The Record Newspaper 19 September 2007

Southern Cross Aged Care celebrates 40 years of love Page12

WHAT’S THIS? Are Perth youth actually embracing the Church? Page 6

SHOCK RESIGNATION: Archbishop Pius Ncube steps down Page 10

JPII relics available

Vicariate of Rome now accepting requests for relics of Karol Wojtyla

Faithful can make requests to Rome via fax or post

VATICAN CITY, (Zenit.org)People who want to receive a relic “ex indumentis” - from the clothing - or a holy card of Pope John Paul II, may do so by writing to the Vicariate of Rome. The Vicariate of Rome is accepting requests via mail, fax or e-mail for the religious items. The petition should be sent to “Holy Cards and Relics Continued - Page 3

PRAYER FOR ASKING GRACES THROUGH THE INTERCESSION OF THE SERVANT OF GOD POPE

JOHN PAUL II

OBlessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with Pope John Paul II and for allowing the tenderness of your Fatherly care, the glory of the cross of Christ, and the splendour of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him.

Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with you.

Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore, hoping that he will soon be numbered among your saints. Amen.

Throwing out out the Child the

The fallout is increasing for Amnesty International following its embrace of abortion - the head of the Australian Bishops’ Conference is the latest to speak out. - Vista 1-3

Australia’s Bishops hope to reach those who have suffered the distress of marital breakdown and divorce with a new easy-to-read booklet which outlines the Church’s teaching in this difficult area and offers pastoral care and support. The booklet, entitled Divorce and the Catholic Church: Frequently Asked Questions, is presented in the same question and answer format which proved so popular with the booklet, Marriage in the Catholic Church and covers questions such Continued - Page 2

Leschenault MP announces private Bill based on Scandinavian

Leschenault MLA Dan Sullivan will present a private member’s Bill to State Parliament which would make it an offence for anyone to use a prostitute.

The Bill will also make it an offence to advertise or pro-

mote prostitution. He said he was encouraged by the growing groundswell of support for the Swedish solution which made it an offence for anyone to pay for the services of a prostitute.

The MP’s announcement came the day before the visit on

Tuesday this week of Swedish expert Gunilla Ekberg, who was due to meet with Labor and Liberal MPs, Attorney General Jim McGinty and Greens MLC Giz Watson.

“This approach was adopted in Sweden and has proved to be

an effective way to deter people from using prostitutes and has helped many women escape this foul trade,” Mr Sullivan said.

“This Bill represents a stark contrast to the legislation introduced by Minister Jim McGinty and will give all politicians the

approach

option to oppose prostitution once and for all.”

He says it is high time politicians bit the bullet and made it illegal to pay for the services of a prostitute.

At present the law does not

Continued - Page 2

JUSTICE IS FOR EVERYONE

Dan Sullivan

Sensitive: The new publication from Australia’s bishops, above, offers advice on the possibilities and process of annulment.

With ecclesiastical approval

CARDINAL CAMILLO RUINI

The Holy Father’s Vicar General

A favourite Freo son celebrates golden mark

A LIFE OF PRAYER

...areyoucalledtotheBenedictinelifeofdivine praiseandeucharisticprayerfortheChurch?

Contact the:

TYBURN NUNS

Faith, fraternity and football – Father Don Hughes’ 50 years of priesthood has it all

By Anthony Barich

It’s neither surprise nor coincidence that the flowers outside St Patrick’s Basilica in Fremantle are red and white.

For these are the colours of Fr Don Hughes’ beloved South Fremantle Bulldogs WAFL team.

But, truth be told, they’d be purple too if Fr Hughes had his way, adding a distinct Dockers flavour to the Fremantle icon.

Fr Hughes is a born and bred Fremantle boy, and all he ever knew growing up was Oblate Fathers, which was why, after entering St Charles’ Seminary, he joined their Novitiate in Sorrento, Victoria in 1953.

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate have been involved with the Fremantle parish since Bishop Matthew Gibney introduced them to the Diocese of Perth from Dublin, Ireland in 1894.

The Basilica presbytery is now the Oblates’ Archdiocesan House, with current parish priest Fr John Sherman OMI its rector and superior, who gave the homily at the Mass celebrating Fr Don’s Golden Jubilee last Sunday.

Each Oblate has left an indelible mark on the parish.

For Fr Don – who suspects

his cricket-loving father named him after the great D Bradman – the red and white flowers are as much a tribute to his father as the football club that bears the colours.

His father, William (aka “Doozer” Hughes) was a former player and president of the South Fremantle club, and the Bulldogs’ best and fairest award is, to this day, called the WJ Hughes award.

Fr Don even had the pleasure of blessing the Dockers’ new multi-million dollar facilities, located at the Bulldogs’ home ground adjacent to the old Heritage-listed prison and the famous markets.

The Mass Frs Hughes and Sherman concelebrated with fellow Oblate Fathers Gaetano Nanni, Gregory Watson and John Archibold and St Charles’ Seminary spiritual director Fr Nino Vinciguerra also coincidentally fell on the day before the anniversary of his baptism 75 years ago by Fr John Ryan.

Fr Ryan, another Oblate, built the nearby Christ the King Church at Beaconsfield while assistant priest at the Basilica, where he spent 10 years before eventually retiring there.

Fr Ryan had a gruff voice but, Fr Don says, was much loved by parishioners, and was a major influence on his vocation.

A talk by then-Dr Launcelot Goody, the future Archbishop of Perth, given at CBC Fremantle where Fr Don was a student, sealed his decision to join the priesthood, which he did with the late Fr Pat Ahern in 1946.

Fr Don served as an altar boy for Fr Ryan, in what proved to be an important part of his formation before his Oblate order sent him to Massey, New Zealand; Liverpool, UK; Rosebud, Victoria; Tea Tree Gully, South Australia; and inaugural rector of Mazenod College, Lesmurdie. He also ran the Oblates’ Melbourne

seminary.All this was undertaken with his typical panache and good humour, despite serious bypass surgery 20 years ago.

As Fr Sherman said in his homily at Sunday’s Mass at the Basilica, it’s all part of Fr Don’s life revolving around responding to God’s call - redolent of the Oblate reflection for September, “We are called”.

“Fr Don’s attitude was always ‘if that is what is needed, I will do my best’,” Fr Sherman said.

“His best was always done in good humour, warmth of relationship with his fellow Oblates and trust in the presence of Christ to give him strength.”

Fr Sherman added that people, be their vocation to the priesthood, married, single or religious life, can learn much from the way in which Fr Don has carried out his ministry.

“Listening to God’s call can embarrass us and make us feel inadequate, but in fact it gives us the graces to go on,” Fr Sherman said.

“God shares Himself to give us the strength to stand up and be who He has called us to be. As we look back we see the hand of God, and the power of the Eucharist.” He thanked Fr Don for “saying ‘yes’ to God, and for his witness in celebrating the Eucharist. “We thank Fr Don for his availability to the Lord’s work and pray that Mary Immaculate will continue to guide his path in the future. Fremantle can indeed be proud of Fr Don, our priest and our Oblate.”

MP announces private Bill on prostitution in WA

Continued from Page 1

allow anyone to run a brothel although the Police often do not enforce this law under a socalled containment policy.

The act of prostitution is not illegal.

Mr Sullivan said the vast majority of people he spoke with said they opposed prostitution and would like to see Parliament take action to close down the brothel industry.

prostitute working in a brothel?” Mr Sullivan said.

“I have a simple question for anyone who supports legalising brothels and licensing prostitutes and that is: would you want your child to become a

“A minority of people argue that we will never get rid of prostitution so it should be condoned and licensed.

“If we follow that foolhardy logic then we have to admit we are unlikely ever to get rid of dangerous illicit drugs like heroin but that does not mean we should ever condone their use.” Mr Sullivan said it was well known that crime and prostitution went hand in hand and this had not changed in places where brothels had been legalised.

Bishops offer new resource on divorce,

Continued from Page 1

as: Why is marriage so important to the Church? Is it always ‘for keeps’? Why do some couples feel that they are no longer able to ‘live’ their marriages? How should spouses respond to challenges in marriage?

The booklet also explains clearly the possibilities and the process of annulment and the question of whether divorced people can continue to receive Communion.

Chairman of the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life,

Bishop Eugene Hurley, said the Bishops produced the booklet because they were deeply aware of a pressing pastoral need for such information for Catholics whose marriage had broken down.

“Marriage breakdown is always terribly sad and distressing for all involved and none of us are untouched by the deep pain experienced by family members or friends whose marriage has broken down,” said Bishop Hurley, the new Bishop of Darwin.

annulment

In the introduction to the booklet, the Bishops say that these hurts and concerns are compounded when they impact on another sacrament, the Eucharist.

“As a Church we have a responsibility to develop the great way of life to which we are all called while at the same time responding with all our hearts to the complexities of human relationships and actions. It is not easy, and being human, we sometimes fail,” Bishop Hurley said.

Baguley recaccounts@iinet.net.au PRODUCTION

Terence Boylen production@therecord.com.au

“This small booklet is an attempt to explain some of the principles underlying the Church’s approach to issues around divorce, remarriage and the Eucharist.

“It is hoped that it provides encouragement and guidance to all who are grappling with the pain of divorce and, in particular, with its implications for their life as members of the body of Christ, the Church.”

To access a pdf version of the booklet go to: http://www.acbc.catholic.org.au/ documents/20070913267.pdf

Celebration time: Fr John Sherman (left) speaks highly of Fr Don’s response to “the call” from God. Right: the choristers sing God’s praises.

Blessings: Fr Don Hughes sends blessings of peace to parishoners at his 50th anniversary Mass. PHOTOS: ANTHONY BARICH

Next generation: Fr Don Hughes mingles with a young parishioner after his 50th celebration Mass.

Academic seeks faith education

■ By Anthony Barich

A senior Notre Dame lecturer in sacramental theology says the incredible thirst today’s youth have for truth should encourage secular universities to abandon their long-held commitment to secularism and embrace religion in their teaching programs.

Join Pope Benedict XVI in prayer - September

If religion was to be introduced into public universities, they would be reluctant to have proselytising on their campus, so religion would be taught academically rather than with a denominational focus.

“At UNDA we are free to use Catholic concepts, and we don’t back away from that, but it could be repackaged in a secular context for public universities,” she said.

Dr Clare Johnson, senior lecturer in sacramental theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, says Australian secular universities are behind the times compared to great colleges like Harvard, Yale and Oxford which all have schools of divinity. She also says that by remaining committed to secularism, Australian secular universities are denying their heritage – as the Catholic Church’s monastic communities started the university system where scholars gathered to teach and share knowledge.

Her comments came after Gary Bouma, professor of sociology at Monash University, told a conference for Muslim students at the University of Western Sydney last week that the secularist stance of universities was no longer appropriate due to the rise of religion in the public sphere.

Dr Johnson said that although UNDA’s courses are Catholic-centred, it could assist secular universities to establish courses from a sociological rather than a catechetical approach.

“Secular universities in Australia have a tendency to back off from religious-focused courses,” she said. “That’s part of Australian society and its ‘fair go’ approach, as we try not to give precedence to one religion over the other.”

Dr Johnson said the rising interest in the spiritual “may be a generation related issue”.

“Among the young students I teach, there is a rising curiosity about religious matters. Though some don’t have a Catholic background, there is still a yearning,” she said.

“That’s part of the human spirit, to yearn for something beyond ourselves. Karl Rahner – 20th century Jesuit theologian – said that every human person has an innate apprehension of something beyond them which he calls ‘The horizon of all Being’. Humans are more than body and mind, we are spirit as well, and sometimes that gets lost. It is this yearning that’s not being met by an ideology like secularism. It’s a generational shift where the demand has come from the younger generation.”

UNDA requirees students to complete units in theology, philosophy and ethics to graduate any course.

Dr Johnson says that when students are introduced to an understanding of the world beyond a secular context, “often they’re surprised with what they find”.

“It’s inviting them into conversation about some of the deeper issues of life,” she said.

“We don’t just deal with Catholic teachings. We spend five weeks on Judaism, then Christianity generally then Catholicism, and even Islam gets a mention.

“After all, Muslims, Jews and Christians all count Abraham as their father.”

John Paul II relics now available

Continued from Page 1 Service,” and should indicate a postal address.

The holy cards contain the prayer to obtain graces through the intercession of the Servant of God John Paul II (page 1) and can be requested in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.

Though the vicariate is not charging for the holy card, donations are accepted to cover the printing and mailing expenses.

For more information, visit the official multilingual Web site

of the postulation of the cause of beatification and canonisation.

Requests should be sent to: Vicariate of Rome - 3rd Floor “Totus Tuus” Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, 6/A Rome, Italy 00184 Tel: 0011+39 06 69893723 Fax: 0011+39 06 69886240

The Vicariate’s Web site can be found on the Internet at: www.vicariatusurbis.org/Beatificazione/ Italiano/LeIniziative/RichiediUnaReliquiaExInd umentisESantino.htm

Go back to the beginning

While we hope that every marriage has a happy ending we can be sure that they have nearly all had a happy beginning. It is the story of two people falling in love and wanting to spend the rest of their lives together happily ever after. Make sure you take time to reflect on and recount the happiest moments of your marriage.

General intention: Romanian Assembly - That the ecumenical assembly in Romania this month may contribute to the growth of unity among all Christians.

Mission intention: That, following Christ most joyfully, all missionaries may know how to overcome the difficulties they meet in everyday life.

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Regensburg opened up the real issues we face

Is it possible that whatever sustains reality can reveal itself to our hearts?

Pope Benedict’s speech one year on: faith, reason, dialogue

■ By Associate Professor John Kinder

One year ago, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg, Germany.

The lecture was hailed by some as epoch-making and one of the great speeches of our time, but from others it provoked angry reactions: Islamic groups issued death threats, and exponents of the neo-liberal Western establishment told the Pope to stick to his job, i.e. running churches and spiritual affairs, since faith is supposed to have nothing to do with real life.

The questions opened up by the Pope lie at the heart of any possibility of meaningful dialogue between people of different faiths and none. This is as important for multicultural Australia as it is for other parts of the world.

At the centre of the Pope’s speech was an appeal to “broaden our concept of reason and its application”.

A recent book takes up the theme of the nature and use of reason in response to Benedict’s Regensburg lecture. Five writers, from Europe, the Middle East and North America, approach the lecture from the perspective of their own faith tradition: Catholic, Muslim, Jew, atheist.

May God Save Reason (Cantagalli, 2007) was presented last month at the 28th annual “Meeting for Friendship among the Peoples” in Rimini, Italy.

The “Meeting”, organised by Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation, is the world’s largest summer cultural festival, lasting a week and attracting 700,000 visitors.

The first impression of an Australian present at the book presentation was that here was a serious challenge to the glib and widespread assumption that the world is divided neatly into enlightened, post-modern thinkers and primitive, pre-industrial obscurantists.

Three of the book’s authors spoke at the Meeting on the question of faith, reason and the possibility of dialogue.

While openly prepared to disagree with each other and with Benedict XVI, they did share the Pope’s conviction that genuine dia-

logue between the world’s cultures and religions will only be possible if “we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and once more disclose its vast horizons”.

The withered version of reason bequeathed us by the Enlightenment traps us inside our own predetermined categories, and what doesn’t fit the categories simply doesn’t exist.

But the true dignity of human reason lies in openness to reality in all its factors.

Reason is not a cage for defining reality but a window thrown open to all the facets and possibilities of reality as we experience it.

Reason cannot stand outside, or before, experience. As French philosopher Jean Guitton puts it, “a reasonable person is one who submits reason to experience.”

The phenomenological basis of the Christian faith is recovered in Benedict’s account of the intertwining of Greek reason and Judeo-Christian belief.

But at the Rimini Meeting, Sari Nusseibeh, rector of Al Quds University, Jerusalem, recalled that Hellenic roots (pre-Socratic, Aristotelian or neo-Platonic) are

Book launch at The Record a hit with young

Mainly young people filled The Record’s soon-to-be-opened bookshop on Friday evening September 7 to hear one of Australia’s most gifted communicators of the Theology of the Body - a celibate priest who has written a best-selling book on sex.

Fr Anthony Percy, a parish priest of the Diocese of Canberra-Goulburn is the author of Theology of the Body Made Simple, an Australian publishing success story which has now been translated into Chinese, Korean and Polish.

The book is a beginner’s guide to the topic which has been garnering increasing interest among mainly Catholic but also other Christian communities around the world in the last decade for its surprising

undoubtedly imprinted in the Islamic intellectual tradition as much as in the Christian intellectual tradition, “despite the opinion implicit in the Pope’s speech that it is Christianity that is most significantly Hellenic”.

