The Record Newspaper 20 January 2010

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THE R ECORD

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

-Bishop Matthew Gibney 1874

Men need post-abortion help too

A Perth pro-life organisation has initiated a new approach to those often forgotten in the abortion debate: men

BY ROBERT HIINI ParishReporter

ABORTION Grief

Australia (AGA) has announced that is making moves to provide postabortion grief counselling to men for the first time.

Partnering with BaptistCare’s Pathways Counselling, AGA will provide training in the nature and treatment of post-abortion trauma in men with a view to eventually establishing a men’s crisis line, in conjunction with local men’s organisations.

The training is expected to take place in February; something, the organisation hopes to make a regular part of its training services.

AGA’s founder and director, Julie Cook says that there are currently no effective therapy programmes for men experiencing abortion trauma and that, as is the case for post-abortive women, it is extremely difficult for men to get the help they need.

The causes lie in the dearth of recognition and training amongst health professionals, Ms Cook says; a situation AGA has spent the past 25 years, since its inception, trying to rectify.

Despite growing international research linking abortion to increased risk of suicide, depression, post traumatic stress disorder and relationship problems and the existence of 24 published studies linking abortion to substance abuse the prevailing politics of abortion, on both sides of the spectrum, mean that many health professionals who recognise the symptoms do not get the training and support they need to help clients.

Despite the absence of dedicated services for men, one fifth of all calls to AGA’s abortion grief help line come from men.

Ms Cook recounted one incidence when a man rang the help line claiming to be suicidal and holding a gun to his head. He had been party to three abortions but said he was unsure as to why, in desperation, he had rang an abortion grief helpline.

“It was when the next pregnancy he was involved in was brought to Please turn to Page 5

Cardinals at odds as

DEBATE

The debate over the legitimacy of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje has been revived after an Austrian Cardinal said that private Medjugorje visits bring good results; while the local Mostar Bishop said the Cardinal broke Church etiquette with his own personal visit to his diocese.

JE MEDJUGORJE

ON DEBATE MEDJUGOR

HEATS UP

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - After visiting Medjugorje, the site of alleged Marian apparitions in BosniaHerzegovina, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said the Church must recognise that private pilgrimages to the village result in prayer and reconciliation.

But Bishop Ratko Peric of MostarDuvno, the diocese that includes Medjugorje, said the Cardinal’s very public pilgrimage “has added new sufferings” to those already present in his diocese and did “not contribute to its much needed peace and unity.”

Cardinal Schönborn visited Medjugorje from 29 December-1 January in what his office described as a “private pilgrimage”.

He visited one of the young adults who claimed they began receiving messages from Mary in 1981 and he celebrated Mass in local parishes.

He told Vatican Radio’s German programme on 4 January that it was up to the universal Church to determine whether or not the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje are supernatural, but he also said it was clear that Medjugorje is a place of prayer, reconciliation and faith-based acts of charity.

“The pilgrims do one thing above all: they pray,” he said during the broadcast. Each day thousands of people recite the Psalms together, spend time adoring the Eucharist, meditate on the Stations of the Cross and pray the Rosary, he said. Medjugorje also is “a place where people have rediscovered confession,” he said.

However, another senior Cardinal has weighed into the revived debate over the alleged Marian apparitions, with the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints expressing skepticism about their authenticity.

Speaking in careful language, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins told the Italian website Petrus that he would await the official verdict of the Church regarding the apparitions.

However, he said that it was a mistake to assume that displays of piety at Medjugorje are a sign of authenticity.

“Just because people convert in this place, it is not given that the Madonna is appearing,” he said, observing that conversions take place regularly in ordinary parish churches.

The Cardinal also voiced misgivings about the alleged messages from the Virgin Mary instructing the Medjugorje “seers” to disregard orders from their Bishop.

Please turn to Page 2

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the Parish. the Nation. the World.

Julie Cook

SAINT OF THE WEEK

Shopfront celebrates unique work

BY JULIE W ILLIAMS

Thomas Aquinas

1225-1274 January 28

Crosiers

Thomas so shocked his noble Italian family when he entered the Dominicans about 1244 that his brothers imprisoned him for a year. But he would not yield, and studied under St. Albert the Great, becoming a master of theology in 1256. For the rest of his brief life, the “dumb ox,” as he was dubbed, taught, preached and wrote, producing the monumental “Summa Theologica.” His thinking became enormously influential in later centuries and he was named a Doctor of the Church in 1567.

CLERGY CHANGES

Fr Jean-Noël Marie, currently Assistant Priest in Good Shepherd, Lockridge, and Fr Jeronimo Flamenco Castillo, currently Assistant Priest in St Thomas More, Bateman, have been appointed Assistant Priests to St Mary's Cathedral from 1st February 2010

Fr Vittorio Ricciardi, currently Assistant Priest in Our Lady of Lourdes, Rockingham, will shortly take up a new position in the Diocese of Bunbury.

Fr Joseph Kum Htoi, presently in the Parish of Applecross, has been appointed Assistant Priest at Our Lady of Lourdes, Rockingham from 27 January 2010.

Fr Pavel Herda, currently Assistant Priest in Sacred Heart, Thornlie, has been appointed Assistant Priest in the Parish of Good Shepherd, Lockridge from 1 February 2010.

Fr Noel Latt, currently Assistant Priest at St Joachim's, Victoria Park, will take up his new appointment as Assistant Priest in Sacred Heart, Thornlie from 1 February 2010.

Fr Andrew Albis, has been appointed Parish Priest of St Andrew, Clarkson, effective 1 February 2010. Fr Albis was previously Assistant Priest in Kalgoorlie.

Fr Anthony Maher OMI will replace Fr John Sherman OMI as Parish Priest of St Patrick's Basilica at Fremantle, whose term of office has concluded.

Fr John Ramesh OMI has been appointed Chaplain at the University of Notre Dame Australia replacing Fr Gerard Conlan OMI, whose term of office has concluded.

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THE Shopfront, an outreach centre for disadvantaged people funded through the Archbishop’s LifeLink appeal, celebrated its annual Christmas party on 12 December.

Each year our friends who visit The Shopfront eagerly anticipate the Annual Shopfront Christmas Party. This year over 300 people came to share in the celebrations.

The Christmas party brought together volunteers from the Shopfront, parishioners from Queen of Martyrs Parish, Maylands, supporters and benefactors of Shopfront and especially our visitors who attend Shopfront seeking assistance, support and companionship.

Our team of Shopfront volunteers and staff spent many hours preparing for the Christmas party. Each year Sandy Louis and the Thornlie Parish Youth Choir perform carols, stirring Christmas songs as well as a nativity play.

Local law firm director Gus Irdi made his grand entrance as Father Christmas; greeted with shouts of joy and excitement by everyone. He had plenty of gifts to give out thanks to the kindness and generosity of many people but especially the Sacred Heart Primary School children, Sacred Heart Parish at Highgate and Sacred Heart College Students, Sorrento.

Our delicious turkeys and hams were again donated by Paul McLoughlin of Northside Meats, Malaga with other food donated by Cliff Mitchell, Lourdes Smith, Patricia DeSouza and Nancy Sgroi as well as volunteers of Shopfront. The City of Bayswater Mayor Terry Kenyon, Deputy Mayor Barry McKenna and Councillor Sally Palmer joined in the festivities.

Julie Williams is a co-founder and the manager of The Shopfront.

Cardinals at odds over Medjugorje

Continued from page 1

“The Madonna could not, in any case at all, be anti-hierarchical and incite disobedience, even if the Bishop of Mostar were wrong,” he said. In questioning the claims about Medjugorje, he said, “This is another element on which to reflect.”

Questioned about the recent visit to Medjugorje by Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, which drew criticism from Bishop Ratko Peric of the local Mostar diocese, Cardinal Saraiva said: “Far be it from me to think of judging the conduct of Cardinal Schönborn, but, considering the morbid attention which is concentrated on Medjugorje, and as I always do every time I go out from Rome, I would have spoken beforehand with Monsignor Peric: when we Cardinals enter into a diocese, we are entering into the ‘house’ of the Bishop of the place and we must have the good manners and good sense to announce ourselves.”

Cardinal Schönborn told Vatican Radio he believed that until the Church issues an official judgment on the apparitions, it is wise not to permit formal pilgrimages, a policy adopted by the Bishops of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and confirmed by the Vatican. But he said it was also important to provide pastoral care to Medjugorje visitors, which the same policy recommended.

In a 4 January interview with the Vercernji List daily newspaper, Cardinal Schönborn said: “Jesus said that the bad tree doesn’t bear any fruits, which means if the fruits are good then the tree is good as well.”

Bishop Peric, who repeatedly has questioned the authenticity of the apparitions and struggled to limit the influence of religious living in the diocese without permission, issued a 2 January statement saying that while he recognised the right of a cardinal to celebrate Mass anywhere in the world, “there also exists a certain etiquette in the Church” that encourages a visiting Cardinal to discuss a visit with the

local Bishop. He said neither the cardinal nor anyone from his office contacted him.

In addition, Cardinal Schönborn’s visits to unauthorised religious communities “could be interpreted as supportive,” Bishop Peric said.

“I regret that the cardinal, with his visit, appearance and statements, has added new sufferings to those already present of this local church which do not contribute to its much needed peace and unity,” he said. The Bishop also said that in his diocese the phenomenon of many faithful going to confession is not unique to the churches in Medjugorje.

“We believe that the mercy of the heavenly Father is perceptible in Medjugorje, just as in each and every parish of this diocese,” he said.

If long lines of faithful waiting to go to confession are seen as a

sign that Mary is appearing, he said, then some could argue that she is appearing in every parish in the diocese.

Pilgrims light candles in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, June 25, the 25th anniversary of the start of alleged Marian apparitions.

PHOTO: DANILO KRSTANOVIC, REUTERS

Above, Thornlie parish youth perform the nativity play; below, Gus Irdi, aka Santa Claus, entertains partygoers; below right, a fun day for children and adults alike.

PHOTOS COURTEOUSY OF THE SHOPFRONT

Treacherous journey inspires priesthood

BY ROBERT HIINI Parish Reporter

Fr Peter Nguyen

WHEN Fr Peter Nguyen got on a rickety boat bound for Australia he had little hope of ever arriving here.

It was the then-24 year old’s third attempt at escaping the brutalities of life in the new Vietnam having been conscripted into the Vietnamese People’s Army to fight in Cambodia.

“I was so sick of war,” Fr Nguyen told The Record, having grown up in Saigon during the dark days of the Vietnam war.

With no food and limited water, it took eight days just to get to Malaysia.

For the last four days of the treacherous and uncertain journey, what little water they had was rationed to the children and elderly.

Fr Nguyen, parish priest of St Luke’s Woodvale, said that the experience and the enduring gratitude he felt toward God were the main reasons he decided to become a priest.

Despite the blessing of making it to Australia, forging a life as a single adult with no family or companions in a country where he couldn’t speak the language was as difficult as it sounds.

Tragedy beset him early on when he found out that his youngest brother who had accompanied him on two unsuccessful attempts to get to Australia had drowned at sea along with their aunt and her two children, one month after

Fr Nguyen’s successful crossing. In subsequent years his decision to enter the Dominican novitiate in Melbourne was a natural one, he says, having been on the other end of the Dominican’s charism while a student at a Dominican highschool in Vietnam.

He was ordained a deacon in Auckland, New Zealand, where he returned as an assistant priest after being ordained in Australia.

After a stint at St Dominic’s, Camberwell, Victoria, he performed the roles of assistant priest and parish priest in Brisbane for ten years before arriving at St Lukes where he has been Parish Priest since Easter 2009.

While he enjoys being a priest, he said that being a priest in Australia was extremely challenging.

Although most of his fellow Australians approve of and embrace cultural diversity, their are pockets of rejection which are unfortunate and difficult to deal with on a personal level, he said.

Those people are likely to be even more frustrated in coming years, he said, as willing priests from outside Australia fill the gaps left by the dearth in Australianborn vocations.

Fr Nguyen said he has found fraternity in sharing a community life with his fellow Dominican priests as well as Perth’s many Vietnamese clerics, many of whom have very similar stories to tell.

In the little time when he is not about his priestly duties, Fr Nguyen enjoys going to the gym and swimming.

Greenmount parish gears up for big year

St Anthony’s and Salvatorians mobilise whole parish for a year of festivities

THE parish of St Anthony’s in Greenmount is about to move into top gear in preparation to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.

Their sacramental programme will begin its third year of operation in February; the beginning of what will eventually see hundreds of primary and secondary school age students receive the sacraments of Reconciliation, confirmation and Holy Communion.

Parish priest and Salvatorian Father Karol Kulczycki told The Record that they developed their own programme after the Catholic Education Office and the Archdiocese of Perth implemented a new policy of integrating sacramental formation between the school, the parish and the family.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2011, parishioner and parish councellor, Mike Freeman, says that St Anthony’s parish community has developed “a deep spiritual maturity” in the many committed parish groups that attempt to fulfill both the religious and secular needs of the people.

Located some 18 km east of Perth, the Parish formally caters for the needs of the community in the areas of Greenmount, Swan View, Jane Brook, Stratton, Midvale, Bellevue, Koongamia, Helena Valley, Boya and Darlington.

The church has a varied history, having been located on three separate sites around Midland before finally moving to the present site next to the historic Blackboy Memorial location.

Facilities consist of a large combined church and parish hall and presbytery, and the adjacent St Anthony’s Primary School that caters for about 500 students between kindergarten and Year 7, feeding into La Salle College in Midland.

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The current church was opened in 1983 by Archbishop Launcelot Goody, and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008.

The school initially opened in 1987 but was completed in 1993 and is a relative youngster in WA’s Catholic educational system.

A Marian grotto was built next to the church and blessed on the Feast of the Epiphany in 2001 as a peaceful place for contemplation.

The parish has been supported by the Salvatorian Order, also called the Society of the Divine Saviour, since the first priest arrived in June 1961.

There are currently three Salvatorian priests stationed at the parish: Frs Kulczycki SDS, Dariusz Basiaga SDS and Leonard Macionczyk SDS, all natives of Poland.

Fr Karol is “a dynamic and very caring person who is seen energetically driving almost all Parish events and functions,” according to Mr Freeman, along with colleague and assistant priest, Fr Leonard Macionczyk SDS, who

with Fr Leonard is chaplain to several colleges in the region.

Parishioners and priests alike raise funds for the Salvatorian’s outreach to children living in the slums of Manilla. Parishioners donated over $5,000 last year, keeping up to date with the work of the project through video updates.

For the most significant religious days, the church doubles in size by opening up the hall, doubling the seating capacity from its normal capacity of about 300.

Mr Freeman says the “pride and joy” of the parish is the Children’s Choir who were a major part of the parish’s recent Christmas celebrations.

Annual Family camps or weekends have been a highlight of the social calendar for a number of years. Of particular note in October 2009 was a two-busload visit of parishioners on a one-day visit and picnic to New Norcia.

For more information about St Anthony’s parish, visit their website at www.stanthonys.org.au.

Lenten Reflection Programme “Remember Me”

Thursdays: 9.30am – 12.00pm Theology and Spirituality of the Laity 1.00pm - 3.30pm Celebrating the Sacraments in the Eucharist Core of our Faith

Fridays: 9.30am -12.00pm Ecological Spirituality: The Covenant between human beings and the environment

EVENING COURSES - 6 WEEKS COST $35

Monday 8th Feb – Wednesday 17th March - 7.00pm -9.00pm

Monday: Beginning Theology Catholic Social Justice

Wednesday: Lenten Reflection Programme “Remember Me” Women in Scripture

Phone: 6380 5160

Fax: 6380 5162

Email: maranatha@ceo.wa.edu.au

A family ofers candle light offerings to Our Lady at St Anthony’s Parish in Greenmount.

PHOTO: MIKE FREEMAN

God unlocks hearts for single mum

Little Beauty - exclusive interview

BY MARK REIDY Parish Reporter

WHEN Mandy Varley arrived in Perth from England in 1990 she had her two year old son with her, but not much else.

She recalls the difficult moments as a single mother in a new country, including enduring a life-threatening liver disease, but says that there was always an underlying awareness that God’s hand was guiding her during even the most challenging times.

It was His providence and grace, she believes, that drew the people into her life that would help her rebuild her self-esteem, open the doors to her work with special needs children and subsequently inspire her vocation as a children’s author, illustrator and storyteller.

