailed the petition to all priests in his diocese while Broome Vicar General Monsignor Paul Boyers said he would be promoting the petition in his parish of Derby.

Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders told The Record that the petition has been mentioned in homilies around his diocese.

The petition that the Bishops approved reads: “As a parishioner of (parish name and location) within your electorate, please con-

sider my position on the meaning of marriage. Given the variety of domestic arrangements available in Australia, I request that you protect the unique institution of marriage as traditionally understood and actually lived as the complementary love between a man and a woman.”

Australia’s Bishops have been criticised by lobby group Australian Marriage Equality since urging all priests to encourage Catholics to sign a petition urging MPs to resist The Greens’ push to legalise samesex marriage.

The petition was in response to a motion presented by newly elected Greens Member for Melbourne Adam Brandt that urged MPs in the House of Representatives to “gauge their constituents’ views on ways to achieve equal treatment for samesex couples including marriage”.

“This will be an opportunity for all Catholics to make a personal contribution to the fight to preserve the unique nature of marriage,” Archbishop Hickey told The Record

“We have used language which clearly enunciates where we are coming from.

“The wording is very important, and we want the petitions to be activated in every parish, so that parishioners will be able to take up what was recommended by parliamentarians, to contribute to discussion about this.”

Same-sex unions ‘penalise’ marriage

BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

VATICAN CITY - Same-sex unions “penalise” traditional couples and distort the true nature of the family, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The many crises that families face are “caused by the rapid social and cultural changes” in society, the Pope said on 14 January in a speech to officials from the city and province of Rome and the Lazio region of Italy.

Passing legislation or adopting policies that recognise “forms of unions, which distort the essence and purpose of the family end up penalising those who, with much effort, commit themselves to living a life whose bonds are marked by stable intimacy, have juridical guarantees and are recognised publicly”, he said.

While same-sex unions, or gay marriage, is not recognised in Italy, a number of city and regional governments, including Rome’s Lazio region, have introduced registries for same-sex couples that are largely symbolic and have no legal consequences.

Pope Benedict also called on government officials to help support married women who wish to pursue a career and build a family.

Too often, he said, women

“are forced to wait” to have children. “For this reason, it’s necessary to concretely support motherhood, including guaranteeing professional women the possibility of balancing family and work. Too often, in fact, women are put in the position of having to choose between the two,” he said.

He said local governments should promote and support maternity rights, including public or privately run child-care centres, to help make it so “a child is not seen as a problem but as a gift and a great joy.”

Editorial - Page 8

Pope Benedict XVI

Families a ‘major evangelising agent’

BY ANTHONY BARICH

A MAJOR national Catholic gathering in April seeks to end the ‘welfare mentality’ and empower families to be major agents to evangelise and to transform the world.

The 15-17 April third National Family Gathering at Australian Catholic University in Kew, themed Share the Dream: Families Transforming the World, will target the “Why Generation” – 16 to 25 year olds who are searching for vocation and meaning in life.

With a youth forum, catechesis, adoration and Stations of the Cross, the conference will feature French Bishop Jean Laffitte, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Family, discussing why understanding self and sexuality is essential to happiness.

The concept of the family as a major agent for evangelising the family, the Church and the world has been central to the Australian Catholic Marriage and Family Council (ACMFC), which organised the conference hosted by Australian Catholic University. It was also a major theme at the Sixth World Encounter of Families in Mexico in 2009, and subsequently the theme of an International Congress convened in Rome last November by the Pontifical Council for the Family was Family, subject of evangelisation

The Rome congress stressed that in the difficult challenges of family life when people dare to hope and courageously try again, they become especially open to God’s grace and become “very effective evangelisers”.

The congress reinforced the importance of a key statement from Pope John Paul II’s 1999 PostSynodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia: “The family is not simply the object of the Church’s pastoral care; it is also one of the Church’s most effective agents of evangelisation.”

Cardinal Ennio Antonielli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told the Congress that, alone, families find things

hard; but in small communities they find strength in each other. “Such mutual support should happen at parish level,” he said, but added that it can be “much enhanced” by major gatherings like the Kew conference.

Ron and Mavis Pirola, ACMFC chair couple who attended the Rome congress on behalf of the Australian Bishops, told The Record that concept of the family as an evangelising agent is “not very well understood or even accepted”.

“People often talk about pastoral ministry to families; it’s often about a welfare mentality, which is important but is already well entrenched,” said Ron and Mavis, who have been married 51 years. “Both evangelisation of the family and by the family can occur.

“The family can evangelise just by being what it is – based on marriage which takes its origin from the sacrament; it’s a community of love which, by its nature, is a naturally expanding thing.

“Therefore, when this is lived out, it spreads love to other people and becomes an evangelising force by its nature. This is something families do; they just don’t realise they’re doing it. If you can make people realise what they are doing

and are capable of doing, they’ll do it better - that’s with all the ups and downs with family life.

“We’re not talking about the socalled perfect families; it’s when they live through the difficult times of relationships which every family goes through.

“Natural crises are the growth points, when they build their strength. Love doesn’t actually grow until you have to test it. It’s a natural part of relationship building, and gives them a lot to offer society.

“Families don’t always appreciate that. They tend to think ‘we have problems and are not the perfect family’; they don’t see themselves as the evangelising force that they can be.”

Jonathan Doyle, co-founder of values-based educational resource producer Choicez Media, will also address the April conference on what it means to be a Christian man today.

Sydney’s Archdiocesan Life, Marriage and Family Centre policy officer Dr Brigid McKenna will discuss the importance of understanding the dignity and beauty of being a Christian woman.

For information call (03) 9287 5579, email imf@cam.org.au or go to www.sharethedream.org.au.

Dawesville to be dedicated to the ‘leper priest’ of Molokai

THE parish church of Dawesville in the Diocese of Bunbury will be dedicated to the patronage of St Damien of Molokai, the ‘leper priest,’ this Sunday, 22 January.

It will be dedicated at a 10am Mass by Bishop Gerard Holohan of Bunbury exactly six years to the day after the parish was founded on 23 January 2005.

The parish also maintains a close relationship with members of the Anglican Communion in and around Dawesville; it will be used every Sunday at 10.30am for Anglican services as well.

St Damien de Veuster, a young Belgian-born priest who was a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, worked on the island of Hawaii for eight years before volunteering in 1873 to work at a leprosy colony on nearby Molokai, where he served as pastor, doctor and counsellor to some 800 patients.

In 1884, he contracted leprosy but, refusing to leave the island for treatment, continued to work

until the month before his death at age 49 in 1889.

St Damien was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2009; during the ceremony Pope Benedict said St Damien “felt at home” as “a leper with the lepers” during the final years of his life.

“He invites us to open our eyes toward the ‘leprosies’ that disfigure the humanity of our brothers and sisters and that today still call, more than for our generosity, for the charity of our serving presence,” he said at the time.

St Damien has been considered an intercessor for patients with leprosy and, more recently, HIV and AIDS. The Vatican’s liturgical programme for the 2009 canonisation described St Damien as a voice for “rejected people of all kinds: the incurably ill (victims of AIDS or other diseases), abandoned children, disoriented youths, exploited women, neglected elderly people and oppressed minorities.”

Anglicans aim for Pentecost

BY ANTHONY BARICH

AN Ordinariate for Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church is set to be established in Australia by Pentecost this year, and will include Japan. The Ordinariate – which is effectively a diocese without geographical boundaries - is in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 2009 Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (“On the gathering of the Anglicans”).

The Constitution gave Anglicans a way to celebrate their heritage of worship and life as communities within the full communion of the Catholic Church.

While the emphasis of Anglicanorum coetibus is for Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church in groups, 28 Anglican priests in Australia have so far expressed their firm intention to take up Pope Benedict’s offer.

The Traditional Anglican Communion, a group of disaffected Anglicans who have been seeking full communion with Rome for years, will host a festival in Perth on 26 February at Holy Family Catholic Church in Como for the Anglican Ordinariate for Australia.

TAC Bishop Harry Entwistle - one of four TAC Bishops in Australia and the Torres Strait Islands who will be ordained as Catholic priests, likely just before the Ordinariate is officially established, told The Record the festival is a public statement that “this is no longer just a theory, it’s really happening”. “It’s an opportunity to gather those who are more than just casually interested,” he said of the festival, which is for Catholics and Anglicans who, like the TAC, have long been disillusioned with

in brief...

Concert series to feature Handel

ST MARY’S Cathedral Concert Series for 2011 will commence at St Mary’s Cathedral on 25 March with Magnificat - a programme featuring performances by the Cathedral Choir with a small chamber orchestra.

The musicians will perform Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Gregorian canticles in a Vespers style format interspersed with movements from Handel’s Concerto Grosso in G Major

Four subsequent concerts form part of the series, including Marian Meditations at 2pm on 15 May; MacKillop Tribute Concert at 2pm on 7 August; Chapels of St Mary’s by Candlelight at 7.15pm on 18 September and Christus Rex at 2pm on 20 November.

The series is partly sponsored by Miss Maud Hotel and Restaurant who will provide afternoon tea during intervals at the afternoon concerts and discounts to ticket holders on concert days.

Evening concert tickets

the Anglican Church’s liberalisation with female clergy, among other things.

Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, Delegate for the Holy See for the Australian Ordinariate, will address the festival, as will Adelaide-based Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the TAC which claims a global membership of 400,000.

Peter Gannon will also address the festival on what benefit the Ordinariate has for ‘cradle Catholics’, while Robert Andrew, a member of the Friends of Anglican Catholics support group who also converted from the Anglican Church, will also talk on what attraction it holds for people like him.

Bishop Entwistle, of TAC’s Western District encompassing WA, is part of an implementation team that includes officials from the Holy See and Bishop Elliott, who is himself a convert from Anglicanism.

Bishop Entwistle’s vision for the Western District of the ordinariate will include weekly Masses at his Maylands base of Saints Ninian and Chad Church and monthly Masses in areas outside Perth including Albany and Bunbury. Anglican Catholics in these areas will attend ‘regular’ Catholic Masses between these monthly Masses until more priests are ordained to service these areas.

Japan’s Anglican Catholics constitute a small group led by a retired Anglican Bishop. Bishop Entwistle said the Japanese are happy to adopt a Western Ordinariate like Australia as they are among a persecuted minority. However, he said that the “one size fits all” concept does not apply to Ordinariates around the world.

are $25 ($20 concession) and afternoon concert tickets are $45 ($35 concession) but subscriptions are also available for those who wish to go to two or more sessions. Tickets through BOCS ticketing 9484 1133 or 1800 193 300 or www. bocsticketing.com.au.

Whitford drive for Pakistan, West Vietnam

OUR Lady of the Mission Parish in Whitford begins its annual drive in February to fundraise for poverty relief in Pakistan and West Vietnam.

The fundraiser will take the form of a bric-a-brac sale over two weekends, from 6-7 March to 13-14 March.

All proceeds will go towards relief efforts, parish organisers said, which include a roofbuilding project in the floodaffected slums of Pakistan, as well as poverty relief in West Vietnam.

Last year, flooding in Pakistan was the cause of an estimated 2,000 deaths and directly affected a further 20 million people.

To donate secondhand items for the sale, or for further inquiries, contact Jo on 9403 2763.

Ron and Mavis Pirola say families are a key agent of evangelising the world.

St Damien de Veuster

Perth to join world in 40 Days for Life

BY DAVID C HUA

LOCAL parishes are being urged to join over 300 cities in March when Perth hosts its first Lenten 40 Days For Life campaign to pray for an end to abortion.

Perth parishes will join Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and over 300 other cities worldwide, where the campaign has already drawn thousands of participants over recent Lenten seasons.

Accordingly, Perth’s campaign will begin on Ash Wednesday, 9 March when participants around the world will offer up fasting and prayer for an end to abortion until Palm Sunday, on 17 April.

Helene Sawyer, the coordinator of the Perth event, told The Record that the large scale of the campaign requires strong parish support. She hopes parishes will take on specific days or periods during the campaign for parishioners to

Events across the Archdiocese

At a Glance

St Jerome’s, Munster

Divine Mercy Mass and Healing Service

Mass by Vincentian priests, Rev Sunil Anekkattu VC, Fr Binoy Puthiyedath VC from Potta, India and Fr Sebastian Kalapurackal. Includes preaching, praise, worship and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.

Enq: Edita 9418 3728 or Liliana 0435 006 368.

When: 7–9pm, Tuesday, 1 February, St Jerome’s, 36 Troode St, Munster.

Holy Family Church, Maddington

Special Healing Mass

Mass offered by Fr Sunil Aenekkatu and Fr Binoy Augustine. All welcome.

Enq: 94931703

When : 7.30pm, Holy Family Church, Lot 375 Alcock St, Maddington.

St Bernadette’s, Glendalough

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary Commences with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, reflections, Rosaries, hymns etc alternating with healing sessions. Vigil concludes with Midnight Mass.

Enq: Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

When: 9pm, Friday, 4 February, St Bernadette’s, 49 Jugan St, Glendalough.

Pater Noster, Myaree

Day with Mary

Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima message.

9am video, 10.10 Holy Mass, Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on the Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch.

Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

When: 9am – 5pm, Pater Noster Parish, cnr Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree.

contribute to the vigil. Participants will also participate in a local peaceful prayer vigil which will take place outside the Rivervale Pregnancy Termination Clinic on Cleaver Terrace.

The 6am to 6pm daily vigil each day in Lent – totalling over 400 hours of prayer – will include Daily Mass to be offered at nearby St Augustine’s Church in Rivervale for the souls of the unborn and those in the abortion industry.

The campaign’s arrival in Perth has united a diverse array of pro-life ministries from various Christian denominations.

Perth’s campaign director Brad Taylor, director of the pro-life group Justice Mandate, has organised the event with coordinators including Mrs Sawyer of the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants and Pregnancy Assistance, Life Ministries director Dwight Randall, Family Life International regional coordinator

St Francis Xavier, Perth

Divine Mercy – An Afternoon with Jesus and Mary Main celebrant Fr Johnson Mayil SAC – homily on St Jerome Emiliani. Reconciliation, Rosary, Prayers and Benediction. Refreshments afterwards.