Nusseibeh astutely pointed out that when the Pope insists on the “imprint” of Hellenic thought in Christian faith, he is speaking principally to his fellow Christians, and especially those who have claimed in recent years that Christianity needs to free itself of its Greek heritage.

This was echoed by Joseph Weiler, Jean Monnet Chair of Constitutional Law at New York University. Speaking as an orthodox Jew, Weiler noted that the Pope’s address was aimed at three types of public: the Catholic faithful, other religions, and our general political and cultural environment.

Weiler argued strongly, in his A Christian Europe (2003), against the proposal to delete any reference to Christianity in the Preamble to the European Constitution. “True tolerance”, he wrote, “is not where you hide, but where you overcome the temptation of coercion. This

focus – the link between our identity as male and female, God’s nature, and our eventual destiny in heaven.

The evening served as an effective launch in WA of the second edition of Fr Percy’s book, but a third edition is already expected within months.

Record editor Peter Rosengren introduced Fr Percy saying that Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is to our understanding of gender, marriage and relationships as Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was to physics.

But, he said, many in the Church have yet to catch up with its importance. Only a few days before a priest had telephoned The Record to complain about its “obsession” with prostitution, and yet clearly the current debate is an example of where the TOB is highly relevant.

Fr Percy spoke briefly then spent more

is why an Orthodox Jew can ask Europe not to be afraid of its past and of its own Christian identity.”

The link between faith, reason and culture was developed by young Muslim academic Wael Farouq, Professor of Islamic Sciences at the Copto-Catholic Faculty of Sakakini, Cairo.

Farouq affirmed: “I find no contradiction in myself between the convictions between the Pope’s affirmations, i.e. that reason lies at the basis of faith and that faith is opposed to violence, and that Islam is a religion of love, mercy and reason.”

This position rested on a “broader” use of reason. For Farouq embraced Benedict’s category of “reasonableness”, as opposed to positivist “rationality”. Reasonableness is a relationship between perception and presence, between the human “I” and the real, the mechanism and the tool for the production of knowledge through relationship with reality.

He went on: “It is reasonableness that prevents religious thought from becoming ideology (this is precisely the problem of radical Islam), and which would mean its definitive resignation from human life”.

This convergence on the faithreason nexus, among thinkers crossing geographical, cultural and religious divides, reminded me how far we have come in impoverishing both reason and faith.

Reason has been shrunk down to the measure of human perception, and at the same time faith has been explained away as a residual expression of pre-modern ignorance and fear (see recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray, and others).

But the religious sense arises in humans not from fear but from wonder. For the ancient Greeks wonder was the basis of every philosophy.

If I were to be born now, with the understanding of the world I have now, my first, my very first reaction as I opened my eyes would be wonder. Wonder at the very existence of reality, a reality made up of sensations, of things, including my own self. Just watch a young baby as it grows into understanding of the world. No fear there, but eyes full of wonder, arms outstretched to embrace the marvel of reality.

Fear, if it comes, comes second. And anyway, fear of what? Why should we be fearful of the

than an hour taking questions from the audience on everything from the link between the TOB and natural family planning to how best to open friends to its possibilities.

Asked whether there was any differ-

dark, of death? Only because those unknowns can deprive us of something that we already know is good. If it were not good to be alive, why fear death at all?

The religious sense grows out of wonder at the fact that reality exists, that I exist as a part of reality, and that my existing is obviously not the result of anything within my control. If I exist, then I depend on something that has somehow brought me into existence and is maintaining me in existence in this very moment.

But this could end up as a blind alley, unless we live our religious sense in a reasonable way. If reason and faith are defined a priori as belonging to universes that have nothing in common, then my religious sense has nowhere to go, and must remain in a subjective, unverifiable and ultimately meaningless search for meaning.

A fully open use of reason acknowledges freely that the existence of reality depends on a dimension beyond the measurable and the comprehensible (as Amanda Shaw demonstrates in her account of “God and Imaginary Numbers” in the latest First Things).

It recognises the nature of reality as, fundamentally, mysterious. And since humans are incapable of reaching – let alone defining –this mystery by their own devices, the most reasonable stance for us to take in front of reality is to be open to the possibility that whatever sustains all reality may reveal itself to the hearts and minds of humans.

This is the cry of poets and artists in all cultures in all times of recorded history.

Our search for meaning takes one of two forms: the path of reason and the path of faith. The Pope’s lecture and the responses from the writers at the Rimini Meeting claim that these two paths are mutually dependent: each needs the other to flower.

The opportunity and the challenge work in both directions: faith must submit itself to verification by human reason (Benedict defines theology as “an inquiry into the rationality of faith”), and reason – in order to be fully itself – must free itself from the straightjacket of the empirically verifiable in an openness to all the dimensions of the real.

Associate Professor John Kinder teaches Italian at the University of Western Australia and is the WA contact for Communion and Liberation.

ence between the way JPII and his successor thought on this issue, he said JPII approached it primarily as a philosopher whereas Benedict XVI is probably the greatest historical theologian of the Twentieth Century.

Afterwards, Fr Percy signed copies of his book which, as he explained, merely summarises the beginning of Pope John Paul II’s catecheses on the subject in order to open it up to the general reader.

Interestingly, the audience appeared to be overwhelmingly made up of people under 30 years of age, many of them teenagers, possibly reflecting the fact that in a time when an absence of values in sex appears to rule, increasing numbers of the young are looking for something they can trust.

Fr Percy’s book is available from The Record for $18.95 plus postage and handling.

No contest: The popular distinction between faith and reason is artificial, writes John Kinder, above. Pope Benedict is right on track in his analysis, he says.

On the dotted line: Canberra-Goulburn parish priest Fr Anthony Percy speaks at The Record bookshop on September 7. PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Australia’s role as a gobal citizen

Social Justice Sunday will be observed around nation on September 30

■ By Paul Gray

The Australian bishops’ Social Justice Sunday statement, Who is My Neighbour, opens with the words of Deacon Gary Stone, a military chaplain who first served with the army in East Timor in 2000.

“Please don’t forget us!” the people have told Gary after each of his many visits there. His Brisbane parish is now partnered with a Timorese parish. It’s a partnership which “embodies Jesus’ call to love your neighbour as yourself and shows that average Australians can make a difference in difficult circumstances.”

Making the world a home in which all are welcome

Sketching an answer to the question of who is our neighbour, the bishops argue that today nations of the world are citizens of the world, just as individuals are citizens.

This makes it a duty for Australia, as a world citizen, to act more in the interests of those of our neighbours who do not share our prosperity and security.

Developing our world

Some history of the Church’s thinking on being a good global citizen is brought to light when we remember how Pope Paul VI, 40 years ago, published his Encyclical letter Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples.)

In the same year, Australians stopped using capital punishment, recognised the voting rights of indigenous Australians and encouraged poorer countries through initiatives like the Colombo Plan.

The Australian church’s annual Project Compassion campaign began in that same decade. Raising $115,000 for the overseas poor in its first year, last year Project Compassion raised $8.9 million.

Acting in solidarity

More recently, the late Pope John Paul II has given voice to two important concepts to be remembered when we consider our global duties. These are interdependence and solidarity.

While the rich and secure are not necessarily directly responsible for causing the poverty of the earth’s poor, nevertheless the rich and secure have some responsibility for their disadvantaged neighbours, even those living in another country, John Paul taught.

Living with globalisation

As a sign of globalisation, the bishops remind us that even the clothes Australians wear today are made in many more countries than ever before. “Would we purchase these clothes so cheaply if workers in these developing countries enjoyed the same conditions as Australian workers?” the bishops ask.

The bishops’ statement then reminds us of the exploitation of workers in poor countries, and of “the sickness of their children who find it difficult to breathe polluted air.”

Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel – “if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any credit?” - are a warning that we must be mindful of these neighbours from poor countries who are strangers to us.

Joseph Stiglitz, a one-time World Bank chief economist who is a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Sciences, says that today, there is a huge gap between “economic globalisation” and “political globalisation.”

“Because of the democratic deficit in the way globalisation is managed, its excesses have not been tempered,” Stiglitz warns.

Being a good global citizen

There are five particular challenges to

United Nations organisation, and of the goal of its becoming a more efficient instrument for promoting justice, solidarity and peace in the world. The World Trade Organisation, World Bank and other international institutions should be reformed to allow fairer treatment of the poor.

The bishops also warn that international organisations will fail humanity if they adopt a “narrow secularism” in their work.

4. Climate change

Australia’s stature as a global citizen which the bishops ask us to consider.

1. Aid, development and trade

The bishops approve the federal government’s 2005 doubling of the foreign aid budget (to $4 billion a year by 2010) but say that more, still, should be done.

They also approve the principle of concentrating our national aid efforts on poor countries in our region, saying it is appropriate for the government to act in the national interest in designing the aid program.

However there can be no objection to also helping the poorest countries of the earth, regardless of whether Australia has a special relationship with those countries, the bishops say.

The bishops also affirm the importance of “embedded relations” with poor countries, where Australians from all walks of life become directly involved with the citizens of poor nations. Good neighbours are not just tourists and law enforcers.

In the area of trade, rich countries have failed to create agreements with poor ones that are free and fair. This must be done.

The bishops quote Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, who says that economic growth for poor countries is “the real poverty buster.” While agreeing, the bishops also state that “market forces alone will not ensure “the equitable or full development of peoples.”

2. Military alliances and interventions

“Obligations to an ally cannot include an obligation to engage in war that is not justified,” the bishops state. This is the concluding remark in a passage reflecting on the Iraq war.

The Australian bishops, like the bishops of the United States, have previously ques-

tioned whether a pre-emptive military strike against another country is consistent with the Catholic teaching on just war.

The bishops acknowledge that Australia’s military alliance with the USA is an important part of our international security arrangements, but “we would fail in our duty as a good global citizen if we were again to take military action without our own thorough assessment of its morality and prospects, and without broad international approval.”

3. The United Nations and international finance

The bishops voice their support of the

As Christians, we are “stewards of a planet and its resources made by God, Creator of heaven and earth.” This means we are challenged to examine the planetary impact of our lifestyles, and of how we produce and consume energy.

The bishops acknowledge that the available research data on issues like climate change can seem contradictory and uncertain. But they urge prudence and a “precautionary principle” in decision-making while research remains a work in progress.

5. Border protection

Australia should abandon the “Pacific solution,” whereby our government is paying poor neighbouring countries to warehouse our problems, in the human form of asylum-seekers. “We are exploiting our poorer neighbours by paying money to Nauru and PNG to detain and process such people,” the bishops say.

The bishops agree that the people smuggling business should be actively opposed by all good global citizens. But even people engaged in “secondary movements” – that is, moving on from countries where they could theoretically claim asylum – should be processed in Australia while their health, security and identity are confirmed.

Our Christian

Vocation

Looking ahead to a federal election, the bishops urge Australians to engage in dialogue about our responsibility of global citizenship.

Echoing Pope Benedict, the bishops say that our sharing in the Eucharist gives rise to a service of charity towards our neighbour. This Eucharistic charity means that “I love even the person whom I do not like or even know,” as the Pope puts it.

Truth sets youth free

Fifty young adults gather in a parish hall to hear about God’s plan for a topic that they are inundated with via media throughout the week: sex and sexuality.

Our Lady of the Mission Parish Whitfords, in conjunction with True Love Waits and Catholic Youth Ministry have been hosting a viewing of Christopher West’s DVD series, Created and

Redeemed on Thursday nights. The series includes eight talks, including “Redeemed as male and female: Christ restores God’s plan”; “God’s plan for marriage: The two become one flesh” and “Theology in the bedroom: A living morality”.

The young adults viewed the presentation and shared their thoughts with each other in a casual environment.

True Love Waits coordinator Stephen Gorddard says that people are often surprised by young adults’ reaction to God’s

plan for sexuality: “According to the outside world, this message is supposedly unattractive and shouldn’t really work but the overwhelmingly positive reaction of people here shows that youth are dying for the truth and are looking to live out this positive message about sexuality,” Mr Gorddard said. They are currently halfway through the eight-week course, and more people are welcome. More information about Created and Redeemed can be found at the True Love Waits website www.truelovewaitswa.com

Young embrace scripture

The Teen Timeline hits Thornlie’s youth at heart

For the past four weeks local teens have been meeting on Saturday nights at Sacred Heart parish in Thornlie to journey through T3: The Teen Timeline together.

Most teens who attend are part of Thornlie’s contingent going to World Youth Day in Sydney next year as well as being part of the parish’s music ministry.

The eight-week series is a DVD-based bible study that aims to give teens the overall picture of scripture by focusing on the 14 narrative books in the Bible; the

books that read like epic stories.

The series is presented by Mark Heart, the “Bible Geek” from Lifeteen – the largest Catholic youth movement in the United States (lifeteen.com).

It is based upon the powerful system for reading scripture that was developed by Bible scholar and protestant convert Jeff Cavins in the 1980s.

Mrs Sandy Louis, the leader of Thornlie’s WYD group, says that she wanted to make sure their WYD preparation wasn’t only about flight bookings and parish fundraising.

“At the end of the day, WYD isn’t about a trip to Sydney but about a journey of self-discovery

Olivia takes on CYM

A new face at Catholic Youth Ministry

The Archdiocesan youth office, Catholic Youth Ministry, added a new face to its team last week when Olivia Lavis started her new role as local ministries project officer.

The position is a new one and reflects CYM’s stated vision of enabling and assisting local leaders to establish youth initiatives in their own area; particularly in the leadup to World Youth Day.

Ms Lavis, 27, has just returned from spending the past year at the Emmanuel School of Mission in Rome where she learnt the theory and practice of evangelisation, often in confronting but powerful ways.

This involved taking to the streets in different parts of France, Ireland and the Netherlands to minister to passers-by.

Ms Lavis grew up in the Catholic Church but has only felt a real connection with God in recent years. Having graduated from Iona Presentation College, Olivia attended Notre Dame University in Fremantle where she was on the chapel music team and also social coordinator for the campus.

“I felt like I was living two different lives leading Catholic student retreats as well as organising all the campus parties and big events” says Ms Lavis.

In the latter years of study, Olivia experienced several painful strug-

in Christ” she said. “As difficult as it is to find the time to prepare practically and spiritually, I was really keen that our group learnt more about their faith in the leadup to next year”.

T3: The Teen Timeline is being run as a joint initiative between the parish WYD group and the Archdiocesan youth agency, Catholic Youth Ministry.

CYM Director, Robert Hiini, says that CYM aims to help parishes prepare spiritually for WYD. “There are two central questions: How can we prepare youth so that they get the most out of WYD and what are our WYD-impacted youth coming back to in their local areas?”

Pregnancy handout

Expectant mothers in Britain will be given a £120 handout in the hope they spend it on fruit and vegetables to nourish their unborn children. The money, which would be given in the seventh month of pregnancy, would be linked to advice on how to maintain a balanced diet and give up drinking and smoking.

gles in her personal life that lead her to seek answers from God.

“One Sunday at Mass, I remember praying something like “Lord, I feel so far away from you and I don’t know how to change that, but I want to be closer to you. I need you to help me because I don’t know what to do.”

While undertaking her practical teaching assessment at a Catholic high school, the school’s chaplain invited her to a faith discovery course. She then went on to attend an annual Catholic youth conference.

“I just wanted to be happy again so decided to give it a go,” she said. “For the first time, I was around Catholics that were really living out their faith everyday. There was a sense of joy and peace in their lives that I had never seen before. Jesus wasn’t just someone that they caught up with at Mass on the weekend. He was at the centre of everything in their lives and all the decisions they made”.

After her last year of university study, Ms Lavis spent time teaching in Timor-Leste (East Timor) and is fluent in Tetum, one of the nation’s official languages. Upon returning to Perth she spent a year teaching at Irene McCormack Catholic College.

Ms Lavis says she looks forward to helping local Catholic leaders give the same witness to young people that has been shown to her; the witness and impact she hopes to give in her new position at CYM.

Gay parade ban

A Moscow district court has ruled that a ban on holding a gay parade on May 27, which turned violent when marchers gathered in defiance of the order, was legal. Moscow’s mayor, Yury Luzhkov, has called such events “satanic”. Some 50 members of the European Parliament signed a protest against the ban. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 2003.