She was speaking to The Record about her book, The Story of Little Beauty, the touching tale of a blind seahorse, Beauty, who endures bullying but chooses to forgive. Presented in rhyming verse, it is a multilayered story that also deals with friendship, fear, overcoming adversity and recognising the giftedness in the others.

Her own talents as a story-teller has allowed her to personally narrate this inspiring tale, in her own inimitable Hertfordshire lilt, to hundreds of enthralled children in schools and hospitals across Perth and as far away as Tasmania.

Presenting such a wide range of issues that are relevant to young children has allowed Ms Varley to share the adventure of Beauty at both Christian and non-Christian schools, usually igniting discussion amongst students.

Ms Varley says that it was her nursing qualifications that initially drew her to assisting special needs children at St Simon Peter’s in Ocean Reef, but it was her love and empathy for these children that would lead her to completing a Teacher’s Assistant course that would allow her to become more involved in their lives.

It was during this course that Ms Varley wrote the story of Little Beauty, as part of an assignment in the subject of Special Needs. “The credit for this story belongs to God”, Ms Varley explains, “The inspiration for it came to me immediately after praying to Him. I know it would not have been the same story had I not asked for His help”.

Ms Varley studied literature and art as a teenager but never expected it to play such a significant role in her life. She believes that the opportunity to use these God-given gifts has allowed her to introduce Christian values to a wide audience of young people as well as allowing them to recognise that every person has something special to offer the world.

Ms Varley believes that it was her own experiences and the vulnerability of her son in those early years that allowed her to relate with those who feel disconnected or different in some way. It was this insight that led her to understanding the importance of being surrounded by people who will love you, are willing to see beyond the exterior and recognise the gifts that God has given you.

Ms Varley’s experience has helped her to recognise the “Beauty” within herself and now, it seems, she is determined to assist others in recognising this truth within themselves and those around them.

Leaders recharge for 2010

BY CATHERINE GALLO MARTINEZ

A STAR-studded line-up of guest speakers helped the Archdiocesan Catholic Youth Ministry kickstart 2010 with a retreat forming youth leaders with practical resources and deepening their knowledge of the faith and their spirituality.

This would enable them to lead other young Catholics in their parish programs throughout the year.

From 8–12 January, parish youth leaders descended on Eagles Nest, Gidgegannup to recharge their spiritual batteries.

As soon as one drives outside the metropolitan area, a relaxing and reflective attitude sets in – the perfect approach to a retreat for the Archdiocese’s youth ministers, who were joined by Perth Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton.

The retreat was for leaders to gain valuable youth ministry skills and to take time for reflection and prayer. Upon arrival leaders were given two resources which would be referred to throughout the weekend: a prayer booklet and two books entitled “Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry” and “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry” by world renowned author Doug Fields.

Friday night kicked off in an entertaining fashion as leaders were challenged by the evening’s presenter, CYM director Anita Parker, to go ‘back to basics’ and focus on building relationships with youth at their parishes.

The highlight of the evening was the role play where leaders were split into groups, presented with various scenarios, and given the task to ‘invite’ youth to a fictitious parish event.

This was followed by a look at some of the current resources available for guiding teens through a Catholic understanding of the scriptures.

The Saturday was set aside for the ‘spiritual recharge’ - a day packed with prayer, reflection and faith formation, starting with an insightful talk by Sr Bernadette Pike of the Cross – the foundress of the new Association of Christ’s Faithful called Missionaries of the Gospel, about our relationship with Christ.

The talk was dramatically assisted by Beatrice and Natalie who are also Sisters from the Missionaries of the Gospel, based near the Willagee parish.

Bishop Sproxton celebrated Mass before lunch and then the attendees went into silence.

The silent element of the retreat proved very fruitful for all attendees, in particular for those who lead very busy lives. It was a time to reflect on their own prayer life, to read quietly, and to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The silence was broken by an energetic, informative and humorous talk by Aquinas College Religious Education Coordinator Paul Kelly about Catholics’ relationship with the Church, answering many questions that young people have on the teachings of the Church.

Fr Roman Wroblewski SDS ended the day of spiritual formation with a talk on the importance of prayer for youth leaders, including how to pray, how often and highlighted the benefits of prayer in a leader’s life using examples from the greatest saints and leaders of the Catholic Church.

A final night of prayer concluded

the day’s activities. On the Sunday, the Young Christian Workers’ methodology of ‘See, Judge, Act’ was taught and applied to the leaders in a review of their youth ministries.

This was followed by a session to look at leadership ministry.

The books by Doug Fields were once again the reference point and a quote from Purpose Driven Youth Ministry best sums up the lesson that each leader can take heed of “... a healthy youth ministry doesn’t begin with ideas, but with spiritual leaders.”

The leaders will be commissioned into their ministry alongside all youth leaders throughout the Archdiocese at a Mass on 4 February at St Mary’s Cathedral, which all youth leaders and youth groups are invited to.

Padre Pio priest to hit Perth

THE Padre Pio Prayer Group have announced a major coup in securing San Giovanni Rotondo priest Father Ermelindo Di Capua OFM Cap for an Australasian tour. The priest will give talks in English and Italian on August 10 and 14 respectively and will also travel to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Dunedin and Queenstown. Fr Di Capua will bring a first class relic with him, taken from one of the saint’s gloves. He is stationed at Our Lady of Grace Church where Padre Pio lived in religious community and was involved in the year long display of the saint’s incorrupt body which ended in September last year. Organiser Des Scully says he has great hopes for the tour as a powerful force for evangelisation in Australia and New Zealand. For more information about the tour, call 6278 1540.

Following this Mass, the Catholic Youth Network will be launching the Archdiocesan Vision for Youth Ministry – a document to help Parishes and communities develop their work with young people. Contact CYM on 9422 7912 admin@cym.com.au for details and to RSVP for the evening.

CYM also has a calendar full of Catholic Youth events for 2010 including the ‘Sunday Sesh’ talks which resume on 24 January at Como Parish and various other venues throughout the year.

There will also be a World Youth Day 2010 celebration on Palm Sunday (28 March) in Forrest Place and a Sand Sculpture Competition on Scarborough Beach on 10 April.

See www.cym.com.au for details on these events.

Mandy Varley with her new book Little Beauty.

Above: Melissa Haydon takes time out for contemplation; below, JJ Hose relaxing at Eagle’s Nest retreat centre.

PHOTOS: COURTESY CYM

Priests journey to origins Programme to launch for all married couples

AS we are all aware, Pope Benedict XVI has declared this year “The Year of the Priest”. We as a Catholic community have therefore been asked to embrace our priests in a very special way; to pray for them, to celebrate them, to encourage, and to salute them. Harvest Pilgrimages has taken this message from Rome very seriously and has consequently put together a unique pilgrimage package especially for our priests.

This February, 65 Australian priests will depart for the Holy Land in two separate groups for this “priests only” pilgrimage.

The Journey’s will be part retreat, part familiarisation, as they will be travelling with their peers, rather than as leaders of their “flock”.

The priests will have the luxury of enjoying the pilgrimage as true pilgrims, walking in the footsteps of Jesus, without the added responsibility of being spiritual leaders of pilgrims. Our priests, who are Jesus’ representatives here on earth, will be given the opportunity to visit the site of the visitation, where the first human recognized Jesus’ own humanity.

They will be given the opportunity to celebrate Mass in the Church of the Nativity which was built over the stable where Jesus

was born. One of the highlights will surely be a holy hour one evening in the Garden of Gethsemane. No doubt Good Friday will hold new meaning once the priests have retraced Our Lord’s footsteps along the Via Dolorosa where He dragged His heavy cross to the Church of Calvary where ultimately He was crucified.

Visiting these Holy sites will bring the Gospels to life and will allow our priests to live and breathe the Gospels so they may return to their parishes renewed and refreshed. A Christmas Eve sermon and an Easter vigil will take on new meaning, the graces and gifts that these priests will receive will not be for them alone, their parishioners will share in these gifts.

Harvest pilgrimages is heavily subsidizing this venture which will be accompanied by one of their most senior Holy Land travel escorts Chris Hohnen. He will personally accompany both groups and under the guidance of Harvest’s hand chosen local Catholic guides based in the Holy Land.

In a very concrete way, Harvest is embracing our priests and celebrating this year of the priest while preparing these shepherd to return with their own flock of faithful in the very near future . It is said that once you have visited the Holy Land as a true pilgrim, your celebration of the Mass and appreciation of the scriptures will be elevated forever!

Perth Archdiocese’s Catholic Marriage Education Services launches Faith-based marriage enrichment programme

CATHOLIC Marriage Education Services (CMES) is set to launch a new six week marriage enrichment programme, IMAGO, on 4 February.

IMAGO is an educational programme for Christian couples who want to understand and deepen their relationship even more.

The goal of IMAGO is to build, support and strengthen committed married couples.

Derek Boylen, director of CMES, said that he hopes the programme will contribute in a special way to the lives of married couples in Perth and to the Catholic Church.

“People sometimes think that marriage enrichment is for couples experiencing dif-

in brief...

ficulties, but IMAGO is for all married couples who desire to deepen and grow their marriage,” Mr Boylen said.

“By renewing and deepening our relationships we contribute to the transformation of humankind and the broader community.”

The programme has been developed by Harville Hendrix PhD, who co-founded Imago Relationships International together with his partner, Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD. Hendrix is also bestselling author of Getting The Love You Want: A Guide for Couples

The goals of the program are to enhance communication, by discover new ways of talking to one another and for listening, co-creating shared dreams and a vision for their relationship, deepening romantic love, celebrating their marriage and uncovering new opportunities for emotional and spiritual growth.

The sessions build on one another taking couples on a six week journey of relationship enhancement. Beginning and ending in prayer, couples will have the opportunity for one to one communication, exploration of new ideas and skills, general group discussion, and input from a trained IMAGO group facilitator.

Meditation chief set for Perth

The programme will run from 6pm-8pm on Thursday evenings at the Cathedral Parish Centre, located at 450 Hay Street, Perth. The charge for the six week program is $60.

Couples interested in participating can enrol by contacting Catholic Marriage Education Services’ office on 9325 1859.

Fr Laurence Freeman OSB, the head of the World Community for Christian Meditation, will be at Notre Dame on 16 February.

The priest will be conducting a workshop beginning at 9am at the University’s Fremantle campus for a suggested donation of $5.

The event is being hosted by Notre Dame Fremantle’s, Campus Ministry, who promise another year of interesting public talks and workshops on theological issues. The World Community for Christian Meditation was founded by Fr Freeman’s predecessor, Fr John Main OSB who developed a form of Christian meditation after reading the works of Desert Father, Saint John Cassian and receiving instruction from the Swami Satyanandain, a Hindu monk. More information about the London-based centre can be obtained at their website, www.wccm.org.

Correction

In the story New Gingin Church approved which appeared in our 6 January edition, we incorrectly reported the name of the entity who donated the land on which the new Divine Mercy Church will be built in the parish of Gingin/Chittering . The land was donated by the Prindiville Group. The Record regrets the error.

Post-abortion trauma help at hand for men

Continued from Page 1 term that the enormity of those previous abortions hit him,” Ms Cook said.

“Unless there is healing, men will act out while not even consciously connect their acting out to the abortion experience but given the opportunity can remarkably honest and direct and great progress can be made working through their grief.”

Ms Cook believes that the demand for abortion grief counselling services will only become stronger with one in four women in WA having experienced abortion.Last year, AGA was involved in a joint initiative with Pathways Counselling to establish an effective group therapy programme. Three women successfully completed this 32 week programme.

With the support of Bishop Don Sproxton, the organisation was also part of relaunching Rachel’s Vineyard retreats for women who have suffered the loss of a child through abortion or miscarriage with the next retreat to take place in May.

This year, AGA will launch a new website with information for women, men and health professionals with the next group therapy program to begin on 12 February.

For more information ring Abortion Grief Counselling on 9313 1784.

A groom places a ring on the finger of his bride as a priest looks on during a wedding ceremony in Yaounde, Cameroon, in February 2009.

PHOTO: CNS

New liturgy translation will restore beauty

Congregations will need to ‘tune in’ to liturgy’s mystery says Bishop

BY ANTHONY BARICH

National Reporter

CATHOLICS may make a surprising discovery if they pray the new Missal “as the Church prays” and apply their minds to it, says an Australian Bishop set to visit Perth for the February 4-7 Australian Bishops’ liturgy conference at Novotel Langley Hotel in Perth.

The programme to help priests and the laity understand the new translations will also be launched at the conference.

Lismore Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett, to whom liturgy has always meant a great deal having grown up with a “deep experience of beautiful worship” in the Anglican Church, said that with a positive attitude from Bishops and clergy, the new Missal would more fully express the Catholic faith and nourish it.

In fact, the new translations will make the liturgy so much more profound and powerful that “priests will find they can write a whole homily on some of the new phrases in the Mass, as something just leaps out of the accurate translation that wasn’t there before”.

This is not a criticism of the 1973 text, he said. By introducing the new translations, the Church is “consciously striving to translate the liturgy in the most accurate

and beautiful way possible for the future”. Bishop Jarrett said the new Missal is crucially important for the faith as the Christian life of the Church for each individual reaches its high point in the celebration of the liturgy.”

“Our life is focused toward the liturgy, which is the worship of God, and derives its spiritual strength and power from God’s gift to us in the liturgy.”

He said that the new translation will require priests to read and rehearse the texts as they will have the key role as the celebrants of the liturgy.

While its introduction in early 2011 will require “considerable explanation and preparation” by Bishops and clergy, Bishop

Jarrett told The Record that the new translations completed by the International Commission for English in the Liturgy will make the liturgy more powerful by enabling it to speak its essential meaning more profoundly.

It will also require Bishops to give leadership to priests who already have many commitments, “to respond to this wonderful initiative and see it as such, to be very positive about it, and to discover the riches that are there and how it will make liturgy a more beautiful and meaningful celebration, and to help the priests see that”.

The key, he said, is a positive attitude.

“This is great step forward. We’re all going to benefit; the spir-

Pope appoints World Youth Day organiser to Parramatta

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

POPE Benedict XVI has appointed the bishop who organized World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney Bishop of one of the biggest dioceses in Australia.

Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, who at 49 is the youngest prelate in Australia, was appointed on 6 January as the third Bishop of Parramatta, a part of western Sydney that was separated from the Archdiocese of Sydney in 1986.

Bishop Fisher succeeds Bishop Kevin Manning, whose retirement was accepted by the Pope according to a 6 January statement from Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, the Apostolic Nuncio to Australia.

Bishop Fisher, a Dominican friar and ethicist, has for the past seven years been parish priest of Watson’s Bay and an Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney. He will be installed as Bishop of Parramatta on March 4 at St Patrick’s Cathedral.

Bishop Fisher said in an 11 January statement that his major priority will be to promote priestly and religious vocations.

“As a priest and religious myself, I honour the role that priests and consecrated women and men have played in the history of Western Sydney. Priests are the backbone of our parish life and religious today contribute to education, welfare, health and aged care, as well as to parish and spiritual life. Naturally, promoting priestly and religious vocations will be a major priority for me,” Bishop Fisher said.

“It is a very great privilege to be entrusted with this role of leader-

ship and service in the vibrant young diocese of Parramatta. “I have a passion for preaching, teaching and formation, and so I will be very interested in the distinctive contribution the Catholic Church makes in this regard in the Diocese of Parramatta.”

Bishop Fisher studied History and Law at the University of Sydney and practised in a city law firm before entering the Order of Preachers in 1985. He studied theology in Melbourne, was ordained a priest in 1991 and completed a doctorate in bioethics at the University of Oxford in 1995.

From 1995 to 2000 he lectured at the Australian Catholic University. From 2000 to 2003 he was the

itual life of people worshipping at Mass is certainly going to benefit,” Bishop Jarrett said.

After the Second Vatican Council it was often assumed that the English in the liturgy had to be simplified down to “the most everyday sort of language so that the man in the street could immediately relate to it”, he said.

“It was believed you had to strip it down to more of a paraphrase –under a sort of ‘dynamic of equivalence’ – you weren’t aiming to produce a translation as such, but aiming to express the equivalent of what the translator thought the prayer was saying.”

“So you weren’t translating necessarily words that appeared in the original, like gracia for grace, but what the man in the street could relate to – like ‘love’.”