Enq: John 9457 7771.

When: 1.30pm, Sunday, 6 February, St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, Perth

Flame Ministries

International 21st Annual Congress

Called to a Radical Holiness in a Dark Age of Sin International and local speakers, praise and worship, evening rallies and much more.

Enq: 9382 3668 or email fmi@flameministries.org.

When: Begins Friday, 7.30pm, 21 January. All day and evening sessions 22 February and 23 February. Evening sessions free. At John XXIII College, Mt Claremont.

St Anne’s Belmont

Australia Day Holy Hour for the Conversion of Australia 8.45am Holy Hour followed by 10am Mass then morning tea in the hall. Bring a plate to share. All welcome.

Enq: Fr Michael Rowe 9444 9604 or latinmasschaplaincywa@iinet. net.au.

When: 26 January 2011, St Anne’s Belmont, 13 Hehir St, Belmont.

A testimony on Divine Mercy

Stanley Villavicencio visit After being pronounced “clinically dead” in 1993, Stanley has been travelling the world speaking about his amazing spiritual encounters with Jesus , The Divine Mercy. He returns to Perth to tell his story at the following venues:

10 February, 7.30pm. Holy Family Church, Como. Talk/witness.

11 February, 10am. Casa Luisa Piccarreta, 59 Newton St, Spearwood. Talk/witness.

11 February, 7.30pm. St Lawrence’s, Albert St, Balcatta. Talk/witness

12 February, 10am. St Bernadette‘s,

Geoff Storey and Family Voice

Australia’s Lance McCormick.

Mrs Sawyer told The Record that the campaign offers an opportunity not only for Catholics and Protestants to unite under a common cause, but for Catholics to “evangelise by example”.

The 40 Days vigils often follow common features of pro-life vigils typified by Catholic devotions such as the Rosary, the Divine Mercy chaplet and Catholic devotional hymns.

Mrs Sawyer also told The Record that the campaign’s motto, “pray to end abortion”, reflects the nature of the campaign as one focused not on ‘human protest’ against abortion, but rather the power of God to stop and heal abortion and its consequences.

“It is witnessing to Christ’s love for everyone, not protesting,” she said, adding that the public nature of Christian witness ‘in the

world’ necessitates prayer that is unashamedly visible and public.

“We have an obligation to bring the Kingdom of God into this, and every other sphere of our society.”

The upcoming Lenten campaign will be the 40th coordinated campaign conducted around the world by 40 Days for Life since 2007.

It is estimated that more than 3,000 unborn lives have been saved internationally as a result of the campaigns.

Abortion was legalised in Western Australia in 1998. Since then, over 100,000 babies have been surgically aborted. Abortion rates continue to rise, with an estimated 10,000 babies to be aborted in 2011 in WA alone.

For more info, log onto www.justicemandate. org. Interested in helping? Contact Helene Sawyer 9402 0349 or email hmsawyer@hotmail.com

Sisters farewelled

Jugan St, Glendalough. Talk/witness.

12 February, 7.30pm (directly after 6.30pm Vigil Mass). Our Lady of the Missions, 270 Camberwarra Dr, Whitford/Craigie. Talk/witness.

Enq: 9245 2222, 0413 707 707.

Novena in three parishes to Our Lady of Lourdes

St Peter’s, Inglewood

2 February - 7pm Mass, Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction.

3 and 4 February - 7pm Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction.

Blessing of Sick - 4 February celebration followed by supper. (Please bring a plate of finger food.)

Enq: Fr Sam 0422246551 or Jimmy 0411615239

When: Wednesday, 2 February –Friday, 4 February, St Peter’s Parish, Wood St, Inglewood.

Good Shepherd, Kiara

5 February - 6.30pmVigil Mass followed by Novena Devotions, Procession (Rosary) and Benediction concluding with a social get together in the parish hall for a light supper. (Please bring a plate of finger food.)

6 February - 5pm Mass followed by Novena Devotions, procession (Rosary) and Benediction.

7 February - 7pm Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction, blessing of the elderly.

Enq: Fr Francis Ly 9279 8119 or Jimmy 0411615239

When: Saturday, 5 February – Monday, 7 February, Good Shepherd parish, 215 Morley Dr, Kiara.

Our Lady of Mercy, Girrawheen

8 February - 7pm Mass, Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction.

9 February - 7pm Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction.

10 February - 7pm Novena Devotions, procession, Benediction and Blessing of the Sick.

11 February - Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes – 7pm Mass, candlelight procession, Benediction and burning of petitions followed by light supper and drinks in the parish hall. (Please bring a plate of finger food for supper.)

Enq: Fr Tony Vallis 9342 3562 or Jimmy 0411615239 When:

8 February – 11 February, Our Lady of Mercy, Girrawheen Ave, Girrawheen.

in brief...

CHRIST the King School, Beaconsfield officially thanked and farewelled the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition after 107 years of dedicated service to the school and parish community. Principal Peter Panizza said: “It is important that we acknowledge the contribution, the dedication and the influence the Sisters have had on our school and parish communities.

The legacy they leave is something of which all Sisters from the Order should be proud.”

A number of Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition were joined at the celebrations by CEOWA deputy director Mary Retel; Christ the King Parish Priest Fr Liam Keating SMA; past principals and representatives from the School Board and Parents and Friends Association, and staff, students, parents and friends of Christ the King School.

A youth participates in Sydney’s 40 Days for Life campaign last year.

PHOTO: GIOVANNI PORTELLI

The Lego version of a relationship

The latest book to be published by Pope Benedict XVI is, like the several book length interviews with him that have been published since the remarkable Ratzinger Report in 1984, full of remarkable answers to very direct questions. What is so refreshing and heartening about these personal reflections and comments from the Holy Father is that, while he acknowledges the many extremely serious and disturbing challenges facing the modern world and the Church (the word ‘crisis’ is explicitly used on numerous occasions in relation to each), he is never pessimistic. On the contrary, one gets the impression that a very simple mind that is at the same time extraordinarily deep and limpid sees in each and every crisis the possibilities and signs of new growth for the kingdom of God, new hope for the world. Everywhere, his gaze is fixed upon Jesus on the Cross and Jesus risen from the dead, on the Communion of the Saints, on the love and intimate closeness of God to each and every one of us. This is merely one among many reasons why it is a pleasure this week to carry an extensive review of Light of the World by Archbishop Hickey’s former Communications Officer, Hugh Ryan (review begins on Page 11 of this edition)

As Archbishop Barry Hickey and Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton, together with the Bishops of Western Australia and the nation, have appealed directly to the Catholics of Perth to petition Parliament to protect marriage from those who wish to morph it into any legal relationship (see story, Page 5) with the strong likelihood that this is just the tip of the iceberg, one of the Holy Father’s comments from his latest book springs to mind.

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Asked by journalist Peter Seewald why it is not a scandal that a Church with such a massive global membership does not take better advantage of its presence to evangelise, Pope Benedict had this to say:

“Really, one wonders how it happens that Christians who personally are believers do not have the strength to put their faith into action in a way that is politically more effective. Above all else we must try to make sure that people do not lose sight of God. That they recognise the treaure that they have. And that they themselves then, as a result of the strength of their own faith, enter into the conflict with secularism and are capable of carrying out the discernment of spirits. This tremendous process is the real, great task of this hour. We can only hope that the inner strength of the faith that is present in people will become powerful publicly as well by leaving its imprint on public thinking, too, and that society does not fall into the abyss.”

There is really little point in trying to give a better explanation of the above remarks as their meaning and implications for Christians are transparently clear and superbly expressed in the most succinct and direct language. Suffice it to say that the Holy Father clearly hopes Catholic men and women everywhere will translate their private faith into a public reality and sign. This is the most basic logic of following Christ, after all. The defence of marriage between a man and a woman and in the interests of children in Australia is precisely one issue where it can be said that the moment to act has arrived.

In fact, in relation to the extremely serious and very disturbing issue of the push to officially recognise any other socially acceptable relationship as the equivalent of marriage, it is clear that it is now only Christians standing between marriage as a unique institution that provides a lifelong context and security for all its members and which is the fundamental unit of society, and the legal erection of the Lego brick version which can be constructed in any shape, breaks down or is jettisoned at a moment’s whim. The problem is that Lego, fundamentally, is for five year olds.

However, in the push to defend marriage and children, Christians will be, as they say, up against it. Their biggest opposition will be overwhelmingly from the media who know everything and know nothing. What appeals to the nation’s media, together with a variety of relatively small but potent lobby groups, is the misconception that the legalisation of same-sex marriage is an exercise in tolerance. The assumption rests upon a well intended but completely false premise that any acceptable relationship, basically speaking, can be a marriage. But it was the slightly dotty British woman Sharon Tendler who, in 2006, married a dolphin in Israel and in passing demonstrated the reductio ab absurdum of the central plank in the same-sex marriage lobby’s platform. In reality, the recognition of any relationship as marriage must, of necessity, mean that there is no longer any such thing as marriage. Aldous Huxley, the author of the disturbingly prescient 1939 novel Brave New World, perhaps put it best in a new introduction written a decade after the novel’s first publication: “There are already certain American cities in which the number of divorces is equal to the number of marriages,” he wrote. “In a few years, no doubt, marriage licences will be sold like dog licences, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time.”

The real isssue is that Australia has, since the introduction of no fault divorce in the early 1970s, increasingly experienced a crisis of marriage. The human costs in broken lives, broken hearts and millions of children who no longer believe in the possibility for their own lives of human happiness in the intimate relationship of marriage will not be solved by increasingly widening the definition of what marriage is. Those who seek to legalise same-sex marriage, in reality, do not know what marriage is and have no conception of it other than an official licence for something as long as their fancy keeps them interested. They seek, essentially, to make a marriage certificate as valid as a dog licence.

Letters to the editor

Time to back the Bishops

Thank you to The Record for the article (5 January) concerning the authentic right of the Church to publicly oppose so-called same-sex “marriage”. Proponents of this and other radical issues being pushed by the Greens and sections of the mainstream media naturally seek to silence any who oppose them. They also want to label opposition as a religious issue.

In our Australian Constitution, there is no clause for “separation of Church and State”, only a provision against setting up an established religion.

There is a very clear difference. In countries where a particular religion or denomination has been established, the government endorses that religion and assigns it a privileged position. Clergy of the established Church participate in government. Established Anglicanism still exists, for instance, in the UK. The purpose of constitutional non-establishment is not to protect the government from religion, but to protect religion from governmental intrusion, and to ensure freedom of religion for all.

The institution of marriage between a man and a woman is a natural, not a religious, construct, and has been found since the dawn of history in every community of any religion or none, pre-dating all governmental and religious institutions. In ancient Greece, for instance, homosexuality was socially acceptable and widely practised, but marriage was for a man and a woman. Natural marriage may be adequately defended on the grounds of biological science and commonsense, and it is advisable to use that argument when contacting politicians.

It is a serious violation of freedom of speech, and an illustration of unjust discrimination, to disqualify and silence religious voices in important debates which have the potential to determine the future of our society. Moreover, freedom of conscience is an authentic right, upheld by the UN Universal Declaration of

In brief ...

Destination Madrid

Perth Catholic Youth Ministry are gearing up to take pilgrims to World Youth Day in Madrid and the Days in the Diocese programme in Santiago de Compostela’s Diocese of Tui Vigo. There are two travel options for Perth pilgrims. The direct trip leaving 9 August will include a stop at Salamanca prior to WYD before its return to Perth on 24 August. An extended pilgrim option is available which incorporates visits after WYD to Fatima, Rome and Assisi, and which returns to Perth on 31 August. Registrations for

Human Rights. The same applies to parental rights to determine the kind of education to be received by children.

Few people are aware of the disastrous consequences for family life in places where ‘same-sex marriage’ has been legalised, including indoctrination of schoolchildren from an early age and removing parental rights to object. In some countries, any who disagree are threatened with “hate-speech” crime legislation punishable by imprisonment.

It is to be remembered that our opponents are not persons who experience same-sex attraction but the ‘same-sex marriage’ political lobby. They are definitely not one and the same. It is to be observed that the lobby ignores logic and factual evidence, and relies instead on vilification of those who oppose their agenda as “motivated by hate”.

As our Holy Father recently pointed out, freedom of religion is much wider than “freedom of worship”, in that it guarantees a right to live one’s faith in all areas of life. In the same speech, the Pope drew attention to the fact that two forms of persecution of Christians are prevalent, illustrated by anti-Christian violence and killings by Islamic radical extremists, and bureaucratic persecution in formerly Christian countries by rigorously eradicating all forms of Christian influence from the culture.

Thanks to electronic communication, it is possible to email all politicians simultaneously with one click.

It is of the utmost importance both to support our Bishops by signing petitions available in most parishes, and to contact politicians directly.

If petition forms are not available in your parish, or if you require any further information, you may contact the Australian Family Association on 9277 1644 or email afawa@msn.com.

Anne M Kirkwood Attadale

Men of the East

In the article “Who were the Three Wise Men?” (The Record, 12 January) Fr John Jay Hughes asks and then doesn’t answer his own question!

John Jay Hughes is a fine historian. This article, however, does neither him nor The Record much credit. It remains for some other ‘real’ historian to answer the above question but in the meantime this is my own (poor) understanding of the Magi:

The Magi were the priests of the Medes, as recorded by Xenephon in the 4th century BC, who conspired with the Persians in assisting Cyrus to overthrow the Assyrian empire of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.

Australian Madrid WYD pilgrims are now due via www.wydtours. com/perth.

All those pilgrims who have deposited their initial registration payment of $500 by midnight on 26 January go in the running to win a $2,000 WYD bonus certificate; the winner to be announced 7 February via www.wydtours. com.