Gathering to hear the truth, and loving it: Some of the young people who flocked to hear the good news that sex is more than what the rest of the world thinks it is. PHOTO COURTESY OF CATHOLIC YOUTH MINISTRY

Thrilled: Olivia Lavis brings plenty of enthusiasm to CYM after living in Rome.

United: Thornlie youth are having a ball during T3: The Teen Timeline, a powerful tool for reading scripture.

More evidence of abortion lie

■ By Paul Gray

Achieving a national consensus on abortion and sex education is the aim of a new book launched in Melbourne this week.

While abortion and sex education remain divisive topics in the media, the attitudes of most Australians show a surprising degree of agreement, say the book’s editors, Drs John Fleming and Nicholas TontiFilippini.

“It is time for renewed efforts to seek political agreement on ways to address both sex education and the welfare and interests of women who are pregnant,” Dr Tonti-Filippini says. Common Ground, published by St Paul’s Publications, argues that the current polarisation of political debate about abortion is preventing progress being made in areas where there is broad agreement amongst Australians.

The book contains essays by some of the leading Australian pro-life thinkers including Selena Ewing of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute, Dr Brigid McKenna (Brigid Vout), Life Officer for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney and Marcia Riordan, the Respect Life Officer of the Melbourne archdiocese.

The book highlights the fact that 87 per cent of Australians would like both to reduce the abortion rate and retain the right of women to legal access to abortion.

Seventy-three per cent of Australians say outright that the rate is too high. Only 24 per cent of the general public finds abortion to be morally justifiable, with the exception of cases of severe foetal abnormality.

Australians are “clearly deeply conflicted” on the abortion issue, the book says.

The book’s contributors and editors believe that the right to life of every human being should be protected under the law, but they also recognise that there are other public policy issues connected with abortion on which consensus might be achieved. These include the need to improve women’s opportunities for free and informed consent on abortion, including the opportunity for professional decision-making counseling.

“Abortion is not a routine medical procedure. It is a life-changing procedure and ought not to be treated as minor surgery,” the editors say.

The book includes extensive discussion of the research findings about sex education.

Many Australians believe that an important answer to the need to lower the abortion rate is to prevent unplanned pregnancies by better sex education.

However the book’s review of the expert literature on the subject indicates that public sex education programs are almost wholly without effect. Both “safe sex” and

“abstinence only” programs are also ineffective in delaying sexual initiation, and in reducing the rate of sexually transmissible diseases and unplanned pregnancy, it says.

Dr Tonti-Filippini said that a crucial role in preventing sexual initiation, particularly among girls, is played by the father.

If a teenage girl feels loved by her father, “then she doesn’t look for love somewhere else,” Dr TontiFilippini said.

“The usual thing, I think, is that girls give sex in order to get love, and so if that sense of being supported is coming from home, and if

there’s a male relationship at home that’s a supportive relationship and not an exploitative one, then that seems to pre-dispose to not being an early sexual initiate.”

The answer to the sex education conundrum can be likened to a wellknown Irish joke, Dr Tonti-Filippini said. “When you look at it, the way I put it to parents is, if you want to do sex education, don’t start there. It’s like Irish directions: ‘if you want to go there, I wouldn’t start from here!’

If you want to do sex education, you start with other things.

“You start with relationships, you start with identity, you start with

Praying the Rosary

what it is to be a man and a woman: all of those things that are not about sexual intimacy, but about a whole lot of other things.

“If those things are strong, then sexual intimacy doesn’t become a need or a demand.”

Dr Tonti-Filippini said it’s helpful if there is a lot happening in teenagers’ lives, and that they are “engaged otherwise and achieving otherwise.” These achievements do not have to be academic ones, he added.

“The drive for sexual intimacy seems to come from kids who are somehow lacking somewhere else. It meets a need.”

Job’s Tears Rosary Beads

Serious matter: Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, in Melbourne after the launch of Common Ground

PHOTO: PAUL GRAY

Perspectives

Happy are the merciful

Welcome to the fifth beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.”

Mercy is the application of reason and will to go beyond justice in dealing with another person’s problems.

Mercy is compassionate sorrow at another’s misfortune together with a will to alleviate it.

Archbishop Barry Hickey continues his series of short talks explaining the Beatitudes and their application in daily life. All the talks may be found on Archbishop Hickey’s website at www. perthcatholic.org.au

The key to understanding and developing mercy is action. To have compassion for another’s suffering is fine, possibly even noble, but unless it moves us to action it is not mercy.

Jesus’s best known parable about mercy is the story of the Good Samaritan – a man who went beyond his ethnic identity

Who’s confusing whom?

FPO Box 75, Leederville, WA 6902

Tel: (08) 9227 7080, Fax: (08) 9227 7087 cathrec@iinet.net.au

Global climate

In the past few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians and the public.

It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments.

Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way – climate will continue to change as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. Should it occur a modest warming may be, on the whole, beneficial.

This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is political.

Because of the mistaken idea that governments must do something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national economies, decrease standards of living and increase poverty.

This misdirection of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in industrialised nations. And even more in developing nations. Thus it could well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between them.

If not for this economic and political damage, one might consider the present concern about climate change nothing more than

and any requirement of justice in order to show mercy to a complete stranger.

The requirement to show mercy is not limited to physical suffering. It extends to people who are suffering mentally, morally and spiritually.

Throughout his life on earth, Jesus was constantly merciful at all levels, but his greatest acts – his death and resurrection and the institution of the Eucharist - are acts of mercy for the spiritual salvation of humanity.

The Church exists for the same reason, and many of the Religious Orders in the Church were founded by men and women who were motivated by mercy to care for the suffering or to educate those who

r Frank Brennan, “You’re confusing the issues,” The Record, September 5, is certainly ‘confusing the issues.’ He acknowledges Cardinal Ratzinger’s, ‘Donum Vitae,’ which says that “all IVF is unacceptable” and then proceeds to argue a case wherein he considers IVF “could be morally permissible.”

He would counsel scientists “to avoid experimenting on human embryos” but he will “respect scientists who believe it appropriate to experiment on embryos for the good of humanity when such embryos are going to succumb anyway.”

He says “morally there is a difference between creating embryos for destructive experimentation and creating embryos for selection and implantation.” “At least, excess IVF embryos are created with a chance at life.” (“All IVF is unacceptable.”)

He then proceeds to describe a human embryo of less than 14 days development as “human life in its earliest form,” and due to the fact that twinning can occur at 14 days he conjectures that ‘early human life prior to 14 days’ may be considered as being not yet the life of “a human person or human being with a soul.”

So, according to Father Brennan it is possible to have human life which is not the life of a person or persons. But the embryo is deemed to be human in its very nature; and the human nature of man is a union of spirit and matter which feeds a single nature. (CCC365) This union of matter and spirit thus necessarily occurs at conception for the life to be deemed human.

Father Brennan, for all his rhetoric, stands with those who want ‘two bob each way.’

He stands with one foot planted in Church teaching while the other has taken root in the world which enables him to ‘respect’ minds and hearts which disregard the sanctity of every human life from the moment its complete genetic identity has been created at conception.

From the moment lives are conceived, be they the genetic identities of two persons conceived simultaneously in the one embryo, each is reaching towards the fulfillment of its own individual destiny. The inviolable nature of these lives-in-embryo commands absolute respect.

No human right exists which would allow any person to even touch them lest it be to assist them to achieve the fullness of their own individual destinies. Father Brennan ‘respects’ the violation of some of these lives-in-embryo ‘for the good of humanity.’

Is not Father Brennan’s role as a priest to uphold and defend the sanctity of every human life, without exception, from its beginning at conception to its natural end, and to do so in no uncertain terms in the face of those who ‘justify’ the violation of countless innocent defenceless lives at their beginning by the ‘good results’ these violations make possible?

Not one ‘good’ result achieved by such violation is morally permissible as St Paul clearly points out to all who love the truth, “Evil may never be done in order to achieve a desired good outcome. The condemnation of such is just.” (Romans 3:8)

Clearly, every life from conception is sacrosanct.

It is also clear that Father Brennan is not defending every human life from conception and as such is at odds with Church teaching and right reason which both recognise the immediate presence of the complete genetic identities of individuals-in-embryo at the moment of conception. He toys with inviolability after 14 days.

His teaching is not Catholic and should not be taught as such.

Alan Mitter

Langford

Embryos and respect for life - Perth bioethicist writes - Vista 4

just another environmentalist fad. So much is at stake, it is essential that people better understand the issue.

The most fundamental question is scientific; is the observed warming of the past 30 years due to

natural causes or are human activities a main or even a contributing factor?

It is plausible that humans could be responsible for warming the climate. After all, the burning of fossil fuels to generate energy releases

did not know God. Instructing, advising, consoling and comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently.

The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned ... and in contributing financially to support this work by others.

The merciful will be rewarded by God’s mercy in this life and the next by coming to understand what Jesus meant when he said that whatever we do for the least of his little ones, we do for Him.

That brings with it the wonderful joy of knowing how close God is to us.

large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The CO2 level has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the industrial revolution and is now 35% higher than it was 200 years ago.

Also, we know from direct measurements that CO2 is a ‘greenhouse gas’, which strongly absorbs infrared (heat) radiation.

So the idea that burning fossil fuels causes enhanced ‘greenhouse effect’ needs to be taken seriously.

In identifying the burning of fossil fuels as the chief cause of warming today. Many politicians and environmental activists simply appeal to a so-called ‘scientific consensus.’

There are two things wrong with this. First, there is no consensus. An increasing number of climate scientists are raising serious questions about the political rush to judgment on this issue.

For example the widely touted ‘consensus’ of 2,500 scientists in the United Nations intergovernmental climate change (IPCC) on climate change is an illusion.

Most of the panelists have no scientific qualifications, and many of the others object to some part of the IPCC’s report.

The second reason not to rely on a ‘scientific consensus’ in these matters is that this is not how science works. After all, scientific advances customarily come from a minority of scientists who challenge the majority view – or even just a single person. Science proceeds by the scientific method and draws conclusions based on evidence, not a show of hands.

Ray Finlayson Rossmoyne

Arrogant Record

Ihave just received this week’s Record (September 12) , and the headline “What Vocations Crisis? “ prompts me to make the following comments: What arrogance!

When we consider the average age of priests today, the scarcity of religious sisters and brothers in our parishes and schools, parishes being closed down in Europe for lack of priests, the abysmal level of religious education in many of our Catholic schools, I find such bravado offensive.

What a contrast we see in tomorrow’s (14 September 2007) second reading - Letter of St Paul to the Philippians 2:6-11: of Jesus, who, being as all men are “was humbler yet, even to accepting death on a

cross.” By all means let us build on these positive developments, of 3200 men and women indicating their intention to take up the religious life. Could this be done in all humility?

Daniel Regnard Riverton

Rights and balance

In a letter that appeared in The West Australian there was a call for Parliament to promote a nonlegal code of responsibilities for all citizens. Although I agree with this sentiment, I doubt that this will happen - at least not while Jim McGinty is the top man in this government.

We do need rights, especially an individual’s most fundamental right, namely the right to life. However being conscious of our rights does not necessarily make us behave responsibly.

In fact, an undue emphasis on our rights has the potential to make us even more selfish. This is why we need this code.

If Fred Chaney and his committee do not include the individual’s right to life and rights that protect the traditional family, which is the backbone of society, then their charter would be as good as useless.

During the past few years politicians have introduced laws that allow for the fundamental right to be circumvented. What makes it even worse is that the proponents of these newly-gained exemption rights do all they can to then compel others to fall in line.

Unfortunately, there have been reports that in some parts of the so-called liberated‚ western world people have been penalised and institutions closed down because they have stood by traditional individual and family rights that have sustained society for so long.

In their eagerness to have certain desires and lifestyles turned into rights, some have resorted to portraying political discussions as a battle between the Church and the rest.

A very cunning strategy, indeed! The truth is that, besides Christians, there are many others who are concerned about the direction in which we are going.

There is a fear that we are being dragged deeper into this Self-serving Age which could prove to be the darkest and most socially destructive period in history.

Malcolm Lyons Carlisle

Vista

President not contactable

AMNESTY CLOSES RANKS

Abortion decision confounds members

■

By Anthony Barich

It all started when a 40-year-old London barrister in a bowler hat sat reading his newspaper on the London underground in late 1960.

He read a small item about two Portuguese students being sentenced to seven years imprisonment for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom. Outraged, he got off at Trafalgar Square station and strode into the church of St Martin’s-inthe-Fields and sats there for 45 minutes thinking about how to mobilise world opinion.

In his words: “It was necessary to think of a larger group which would harness the enthusiasm of people all over the world who were anxious to see a wider respect for human rights.”

Within months, he launched his Appeal for Amnesty with a frontpage article in The Observer newspaper, which got a massive response.

The man, of course, was Peter Benenson – a Catholic.

When he died in 2005, Amnesty International USA said that by mobilising a network of letter writers to bombard governments with appeals on behalf of prisoners jailed and ill treated in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Benenson was a major contributor towards a “civil society”, which it said did not exist before.

Unfortunately, the international juggernaut he started is now suggesting women have access to abortion in some cases – turning back

the clock on this “civil society” he was supposed to have helped create.

An AI Australia spokesperson told The Record the decision was made after two years of consultation with members, most of whom, they said, supported the move.

But Jesuit Father Chris Middleton, principal of St Aloysius College in Sydney, says he’s spoken to members who were unaware of the consultation, “and if you look at both the national and international websites it is curious how difficult it is to find reference to the decision or to the consultation”.

“An organisation promoting conscience has become to some extent unconscionable in its process,” Fr Middleton said.

Enquiries by now-former Amnesty member Mark Clarke, social justice officer of the Melbourne Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace, have been met with a similar brick wall.

He says that as far as he knows, Australian members didn’t even get the courtesy of a vote, “which is the annoying thing – two countries where there has been a vote - in Ireland and the UK, the members voted against it”.

Mark says this “consultation” process invited submissions – which he duly made – and was later told that 14 were made out of an Australian AI membership of 12,000. He says no feedback was given, and he has no idea how many of those submissions were for or against maintaining AI’s neutral stance on abortion.

“If they say they had two years worth of consultation, detail it!”

“An organisation promoting conscience has become to some extent unconscionable in its process.”

“An organising promoting conscience has become to some extent unconscionable in its process”

- Fr Chris Middleton SJ

Mark says. Elena Rosenman, employed on a 12-month contract as the sexual and reproductive rights officer for AI Australia to implement the new policy, told Mark in an email: “I have received confirmation from Amnesty International’s International Secretariat that AI policy documents are internal documents and cannot be further distributed.”

But when he tried to contact AI Australia’s national president Georgina Perry by phone, he was told she’s a volunteer so they can’t give out her details. By chance, he saw a notice in last month’s edition of AI’s publication “Human Rights Defender” inviting people to email Declan Doherty, who would attend the Mexico conference as a delegate.

Mark emailed Declan but got no reply, and again his attempt to contact him by phone was denied as Declan is only a volunteer.

Even letters from the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, have been ignored. Archbishop Wilson said that he had written two letters on behalf of the Australian bishops’

Turning in his grave?: Peter Benenson, Amnesty’s inspirational founder.

conference during the past year, urging Amnesty International to abandon the policy change.

“Unfortunately,” Archbishop Wilson said, “despite similar entreaties from people the world over, Amnesty International decided to proceed with the new policy.”

For the record, according to Ms Rosenman, AI’s new policy calls on governments to: - Ensure access to abortion services to any woman who becomes pregnant as the result of rape, sexual assault or incest, or where a pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s life or a grave risk to their health, - Ensure that any woman who suf-

fers complications from an abortion will have access to the medical services she needs, whether she obtained the abortion legally or not, - Repeal laws that allow women to be charged, imprisoned or otherwise subjected to criminal penalties for seeking or having an abortion, and - Provide women and men with full information on sexual and reproductive health.

However, Amnesty stopped short of backing aborting as a “fundamental right” for women because, according to AI spokeswoman Widney Brown, that approach was not supported by international human rights laws.

Top US lawyer exposes Amnesty’s vision

■ By Anthony Barich

One of the American Catholic Church’s top academics has exposed how the reasoning behind Amnesty International’s new proabortion stance will not solve the problem of violence towards women.

Helen Alvare, former staff attorney, General Counsel and director of information and planning for the US National Conference of Catholic Bishops, was interviewed on Al Jazeera TV, the Arabic news satellite channel, with Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s senior director of international policy and campaigns, on August 23.

Ms Brown said AI changed its previously neutral stance on abortion after a global campaign it launched against violence against women found that women who had been raped by gangs in wartorn areas were being denied access to abortion.