However, the original Latin text from which the new translations derive is important, he said, as “we are praying with the Church, and we might make a surprising discovery if we pray what the Church prays and apply our minds to it”.

“We are praying with the church, we’re not adapting for ourselves what we think the Church should pray in our language,” he said.

While the precise meaning of the phrase may puzzle some, he believes this is a good thing, as it prompts people to think about them and let the meaning come through.

“The language challenges us,” he said. “It’s not everyday language because (worship) is not an everyday thing. It’s a much elevated thing - worshipping God, and

entering into communion with Him … ultimately no human language will be sufficient.”

Elements of Scripture and liturgy, when translated in any language, are not immediately easy to understand as there is “so much of God’s being and purpose involved” in these texts”, he said

“This is why that dynamic of equivalence flattened it out, making it more understandable but there’s not much mystery or beauty left in it.

“There’s not terribly beautiful English in the liturgy; now there will be, as is in the English we know in theatre and poetry; and we’re going to have to tune into it.”

This is why the program to be unveiled at the February 4-7 conference in Perth for introducing the new translation into parishes across the country is necessary, he said - to encourage the faithful to “tune into what the prayers are saying”.

While there is some apprehension from priests and lay about the new translations, he says there is nothing to fear but getting used to the new phrases.

Most changes are to what the priest says, and relatively few changes have been made to the congregation’s responses.

“There are some who would be happy to continue with the present texts, but I’d say that of the people who have read and seen the new text, by far the majority are saying this is better and will aid our worship and will introduce us more deeply into what the liturgy is praying,” he said.

Notre Dame increases access for low socio economic students

foundation Director of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne where he is still a Professor.

He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Notre Dame Australia and Deputy-Chancellor of the Catholic Institute of Sydney.

Until now he has also been Episcopal Vicar for Life and Health and Chairman of the Sydney Archdiocesan Catholic Schools Board.

His new diocese in western Sydney is one of Australia’s fastest growing areas, with a median age of 32, Bishop Fisher said, with many young families and numerous ethnic communities. With a third of the locals identifying as Catholic in the last census (319,215), Parramatta is Australia’s most Catholic area, with 49 parishes, 76 systemic schools (54 primary and 22 secondary) and six congregational schools.

The Diocese of Parramatta includes the shires of Baulkham Hills, Blacktown, the Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury, Holroyd, Parramatta and Penrith, and parts of Wollondilly and Liverpool.

“I don’t come with any agenda apart from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church,” he said.

Bishop Fisher is also the Chairman of the NSW Catholic Education Commission and a member of the Australian Bishops’ Commissions for Doctrine and Morals and for the Health and Community Services.

He is also a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.

THE University of Notre Dame Australia has responded to the Federal Government’s challenge of increasing access and support for students of low socio economic status by opening two Academic Enabling and Support Centres on its Fremantle and Sydney campuses. Vice Chancellor, Professor Celia Hammond, said UNDA’s Tertiary Enabling Program (TEP), the University’s alternative entry pathway course to undergraduate studies, has already produced fruit, as has its Academic Support Program workshops, First Year Mentoring Program and Mature Age Support Network.

Prof Hammond said that by establishing these centres UNDA is consolidating and increasing the range of academic support services it offers, allowing it to focus on individual students’ needs; to improve the pathways to university and to give students the equity in their education that Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been urging universities to provide.

Headed by leading education academics, these centres will also develop and deliver a more comprehensive ‘foundation year’ program with a particular focus on literacy skills. There will be continuing support at a higher level for our university students, with the centre helping to identify those that need extra academic and pastoral support including the university’s “International, Indigenous and Equity” stu-

University of Notre Dame Australia Vice Chancellor Professor Celia Hammond, who says the university’s new programme will help cater for individual students.

dents. The projects, to be implemented in 2011, will initially be working with identified low SES and ‘disadvantaged’ schools.

The range of potential projects will include ‘twinning’ with local and regional schools, provision of adult education classes and courses and mentoring projects, which also focuses on the Government’s priorities.

“In addition to the teaching services they will provide, the Centres will have a research remit which will see them engaging in research and analysis of issues relating to all of their three operational functions to ensure what is being done is the best support possible,” Prof Hammond said.

Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett of Lismore, NSW says that the new Missal translations set to be launched in early 2011 will enhance the faith of everyday Catholics in a profound way.

PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, who has just been appointed Bishop of Parramatta.

PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

MacKillop miracle woman reveals herself

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE Australian grandmother of 20 whose cure from cancer was attributed to the miraculous intercession of Blessed Mary MacKillop has stepped forward and spoken to Australian media for the first time about her experience.

Kathleen Evans, 66, from the small town of Windale in New South Wales and whose anonymity has been closely guarded until now, spoke at the Mary MacKillop Chapel in North Sydney on January 11 about her survival that led to the second miracle attributed to the intercession of the Australian Blessed who will now be canonised in Rome this year on a date yet to be confirmed.

Surrounded by her husband Barry, two of her five children Annette and Luke and Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart - the order founded by Blessed MacKillop - the great-grandmother of two told how she had smoked since the age of 16 but had given up in 1990.

Three years later, aged 49, she was diagnosed with cancer - a particularly aggressive tumour in her right lung that quickly spread to her glands.

Within a few months a secondary cancer was found on her brain. She was told it was inoperable and that chemotherapy and X-ray treatment were considered pointless.

“Besides, the odds were just not worth it,” she said. “I was only given a couple of months at the most to live so I said thanks but no thanks. All I had left was prayer. I was a great believer in prayer.

“The next few weeks were hard times. I was unable to stay out of bed for any length of time. I would get the shakes so bad that my husband would have to lay on me to ease them down.”

She couldn’t bathe or shower herself or use the toilet on her own, she suffered from night sweats and struggled to breath at times. “I was in a bad way,” she said.

A friend in the Hunter Valley, NSW gave her a picture of Mary MacKillop with a piece of the Blessed’s clothing attached with some prayer cards from the Josephites, so

Mrs Evans, her family and her parish all began praying.

“I’m not one to be on my knees all the time or think I’ll go to hell if I miss Mass,” said Mrs Evans, but confirmed she is a regular churchgoer. Within two weeks she was able to attend a retreat.

After four months her doctor called for more tests “because, as he said, I just shouldn’t be here”.

Ten months after her original diagnosis, she was told there was no sign of the cancer, just some scarring where the tumours had been; and though doctors heavily scrutinized her medical records, she has no doubt about what saved her.

“I do believe in miracles,” she said, adding that she talks to Blessed Mackillop all the time in prayer and hopes to go to Rome for the ceremony. Her cure enabled her to celebrate her 50th birthday in November 1993 and her daughter’s wedding in October 1993.

“So after all this time I can say I’m still here and very well and enjoying life to the fullest.”

On December 19, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI formally signed a decree recognizing the second miracle needed for Mother MacKillop’s canonisation. The campaign for her canonisation began in 1926, 17 years after her death.

The first miracle attributed to her intercession - the 1961 cure of a woman with terminal leukaemia - was accepted by the Vatican and she was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995.

Several other high-profile victims of illness or accident have attributed their recovery at least in part to Blessed MacKillop’s help, including the Catholic family of burns victim Sophie Delezio, the World Youth Day Sydney 2008 ambassador who met Pope Benedict XVI at the event and credits her remarkable medical progress to the Australian Blessed, otherwise known as Blessed Mary of the Cross.

When Irishman David Keohane woke from an eightmonth coma in August 2009 following an assault when he was bashed beyond recognition in Sydney, his family attributed his recovery to months of prayers to Blessed MacKillop.

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Kathleen Evans at her daughter’s wedding, which, according to doctors, she was not expected to live to see.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF JOSEPHITES

Our ‘green’ Pope: not your standard environmentalist

For Pope Benedict, a different shade of green

Over the last few months, Pope Benedict XVI has opened a wider dialogue on the subject of environmental protection, and in the process put a sharper focus on an issue that’s become central to his pontificate.

It’s increasingly clear that the “green” label slapped onto Pope Benedict after he installed solar panels at the Vatican and joined a reforestation project in Europe was not the whole story.

Now the Pope is defining which shade of green - in moral arguments that are not always popular.

The Pope began weighing in on environmental themes in 2006. His strong defence of the Amazon’s fragile ecology, his appeals for safe water and his warnings on pollution’s burden on the poor all received general acclamation.

When he approved the installation of solar panels on several Vatican buildings and funded treeplanting in Hungary, the Vatican drew praise for trying to become the world’s first carbon-neutral state.

But lately, the Pope’s words on ecology have raised eyebrows and even some objections.

In a 11 January speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, the Pope extended the discussion of “human ecology” to

same-sex marriage. “Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience,” he said.

“One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination,

a wonderful article, which I am keeping for my records.

Larry Hibble Hillarys WA

Confession piece flawed

Iwrite in reference to an article in the Christmas Edition of The Record, entitled “How (and why) we should return to Confession.”

Marian correction

Irefer to the souvenir edition of The Record (8 December) on Page 11 there is a wonderful article by Anna Krohn titled Mary: True Womanhood and Graced Humanity. I would just like to point out one error for the sake of historical accuracy and the information of readers.

Anna states at one point “It was the pioneer Spanish Benedictine Bishop of Perth, Joseph Benedict Serra, who was so strongly inspired in the immediate wake of the First Vatican Council, by the 1854 promulgation of this definitive Catholic Teaching, that he renamed his Cathedral (from St John the Evangelist) to Our Lady’s new title only a year later in 1855.

The Dogma was indeed promulgated in 1854 as Anna has stated. However, when Bishop Serra changed the name in 1855, this was 14 years before the First Vatican Council which took place in 1869-70. Notwithstanding the above, Anna has written, as I said,

While I commend the promotion of this essential Sacrament of the Church, and while it did have some good points to make, I am concerned about the way it was presented, particularly as it was printed as “The Record’s cut-out, photocopy and pass-on guide.”

First of all, while I was happy to quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, why did the article not use the name that is given the Sacrament in the Catechism, “The Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation”, as given in the title of Part 2, Ch 2, Art 4? While we can still refer to ‘confession’ (and I sometimes do myself), because this is “an essential element of the Sacrament”, the article in question gives little regard to “confession” as acknowledgement and praise of the holiness and mercy of God (No 1424).

It presents a very individualistic, as against communal, approach to the Sacrament, with no reference to reconciliation with the Church (No 1422).

Item 13 of the article is particularly misleading. It stated that

Pope Benedict, however, was not trying to score a cheap political point.

His argument touched on what might be called the leitmotif of his pontificate: that man is not God, and that man’s actions should correspond to God’s plan - or, as he phrased it to the diplomats, to “the structure willed by the Creator.”

This is a long-held opinion of the German pontiff.

In 2004, in a major Vatican doctrinal document on the relationship of men and women, thenCardinal Joseph Ratzinger said the “obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes” was part of a misguided effort to free the human being from biological conditioning.

Addressing the diplomats, the Pope said he was thinking of legislative initiatives in countries in Europe, North America and South America.

Three days earlier, the Parliament in heavily Catholic Portugal was the latest to pass a law that would legalise same-sex marriage.

In the same speech, the Pope underlined that protecting the environment makes no sense unless it begins with protecting human life, including the life of the unborn.

Here, too, the Pope was emphasizing that the church’s “green” philosophy always puts the human being at the centre, precisely because humans are made in God’s image.

tion demands a re-allocation of resources away from military spending and the development of nuclear weapons.

It echoed an appeal he made for disarmament in his World Peace Day message on 1 January, which was dedicated to the environment. In that text, the Pope said the continued existence of nuclear weapons “threatens the life of the planet and the ongoing integral development of the present generation and of generations yet to come.”

Likewise, the Pope probed the link between war and ecological damage. He noted that many current conflicts around the world arose from a struggle for natural resources, and in turn inflict immense harm on the environment.

He looked at the connection between environmental destruction and migration, and pointed to the drug trade in places like Afghanistan, where agriculture is largely dedicated to the production of narcotics.

“If we want peace, we need to preserve creation by rechannelling these activities,” he said.

In short, the Pope’s analysis is not a simple one, nor is it easily categorized.

His environmental “position” touches on climate change (he urged an international agreement, warning that the future of some island nations is at stake) and the global economic crisis (which he blames in part on the selfish activities of the investment industry).

PHOTO: CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, CPP

strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes.”

That prompted protests from homosexual activists, including the head of an Italian gay organization, who said the Pope’s linkage of gay marriage and ecological irresponsibility was “almost comical.”

‘mortal sin, unconfessed,” causes exclusion from Christ’s Kingdom (Catechism No 1861). Actually that paragraph doesn’t use the word ‘unconfessed’ at all. The Actual text is: “if it (mortal sin) is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion.”

It goes on to say immediately: “However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offence, we must entrust judgement of persons to the justice and mercy of God.” The Sacrament is the normal way for reconciliation “for all sinful members of his (ie Christ’s) Church,” (Catechism No 1446). Those who can remember back to the ‘old catechism’ days would know that, in the absence of a priest, God offers forgiveness through a true act of contrition.

It is through this spirit of sorrow and repentance that all people can know the goodness and mercy of God.

Fr

Geoff Aldous Geraldton

Wildcats are go

What heartening news to read in The Record, January 6, that Wildcats’ chief executive Nick Marvin has lined his players up to sign contracts binding them to good behaviour as well as ensuring they perform 350 hours of community service. That’s courage for you.

From now on I’m an avid Wildcats supporter.

Maureen Taylor Dunsborough WA

Critics might argue that the Pope was hijacking environmental issues to push the church’s agenda on the usual topics of abortion and homosexuality. But in fact, the Pope’s analysis of morality and ecology went in several other directions, too, challenging conventional policies.

One of his strongest points to the audience of diplomats - and one that received relatively little coverage in mainstream mediawas that the protection of crea-

Where’s Mass?

Some years ago your paper occasionally published Mass timetables for each metro and country areas, which I found most helpful. With the holiday season now upon us and people moving around the state I was wondering whether you could provide this information again.

I am sure the geriatric gypsies such as myself would appreciate it as they make up the larger component of congregation these days.

Ross Tilear Stoneville WA

Confession clarity

Iam a weekly penitent and the Good News is, I hope, that my sins are forgiven even before I receive the Sacrament of confession; it is incorrect to believe sins can be forgiven only in Confession. An act of perfect contrition or an act of perfect love of God immediately wipes away all sin and either increases sanctifying grace or restores the soul to sanctifying grace it had been in the state of mortal sin.

The act of contrition is allimportant.

This is my act of contrition which I recite before absolution - My God I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins and detest them above all things, because they deserve thy dreadful punish-

He sees the ecological crisis as part of a wider moral crisis, and the common denominator is what he calls a “self-centred and materialistic way of thinking which fails to acknowledge the limitations inherent in every creature.”

With that as a starting point, the Pope’s continuing catechesis of ecology is likely to keep grabbing attention and ruffling feathers in coming months.

Editorial by John Thavis, Catholic News Service

ments, because they have crucified my loving Saviour, Jesus Christ, and most of all because they offend thy infinite goodness, and I firmly resolve by the help of thy grace never to offend Thee again and carefully avoid the occasions of sin. Amen.

The first reason is imperfect contrition and useless without confession.

The second and third reasons can excite perfect contrition or the perfect love of God and therefore restore or increase sanctifying grace even without confession.

There are extraordinary actual graces, which the sacrament bestows. As the Penny Catechism used to say “If one has the misfortune to commit a mortal sin one should immediately make an act of perfect contrition and go to confession as soon as one can.’

Because it is difficult to know if one’s contrition is perfect, the Church has wisely forbidden the reception of the Blessed Eucharist until all mortal sins are confessed and forgiven in the sacrament of confession.

With confession we are as sure as humanly possible that our sins are forgiven.

I pray I do not have a sudden and unprovided death but nevertheless I would be loathe to think there was no hope if one were taken by a shark at Scarborough and every time I lower my head at the Gloria Patri, I die in admiration for those 800 souls who had no priest but died gloriously at Otranto.

Pope Benedict XVI and two priests look out over a pond on the grounds of Kenthurst Study Centre in Kenthurst, Australia, in mid-July, 2008. He told young people at World Youth Day that concern for sustainable development, justice and peace, and care of the environment are of “vital importance for humanity.”