The online progress pay-

The Magi continued to hold their respected position as priests of the new empire. They specialised in the interpretation of dreams. At this time the Jews, in exile in Babylon, were ‘remembering’ their stories and traditions and collating what would become ‘The Old Testament.’ There can be little doubt that the Magi influenced these primitive hill people of Judea in their task.

Nobody knows the mind of God, but I like to think that Jehovah was using the Jewish exile in Babylon as part of a long process of formation of His people and exposure to the subtle, though pagan, theology of the Magi was part of that process.

Not all the Jewish exiles returned to Judea. The links between the remaining Jews in the Persian (and Greek and Roman) world and the returning inhabitants of Israel would have been very strong. They would probably have shared a Messianic vision. The Acts of The Apostles underscores both the international character and shared religious beliefs of this Persian diaspora.

“Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia ... we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.”

The Magi were no mystery to the people of Jesus’ time and there can be little doubt that Matthew understood the significance of their endorsement of the Messiah.

Patrick Cunneen Kallaroo WA

Think ‘pilgrimage’

As the New Year begins and readers may be considering overseas travel during 2011, I would like to suggest the Holy Land as a destination.

For any Christian, the area of the Middle East encompassing Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Egypt, offers an undeniable attraction. This is where Jesus was born, lived, taught, healed the sick, was crucified and rose again.

After leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land in recent years, I have set up a website www.seetheholyland.net providing descriptions and photographs of more than 70 holy places, to encourage more Christians, especially from the southern hemisphere, to go as pilgrims.

Besides the real spiritual benefit Christians receive from visiting places associated with the life of Christ, pilgrimages to the Holy Land are a positive way to express solidarity with the declining number of Christians still living there under difficult conditions.

Pat McCarthy Auckland, New Zealand

ment option is still open via the website but final payments are due by 15 April. Although EFT direct deposits and payments by cheque attract no service fee, a 1.5 per cent charge will apply to all credit card payments (Visa or Mastercard) from 27 January.

The CYM office is also hosting a monthly Monday meeting series designed to bring pilgrims together and to share ideas and tips and provide practical and spiritual preparation.

These meetings are compulsory for WYD pilgrims. For more information, call CYM on 9422 7912 or email admin@cym.com. au.

When: 7.30pm on 24 January, 28 Feburary, 28 March, 11 April, 23 May, 27 June, 25 July at the Catholic Pastoral Centre. 40AMary St, Highgate.

angels ngels in the in architecture rchitecture

Record contributor and Perth author Tony Evans has released his latest effort, a masterly study of the life and achievements of one of the nation’s greatest architects...

REVIEWED BY MICHAEL COSTIGAN

during his only visit to Australia, a year before his death, my seminary classmate and friend from our shared Roman days, Professor Adrian Hastings, was amazed to find in this country two such majestic Cathedrals as St Patrick’s in Melbourne and St Mary’s in Sydney.

His reaction to these ‘down under’ Gothic Revival masterpieces was typical of that of other first-time travellers to Australia for whom I have acted as a guide. Among them were several Cardinals and Bishops.

When I told Adrian that the architect for both buildings was William Wilkinson Wardell (1823-99), like himself an Englishman, the distinguished theologian and historian was pleased. If the two Cathedrals were the only surviving examples in this country of Wardell’s genius, that alone would justify the publishing of the architect’s first full biography, written with style and passion by A G (Anthony) Evans. But they are far from being isolated examples of their designer’s art. During his 41 years as an Australian immigrant, half of them spent in Melbourne and half in Sydney, Wardell designed wholly or in part around a dozen churches and close to 20 other buildings, most of which still stand and are much admired.

Leaving England in 1858 at the age of 35, Wardell had already established his reputation there and in Scotland as an architect of church and other buildings, nearly all constructed in the style of that Gothic Revival which his mentor and inspiration Augustus Pugin (1812-52) had led. Many are extant, in some cases with modern changes (not all praiseworthy) or repairs necessitated by wartime bombing.

Wardell quickly made his mark in the young city of Melbourne, growing apace and able to afford grand buildings in the wake of Victoria’s gold rush. He was almost immediately commissioned under Bishop Goold’s leadership of the diocese to become the architect for what was then envisaged as a Cathedral intended to dominate the skyline for centuries.

For the best part of four decades, collaborating for much of that time with the legendary Dean John Fitzpatrick, he was closely involved in virtually every detail of the building and furnishing of St Patrick’s bluestone Cathedral. At the same time, he was designing other church buildings in Melbourne and other parts of Victoria. Two outstanding examples of his parish church creations are St Mary’s, East St Kilda, and St Ignatius’ in Richmond.

As if the demands on his private practice from ecclesiastical sources were not enough, Wardell willingly accepted senior public service appointments as Inspector General of Public Works and Chief Architect. The most celebrated of his creations in the latter role is Victoria’s Government House near the Botanic Gardens, still one of Australia’s most praised buildings.

Meanwhile, he had been developing a

Continued on Page 10

Light of the World

Sizing up Pope Benedict’s latest - and controversialbook

A Master’s touch that will stand

Continued from Page 9 special relationship with Church authorities in Sydney, leading to his accepting commissions for the designing of St John’s College in Sydney University and eventually to his assuming the role of architect for the new St Mary’s Cathedral. This was to become an intimate, almost daily involvement, from the

which he continued to visit regularly, and Sydney, as well as a pair of clubs in the city of Sydney and three warehouses in the Rocks area. Unfortunately, not all of these nonecclesiastical buildings have survived.

Hampered to some extent by the absence of any diaries or personal recollections by Wardell, Evans traces the story of his early life, beginning with his growing up in London’s East End as the son of the master and mistress of a workhouse in the Borough of Poplar.

For a short period he went to sea, against his father’s wishes, after which he trained successfully as an engineer and architect and began to build his career. Later, in Hampstead, after his marriage in 1847, he developed close friendships with his neighbour, Clarkson Stanfield the artist, as well as with the novelist Charles Dickens.

Wardell had left the Anglican Church and become a Catholic in 1844, aged 20. Evans regards the conclusion that John Henry Newman influenced this decision as doubtful, as is the claim that he and Newman were good friends. His conversion preceded Newman’s by a few years. Coupled with Pugin’s much more evident influence, it helped to open the way for Wardell’s years of creativity as the architect of Catholic buildings in Britain in the 1850s. One notable example among many is the large London Church of Saints Mary and Michael, sometimes called ‘the Cathedral of the East End’.

in 1878 that led to his move to Sydney.  But this did not interfere with his work on St Patrick’s for Archbishops Goold and Carr. Inter-city rivalry being what it is, Melbourne and Sydney Catholics (and others) may have different opinions about the comparative merits of the two great Cathedrals.

time of his 1878 move to Sydney to the time of his death, in the planning and building of what Anthony Evans calls ‘his greatest work’.

As in Melbourne, Wardell’s work on the building of a great cathedral did not stand in the way of his accepting other commissions. These resulted in his designing several fine bank buildings in both Melbourne,

The details of the Australian half of Wardell’s life, when he became a renowned public figure, are more thoroughly documented than his earlier years. While carrying a prodigious workload, he had to endure the envy of some competitors and the hostility of a newspaper. It was the abrupt and unfair termination of his public service appointments

Brought up in the Victorian capital and educated by the Jesuits in the shadow of St Patrick’s, I should have a natural sentimental bias towards it. But frequent visits to St Mary’s prayerful interior since moving to Sydney 35 years ago, together with the pleasure gained when often gazing at the imposing sandstone edifice from all directions outside, deter me from declaring that St Patrick’s has my vote. Anthony Evans, who has written thoughtful pages on the comparison, is in no doubt that St

Mary’s has the edge. Evidence from others rather than from his own pen is not lacking about the kind of man William Wardell was. He was clearly something of a workaholic, highly sensitive, proud of his achievements, well aware of his talent, never prepared to accept ‘second best’ solutions and insistent on being treated with respect and justice. His biographer considers that Government House, Melbourne tells us much about its creator’s character: ‘we see nobility, strength yet restraint, elegance, discipline and informed taste, attributes which we may apply to Wardell himself’.

Above all, he emerges from these pages as a devout believer, whose church architecture expresses his deep faith. Like mediaeval Cathedrals, his two and his many other churches in two hemispheres

Some of William Wardell’s best known architectural achievements: St Patrick’s Cath Melbourne’s Government House, the residence of the Governor of Victoria, above.

for centuries Signs of the times

are ‘a celebration of belief’. They were truly built with conviction. The author knows much about architecture, as he has shown in previous writings. He provides full descriptions of Wardell’s buildings, most of which he evidently visited while researching the architect’s life. More than 50 photographs complement his clear and informative prose.

The 19th century Gothic Revival had virtually run its course soon after Wardell’s death. Anthony Evans is no admirer of what he calls the ‘concrete barbarism’ found in some modern, post-Vatican II churches.

While I understand what he means and partly share his views, I find his attack a little extreme. One can understand why he would be no admirer of new Cathedrals like those in Liverpool and Los Angeles but I trust he would see merit in such a

remarkable building as the restored St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta. And what would he say about Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona – neither post-Vatican II (for the greater part) nor Gothic, but a unique and overwhelming modern expression of faith?

At a time when the Archbishops of Sydney and Melbourne are taking further steps to ensure that William Wardell’s contribution to their respective Sees receives more recognition, this first-rate biography, which both George Pell and Denis Hart have subsidised, contributes much to achieving their aim.

- The Catholic Weekly, Sydney

Built With Conviction is available from The Record Bookshop for $39.95 + postage and handling.

review

Light of the World - The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times

By Pope Benedict XVI and Peter Seewald

REVIEWED BY

HUGH RYAN

Pope Benedict XVI’s latest book, an interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, opens with a touching description of what the 78-yearold Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expected from the Papal Conclave of April 2005. He expected finally to have some peace and quiet.

The humble obedience and direct prayerfulness with which he accepted a dramatically different outcome reveal a man readers will want to get to know better.

This raises the question: Who is the book for?

It is for Catholics, of course, and especially for those whose attitudes to their Faith, the Church and the Pope are too heavily influenced by the secular media who are almost always wrong in their facts and their interpretation about Church controversies.

It is also for non-Catholics of any religious belief or none who would like to have a reliable insight into the Catholic Church which is the 2,000-year old foundation stone of Christianity and the biggest organisation in the world, although entirely lacking in military or economic power.

It is not a book of religious instruction, although Benedict’s faith shines clearly through. A glance at the summary of the Pope’s engagements from 20052010 (pages 200-217) will convince any potential reader that this really is an interesting man and his book worth reading. His visitors include most of the world’s political and religious leaders, on a scale that is almost certainly unique in the world.

A third group who would profit from the book are journalists and those who teach journalism in universities. Without requiring any sort of religious or spiritual agreement from the secular media, this book would reveal how consistently they have misunderstood and misinterpreted

the Pope’s words and actions in the controversies of recent years. Since the purpose of journalism is to get things right, such enlightenment would help journalists and their readers, viewers and listeners.

Throughout the book, Pope Benedict deals with all the controversies of his time, and in the process gives delightful insights into his character and his faith. He deals with the sexual abuse of minors with the blunt directness and heartfelt sorrow he has shown on visits to places like the US and Ireland. But he deals only with the work the Church needs

to undertake to eradicate the problem from the Church, without making any comparisons with the rest of society.

He accepts Peter Seewald’s point that most of the abuse within the Church occurred 25 to 40 years ago, but only to seek its meaning in the virtual collapse of moral theology within the Church and society at that time, and to show the need for conversion and purification.

The Pope does not seek mitigation of the Church’s problem in the far greater sexual abuse problems in society and does not mention them even when Seewald raises some figures.

For instance, on 1 November last year, Perth’s morning newspaper ran a double-column story with photo headed “Clerical abuse victims march on the Vatican”. A

US leader of the group was reported as saying: “Society has failed to address the problem of sexual abuse by priests, but we can’t let this go unresolved.”

There was no mention of the fact – and no marches on Washington or New York – when a few months earlier the US Government released a report showing that in 2008 there were 69,100 cases of sexual abuse of minors in the USA. Parents and other direct and extended family members were responsible for 55.5 per cent of cases and mothers’ unmarried boyfriends another 8.8 per cent. The rest of the abusers were spread across society, with priests of all kinds accounting for 0.03 per cent.

The Pope also speaks beautifully about his prayer life: “I see very well that almost everything I have to do, I cannot do myself. I place myself in the Lord’s hands and say to Him: “You do it if you want it!”

Later, he says, he notices “there is help there, something is being done that is not my own doing”.

He also speaks of his prayer with Mary and with his friends Augustine, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, and then with the whole Communion of Saints.

“Strengthened by them, I then talk with the dear Lord also, begging for the most part, but also in thanksgiving – or quite simply being joyful.”

Later, when speaking of his Papal journeys, he says: “I am carrying out the task entrusted to me, in the awareness that this is being done for Another and that this Other is standing by me.”

He deals easily with the question of infallibility in a way that anyone can understand, regardless of whether they want to accept it.

Benedict’s summaries of ecumenical and interfaith progress with Orthodoxy, China, Protestants and Islam (including the famous Regensburg address) are illuminating, but are neither pessimistic nor presumptuous of early success. With regard to the division created by the Government in China between the two groups of Catholics, he says, “there is much hope that we can definitively overcome the separation. This is a goal that is

Continued on Page 12

hedral, Melbourne, top left and at left, St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney at top, and

Young people from the Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain, sing and dance before attending a special audience with Pope Benedict XVI at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, on 9 August. The young are among the key groups with whom the Holy Father wants to communicate. They live in an increasingly antipathetic global society where the media, the culture and their peers tell them God is irrelevant.

PHOTO: CNS//DARIO PIGNATELLI, REUTERS

ST JOSEPH’S parish in Bassendean held its 34th annual Rosary procession on 5 December 2010 to coincide with the feast day of the Immaculate Conception.

More than 200 parishioners and visitors attended the longrunning procession.