AI also found that women on death row in Nigeria were denied access to medical services after they’d had unsafe abortions, and that the World Health Organisation confirmed that 70,000 women die each year as a result of this.

“Once you look at these figures, neutrality is no longer an option,”

Ms Brown said.

Ms Alvare, now an Associate Professor of Law at the Catholic

University of America, told Al Jazeera TV that abortion itself is another violence, and does nothing to stop the violence against women.

“While Amnesty has described this as a motivation for changing its position, it decided to embrace abortion even in cases where the woman’s health – undefined – is at stake, which in the US has included all abortions for all reasons, even the abortion of partially born children,” Ms Alvare said.

When asked whether rape being used as a weapon of war in areas like the Congo, Bosnia and Darfur was a reason for the Catholic Church to support abortion, Ms Alvare conceded that “one’s initial emotional reaction would be to take away the visible evidence of this terrible violence”.

But she added that ”when one steps back and thinks about it, it has never been the case that embracing violence has solved another violence”.

Ms Brown said AI’s position “should be understood in the broader work that we do to address why women have unwanted pregnancies, which is about access to information and contraceptive services – another thing that the Catholic Church doesn’t want women to have, but then doesn’t want them to terminate unwanted pregnancies”.

However, Ms Alvare dismissed this reference to contraception as a “red herring. It’s what lawyers refer to as a ‘red herring’ – it diverts your

as soon as contraception was made much more widely available from the government and in the public mind, abortion rates have gone up.

“So the world knows it is not “not knowledgeable” about contraception, and the Church isn’t responsible for keeping it out of populations.

“So while on its face the policy uses words like “grave risk”, in the US Supreme Court, in AI’s own US execution of this policy, it is broad indeed and has allowed abortions even after the child is mostly born.”

Ms Brown said that the UN Human rights committee has held that not allowing women to terminate unwanted pregnancies that are a result of sexual violence in war is a form of torture.

Sick of Amnesty? Stick with Benenson’s other group

■ By NZ CATHOLIC staff

People who sever their connections with Amnesty International over its policy on abortion can continue their support for human rights through another organisation with links to Amnesty’s founder.

Pa qualitative difference to other points of disagreement within an organisation. Consequently, we feel we have no choice but to leave Amnesty.

“Amnesty has weakened itself by becoming exclusive in a way that will harm its work.

■ By Anthony Barich

Amnesty International could lose thousands of dollars in Australia alone after it ratified the change of its neutral stance on abortion at last month’s Council Meeting in Mexico.

Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president, urged AI to change its policy in a statement that hinted at ramifications for AI in Australia. “We will now consider the situation carefully, in consultation with the Catholic education sector and the many other arms of the Catholic Church in Australia which have had association with Amnesty International,” the 59-year-old prelate said in a September 9 statement. It is not too late for Amnesty International to take stock of the damage being caused by this change of policy and to return to its former neutral stance on abortion. I would urge them to do so.”

AI - started by an English Catholic, Peter Benenson, who died in 2005 - is mentioned in the religious education textbook used in the Archdiocese of Melbourne called, “To know, Worship and Love”, but it is understood this will be removed in the next reprint. It is understood that some Catholic secondary schools will discontinue fundraising for Amnesty with events like Candle Day, which can collect up to and above $1000. The president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, said in June: “I believe that, if in fact Amnesty International persists in this course of action, individuals and Catholic organisations must withdraw their support.”

eter Benenson, an English lawyer (and Catholic convert), founded Amnesty in 1961. In the 1970s he was involved in the establishment of Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture and became its chairman.

“What is being ignored in much of the discourse is that being pregnant is a daily reminder of the violation that you went through, so not giving women the opportunity to say ‘this is what I need as part of my healing process’ is important,” she said.

Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, senior bioethics lecturer at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, told The Record that women’s health as a reason for abortion is a smokescreen for the real concern, which is that human aid agencies are promoting abortion as being integral to women’s health.

attention away from what’s going on here,” said Ms Alvare, who has testified on behalf of the US bishops before federal congressional committees and lobbied members of Congress on federal legislation

concerning abortion, health care and welfare reform. “The Catholic Church has not supported policies in law to make contraception illegal. More importantly than that, is that in the US and the world,

“Muslim, Hindi and Buddhist cultures tend to reject abortion, and there’s a lack of respect at the UN for that,” he said.

“It’s more than a passive acceptance. It’s an aggressive promotion of abortion as if it’s an integral part of a woman’s health.”

Archbishop’s dire warning

It is not too late for Amnesty International to take stock of the damage being caused by this change of policy and to return to its former neutral stance on abortion. I would urge them to do so.

Archbishop Wilson said Catholics, after a “long association with Amnesty International, going right back to its inception,” are now abandoning it. He said the Church and AI “have been closely aligned in their commitment to social justice. However, Amnesty International has now adopted a position, under the misleading term of ‘sexual and reproductive rights,’ which is at odds with the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the human person and sexuality”. “In adopting this position, Amnesty has moved to a concept of human rights founded not upon the good of the human person, but simply upon the autonomy of the individual,” he said.

“This decision has led some people, including some Catholic school groups, to withdraw from membership of Amnesty International and to seek other ways in which to pursue the same aims of fighting injustice, ending human rights abuses and standing in solidarity with the imprisoned and the oppressed.”

But an AI Australia spokesperson told The Record that there was no chance the organisa-

tion would revert back to its neutral stance on abortion, and said that “to date, feedback received from across the global Amnesty movement has indicated that in most countries where AI is based, more people have joined because of our support for sexual and reproductive rights than have left in opposition”.

The spokesperson confirmed that during the two-year consultation process, “many members were, and still are strongly opposed to AI’s adoption of a policy on any respect to abortion”. But she added that consultation showed the majority of members supported the development of a policy on selected aspects of abortion, provided they were careful, considered and complied with international human rights standards. AI’s old policy on abortion was that it “takes no position on whether or not a woman has a right to choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies;” as “there is no generally accepted right to abortion in international human rights law”.

The UN’s Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) states: “A child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.”

When asked whether AI has a policy on the rights of the unborn, the AI spokesperson said: “Amnesty International takes no position as to when life begins. International law is silent on the point when life begins and the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been interpreted as allowing national legislation to specify the moment when childhood or life begins. AI’s policy on selected aspects of abortion recognises that it’s the role of the states to impose reasonable gestational limitations on access to abortion. AI would judge the reasonableness of these by taking into account factors such as the evolving protection needs of the foetus and the health needs and autonomy entitlements of the woman.”

Irish Amnesty hold firm

Irish office opts out of controversial policy.

DUBLIN, Ireland (Zenit) - Ireland’s branch of Amnesty International will not promote the organisation’s new policy of allowing abortion in cases of rape, incest, or threats to the mother’s life.

Noeleen Hartigan, director at Ireland’s Amnesty International office, confirmed that the Irish branch is opting out of the controversial new policy, the Irish Times reported.

Catholic delegates attending an Amnesty International conference this week are likely to raise the issue, which has already received wide media attention. A former member, Mary Stewart, told the Irish Times that she sent back her membership card in protest at the executive committee’s decision to adopt the abortion policy.

Stewart explained: “I joined Amnesty because of its strong opposition to the death penalty but now opposition to the death penalty does not apply to unborn babies.”

Amnesty International was started as a campaign for prisoners of conscience in 1961 by British lawyer and Catholic convert Peter Benenson.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, its membership has swelled to 1.8 million.

Kate Gilmore, Amnesty International’s deputy secretarygeneral, said the decision from the Irish branch and criticism from US bishops will not reverse the organisation’s abortion policy decision.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, recently told the National Catholic Register that Catholics would have to withdraw support from the organisation if it continued to support abortion.

“By pushing for the decriminalisation of abortion as part of their platform, Amnesty International has disqualified itself as a defender of human rights,” he said. “If AI is no longer willing to stand up for the most basic human right - the right to life - then the very integrity of the organisation is called into question.”

AI decries sex-selective abortions

Amnesty International supports a woman’s right to abortion in certain cases yet decries millions of women being lost in sex-selective abortions in countries like India.

In defending the decision to ratify its non-neutral stance on abortion at last month’s council meeting in Mexico, an AI Australia spokesperson told The Record “Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic.

“At least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.

“More than 60 million women are ‘missing’ from the world today as a result of sexselective abortions and female infanticide.

“Every year, millions of women are raped by partners, relatives, friends and strangers, by employers and colleagues, soldiers and members of armed groups.

ACAT tries to bring about a growing consciousness among churches and individual Christians of the evil of torture and to encourage them to fight for its abolition.

Its charter states: “Our faith in Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead, Saviour of the world, gives us the strength and hope to struggle for the abolition of torture.

“Faithful to his Word, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, we personally, and our churches, are called to commit ourselves to serve those with whom Jesus Christ identified himself. The struggle against torture is at the heart of the Christian message.”

ACAT campaigns on behalf of people who are tortured, detained in inhumane conditions, sentenced to death or “disappeared”, whatever their origins, political opinions or religious beliefs.

Like Amnesty, ACAT writes letters to political leaders to condemn acts of torture and ask for fair court trials, release from unfair imprisonment or commuting of the death penalty.

Unlike Amnesty, ACAT meets in groups to pray for both prisoners and torturers.

Amnesty has had an almost unique position in the depth of its membership in being able to attract conservative and liberal, religious and secular support, for issues around freedom of conscience and political rights.

“Its decision means that for many people of faith, membership will no longer be possible.”

Fr Middleton said some 500 Catholic schools in Australia had Amnesty groups. Schools paid teachers to mentor such groups, while religious studies textbooks often encouraged membership in Amnesty and provided links to Amnesty on the Internet.

“These groups help raise funds for Amnesty. All that could end now — and for what advantage?” Fr Middleton disagreed with Amnesty’s assertion, in correspondence with him, that “the project of human rights is a secular one”.

“Peter Benenson’s own project in starting Amnesty was influenced by his religious experience. The first Amnesty campaign in 1961 highlighted the fate of six prisoners of conscience: Angolan anti- colonialist poet and resistance leader Agostinho Neto; the Greek Communist Toni Ambatielos; Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague and Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Budapest, both imprisoned by Communist dictatorships; Reverend Ashton Jones, a campaigner for the rights of blacks in the United States; and the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica. .

More than 60 million women are ‘ missing’ from the world today as a result of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.

More than 60 million women are ‘ missing’ from the world today as a result of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.

“As a human rights organisation, Amnesty International cannot remain silent in the face of this suffering and it campaigns against all of forms of violence against girls and women in countries in all regions of the world.

“The human rights of girls and women are at stake whenever gender-based violence against them goes unchallenged and wherever its survivors are denied access to the full range of remedies to which they are entitled.

“Violence against women violates women’s rights to physical and mental integrity including sexual and reproductive rights. Upholding human rights including women’s sexual and reproductive rights is essential to preventing and ending gender-based violence.”

However, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said that AI’s support for abortion is not the solution to violence against women.

“Violence cannot be answered with further violence; murder with murder; for even if the child is unborn, it is still a human person,” Cardinal Bertone said.

“It has a right to dignity as a human being.

“The inhuman violence of rape must be stopped, and society must be mobilised to protect the dignity of women.”

Cardinal Bertone, the Pope’s No 2 man, also pointed out that “the Church has promoted the dignity of women in its documents and encyclicals” but that these seem to have gone largely unnoticed.

There are currently about 30 national ACATs, in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. An international federation, created in 1987, has been accorded consultative status at the United Nations.

One Catholic institution that has severed its association with Amnesty is St Aloysius’ College in Sydney. This Australian school is setting up its own human rights group, which it will call the Benenson Society.

“Many people will argue that we should remain inside Amnesty, because of the overwhelming good that it does,” said the college principal, Fr Chris Middleton, SJ.

“Indeed, some of the strongest proponents of the change are counting on this sentiment. What is different about abortion, unlike, for example, promotion of gay rights, is that this policy explicitly excludes some of the most vulnerable members of society — the ‘unborn human’ — from its campaigns for human rights.

“To my mind this goes right to the core of Amnesty as a human rights organisation and as a body that gives primacy to conscience.

“It strikes against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child which states that every child ‘needs special safeguards and care, including legal protection, before as well as after birth’. This is surely a crossing of the Rubicon,

“In his history of Amnesty, Keepers of the Flame, Stephen Hopgood writes that ‘The Amnesty movement was to be a spiritual awakening that would stimulate moral change in members’ own societies as well’ (p.57).

“It is striking how many of the key early figures of Amnesty had strong religious connections — Quaker, Jewish, Protestant and Catholic.

“Far from being a secular project, one could argue that Amnesty itself has its origins in the religious commitment to justice.

“It seems that increasingly our society is developing collective amnesia about the influence people of faith have had in shaping much of our modern world.”

Fr Middleton said the Benenson Society will have as its symbol a stylised white rose.

“This symbol draws inspiration from the White Rose Society, a group of Catholic and Protestant students and teachers at Munich University, who opposed Nazism with letters and pamphlets, with nine paying the ultimate price of being guillotined for their stand for human rights. A film about one of its members, Sophie Scholl, was released recently.”

■ By Anthony Barich

Fr Chris Middleton

Defending the faith: Helen Alvare explained the Catholic Church’s position on Al Jazeera TV last month, pitted against Amnesty’s Widney Brown.

US Catholic law professor tells Al Jazeera TV that violence never solves violence.

Graces: Archbishop Wilson prays over a young man at a youth congress in Canberra earlier this year.

Good work: Michael Gradison and Karen Burkhart of Plainfield, Indiana, a Catholic and death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International, sign a 2001 petition to abolish the death penalty in America. Now Noleen Hartigan (pictured below) protests because Amnesty wont extend that right to life to the unborn child. PHOTO: CNS/KAREN CALLAWAY

Noleen Hartigan

- Archbishop Philip Wilson -

Opinion

Embryos and respect for life

Recent correspondence in the Letters pages of The Record could mislead readers as to the Church’s stance on the use of IVF embryos for research. Apropos of one letter in particular, I offer the following observations.

1. All persons, Catholic or otherwise, are bound to follow the dictates of conscience when they have reached a state of certainty about what they ought to do.

This is authentic Catholic teaching, and has been so for centuries.

It is also Catholic teaching that every person must make all reasonable efforts to inform their conscience. For Catholics this includes receiving attentively and respectfully the Church’s moral teaching and, where necessary, taking further counsel with wise and experienced pastors.

Nevertheless, as the Church has taught consistently, a state of certainty reached in these circumstances is binding and may be entirely subjectively inculpable even if, on the objective level, it varies from Church teaching.

To suggest that for such a couple ‘IVF could be morally permissible’, however, is to claim much more that this.

Regardless of the integrity of the particular couple and their inculpability with respect to their decision in conscience, the fact remains that on the objective level IVF itself

remains morally problematic. The reason, given in the 1987 document ‘Donum vitae’, is that every child has a natural right ‘to have a fully human origin through conception in conformity with the personal nature of the human being.’

This fundamental difficulty with IVF itself remains, even while we affirm our couple’s duty to follow the dictates of their certain conscience.

2. Your correspondent properly holds in respect ‘those scientists of a contrary moral view who think it appropriate to experiment on embryos… when such embryos are going to succumb anyway.’

Respect for the person of the scientist, of course, does not necessarily translate into agreement with the scientist’s decisions.

The fact that many IVF embryos are destined to be allowed to die is one thing, and some have argued (cogently, I believe) that while we may regret their creation in the first place, in the absence of better alternatives we may legitimately allow these embryos to succumb.

But deliberately to cause the deaths of these embryos is an act of a different moral order altogether.

There is no difference for the embryos, of course: either way they die. But there is a huge difference for the person who deliberately brings about their death, and for the society which permits this to happen, even in the interests of

the family is the future

medical research. To equate ‘allowing to die’ with ‘causing death’ simply because the outcome for the embryos is the same in either case, is to fall victim to the lure of a radical consequentialism which claims ‘the end justifies the means’.

It would not be truly respectful of IVF scientists to conceal from them this very legitimate point of view.

3. One well appreciates the difficulty of equating a dish of earlystage embryos with a room full of mature human beings, but this difficulty might reduce to the fact that we can interact more easily and on a more personal level with the room full of people than we can with a dish of embryos.

Which says nothing, of course, about the essential nature of the embryos themselves.

Your correspondent likewise struggles with the fact that a single early-stage embryo (with one soul) can ‘twin’ to form two human beings (each with a soul).