Dying to self and motherhood

BY MARION FERNÁNDEZ-CUETO

There is a line in Scripture that has always infuriated me. It's Timothy 2:15, and for years I could not read it without wanting to hurl my Bible at the wall. "The woman," writes St. Paul, "will be saved by childbearing, if only she continue with faith, love and holiness." Its baptised misogyny was insulting enough (how typical to posit a woman's salvation within her social confines of barefoot, pregnant servitude), yet beneath it lurked a more devastating injury: the idea that a woman's sanctity was tied up in motherhood. That spelled damnation for me, I thought, for the drudgery of childbearing was the last thing I aspired to.

Then I fell in love with a man who wanted kids the way former boyfriends had dreamed of plasma TVs. As he wooed and pursued me, I realised it was not motherhood per se I had long feared and mocked; it was the utter dying to self that motherhood entails.

My individualism and selfishness were alive and well, fostered by nearly a decade of independence, during which my time, decisions, money, plans, and body had remained solely my own. The idea of marriage thrilled me (it was no sacrifice to love Andrés), but children held no such natural enticement toward selfoblation. Like St Augustine's tepid plea for chastity, I didn't want my selfishness scourged quite yet.

But St John writes that perfect love casts out fear, and it is true, even of flawed loves like ours: A year after our wedding, we found ourselves praying I might get pregnant. Two days later, I did.

To say I was ecstatic would be a lie - I hadn't expected an answer to arrive overnight express. But we were awed at this new life God and our union had wrought.

My pregnancy proceeded in a happy glow: I grew fat and contented as a tabby cat, unhampered by morning sickness. I shopped and cleaned, cooked and froze dinners, ordered parenting books, and interviewed doulas in a blissful whirl of organisation. I found myself dreaming of long-scorned domestic scenes, a tangle of jolly siblings for our son, and a kitchen fragrant with hot meals and teasing affection. Finally, I thought, I was ready to be a mother.

Then Dominic was born. I still remember my feeling of incredulity when the hospital night nurse first woke me to feed him, seemingly minutes after a searing labour. I looked at the clock2:20 am - then at my mewling, scrunchy little baby, and knew like Napoleon at Waterloo that the end had come - the end of life as I knew and liked it.

This child, this responsibility, was mine for the rest of my life.

I felt a tidal wave of resentment that God had allowed me to welcome pregnancy while providing barely a shred of fuzzy maternal instinct beyond delivery. I knew my hormones were running amok, but I felt blindsided and betrayed. Where was the grace that had flooded the previous nine months? Right then, I wanted nothing more than to rewind time back to that September night when we'd first asked God for a baby, and postpone our prayer another two years. I wanted to push my son right back at the nurse and snap, "You feed him." I'm a wretched mother already, I thought.

Poor, innocent, ill-fated Dominic.

Somewhere I'd assumed that if only I prayed hard enough for grace when I accepted pregnancy, a good mother would be born with my son. I had forgotten that elemental wild card of Catholic theology: that grace builds on nature. Prayers are not magic spells, and none would instantly transform my longfostered habit of selfishness into a spirit

of enthusiastic self-sacrifice. Instead, over the next weeks and months, a loving Saviour would ask me to take up my cross and learn to follow Him. In obeying, I would discover that God rarely calls the equipped. If we are asked to cooperate in our own salvation, it is only because He equips those He calls.

Meanwhile, Dominic didn't know he was poor and ill-fated. He was a nearperfect baby by every account, with limpid blue eyes and pink, puckish smiles. I coddled and bathed him, tickled and sang to him, boasted shamelessly of his every new feat. When he napped on our bed, flushed with sweet sleep, I would lie beside him and murmur my undying love into his damp blond curls.

Yet through it all, I rebelled. A voice in my head echoed the old cry of Lucifer: non serviam - I will not serve. “You're too good for this,” said the voice.

“You were made for better things - not the endless, mind-numbing tedium of diapers and dishes and laundry.

“Where is the glamour, the intellectual stimulation, the chances and promotions you still deserve? Is this really what God intended for you?”

The voice would resume each morning as I watched the army of lawyers and interns swinging down 16th Street with their lattés and briefcases and careers. Each smartly dressed young woman, luxuriating in her phone conversation or iPod, represented a life I couldn't have anymore, opportunities and experiences that would never be mine. “You see?” the voice would prod. “You see?”

Of course, every slide into self-pity would trigger an even greater avalanche of guilt. The world over, women were struggling with infertility, miscarriages, the death of a child, or newborns with cruel, debilitating diseases. Thousands of new mothers would never have the luxury of choosing whether to go back to work. Thousands more lacked a caring, sensitive husband, or any kind soul to see them through the first dazed months. I despised myself utterly for chafing under Dominic's featherweight load; I knew to the core how fortunate I was, how ludicrously bourgeois my malaise - and so my self-loathing would compile.

I reached my breaking point one afternoon while walking with Dominic past St. Matthew's Cathedral. A panhandler standing at the corner took a long look at my stroller and its sleeping cargo and inexplicably dragged a condom out of his pocket. "If you'd used one of these," he leered, "you wouldn't have had him." Shaken, I knew the man had articulated the very thought that had risen like a demonic spectre on more than one sleepdeprived night. That condom represented every temptation I'd experienced in my

struggle to be open to life, every forbidden alternative I might have taken as I struggled to welcome first pregnancy and then Dominic.

Sick with shame, I sought out a priest in confession. With the gentle yet exacting probe of an experienced confessor, he asked me to name what I would rather be doing. "Go on, imagine," he urged. "Let's say you can leave your family, your responsibilities. What do you want?"

A voice in my head echoed the old cry of Lucifer: non serviam - I will not serve. “You’re too good for this,” said the voice. “You were made for better things - not the endless, mind-numbing tedium of diapers and dishes and laundry.”

My answers were distressingly ready. "I want to see the rest of the world," I told him. "I want to be the foreign correspondent I trained to be. I want to take my morning coffee in silence, to read the paper uninterrupted. I want to sleep until noon on Saturdays - or at least through the night. I want my time, my space, my schedule, my plans, my peace, my quiet ... I want me again. I just want me."

The priest gazed at me, his eyes suffused with compassion. "All of us want that," he said softly. But serving ourselves, living for ourselves . . . what does the Gospel say about that? 'He who seeks to save his life, will lose it.' 'Unless the grain of wheat falls in the earth . . .' We know we can't find happiness that way."

"Try me," I thought darkly.

Not long after, God took me up on my silent challenge: When an old college friend flew in from France, I was given the chance to see, George Bailey-style,

what my life might have been like without Dominic.

Veronique - a single, gorgeous, multilingual painter - was living out the very fantasy I had tried to articulate to my confessor. She jetted around the globe with no apparent responsibility standing between her next whim and reality. Her family was distant; her jobs, like her love interests, were sporadic and provisional; all were powerless against the lure of new ventures and continents. I couldn't wait to hear her stories, to soak in the shimmering brilliance of her life. Inviting her over for tea one afternoon, I braced myself for the flash of pity I had often glimpsed in her eyes at my increasingly predictable, beige-hued existence (husband, child, mortgage, minivan).

It never came. Veronique was miserable, and desperately so. Approaching 30 like me, her hard independence, emotional skittishness, and sheer impulsivity were catching up with her. She hated her expensive art school. Her e-mails, dazzling travelogues forwarded to massive lists of friends, were going unacknowledged. The handful of men in her life arrived and then disappeared with a disturbingly familiar, slapdash autonomy. She was tired of being broke, of depending on the more conventionally stable for her car rides and phone calls and suppers. Yet the promising internships and positions were passing her by for younger college grads who had long since paid their dues in nine-to-five grunt jobs.

Veronique seemed haunted by a stirring realisation that years of self-direction, self-discovery, and self-fulfillment (all so greedily panted after by me) had brought her not nirvana, but only herself - a self she was starting to find unbearable. As she watched me wipe applesauce off Dominic's chin, help him down from the highchair, and start preparations for yet another meal, her eyes reflected not pity but raw, naked wishing. And her next words startled me further. "I wish I had someone to love and give myself to like that," she said. "Sometimes I'm afraid my heart is going to shrivel up."

I expected to feel relief at Veronique's woe - after all, her admissions amounted to foundational cracks in a lifestyle I had lusted for with near idolatry. But instead I felt only wonder and the spreading epiphany that mothering - that vocation I wore like a penitent's hair shirt - had spared me the tyranny, the terrible poverty, of my unconstrained will. As I glimpsed the bleakness in Veronique's life, I realized I never could have borne the curse I had craved so long - that of gaining the whole world, only to lose my soul. In His all-seeing mercy, God had eliminated for me the option of exclusive self-service when I bore Dominic.

As a wife and mother, my heart might bleed, but I knew it would never shrivel, pumped full as it was with the occupational hazards of delight and terror, grief and compassion.

When Veronique left, I clutched my son to my breast and wept with gratitude.

Henry Ward Beecher once wrote that children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. I first inscribed that quote in Dominic's baby book, but it is only now, nearly four years and an infant daughter later, that I see it is simply a more palatable version of Timothy 2:15. Through Veronique I realized that what I once called heaven - all that came from my own stubborn choosing - was the quintessence of hell itself.

Only children could roll away the stone from the grave of self in which I lay and offer my soul rebirth.

Though I mostly struggle and stagger in my vocation as mother, I do so rejoicing, knowing that God will hold me through it, if only I continue with faith, love, and holiness. This woman, at least, will be saved by childbearing.

Devastation on an unimaginable scale as Haiti burns

● Archbishop slain

● Red Cross says death toll could top 50,000

● 90 percent of buildings in ruins

● One third of 9 million population affected

● 100 priests and seminarians killed

Death of an Archbishop breaks the heart of a nation

Haitian Archbishop who died in earthquake portrayed as a humble man.

BY BARB FRAZE Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON - Haitian Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot was known as a humble man who was close to the poor in the Archdiocese of Port-auPrince. Archbishop Miot, 63, was among tens of thousands of Haitians who died in the 12 January earthquake.

For years he served as President of the Haitian Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, and he often spoke of the need to help the citizens of the Western Hemisphere’s most-impoverished nation. “The misery is so great,’’ Archbishop Miot told Catholic News Service in New York in May 1998. “Things have never been as bad as they are now. People who could not make a living in the rural areas have moved to the cities, and they are piling up in the slums.”

In a 14 January email to CNS, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Papal Nuncio to Haiti, said the Archbishop “was hurled from the balcony outside his room while he was waiting for another person on their way to a ceremony. The force of the earthquake threw him headfirst off the balcony and he died, it seems, from the impact.”

Because there was no electricity in the city, church officials took Archbishop Miot’s body to the coastal city of St. Marc, said the nuncio. He said he asked that the body be buried immediately, which is not the normal Haitian tradition.

Haitian Holy Cross Father Rodolphe Arty, associate pastor of St Thomas the Apostle Parish in Naperville, Illinois, described Archbishop Miot as “a man of prayer” with a “great devotion to the Blessed Mother.”

Fr Arty, who said the Archbishop taught him philosophy at the major seminary in Port-auPrince, told CNS by telephone that his friend would welcome anyone into his home.

He was “humble” and “very close to poor people in Port-au-Prince,” said Father Arty, a former provincial of the Holy Cross Fathers in Haiti. The priest, who has been in the Illinois parish for three months, also said he crossed paths with the archbishop at youth and pastoral ministries meetings.

Thomas

Quigley, former adviser for Latin American affairs for the US Bishops’ Conference, said he considered the late Archbishop a friend.

Archbishop Miot often visited the US Bishops’ headquarters in his role as general secretary of the Haitian bishops’ conference.

Quigley said Archbishop Miot was “a modest man” and “very soft-spoken. “He was such a wonderful man,” said Liz McDermott of Le Claire, Iowa. “We lost a wonderful soul, truly a man of God. It’s just heartbreaking.”

As a volunteer with ServeHAITI, she has made numerous mission trips to the medical clinic the organization operates in Grand Bois, about 60 miles from Port-au-Prince.

Archbishop Miot even attended a Haitian fundraiser at Our Lady of the River Parish in Le Claire in October 2008 and, while he was there, he concelebrated the funeral of the parish’s pastor, Msgr. Leo Feeney.

Joseph Serge Miot was born in Jeremie, Haiti on 23 November, 1946. He was ordained on 4 July, 1975. As a priest, he taught and served as rector at the seminary in Port-au-Prince until he became rector of the newly established University of Notre Dame of Haiti in 1996.

In July 1997, Pope John Paul II named him coadjutor archbishop of Port-au-Prince in an effort to resolve a difficult situation that arose after a failed presidential coup in 1991. Many city residents held Port-au-Prince Archbishop Francois-Wolff Ligonde responsible for encouraging the coup, and crowds burned his residence as well as the headquarters of the Haitian Bishops’ Conference, a historic church that formerly served as the Cathedral and the Vatican nunciature.

Scenes from a catastrophe

CRS spokesperson expects ‘thousands and thousands’ of dead, injured in Haiti

BY DENNIS SADOWSKI PATRICIA ZAPOR Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON - Many people who survived Haiti’s devastating 12 January earthquake are expected to soon be looking for new places to live, creating the potential for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of displaced people trying to settle in other countries in the region.

The expected flow of people out of Haiti has led to renewed pressure for the US to extend temporary protected status, shielding Haitians from deportation until the situation improves in their homeland.

It also has led aid organisations to begin planning for the possibility that many Haitians will decide to leave their battered homeland, whether through organised resettlement programs or on their own. Previous political and economic crises prompted tens of thousands of Haitians to flee their country in boats.

In the 1990s, many ended up living in tents at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Within a day of the magnitude 7 earthquake, as images of the destruction of the capital city Port-au-Prince dominated the news, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that deportations to Haiti were being suspended. She stopped short of extending temporary protected status, however, which would enable at least tens of thousands of Haitians who are currently in the US illegally to remain there and legally hold jobs.

Shaina Aber, associate advocacy director for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, said that as of summer 2009, there were about 35,000 Haitians in the United States who have final orders to be deported. That means they’re just waiting for the paperwork and final arrangements that would send them home. Of those about 600 are being detained, she said.

Advocates for immigrants, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, have long advocated that temporary protected status be extended to Haitians because of the country’s fragile situation. Such status is currently available to certain citizens of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan, whose home countries have been severely affected by war or natural disasters.

Typically, the duration of that status is extended if there is no significant improvement in the home country.

During a 13 January conference call with representatives of social service providers, spokesmen for the Obama administration announced that deportations had been suspended for Haitians and said temporary protected status was being considered as well.

Archbishop John Favalora of Miami, which has a large Haitian population, was among those calling on President Barack Obama to grant such status to all Haitians in the United States.

In a 13 January statement, he said any attempt to repatriate Haitians “would be to send them to a country in crisis and would certainly condemn them to probable, if not certain, death. This would be grossly inhumane and immoral on the part of the United States.”

The lengthy list of those calling for temporary protected status for Haitians included members of Congress from both political parties, human

rights and immigrant rights organisations and a wide assortment of faith groups.

With an estimated one-third of Haiti’s population of nine million people affected in some way by the earthquake, some very quickly made their way to the nearest foreign country, the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

The Dominican government closed the border on 13 January.

Jesuit Refugee Service workers near the border were making arrangements to provide some basic services for Haitians who might end up stranded just outside the Dominican Republic, said Aber.

At least 200,000 Haitians are in the Dominican Republic, she said, and some people estimate the number is actually more like two million.

The Dominican government recently militarised much of the border, Aber said, and part of what the Jesuit organisation’s staff will be doing is

ties for terrorism suspects, which the Obama administration is slowly closing.

The detention centre covers a small portion of the 45 square mile base. Other countries also will likely see a flow of Haitians, but Kekic said few in the region are able to accommodate their needs.

Kekic said in the last decade several, South American nations have developed strong refugee resettlement programs, a first for the region. But whether Brazil, Argentina and Chile are able to deal with people fleeing on their own from a natural disaster, as opposed to refugees who are screened and assisted through the process by international agencies, remains to be seen, he said.

● Catholic Relief Services was preparing for “thousands and thousands” of dead and injured people in the wake of the most devastating earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries, said Karel Zelenka, the agency’s country representative.

monitoring to be sure troops on the border “don’t overreact.”

Erol Kekic, immigration and refugee director for Church World Service, a partnership of dozens of Christian churches, said arrangements were being made with Haitian communities around the United States to potentially house incoming people from Haiti.