More than 20 Marian groups across Perth were invited to the event to mark the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The Marian procession was followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and refreshments in the parish hall.

The procession, started by Fr Morahan in 1976, is now a tradition and highlight in the parish calendar.

It is held annually on the first Sunday of December to coincide with the feast day of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December.

Getting to the heart of ‘the Benedict phenomenon’

Continued from Page 11 particularly dear to me and that I bring before the Lord daily in prayer.”

The relevant section of the Regensburg address is included in the Appendix, and the Pope describes the positive outcomes from this speech which was so widely and ignorantly condemned at the time.

He points out that both Christianity and Islam defend major religious values – faith in God and obedience to God – and that Islam is lived in very different ways depending on its various historical traditions and current relationships of power. Bishops from many parts of sub-Saharan Africa told him there had been a long tradition of good co-existence and it was a matter of ancient custom for them to celebrate one another’s holidays.

“The important thing is to remain in close contact with all currents in Islam that are open to, and capable of, dialogue, so as to give a change of mentality a chance to happen even where Islamism still couples a claim to truth with violence,” he concluded.

Expressing the basis for

Ecumenism, Benedict says the world needs a well-founded, spiritually based, rationally bolstered capacity for witness to the one God who speaks to us in Christ … and it is of the greatest importance that we provide it together at this time when the peoples of the earth are in crisis.

The Pope speaks in a variety of ways about the many aspects of this crisis of humanity, but most of it comes back to the prevalence of atheism, relativism and the largescale rejection of a natural moral law in the Western world and the erroneous behaviour that flows from them.

“Today,” he said, “it is still a major task of the Church to unite faith and reason. For, after all, reason was given to us by God. It is what distinguishes man.”

The problem in the modern world is that reason is expected to lead the individual to what he wants, whereas sound reason leads to what is true.

Faith is the conviction that we are required to live by truth, and at a deeper level Faith is revealed truth.

This conflict about the purpose and value of reason is repeatedly

displayed in Australia and the rest of the Western world.

A few years ago when embryonic stemcells were supposed to save the world, the then Federal Minister for Health declared belief in the sacredness of human life, but added that if there was any benefit to be gained from killing human embryos, that would be the thing to do. Sadly, our Parliaments agreed.

Similarly, we pay baby bonuses to encourage women to have babies and we pay doctors to kill babies in the womb if anyone wants them to.

Speaking for the entire world, the United Nations defines killing babies in the womb as “reproductive health”.

That’s Western reason?

Reason should say it is nonsense to drug healthy women every day, but we pay the medical profession to prescribe the pill, even though doctors know that if a woman not taking this drug turned up with her body functioning as though she were, they would have a serious clinical condition to attend to.

The Western world lived through the 20th century and the unprecedented cruelty and slaughter launched on its own people and others by atheistic philosophies and dictatorships, but today in Australia and elsewhere atheism is being presented as the only reasonable way of thinking and living.

However, Pope Benedict explains: “Truth points out those constant values that have made mankind great. That is why the humility to recognise the truth and to accept it as a standard has to be relearned and practised again.”

Benedict examines a wide variety of earthly problems such as the environment and the economy and places them in this context of truth, God and the common good.

In relation to the GFC, the subsidisation of banks by governments, and the huge interest bills being paid by governments to banks to cover their GFC borrowings, the Pope says, “it is plain that we are living in untruth”.

He also speaks of the “serpent of drug trafficking” and the “destruction that sex tourism wreaks on our young people” and attributes both to the “arrogance and false freedom of the Western world” and its search for “eternal joy” when “the eternity man needs can come only from God”.

“The important thing today is to see that God exists, that God matters to us, and that He answers us. And, conversely, that if He is omitted everything else might be as clever as can be – yet man then loses his dignity and his authentic humanity and, thus, the essential thing breaks down. That is why, as a new emphasis, we have to give priority to the question about God.”

Late in the book, Peter Seewald introduces the apparitions of Mary the Mother of God to three children at Fatima and the great miracle that was performed there on 13 October 1917

The Pope adds that throughout history God had never ceased to use Mary as a light to lead us to Himself. At Fatima, she appeared to three children and spoke to them of the essentials: faith, hope, love and penance. For those who don’t know the story, the apparitions occurred monthly from May to October and quickly became widely known by the Catholic faithful and the very angry officialdom. In July, August and September, Mary promised the children that on 13 October she would perform a miracle that everyone could see and know that the children were telling the truth.

Between 70 and 90 thousand people turned up, including the editor of Portugal’s biggest daily newspaper called O Seculo in harmony with the virulently secular and antireligious spirit of the Government and establishment.

In a front page editorial, he condemned interest in the event and promised to attend himself and expose the ridiculous hoax. He and the rest of the huge crowd, including people who were more than 20 miles away, witnessed a spectacular display of multi-coloured light issuing from a wildly gyrating sun which at one point dislodged itself from its place and charged towards the earth.

At the end of the 10-12 minute display, people suddenly realised they had been staring directly at the sun for that period of time without any ill-effects, and also realised that despite heavy rain through the night and morning their clothes

and the water-logged ground they stood on were dry. To his eternal credit, the editor of O Seculo published the story in detail, for which he was roundly criticised by many of his prominent secular friends, not because they thought he could deny it, but because he really should not have given it any publicity!

This attitude of denial and pretence that the spiritual world does not exist is still rampant in our society, but as Benedict says, Mary and her message at Fatima are still alive in the world and essential to it because the solution to the world’s problems can only come from the transformation of the heart –through faith, hope, love and penance.

There are many other aspects of the human condition dealt with in this book, all of them interestingly.

The language is clear, without the burdens that so often accompany matters theological and philosophical.

The ideas are accessible to people with or without religious background.

The star of the book is undoubtedly Benedict, but Peter Seewald deserves our admiration and gratitude for his lucid questions and interesting background information.

It occurred to this reviewer about 2000 words ago that the best review of this book would be: Read it, re-read it, and then read it again. You will never regret it and always remember it.

Available from The Record Bookshop, tel: (08) 9220 5900

Eugenics now urgent issue for bioethicists

One of Australia’s leading bishops has warned on the new threat of eugenics

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE renewed push for euthanasia to be legalised in Australia shows that the Nazi practice of eugenics is prevalent in society, a senior Australian Bishop said.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference have also requested that eugenics be the focus of a major Catholics bioethicists’ colloquium in Melbourne from 23-26 January.

Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, the Australian Bishops’ delegate on the Australian Catholic Disability Council who will address the Colloquium, said the focus on eugenics is “urgent” because of “the push for euthanasia and the wider use of abortion”.

He told the closing Mass of the annual Christus Rex Pilgrimage at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo

in October 2010 that the “warped practice of eugenics is rising from its Nazi tomb” in Australia.

He blamed “aggressive secularism” for the renewed push for euthanasia to be legalised and for broader laws allowing abortion. Bishop Elliott then told The Record on 13 January that abortion can also be used for eugenical purposes, and even the practice of sex selection abortion “has a eugenics mentality in it”.

“This was seen recently in Victoria when an IVF couple aborted twin boys, not because they were twins but because they were male,” he said.

“But the more obvious example of eugenic abortion is the seek and destroy approach to Down syndrome babies. The new technologies that reveal life in the womb are misused to eliminate these ‘imperfect’ human beings.”

The practice of euthanasia has eugenics within it, he added, in the sense that some people are “deemed unfit to remain on the planet because of health condition,

disability or even merely their age”.

Bishop Elliott said infanticide for eugenical purposes has also been publicly defended by controversial Australian philosopher Peter Singer, Ira W DeCamp Professor of

Bioethics at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Attempts to legalise euthanasia have been defeated in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania in the past six months, but there are renewed attempts to pressure the Federal Government to repeal its ban on the Northern Territory’s euthanasia laws passed in 1996. Abortion is legal in every State and Territory in Australia.

In planning the Colloquium, the Australian Association of Catholic Bioethicists (AACB) noted that “eugenics is widespread practice in Australia”, as approximately 90 per cent of children who are diagnosed with disabilities in utero are aborted.

“These Colloquium proceedings come at an important time for Catholic bioethicists, health professionals, parliamentarians and members of the legal profession to be aware of the Church’s teachings on the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life, from conception to a natural death,” the AACB said on

its website. “There is also a practice of sedation and demanding feeding, in other words, starvation, for those who survive to be born with a disability and whose parents do not wish them to survive.”

The Colloquium will also consider eugenics at the end of life in relation to the advocacy for euthanasia to be available for people who are in pain or experiencing “existential suffering”, which refers to loneliness and depression.

Catholic Women’s League member and health care ethicist Jo Grainger will present a paper at the Colloquium on 26 January titled ‘Nursing and assisted suicide – the international experience.’

The Colloquium proceedings are open for health professionals, academics and legal professionals. The general public are invited to the opening public forum and Colloquium dinner.

Full programme and registration can be found on the Colloquium website www.bioethicscolloquium. com.au or call Monica O’Shea on (03) 9412 3377.

The West started culling the feeble before Nazis

Concern at ‘racial decay’ was one reason eugenics became popular with Western scientists and intellectuals, notes Melbourne Bioethicist Dr Nicholas TontiFilippini

THE Australian Catholic Bishops Conference requested that the 2011 seventh Annual Bioethics Colloquium be held on the theme “Eugenics in Contemporary Bioethics”.

In planning the colloquium, the Australian Association of Catholic Bioethicists noted that eugenics is widespread practice in Australia.

Approximately 90 per cent of children who are diagnosed with disabilities in utero are aborted. There is also a practice of sedation and demanding feeding, in other words, starvation, for those who survive to be born with a disability and whose parents do not wish them to survive.

The colloquium will also consider eugenics at the end of life in relation to the advocacy for euthanasia to be available for people who are in pain or experiencing “existential suffering” which is word for loneliness and depression.

This year the first of the baby boomers turned 65 and in the next twenty years the demand for aged care facilities is likely to double.

The issue of aged care and euthanasia are unlikely to be separable as the baby boomers seek euthanasia as an alternative to living in aged care.

There is to be a public forum at the colloquium at which the Hon Greg Donnelly MLC, Government Whip in the Parliament of New

South Wales, will speak on the topic New Developments in the Euthanasia Campaign

The forum will be held in the Christ Lecture Theatre at the Australian Catholic University on Sunday, 23 January at 7pm.

There is also to be a Colloquium Dinner on 25 January for which there is to be an open invitation to be addressed by Kristen Deane, Victorian State President of the Down Syndrome Association and executive director of the National Disability and Carers’ Alliance, on the topic Downs Syndrome in the Brave New World

In the 1920s there was a strong eugenics movement in Western countries.

The major area of concern was ‘racial decay’, which predicted an inevitable decline in the ‘national stock’ because of the lesser fertility of the more successful and worthy sections of society by comparison with those regarded as being feckless and of lesser capacity.

This fear led to legislation in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to compulsorily sterilise people who had developmental disabilities.

Such legislation was advocated by the then Home Secretary Sir Winston Churchill who in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith, 1910 wrote:

“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded classes, coupled with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitute a race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the sources from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.”

Attitudes to people with disabilities were very negative. The Willowbrook State School in New York City conducted a research programme where children who were developmentally disabled were deliberately infected with hepatitis. Parents agreed in exchange for admission.

In California, forcible sterilisation of over 20,000 mentally disabled men and women took place between 1909 and 1970.

The UK 1913 Mental Deficiency Act required the compulsory sterilisation of those in mental asylums.

In the US there were numerous reports of the inmates of asylums being used for experiments such

as being given X-ray therapy as an experimental treatment for headlice.

When we speak of eugenics, we tend to think of the horrors of Nazi Germany. We forget that the eugenic movement was widespread and was endorsed by most Western Governments.

What is also forgotten is that the worst excesses of Nazi medicine actually began in relation to people with developmental disabilities and mental illness and the establishment of a facility for the purpose at Hadamar.

On 13 January, 1941, the first transport of mentally sick and disabled persons arrived from the psychiatric hospital Eichberg at the newly established killing centre Hadamar near Limburg.

After a few hours, the patients were killed by gas, their remains were burnt in the crematorium. Until August of the same year, more than 10.000 people were killed in the gas chamber of Hadamar.

Two decades ago, philosopher Jonathon Glover asked the question “What sort of people should there be?” He referred to the “genetic supermarket” and envisaged that the development of gene therapies would result in parents being able

to choose the genetics of their children.

The expectation that gene therapies would rapidly develop has not been the reality. It is still the case that no gene therapies have become established therapy. What has developed as a spin-off of the techniques developed for use in the Human Genone Project is a rapidly increasing capacity to identify genetic difference or abnormality and to correlate this with disease states or propensity for disease.

Much has been written about the possibility of the use of this information in discriminatory ways in relation to employment, financial institutions, personal insurance, superannuation and pension entitlements. But there is an area of discrimination that has already become well-established, that is the area which the National Health and Medical Research Council calls “reproductive discrimination”.

Reproductive discrimination may happen though pressure or influence for the purpose of preventing conception or birth of a child with a particular genetic trait:

● Pre-nuptially – by screening individuals who have decided to have a child,

● Pre-fertilisation – by screening

or altering gametes, or somatic cell nuclear transfer,

● Pre-transfer – by embryo biopsy and selection,

● Pre-birth – by pre-natal diagnosis and selective abortion,

● Peri-natal – by infanticide.

Some would argue that reproductive discrimination is not discrimination at all but simply a matter of respecting the individual choice of the woman and her partner.

However, to say that an act of discrimination is an act of individual choice does not make that choice any less discriminatory. Discrimination is almost always a matter of individual choice.

What matters is when that discrimination forms something of a pattern so that a group or category of individuals suffers as a result of those choices, and when respect for human life is contingent.

Tickets to the colloquium are available by contacting Toby Hunter, John Paul II Institute, phone 9412 3386 or email thunter@ jp2institute.org.

Dr Tonti-Filippini is an Independent Consultant Ethicist, an Associate Professor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Studies, an Honorary Fellow at the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute and chairman of the Research Committee for Matercare International.