This only poses a theological problem if we hold that the soul is created separately from the body and is then ‘added’ to the body at conception - or at twinning. While various theories of ‘ensoulment’ may once have occupied theological minds, it is important to recognise that no approach we adopt towards this ‘theological challenge’ will alter the essential nature of the early-stage embryo before it twins.

A theology which views the human person as ‘body-plus-soul’ might be helpful when we consider some aspects of life (such as ‘what happens to me after death’), but it raises insurmountable problems when we consider other aspects, such as the data of modern embryology.

The question is, should we ignore the data of the sciences and hold on to theologies which may be inadequate, or should we accept the data and set about reviewing the adequacy of our theology?

As the whole Galileo episode proved, in one direction lies intellectual stagnation but in the other lies authentic development of doctrine.

Data uncovered by the sciences (such as embryology) often present

new challenges, and these can only be addressed adequately if we use theologies appropriate to the task.

Pope John Paul II understood this.

He went to great lengths to correct the essentially dualistic ‘bodyplus-soul’ notion of the human person and ensured that the Catechism also reflected a more unitary concept.

In the argument about using IVF embryos for research, then, is the real ‘theological challenge’ met by conceding that early-stage embryos may indeed be destroyed for research purposes, or is it met by seeking better ways of thinking about the ‘body-and-soul’ unity of the human person? The Church clearly favours the latter.

-Fr

The heart of evengelisation lies within

By Derek Boylen

■

Late in his pontificate, John Paul II called for a New Evangelisation. Many in the Church embraced this and developed programs, strategies and ideas.

In the Archdiocese of Perth, Archbishop Barry Hickey called on each parish to develop a plan for evangelisation.

It’s a curious phenomenon that whenever the topic of evangelisation comes up people look outside of themselves.

We talk about what “the Church” should be doing or isn’t doing. It’s as if “the Church” is some external object beyond our control or influence.

Such discussion, in many ways is a waste of time, it is disabling. Even worse, it isn’t true.

All the strategies and initiatives that parishes and communities are implementing are important

and there are some great projects. However, the truth is that evangelisation must start in the home, in the family.

When we look to the early Church, we often think of the great evangelisers like St Paul.

While these men and women did great work, the truth is that the real evangelisation took off when it took root in the home.

Families, living the gospel challenge in all its awkwardness, are the true evangelisers. When a husband and wife try hard to live a Christian life they evangelise each other.

They bear witness to God’s love in their patience, forgiveness, gentleness and by challenging each other to do better.

They bear witness to their children of the fullness of life that comes from living according to God’s way of life.

And, such families bear witness to the world, to others. Recently, Karen and the kids had dinner with the neighbours who aren’t Christian.

As we were about to start dinner our neighbour’s 7 year old son called out: “Aren’t we going to say grace?”

It came as a surprise. Karen asked Tracey, do you normally say grace? To which the answer was “no.”

So they all said grace together. This little boy had been to our

home often enough to know that when the Boylens have dinner they usually start with a prayer.

The best evangelisation isn’t a preaching from on high.

It’s a persistent, gentle, invitation; a life that bears witness to a deeper, richer, more fulfilling way of living.

Pope Paul VI tells us that: “The family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates.

“In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelise and are evangelised.

“The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them.

“And such a family becomes the evangeliser of many other families, and of the neighbourhood of which it forms part.”

Pope John Paul II tells us that: “Future evangelisation depends largely on the domestic Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI tells us that: “The Holy Family of Nazareth is truly the “prototype” of every Christian family which, united in the Sacrament of Marriage and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist, is called to carry out the wonderful vocation and mission of being the living cell not only of society but also of the Church, a sign and instrument

of unity for the entire human race.”

It’s a challenging and wonderful vocation but one which brings real life to the world.

And we do it by going to Mass on Sunday, praying as a family

during the week, responding to the needs of others and making good choices in the light of the Gospel.

In short, keeping Christ always before us. The family is the heart of evangelisation.

Joe Parkinson

Clarification: LJ Goody Bioethics Centre director Fr Joe Parkinson (pictured) has clarified the Catholic Church’s position on embryo research after Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan wrote into The Record about his own views on the subject.

The World FEATURE

Can Sunni, Shia clerics save Iraq?

While politicians squabble and bombs destroy innocents, a quiet movement based on religion works towards national reconciliation for war-torn country

Security expert Robert McFarlane thinks that it is possible to bring Shia and Sunni imams together to talk about peace.

The long war in Iraq has been dogged by a tough chickenand-egg question: what is the relationship between military gains and political progress?

Does an improved security situation create breathing room for politicians in Baghdad to make headway, or must reconciliation efforts at the government level be made in order to reduce sectarian strife?

To add to the complexity, a quiet movement consisting of representatives from all three major communities in Iraq has made steady gains towards a national reconciliation of its own, this one based on religion. Can Iraq’s clerics save Iraq?

“You can’t very well say that religion is not a serious element in this struggle,” says Robert McFarlane, former national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

McFarlane is a prominent supporter of the religious reconciliation effort.

In an interview with MercatorNet McFarlane labelled as “misguided” the “accepted tenet of American diplomacy that religion should be kept separate... particularly in these circumstances where the ostensible motive for much of the violence is the assertion of the rightness of the Shia or Sunni worldview, and the wrong-headedness of the other.”

There is reason to hope that the silent majority of Iraqi clerics, many of whom have been killed for speaking out against the extremists, may be finding its voice.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has preyed on these religious differences.

For example, in February 2006, the terrorist group attacked the al-Askari mosque, one of the three holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq.

The goal - swiftly accomplished - was to spark reprisal killings by Shia militiamen against the Sunni population. Examples of similar attacks abound.

According to Colonel H. R. McMaster, who commanded the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment in Iraq and now serves as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, al-Qaeda in Iraq created the “cycle of violence” seen today by deliberately perpetrating these attacks.

Many Iraqi clerics have helped fuel the strife. Droves of imams were placed “on the payroll of Saddam” during the 1990s, McMaster told MercatorNet

Many of these were laymen and received no formal religious instruction.

Their purpose was to bolster the regime and bring an Islamic face to Saddam’s generally secular rule.

After Saddam fell from power, however, these clerics did not melt away as did the Iraqi army.

Instead, they retained their positions of authority in their villages and, through their “cynical use of religion,” helped organise the insurgency.

In these radical mosques, young teenage boys continue to be indoctrinated and initiated into al-Qaeda in Iraq.

According to McMaster, there are many

“legitimate imams who don’t want to see this happen”.

There is reason to hope that the silent majority of Iraqi clerics, many of whom have been killed for speaking out against the extremists, may be finding its voice.

Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest who serves as the vicar of Baghdad, has dedicated himself to bringing together the mainstream religious leaders of Iraq’s Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities.

By providing them a forum to cooperate and dedicate themselves to living in peace with each other, the vicar hopes they can help set the example and lead their countrymen forward.

Since 2004, Canon White has worked to organise conferences where clerics meet and greet, shake hands, and sign ground-breaking agreements condemning both terrorism and sectarian violence.

In attendance at the “first formal gathering” was an “odd mixture” of tribal leaders and sheikhs “without any particular blessing from the top echelons” of the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities.

Following this first meeting, Canon White established relationships with community leaders and strove to impart to them the idea that he, as an impartial non-Iraqi cleric, could bring everyone to the table for a constructive “trialogue.”

According to McFarlane, who helps Canon White with fund-raising, years of hard work seem to be paying off.

In June, over 70 Iraqi religious leaders attended a conference in Baghdad organised by Canon White.

On June 13, the al-Askari mosque in Samarra was attacked for a second time.

McFarlane, who attended the conference, notes that as the mutual declarations condemning al-Qaeda and calling for peace were issued at the end of the conference, “all

three communities condemned emphatically this attack, called for restraint, and called for there being no reprisal, no Shia blacklash and escalation.”

While the conference’s calls for peace were ultimately ignored and ethno-sectarian attacks ensued, McFarlane argues that the conference was a success because it built the foundation for another conference in August, this time in Cairo.

The top half-dozen Iraqi clerics—both Sunni and Shia—participated. Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, for example, arguably the most powerful man in Iraq, dispatched his chief of staff to the event.

After Saddam fell from power, clerics, through “cynical use of religion,” helped organise the insurgency.

In these radical mosques, young teenage boys continue to be indoctrinated and initiated into alQaeda in Iraq.

As a result of this conference, a joint Sunni-Shia fatwa calling for an end to the violence in Iraq could be issued in the near future, McFarlane wrote in the Wall Street Journal. The recent drop in sectarian violence reported by General Petraeus may very well be due, in part, to Canon White’s conferences.

McFarlane believes that Canon White’s campaign is “an important dimension of track-II diplomacy—diplomacy parallel to the formal government channels”.

He argues that “if you bring clerics together who have political power, but at some level are accountable to God, they behave in a different way” than conventional diplomats

trying to solve a problem. Because religious leaders live within a certain moral framework of right and wrong that to clerics “is a matter of spiritual design,” they would hold themselves to that framework in negotiations. In such a situation, one might “be able to make people engage and think seriously about compromise and concessions simply out of good will, as they are mandated to espouse by their God.”

While careful to label his idea only a theory, he concludes: “I think that’s something, given the long road ahead of us in dealing with radical Islam, that we need to learn more about.”

It is important to recognise, however, that there are other religious groups in Iraq besides the Sunni and Shia. Canon White flew to Washington DC in July to testify about the plight of these minorities, particularly Christians, who are targeted for kidnapping, torture, and murder.

Michael Cromartie, chairman of the Commission and vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, said that “White’s testimony gave personal, first-hand evidence of what the Commission had been hearing about for over a year.”

The deadliest attack of the war was carried out in August by al Qaeda in Iraq against the Yazidi, another religious minority. Even if the Shia and the Sunni reconcile, there is no guarantee that the plight of the religious minorities will be alleviated. Regardless, all these efforts may be for naught if the rhetorical reconciliation at the clerical level is not “translated into law” by the Iraqi government, as McFarlane freely admits. Without concrete political progress, “meeting after meeting will have little value.” Can Iraqi clerics, then, save Iraq? If not, who can?

By

Tristan Abbey, a senior at Stanford University who writes for MercatorNet.

Silence, temporarily: Iraqis attend Friday prayers at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad in February last year. An emergency curfew for Friday’s Muslim day of prayer helped quell sectarian violence that has killed some 200 people around Baghdad.

PHOTO: CNS

The World

Ncube resigns in storm of controversy

Archbishop’s decision was ‘no admission of guilt’ over adultery charges

Archbishop Ncube, the outspoken critic of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, resigns amidst a storm of controversy.

■ By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, the most outspoken critic of the country’s leadership who is also facing allegations of adultery.

In an undated letter written by the archbishop and released by the Vatican press office on September 11, the Archbishop wrote that he offered his resignation to Vatican officials in July to spare sullying the image of the Church.

The Vatican announced that the Pope accepted the Archbishop’s resignation under Canon 401.2, which covers resignations for illness or some other grave reason.

Archbishop Ncube, 60, is being sued for adultery and his case is before the High Court of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo. The adultery lawsuit was made public in July and state-run newspapers published photos they said were of Archbishop Ncube and a woman, taken with a concealed camera placed in the Archbishop’s bedroom.

Archbishop Ncube’s resignation “is not to be seen as an admission of guilt” to the adultery charges and it “shouldn’t have any bearing on the court case,” Father Frederick Chiromba, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said in a September 11 telephone interview from the capital, Harare.

Father Chiromba said Archbishop Ncube’s resignation was “not expected,” but that he would “now have more time to attend to the charges” against him.

Noting that Archbishop Ncube “tendered his resignation and was not asked to resign,” Father Chiromba said the archbishop may have “wanted to stand aside so that the focus can shift” from himself to the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

His resignation will have no major impact on the bishops’ conference as it “makes decisions and issues statements as a unit,” Father Chiromba said.

In the letter released by the Vatican, Archbishop Ncube wrote that he alerted the Pope by letter “within days” of the news reports, calling it “obviously a state-driven, vicious attack not just on myself, but by proxy on the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe.”

He said he wished to resign as head of the Archdiocese of Bulawayo “to spare my fellow bishops and the body of the Church any further attacks.”

In an August 29 statement from Harare, Zimbabwe’s bishops had called attacks on Archbishop Ncube “outrageous and utterly deplorable” and an attempt to divert attention from the catastrophe that Zimbabwe has become.

The Archbishop has long been an outspoken critic of the country’s leadership, especially Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. The church leader has urged Zimbabweans to take to the streets in protest against decades of government oppression.

Archbishop Ncube’s lawyer has said the allegations of adultery are part of a “well-orchestrated campaign” to discredit him. Archbishop Ncube said in his letter that although he has stepped down as head of the archdiocese “I remain a Catholic bishop in Zimbabwe and will continue to speak out on the issues that sadly become more acute by the day,” such as the country’s grinding poverty and severe food shortages.

“I have not been silenced by the crude machinations of a wicked regime,” he wrote, adding that he will decide in the next few weeks where he will continue working - either in the church or with grass-roots groups - to advocate “for greater humanitarian support, in particular, for food and medical supplies,” and “to continue with God’s work.”

In neighbouring South Africa, Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg expressed shock upon hearing the news.

“This will have huge repercussions in Zimbabwe, where he is seen as a prophetic voice,” Bishop Dowling said. “He has massive support in Matabeleland, where they see this as an attack on the Matabele people, not just on their leader.”

Matabeleland is a region in western Zimbabwe.

Bishop Dowling confirmed that the camera placed in the light in Archbishop Ncube’s bedroom was put there by Ernest Tekere, a senior intelligence operative for the Zimbabwean government for 20 years. Tekere allegedly was involved in the Gukurahundi campaign, in which government troops were responsible for the murders of about 20,000 people as well as

torture and human rights abuses in the western Matabeleland province from 1981 to 1987.

As a result of the photos, Onesimus Sibanda claimed damages from Archbishop Ncube for an alleged affair with his wife, Rosemary Sibanda. Zimbabwe is crippled by the highest rate of inflation in the world, unemployment of more than 80 percent, and shortages of foreign currency and fuel. Food shortages are acute, large numbers of people are migrating to the neighbouring countries of South Africa and Botswana, and, with elections scheduled for March, political violence has intensified.

Benedict sets Vietnamese Cardinal on sainthood path

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - As Church officials prepared to open the sainthood cause for Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan, Pope Benedict XVI praised the late Vietnamese Cardinal as a “singular prophet of Christian hope.”

“This heroic pastor” left behind a legacy that included his “shining witness of faith” in God’s plan for humanity, the Pope said in a September 17 audience with members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the office Cardinal Thuan headed from 1998 until his death in 2002.

The audience at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, came one day after Cardinal Renato Martino named Silvia Monica Correale as postulator for the Cardinal’s sainthood cause.

Correale said that the Diocese of Rome formally will open the canonisation process “very soon.” Church law calls for a five-year waiting period between the time of the candidate’s death and the cause for canonisation to begin. The first step in the canonisation process is the declaration of a person’s heroic virtues, then beatification. In gen-

eral, the Church must confirm two miracles through the intercession of the sainthood candidate before canonisation.

Pope Benedict said the Cardinal “was a man of hope; he lived (a life) based on hope and he spread it among everyone he met.”

“Hope sustained him” in his many years of detention in communist Vietnam, and it helped him “catch a glimpse of the absurdity in events,” such as his never receiving a trial during his 13 years of imprisonment, the Pope said.

The Pope, who said he knew Cardinal Thuan well because they worked together in the Roman Curia, recalled how the cardinal loved to say that a “Christian was a person of the hour, of now, of the moment, ready to welcome and live with the love of Christ.”

His capacity to live in the present was seen in the way he gave himself completely over to God as well, said the Pope, who remembered the Cardinal’s “simple and immediate cordiality,” his ability to communicate and be close to people, his fervid dedication to spreading the Church’s social teachings to the poor, his “yearning for the evan-

gelisation of his continent, Asia,” as well as his efforts in promoting and supporting charitable works and human development in “the farthest-flung places on earth.”

Cardinal Thuan died in Rome on September 16, 2002, at the age of 74 after an extended battle with cancer.

Vietnam’s communist regime jailed the cardinal in 1975 when he was the newly named coadjutor bishop of Saigon, later renamed Ho Chi Minh City. He was never tried or sentenced and spent nine of his 13 years of detention in solitary confinement. His uncle was South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who was assassinated in 1963.

After Cardinal Thuan’s release in 1988, the communist authorities refused to let him resume his post or to be reassigned to the Archdiocese of Hanoi. The prelate fled to Rome in 1991 after a Vietnamese government official “suggested” he leave.