In Florida, the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami announced that it “stands ready to receive, house and find permanent homes for Haitian children who may have been orphaned by the disaster; similar to what was done for Cubans in the 1960s.”

In an operation known as Pedro Pan in the 1960s, the Catholic Church in Miami helped resettle 14,000 Cuban children who were sent from their homeland by their parents to get them away from that country’s political strife.

They later were reunited with their families as their parents were able to emigrate from Cuba.

Kekic said Church World Service also was considering the possibility that the US government may decide to provide temporary housing for Haitians in an off-shore location, such as at the Guantanamo base.

“That’s definitely a possibility,” he said.

The base is currently home to detention facili-

Among those reported dead were Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince and Zilda Arns Neumann, a paediatrician who founded the Brazilian Bishops’ Children’s Commission and sister of Brazilian Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, retired archbishop of Sao Paulo. A group of Montfort priests and seminarians initially reported to have died in Port-au-Prince were not even in the city and were not killed, a spokesman said.

In an email from the capital, Port-au-Prince, Zelenka told his colleagues at CRS headquarters in Baltimore that damage was “incredible all around.” In response, CRS initially has committed US$5 million to help survivors, said John Rivera, the agency’s communications director.

CRS already had food, bedding, water storage containers and other supplies in warehouses around the country and agency staff is working to assess if it was damaged in the quake. Other supplies will be shipped from the Dominican Republic and Miami, he said.

Robyn Fieser, CRS regional information officer, shared part of Zelenka’s message with CNS on 13 January and said he wrote that the Haitian government has not made any announcement about rescue and recovery efforts.

“On the radio stations there has been only wild

music,” Fieser said Zelenka wrote. “People have been screaming and chanting all over the place. People are chanting and praying. It’s the disaster of the century.”

Zelenka reported that the only rescue efforts he and his staff have seen are by people digging through rubble with their hands.

Cell phone service was sporadic, with calls lasting only a minute or so, making it difficult for CRS staff to communicate with each other, Zelenka said.

CRS international staff were safe and accounted for; however, some local CRS employees had not been heard from since the earthquake hit shortly before 5pm local time on 12 January, Fieser said.

CRS offices survived the magnitude 7 quake, but an office building across the street collapsed, she said.

The quake was felt as far away as eastern Cuba, where houses shook but there were no reports of significant damage.

“We felt it very strongly and I would say for a long time. We had time to evacuate,” Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago, Cuba, president of the Cuban bishops’ conference, told the Associated Press.

Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Florida, home to 80,000 Haitians, told CNS he had been in touch via email with Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio in the country.

“He tells me the devastation is incredible,” Bishop Wenski said. “He said he toured the city last night and it was quite devastating. Priests and nuns were in shock.”

Amid the confusion, Archbishop Auza told the Vatican missionary news agency Fides that 100 priests and seminarians also were killed.

The clergy were reportedly members of the Montfort order on retreat in Port-au-Prince.

Fr Matt Considine of the US province of the Montfort Fathers, based in New York, said that although the “situation is very confused,” the order’s officials have not been told that any of their members died in Port-au-Prince.

The Order has fewer than 100 members in the country, he told CNS, adding that although there was a retreat going on, it was not in Port-auPrince and everyone is “presumed OK.”

There have been reports of “lots of pain and misery” but no deaths reported associated with the Montfort Fathers, he said.

The US government and relief agencies were mobilising quickly to provide assistance to the devastated area around the Haitian capital.

The quake’s epicentre was about 10 miles southwest of the capital. It was the country’s worst quake in two centuries.

At the White House, President Barack Obama offered his thoughts and prayers to the Haitians.

UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon confirmed on 13 January that at least five UN staffers were killed and that more than 100 were missing, including the Tunisian head of the world body’s mission in Port-au-Prince.

CAFOD, the overseas development and relief agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, immediately pledged $162,000 for water, food, medicine and shelter for victims in the worst affected areas.

A special Mass to pray for victims was scheduled for 13 January at the Cathedral of St Mary in Miami.

Bishop Wenski asked parishes to sponsor special collections for quake victims.

Information about injuries, fatalities and damage was difficult to obtain because major communication links were destroyed in the disaster.

Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince

population

3.96 million Catholics

2.85 million parishes priests seminarians schools

79 283 75 379

Source: 2009 Annuario Pontificio ©2010 CNS

Human Impact

One of every three people in Haiti have been affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Total Population 9 million

Port-au-Prince Area

4 million Affected in Quake

3 million (Those who will require medical help and/or aid ranging from shelter to food.)

3 million = population of Iowa

Sources:

The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere relies heavily on international aid. Catholic aid agencies operate in the country.

Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot Destroyed

seen in this aerial view of Port-au-Prince in this United Nations handout photo. Scores

stores, hospitals and churches in the capital city were reduced to rubble in the 12 January magnitude 7 earthquake.

PHOTO: CNS/LOGAN ABASSI, UN, VIA REUTERS

Stories of hope, sadness emerge from Haiti

Earthquake claims life of first Haitian-born Salesian Brother

One of the tens of thousands of victims in the Haitian earthquake was Salesian Brother Hubert Sanon, 85.

Salesian Fr Mark Hyde, executive director of the Salesian Missions based in New Rochelle, New York, said Br Hubert was the first Haitian to become a Salesian Brother.

Details surrounding Br Hubert’s death were unknown, but Father Hyde said he died in the Salesian compound that houses the National School of Arts and Trade, known as ENAM among Haitians.

Concern also was growing for 200 students believed trapped in the rubble at the school. Father Hyde said he last heard from someone at the school at midday on 13 January, minutes before cell phone service was disrupted.

A Salesian from Gonaives, about 70 miles away, was expected to arrive at ENAM on 14 January to assess the situation and report his findings to the order’s mission office.

Br Hubert professed vows in 1947 and worked at the school’s Lakay program for young adults and teenagers on the streets.

The program tries to reunite the young adults with their families.

For those unable to find their families, the program offers the young people a place to stay and teaches them a trade in preparation for employment.

Fr Hyde said Br Hubert was a graduate of the school and was so impressed with the work of the Salesians that he decided to join the Order. The school’s director, Salesian Fr Atilio Stra, was seriously injured during the earthquake. Father Hyde reported that the school and the surrounding compound suffered extensive damage.

‘What is happening?’

Haitian asks US caller

Junior Sinsmyr thought Haiti had been attacked.

Sinsmyr, senior translator at an American-sponsored medical clinic in Port-au-Prince, was not exactly sure why his world was falling down all around him the evening after the earthquake hit.

Brent DeLand, a member of Christ the King Parish in Springfield, Illinois, who established the SARTHE Medical Clinic, was on the phone with 24 year old Sinsmyr when a major aftershock shook the Haitian capital. “I was stunned when he answered the phone,” DeLand said. “His response was ‘What is happening?’ He asked me what an earthquake was. I told him. I’m not sure he really understood what an earthquake was.

“Then he sort of understood and I asked ‘What do you see?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m in the middle of the street. In all directions there are no buildings left.”

“As we were talking the second aftershock hit and I knew it because I was watching it on CNN. He said, ‘Oh, no, the world is shaking.’ That was a fairly profound comment. I asked what was happening. I couldn’t hear him because of all the screams and cries.”

Then the line went dead.

As of 14 January, DeLand had

not heard from Sinsmyr or anyone else from the clinic since the night of 12 January. He was hoping to travel to Haiti with a small group of volunteers on 16 January, as originally planned. They were expecting to have to deal with more than routine medical procedures.

Courage of Haitians

“starts young,” says US nun who nursed hundreds

Sister Mary Finnick, a nurse who directs the Matthew 25 House in the Delmas 33 area of Port-au-Prince, found that “the courage of the Haitian people starts young” when she opened an impromptu triage and treatment center in a nearby soccer field after the quake.

“The children, though crying, did not have temper tantrums and cooperated as much as is possible for a 3 year old when you make a splint, clean out a head wound and debride backs and legs,” the Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart reported in a 13 January email.

“In all of this, we also hear the Haitian voices raised in song, praising God for being alive,” she added.

Sr Mary said she, two other Matthew 25 staff members, six guests from Pennsylvania and New York, and three Haitian doctors treated 300-400 people in the hours after the magnitude 7 earthquake. “We began to see some very horrible conditions caused primarily from the cement blocks, which most of the houses are built with, poor and rich alike,” she wrote. “There were many head wounds, some so serious it surprised us the person was still alive. Most were deep wounds that should have been sutured, but we had no material to do that.”

When supplies ran out, “we finally cut up pillowcases for ban-

dages,” Sr Mary reported.

Matthew 25 House, established in 2005 by the Nashville, Tennessee,-based Parish Twinning Program of the Americas, provides hospitality to North Americans who come to Haiti with the twinning program or with other missionary or humanitarian organisations.

Although the downstairs of the house experienced no structural damage, Sr Mary said, the upper floors had more damage and “the wall between us and the neighbor has quite a large hole.” But she encouraged medical teams that had been scheduled to come to Haiti not to change their plans.

“There is a great need for medical supplies, suturing, betadine, analgesics ... everything ... and personnel to bring it,” she said.

Aid worker finds scene from Dante’s Inferno

“It looks like Dante’s Inferno.” That’s how Mike Henry, Haiti project director for Cross International Catholic Outreach, described the scene in Port-auPrince after the quake.

“There are dead bodies everywhere,” Henry said in a 13 January report from the Haitian capital. “It is hell on earth.”

Jim Cavnar, president of the Catholic aid agency based in Pompano Beach, Florida, said the magnitude 7 earthquake “has done more than shake the earth. It has shaken the fragile hopes and dreams of the Haitian people, who just last year were the victims of devastating storms and flooding.”

But even amid the devastation, there were signs of resilience.

“The girls were shaken up quite a bit when it happened,” said an unnamed person who works with Cross Catholic, in a message to Cavnar, “but now they are playing with the kids of the parents who are staying in our home.”

Catholic aid agencies accept donations for Haitian quake relief. Here’s how to help:

● Catholic Relief Services, the US Bishops’ international relief and development agency, is accepting donations online at www.crs.org; or by mail to CRS, PO Box 17090, Baltimore, MD 21203-7090.

● The Salesians are accepting donations online at www.salesianmissions.org; or by mail to Salesian Disaster Relief, Salesian Missions, PO Box 30, New Rochelle, NY 10802-0030.

● The Archdiocese of Miami, which has a large Haitian population, has set up a place to donate online at www.newmiamiarch.org.

● Caritas Internationalis is accepting donations for Haiti at www.caritas.org or call 1800 024 413 in Australia.

● Food for the Poor is also

accepting donations at www. foodforthepoor.org.

● Catholic Medical Mission Board is accepting monetary donations by mail to CMMB, 10 W. 17th St, New York, NY 10011; online at http://support. cmmb.org/Haiti.

● Jesuit Refugee Service is accepting donations at www. jrsusa.org; click on Donate Now box on right of page.

● The Pontifical Mission Societies has established a longterm solidarity fund to help Haiti. Contributions may be directed to: Pontifical Mission Societies, Haitian Solidarity Fund, 70 W. 36th St, New York, NY 10018. Credit card donations can be made at www.onefamilyinmission.org.

Rose Micheline Saint-Jean, wearing a bandana with Haiti’s national flag, prays for Haitian earthquake victims during a memorial service at Notre Dame D’Haiti Church in Miami on 13 January. During the service, Fr Reginald Jean-Mary, pastor, called the 12 January earthquake the darkest moment in the history of Haiti.

PHOTO: CNS/MARLENE QUARONI

Students at St Mary Cathedral School pray during a Mass for the victims of Haiti’s earthquake on 13 January in Miami. Many of the school’s 380 students are of Haitian descent.

PHOTO: CNS/ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO, THE FLORIDA CATHOLIC

A woman reacts to the devastating situation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on 13 January.

PHOTO: CNS/EDUARDO MUNOZ, REUTERS

Kids bitz ARTISTS WEEK OF THE

SPOTLIGHT ON SAINTS

St Paul St Paul was a Jew who was known for most of his life by the name of Saul. He also had the advantage of being a Roman citizen. He received his education from Gamaliel, a respected teacher who was a Pharisee. Pharisees believed in very strict observance of the laws of Moses, and Paul followed this philosophy himself. Paul became a very harsh critic of Christians. He wanted them arrested and stopped because he thought their teachings were contrary to the laws of Moses. But God blinded Paul temporarily and had him brought to a Christian who healed him. Immediately Paul believed in Christ.

Paul became an active missionary. He preached all over the world of his time. He wrote many letters, some of which we still have as part of the New Testament. We honour him on 25 January.

COLOUR

126.EZRAREADSTHELAW (NEHEMIAH8:1-9:5)

“And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; (for he was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood up: and Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground.” NEHEMIAH8:5-6

BIBLE ACCENT:

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah recount the events of the Hebrew people after their exile in Babylon. The books were usually considered one book by the Jewish people, but later scholars made distinctions between the material and divided the book into the two that we know. Rather than present a history of how the people rebuilt their lives and their homes, these books emphasise the religious changes that were taking place.

Ezra was a priest who was part of the same line as Zadok, a priest who served David and Solomon. Because he was also an expert in the law, Ezra was charged by Artaxerxes to set up a code of laws based on the words that God gave to Moses.

Q&A

1 Why did Nehemiah call the people together?

2 How long did the feast last?

126.EZRAREADSTHELAW

(NEHEMIAH8:1-9:5)

CHILDREN’S HILDREN STOR Y TORY

EZRA READS THE LAW OF GOD TO THE PEOPLE

By Joe Sarnicola

ON the first day of the seventh month all of the people came together in the field before the place called the Water Gate. They wanted to hear Ezra, the scribe, read from the laws that God had given to their ancestors through Moses.

Standing on a wooden platform, Ezra held up the scrolls so that the people could see them as he read. On either side of him were some of the elders of the people.

Before he began to read, Ezra blessed the Lord and all of the people, who shouted, “Amen, amen!” in reply.

From sunrise until noon, Ezra read to the men, women and children that had assembled in front of him. Not only did he read, but he tried to interpret the Scriptures so that everyone would know all that God had done for them and wanted them to do in return.

“Today,” he said, “is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep.” Ezra added this, because some of the people were so grateful that the law was being read to them that they were crying. “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength!”

The Levites who were standing with Ezra said to the people, “Hush, for today is holy, and you must not be saddened.”

After they had heard the laws that were read to them, the people began to celebrate and rejoice.

On the next day, the heads of all of the families joined the priests and Levites as they met with Ezra to discuss the law in more detail. They discovered that during the seventh month they should live in booths during the time of feasting.

They proclaimed a decree throughout their cities, in Jerusalem and to all of Israel that said: “Go out into the hill country and bring in branches of olive trees, oleasters, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as the law prescribes.” And the people obeyed the decree and made booths for themselves and their families.

This had not been done since the time of Joshua, and the people were filled with joy that they had been able to reinstate such a celebration.

The feast lasted for seven days, and Ezra read from the law on each of those days.

READ MORE ABOUT IT: Nehemiah 8

Harry McAdam Holy Rosary School Kindy class

Mitchell James Holy Rosary School Kindy class

JPII’s would-be assassin, preparing for release, promises answers

MEHMET Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in May 1981, promised that he would answer questions about the assassination attempt after his scheduled release from a Turkish prison this week.

In an English-language message released by his lawyers, Agca acknowledged that his attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II has given rise to many questions about the possible involvement of Communist-bloc intelligence agencies.

“I will answer to all of these questions in the next weeks,” he said.

Agca’s credibility in answering those questions might be open to question. In his characteristically emotional and disconnected statement, he condemned terrorism and called for the establishment of “a new American empire” to bring world peace and democracy. Last year Agca said that he wants to return to St Peter’s Square, the scene of the assassination attempt, to be baptised there.

US Archbishop defends his handling of sex-abuse cases

FORMER Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland has defended his handling of sex-abuse complaints, with an email message to Associated Press saying that he did his best, given what he knew at the time.

Archbishop Weakland, who has acknowledged that he shredded evidence of abuse by priests during his tenure in Milwaukee, has come under fresh criticism as he appears in the city this week to address the National Cathedral Ministry Conference.

Sex-abuse victims have argued that the Archbishop, who stepped down in 2002 after it emerged that he had paid over $400,000 in Archdiocesan funds to buy the silence of a man who accused him of abuse, should not be granted the prominence of such a public appearance.