Bishop Peter Elliott

Croatia proclaims year to celebrate Jesuit scientist

THE Croatian Parliament proclaimed 2011 a national “Boscovich Year,” marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of a learned Croatian Jesuit, Father Rogelio Joseph Boscovich Bettera.

Fr Boscovich Bettera (1711-1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, architect, philosopher and diplomat. He was born in Dubrovnik and died in Milan in 1787. The inventor of the achromatic telescope and a precursor of modern atomism, Fr Boscovich Bettera received several scientific and diplomatic missions from Popes. For example, he consolidated the cupola of St Peter’s Basilica and the central tower of Milan’s Cathedral.

UNESCO also chose to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth.

The decision of the Croatian Parliament to proclaim 2011 “Boscovich Year” will be an opportunity for Jesuits to “promote their mission and awaken new vocations in university and educational institutions,” stated a communiqué from the Society of Jesus.

The Jesuits also reported that the Faculty of Philosophy of Zagreb will organise an international conference in November focusing on the figure of the learned priest.

Holy See moves toward restored ties with Vietnam

POPE Benedict XVI has appointed a diplomatic “representative” to Vietnam, in an indication of some movement toward the restoration of diplomatic ties.

Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, who has been serving as the Apostolic Nuncio in Indonesia, will become the “non-resident pontifical representative for Vietnam,” the Vatican announced on 13 January. The Archbishop will also be Apostolic Nuncio to Singapore, and apostolic delegate to Malaysia and Brunei.

Vatican representatives have travelled frequently to Vietnam in an effort to restore diplomatic relations, which were broken off in 1975. While the Vietnamese regime has gradually eased restrictions on the Church, permitting the belated appointment of some Bishops and allowing a greater number of young men to enter the seminary, significant restrictions on religious freedom remain in place. The Vietnamese government has also clashed repeatedly with lay Catholic activists over the confiscation of Church properties.

Dozens of Christians persecuted in Indonesia

THEOPHILUS Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum and secretary general of the Indonesian Committee of Religions for Peace, has prepared a report documenting dozens of recent incidents of persecution against Catholics and other Christians in Indonesia, the world’s most populous, predominantly Muslim nation.

The report also provides historical context: of the 1,200 churches burnt down or closed since 1945, only two were burnt down between 1945 and 1967. On the other hand, the situation has improved since a decade ago, when there were mass burnings of churches. Three per cent of the nation’s 228.5 million people are Catholics, according to Vatican statistics. Six per cent are Protestant and 86 per cent are Muslim.

Thai Bishops in death penalty, Eucharist devotion pledge

Taiwan’s Bishops have committed to increasing love of the Eucharist and abolishing the death penalty their top priorities for 2011. In their 2011 pastoral letter, Taiwan’s Bishops outlined four priorities for the new year:

● “Loving the Eucharist, constantly participating in the best way at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, not omitting prayer and daily Bible reading, promoting the Liturgy of the Hours to respond to the call of the Lord”

● “To try in all ways to witness Jesus, profiting from the mass media to evangelise”

● “To respect life, to promote the protection of unborn life, the abolition of the death penalty, to promote the spirit of forgiveness, to stabilise relations of peace and justice among peoples through prayer, attention to the neighbourhood, the protection of the environment and the healing of the weak”

● Ongoing formation to promote the “sanctification and the love of the family, in family relations, in the promotion of prayer for the family, in children’s and youth formation and of intellectuals through the Catechism”.

Of the nation’s 23 million people, 1.3 per cent are Catholic, according to Vatican statistics; 93 per cent are Buddhist or Taoist.

Scientist says Red Sea parting historical fact

Colorado scientist’s research finds likely spot for parting of the Red Sea

BY ANNA MARIA BASQUEZ Catholic News Service

BOULDER, Colorado - From his office in Boulder, scientist Carl Drews can pinpoint the spot where his research theorises the biblical miracle of the parting of the Red Sea took place.

Although Drews has never been there, the Google Earth Pro imaging on his computer can zoom in on the place in Egypt where Moses and the Israelites escaped death when the waters parted, according to the Book of Exodus. His virtual “pushpin” comes back with images of what is now predominantly agricultural land, with orchards, irrigation canals and grape fields indicating vineyards.

It is in the Eastern Nile Delta, between Pelusium and Qantara, and 75 miles north of the most popular theorised place in Egypt, which has been the Suez Canal. And it’s reachable on foot.

“One of the places right in the middle of the crossing shows what looks like a hotel and some type of building,” said Drews, a member of Epiphany Anglican Fellowship in Boulder, a congregation under the umbrella of the Anglican Mission of the Americas out of Rwanda.

“It would be fun to knock on their door and to say in Arabic, ‘Do you know that Moses walked right by here.’ It would probably elicit a form of disbelief. But perhaps people would say, ‘Well, maybe ...’”

His research made the miracle ever more real, said Drews, who claimed to have always been enchanted by the account in the Book of Exodus.

“For anyone who always believed this happened, somehow it’s still a thrill to see it supported by scientific finding,” he said. Drews, of Gunbarrel, took up the crossing of

the Red Sea for his master’s thesis in oceanic and atmospheric sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

His research gained national attention, including a segment by ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, but the software engineer with the National Centre for Atmospheric Research said he was not comfortable with the premise some media took - that his research “explained” the phenomena of the parting of the Red Sea.

“The science can only look at the physical aspects of it,” Drews told the Denver Catholic Register, newspaper of the Denver Archdiocese. “‘Explanation’ means somehow God didn’t do it and I don’t like those connotations. I think my research further affirms it happened. I think it supports the account.”

The study was part of a project into the impact of winds on water

depths, including the extent to which Pacific Ocean typhoons can drive storm surges, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, known as UCAR. “By pinpointing a possible site south of the Mediterranean Sea for the crossing, the study also could be of benefit to experts seeking to research whether such an event ever took place,” UCAR said in a statement. “Archaeologists and Egyptologists have found little direct evidence to substantiate many of the events described in Exodus.”

Drews and oceanographer Weiqing Han analysed archaeological records, satellite measurements and current-day maps to estimate the water flow and depth that could have existed 3,000 years ago. They then used an ocean computer model to simulate the impact of an overnight wind at that site.

Moses Parts the Red Sea

The results were that a wind of 63mph, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back waters estimated to be 6 feet deep. That would have exposed mud flats for four hours, creating a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide. As soon as the wind stopped, the waters would come rushing back, UCAR said.

“There are a number of details (in Exodus) like the duration of the wind and the direction of the wind that support the computer model,” Drews said.

“The fact that bodies washed up on the Eastern shore where the Israelites were able to see themdetails like that were confirmed by the ocean model.”

From a theological standpoint, the timing of the Red Sea parting when Moses and his people needed to cross shows the miracle, Drews said.

“From a faith perspective, it has always made sense to me that God uses natural action to carry out His plan if He so chooses,” said Drews, who grew up Lutheran. “In this case, He sent the wind and the wind moved the water. God is using natural means to bring out what He wants to have happen, which is to save His people. In this case, God is directing all things.”

Fr Boscovich

Archbishop Girelli

Cardinal Michael Michai Kitbunchu of Bangkok

MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Cairo

JORD

ISRAEL

LEBANON

Kedua Gap

SINAI PENINSULA A

Kedua Gap is the spot where scientist Carl Drews says the biblical miracle of the parting of the Red Sea took place. GRAPHIC: CNS/EMILY THOMPSON

The most famous Hollywood portrayal of the main figure in Exodus: Charlton Heston as Moses.

Book reveals Communist ‘war’ with Church

US author cites new evidence of Communist attempt to discredit JPII

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

ROME - That Pope John Paul II was a pivotal figure in the fall of European Communism is accepted as a truism, but many details of that drama have remained hidden in archives.

A US biographer of the late Pope has now provided particulars of what he describes as the fullscale war by Communism against the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul’s astute and successful counter-strategy.

The Polish Pope displayed political savvy and “a shrewdness that combined steadiness of strategic vision with tactical flexibility,” George Weigel told an audience of seminarians, diplomats and Vatican officials at the Pontifical North American College on 9 January.

One of Pope John Paul’s moves, Weigel said, was to appoint as his own secretary of state Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the architect of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik efforts to reach workable compromises with communist regimes.

By doing so, the late Pope “created tactical advantages for the Church: As the Pope preached moral revolution over the heads of communist regimes, speaking directly to their people, Casaroli continued his diplomacy, thus denying the communists the opportunity to charge that the Church had reneged on its commitment to dialogue,” Weigel said.

Weigel said he based his conclusions on previously secret cables and memos that have emerged from behind the former Iron Curtain. He came across the information while researching his latest book on the life of Pope John Paul, “The End and the Beginning,” which looks at the Pope’s final years and evaluates his legacy.

As a point of orientation, he quoted Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul’s longtime secretary, who once remarked about the

Church’s battle with Poland’s communist regime: “You must understand that it was always ‘them’ and ‘us.’”

What he meant, Weigel said, was that “the struggle between Communism and Catholicism could not be understood as a matter of episodic confrontations ... It was all war, all the time.”

Certainly that was how communist leaders from Moscow to Budapest saw it, Weigel said.

He catalogued efforts by communist regimes to place spies in local Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican, to exploit the Church’s moves toward openness and dialogue, to create ecumenical confusion and to compromise Church leaders by planting false stories.

“The struggle between Communism and Catholicism could not be understood as a matter of episodic confrontations ... It was all war, all the time.”

In 1983, Weigel recounted, the Polish security police even decided to blackmail Pope John Paul.

The instrument chosen was a fake diary said to have been written by a deceased female employee of the Archdiocese of Krakow, in which the diarist reported she had been the future Pope’s lover.

The plot fell apart when one of the conspirators, after successfully planting the diary in the home of a Krakow priest, got drunk, crashed his car and blabbed to police about what he’d just done.

Although the story has a Keystone Cops flavour, Weigel noted that the same security police operative would surface a year and a half later - as one of the men who beat Solidarity activist Fr Jerzy Popieluszko to death and dumped his body in the Vistula River.

Weigel said Soviet bloc intelligence services tried to manipulate the debates of the Second Vatican Council for political ends, a process that continued as the Ostpolitik policy of the Vatican developed and prevailed.

Pope’s words encourage struggling Iraqi Christians

By strongly emphasising religious freedom in his message for the World Day of Peace and his address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict XVI has provided welcome encouragement to embattled Christians in the Middle East, said Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq. “The most important issue for our region, the Middle East, is religious freedom,” said the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop. That freedom is endangered, he said, by “religious fanaticism.”

The Pope’s argument for the importance of religious freedom should be easy for Islamic rulers to grasp, the Iraqi Archbishop said. He explained: “The nations of the Middle East are governed in one way or another by theocracies. These countries should understand more so than nations that have a secular government that value of freedom of religion affects every relationship and all activities.”

Archbishop Sako said that targeted violence “has sown death, pain, and confusion among Christians” in Iraq, prompting thousands “to leave the land where their ancestors have lived for centuries.” The same sad phenomenon is now visible in Egypt, he said.

Blow up churches while Christians celebrate Christmas: Jihadists

A “JIHADI Encyclopedia for the Destruction of the Cross,” developed by al-Qaeda and widely circulated on the Internet, likely influenced the perpetrators of the New Year’s bombing of a Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, according to press reports.

He said the Hungarian regime used the Vatican’s diplomatic opening to take control of the Catholic Church in the country; most Bishops nominated after 1964 were cooperators with internal security and foreign intelligence services, he said.

At the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in Rome, all the rectors and half the students in the late 1960s were trained agents of Hungarian secret intelligence, he said.

Weigel said Communist moles were placed successfully at Vatican Radio, at the Vatican newspaper and in pontifical universities. When Pope John Paul II was elected, he took some counter-intelligence steps; for one thing, materials dealing with Poland were no longer archived in the Secretariat of State but were kept in the papal apartment “where there was no chance for mischief-makers to prowl around,” Weigel said.

When Pope John Paul met with leaders such as Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the Pope decided not to keep a written record of their conversations, so that the notes would not fall into the wrong hands. Instead, Weigel said, the Pope and then-Mgr Dziwisz would discuss the encounters, and the secretary kept notes in diaries that remained under his control.

Weigel said he thinks some lessons can be drawn by the Church’s experience with European Communism, as it looks to present challenges in the world’s remaining Communist states and in Islamic states. For one thing, he said, Vatican efforts to reach beneficial compromises with Communist powers “rarely, if ever, paid significant dividends.”

He said a much more valuable witness was provided by Church leaders who spoke courageously against the regimes, sometimes paying with their lives.

“Deeply committed and politically shrewd Christian pastors and laity eventually won out over Communism. The blood of martyrs, however, was the seed of victory,” he said.

“Their sacrifice, and what we can learn from it about the cardinal virtue of fortitude - courage - must never be forgotten.”

“Blow up the churches while they are celebrating Christmas or any other time when the churches are packed,” the document advised. The document offered step-by-step instructions for building a bomb and included the addresses of Christian churches, including the one targeted in the attack.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Coptic Christians took part in a peaceful protest near the church on 4 January. As they did so, they chanted, “With my blood and my soul I will defend the cross.”

Hepatitis risk from Communion

The Nassau County Department of Health is urging 1,300 people who attended two Christmas Day Masses at a Long Island parish to receive hepatitis A vaccines. A minister of Holy Communion at the Masses was diagnosed with the disease following Christmas.

This DVD documents the heroic life of St. Gianna Molla through interviews with her husband, children, friends, letters, and family mementos. St. Gianna, who sacrificed her life to save her unborn baby, was a mother, a medical doctor, a lover of wwopera, art, and culture; one who can speak much to our present day especially when family life is threatened on so many fronts.