His prison experiences shaped his spiritual outlook and were a constant theme in his numerous public speaking engagements around the world. Even after leav-

ing Vietnam, he continued to wear a pectoral cross and chain he fashioned in prison out of wood and electrical wire and which he hid from guards in a bar of soap.

“I wear this cross and this chain every day,” he said at a conference in Los Angeles in 2000, “not because they are reminders of prison, but because they indicate

my profound conviction, a constant reference point for me: Only Christian love can change hearts; neither weapons, nor threats nor the media can do so.” He repeatedly said he bore his guards no ill will and even tried to become friends with them, answering their questions about the Catholic Church in an attempt at evangelisation.

Troubled man: After being vigorously defended by his bishops, Archbishop Pius Ncube has resigned to “spare sullying the image of the Church”, as he was embroiled in a sex scandal. PHOTO: CNS

In the company of greatness: Pope John Paul II bestows a blessing on Vietnamese Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan during the consistory ceremony in 2001 in St Peter’s Square. CNS

Pregnancies show sex ed is failing Kiwis

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand ( Zenit.org) - After decades of comprehensive sex education in New Zealand’s schools, a pro-life group is asking about the results.

In statement released last week, Right to Life New Zealand notes that the country has the second highest rate of teen pregnancies among the 30 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an increasing rate of teenage abortions, and an escalating epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases.

The pro-life group’s statement follows a recent Education Review Office (ERO) report on sex education.

It asks the ERO to show that the current program can reach the stated objectives of decreasing teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, and helping teens cope with coercive behavior.

Right to Life New Zealand says the current program cannot fulfill those objectives and experience proves it, and that the ERO review did not evaluate the effectiveness of the current educational program.

“’Safe sex’ is a pernicious, false and dangerous lie,” the pro-life group said. “Why does ERO continue to promote to our youth this immoral falsehood? The official line that ‘safe sex’ is effective is sending a message that is actually endangering the health of our young people.”

All programs, the ERO review stated, should treat delaying sexual intercourse as a priority but should also focus on safe sexual practices.

Right to Life, on the other hand, says the programs are a failure.

This movie did a lot of damage...

“The time has now come for ERO, the ministries of education, health and women’s affairs, to stop promoting a culture of death with its false ‘safe sex’ message,” the statement said.

The problem is, the Attorney General seems to think it was a documentary.

“Failed comprehensive sex education, as promoted by the ministries of education and family planning, should be withdrawn and replaced with successful abstinence-based programs that will result in a decline in teenage pregnancies, abortions and STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] and promote happy and healthy teenagers.”

Richard Gere and Julia Roberts may one day come to regret having acted in a film that portrayed the sexual abuse of women and girls as glamorous.

Pretty Woman was a wildly successful movie when it was released in 1990.

A bit like a modern-day My Fair Lady, it had everything you could want in a Hollywood fantasy - a handsome leading man, one of the world’s most beautiful women as leading lady, a poor-girl-forcedinto-an-unpleasant-job swept off her feet by a wealthy businessman - an all’s well that ends well sort of story.

Of course. Sadly, the truth is different. Very.

If one thing is universally known about the ugly business of human trafficking

and prostitution it is that it depends on the ongoing abuse and destruction of women and girls for its continuation.

Its effects are clear, known and documented: loss of self-esteem, self-abusive behaviours, drug addiction to numb the painphysical or psychological - loss of a sense of purpose, and despair. Try asking those who help prostitution’s first victims to escape, and see what they say.

But when Jim McGinty talks about decriminalising prostitution in WA, its clear he’s clueless about what it really involves - and who is hurt by it most of all.

Pretty Woman was in many regards a clever, funny, well-produced movie, the sort of thing Hollywood is brilliant at making - a fantasy. But it’s hardly the sort of thing we should be modelling actual laws on - not, that is, unless we don’t care about the victims in the first place.

Some problems can be solved. It’s worth the effort.

For further information,contact the Prostitution Law Amendment Working Committee PO Box 3557, Perth, Adelaide Tce WA 6832 plawc@yahoo.com.au tel: 0419 956 319

Southern Cross Care ‘a ripping yarn’

The Knights of the Southern Cross have just celebrated 40 years of work caring for the elderly and the aged

The “ripping yarn” of Southern Cross Care’s 40 years of charity, compassion and respect for the dignity of individuals was celebrated at Burswood by over 500 people on August 23.

Many Streams – One River, a history of Southern Cross Care, was also launched on the day, in which Archbishop Barry Hickey joined the celebrations.

The “ripping yarn”, as described by chairman Hugh Cahill, started in 1966 when Southern Cross Care (WA), then known as Southern Cross Homes, was established by the Knights of the Southern Cross, reflecting the Knights’ desire to provide quality services to the community according to need and based on the principles of charity, compassion and respect for the dignity of individuals.

In 1967 the Knights purchased one and a third acres of land from the Redemptorist Fathers in North Perth for the construction of BF Prindiville Village.

Officially opened on May 15, 1968, it provided retirement living for 32 people – and so the journey began.

The first foray into residential care was Villa Pelletier.

This 40-bed hostel was con-

structed in 1971 and officially opened in the November. From its establishment to the present day Southern Cross Care has expanded significantly through building, acquiring and managing

aged care facilities and independent living villages as well as establishing and expanding its Community Care Division in 2000.

But times have changed.

With many elderly people now preferring to age at home, Southern Cross Care has diversified its services by providing community care to many West Australians and has also opened day and overnight respite centres in North Perth, Broome and Success.

Southern Cross Care now has a range of facilities, villages and services and has kept true to its values and its particular commitment to the disadavantaged and marginalised.

This is perhaps most obvious through its work in Broome with the indigenous community.

From humble beginnings

Southern Cross Care has grown to offer services to over 2000 West Australians and employs over 700 staff, achieving an enviable reputation as one of the state’s leading aged care service providers.

The Knights of the Southern Cross (WA) and Southern Cross Care (WA) maintain a mutually supportive relationship and expect to further the expansion of Southern Cross Care.

Copies of the Southern Cross Care (WA) history can be purchased for $25 plus $10 postage and handling.

Contact Tara Mitchell on (08) 9282 9900 or via email: tmitchell@scrosswa.org.au.

Prominent Dianella couple celebrate 50 years of marriage

Joseph and Margaret Callus, who play a prominent role in the Dianella parish, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on August 25. Their celebration was a virtual re-enactment of their wedding 50 years ago, only all the participants were older.

It was in the same church, Sacred Heart in Mary Street, Highgate and with the same celebrant, Bishop Peter Quinn. The co-celebrant was Father Anton Hesse.

The best man, Joseph’s twin brother Andrew, groomsman, Eddy Galdies, and the bridesmaid, Desma Lambert were also present.

The other bridesmaid, Margaret’s sister Theresa Greeve was in Albany and unable to attend because of ill health.

They again had a renewal of marriage vows, a blessing and an exchange of rings. Bishop Quinn gave them another Marriage Blessing, praying that they will continue to be a joy and blessing to each other.

On this occasion they received a special blessing from Pope Benedict XVI for their fifty years of marriage.

In his enthusiastic homily Bishop Quinn emphasised the importance of coming back to the place where great events happened; in particular the Sacred Heart Church in Highgate, which had many nostalgic memories for himself. He then entertained the congregation of family and friends with a trip down memory lane, commencing from when he was an

altar boy living in Mary Street. The church was where he made his first communion, was confirmed and to where he was sent following his ordination in 1955.

Singing at the Mass was performed by members of the St Mary’s Cathedral Choir, one of whom was their grandson Marcus.

At the conclusion, Margaret’s brother Bill Palmer, who is confined to a wheel chair, sang The Our Father, which was greeted with enthusiastic applause.

The mainly family congregation, which included their four children and nine grand-children, repaired to the Dianella Community Centre for a joyful luncheon celebration with speeches cum-reminiscences and more of Bill’s singing Joseph and Margaret’s celebra-

Evidence says Griver practiced medicine

■ By Anthony Barich

Notre Dame Masters student Odhran O’Brien has unearthed tangible evidence that Bishop Martin Griver of Perth practised medicine on the priests and Religious.

After being awarded a twoyear scholarship for a 50,000word thesis on Bishop Griver by the Archdiocese of Perth, Mr O’Brien took a cursory look through the Benedictines’ archives at New Norcia and found several letters suggesting that Bishop Griver was administering services as a doctor – mainly to the Religious.

“It’s promising that we’re going to be able to prove that he did at least continue practising in the colony several years after coming here (from Spain),” said Mr O’Brien, who presented his first findings to the Archdiocesan Historical Commission on August 28 at St Thomas More College.

“We were unsure how much evidence there would be, so we are pleased. Though it’s important to realise he had restrictions on what he could perform, the evidence shows so far that he never exceeded those restrictions.”

Mr O’Brien found up to 400 summaries of letters of correspondence between Bishop Griver and Bishop Rosendo Salvado and other priests or monks in New Norcia, and letters between New Norcia and the Archdiocese and Rome.

tions continued with 9.30 Mass the next day in Our Lady’s Assumption church, Dianella.

A large gathering of parishioners and friends enjoyed morning tea in the Community Centre with more speeches, reminiscences and congratulations.

The Callus family has lived in the Dianella parish for 40 years, where both have fulfilled many roles. Joseph has been an acolyte for 34 years.

His duties as an acolyte have extended outside the parish. Since 2001 he has been acolyte for Archbishop Hickey who has taken pilgrimages to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, The Eucharistic Congress in 2004 and in 2006 a pilgrimage to Egypt, Turkey, Patmos and Rome.

Mr O’Brien hopes private archives of WA Catholics may unearth more personal details, and is asking anyone to come forward with information like personal letters from the Bishop or anyone else involved in his era. He is yet to study microfilms at the Battye Library, which has letters from Catholic Archives and New Norcia. The State records office should also prove a fruitful source. The letter summaries are in English, but the letters themselves are in Spanish so he needs to translate them, so has not reviewed any letters as yet. “We’re still very much at the early stages, and as we expected there will be a monumental amount of info to sift through,” Mr O’Brien said. Anyone with personal archives contact Odhran at oobrien@student.nd.edu.au.

Archbishop Barry Hickey and Joe Palandri, State Chairman of the Knights of the Southern Cross (WA) Inc. at Southern Cross Care’s 40th Anniversary function.

Bishop Peter Quinn, the retired Bishop of Bunbury, presents Margaret and Joseph Callus with a framed papal blessing from Pope of their 50th wedding anniversary. Bishop Quinn presided at their wedding 50 years ago in the same Church, Sacred Heart in Highgate. Among Joseph Callus’s duties over the years has been the pleasant task of acting as acolyte to Archbishop Barry Hickey during pilgrimages overseas, right, including this visit to the house reputed to have been the Virgin Mary’s at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey.

Odhran O’Brien

Holy Hour goes global as Marian apparitions inspire

The apparitions of Mary to three shepherd children in Fatima in 1917 are the inspiration behind the Worldwide Children’s Holy Hour that will be broadcast on Catholic television station EWTN on October 5.

■ By Mark Reidy

A Worldwide Children’s Holy Hour, which began in 2003, will be hosted at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington and received live in over 140 nations.

The goal of the Holy Hour is to coordinate as many children as possible from around the world in a time of Eucharistic Adoration and prayer.

The event is being organised by the US based World Apostolate of Fatima and seeks to continue the mission of the visionaries who were asked to pray for the saving of souls and for world peace.

Spokesperson for the Apostolate, Connie Schneider, said that they were inviting and encouraging bishops, parish pastors, school principals and families from around the globe to plan “little pilgrimages” to their local shrines, cathedrals, churches and chapels to gather children before the

in brief

Dutch

women

loathe to put career before family

In a new effort to get housebound mothers to work, the Dutch government now requires all schools to offer afternoon child care.

Female participation in the workforce, at 66 per cent, is higher than the European average, but a 2006 study found that 61 per cent of Dutch women in work are part-time, compared with 39 per cent in Germany.

Providing after-school care is meant to boost women’s working hours, but Heleen Mees, an economist and new generation feminist, says that won’t be achieved without narrowing the pay-gap between men and women, and lifting women’s ambition.

- FamilyEdge

Boys expelled from polygamous sect

As the head of a polygamous breakaway Mormon sect goes on trial on sex charges in Utah this week, boys banished from his community are receiving help to begin a new life.

Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave Warren Jeff’s polygamous settlement straddling the ArizonaUtah border. Many have ended up living rough and getting into trouble.

Official efforts to help them have been frustrated by the boys’ distrust of government and fear of getting their parents into trouble. Recently the first residential centre for them opened.

Disobedience to Jeffs’ dictates is the usual pretext for the expul-

Blessed Sacrament. Families who cannot attend at these places are encouraged to gather their children at home to pray in unity with other participants from around the world. Due to the differences in time zones it is anticipated that

sions, but they also remedy a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives. The problem of surplus males worsened in the 1990s when the late “prophet” Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs’ father, took on dozens of young wives.

Warren Jeffs, assuming leadership after his father’s death in 2002, adopted most of his father’s wives and married others, and also began assigning more wives to his trusted church leaders, former members say. Forced departures increased.

Jeffs is charged with being an accomplice to the rape of a 14year-old girl by forcing her to marry an older cousin, and other sex-related crimes. A young man thrown out of the 6000 member community at the age of 16 estimates that 100, or 70 per cent of his school class have been expelled or left. “There are a lot of brokenhearted parents, but you question his [Jeffs’] decision at the risk of your own salvation.”

- FamilyEdge

Spanish government’s ‘lay religion’ gets hostile reception

As parents in Montgomery County, eastern United States, go to court again over homosexual sex-ed lessons, Spain’s socialist government is facing its own bitter back-to-school fight over pro-homosexual content in its Education for Citizenship and Human Rights curriculum.

The Spanish Family Forum reports that among 200,000 students, at least 15,000 conscientious objections have been registered with school authorities.

Whole provinces have not yet reported figures from their areas.

there will be continuous prayer across the globe throughout the day.

Schneider said that the “Angel of Peace”, who first appeared to the Fatima children in July 1916, planted the seed for today’s movement.

Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Community of Madrid (Spain’s largest province), has criticised the program as “indoctrination” and said her government would only authorise those parts that were not objectionable to anyone. Religious doctrine was taught in Catholic schools because parents wanted it, she said. She accused the government of wanting to force schools to teach a “lay religion”.

- FamilyEdge

India’s demographic crisis

Fears of a demographic crisis are mounting in India, where many years of female feticide have severely skewed the makeup of the population. Ironically, one of the latest warnings came from Ena Singh, a representative of the UN Population Fund - itself responsible for promoting abortion. Singh told the news agency Reuters, in a report published on August 31, that the lack of women could lead to an increase in sexual violence and child abuse. According to the United Nations, an estimated 2,000 unborn girls are illegally aborted every day in India.

A much higher estimate of the number of missing girls was given earlier, when the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) presented its “State of the World’s Children 2007” report in India. According to an article published on December 12 by Reuters, UNICEF officials said that 7,000 fewer girls are born in India each day compared with global averages. In its report, Reuters noted that a 2001 census showed regions such as Punjab, Gujarat and Himachal with fewer than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.

- Zenit

had pleaded for children of the world to pray for the ending of the First World War.

“Perhaps God will be affected by the cry of the innocent, which is the cry of justice”, he said during a gathering in Rome.

When Mary appeared to the children a year later, she also urged the children to pray for world peace and the saving of souls.

The World Apostolate of Fatima seeks to provide the opportunity and encouragement for children across the world to continue answering these requests as well as those urged by Pope John Paul II in a 1992 letter, which entrusted the mission of praying for families to the prayers of children.

Schneider said that the papal connection for the Apostolate continues today with Pope Benedict XVI providing an Apostolic Blessing for this event.

“It is my hope and prayer”, he states, “that each of the children who participate in this Holy Hour will be ambassadors for Jesus Christ to other young people and to the world.”

He initiated the “first Children’s Holy Hour”, she said, by teaching the visionaries how to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Schneider also points out that in the same month that these apparitions occurred, Pope Benedict XV

Schneider believes the fruit of the global Holy Hour will be the establishment of weekly and monthly Children’s Eucharistic Adoration in parishes, schools and families around the world.

For more information and suggested prayer programs for the Holy Hour see: www. childrenoftheeucharist.org

Pemberton joins world

■ By Mark Reidy

In the peaceful surroundings of the Southwest town of Pemberton an enthusiastic gathering of children is looking forward to uniting their own Holy Hour with the Worldwide Children’s Holy Hour on October 5 (see above article).