The Archbishop was also denounced by a state legislator who referred to him as a “piece of work” during hearings this week.

Egypt has no religious liberty: Coptic lawyer

RELIGIOUS freedom is virtually non-existent in Egypt, a Christian lawyer has charged in the wake of murderous Christmas-eve attack on Copts. Caroline Doss, herself a Coptic Christian, points to “a huge difference between the way the laws are applied to Christians and Muslims.”

The government’s failure to prosecute Islamic extremists for acts of violence against Christians is “inexcusable,” she said.

“Technically speaking, the Constitution does allow freedom of religion but practically speaking it does not exist,” she said on Tuesday.

“There is a huge difference between the way the laws are applied to Christians and Muslims in Egypt.”

South Africans prepare for World Cup trafficking fight

BY BRONWEN DACHS Catholic News Service

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Catholic officials are working to make sure South Africa’s hosting of the world’s largest soccer championship does not endanger the nation’s citizens, especially women and children.

While the 2010 FIFA World Cup provides a “wonderful opportunity for building global unity and friendships,” hosting it is full of risks and threats, including human trafficking and the marginalisation of the poor, said Dominican Fr Mike Deeb, director of the justice and peace department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The Church in South Africa needs to highlight these threats “so that everyone is aware of them and those in authority are challenged to address them,” he said in a telephone interview from Pretoria.

Raising awareness of human trafficking among potential victims and their families and working with the police and other authorities to prevent it are the biggest challenges before the 11 June-11 July World Cup, said Holy Family Sr Melanie O’Connor, who since January 2008 has been coordinating the Bishops’ efforts to combat trafficking.

The South African Bishops Conference says in a special section on the World Cup on its website: “Trafficking in persons, as Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, is a real ‘scourge’ of our time and is generally referred to as ‘Modern Day Slavery’.

“It is difficult to comprehend that in this day and age slavery still exists; that people are bought and sold and transported all over the world.

“Yet, it has been suggested that slavery is more common now than at any time in world history and that hardly any country is untouched by it.

forced into prostitution - mainly those who have no identification documents, speak little English and are afraid of reporting their situation to the authorities - and to help them to contact organisations able to give them shelter and spiritual, material and psychological assistance, Sr O’Connor said.

Large syndicates that are “bound up with drugs and pornography” are involved in trafficking in countries such as South Africa, Russia and Brazil, as are “smaller local rings that will take advantage” of the influx of tourists into South Africa for the World Cup, she said.

“tyrannical”

Doss organised a rally in New York City on 19 January to send a “clear message” to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak “that failing to prosecute crimes against Coptic Christians is inexcusable” and to “send a message to President Obama here that there is persecution in Mubarak’s land.”

An anticipated 2,000–4,000 people are expected to participate in the upcoming rally.

Doss continued to explain to CNA the hurdles that exist for Christians in Egypt, particularly the difficulty of being able to build churches there, as well as the documented punishment of those who convert from Islam to Christianity.

“To get permission to build a new Church you need a presidential decree,” stated Doss, who also lamented that “if you wanted to convert, for example, from Islam to Christianity you could not legally do so.” In fact, Doss claimed, “there are clear reports of converts to Christianity who have been taken into detention by state security officials” and have been “tortured and raped.”

San Francisco prelate rebuts Pelosi’s argument on conscience

ARCHBISHOP George Niederauer of San Francisco has written that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who lives in his Archdiocese, betrayed “some fundamental misconceptions about Catholic teaching on human freedom” in a December magazine interview.

In a conversation with Newsweek last month, Pelosi had said that her support for legal abortion reflects her belief in human freedom.

Her archbishop, responding in a column for the San Francisco archdiocesan newspaper, noted that “human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices, nor does it justify a stance that all moral choices are good if they are free.”

“These misconceptions are widespread both within the Catholic community and beyond,” Archbishop Niederauer wrote. While acknowledging that every moral actor must follow his conscience, the archbishop added that there is also an obligation to inform one’s conscience, and for Catholics that obligation implies learning from the teachings of the Church.

“While we deeply respect the freedom of our fellow citizens, we nevertheless are profoundly convinced that free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others,” the Archbishop wrote.

“Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of freedom.”

“Due to the underground nature of trafficking, there are no official records of trafficked persons, therefore, estimates vary widely.”

Some estimate that there are 27 million in slavery worldwide; that approximately 800 000 people are trafficked across national borders.

“This does not include the millions trafficked within their own country. Child trafficking is said to be on the increase,” the SACBC says.

The United Nations estimates that childtrafficking alone generates 7 to 10 billion US dollars annually for traffickers.

It cites trafficking in persons as the second most lucrative crime around the world next to the drug trade and that 30 per cent of trafficking victims are below the age of 18.

Criminals intending to establish prostitution rings at the sporting event “need to know that we’re ready” to stop them, Sister O’Connor said in a telephone interview from Pretoria.

She said thousands of people have been trained to assist the police in maintaining law and order during the games.

“Working with the International Organisation for Migration and other groups, we teach people what to look out for, how and where trafficking is happening and how to respond,” said Sr O’Connor, who has travelled the country focusing mostly on rural areas where women and children are in danger of being taken from their homes and sent to the soccer tournament’s host cities and towns.

On a visit to South Africa’s Eastern Cape province to run training workshops, “I was appalled at the ignorance about trafficking,” she said, noting that she “heard many people there say they didn’t know it really happened.”

Volunteers from parishes around the country are being trained to look out for women and children who may have been

Representatives of an international network of 252 women’s religious orders involved in combating human trafficking in 36 countries will visit South Africa in February to check on local readiness for the World Cup and give assistance where necessary, she said.

The network, called Talita Kum , Aramaic for “Get Up,” was established in June at a Rome meeting sponsored by the International Union of Superiors General and the International Organisation for Migration.

Fr Deeb warned that “marginalisation of the poor threatens the social cohesion that hosting the World Cup could bring.”

While the poor are among the country’s greatest soccer fans, most will be unable to attend the games because ticket prices “are way beyond their reach,” he said.

While the World Cup is “very likely to boost South Africa’s economy,” with new roads, railways and other improvements to the country’s infrastructure creating many jobs and businesses, “there is no guarantee that the poor will benefit,” Father Deeb said.

“Some people view the World Cup as a waste of money that could have been better spent on poverty alleviation,” he said, noting that “it is interesting that people from the host cities are more positive about the tournament than those who live in rural areas and are unlikely to benefit.”

South Africa’s high crime rate should not deter visitors, Fr Deeb said, noting that, with thousands of extra police officers on duty during the games, “the chances of being a victim have been reduced, as long as fans are careful and vigilant.”

During the World Cup, the Church plans to offer trauma counselling to crime victims, said Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban. “It’s a big challenge to us as Church to put together the infrastructure to cater for the influx of visitors,” Cardinal Napier added, noting that “we need to ensure that people know Mass times and where our churches are.”

Ihab al-Sherif, Egypt’s ambassador to Iraq, is pictured in a frame grab from a video posted on a website in 2005. Al-Qaida in Iraq said on the site it had executed the 51-year-old diplomat because he represented a

government allied to Jews and Christians. CNS

An ad on the SACBC website urging Catholics and others to fight trafficking during the World Cup.

Holy Land sites threatened

Bishops visiting Holy Land express concern about Jewish settlements.

BY JUDITH SUDILOVSKY Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM - Representatives of US and English bishops meeting with colleagues from Europe and the Holy Land expressed concern over the increasing construction of Jewish settlements around Jerusalem.

“There is continuing development of not only the Old City but also the historical basin area around the Old City, and the plans seem to be taking place without any discussion with Muslim and Christian authorities about their holy places,” said Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, vice president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“There is concern about (this) continuing development.”

Bishop Kicanas noted that at locations such as the Mount of Olives, where the Jerusalem municipality recently approved construction of four new buildings, there are sites considered holy by both Jews and Christians.

“The settlers are interested in (the Mount of Olives) because of the historic and religious meaning it has for Jews, and that is obviously important, but also in that area of the land the other faiths are important, too,” he said.

“Certainly the Mount of Olives is important in the Christian faith.”

Auxiliary Bishop William Kenney of Birmingham, England, said the apparent lack of accountability in the planning of the

development of these projects circling Jerusalem is very disturbing. “The basic impression (from briefings) is that something is going on that is not transparent, and it sounds extraordinarily odd,” said Bishop Kenney.

“Obviously it seems to be a campaign to make sure Palestinians leave East Jerusalem.”

The two Bishops were among 10 Western bishops and Churchleaders attending the 10th Holy Land Coordination Meeting in Israel and the Palestinian territories from 10-14 January in support of the Churchin the Holy Land.

The bishops visited Christian parishes across the West Bank, areas in East Jerusalem affected by land confiscations and evictions, and a Jerusalem housing project designed to help young couples continue to live in the area. Mandated by the Holy See,

the meeting occurs each January in an effort to show solidarity with the Christian community in the Holy Land. Participants met with local Churchand Israeli representatives; and with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to discuss the difficult process of getting and renewing work visas for clergy and religious from neighbouring countries.

“This is a matter of serious concern for us,” said Bishop Kenney, noting that Ayalon told them his offices were trying to bring about change on the issue within the Interior Ministry.

“We hope a solution can found to this problem.”

Bishop Kenney said following discussions with the Vatican ambassador, the bishops were left with an impression that negotiations on the Fundamental Agreement with Israel had

not gotten very far following a December meeting. He said that while the talks have not broken down they “are not getting anywhere very quickly.”

“We would like to see an agreement reached which is satisfactory to both sides, but that does not seem to be happening,” he said.

The difficult issues currently under discussion are the recognition of Christian holy places, the appropriation of Churchlands and taxation, said Bishop Kicanas.

The Bishops said they sensed a feeling of growing despair among both Israelis and Palestinians, who are becoming weary of the ongoing conflict.

“The number of people who spoke to us of the need of hope has increased. The lack of hope is becoming a problem,” Bishop Kenney said.

Bishop Kicanas compared the situation of the Israeli separation barrier to the situation in Arizona, where residents rarely meet with migrants and have established stereotypes of the workers as criminals.

“There is always going to be some friction but I do think most people would get along quite well if they have the opportunity to get to know each other on a human level,” agreed Bishop Kenney.

The barrier is a series of barbed-wire fences, security roads and looming cement slabs which, if completed as planned, would stretch nearly 400 miles and restrict the movements of 38 percent of residents of the West Bank. Israel maintains that the barrier contributed significantly to a decrease in the number of terrorist attacks, while Palestinians contend that the barrier is simply another Israeli land grab, imprisons them and imposes travel limitations.

Saints constantly needed for reform

God constantly calls saints to renew the Church: Pope

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - At every moment of Christian history, God raises up saints to renew and reform the Church, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“To renew the Church in every age, God raises up saints, who themselves have been renewed by God and are in constant contact with God,” the Pope said on 13 January at his weekly general audience.

The Pope said that in continuing his audience talks about the history of the church, specifically about theologians of the Middle Ages, he wanted to highlight the essential role of saints, who are able to make lasting, revolutionary contributions to the Churchprecisely because they live the Gospel in their own lives.

Pope Benedict spoke of “the consoling reality that in every generation saints are born.”

“Through all the sadness, the negative aspects of history, we see the birth of forces for reform and renewal because the newness of God is inexhaustible and always gives new strength,” he said.

Focusing specifically on the 13th century founding of the Franciscans by St Francis of Assisi and the Dominicans by St Dominic Guzman, the Pope said personal holiness led the two saints to preach - and to help actualise - a return to Gospel poverty, a deeper unity with the Church and a new movement of evangelisation, including within the European universities that were blossoming at the time.

At a time when some monasteries and dioceses, which had been oases for prayer and learning, started accumulat-

ing vast amounts of money and property, groups of Catholics became scandalised and started groups that, while aiming to live the Gospel authentically, did so by increasingly separating themselves from the Church and from its doctrine, the Pope said.

“The Franciscans and Dominicans, on the other hand, followed in the footsteps of their founders and demonstrated that it was possible to live evangelical poverty, to live the Gospel itself, without separating themselves from the Church,” Pope Benedict said.

The popularity in the Middle Ages of the Franciscans and Dominicans, and their ability to preach in a way that helped everyone see how they could live

the Gospel, led to the formation of “third orders” of laymen and laywomen who associated themselves with the orders’ spirituality, he said, adding that in today’s world, often marked by a culture that “focuses more on having than on being,” there continue to be holy Christians who choose to live extremely simply in solidarity with the poor and with Christ who was born poor.

“As the Second Vatican Council recalled, the call to holiness is not reserved to a few, but is universal. In every state of life one has the possibility of living the Gospel,” he said.

“Even today every Christian, no matter what his or her state, can and must strive to reach the heights of Christian life.”

No to sexual immorality means yes to life, love

Pope says young people need help avoiding trivial sense of love, sex

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Young people need help in avoiding a lifestyle where relationships and sexuality are trivialised, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“The Church asks for everyone’s collaboration, in particular from those who work in schools, to teach a lofty view of love and human sexuality,” the Pope said on 14 January in a speech to officials from the city and province of Rome and the Lazio region of Italy.

Young people today are looking for answers that can explain the human condition and the future of humanity as well as “for answers that can show them how to base their life on timeless values,” he said.

Christianity offers a “loftier vision of humanity” and the Churchcan contribute much to the urgent task of teaching young people about relationships and sexuality, he said. “It’s necessary to avoid exposing adolescents and young people to ways that promote the trivialisation of these fundamental dimensions of human existence,” that is, the dimensions of human sexuality and love, he said.

The Pope said when the Church says “no” to particular behaviours and lifestyles, “in reality it is saying ‘yes’ to life, to love lived in the truth of giving oneself to another, and to love that is open to life and is not closed up in a narcissistic view of the couple.”

Civilian courts should deal with sex abuse cases: Vatican

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - In order to treat sex abuse accusations against priests thoroughly, cases should be turned over to the civil justice system, not just to Church authorities, said the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes said instances of priestly sexual abuse are “extremely serious and are criminal facts that the Church can never tolerate in any way.”

“Once the evil deed has been objectively proven, one must resolutely pursue (the case) to the very end by also turning to ordinary justice,” referring to the civil justice system, he told the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, on 13 January.

The Cardinal was one of several top Vatican officials who attended a lengthy meeting on 11 December with Pope Benedict XVI and Irish Church leaders to discuss revelations about clerical sex abuse in Ireland.

Cardinal Hummes told the newspaper that what happened in Ireland was “a very painful fact, which certainly hits first and foremost the victims, but it also deeply hurts the heart of the Church.”

For the most part, Bishops are “good fathers for their priests” and any “unbecoming situations are very limited,” he said, adding that when society lacks the desire to seek out the full truth, the image of the priestly ministry is compromised, especially when the mass media “aim their floodlights on these episodes (of abuse) rather than on the good things that the overwhelming majority of priests do.”

Priests need the support of the Churchand the faithful so they can continue their good work, he said.

Permanent formation, prayer and Eucharistic adoration are all necessary to help priests face the challenges in today’s world, he said.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, looks at a camera with a Palestinian boy in the West Bank city of Hebron on 13 January. Shops on the street had been closed by order of the Israeli military. PHOTO: CNS/DEBBIE HILL

A fresco by Giotto depicts Pope Innocent III giving approval to the first Franciscan rule and blessing St Francis and his followers during their visit to Rome in 1209-1210.

PHOTO: CNS

St Dominic Guzman

Things worked out for me once I became Catholic

Mei Aodong

I’m an international student from China and I don’t have any religious background. I had my baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion three months ago.

The reason I became a Catholic started when I met my boyfriend in Australia. He is a very strong Catholic and I began going to Mass with him.

At first I was just curious about church and Catholicism but later I found that I love the hymns, could sing along with the choir after church and got to know some nice people there.

Fr Kenneth Asaba is a very nice and humorous person. We have become good friends. He is the one that got me interested in the Catholic faith.

Fr Kenneth set up a Bible class every Wednesday. The time clashed with my lessons this semester so he set up another class on Thursdays just for me. I so appreciated that.

Why I became Catholic

with Debbie Warrier

My Bible class teacher Eileen is very kind and knowledgeable. She made me realise something that is so true in life. “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find.”

This is the motto that encourages me to pray for what I want and work hard to get it.

I also got to know some girls from the choir and we are good friends now.

I don’t feel lonely anymore and my life has become more interesting.