“A woman of exceptional love, an outstanding wife and mother, she gave witness in her daily life to the demanding values of the Gospel”

- Pope John Paul II

Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako

The relics of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko are carried through the streets of Warsaw, Poland on 6 June 2010. Fr Popieluszko, murdered by Communist police agents in 1984, moved a step closer to sainthood during a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. His case was mentioned by theologian and author George Weigel in the biography that reveals Communist plots to discredit John Paul II and destroy Catholicism. PHOTO: CNS

Japan Bishops’ Neocat ban overruled

POPE Benedict XVI has overruled the Japanese Bishops’ decision to suspend the activities of the Neocatechumenal Way in the nation for five years.

Japanese Bishops, including their episcopal conference president Archbishop Leo Jun Ikenaga of Osaka, told Pope Benedict and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on 13 December that the group’s activities are secretive and that its activities, including its manner of celebrating the sacred liturgy, harm the unity among the faithful.

Archbishop Ikenaga called for the cooperation of priests and laypeople to confront “problems” with the Neocatechumenal Way, which he said has had a negative effect in the country.

“In those places touched by the Neocatechumenal Way, there has been rampant confusion, conflict, division and chaos,” Archbishop Ikenaga said in a statement published in Katorikku Shimbun, the Catholic Weekly of Japan, on 12 January.

“In Japan, the net effect has been negative. We Bishops, in light of our apostolic pastoral responsibility, could not ignore the damage.”

Following the meeting, the Vatican Secretariat of State decided that:

● “The suspension of the Neocatechumenal Way in Japan for five years - as attempted by the country’s episcopal conference - is not admissible”

● “The dialogue between the Bishops of Japan and the Neocatechumenal Way must be taken up again as soon as possible with the help of a competent delegate who loves the Way and respects the problems of the Bishops”

● “If necessary, the latter must give concrete indications to the Way for each of its own dioceses, avoiding pronouncements of the episcopal conference”

● “The Secretariat of State will be in charge of giving the necessary instructions and will address, in contact with the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the questions referring to the presence of the Way in said country”.

Pope Benedict XVI refused a December request from four

Pope backs, but cautions, movement

IN a sign of support for the Neocatechumenal Way, Pope Benedict XVI held a private audience on 17 January for members of the controversial lay movement, offering words of caution.

The Pope stressed that members of the Neocatechumenate must work with the Bishops and obey the Church’s liturgical directives.

Kiko Arguello, the founder of the Neocatechumenal Way, shared the microphone with Pope Benedict at a commissioning ceremony, in which 230 members were sent out on missions to organise new communities in “de-Christianised” areas.

Since its founding in Spain in 1964, the Neocatechumenal Way has attracted nearly one million members and has active communities in 120 countries.

While drawing high praise for its energy and ability to foster vocations, the group has also encountered criticism for some of its practices.

The liturgical practices of the Neocatechumenate have drawn a rebuke from the Vatican, which insisted on adherence to universal liturgical rules. And the Japanese Bishops have charged that the group promotes division among the faithful.

Pope Benedict - who has regularly joined in the annual commissioning ceremonies -

Japanese Bishops, including Archbishop Ikenaga, to suspend the Neocatechumenal Way for five years.

However, a statement published in January, dated 20 December, suggests that the Bishops are unwilling to let the matter rest there.

“Until now, the CBCJ has engaged with both the Holy See and the Neocatechumenal Way. But now the time has come to gain the participation of the laypeople of Japan,” Archbishop Ikenaga wrote in the statement.

expressed his appreciation for the lay movement in his remarks to this year’s meeting. He said that for more than 40 years the Neocatechumenal Way has been contributing to the revitalisation and consolidation of Christian initiation in dioceses and parishes, favouring a gradual but radical rediscovery of the riches of Baptism, helping people to savour divine life, the heavenly life which the Lord inaugurated with His incarnation, when He came

He said the Pope plans to send an envoy to Japan soon.

He also said the Bishops hope that those who have come into personal contact with the actions of the Neocatechumenal Way will relate their experiences to the Pope’s envoy.

“The fact is, it’s very difficult for the real state of affairs to be conveyed to a place as far away as Rome,” he wrote.

“We hope that they (the Neocatechumenal Way) will take a hard look at why things haven’t

among us and was born like one of us. The Pope also drew attention to the official approvals that the Neocatechumenal Way has received from the Vatican: first for its internal statutes, and then for its own Catechetical Directory of the NeoCatechumenal Way Pope Benedict cautioned, however, that these “seals of ecclesiastical approval” should be a reminder that the lay movement should work within the framework of the Catholic hier-

worked out here so far and, for the first time, help us root out the cause of the problems so that we can find the path to a solution.”

The Neocatechumenal Way was set up in Japan around 1970 in the Diocese of Hiroshima.

In 1990, the affiliated Redemptoris Mater seminary was built in Takamatsu Diocese, which has the smallest number of resident Catholics of any Japanese diocese.

The Neocatechumenal Way began in Spain in 1964, initiated by painter Argüello, a convert

archy, “in filial obedience to the Holy See and the pastors of the Church.”

Underlining that point, the Pontiff said that the movement should “insert itself into the harmony of the ecclesial body.”

“In this light,” the Pope said to the members of the Neocatechumenal Way, “I exhort you always to seek profound communion with pastors.”

-CatholicCulture.org

from atheistic existentialism, and Hernández, a missionary. They worked among prostitutes, gypsies and ex-convicts in a novel approach to the evangelisation of the “fallen away.”

Archbishop Casimiro Morcillo of Madrid was the first prelate to support the movement, on his return from the Second Vatican Council. The first communities were born in the parishes of Zamora, Madrid and Rome. Today they are active in some 5,000 parishes worldwide.

WILLIAM WARDELL BUILDING WITH CONVICTION

BY A G EVANS

Born into lowly circumstances in London’s East End in 1823, WILLIAM WILKINSON WARDELL became one of Australia’s greatest architects whose crowning works are his two Cathedrals, St Mary’s in Sydney and St Patrick’s in Melbourne. As well as being a leading exponent of Gothic Revival architecture of the 19th century, he served for a period as Chief Architect in the Victorian Public Works Department where he stamped his character and his high standards on many of Melbourne’s best-loved public buildings including his own design, Government House.

‘Writing with real literary flair and lively authorial imagination, [Evans] has produced the best biography we are ever likely to have.’ New England Quarterly.

Purgatory is a process not a place: Benedict

Purgatory is the suffering of the soul

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Purgatory is like a purifying fire burning inside a person, a painful experience of regret for one’s sins, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“A soul stained by sin cannot present itself to God,” the Pope said on 12 January at his weekly general audience.

The Pope spoke about purgatory in an audience talk dedicated to the life and mystical writings of St Catherine of Genoa, a 15th century married woman who ran Genoa’s largest hospital.

which, for a long time, made her experience constant pain for the sins she committed and pushed her to impose penances and sacrifices on herself to demonstrate her love to God,” the Pope said.

Although she is the author of a Treatise on Purgatory, Pope Benedict said, “she never received specific revelations about purgatory or the souls that are being purified there.”

Rather, her deep prayer and focus on the conflict between human sin and God’s love led her to understand how logically a person who has sinned would not be worthy to be in the presence of an all-loving, all-perfect God, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Married at age 16 to an older man with a gambling problem, she initially lived a very worldly life, the Pope said, but after about 10 years, she was struck by the emptiness of her life, especially in comparison to the greatness of God’s love.

She began a “life of purification,

Unlike most Catholics of her day, he said, she was convinced purgatory was not a place, but a process.

“The soul that is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God consequently suffers for not having responded correctly and perfectly to that love,” the Pope said, adding that the suffering is purgatory.

A group of U.S. pilgrims with the Neocatechumenal Way hold a large banner saying “Benedict XVI Apostle of the Truth,” during the pontiff’s general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican on 10 November.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

Latin America rebuilt with Gospel

BY BARBARA J FRASER Catholic News Service

YUCAY, Peru - In the waning days of 2010, residents filled the streets of this tiny Andean town, showering a statue of Our Lady of the Nativity with flower petals and dancing in native costumes to usher in the new year.

But the dancers, many of whom were Quechua-speaking farmers, looked ahead with trepidation. Some worried that rainfall resembled last year’s weather, when February floods triggered landslides, washed out roads and bridges, and destroyed crops. Some people who lost harvests last year could not afford to plant this year.

After the disaster, the Catholic Church stepped in with emergency aid and long-term development assistance. Church agencies did the same in other countries in the region: from Haiti, where an earthquake in January 2010 killed as many as 300,000 people and left nearly two million homeless, to Colombia, where recent floods overwhelmed five towns, killing 300 people and affecting another 2.2 million.

As Latin American Church leaders look ahead to 2011, they expect to respond to more disasters, from droughts to flooding, that will threaten small farmers’ livelihoods and trigger migration. They say the Church must also speak out on such issues as violence, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, conflicts over natural resources, lack of jobs for young people and the region’s persistent inequalities.

Environmental concerns rank high in the region, and experts expect to see more conflicts over natural resources. Mary DeLorey, strategic issues adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean for the US Bishops’ Catholic Relief Services, predicts an expansion of mining and oil drilling, especially in Colombia, if political violence there continues to decrease.

Both industries and governments have their eyes on minerals, oil and timber in the Amazon basin.

“This is a time of serious social, environmental and cultural impacts in Amazonia,” said Adda Chueca, director of the Amazonian Centre for Anthropology and Practical

PHOTO: CNS/GIL MONTANO,

migrants has not ebbed. Experts say the US Catholic Church could help by speaking out, warning migrants in the United States of the problem and urging them to take precautions, and pressuring wire-transfer companies like Western Union to ensure that money is not going to criminal gangs.

Drug-trafficking gangs are involved in the migrant kidnappings and killings, and Bishops in the Andean countries are worried that drug-related violence is spreading in their jurisdictions as well.

In a statement issued after a meeting in December, the presidents of the Bishops’ conferences of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela expressed concern about “the expansion of violence and disregard for human life, manifested in the rise of crime, murders, kidnappings and acts of terrorism. Drug trafficking and corruption are among the worst scourges our people suffer.”

Application in Lima, which supports the Bishops in the Peruvian Amazon.

Drought caused water levels in the upper part of the Amazon River to drop to historic lows in 2010, while other parts of the region suffered flooding.

Plans for expanded transportation networks, pipelines and hydroelectric dams increase the risk of deforestation and migration to the Amazon region, Chueca told CNS.

Although studies in 2010 showed deforestation in Brazil had slowed, clearing continues, and forest fires burned more than 3.5 million acres of forest in Bolivia last year.

The nine countries that share the Amazon basin “have not made a real commitment to addressing climate change,” Chueca said.

In Central America, climate change threatens farmers’ livelihoods.

In Nicaragua, where many small farmers grow coffee, a study by CRS and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture found the best yields and quality at an altitude of about 4,000 feet.

As the climate warms, however, experts expect the optimal altitude to increase to about 4,600 feet by 2020 and 5,200 feet by 2050, said Gaye Burpee, senior climate change adviser at CRS.

“The implication for the smallholder farmer who is using coffee as a cash crop is that (at 4,000 feet) their yields will go down,” Burpee told CNS. “Livelihoods will be increasingly at risk.”

When farmers barely make a living off the land, one bad harvest can drive them to cities in search of jobs. With employment opportunities scarce, many Central Americans head north toward the United States, often riding freight trains to Mexico.

That journey, always perilous, has turned deadly in recent years.

The massacre of 72 migrants in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, in August 2010 made headlines throughout the region, but kidnapping of migrants for ransom has been a growing industry for criminal gangs in Mexico for about the past four years, said Axel Garcia of the Mexican Bishops’ human

mobility ministry. “This is an enormous challenge,” he told CNS. “The level of violence and impunity is so great that the Church will have to strengthen and prepare itself” to address the problem.

A study by the National Human Rights Commission in mid-2010 found that some 10,000 migrants had been kidnapped in the first half of the year. By the end of the year, the figure had climbed to 20,000. Nearly 250 cases involved between 50 and 100 victims at a time.

In many cases, the freight train on which the travellers are hitching a ride stops, armed gang members pull up in pickup trucks, throw the migrants into the trucks and take them to a house, Garcia said. Gang members contact the migrants’ relatives in the United States, ordering them to wire ransom money to Mexico.

The captives are often beaten and sometimes killed. Women have been raped, and gang members sometimes brand them with hot metal rods, like cattle, marking them as gang property. Despite the dangers, Garcia said, the flow of

In November, Archbishop Tito Solari Capellari of Cochabamba, Bolivia drew criticism from both government officials and farmers who grow coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, when he voiced concern about young people who are recruited for criminal activities by drug gangs.

Many countries in the region, particularly the Andean and Central American nations, still have relatively young populationswhat DeLorey calls a “youth bulge.”

“There’s not enough employment available for this large group of youth,” she said, which makes them vulnerable to recruitment by gangs.

Underlying these problems is the region’s persistent inequality, Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogota, Colombia, president of the Colombian Bishops’ conference, told CNS.

Latin America has the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world, with indigenous people and those of African descent at the greatest disadvantage.

Amid the challenges they will face this year, Church workers must “witness to the love of Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Salazar said.

“The Church has no weapon besides the Gospel.”

Homosexual lobby ‘hijacking’ Martin Luther King legacy

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNA/ EWTN News) - Illinois religious and political leaders have organised to challenge the “hijacking” of the civil rights movement by homosexual political activists.

On the observance of Martin Luther King Day, AfricanAmerican leaders noted the slain civil rights figure’s Christian position on cultural issues like abortion and sexual ethics.

Dr Alveda King, full-time director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and King’s niece, cited her uncle’s advice columns written for Ebony magazine in 1957 and 1958.

“In advising men and women on questions of personal behaviour 50 years ago, Uncle Martin sounded no different than a conservative Christian preacher does now,” she commented. “He was pro-life, proabstinence before marriage, and based his views on the unchanging Word of the Bible. Today, Planned Parenthood would condemn Dr Martin Luther King, Jr as part of the ‘religious right’.”