The group, which can consist of up to 20 eager participants, is a part of the Holy Spirit of Freedom Community and has been gathering together each Friday since March 2006.

Coordinator of the Pemberton Children’s Holy Hour, Robert

McLernon, said that the weekly event included ‘gentle action’ songs, a decade of the Rosary, Scripture reading with a short homily, praying for intentions and the sacrament of Reconciliation. He is encouraged by the reverence and enthusiasm displayed by the children, with some even participating in Adoration before school.

Mr McLernon said that this year will be the second time the group has united with the Worldwide event and agrees with the sentiments of Padre Pio who said that the world will be saved by the prayers of children.

Devotion: A woman places a candle in an area where pilgrims leave candles and wax figures at the Marian shrine in Fatima, Portugal. The site has attracted pilgrims since 1917, when three children - Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto - saw visions of the Virgin Mary and received her messages for prayer and conversion. PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

Devotion: Pemberton parishioners young and old embrace the Holy Hour concept, uniting with Catholics around the world.

PANORAMA a roundup of events in the archdiocese

Each Saturday, September 22 – November 10

BE RENEWED AND REFRESHED IN THE NEW LIFE IN GOD’S SPIRIT SEMINAR

The Holy Spirit of Freedom Community invites you to this eight week seminar, which provides an opportunity to deepen your relationship with God and seek a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The course will run from 10.30am - 12.30pm at St Anne’s Church Hall, 11 Hehir St Belmont. For further details contact Peter on 9475 0155 or email at hsofperth@gmail.com.

Saturday 22 September

AWAKENINGS

An Internationally accredited 5 Hour Retreat. Experienced by thousands in different countries, is guaranteed to bring new meaning to your life as Catholics. This Retreat beautifully developed by Fr Douglas Rowe SFP and brilliantly conducted by him is an experience you will never forget. Seeing, is believing! Catholic Pastoral Centre, 40/A Mary Street, Highgate. 2pm sharp till approximately 7pm. Registration: 1.30pm onwards. Book in advance to avoid disappointment. Contact: Jan 9323 8089 or Maureen 9247 4643 or Fr Douglas Rowe SFP 9325 2009.

Sunday September 23

“IN WHOSE SHADOW DO WE STAND?”

The Council for Australian Catholic Women (CACW) Forum. 2 - 5 pm at Mary MacKillop Centre 16 York St South Perth. Sr Leonie Mayne RSJ will discuss the influence of women in the myth of family, our faith stories and in the choices we make in living our vocation. Sr Leonie co-ordinates the MacKillop Rural Network and is involved in Pastoral Administration and the Sisters’ Retreat Centre at Safety Bay. Cost$5/unwaged: gold coin. RSVP 19th September to 9345 2555 or michelleww@iinet.net.au.

Sunday September 23

ST JEROME’S SCHOOL/PARISH FETE

Stalls, rides, hot food, refreshments, raffles, auction at 12noon, and much more..... Corner Rockingham Road and Troode Street Munster.

Sunday September 23

40TH ANNIVERSARY OUR LADY OF LOURDES

Past parishioners and friends of Our Lady of Lourdes, Nollamara are warmly invited to attend the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of our Church and the Blessing of its extensions. Celebrations will begin with a concelebrated Mass at 2.30pm followed by light refreshments. For further enquiries please contact the Parish Centre on 9345 5541.

Sunday September 23

ST JOSEPH’S CHURCH TRAYNING CELEBRATES 81 YEARS

10.30am St Joseph’s Trayning will celebrate 81 years. Mass will be followed by a bring and share lunch. Contacts: Sandra Waters 9683 2048 email: rosalind@bbsat.com.au Val Enriquez 9683 1191, Fr Chien 9685 2399.

Tuesday September 25

FR FRED DELORME PROMOTING THE APOSTOLATE OF ST JOSEPH OF THE ETERNAL FAMILY

To encourage families to pray to St Joseph for people who might be undergoing difficulties. People are asked to bring photos; these will be taken up during Mass. Program: Wed 26 St Jerome’s Church Spearwood, Thurs 27 St Patrick’s Church York, Friday 28 St Bernadette’s Church Glendalough. Start: 10.30am Rosary, Holy Mass and Talks. Benediction at 2pm (BYO lunch) Tea and Coffee supplied. Evening Mass: Wed 26, 7pm-9pm St Bernadette’s Glendalough. Enq: Margaret 9341 8082 or Jenny 9494 2604.

Thursday September 27

THE ANNUAL MASS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF CATHOLIC POLICE OFFICERS OF WA INC

To be held at Our Lady Help of Christians Parish, 43 Camberwell Street, East Victoria Park. Start 7pm. Light supper and refreshments will be served following Mass. It is an opportunity to remember those members who lost their lives in the service of the community and those who have gone to their final reward following many years of dedicated service. RSVP by 20 September. Enq: Peter Browne 9321 2155 or John Bouwman 0437 576 103.

Friday - Sunday September 28 – 30

ANCHOR WEEKEND

The Youth Mission Team is running a weekend for young people aged 14-18 years. Venue: Advent Park, 345 Kalamunda Road, Maida Vale. Get ready for heaps of fun, games, drama, faith formation and fellowship. Cost is $60. Contact the Youth Mission Team on 0417 637 040 or at perth@ymt.com.au for more details.

Friday September 28

4TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Mass at 7pm for Perpetual Adoration at Christ the King Church Beaconsfield. Concelebrated by local priests and Vicar General Fr Brian O’Loughlin.

Friday - Sunday September 28–30

GOD’S FARM CHAPEL 20TH

“Rejoicing in God our Saviour” weekend retreat theme at God’s Farm, 40km south of Busselton.

Saturday September 29 a Concelebrated Mass of tremendous Thanksgiving will be offered at 11am in The Perfect Joy of Jesus and St Francis stone Chapel. Celebrant Fr Tony Chiera VG. Finger lunch provided. Bookings call Betty Peaker 9755 6212 or write PO Box 24, Cowaramup, 6284. Farm address 94 Woodlands Road, Wilyabrup, map available.

Friday 28 September

HEALING FIRE BURNING LOVE AND CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

Are celebrating their Regional Healing Mass at Our Lady of the Missions 270 Camberwarra Drive, Whitford. 7.30pm to 9.30pm. All prayer groups and people are invited to attend and receive the healing love of Jesus. Enq: Jenni Young on 9445 1028.

Saturday September 29

DISCOVER THE MYSTERY OF THE SCARLET THREAD IN THE BIBLE AND YOUR CATHOLIC FAITH.

Flame Ministries and St Anthony’s Greenmount offer a one day Bible retreat on Yahweh’s Blood Covenants. 10.30am, Blood Covenants in our culture. 1pm, The 9 Steps of a Hebrew Covenant Ritual. 2.45pm, Yahweh’s 9 Steps from Adam to Abram. 4.30pm, Yahweh’s 9 Steps from Abraham to Moses. 6pm, Mass. 8pm, Jesus’ 9 Steps to the Final Sacrifice. St. Anthony’s Church, 96 Innamincka Road, Greenmount. Speaker, Eddie Russell FMI. Bring a Bible and Shared Meals. Info: 08 9362 3668. fmi@flameministries.org.

Sunday September 30

GOOD SHEPHERD PARISH LOCKRIDGE

The Pauline Youth will be having a gathering starting at 5pm with the celebration of Mass followed by singing and Bible reading. After this there will be a gathering in the Father Dan Foley Centre with refreshments, fun and social activity. Enquiries to Father Hong Pham 9279 8119 or Nick De Luca 9378 2684.

Tuesday October 2

MOTHERS’ PRAYERS MASS

To be held at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church at 10am, cnr Tribute Street and Tudor Avenue, Riverton. For all Mothers and Grandmothers coming together to pray for their children. Fathers, Grandfathers welcome. Bring a plate and enjoy fellowship after Mass. Tea/coffee provided. Enq: Veronica Peake 9447 0671.

Wednesday October 3

TRANSITUS CELEBRATION OF ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

All are welcome to join the Secular Franciscan Order in WA and the Franciscan Friars in celebrating the Transitus (the passing) of St Francis with Mass and readings at 6.30pm at Our Lady Queen of Poland Church, Polish Catholic Centre, 35 Eighth Ave, Maylands. Readings and Mass in English and Polish. Public transport is available. Contact Transperth for details. Enq: Mary 9377 7925.

Friday October 5

ALLIANCE AND TRIUMPH OF THE TWO HEARTS

Holy Mass and Eucharistic vigil at St Bernadette’s Church Glendalough. Confessions at 5.15pm. Holy Mass at 5.45pm (Celebrant: Fr Doug Harris) followed by exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, hourly Rosaries, hymns and reflections etc. Vigil concludes with midnight Mass in honour of the BVM (Celebrant: Fr Amando Carandang). Enq: Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

Friday - Sunday October 5-7

THE CELEBRATE FAMILY WEEKEND

Discover new ways to enrich your family life at Our Lady Queen of Apostles Parish, Riverton. Adults: Talks and Workshops on nurturing faith in the family, communications, parenting ideas and more. Youth: bands, drama, dance, student art, youth expo. Children: Creche for little ones, age appropriate programs for those aged 3-12 and 13-17. Cost: $20 per family for the whole weekend. More details at: www.celebrate-families.com or call Barbara/ Su on 9328 8113 or email: familylife@perthcatholic. org.au.

Friday - Sunday October 5-7

BROTHER ANDREW’S SEVENTH

On the Feast of St Francis, 4 October 2000, Brother Andrew completed his tremendous work for God on earth. God’ Farm, 40km south of Busselton is holding Brother’s Seventh Thanksgiving Retreat. Led by Fr Brian Morgan. Brother’s books, tapes, etc still available here. Prompt bookings contact Betty Peaker 9755 6212 or write PO Box 24, Cowaramup, 6284. Farm address 94 Woodlands Road, Wilyabrup, map available.

Friday October 5

PRO LIFE PROCESSION

The First Friday Mass, Procession and Rosary Vigil starting at 9.30am. Mass celebrated at St Brigid’s Church, Midland. The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate will lead us. All are invited to witness for the sanctity of life and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Saturday October 6

WITNESS FOR LIFE PROCESSION

The next First Saturday Mass, Procession and Rosary Vigil starting at 8.30am. Mass celebrated at St Anne’s Church, Hehir Street, Belmont. We proceed prayerfully to the Rivervale Abortion Centre and conclude with Rosary. Led by Fr Paul Cary SSC. Please join us to pray peacefully for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Saturday October 6

DAY WITH MARY

St Anne Church, 6549 Great Northern Highway, Bindoon 9am–5pm. A video on Fatima will be shown at 9am. A day of prayer and instruction based upon the messages of Fatima. Includes Sacrament of Penance, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons, Rosaries, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Stations of the Cross. Please BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286. Bus available – Contact Nita 9367 1366.

Sunday October 7

DIVINE MERCY

An afternoon with Jesus and Mary will be held at St Joachim’s Church, cnr Shepperton Road and Harper Street, Victoria Park at 1.30pm. Program: Holy Rosary and Reconciliation, Sermon: Saint Faustina Kowalska by Fr Andre Maria FFI, followed by Divine Mercy Prayers and Benediction. Afterwards refreshments in the Parish Hall, followed by a video with Fr Benedict Groeschel on Saint Faustina Kowalska. Enq: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Thursday - Saturday October 11, 12 and 13

TRIDUUM TO CELEBRATE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FATIMA APPARITIONS

Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. 7pm Holy Mass followed by Rosary, Litany, Marian Prayer and Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament on Thursday and Friday respectively. Saturday 13th, Vigil Mass at 6pm followed by devotions as above, concluding with candle light procession and fellowship at the hall to thank and farewell Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate the Preacher Fr John Josep. Please bring a plate. Enq: Mons McCrann 9271 5528 or Judy David 9275 5827 or George Jacob 9272 1379.

Saturday - Thursday October 13-18

SPIRITUALITY IN EVERDAY LIFE

A parish renewal, entitled “Spirituality in Everyday Life” and conducted by a team from the Thomas More Centre for Preaching and Prayer, will be held at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, 17 Angelico St, Doubleview. All welcome. For details, contact the Parish Office on 9446 2055.

Saturday October 13

RETREAT “LET THE FIRE FALL”

Come and be Blessed by the Holy Spirit. The Apostles For Christ Prayer Group of the Sts John Paul Church is sponsoring a retreat directed by Fr Greg Donovan. Venue: Orana School, cnr Querrin Avenue and Vahland Avenue, Willetton. Start 9am to 5pm followed by Reconciliation at 5.30pm and Mass at 6.30pm at Sts John Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Road, Willetton. All welcome. Enq: Michelle 9456 4215 or 0412 652 827 or Margaret 9332 0087 or 0413 380 338.

Saturday October 13

YMT INFORMATION NIGHT

YMT Australia is now taking applications for 2008. YMT Australia is a national, Catholic organisation that was created to serve the Church in the area of Youth Evangelisation. YMT members defer career or studies to facilitate secondary school reflection days, youth groups and camps. They lead a common lifestyle based on prayer, simplicity and chastity. Held at Integrity House, 67 Howe St. Osborne Park, at 7pm. Further information visit www.ymt. com.au or contact on 0417 637 040 or perth@ymt. com.au.

Sunday October 14

DIVINE MERCY PILGRIMAGE

Bove Farm, Shrine to Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary. 2pm Holy Hour. 3pm Divine Mercy Holy Mass followed by Benediction. 4pm Divine Mercy Way of the Cross. 5pm BBQ and refreshments. Celebrant will be Fr Marcellinus Meilak, OFM. Bus available from Our Lady of Mercy Church, Girrawheen at 8am, St Joachim’s, Victoria Park at 8.30am and St John and Paul Church, Willetton at 9am. Return trip to Perth will depart at 6pm. Enq: Charles 9342 0653 (NOR) or John 9457 7771 (SOR).

Friday - Sunday 19-21 October

MARRIAGE ENCOUNTER WEEKEND

When You Care Enough. Looking for a new way to let your spouse know you love them in the midst of your jobs, the kids, sport and trying to keep up with your house, pool and garden? Tell him or her they’re still No. 1 in your life. To love the very best in your marriage, treat yourselves to a Marriage Encounter Weekend. Register now for the last weekend for the year 2007. Contact Joe and Margaret Cordina on 9417 8750 for further details and bookings.

Saturday October 20

ST JOSEPH’S YOUTH GROUP, QUEENS PARK, 30 YEAR REUNION

All past members of the St Joseph’s Youth Group are invited to attend a reunion. If you would like to attend or know of someone who was a member, please contact Wayne McGoorty on 9351 9563 or email dmcgoorty@upnaway.com or Carolyn Pen on 0411 133 465 or email penpc@optusnet.com.au for further details of this event.

Friday October 26

HEALING OF THE FAMILY TREE

Our Lady of the Missions Church, 270 Camberwarra Drive, Whitfords. 7.30pm to 9.30pm. Don’t miss this opportunity to be set free from generational sins and sicknesses. Celebrant is Fr Hugh Thomas CSsR. Family Tree Booklets available from the Healing Fire Burning Love Ministry during Service for $2. Enq: Jenni Young 9445 1028.

Friday - Sunday October 26-28

CATHOLIC FAITH RENEWAL: RETREAT BY FATHER GINO HENRIQUES

God and You Inner Self. Fr Gino Henriques CSsR is a Catholic priest of the Redemptorist congregation. Ordained in 1960 and studied Sacred Scripture and Theology in Rome and Mass Media in Canada and the USA. He is an international speaker who has preached to Bishops, Priests, Religious and laity. Enq: Rita 9272 1765, Rose 0403 300 720, Maureen 9381 4498.

Sunday October 28

JENNACUBINE

An invitation is extended to all persons who have any links to St Isidore’s Church, Jennacubbine to attend the 100th Anniversary Celebrations at 10am.

Celebrant: Archbishop B J Hickey. We would appreciate the offer on-loan of any memorabilia or photos of interest. Contact: Joe and Cathie Bowen 9623 2264 cbowen@wn.com.au.

Sunday November 4

ST MATTHEW’S PARISH CENTENARY NARROGIN

A Mass will commence at 2.30pm in the church followed by afternoon tea in the Senior Citizens Centre. Everyone welcome. We would love to see any ex-parishioners. Please come and help us celebrate this great occasion. RSVP: 10 October stmatthews.narrogin@bigpond.com or Jenny 9881 1496 or Evelyn 9881 1774.

Friday November 17

INTERCESSION FOR WORLD YOUTH DAY 2008

All night prayer vigil. St Bernadette’s, Jugan St, Glendalough. 8pm-6am. Begins with Mass ends with Breakfast. All are welcome to come to pray and intercede for World Youth Day 2008. Come for an hour, stay the night.

Every First Friday and First Saturday of Each Month

COMMUNION OF REPARATION ALL NIGHT VIGIL

Corpus Christi Church Mosman Park 7pm-1am. 46 Lochee Rd, Mosman Park. Mass, Rosary, Prayers, Confessions and silent adoration. Contact: Catalina 0439 931 151.

First Sunday of each month

DEVOTIONS IN HONOUR OF THE DIVINE MERCY

The Santa Clara Parish community welcomes anyone from surrounding parishes and beyond to Santa Clara Church, cnr of Coolgardie and Pollack Sts, Bentley. The afternoon commences with the 3 o’clock prayers, followed by the Divine Mercy Chaplet, reflection and concludes with Benediction.

Last Sunday of every month

HEALING FIRE BURNING LOVE CHARISMATIC MASSES

Worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth John 4:23-24 Holy Spirit Chapel. 5.15pm to 6.45pm, 85 Boas Avenue, Joondalup. Enq: Jenni Young 9445 1028.

First Sunday of every month

HEALING FIRE BURNING LOVE CHARISMATIC MASSES

Worshipping the Father in Spirit and in truth John 4:23-24 St Bernadette’s. 6.30pm to 8.00pm, Cnr Leeder and Jugan Street, Glendalough. Enq: Jenni Young 94445 1028

Every Saturday

PERPETUAL HELP DEVOTIONS

4.30pm. The half hour perpetual novena devotions to the Mother of Perpetual Help continue each

PANORAMA

Saturday at the Redemptorist Monastery Church, 190 Vincent St, in North Perth. Reconciliation available before and after the devotions. All welcome.

Every Sunday

BULLSBROOK SHRINE

Sunday pilgrim Mass is celebrated with Holy Rosary and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament 2pm at the Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Road, Bullsbrook. Reconciliation is available in Italian and English before every celebration. Enq: 9447 3292.

Every Sunday

RADIO GATE OF HEAVEN

7.30-9pm. 107.9FM. 1. Getting God’s Help w/Fr Benedict Groeschel - “The Gift of Fear of The Lord” Episode #8. Life on the rock w/Fr Francis Mary“Activists & Participants in the Walk for Life on the West Coast” Episode #156.

Every Sunday in September

TAIZE MEDITATIVE PRAYER

7pm to 8pm at Sisters of St Joseph Chapel, 16 York Street, South Perth. Everyone welcome, bring a friend and a torch. Pray in a candle lit chapel in stillness and peace and song. Enq: Sister Maree Riddler 0414 683 926.

Every Sunday LATIN MASS

The Latin Mass according to the 1962 missal is offered every Sunday at Our Lady of Fatima, 10 Foss St, Palmyra at noon. All welcome.

Every fourth Monday

SCRIPTURAL PRAYER PROGRAM

7.30-9pm. Venue: St Mary’s Parish Centre, 40 Franklin St, Leederville. The Council for Australian Catholic Women (CACW) is offering a scriptural prayer program developed in the Jesuit tradition. This form of prayer can lead to more reflective living, greater spiritual depths and promotes lay spiritual leadership in the Church. Led by Kathleen Brennan (ibvm). Enq: Michelle Wood 9345 2555.

Every Wednesday

HOLY HOUR, BENEDICTION

Holy Hour 4.30–5.30pm, St Thomas Church, 2 College Road, Claremont each Wednesday, followed by evening prayer and Benediction. Personal prayer before the Blessed Sacrament is Adoration of Jesus’ gift of Himself, of His love for you, for your loved ones and for our world. Come and Thank Him.

Every second Wednesday FORTNIGHTLY BIBLE REFLECTIONS

Workers in the Garden of the Holy Family are conducting Bible Reflections at St Mary’s Church, Parish Centre, 40 Franklin Street, Leederville. Commencing 7pm with Rosary, refreshments provided afterward. Dates: October 3, 17, 31, November 14, 28, December 5. Enq: 9201 0337.

EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

Holy Trinity Church, 8 Burnett Street, Embleton. Every Monday to Thursday after the 8.30am Mass untill 10am. Every Thursday night from 11pm to midnight. Every Friday Eucharistic Adoration after the 8.30 Mass untill 6pm. Enquiries: Mgr McCrann on: 9271 5528 or George Jacob on: 9272 1379.

Every First Friday

HOLY HOUR FOR VOCATIONS TO THE PRIESTHOOD AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

At Little Sisters of the Poor Chapel, 2 Rawlins Street, Glendalough. 7pm Mass with celebrant Fr Albert Saminedi. 7.30pm Holy Hour Adoration with Fr Don Kettle. Refreshments to follow in the hall. All welcome.

Every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month

CATHOLIC FAITH RENEWAL

Every 1st Friday - Praise and Worship evening held at St John and Paul’s Church, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton at 7.30pm. Every 3rd Friday Catholic Faith Education by Fr Greg Donovan, LJ Goody Bioethics Centre, 39 Jugan Street, Glendalough at 7.30pm. All are welcome. Enq: Rita 9272 1765 or Rose 0403 300 720.

Second Friday of each month

GENERAL PRAYER ASSEMBLY

The Couples for Christ and its Family Ministries welcome all members who now reside or are visiting Perth to join the community in our monthly general prayer assembly 7.30pm, St Joachim Parish Hall, Shepperton Road, Victoria Park. Enquiries: Tony and Dolly Haber (08) 9440 4540.

Every Fourth Sunday

SECULAR FRANCISCAN ORDER

The Perth Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order assembles every fourth Sunday at 2.30pm in the Chapel of RSL Care, 51 Alexander Dr, Menora. Enquiries John 9385 5649.

Every Fourth Sunday WATCH AND PRAY

A Holy Hour is held at Infant Jesus Parish, Morley from 2-3pm with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The hour consists of some prayers and Scripture but mostly the hour is silent prayer for Vocations. All are welcome. Please encourage others to come and pray. Prayer - it works! Enq: 9276 8500.

Every Monday

WEIGHT MANAGEMENT FOR THOSE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

The Emmanuel Centre are offering to help people who gain weight because they are using medication for their mental illness. The group helps participants to manage their weight safely and healthily. Mind-Body-Life meets at the Emmanuel Centre on Mondays from 12.30-2.30pm. Free. The group starts with a weigh-in, then a talk on nutrition and healthy eating tips, goal setting and then half an hour of exercise. Enq: Amanda - Emmanuel Centre, 9328 8113.

BOOK DONATIONS

We still seek donations of books and thank you and bless you for your kind, generous contributions of Bibles, Missals and Catholic books on the faith. We are now able to offer a selection of second-hand, preloved books to the community in return for a small donation. Enq: 9293 3092.

WINDOW FUND DONATIONS WELCOME

St Catherine’s Catholic Church, Gin Gin Parishioners are currently fundraising to restore the church windows. The cost of each window is $1500. If anyone is able to assist our fundraising efforts please telephone Fr Paul 9571 1839.

CLUB AMICI

Club Amici aims to build community amongst Catholic singles, couples and families (aged 25 and up) by organising social events. If you would like a copy of our new calendar of events or would like to be on our mailout list please contact Therese 9437 5349 or email clubamiciwa@yahoo.com.au.

FIRST EDITION MULTICULTURAL COOKBROOK

Published by St Lawrence Parish, Balcatta - Easy family recipes only $15. To purchase a copy, call Luciana Bailey 9344 7066 during office hours: Tuesday to Friday 9.30am to 12.30pm.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

Ignatian Volunteers Australia calls for part-time volunteers to respond to the needs of people in the community who live in marginalised circumstances. At the heart of this program is a reflective process based on Gospel values, which supports the volunteers in their work. To learn more: www.volunteers.jesuit.org.au Contact Kevin Wringe, Perth Coordinator (08) 9316 3469 kwringe@iinet.net.au .

PERPETUAL ADORATION

Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Christ the King Church, Lefroy Rd, Beaconsfield (cnr Livingstone St) is 24hrs per day except Mass times. Entrance is via side porch at front of church on Lefroy Rd side. Enq: Joe 9319 1169 (commenced 01/10/2003). All are welcome.

MARY MACKILLOP

JOSEPHITE CALENDERS 2008

Available at Mary MacKillop Centre. Orders taken. Enq: Sister Maree Riddler 0414 683 926.

REUNION

John and Marie Acland are planning to hold a reunion later this year of all past and present members of the Apostles of Christ Prayer Group Willetton and all other persons who took part in their Meetings, Fellowship Nights, Life in the Spirit, and supplementary Seminars, the Alpha Course and other group activities. Further details will be advised when full numbers are known. Enq: Marie Acland. Tel/fax 9537-3390. Email jmacland@bigpond.com or Dianne McLeod 9332-0829. Email danielmcleod@bigpond. com

OUR LADY QUEEN OF PEACE HOUSE OF PRAYER

Archbishop Hickey, at the end of 2006, approved a House of Prayer in the Archdiocese of Perth. The house must be fully purchased or donated and operational by the end of November 2007. All donations may be deposited at the CDF (Catholic Development Fund), 61 Fitzgerald Street, Northbridge. Ph: 9427 0333 Fax: 9427 0379 Email: cdf@archdiocese-perth. org.au. All donations will be fully refunded in the first half of December 2007 should a suitable house not be found and purchased. Please enquire about Tax Deductibility and General Enquiries: 9444 1940.

DONATION WANTED: THE CHAIN OF MARY

From 2004 up until now the Chain Of Mary has had a positive response throughout Australia and is now making it’s way overseas. We are now looking for anyone who can help with donations towards the continued printing and distribution of these Booklets. If you can assist Please call Rose on 0437 700 247.

Classifieds

Classifieds: $3.30/line incl. GST 24 hour Hotline 9227 7778 Deadline: 12pm Monday

ACCOMMODATION

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

■ FAMILY GROUP ACCOMMODATION Visit http://www.beachhouseperth.com Call 0400 292 100

BLINDS

■ BLINDS SPECIALIST Call AARON for FREE quotes 0402 979 889.

BUILDING TRADES

■ BRICK REPOINTING Phone Nigel 9242 2952.

■ PERROTT PAINTING PTY LTD

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

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

EMPLOYMENT

■ BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Extra income from your own home-based business. Work part-time without disturbing what you are doing now. Call: 02 8230 0290 or 0412 518 318 Events

FURNITURE REMOVAL

■ ALL AREAS Mike Murphy 0416 226 434.

HEALTH

■ HEALTH AND WELLNESS

A FREE Sample Pack of wellness, weightloss, and energy products. DVD and product brochure also enclosed. (Only while stocks last - hurry!!) Call 02 8230 0290 or 0412 518 318.

HEALTH

■ ACHES, PAINS, STRESS??? Indian mature male masseur offers Reflex Relax Massage at $30 for 60mins. Phone Jai 0438 520 993.

■ DEMENTIA REMISSION

Do you, or your loved one, suffer Dementia. Get into Dementia Remission like me! http://www. wgrey.com.au/dm/index.htm or (02) 9971 8093.

MIGRANTS

■ MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA

For guidance and visa processing, Skilled or Family Visas and Study visas. Call Michael Ring or Ajay Trehan Registered Migration Agent – (MARN # 0212024). Phone: (02) 8230 0290 or 0412 518 318 for a no-obligation assessment, please call or email: michael.ring@bigpond.com

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

■ CATHOLICS CORNER

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

SERVICES

■ BOOKS BOOKS 2ndhand quality Catholic reading at reasonable prices. Also Bibles and Missals. Ph: (08) 9293 3092.

WANTED

■ ORGANIST WANTED

ORGANIST REQUIRED BY PARISH FOR WEEKEND MASSES AND POSSIBLE WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS. REPLY IN WRITING: P O BOX 192, KARRINYUP 6921

Panorama Entries

Panorama entries must be in by 5pm Monday. Contributions may be faxed to 9227 7087, emailed to administration@therecord.com.au or mailed to PO box 75, Leederville, WA 6902.

Submissions over 55 words will be edited or excluded.

Inclusion is limited to 4 weeks. Events charging over $10 constitute a classified event, and will be charged accordingly.

The Record reserves the right to decline or modify any advertisement. Please do not re-submit Panoramas once they are in print.

Music sets prisoners free

■ By Anthony Barich

Perth musician Patrick Carre was more than a tad scared when he had the audacity to sing a song called “Freedom” to over 200 hardened criminals cooped up in an American prison.

There were prisoners there literally on death row, many had been forgotten by society or considered not worth people’s time.

But when he visited Everglades Correctional Institution in Florida as part of Flame Ministries International’s Catholic evangelisism, it was hard to tell who came out of the experience more inspired – the prisoners or Patrick.

“To be honest, I was worried about their reaction – there I was singing ‘Freedom’ to these blokes cooped up in jail,” Patrick said.

“Also, the fact that I was some white bloke singing a Blues song when the Blues was virtually invented by African Americans on the chain-gang in prison.”

But any fear evaporated when he, very nervously, said to the prisoners before he sang, “Who would’ve thought that someone like me would come from the other side of the world to sing to you about the Blues when you blokes invented it”, the prisoners clapped and cheered.

These men, ostracised from society themselves, embraced him.

And after he sang the song, which was about how he felt lost and crushed in the world until he found freedom in Christ, he received a standing ovation.

Patrick nearly fell over in disbelief.

But when he sat down to lunch with them afterwards, the surprise dissipated, as it became glaringly obvious to him that these men, though crushed and bruised physically and emotionally, held aspirations and dreams.

The unflappable energy of the human spirit was alive in these men, because all they talked about to Patrick was how one day they will get out of that prison, to make something meaningful of their lives.

“They’ve got nothing to live for, yet they all mentioned about the day they’re getting out, even though for some of them there’s no way that’s going to happen,” Patrick said.

“They still had aspirations and dreams. They may have been for-

gotten and rejected by society, but in God’s eyes they are His creation and God loves them. I could see that so plainly in that place.

“One of them had been there since he was 18, and he was in his 50s. He was telling stories of how his parole officer was working on reducing his sentence for good behaviour.”

One of the prisoners moved one of the evangelists preaching alongside Patrick to tears.

David Harp, who recounted his testimony of his conversion from his previous life of active homosexuality, drug use and HIV/AIDS.

This prisoner, who was on death row for murder, had his sentence reduced by 40-odd years as he had clearly undergone a radical conversion.

Eddie Russell, another evangelist on the tour, said that man was reportedly given a chance of getting released next year.

Patrick said another man he met in prison used to be timid, yet after David’s visit last year he had produced a brochure aimed at turning people back to God and was distributing it among the prisoners.

It certainly wasn’t the Taj Mahal. The lunch that Patrick shared with these men was barely fit for creations of God – though some of them had undoubtedly committed heinous crimes.

Boiled cabbage was the order of the day and something that Patrick could have sworn was tuna but which turned out to be turkey.

“It was absolutely disgusting, but they told me it was apparently better than what they’d been given the previous years,” Patrick said.

More overpowering for Patrick was that the prisoners were so blown away by the fact that their conversion experiences as a result of the preaching of the Gospel by David and Eddie the previous year had inspired Patrick’s FMI album, on which the title track is “Freedom”.

“It seemed unbelievable to them that their conversion experiences had inspired FMI Congresses and had been translated into music for Australian people to hear,” Patrick said.

Not only did they inspire Patrick’s music, the prisoners turned out to be talented musicians themselves, and one even played the harmonica expertly to back up Patrick’s performance at the prison. Patrick’s

trip also took him to Pittsburgh, where they celebrated Mass and conducted praise and worship with the Byzantine Congregation, which was “more reserved” than a com-

munity they visited in Miami. Yet even that experience left him in awe. Their traditional, Gregorianlike chants and liturgical music was a stark contrast to his Charismatic

style, but it left him wanting more, as it was extremely reverent. Patrick’s “Freedom” album is available from The Record Bookshop. Call Natalie on 9227 7080 or email bookshop@therecord.com.au.

Focused: Patrick Carre leads praise and worship at St John the Baptist Byzantine Church in Pittsburgh. PHOTOS: FLAME MINISTRIES

Embraced: Patrick Carre with a Byzantine Sr Celeste in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Terrifying: Patrick, David Harp and Irene, a visitor at the 5 Nights of Fire, on a ride at Kennywood park in Pittsburgh.