I joined the choir and sometimes I play piano to accompany their singing.

The most important reason for me becoming a Catholic is that I realised God has become a very close friend and He has changed me a lot.

I communicate with Him every day and in different ways. I say the formal prayers at Mass and other times I talk to Him like I talk to a friend. I share my happiness and sorrow with Him, sing hymns to Him and worship Him. English is not my first language so sometimes I just mix up English and Chinese. I know He is not hearing from my voice but from my heart.

I used to wake up at night feeling so scared and weak because all my family and friends are in China.

Now I know that God is always with me and protects me. He is like the bright light in my deepest heart. He gives me support and makes me stronger.

Before, I would get angry or feel disappointed if things didn’t work out.

Now I know God knows what is best for me. He has got a plan for me. I just need to pray to God and He will give me what I need. If He doesn’t give it to me that’s because what I want is not what’s best for me. I may not be able to see that far ahead but later I will know.

A real miracle happened to me that made my faith even stronger. I never expected that I could get a job In Edith Cowan University where I’m studying.

Nonetheless I gave it a try and sent in my résumé. It was a coincidence that I told Father Kenneth I was going for a job interview the next day and he said he would pray for me. One week later I was informed that I got the job.

I really think that things started working out for me after I became Catholic.

If you have a story to tell please contact Debbie via dwarrier75@gmail.com

No avatar needed, just God’s love

I say I say

By Mark Reidy

I CAN’T quite visualise Jesus sitting through the latest blockbuster Avatar with 3D glasses on, but I get a sense that He would have been impressed by its content.

Not that I believe that He would have been overawed by the dazzling Hollywood effects, but rather He would have been pleased with the underlying storyline of an oppressor who is given the opportunity to view the world through the eyes of the oppressed.

In the movie, US Marine Jake Scully is able to literally slip into the skin of the natives of the planet Pandora and experience the physical and emotional fear that comes when one is confronted by a more powerful force that has only its own interests at heart.

Perhaps the storyline would have reminded Jesus of His first public appearance, when He emerged from 40 days in the wilderness. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”, He announced boldly to those in the synagogue in Nazareth, “Because He has anointed Me to preach Good News to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

His words could be seen as a mission statement directed toward the most powerless people of His time and His ministry over the next three years was underlined by compassion toward the poor, the sick, those with disabilities, Samaritans, prostitutes, lepers and taxcollectors.

These were the people who didn’t fit within the “respectable” and “worthy” parameters defined by society, yet Jesus was intent on letting them know that God’s love was, in fact, available to all of them.

Jesus then passed this mission onto us - to become, in His name, liberators of the poor, the captives and the oppressed.

Unfortunately, however, He didn’t provide us with the technology that was available to Jake Scully. We cannot literally step into the skins of those who live under oppression, whether it is poverty, homelessness, addiction, loneliness, violence, sexual or emotional abuse, shattered families, etc.

Unless we have been there ourselves we cannot experience or even imagine the world through their eyes; and even then we cannot comprehend the specific ramifications upon an individual.

We cannot truly understand the trauma of their abuse, the emptiness of their loveless life or the power of their addiction.

We cannot identify with their personal story and therefore can never understand the reasons for their present-day choices.

So has Jesus given us an assignment that we can never fulfil? If we are incapable of mentally, emotionally or physically walking in the shoes of those who are addicted or live in poverty or are violent, etc, how are we to truly understand them? Does Christ expect as to simply be observers of the struggles, sufferings and weaknesses of others?

Obviously not if He has asked us to continue His mission.

However, the problem is that without the technology available to Jake Scully we are left to our own limited devices and our responses to others are based solely on our own experiences and therefore clouded by personal biases, judgements, egos, hurts and desires.

Which is why God has indeed provided us with the means to fulfil our mission. “I am the Vine”, Jesus tells us, “and you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing”(John 15:5).

The process therefore is not fulfilled by stepping inside the “skin” of another, but, in fact, by allowing God to dwell within our own.

And all we need for that to happen is a heart that is open to His love.

In every age, God knows what’s best

Immorality in the Bible

How do we explain certain immoral practices that were part of the law of the Old Testament and that God seemed to condone, like polygamy, divorce, killing all the inhabitants of cities, etc?

By Fr John Flader

A BASIC principle to bear in mind is that God revealed His truth to the people only gradually, taking into account in each age what the people of that time were capable of living.

Thus we see that the moral law preached by Jesus Christ was far more exalted than the basic law that God gave to His people through Moses more than 1200 years before. We see this especially in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus reminds his listeners of what the Old Law said and then goes on to give his own law, which is much more positive and demanding (cf. Mt 5:17-48).

Christ’s law could be more demanding, both because the Jewish people had come a long way since the time of Moses in understanding their relationship with God and in their moral life, and especially because the New Law gave the grace of the sacraments to enable the people to fulfil the law.

At the same time, it should be remembered the law of Moses was much more exalted than the moral customs of the surrounding peoples of the time.

Turning to particular aspects of the

Old Law, one principle that can appear harsh is the punishment to be applied for causing injury to another: “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex 21:24-25).

This principle of equality between the punishment and the crime was in fact an advance on the much harsher punishment meted out among the warring peoples of the Middle East at the time of Moses.

Those peoples, moved by a spirit of vengeance, would often retaliate with a punishment much more severe than the original offence, so that the principle of equality in the law of Moses was in fact much more humane.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commented on the “eye for an eye” and urged the people to go much farther, turning the other cheek (cf Mt 5:38-39) and loving even their enemies (cf Mt 5:43-45).

Another example of an apparently immoral practice was to desire harm to those who hated God or offended His people (cf. Ps 35:3 ff; Ps 55:15; Ps 83:9-18).

This attitude, while far from the love and forgiveness preached by Jesus, can be seen as a desire that God in his justice would punish sinners.

The punishment that was desired was generally some physical evil, not the spiritual evil of eternal damnation.

The permission of divorce under strict conditions is another example of a moral code that falls short of the sublime teaching of Jesus (cf Mt 19:3-9) but was still an advance on the immorality of the surrounding peoples.

The law of Moses, rather than approving of divorce, regulated its use.

It required a grave reason such as adultery and a writ of separation granted by the authority.

What is more, the husband could never take the divorced woman back again as his wife, so that he would think seriously before divorcing her (cf Dt 24:1-4).

Such a law did much to protect the status of women at the time.

As regards polygamy, the law of Moses neither permitted nor forbade it, but it did restrict it in some ways compared with the unrestricted polygamy of the surrounding peoples.

For example, the king was forbidden to “multiply wives” for himself (Dt 17:17) and the high priest could have only one wife (cf Lev 21:13-14).

In any case, God could always dispense his people from the secondary precepts of the natural law, as he did here, perhaps because having a large number of children was important for the survival and growth of the people of God.

By restricting polygamy, the Old Law gradually prepared the people for the monogamy preached by Jesus.

And the destruction of whole cities with all their inhabitants (cf Num 21:2-3; Dt 7:1-5) can be seen as a way of God punishing foreign people for their sins as well as of avoiding the Israelites being contaminated by their idolatry and immoral practices.

- Email Fr Flader at director@caec.com.au

Reality check for Chaz Bono

Body Language

By Christopher West

From Rene Descarte to “Chaz” Bono

IF you’re in touch with current events in pop culture, you’re certainly aware that Sonny and Cher’s daughter Chastity Bono has undergone “gender reassignment surgery.”

She now “self-identifies” as a man and goes by the name “Chaz.” The media, of course, is touting her (they would say “him,” but this is to deny the truth of the matter) as a hero and holding her up as a model of great courage.

In no way do I wish to make light of this situation. I can’t imagine the interior pain that would lead a woman to mutilate her body in an attempt to “become a man.” My heart goes out to her in all sincerity. What I wish to reflect on here is a statement she made in a recent interview on Good Morning America.

“To me,” she said, “gender is between your ears, not between your legs.” In other words, gender is nothing but a construct of the mind. It has nothing to do with your God- given sex.

This dissonant view of existence is a direct descendant of Rene Descartes famous dictum: “I think, therefore, I am.” When human identity is posited in “thought,” man becomes a “mind” divorced from his body. In turn, the body comes to be seen as a “thing” to be dominated and manipulated at will.

The body doesn’t say anything about reality. Rather, the “mind” sets itself up as the determinant of reality – “I think,

therefore I am.” Subjective thoughts are no longer answerable to objective reality. “Reality” is reduced to what I think and feel about it.

Listen again to the ringing “Cartesianness” of this statement: “To me, gender is between your ears, not between your legs.”

And these statements, with which she backed up her main point: “I’ve felt male as far back as I can remember ... As a child it was really clear, I felt like a boy.”

I feel like a boy, therefore I am a boy –that’s her operative philosophy.

In discussing the difficulty of her decision to undergo the surgery, she said: “Finally, it came down to ... this is who I am, I need to finally be who I am.”

Having fallen prey to the cartesian split between body and soul, Chastity Bono has reduced the God-given sex of her body to something merely bodily –as if her body and its sex were merely a shell that her “‘male’ mind” inhabited.

But the human being is not a spirit or mind housed in arbitrarily sexed-flesh. Because of the profound unity of body

and soul in God’s design, the human being is a “sexed being” through and through, physically and spiritually.

As the Catechism makes clear, “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul” (CCC 2332).

It “is by no means something purely biological,” John Paul II told us. Rather, sexuality “concerns the inner-most being of the human person” (Familiaris Consortio 11).

The body reveals the deepest truth of the person, John Paul II reminded us. “It is, thus, in all its materiality... penetrable and transparent, as it were, in such a way as to make it clear who man is (and who he ought to be)” (TOB 7:2).

What, then, is the charitable response to Chastity Bono and others like her? As Pope Benedict XVI has helped us see, we cannot separate charity from truth.

“Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity,” he wrote. “

Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way” (Caritas in Veritate 3).

Those who go along with the deception that Chastity Bono is now a man are not loving her.

Rather, they are fostering a harmful illusion. To love her demands speaking truth. Of course, that truth must be presented in love. Love without truth does not do justice to the person, but nor does truth without love.

So, in love, it must be acknowledged that Chastity Bono is not a man and never will be. She is a woman tragically cut off from her true sexual identity.

The solution is not for her to mutilate her body. The solution is for her to experience the healing of her soul.

This is a healing that, in the final analysis, only the Saviour of the world can offer. This, indeed, is why he died and rose again – so we could know who we truly are. This must be our desire for Chastity Bono.

EU’s Catholic leader a paradox

In clear view

By Guy Crouchback

THE first President of the European Union, Harman van Rompuy, Prime Minister of Belgium but little known outside that country, is a member of the Christian Democrat Party.

The Christian Democrats, like other parties, have changed over the years, but in post-war Europe the Christian Democrats, largely Catholic, had an admirable political record and are largely responsible for Europe’s democracy and prosperity.

It was Christian Democrats under Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard who created the post-war West German Economic Miracle and who oversaw West Germany’s development from a heap of ruins and a Nazi heritage into a prosperous and free democracy.

Similarly in Italy it was Christian Democrat governments that removed the legacy of fascism and created economic prosperity. In Italy and elsewhere the Christian Democrats saw off the challenge of Communism. There are Christian Democrat parties in many countries, including of course Australia.

Like other extra-national parties they have various groupings and linkages in the European Parliament and elsewhere.

Van Rompuy seems an interesting man. He is a strong opponent of Turkey joining the EU because, he argues, as a

Muslim country it would dilute Europe’s Christian heritage.

This may or may not be good political tactics (some argue that excluding Turkey would strengthen the hand of the Muslim extremists there), but to find a European politician talking of Europe’s Christian heritage as something to be defended in these days of multiculturalism - when such things are becoming almost illegal to mention - is quite astonishing. He is a Catholic and a graduate of the Catholic University of Leuven, one of the oldest and most highly-ranked universities in Europe.

As first President of the European Union he occupies a position not only historic but filled with complexity.

The European Union has grown out of the Common Market, and was originally set up after World War II to promote peace between France and Germany and also to prevent further Soviet expansion westwards. As a free-trade organisation it has been astonishingly successful.

However, there are now many voices questioning its present direction of full political unity.

There are fears that it will become a remote, unaccountable bureaucracy not merely interfering in the domestic affairs of member States - as it is already doing -

but reducing them to no more than local councils: indeed there are many within it who are advocating precisely that, with the disappearance of the national identities of the member States.

Distrust of European unity is particularly strong in Britain but there are also strong Euroskeptic parties and movements in other countries. A few small nations have formed a much looser association which seems to be working well.

There are also suggestions that, given the fact Germany is the largest and most powerful member of the EU, its future might be in the direction of a Fourth Reich.

Another dystopian scenario is that given Europe’s very rapidly expanding Muslim population and the collapse of native birth rates (below replacement level in practically every member State) a European Union may be the beginnings of a new Caliphate. Certainly there are very strong questions about the democratic accountability of such a political union: it seems completely at odds with any ideal, such as that expressed by the Catholic social movement of Distributism and local self-government by the people at the lowest possible level.

There has been an idea of a European super-State, sometimes shadowy, sometimes less so, since the Roman Empire.

There seems to be a vague – or sometimes less vague – historical memory that there is a position called “The Emperor” which ought to be filled. Charlemagne tried specifically to recreate this with the Holy Roman Empire, as did the French Revolutionaries and then most obviously Napoleon, who went in for all manner of Ancient Roman pageantry and imagery.

Mr van Rompuy is in an intriguing and perhaps paradoxical position.

The gifts we present at Mass are deeply personal, so do it with silence, reverence

Sacrament of charity

Eucharist expert recommends silence during presentation of the Gifts during Mass

OUR financial contribution during the Sunday Eucharist is simply a symbolic gift given in gratitude for God’s goodness to us throughout the week.

In addition, the bread and wine brought to the altar signify our desire to surrender ourselves totally to God in obedience to his will. During the Word section, God had asked us: “Have you seen how much I love you?” In this section God continues: “Now therefore, will you obey My commandments? If so, you shall be My precious possession.”

So, the presentation of gifts is our answer to that question – ‘will you obey?’ If we really surrender ourselves unconditionally in obedience, then we will certainly give very generously – not necessarily in terms of quantity but of quality.

As with the widow who gave ‘all that she had to live on’, what matters is the love rather than the amount. And so, if our gift is tainted with any selfish considerations like, ‘I want others to know of my generosity’ then the entire value of the gift is lost.

The ‘bread and wine’ that we bring at the time of the gifts are our concrete lives and the way we experience God acting therein.

Simultaneously we need to take up particularly the difficult areas in which God challenges us to surrender ourselves into his hands.

The more consciously and lovingly we do this, the more precious will be our gifts, because then they correspond more explicitly to Jesus’ own self-gift. “Not my will, but yours be done, Lord.” (Mk 14:36).

Preferably in Silence

Since the gifts presented are very personal, it is recommended by liturgical experts that the entire rite of presentation be done in silence. A hymn is generally sung only to accompany the procession with the gifts and should stop once they reach the altar.

In silence, the community is invited to reflect on the ‘quality’ and meaning of the gift each makes. Further, notice that Jesus can transform only what we place on the altar.

If five hosts are brought to the altar, Jesus can transform only five. In other words, Jesus will transform only what we consciously bring to the altar. And so, if we consciously present only five percent of our life at the altar, then Jesus will be able to transform only that much.

Silence helps us reflect on how much of our life we consciously want to surrender to the Lord’s transforming power.

Further, we receive only as much as we give – because that is the amount of ‘room’ we have actually made for God in our lives.

Lastly, the giving at the Eucharist must overflow into a similar generous self-giving throughout the day. Thus, the faithful continue the ‘taking of the bread’ throughout their daily lives.

In the Eucharist, the action of ‘taking the bread’ ends with the Amen concluding the Prayer over the gifts. Being an action largely functional and preparatory in character it should not be highlighted or given undue importance.

Elaborate processions with a series of gifts, long-drawn singing and so on is certainly out of place. Nevertheless, the gifts must always be actually ‘presented’ into the hands of the Celebrant and never placed on the altar. And obviously, what is given at the altar must never be taken back – as is sometimes done with symbolic gifts like spectacles, wristwatches and so on. If not used immediately at the altar, all gifts presented are meant for distribution to the poor and needy. In short, while the gift is symbolic, the act of giving must be real and effective.