King reported that one of her uncle’s columns concerned a young man who had impregnated his girlfriend and refused to marry her, resulting in a “crime,” a euphemism for abortion. Martin Luther King, Jr advised the man that he had made a “mistake.”

He also urged another reader to abstain from premarital sex, saying that such activity was contributing to “the present breakdown of the family.”

“Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was a man of peace, justice, and most of all a man of God,” Alveda King con-

tinued, suggesting that he would be working today to secure justice for those in the womb endangered by abortion.

In Hillside, Illinois, more than 40 African-American religious and political leaders gathered on 17 January at Freedom Baptist Church to lament the misrepresentation of King’s legacy. During the Illinois House debate on the issue of civil unions for homosexuals, two backers of the proposal compared same-sex “marriage” to interracial marriage.

Comparisons between homosexual rights and civil rights have become increasingly common in recent decades. In its own Martin Luther King Day message, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s executive director Rea Carey also invoked the leader.

“We believe that were he alive today, Dr King would be standing with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community as we too reach for equality,” she said.

However, the press conference of African-American leaders in

Illinois challenged this view. Its announcement denied that opposition to discrimination based on “immutable, non-behavioural, morally neutral condition like race” was equivalent to an effort to “normalise and institutionalise deviant sexual relations.”

David Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, was of a similar view.

“Skin colour is not analogous to behaviour,” he said.

“Homosexual activists and their allies are advancing their subversive moral and political goals by hijacking the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy,” the Institute said in a press release.

It said attempts to associate “philosophical conservatives” with racism and bigotry constituted intimidation.

“We shouldn’t allow the legacy of Dr King to be exploited for the destructive purposes of the movement to normalise homosexuality and demonise traditional moral beliefs.”

Christians take part in the Stations of the Cross during a Good Friday service in the Petare neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela on 2 April. Petare is home to one of Latin America’s largest shantytowns, where tens of thousands of people live in self-built h ouses.

REUTERS

The Rev Martin Luther King Jr and Pittsburgh’s labour priest and a longtime columnist for the Pittsburgh Catholic diocesan newspaper, Mgr Charles Owen Rice, march to the United Nations in New York in this April 1967 photo.

PHOTO: CNS/ PITTSBURGH CATHOLIC

MONDAY, 24 JANUARY

Australian-Irish Heritage Association Talk

7.30pm at Holy Family Church Parish Centre, Canning Hwy and Thelma St, Como.

The speaker, Dr Jeff Kildea, is a barrister, holds a PhD in history, has taught Irish and Australian History and will talk on Hugh Mahon: Irish-Australian Patriot. For catering purposes please contact event convenor Patrick 9367 5737.

WEDNESDAY, 26 JANUARY

The Australian-Irish Heritage Association Thanksgiving

10am at the Uniting Church, 50 Berkeley Cr, Floreat. Rev Alan Jeffries will be joined by ministers of mainstream churches in a service of readings and hymns. Professor Alex Main will give the keynote address. A procession of representative items of the Irish contribution to Australia will open and close the service. Complimentary refreshments will follow.

FRIDAY, 28 JANUARY

Medjugorje - Evening of Prayer

7-9pm at St Paul’s Parish, 104 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Adoration, Rosary concluding with Holy Mass. Celebrant Fr Bogoni. Free DVD on Donald Calloway’s life of sexual promiscuity, drugs and crime through to his conversion and priesthood. All are warmly invited. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480 or medjugorje@y7mail.com.

SATURDAY, 29 JANUARY

Love Ministries - Charismatic Healing Team and Fr Hugh Thomas.

6pm at St Paul’s, 104 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Following Mass, come and get prayed over and healed from past and present issues or stand in for a loved one who may be ill or facing problems at this time. All welcome. Enq: Fr Hugh, Gilbert or Fr Tim 0431 570 322.

Novena In Honour of Our Lady of Good Health, Vailankanni

5.30pm at Holy Trinity Church, 8 Burnett St, Embleton. Vigil Mass 6pm. Enq: Church Office 9271 5528 or George 9272 1379.

SUNDAY, 30 JANUARY

St Brigid’s Day - Australian-Irish Heritage Association

3pm at the Irish Club Theatre, 61 Townshend Rd, Subiaco. An annual, light-hearted entertainment about the myths and legends of Ireland’s female patron saint including an encounter with St Patrick. Admission $10 includes Irish afternoon tea. Booking: 9367 6026 or pay at the door.

TUESDAY, 1 FEBRUARY

Divine Mercy Mass and Healing Service

7-9pm at St Jerome’s Church, 36 Troode St, Munster. Mass by the Vincentian Priests Rev Fr Sunil Aenekkattu VC, Fr Binoy Puthiyedath VC from Potta, India and Fr Sebastian Kalapurackal. Includes preaching, praise, worship and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Enq: Edita 9418 3728 or Liliana 0435 006 368.

MMP Cenacle

10.30am at St Augustine Church, Gladstone St, Rivervale. Confessions will be available during Rosary. Holy Mass will follow celebrated by Fr Paul Carey. BYO lunch to share. Enq: 9341 8082.

WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY  FRIDAY, 4 FEBRUARY

Novena

7pm at St Peter’s parish, Wood St, Inglewood. Mass, Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction. Blessing of sick on Friday celebration. Followed by supper. Please bring a plate of finger food. Enq: Fr Sam 0422 246 551 or Jimmy 0411 615 239.

FRIDAY, 4 FEBRUARY

Special Healing Mass

7.30pm at Holy Family Church, Maddington. Mass conducted by Fr Sunil Aenekkat and Fr Binoy Augustine. All welcome. Enq: 9493 1703.

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary

9pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Glendalough. Commences with the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament; reflections, Rosaries, hymns etc alternating with healing sessions. Vigil concludes with midnight Mass. Enq: Fr Doug 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

Pro - Life Witness

9.30am at St Brigid’s, Midland. Mass followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at nearby abortion clinic, led by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. All welcome to come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

SATURDAY, 5 FEBRUARY  MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY

Novena

6.30pm at Good Shepherd Parish, 215 Morley Dr, Kiara. Mass, Novena Devotions, procession, Rosary and Benediction concluding with a social get together in the parish hall. Please bring a plate. Sunday, 5pm Mass followed by Novena Devotions, procession, Rosary and Benediction. Blessing of the elderly on Monday at 7pm celebration. Enq: Fr Francis 9279 8119 or Jimmy 0411 615 239.

SATURDAY, 5 FEBRUARY

Day With Mary

9am-5pm at Pater Noster Parish, corner Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima message. 9am video; 10:.Holy Mass; Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Witness for Life

8.30am at St Augustine’s, Gladstone Rd, Rivervale. Mass celebrated by Fr Paul Carey, followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at nearby abortion clinic. All welcome to come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Women’s Day of Recollection

8.40am at St Paul’s Parish Centre, 104 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Rosary followed at 9am first Saturday Mass, optional, 9.30am tea. 10am talk on Women of the Bible presented by Fr Tim Deeter, followed by discussions, lunch, Holy Hour and Benediction. RSVP essential to catholicwomen.perth@gmail.com or Lydia 0413 993 987 by 23rd February.

SUNDAY, 6 FEBRUARY

Divine Mercy – An Afternoon with Jesus and Mary

1.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, Perth. The main celebrant for the afternoon will be Fr Johnson Mayil SAC - homily on St Jerome Emiliani. Reconciliation, Rosary, Prayers and Benediction. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: John 9457 7771.

TUESDAY, 8 FEBRUARY  FRIDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Novena

7pm at Our Lady of Mercy, Girrawheen Ave, Girrawheen. Mass, Novena Devotions, procession and Benediction. Blessing of the Sick on Thursday celebration. Friday Feast of our Lady of Lourdes. Mass, candlelight procession and Benediction and burning of petitions. Light supper and drinks in the parish hall. Please bring a plate. Enq: Fr Tony 9342 3562 or Jimmy 0411 615 239.

Tridiuum to the Our Lady of Lourdes

7pm at Holy Trinity Church, 8 Burnett St, Embleton. Preacher Fr Nishan. Tues - Mass, Novena, and procession. Wed - Novena. Thurs - Novena and Anointing of the Sick and elderly. Fri - Mass and procession. Social get together. Please bring a plate. Enq: Gordon 9377 4472.

TUESDAY, 8 FEBRUARY

Spirituality and The Sunday Gospels

7-8pm at St Benedict’s School Hall, Alness St, Applecross. Norma Woodcock’s Teaching Session. Be empowered by the Gospel message each week in a personal way. How can we live meaningful and hope-filled lives. Entry - donation for The Centre for Catholic Spiritual Development and Prayer. Enq: 9487 1772 or www.normawoodcock.com.

FRIDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Annual Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Lourdes

7pm at Lake Monger. All are asked to assemble at the Dodd St carpark. For those unable to walk, there is an area where you can sit with others and pray together. Enq: Judy 9446 6837.

SATURDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

Marian Retreat

9am-5pm at Holy Family Church, Maddington. A day of healing with Mary our Mother led by the Vincentian Fathers. BYO lunch. All welcome. Enq: 9493 1703.

Divine Mercy Healing

2.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, Windsor St, East Perth. The main celebrant for the afternoon will be Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM. Reconciliation in English and Italian will be offered. Divine Mercy prayers followed by veneration of First class Relic of St Faustina Kowalska. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: John 9457 7771.

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

8.30am at St Lawrence, 392 Albert St, Balcatta. St Padre Pio DVD followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary, Divine Mercy, Silent Adoration and Benediction. 11am – Holy Mass, St Padre Pio Liturgy, Confessions available. Bring a plate for a shared lunch. Tea and coffee supplied. Enq: Des 6278 1540.

TUESDAY, 22 FEBRUARY

Medjugorje Evening of Prayer

6pm at St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth. Visit of Ivan Dragicevic, reported visionary of Medjugorje, who allegedly is still receiving daily apparitions of Our Lady. Evening commences with Eucharistic adoration, Rosary (alleged apparition of our Blessed Mother), Benediction, Holy Mass and talk by Ivan Dragicevic. All Welcome. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480 or medjugorje@y7mail.com.

THURSDAY, 28 APRIL TO THURSDAY, 12 MAY

Pilgrimage - Beatification of Pope John Paul II and Medjugorje

3 nights Collevalenza, the Lourdes of Italy, St Rita of Cascia. Visit to Fra Elia present day stigmatist. 3 days and 2 nights Rome, visit St Peters’ Holy Cross Basilica, shrines and Community of Family of Mary. Depart Rome 5 May for Medjugorje, for 6 nights 7 days. All flights, bed, breakfast and evening meals included. Approximate price $3,980 with optional extension to Fatima costing extra $900. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480 or 0407 471 256.

SUNDAY, 1 MAY

Centenary of Kellerberrin Parish

11am at St Joseph’s parish, Kellerberrin. All present and past parishioners are invited to the Parish Centenary celebrations. Mass celebrated by His Grace, Archbishop Barry James Hickey, followed by a catered luncheon at the Kellerberrin Shire Hall. RSVP By Saturday, 2 April for catering purposes to Christine Laird 9045 4235 or Fax: 9045 4602, or Audrey Tiller 9045 4021, or stmary@ westnet.com.au.

EVERY SUNDAY

Gate of Heaven Catholic Radio

Join the Franciscans of the Immaculate every Sunday from 7.30-9pm 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 the church and shrine open daily between 9am-5pm. Enq Sacri 9447 3292.

THIRD SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Oblates of St Benedict

2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, South Perth. Oblates are affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey of New Norcia. All welcome to study the rule of St Benedict and its relevance to the everyday life of today for lay people.

Vespers and tea later. Enq: Secretary 9457 5758.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

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 to the priesthood or Religious life hear clearly God’s loving call to them.

LAST MONDAY OF EVERY MONTH

Christian Spirituality Presentation

7.30-9.15pm at the Church hall behind St Swithan’s Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie. Stephanie Woods presents The Desert Period of Christianity, 260 to 600AD. From this time period came the understanding of the monastic lifestyle and contemplative prayer. No cost. Enq Lynne 9293 3848.

EVERY TUESDAY

Novena and Benediction to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

6pm at the Pater Noster Church, Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Mass at 5.30pm. Enq: John 0408 952 194.

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: 0423 907 869 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Rd, Bateman. A beautiful, prayerful, and sung devotion will be accompanied by Exposition and followed by Benediction. All are welcome. Enq: George Lopez on 9310 9493(h) or 9325 2010(w).

EVERY THURSDAY

Divine Mercy

11am at St John and Paul Church, Pine Tree Gully Rd, Willetton. Pray the Rosary and Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and for the consecrated life especially here in John Paul parish, conclude with veneration of the First Class Relic of St Faustina. Please do come and join us in prayer. Enq: John 9457 7771.

The Cathedral Praise Meeting

7.45pm at Faith Centre, 450 Hay St, Perth. When the Spirit Comes – A Holy Spirit Seminar. Each evening –worship, teaching, small group sharing, refreshments. All welcome. Enq: Flame Ministries International 9382 3668.

EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Taize Prayer and Meditation

7.30-8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Church, 3 Kitchener St, North Beach. Prayer and meditation using songs from the Taize phenomenon. In peace and candlelight we make our pilgrimage. All are invited. Enq: Joan 9448 4457 or Office 9448 4888.

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

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 St John and Paul’s parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Songs of Praise, sharing by a priest followed by Thanksgiving Mass and light refreshments after Mass. All welcome to attend and bring your family and friends. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913, Ann: 0412 166 164 or catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigils

7pm-1.30am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park, Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357 and at St Gerard Majella Church, Ravenswood Dr and Majella Rd, Mirrabooka, Enq: Fr Giosue 9349 2315, John or Joy 9344 2609. The Vigils consist of two Masses, Adoration, Benediction, Prayers and Confession in reparation for the outrages committed against the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. All welcome.

Continued from page 18...

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s parish, Wood St, Inglewood. Reconciliation, praise and worship, Exposition of Blessed Sacrament, Benediction, Anointing of the Sick, and special blessing. Celebrants Fr Sam and other clergy. All welcome. Enq: Priscilla 0433 457 352, Catherine 0433 923 083 or Mary-Ann 0409 672 304.

Healing and Anointing Mass

8.45am at Pater Noster, Myaree. Reconciliation, followed by Mass including Anointing of the Sick, Praise and Worship to St Peregrine and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. All welcome. Enq: Joy 9337 7189.

AA ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Is alcohol costing you more than just money? Enq: AA 9325 3566.

OPPORTUNITY FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

Emmanuel Self-Help Centre for People with Disabilities is looking for volunteers to transport newspapers and other recyclable paper from its Perth office to a Canning Vale paper mill about every six weeks. Manual car driver’s licence required. Physical fitness is advantageous as heavy lifting is involved; Centre staff will assist. Enq: Fr Paul 9328 8113 or emmanuelcentre@westnet.com.au.

AL  ANON FAMILY GROUPS

If your home is unhappy because somebody drinks too much, we can help with understanding and supporting families and friends of problem drinkers. Enq: 9325 7528.

PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND

St Peter’s parish in Inglewood is organising a visit to Jordan, Israel and Egypt from 13-26 March 2011. The pilgrimage will cost A$3,990, everything included. Fr Sam will be the Spiritual Director. Eng Jim 0411 61 5239, zawnaing@optusnet.com.au.

SPANISH LESSONS OFFERED AT WHITFORDS

PARISH FOR WORLD YOUTH DAY, MADRID

2011

Beginner classes commence 9 February on Wednesday evenings 6.45-7.30pm and Saturday mornings 10.15-11am. Cost - $5 per class or $40 for 10 classes if paid in full at the beginning of the term. All classes will take place in venues at Our Lady of the Mission Catholic Church, Camberwarra Dr, Craigie. Enq: Noeme 9307 4038 or Shirley-Ann 9407 8156.

CRUISE ON THE RIVER NILE

Sightseeing Tour of Jordan and Egypt

A 14-day package departs Perth, Sunday, 10 July 2011. Accompanying priest, Fr Joe Carroll from the Redemptorist Monastery, Perth. Enq: Fadua 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877.

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

ESPERANCE 3 bedroom house f/furnished Ph 09 9076 5083.

BAYSWATER TO LET, spacious three bedroom, two bath house on bus route $325 per week. Ph: 9272 1085 evenings.

MATURE WOMAN SEEKS

SHORT TERM HOUSESIT or cheap rental up to $150/wk granny flat/side of house. 0448 938 348.

TRADE SERVICES

BRENDON HANDYMAN

SERVICES Home, building maintenance, repairs and renovations. NOR. Ph 0427 539 588.

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph Nigel 9242 2952.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd

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

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

FURNITURE REMOVAL

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

LAWN MOWING

WRR LAWN MOWING & 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.

WALK WITH HIM

23RD S SUNDAY ORDINARY TIME

Gr Isa 8: 23-9:3 A great light

Ps 26:1,4,13-14 The Lord, my light

1Cor 1:10-13,17 Believe in one Lord

Mt 4:12-23 Repent

24 M St Francis de Sales, bishop, doctor of the church (M)

Wh Heb 9:15, 24-28 Anew covenant

Ps 97:1-6 Ring out your joy

Mk 3: 22-30 Spirit of forgiveness

CLASSIFIEDS

Deadline: 11am Monday

FOR SALE

ART FOR THE CATHEDRAL www.margaretfane.com.au.

SETTLEMENTS

ARE YOU BUYING OR SELLING

real estate or a business? Why not ask Excel Settlements for a quote for your settlement. We offer reasonable fees, excellent service and no hidden costs. Ring Excel on 9481 4499 for a quote. Check our web site on www.excelsettlements.com.

BOOK BINDING

NEW BOOK BINDING, General Book Repairs; Rebinding; New Ribbons; Old Leather Bindings Restored.

Tydewi Bindery 0422 968 572.

OPPORTUNITIES

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Work from Home - P/T or F/T, 02 8230 0290 or visit www.dreamlife1.com.

FLORIST

15% OFF SILK BRIDAL BOUQUETS UNTIL 31 JAN 2010 with orders over $300. Specialist fresh and silk wedding flowers by design. All areas with delivery. Customised service. Showroom opened Tues–Fri 9am – 5pm, Sat by appointment. Phone Johanna 0434 390 363.

25 Tu THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL, APOSTLE (Feast)

Wh Acts 22:3-16 Who are you, Lord?

[Alt. Acts 9:1-22 Go into the city

Ps 116:1-2 Praise the Lord

Mk 16:15-18 Proclaim Good News!

26 W Australia Day Wh Isa 32:15-18 A peaceful home

Ps 84:9-14 A voice of peace

1Cor 12:4-11 One Spirit, one Lord

[Alt. Rom 12:9-13 Uniting effort]

Mt 5:1-12 Sources of blessing

[Alt. Lk 12-22-32 You must not worry]

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.

CONVENIENT LOCATIONS FOR BIBLES, BOOKS CARDS, CDs/DVDs, candles, medals, statues and gifts at Ottimo. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade, 671 Hay Street, Perth. Ph 9322 4520. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 10am2pm and at Station Street Market Subiaco on Fri-Sun 9am-5pm.

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

NEW SHOP OPENED SOR

APARACIDAS EMPORIUM

Shop 2 – 101 Calista Ave, Calista 6167. Retailer in Catholic products. CDs, Rosaries, cards, books, statues and more. Tues–Fri 9am – 5pm, Sat by appointment.

27 Th St Angela Merici, virgin (O)

Gr Heb 10:19-25 Love and good words

Ps 23:1-6 A pure heart

Mk 4:21-25 Note what you hear

28 F St Thomas Aquinas, priest, doctor of the church (M)

Wh Heb 10:32-39 We keep faithful

Ps 36:3-6,23-24,39-40 Trust in the Lord Mk 4:26-34 The harvest is ready

29 S Heb 11:1-2, 8-19 People of faith Gr Lk 1:69-75 Love fulfilled Mk 4:35-41 Be calm!

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION

Refugees and Levites

Notre Dame Theology lecturer and Atttadale Parish Priest FR SEAN FERNANDEZ sheds new light on Australia’s illegal immigrant-asylum seeker debate through Church teaching and Scripture

Unearthing Treasure

By Fr Sean Fernandez

This article is a bit of a departure from my previous efforts. I have generally dealt with historical or theological topics; here, I deal with an issue of some currency with legal and political dimensions. My topic is ‘boat people’.

‘Boat people’ is a metonym for asylum seekers who come here by sea. I shall focus here on boat people because they are continually in the headlines in Australia.

Some facts on asylum seekers in the Australian context: ‘The majority of asylum seekers arrive in Australia with a valid visa and live in the community while they pursue their claims’ according to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. A background note of the Department of Parliamentary Services notes that ‘estimates vary, but it is likely that between 96 and 99 per cent of asylum applicants arrived by air originally’.

And more than 91 per cent of boat people are found to be refugees as opposed to 20-30 per cent of those who arrive by air.

Australia is one of 147 countries that is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The Convention was a response to the situation of Europe after the Second World War and dealt solely with those persons displaced by conflicts preceding 1951.

In 1967, a protocol was signed which removed the limitations of the 1951 Convention. Australia signed on to the Convention in 1954 and the Protocol in 1973.

The Migration Act gives effect to our obligations under the Convention and Protocol; it provides that an asylum seeker is to be granted a protection visa if he or she is someone whom we have a duty to protect under the Convention and Protocol.

In the Convention, a refugee

is defined as someone who has a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.’

Australia has processes for deciding whether someone is entitled to a protection visa. Recently, the High Court found that the regimen under which asylum seeker applications were considered in our excised territories “did not treat the provisions of the Migration Act 1958 (Commonwealth) and the decisions of Australian courts as binding and, further, failed to observe the requirements of procedural fairness”.

Bishop Joe Grech said after the judgement that “the Bishops of Australia sincerely hope that this is the end of the so-called ‘Pacific solution’ in which those seeking asylum in Australia are moved to remote offshore locations in order to avoid their access to Australian laws. Mere political expediency is no justification for detaining such people in remote areas.” I shall briefly comment on two common beliefs regarding ‘boat people’.

1 - Boat people have come here illegally. But asylum seekers who come here by boat are not illegal entrants. Under the Convention, they have a right to seek asylum in another country. If an asylum seeker’s claim is judged to fall within the terms of the Convention, then they are deemed to be a refugee and are granted a protection visa.

2 - Boat people are queue jumpers. But there is no queue. Claimants have a right to go to a country that is party to the Convention. Australia took in fewer than 15,000 refugees last year – we are one of the few countries with an annual quota, but the number we take in is not large. There is an obvious response to complaints of queue jumping; raise the quota or do not include those who are processed in Australia in the quota.

There has been much ink spilt discussing this issue in legal terms. I would like to suggest some reflections from the perspective of faith.

Care for the asylum seeker is an expression of the consistent Christian ethic of life. Cardinal Bernadin said that “when human life is considered ‘cheap’ or easily expendable in one area, eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy.” We care for all human beings in all the stages

of life because all life is loved by God and sacred to Him. Daniel Groody, in an article on a theology of migration, warns against dehumanisation of the asylum seeker. We label people for convenience, but in the process there is the danger that we forget their humanity and dignity. We need to keep before us the idea that the refugee is an individual with dignity, created in the image of the living God. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope”) teaches us that people have a right to ‘everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one’s own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom, even in matters religious’ (26).

If they cannot meet these essential needs in their homeland, then they have a right to go where they can. We must not forget the human face behind the label, the frightened person

with arms outstretched. ‘Boat people,’ asylum seekers, are our brothers and sisters; this is not just sentimentality but a reality deeply rooted in the Gospel. Christian Revelation reinterprets human nature, its unity and relationality (Caritas in Veritate).

The Church herself is the sign and instrument of the unity of the human family (Lumen Gentium 1).

Citizenship of earthly lands is not insignificant (though a relatively recent construct), but what should be more important to us, Christians, is the awareness that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God.

This citizenship radically qualifies all other forms of identity.

Finally, we may choose to avert our eyes from the boat person who comes to our shores, but then are we any different from the priest and the Levite who crossed the road to avoid the man beaten by robbers (Lk. 10.25-37)?

The Lord asks us to be a neighbour to the person in need, whoever he or she is; it may not be convenient or we may not like them, but that is all beside the point for ‘just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’ (Matt 25.40).

I say I say Church ups the ante against the devil we don’t know...

By Mark Reidy

As strange as it may sound, the Catholic Church believes in the devil more than the Church of Satan doesat least according to their public declarations. The Catechism is very definite about how Catholics should view the devil: “He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature” (CCC 395).

The Church of Satan on the other hand is more ambivalent. In 1966, its founder, Anton Lavey, proclaimed Satanism to be a philosophy - one that held

individualism as one of its main values. “We are our own gods”, he announced. “A religion based on self-indulgence, carnality and pleasure, instead of self-denial.”

The official teaching of the Catholic Church is, and always has been, that Satan is an actual being, and not merely a philosophy, or “the absence of God” as some other Christian faiths promulgate. And She remains adamant that this reality is distinct from the psychological explanations provided by the medical profession. Yet how much of this belief is truly accepted by those of us in the pews, and even amongst our clergy?

Since the pre-Vatican II preaching of fire and brimstone and eternal damnation were replaced by a focus on God as a loving and merciful Father, reference to the devil seems to have

gone the way of “witch-burning”, or more recently, “limbo”, and been lumped into the category of mediaeval, outdated thinking. Even the prayer to St Michael the Archangel, seeking protection from “the wickedness and snares of the devil”, routinely prayed at the end of every Mass since 1886, was dropped.

Evil personified was certainly not a subject that I remember being taught during my 13 years at a Catholic school in the 70s and 80s, nor preached at any of the churches I have since attended. And I cannot recall a conversation on the topic, whether with believing or secular company. It seems the subject is socially faux pas - an embarrassment to rational thinking - and therefore, best left alone.

Yet despite the reticence within both Catholic and secular cir-

cles to even address the topic, the understanding from the top echelon of the Church - that the devil is real and has the potential to wield power over individualshas remained unaltered since the time of Christ. “When the Church asks publicly and authoritatively in the name of Jesus Christ that a person or object be protected against the power of the Evil One and withdrawn from his dominion, it is called exorcism. Jesus performed exorcism and from Him the Church has received the power and office of exorcising” (CCC 1674).

In fact, according to Fr Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief Exorcist who claims to have performed over 70,000 of them, there has been an increased number of people in recent times approaching the Church to exorcise them of demonic influence.

This, he claims, is due to the growing number of people who, either willingly or inadvertently, are exploring spiritual realms within the New Age movement or are engaging in occult practices that the Church explicitly warns against. As a result, Pope Benedict has responded by encouraging Bishops around the world to specifically appoint and train more priests in the rite of exorcism.

It may seem paradoxical that, despite the waning of belief in the reality of the devil, the Church is upping the ante in Her fight against him, but it should, in fact, come as no surprise. We need only recall the prophetic words of 20th century US Archbishop Fulton Sheen who once said, “Satan never gains so many cohorts as when, in his shrewdness, he spreads the rumour that he is long since dead.”

The Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre in South Australia, opened in 1999 to house 400 people in response to an increase in unauthorised arrivals but ended up housing up to 1500 asylum seekers before it was closed under a storn of controversy 2003. PHOTO: JESUIT REFUGEE SERVICES

Refugees fleeing strife-torn areas is not an exclusively local concern, but a global one. Here, Thai police escort a group of Myanmar refugees crossing from Myawadi, Myanmar, to Mae Sot, Thailand, in November. Church workers rushed humanitarian aid to thousands fleeing to Thailand to escape fighting between an ethnic militia and Myanmar’s military. PHOTO: CNS/CHAIWAT SUBPRASOM, REUTERS