Fr Erasto Fernandez SSS

PANORAMA

A roundup of events in the Archdiocese

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

Contributions may be emailed to administration@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9227 7087, or mailed to PO Box 75, Leederville WA 6902.

Submissions over 55 words will be edited. Inclusion is limited to 4 weeks. Events charging over $10 will be put into classifieds and charged accordingly. The Record reserves the right to decline or modify any advertisement.

Mass times for The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Weekday Mass Times

8.00am, 12.10pm (Monday - Friday), Weekend Mass Times Saturday

8.00am, 6.00pm (Vigil)

Sunday 8.00am, 9.30am, 11.00am, 5.00pm

Reconciliation

Saturday: 5.00pm – 06.00pm

Monday: 11.30am – 12.00pm

MONDAY, 25 JANUARY

Christian Spirituality

7.30pm to 9.15pm at Lesmurdie. Meetings will follow a time line starting with the spiritual teachings from the Bible and proceed thereafter with presentations on the teachings of Christian spiritual teachers, contemplatives and mystics throughout history. Each month we will have a guest speaker. Everyone Welcome. No Cost. Enq: Lynne 9293 3848.

TUESDAY, 26 JANUARY

Divine Mercy Pilgrimage to St Anne’s - Bindoon 12 noon BYO lunch. 1pm, Holy Hour and Exposition, followed by Eucharistic Procession, Rosary and Benediction. 2.30pm Holy Mass, later Divine Mercy Chaplet, Consecration, Blessing of New Divine Mercy Image from Cracow (touched the relic of St Faustina) and veneration of Cross. Tea provided. 4.30pm return to Perth. Transport call Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877. Enq: Lawrie 9576 0491, 0448 833 472 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

Australian Day Ecumenical Service

10am at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Perth. Hosted by the Australian-Irish Heritage Association, the service honours and thanks our country Australia which gave refuge to so many of our forbears in their hour of need. Principal Celebrant, Archbishop Barry Hickey will also deliver the address. Representatives of Christian churches will participate. Refreshments provided following the service.

FRIDAY, 29 JANUARY

Medjugorje Evening of Prayer

7 to 9pm at St Bernadette’s Parish, Jugan and Leeder Streets, Glendalough. All are warmly invited to an evening of prayer with Our Lady Queen of Peace. Evening consists of Adoration, Rosary, Benediction and Holy Mass. Free DVD on Fr Don Calloway. Enq: Eileen 9402 2480.

SATURDAY, 30 JANUARY

Novena to Our Lady of Good Health, Vailkanni 5pm at Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. Vigil Mass, 6pm. Monthly Novena devotions will take place on the last Saturday of every month followed by Vigil Mass. Enq: George Jacob 9272 1379 or Church Office 9271 5528.

SUNDAY, 31 JANUARY

Celebration of Feast of Saint Brigid 3pm at the Irish Club, 61 Townshend Road, Subiaco. Annual stage presentation celebrating Ireland’s Female Patron Saint hosted by the Australian-Irish Heritage Association. Admission $10 includes Irish afternoon tea.

TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY TO WEDNESDAY, 10

FEBRUARY

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes

7pm at Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. Mass and Novena. 3 February, 7pm Novena, 4 February, 7pm Novena and Blessing of Children. 5 February, 6pm Eucharistic Adoration, 7pm Mass, Anointing of the Sick and Novena. 6 February, 6pm Vigil Mass and Novena, Fete later, 7 February 6pm Novena, 8 to 10 February 7pm Novena. 11 Feb 7pm, Concelebrated Mass, with Fr Andre FMM. Enq: Gordon 9377 4722 or Judy 9275 5827.

WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY

The Great Adventure – A Journey through the Bible

7pm to 9pm at St Simon Peter Catholic Church, Prendiville

Avenue, Ocean Reef. Discover a deeper insight into God’s ongoing plan of salvation for the world. How the bible timeline unlocks the many questions of biblical places and events. How and where the various books of the Bible fit in. An Easy-to-Follow Program you will not want to miss. Enq: Monique 9300 4885 or Dominic 0447 053 347, 6253 8041

FRIDAY, 5 FEBRUARY

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s Church, 93 Wood Street, Inglewood. Praise and Worship followed by Reconciliation and Eucharistic Healing Mass; thereafter, fellowship. Enq: Priscilla 0433 457 352.

Pro-Life Witness

9.30am at St Brigid’s Catholic Church, Midland. Mass followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at abortion clinic, led by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

SATURDAY, 6 FEBRUARY

Day With Mary

9am to 5pm at Holy Family Church, 45 Thelma Street, Como. Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima Message. 9am Video; 10.10am Holy Mass; Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Witness for Life

8.30am at St Augustine’s, Catholic Church, Gladstone Road, Rivervale. Mass followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at abortion clinic, led by Columban Missionary priest, Fr Paul Carey. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

SUNDAY, 7 FEBRUARY

Divine Mercy

1.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, Perth. Come for an afternoon with Jesus and Mary, main Celebrant, Fr Johnson Malayil CRS, on the Homily of St Jerome Emiliani. Enq: 9457 771.

Taize Worship

7pm at St Ninian and St Chad Traditional Anglican Church, 11 Susan Street, Maylands. Enq: 0417 180 145.

THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Group 50 Prayer Group

7.30pm at Redemptorist Monastery Retreat House, North Perth. With Praise, Mass and Anointing of the Sick.

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

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

SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY

Divine Mercy Healing Mass

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

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

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

SUNDAY, 14 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

St Catherine’s Catholic Church, Gingin. 12 noon, BYO lunch, 1pm Holy Rosary, Exposition, Hymns, Benediction

and Blessing of the sick followed at 1.30pm with Marian Procession. 2.30pm Holy Mass at the Grotto. 3.30pm tea provided. Transport booking, Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877. Transport cost $15 per person return. Please confirm Coach bookings by 7 February. Enq: Sheila 9575 4023 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY

Medjugorje – Evening of Prayer

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

EVERY DAY

Perpetual Adoration

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

Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation2010 Enrolments and Scholarships

Now open for full and part-time study at Acts 2 College for Semester 1. 16 week courses commence week of 1 March 2010. All courses may be taken towards a Certificate IV in Christian Ministry - national code 51881. Acts 2 College has available one full scholarship and three part scholarships for study at the College in 2010. The full scholarship is through an essay competition; the part-time are based on financial hardship. Enq: Jane 9202 6859.

Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation

Bible Study Sessions for Parishes

Commencing 27 January at 7.30pm, 30 January and 6 February from 10am to 4pm respectively at 67 Howe Street, Osborne Park. Genesis to Jesus, complete the course and be trained to deliver it in your own parish for Lent and Easter. All resources provided. Registration required. Enq: Jane 9202 6859 or 0401 692 690.

EVERY TUESDAY EVENING AND WEDNESDAY MORNING

Adventures in Matthew

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

EVERY SUNDAY

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation

2pm at Shrine, 36 Chittering Road, Bullsbrook. Commencing with Rosary followed by Benediction. Reconciliation is available before every celebration. Anointing of the Sick administered during Mass every second Sunday of the month. Pilgrimage in honour of the

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

Latin Mass

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

EVERY MONDAY

Lunchtime Meditation

Christian Meditation comes to the city. 12.15 to 12.45pm, Wesley Uniting Church, corner William and Hay Streets, Perth. Ecumenical Christian meditation, in the tradition of the desert fathers and mothers. All welcome. Enq: christianmeditation@iinet.net.au, www.christianmeditationaustralia.org or 9444 5810.

EVERY 2ND WEDNESDAY

Year of the Priest Holy Hour

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

EVERY 1ST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Taize Prayer

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

Holy Hour

Commencing 11am to 12 noon on 7 January at Sts John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Road, Willetton. Please come and pray for a vocation in the parish. Enq: John 9457 7771.

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the Two Hearts

9pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Glendalough.  There will be Eucharistic Adoration, Rosaries, hymns and reflections etc.  Concludes with midnight Mass in honour and thanksgiving of the coming reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary.  Enq: Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life

7pm at the Little Sisters of the Poor Chapel, 2 Rawlins Street, Glendalough. Mass and Adoration by Fr Doug Harris. All welcome.

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigil

7pm to 1am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee Street, Mosman Park.  Vigil will have Mass, Rosary, Confession and Adoration with Fr Bogoni. Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357.

SECOND SATURDAY OF THE MONTH

Divine Mercy Healing Mass

2.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, Perth. Main Celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM.

OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENTS - 2010

January

22 Flame Ministries Congress Keynote Address - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG City of Perth’s Civic Reception celebrating 20th Anniversary Sister Cities of Perth and VastoMgr Michael Keating

23 Vasto Club celebrating 20th Anniversary Sister Cities of Perth and Vasto - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

24 Closing Mass of Flame Ministries Congress - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

26 Irish-Australian Heritage Association Ecumenical Service, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey Australia Day Citizenship and Awards Ceremony, Perth - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

31 MercyCare Board of Governors gathering - Archbishop Hickey

February

2 Mercedes College Opening Mass, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

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

HOLIDAY RENTAL Scarborough. Self contained unit. Sleeps 6. Walk to beach. Ph 0402 673 409.

GUADALUPE HILL TRIGG

www.beachhouseperth.com Ph: 0400 292 100.

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

MELVILLE AREA Unfurnished room to rent. Ph. 0428 121 342

BOOK REPAIRS

General book repairs, new bindings, old Bibles, leather restoration and conservation. Tydewi Bindery Ph: 9377 0005.

BUILDING TRADES

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph: Nigel 9242 2952.

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

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

HEALTH

FREE Therapeutic Massage for women, Inglewood, 9473 0989.

COUNSELLING

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHOTHERAPY

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

EDUCATION

ADVANCED AND GRAD DIP in Educational Counselling also WACE Year 12 courses. Web: http://members.dodo.net. au/~uevalenz/. Ph: 0409 405 585.

FOR SALE

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

FURNITURE REMOVAL

ALL AREAS Mike Murphy Ph: 0416 226 434.

NEEDED

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

HOME BASED BUSINESS.

Partners for Australia, India, and Philippines. www.dreamlife1.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.

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

RICH HARVEST YOUR

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

KINLAR VESTMENTS

Quality hand-made & decorated vestments: Albs, Stoles, Chasubles, altar linen, banners etc.

12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph: Vickii 9402 1318 or 0409 114 093 kinlar.vestments@gmail.com

This advertisement to be included in the next issue of The Record and for ......... weeks after DEADLINE: Monday, 11am.

Post to Attention Record Classifieds, 587 Newcastle St, West Perth WA 6005

Fax to Attention Record Classifieds, 9227 7087 Phone Bibiana 9227 7080

COST: $4.40 for the first 8 words plus $1.10 per 4 words thereafter. GST inc.

Sovereignty secure

Ps 88: 4-5, 27-30 Dynasty forever

Mk 4:1-20 Sowing the word

28 Th St Thomas Auinas, priest, doctor of the church (M)

Wh 2 Sam7: 18-19, 24-29 God’s name exalted

Ps 131: 1-5, 11-14 My resting place

Mk 4: 21-25 Nothing kept secret

29 F

Gr 2 Sam 11: 1-10, 13-17 David’s treachery

Ps 50: 3-7 10-11 Have mercy on me!

Mk 4: 26-34 A mustard seed

30 S

Gr 2 Sam 12: 1-7, 10-17 Rich man, poor man

Ps 50: 12-17 God, my helper

Mk 4: 35-41 We ar going down!

Into the Purple

BY DAVID WARREN

Among my most vivid memories of my father is being with him in Toronto, nearly 40 years ago, in the moments before he delivered a speech to a design convention.

We were having coffee in the Colonnade, my beloved father and I. He had of course written his speech, which was supposed to be about trends in industrial design. That's what had been advertised - plausibly, for Jim Warren was, at the time, a practicing industrial designer, with foreign and teaching experience.

He was a former president of the Association of Canadian Industrial Designers, just the sort of guy to tell you about design trends. There would be an audience of, as he put it, "Self-consciously modern and progressive people, entirely in favour of trends in design." They would be easy to please.

My father had just decided to throw his speech out. It had suddenly struck him that design trends were garbage. There is good design, and there is bad design - the trends may swing either way.

But more to the point, there was a world out there, full of people buried under consumerist junk. We were at the peak of the hippie movement, of "turn on, tune in, drop out." Papa was no kind of hippie - Spitfire pilots from World War II make unconvincing hippies. Yet he was counter cultural. He wanted to say that we should forget about trends, in design or anything.

We need to think about truth instead. We need to think about questions of life and death. We need to take responsibility for the world we have inherited and are leaving to our children. We need to get into a position where we can answer for ourselves, where we have thought through what is important and discarded what is not important.

That was what he wanted to talk about, and as his speech would be starting in another few minutes, he would wing it.

I also spoke with my father after the speech; he was fully aware it had been a disaster. He had been earnest and articulate, but one could actually feel the annoyance of the audience at being subjected to a sermon about the good, the true, and the beautiful - when they had come to hear about design trends.

I said the speech was a disaster, but I was impressed that Papa didn't care. He was actually pleased with what he had done. He had said what he wanted to say, and if nobody much liked that, then tough for them.

This behaviour was very much in character. It helps to explain why, at various points in my childhood, our family was rather poor. My father had a gift for finding new jobs - which was good, for he also had a gift for losing old ones.

Indeed, he had the wonderful gift for complete candor, as I was reminded recently reading one of his old CVs, in which he frankly reported how each of his several previous adventures in conventional employment had come to an end.

The most impressive entry was where he explained that he had not, in fact, been fired from his last job, at the Smith & Stone company. He had, however, felt obliged to quit, after making a silly miscalculation on some industrial tooling that had cost the company a few hundred dollars.

Typically, that was for a product - a polyethylene bicycle carrier - that went on to make a few million dollars when the company sold the rights to it around the world. And typically, my father's share in that brilliant success, the direct result of his own original handiwork and refusals to compromise, was zero.

Also, typically, he never whined about

that. In all my memory of him, there is not a single instance when he regretted what might have been. To the end, he accepted fate, and at the end, when I last saw him struggling to breathe in that little room in St Joseph's Hospital, and our eyes met, there was a look of benignity in his face such as I cannot describe.

I have stressed the paradox of victory in defeat, but it would not be fair to my father's memory to depict him only as a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, even if that is what I most admired. He was no respecter of rank in persons, but rather a stalwart friend and a man for all seasons.

Most boys rebel against their fathers at some stage; I failed to do so. There was actually no moment in my life when he was not my hero - and that is not grief speaking; I know it to be true. He was a man who was very gentle and kindly, droll and amusing, instinctively gallant, who loved to act a part. A man forgiving of faults and slights, dutiful, unselfish; indeed, recklessly generous, even to total strangers.

A family man, an ardently loving husband and father. He had a quick temper, too, which disappeared as he grew older, and the power to shut everyone out when he was reading or thinking; and likewise, the power to listen when you came to himto you, and only to you.

My father was not religious by disposition, though he was by implication. He was of a generation that was shy to speak about last things. There were many subjects he never mentioned, and yet his views could be known.

A week ago, three days before his death, I gave him a very Catholic crucifix. He could not speak in words anymore, but he chose to wear it, in his last moments of lucidity, and was still wearing it at his death. The last photograph taken of him, through my sister's Blackberry, shows not only the

cross, but the face of the man who wore it. A painter might call it a face of St Simeon:

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and

The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season had made stand. My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand . . . . Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

According to thy word.

Death is the end of the road in this world, as it crosses the frontier into the world to come - the world we see only in distant glimpses - the purple in the mountains, far far away.

There was a moment in the mountains of Abbottabad, Pakistan, when I was very young, about six. My father gave me a plum from the market, in its deep purple, freshly washed. I beheld it: I thought there was magic in my father's gift. The colour was that of the deep dusking sky. When I bit into it, I thought it must be a plum from heaven - the original and perfect, immortal.

Christ, you will recall, was nailed up with a couple of thieves. One of them railed at Him, saying, "If thou be Christ, save thyself and us." The other rebuked the first, saying, "Dost not thou fear God?" And then this good thief asked of Jesus, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." This event happened about the sixth hour - midday, and yet darkness was descending over the hills of Judea, for the Light was passing out of this world. That purple.

I will honour my father, in the spirit of the commandment. And I will remember the answer of Jesus from the Cross, given to a sinner, as the darkness encroached upon them: "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise."