The Record Newspaper 22 June 2006

www.therecord.com.au

LOCAL SCENE: Around the parishes with Sylvia Defendi Page 4

Medjugorje at

Years of claims - years of doubt...

John Thavis looks at Medjugorje a quarter of a century after several young visionaries claimed Mary had begun appearing to them. VISTA

ALSO INSIDE this week: ALSO INSIDE

A Spirit thing - Page 7

Looking at the charismatic movement

Children and Money - VISTA 4

The Parish. The Nation. The World.

Teaching important lessons in families

Thursday June ,  Perth, Western Australia ● $1 Western Australia’s Award-winning Catholic newspaper

STUDENTS RESPOND: letters on our interview with Julian McMahon Page 6

REFUGEES’ FRIENDS: Aussie MPs join coalition for refugee advocacy Page 5

Coleridge to Canberra

New archbishop will befriend - and criticise - MPs

Comfortable with media and looking forward to new role

■ By Paul Gray

The new archbishopdesignate of Canberra says he will not be afraid to publicly criticise the nation’s parliamentarians once he has taken up residence in the nation’s capital.

But encouragement - not only criticism - for those engaged in the complex game of politics will be the goal for the Church’s new leader in town.

Bishop Mark Coleridge, whose appointment as the new Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn was announced this week, will replace Archbishop Francis Carroll who has retired at the age of 75.

This week the new Archbishop was asked by The Record if his appointment is an opportunity for the Church to put its views strongly before MPs.

“I don’t want to stick the boots in,” Bishop Coleridge answered. “Politics is a thoroughly worthy business.

“I will be there helping, supporting and even at times criticising parliamentarians.”

The archbishop-designate hopes to get to know many politicians personally.

For the Church, he said, the question is how to influence politics, not whether it should.

Continued on page 2

Fessio heads to Australia

Close friend of Benedict XVI to address Aussie students

Along-time friend and former student of Pope Benedict XVI is to visit Australia in early July to speak to Australian Catholic tertiary students.

Fr Joseph Fessio SJ will speak on the Papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, providing detailed insights in to the work of the new Pope and what the Church in Australia and across the world can expect in years to come. Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) was Fr Fessio’s doctoral supervisor and mentor at the University of Regensburg in the-

then West Germany from 19721975. As a member of Ratzinger’s “Schulerkreis” or group of former students, Fr Fessio participated in many of the yearly three-day-long gatherings of that group and the two have remained close friends since.

Fr Fessio has continued to lecture in philosophy and theology across the world.

Father Fessio is close to a number of the cardinals who elected the new pope, including Francis Arinze, the former Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship; Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna; George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney; Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec.

Continued on page 2

War hero’s cause opens

■ By Tim

Hall

AN AMERICAN marine chaplain who continued to administer last rites on a Vietnam battlefield despite being heavily wounded himself could be made a saint.

Even though a mortar shell had left his arm “hanging in shreds,” Fr Vincent Capodanno repeatedly refused evacuation and continued to treat other wounded men and comfort those who were dying.

The priest, who died on the battlefield in 1967 and who posthumously received the US military’s highest distinction, the Medal of Honour, has now been given the title Servant of God in a move that could lead to his canonisation.

With the permission of the Vatican, the US Archdiocese for the Military Services announced the opening of Fr Capodanno’s cause on Memorial Day, May 29,

Continued on Page 7

TRANSLATION STEAMS ON

In the last three weeks the new translation of the Mass in English has received major votes of support from the UK and the US.

Canberra will not loose sight of Jesus

Continued from Page 1

“The Church has no option but to engage in political culture,” Bishop Coleridge said.

But the new Archbishop has no intention of being politically “partisan,” he said.

Many of the issues politicians face are complex, Bishop Coleridge said. “The Church must understand the pressures that politicians are under.”

“Under these pressures, their vision can blur,” he added. “They can get tunnel vision, and they can forget things. They can develop a kind of amnesia.”

“My job will be to remind them of things they might have forgotten.”

The Archbishop-designate, who worked for several years in Rome before being appointed a bishop for his home town of Melbourne in 2002, said that he saw the public role of the Church in Canberra as extending beyond federal parliament.

The public service and the diplomatic corps are also important areas for the Church and its views to be represented, he said.

Bishop Coleridge’s Roman background may influence the way he conducts himself as Archbishop of Canberra, in two distinct ways.

The first is the personal influence of the late Pope John Paul II, to whom the then-Fr Coleridge acted as chaplain.

The second is Scripture scholar-

ship. The new archbishop is one of the few Australian priests to complete a doctorate in Scripture studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

In an earlier interview on his appointment as a bishop in 2002, the new archbishop said that of several priests who had influenced him during his career, the largest influence had been John Paul himself.

To live and work side-by-side

with the Pope had been “an amazing grace,” he said.

One of the things that struck me about Pope John Paul, more than ever in those years working closely with him, was that he was first and foremost a priest, Bishop Coleridge said. He was not a bureaucrat. He’s quintessentially a priest, and he was a great priest.

He occupied a lofty post, but I never failed to sense in him a radi-

antly attractive human being. That then fed into a sense of him as a priest first and last. Pope John Paul, said the new archbishop, was “the least monarchical of men.” He had “the capacity to generate a sense of befriending others.”

He also admired the energy and “fire in the belly” which John Paul II had for spreading the gospel. “I think the roots of the energy went back to that sense that Christ has sent him to preach the good news,” he said.

“I really do hope that some of that apostolic fire, or evangelical energy has rubbed off on me.”

Looking forward to his own career as a bishop, Fr Coleridge said in 2002 that he fully intended to be a teaching bishop. “I’m not sure right now what that means in detail or in practice, but that’s the charism that I have, more than any other.

“I feel called in a particular way to be a teaching bishop – not peddling an ideology, but teaching the beautiful and powerful truth of Jesus, as it’s been passed on to us by the Catholic Church. That’s the epicentre of what I see as my ministry.”

Scripture is a vital resource for today’s Church, he said. “One of the great blessings that I was given was to be led into serious study of the Bible, and the teaching of it. I have been immensely enriched by that.”

Fr Coleridge said four years ago that the Catholic Church was going through tough times but that

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encouragement could be found in the figure of Jesus. “I have a poster on my wall,” he said. “It just says ‘let us not lose sight of Jesus.’ I think that if you can’t see Jesus as the blazing core of the priesthood, then all you see is that which is tawdry and disheartening, and disillusioning.

“But in the midst of all that, if you can see Jesus – and I can – then you see the true glory of the priesthood. In the midst of all that is wounded and desperately sad, you do see what is the true strength and the true beauty of the priesthood.”

Not only priests but believers in general should keep saying to themselves “Keep your eye on Jesus,” he said. Bishop Coleridge likened the contemporary Church to St Peter on the sea in Matthew’s gospel.

“These days, if you take your eye off Jesus, you end up like Peter walking across the water. He takes his eye off Jesus, and as soon as he does that, all he feels is the wind and the waves, and he starts to go down.

“That’s where we are at the moment,” he said. “If you can’t see Jesus at the heart of the mess, then mess is all there is.”

Bishop Coleridge has a reputation as one of the best communicators amongst church personnel in Australia.

He was a media spokesman for the Melbourne archdiocese during the 1990s, and a regular guest on Southern Cross radio’s Melbourne station, 3AW.

Fessio to face Catholic students

Continued from Page1

A ngelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice; Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, France; Jean-Marie Lustiger, former Archbishop of Paris; Jorge Medina-Estevez, former Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of Divine Worship. Fr Fessio is visiting Australia as part of the Annual National Catholic Students Conference, which seeks to form leaders for the future by awakening in students and graduates a renewed zeal and enthusiasm for evangelisation and education in the faith, providing a rich grounding in the call to holiness to build up Catholic life and culture at tertiary institutions across Australia and within local communities.

President Daniel Hill announced the association’s jubilation at attracting such a high-profiled priest, academic and leader like Fr Fessio.

“The response from students has been overwhelmingly positive. Fresh from our integrated response to the Da Vinci Code Movie, many students and others are very excited about his presence as part of the Conference. Having a speaker who has been so deeply involved in tertiary education all his life is a real blessing.”

Fr. Fessio’s lecture, The Papacy of Benedict XVI, is open to the public and will be held in conjunction with the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family at the Cardinal Knox Centre in Melbourne at 7 pm on Friday 7th July.

Ready for action: Newly appointed Archbishop-elect Coleridge begins his new ministry.

Photo: John Casamento

Insight into the papacy: The now Pope Benedict XVI and Dr Fessio.

Mass “enriched” by translation

NEW WORDING

Notable changes in Mass prayers and responses approved by the U.S. bishops

PRESENT FORM

“And also with you”

“I have sinned through my own fault.”

“We believe …”

“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might.”

“It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

©2006

■ By Paul Gray

TCHANGE “And with your spirit”

“I have sinned greatly … through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”

“I believe …”

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.”

“It is right and just.”

he bishops of the United States have voted to approve new translations of the Mass in English. The vote follows support recently given to the new translations by the Australian bishops and the bishops of England and Wales.

The vote marks a significant victory for those in the English-speaking world who support a closer alignment between local Masses said in the vernacular tongue and Masses said in Latin in Rome.

An overwhelming 173-29 vote of approval for the new translations was delivered at the US bishops’ meeting last week.

“He described the new English translations as “richer and more uplifting”

The new translations of the Mass will now be considered by Rome, with whom the final decision on any changes rests.

Asked about the significance of the proposed changes to the English Mass texts, the chairman of the Australian bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, Bishop Mark Coleridge told The Record that the language of the liturgy will “sound and feel different” to Mass-goers, at first.

It will sound less like everyday speech, he said. “Initially it will feel different and a bit strange.”

However, the bishop said that the changes would be worthwhile because they will better communicate the tradition of the Church.

“The texts pass on more richly and powerfully the tradition that finds voice in the Missal,” he said.

Bishop Coleridge, who was appointed Archbishop of Canberra and Goulbourn this week, has

General

Mission

cause of the evangelisation of Peoples.”

OCCURRENCE

Response whenever the priest says, “The Lord be with you.”

First form of the penitential rite

Beginning of the Nicene Creed

Start of the Sanctus

Response when the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

also been Chairman of the Roman Missal Editorial Committee.

He described the new English translations as “richer and more uplifting.”

Meanwhile Cardinal George Pell, who chairs the Vox Clara committee of English-speaking bishops, which will advise the Vatican on the new texts, issued a statement welcoming the vote by the US bishops.

Of the new translation of the Mass, Cardinal Pell said: “Catholics will quickly get used to it and come to love it.”

Cardinal Pell earlier said that “the ambition is” for a single Roman missal to be in use throughout the English-speaking world.

“I think that’s a very worthy ambition,” he said in an interview with America’s National Catholic Reporter.

There have been reports of infighting in recent years amongst liturgists and bishops over changes in the liturgy.

One point of contention has been the translation of the words “Et cum spiritu tuo,” the congregation’s response to the celebrant’s “Dominus vobiscum” (“The Lord be with you.”) There has been dispute over whether to make the new English translation “And with your spirit,” rather than the existing “And also with you.”

The new translation of texts affect several parts of the liturgy, including the Nicene Creed.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, based in Rome, wrote to the US bishops earlier this year urging their acceptance of change.

“It is not acceptable to maintain that people have become accustomed to a certain translation for the past 30 or 40 years, and therefore that it is pastorally advisable to make no changes,” Cardinal Arinze wrote.

Children watch TV too early

Eight out of 10 of the youngest children in the United States - those up to the age of 6 - watch TV, play video games or use the computer for about two hours on a typical day. A third live in homes where the TV is on most of the time. Even for the littlest tots, TV in the bedroom isn’t rare: 19 per

cent of babies under 2 have one despite urging from the American Academy of Pediatrics that youngsters not watch any television at that age.

These are the findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest media study, based on a telephone survey of 1051 parents who were asked their reasons for using the electronic media the way they do.

“I had this sense of kids clamouring to use media and parents trying to keep their finger in the dam,” said lead researcher Victoria Rideout.

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Sylvia in the Parish

Students bring Taize alive in North Beach

■ By Sylvia Defendi

“Nothing is more conducive to communion with the living God than a meditative common prayer with singing that never ends, but continues in the silence of one’s heart when one is alone again,” said Br Roger Schutz, founder of Taize meditation.

Originating during WWII from the Christian monastic community in Taize, located in France, Taize meditation services are currently held throughout the world and have shown to be particularly popular amongst young Christians.

“Since the late 1950s, many thousands of youth, from around the globe, have been drawn to Taize, participating in weekly meetings of prayer and reflection,” said Beth O’Neil, coordinator of Taize in North Beach

Ensuring that the Church is

Children’s bible helps literacy

■ By Sylvia Defendi

Fr Werenfried, founder of the charity group, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), graced poverty stricken Nigeria with the gift of a children’s bible, published in 1979, the UN Year of the Child.

27 years later, the seemingly insignificant book has been translated into 148 languages with 43

million copies distributed among the population.

The pocket-sized bible, titled “God Speaks to His Children,” was written by German theologian Eleonore Beck specifically for children. However “the Child’s Bible is also greatly appreciated by adults, primarily because it is written in their own mother tongue.

For many the little bible is the first book they have ever possessed,” said

Archbishop Onaiyeken. For this reason, the bibles are not only used by catechists for religious instruction; schools are also adopting the bible as a means through which to teach literacy.

Currently the charity is preparing editions in English to further education amongst the poor.

To offer assistance contact ACN on: (02) 9679-1929, or e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org.

ablaze with candles, Our Lady of Grace in North Beach began offering the pensive meditation service in December 2005, with 60 participants.

Now with almost 30 regular attendants joining in the hour of mediative song and prayer, Mrs O’Neil says the service has the potential to “bring people of all faiths together in love and peace and extend it to the broader community.”

While the service includes scripture readings and time for personal prayer, communal song is at the core of Taize. North Beach parish are graced with the talents of three high school music students from Sacred Heart College in Sorrento, who lend their musical abilities to the service.

“Taize is so spiritual, you can be really relaxed and just be yourself with God,” said Emma Ness, one of the three musicians, who plays

the flute. Emma is joined during the service by sisters Kate, who plays the piano, and Gemma Nevin who plays the violin. The trio met Mrs O’Neil by chance and have subsequently been key to the parish service since its inception.

“Musically it’s not difficult to prepare for a Taize prayer meeting, because the sequences are quite simple. The melodies are simply beautiful though,” said Kate. When asked what was particularly special about Taize, Gemma answered “It offers people a period of silence. We talk so much during our lives, that sometimes it’s great to recollect your thoughts and focus on the truly important things in life.”

All those who may be interested are invited to attend the service, which runs every first Thursday of the month at the North Beach parish from 7.30pm. Alternatively, there are also services in Mt Lawley and South Perth.

Faith friends a hit in Greenmount

■ By Sylvia Defendi

Pastoral care advisor, Sr Benedict Mansfield has successfully introduced an innovative faith process into St Anthony’s Greenmount.

Called Faith Friends it is based on the Rite of Christian Initiation and her extensive experience in schools and parishes.

“Faith Friends is a simple and powerful process based on Catholic tradition of having a friend who will share his/her faith with catechumens and those preparing for sacraments,” said Sr Benedict.

Parents of children being prepared for the sacraments of Eucharist and Confirmation are asked to choose another adult close to their child who could act as a Faith Friend during the child’s sacramental preparation.

The Faith Friends meet with the child being prepared for the sacrament three times in the family home to pray, read the scriptures and chat about their faith journey. The meetings are structured and parents are welcome to participate.

The process attracted 140 people to a meeting at St Anthony’s Parish and has caught the imagination of the Knights of the Southern Cross who have agreed to fund the project with a grant for resources and booklets.

Parish Priest of St Anthony’s, Father Karol Kulczycki, is delighted with the progress of the Faith Friends process.

“Sometimes we look for complicated spiritual development programs to renew our spirituality, yet often the simplest things can lift up our spirit, allowing us to feel God’s presence with us,” he said.

Newman to host national comp.

■ By Sylvia Defendi

Over 200 netball competitors from Marist schools in Victoria, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia will compete in the 12th annual Australian Marist Netball Carnival, to be held at the Matthews Netball Centre in Wembley, from June 25 to 28.

“The 2006 carnival gives students, staff and all others representing Marist Schools across the nation the opportunity to come together,” said Veronica Carey, head of secondary at Newman College.

To open the event, competitors and organisers will meet for a celebration Mass on Sunday, June 25 at the Champagnat Chapel, Newman College, Churchlands.

The opening ceremony for the games will follow the next day, June 26, at the Matthews’ Centre at 9am.

During the carnival, outstanding individual players will be recognised by being selected for an all Australian Marist team, as well as in a number of other awards.

“This Carnival will display netball of a very high standard; past team members have gone on to State Representative level,” commented Mrs Carey.

Taize in Perth: The lovely melodies of coordinator Beth O’Neil, Emma Ness, Kate and Gemma Nevin.

Spreading the Word: Religious sisters distribute copies of the Child’s Bible.

Detention not anti-immigration weapon

Backbenchers act with faith on boat-people detention

■ By Paul Gray

Unresolved questions remain in Canberra over the timelimits for the detention of boat people, after concerns over human rights were expressed by a large number of Liberal and National Party back-benchers.

Liberal MPs Judi Moylan and Petro Georgiou and National Senator Barnaby Joyce are among those who are reported to be pressuring the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, to make changes to new migration laws announced recently.

The changes being asked for by the back-benchers would allow for swifter processing of claims for settlement made by asylum-seekers who are detained in Australianrun detention centres outside the country.

The pressure from these MPs, who reportedly also include Family First Senator Steve Fielding, coincides with the launching this week of an international coalition of groups to fight the existence of immigration detention centres around the world.

The chairman of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, was among a group of prominent religious leaders who expressed concern this week over several countries’ use of detention as an antiimmigration weapon.

“It is particularly worrying that detention is being used, in violation of international human rights law, as an instrument to deter the arrival of refugees and to persuade them to leave,” the Cardinal said.

The Cardinal said that arbitrary imprisonment “poisons human

Mercy sisters mark 110 years

■ By Sylvia Defendi

Celebrating 110 years of service to the Western Australian community, the Sisters of Mercy marked the anniversary of their establishment in West Perth with reminiscent events held on May 24 and 25 in celebration of the significant milestone.

In 1888 St Brigid’s Convent was opened as a branch house of the Convent of Mercy, Victoria Square, Perth. When a school was established in West Perth to cater for the many children in the western end of the city, the Sister’s crucial involvement prompted the decision to make St Brigid’s Convent an independent foundation of the Sisters of Mercy.

Sisters from both the Perth and

West Perth Congregations gathered at 4pm on May 24 for afternoon tea at the Convent of Mercy, Victoria Square, to celebrate and remember the first group of Sisters who left the Convent of Mercy in 1896 to settle at the St Brigid’s Convent in West Perth.

As part of the planned afternoon celebrations a re-enactment of the departure of the original foundation group of Sisters from Victoria Square took place. Five Sisters, dressed in the early habit, represented Mother Evangelista O’Reilly, Superior of Victoria Square in 1896, and four of the original six foundation Sisters of St Brigid’s.

“The sight of Sisters in full habit, waving and singing as they emerged from the Convent would not have been an unusual sight in 1896; how-

ever in 2006 this was a fascinating event for all driving past Victoria Square at the time,” said Mercy archivist, Michelle Lillico. Over 200 people gathered for an open-air ceremony and morning tea on May 25 to commemorate the official foundation day of the Sisters.

Music students from Aranmore Catholic College, Mercy College and St Brigid’s College entertained the guests, who included past students, before the proceedings began.

A heartfelt prayer of re-dedication of St Brigid’s was delivered by Sr Beverley Stott, who asked that the blessings of the past 110 years continue to “assist us to imagine new ways of connecting with each other and supporting each other so that we go out from here bringing a spirit of reconciliation and peace.”

society” and “harms those who practise it as well as those who suffer it.”

Cardinal Martino linked the fight against detention with the teachings of Pope John Paul II.

“As human dignity is innate in every human being, Catholics

should cooperate with other faiths within the common ‘human family’ to prevent everyone from losing his dignity,” the Cardinal said.

“The various members of the international community should cooperate in the fight against detention of migrants on the basis of the ‘globalisation of solidarity’ enunciated by Pope John Paul II.”

At a meeting in Rome, Cardinal Martino was supported in his comments by interfaith leaders from the Jewish and Muslim communities.

“In carrying out their role of managing migration flows, it is understandable that states should establish temporary detention centres,” said Alan Naccache, President of the Italian branch of the youth section of the Jewish Bnai Brith Organisation.

“Nevertheless, states should never forget their international obligations to refugees and other migrants.

“In particular, the arbitrary detention of refugees penalises human beings for seeking safety, and denies their common humanity.”

The international anti-detention coalition which was launched this week claims the support of over 100 human rights groups in 36 countries, including Australia.

Its supporting members include the Jesuit Refugee Service.

R esidents in the neighbourhood of Ballajura’s Mary MacKillop Church may well have been woken by the sounds of bagpipes for the second year in a row.

About 200 Ballajura parishioners took part in the second annual Corpus Christi procession held on June 18.

Parishioners were led by Fr John Jegarow, altar servers and seminarian Mathew Willox playing the bagpipes.

The procession, organised by Faye Murphy and Gerry Ryan, started after the 8am Mass and returned to the Church half an hour later, in time for the 9.30am Mass, after which many stayed on for refreshments.

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Seeking a home: Sudanese children watch games in the Kounoungo refugee camp in Chad. More than 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled west into Chad to escape attacks by Arab militias and Sudanese government forces. Photo: CNS

Waking the neighbourhood: Fr John Jegarow leads the Corpus Christi procession at Mary MacKillop parish, Ballajura.

Perspectives

Just a word or two...

JJournalism has frequently been accused (and has often been guilty) of choosing its words to arouse people’s emotions rather than communicate with their minds. Most of the emotions that are targeted are negative and destructive ones that do nothing for the peace of mind of the individual or the peacefulness of the community. That is why the words anger, attack and outrage have had such great currency in radio, television and newspapers.

There is almost no requirement that these emotive words have any link with the reality of the situation. Television is particularly revealing in this matter: we are told that people are angry and outraged, but then they are interviewed and reveal themselves as calm, collected and in many cases forgiving of whatever wrongs have been done to them. The underlying message, however, is that things are only important if people are angry, and rational views on a subject are only important if they constitute an attack.

Another favourite is the word ‘failure’, a negative and destructive word much loved by sports journalists. Had Geoff Ogilvy finished second, instead of first, in the US Open golf tournament on Monday, we would doubtless have been told that he failed to win. This sort of abuse of words, and particularly of abusive words, inevitably leads to its own problems. On the front page of Monday morning’s newspaper we were told that the Socceroos “failed to be intimidated” by Brazil. If that means anything, it means that they did their best to be intimidated, but failed. It is not the first time the love of failure has led to failure of language.

letters to the editor

Year11 students at Santa Maria College in Applecross took up the offer to respond to Paul Gray’s report on Melbourne lawyer Julian McMahon and his experience representing executed Australian man Nguyen Tuong Van. Students were asked to respond in any way they saw fit. The Record thanks Santa Maria’s girls for putting so much thought into their responses and expressing their thoughts so clearly and succinctly.

PO Box 75, Leederville, WA 6902

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

We are not only at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are also told we are at war with cane toads, starlings, and pearl cichlids (the ‘cane toad of the waterways’). We are also, at various times, at war with road rage, violence, sexual abuse, breast cancer, bullying and outcomes based education. Our faith in war as the solution to problems is thus continually reinforced.

Parents who want to do some of their own OBE would do well to record the nightly news and go back over it with their children, seeking the meaningless phrases used by journalists and presenters. There will be a rich harvest and wonderful opportunities to train youngsters to say what they mean and mean what they say.

Journalism used to be an outstanding way of thinking and communicating. It expressed the facts as succinctly as possible, it avoided the opinions of the writer, and did not attempt to sway the opinions of readers/listeners/viewers.

Words are inherently troublesome, best summarised in the old saying, ‘a menu is not a meal, and a map is not a territory’. Words are not what they represent, but they can do a reasonable job of representation. ‘Steak and eggs’ should get you part of a cow and the product of a chook, even when the cook has done a poor job of translating the words into the meal.

‘Steak and eggs’ should get you part of a cow and the product of a chook, even when the cook has done a poor job of translating the words into the meal

Nowadays, the natural difficulties of language are being overtaken by eagerness of opinion and the Alice in Wonderland scenario where words will mean whatever I want them to. For thousands of years and in every language in the world ‘marriage’ meant the union of a man and a woman, the joining of the two halves of humanity in a life-giving, love-giving community. If you were to believe the columnist in Weekend Extra last weekend “we should be thoroughly ashamed we are putting up with something so discriminatory”.

Deep down, I suspect our increasing problem with words is that we have abandoned our allegiance to The Word. God’s knowledge of his own perfection is an undivided whole and is expressed as the Son also known as the Word.

As St John put it: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God.” When the Word became man in the form of Jesus, he told us he is the truth. He spoke to us in many words because that is what we need, but he also told us that He is the truth.

When we keep ourselves close to the singular nature of truth, we are much more likely to keep ourselves close to truth in our communication. Down through the centuries this has been clearly shown by the saints, both literate and illiterate.

When our objective is to make a name for ourselves instead of relying on the name of him who is truth, we are likely to create a new Babel.

After reading an article recently published about Nguyen Tuong Van, put to death last year for drug trafficking, once again the issue of capital punishment has been brought to the forefront of my mind.

As a Year 11 student from a Santa Maria College, I believe that capital punishment is morally wrong. I also feel that it is impractical.

Instead of killing a person because of a crime they have committed, wouldn’t it be better to instead allow them the chance to atone for their wrong doing?

I believe that criminals should be given an opportunity to learn a trade and then make use of that trade in the wider communitywhere it is most needed, such as third world countries.

Not only would the Christians be satisfied, but the wider society would be able to see the benefit of allowing the condemned person to live.

Lydia Cook

The article, “My Friendship with Van” in the Record Vista made me realise how heartless some countries can be. I can see (although don’t agree with) how capital punishment can be accepted in extreme cases, for example committing a horrific murder, but killing a young man for possession of just a small amount of drugs is simply appalling. Nguyen Tuong Van, although by no means innocent, did not deserve to be so horribly executed by Singapore, and I think that they need to seriously reconsider their justice system. By making capital punishment acceptable, they are completely disregarding the human right to life and are playing God. How can such an advanced and successful country be so backward in their beliefs?

Emma Hussein

Reading the Record’s Vista article (June 8, 2006), made me even more aware of the circumstances and emotional impact surrounding the hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van. It is a disgrace that he was executed by the Singapore Government after lengthy review as there were no criminal intentions behind his drug trafficking, only to help pay for his twin brother’s debts. Capital punishment is a primitive method that has no place in today’s society. World governments should take action to stop manslaughter and extreme acts of violence.

Caitlin Haeusler

Recently during my Year 11 Religion class we read your article “My Friendship with Van” (June 8, 2006) as it covered our latest topic, Capital Punishment. We are taught that human life is sacred and any form of destroying it goes against our religion, Catholicism, and the moral values we have. Capital punishment is not the appropriate punishment. It is the easier way out.

Van no longer has to deal with the crime he committed, and cannot fully learn from his mistakes. A jail sentence would have been the necessary action, instead of this, the death penalty, the destroying of human life.

Hanusia Goy

After reading the article “My Friendship with Van”, I was outraged. How can a government so directly disregard the value of human life? As a Year 11 student at Santa Maria College, I know the Ten Commandments back to front. The fifth one being “thou shalt not kill”. No matter who it is, drug dealers, murderers or any other type of criminal everyone has the right to life. What is wrong with a jail sentence where a man such as Van could have reformed himself? The Catholic Church by no means accepts murder, however we do believe in forgiveness. How can people be reformed if they don’t have a chance? Being killed by heartless people in my opinion does not do any good for society and a small amount of drugs or any other crime for that matter should mean a jail sentence and not death. Nothing excuses the fact that those themselves who are trying to enforce the law are in fact breaking it.

Hannah Johnston

Capital punishment is wrong, full stop. I can understand when people say, he/she has done an awful thing and should be punished, but is death really the answer? “My Friendship with Van”, published in the June 8 Record, seriously made me consider Van’s situation, and also all others facing death row. Yes, Van did foolishly strap heroin to his back and carried it through Changi airport to allegedly help his twin brother and yes, his actions may have negatively affected many, but death seems welcome when compared to the life sentence he would have otherwise been offered. Van, and others like him, should have spent the rest of his life contemplating his mistake and wishing for freedom he won’t have again. In my opinion, that would be a punishment worse than death.

Ivana Erceg

After reading the article “My Friendship with Van”, the idea and issue of capital punishment came more clear to me. Capital punishment should not be accepted throughout the world today, as the act is against religious beliefs and those who have committed a crime should not be killed because of their mistake. I believe that there should be a punishment for those who have done wrong but not murder. Simply life in jail is harsh enough, and would definitely be more of an effective way. No one has the right to kill a human being, take away their life and all they have. Van had changed and was seen by his lawyer as a good person, someone who has changed. The point of punishment is changing and seeing what you had done wrong. How is killing someone giving them the chance

to do this?

Lara Paino

After reading the article “My Friendship with Van”, I was deeply saddened about the prospect of capital punishment, because of the fact that a person must lose their life, but also because it shows that as humans we will just kill a person (heartlessly get rid of something) to solve our problems. Like war, it is just a pathetic way to rid the world of problems/conflict, by being equally or more brutal, ultimately causing more problems. Humans need to face their problems, and find better consequences for wrong doings, because capital punishment is brutal and WRONG!

Emily Sivich

No matter what wrong doings someone has done, life is sacred and no one has the right to kill someone else. Trafficking drugs isn’t a just cause to kill someone. In a world constant improving and gaining knowledge, you would think our society would be smarter. Though being politically correct has blinded us from the shocking realities of our actions.

Chareen Raja

After reading the Vista article “My Friendship with Van” I felt upset and disgusted that people could just take away someone’s life for a mistake that person had made.

Life is something we must value and hold sacred, not something we should tamper with or take into our own hands. The creation of all human life is God’s doing so it should be him alone who can take a life.

Brianne Hill

After reading your article “My Friendship with Van” I have come to realise what a disgusting act capital punishment really is. People who are for capital punishment obviously don’t understand how many people these organised executions affect. These executions undermine our society and contradict everything that the community claims they stand for. Those who agree with capital punishment clearly don’t have a conscience.

Casey Lissiman

As a Year 11, Santa Maria College student, I firmly believe in the Catholic teachings of the Church. As a class, reading “My Friendship with Van” (8th June), I found myself disagreeing strongly with the mere idea of Capital Punishment. I believe that Nguyen Tuong Van, who was arrested for carrying 396.2 grams of heroin with him through Changi airport, did not deserve to die for his crime. Of course, he would have deserved to be given a large penalty or sentence, but the taking of his life for such a crime was barely fair. To end his life without giving him a chance to repent or show his guilt was not a moral choice.

Natalie Tran

Medjugorje 25 years later: reported apparitions and contested authenticity

■ John Thavis

Twenty-five years after six children in Medjugorje, a village in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, began reporting apparitions of Mary, pilgrims are still flocking to the site and church officials are still cautious about the authenticity of the events.

Marian experts continue to debate the significance of Medjugorje, and several have published books - ranging from enthusiastically supportive to skeptical - to coincide with the anniversary.

In Medjugorje, Franciscan pastors are preparing for overflow crowds on June 24-25, the dates on which the alleged apparitions and messages began in 1981. They insist, however, that no special commemorations are planned.

“Everything’s been booked solid for more than a year, and we’re expecting thousands of pilgrims. But we’re not putting on any spectacle or festival - just the usual program of prayer,” Franciscan Father Ivan Sesar, pastor of St James Parish in Medjugorje, said in a telephone interview.

Of the six children who originally reported visions from Mary, sometimes daily, one says she still receives messages from Mary on the 25th of each month. They are published online, eagerly awaited by a large network of Christians dedicated to Medjugorje.

According to Bishop Ratko Peric of MostarDuvno, whose diocese includes Medjugorje, the messages now number more than 30,000, a fact that only increases his own skepticism about the authenticity of the apparitions.

Bishop Peric discussed Medjugorje with

Pope Benedict XVI earlier this year during a visit to the Vatican. In a summary of the discussion published in his diocesan newspaper, Bishop Peric said he had reviewed the history of the apparitions with the Pope, who already was aware of the main facts from his time as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“The Holy Father told me: We at the congregation always asked ourselves how can any believer accept as authentic apparitions that occur every day and for so many years?”

Bishop Peric said.

Bishop Peric noted that Yugoslavian bishops in 1991 issued a statement that “it cannot be confirmed that supernatural apparitions or revelations are occurring” at Medjugorje.

Bishop Peric said he told the Pope that his own opinion was even stronger - not only that a supernatural element cannot be proven, but that “it is certain that these events do not concern supernatural apparitions.”

Other priests and bishops have spoken favourably about the apparitions, saying there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the visionaries or the spiritual effects among pilgrims.

At Medjugorje, the debate over authenticity has been largely set aside by the Franciscan friars who minister to pilgrims and keep in contact with the visionaries.

“We are not here to give a judgment about whether the apparitions are true or not. We’re here to follow the people who come, to hear their confessions, to give them pastoral care,” said Father Sesar, the 39-year-old pastor.

Father Sesar said that, while early pilgrims to Medjugorje may have been drawn there by curiosity or a thirst for supernatural signs like rosaries turning different colours, that is less true today. Much more significant are the long lines for confession that form every day, he said.

“The biggest things in Medjugorje today are prayer and the sacraments. It’s no longer a place where people come to see miracles. They are coming for spiritual growth,” he said.

Considerable attention, however, is still given to the apparitions and messages which one of the visionaries, Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, says she continues to receive. She now lives with her husband and children in Italy.

The message from May 2006 strikes a pious tone typical of most of the thousands of alleged communications over the last 25 years: “Decide for holiness, little children, and think of heaven. Only in this way will you have peace in your heart that no one will be able to destroy. Peace is a gift, which God gives you in prayer.”

At the Vatican, officials said they are still monitoring events at Medjugorje, but empha-

25 years of wondering WHAT IF...?

sised that it was not necessarily the Vatican’s role to issue an official judgment on the alleged apparitions there.

More than once in recent years, the Vatican has said that dioceses or parishes should not organise official pilgrimages to Medjugorje. That reflects the policy of the bishops.

But the Vatican has also said Catholics are free to travel to the site, and that if they do the Church should provide them with pastoral services.

That has left a margin of ambiguity among Catholics. Adding to the confusion have been claims that the late Pope John Paul II continued on Vista 3

Vision? Vicka Ivankovic, who first reported apparitions from Mary in Medjugorje in 1981, is seen in the village of Medjugorje, in what was then Yugoslavia, in this 1988 file photo. CNS photo/John Thavis

A long journey: Pilgrims in this June 25, 2004, photo climb the hill where apparitions are said to have first occurred in 1981 in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Photo: CNS

“Mummy, what did you do during the war?

A war is being waged in Asia against unborn girls. Why aren’t more people enlisting to fight for them?

■ Daniel Mansueto

“Daddy, what did you do during the war?” is the challenge in question form that the baby boomer generation rhetorically put to its fathers.

When raised by an adult who has never known war, the question comes off as a smug accusation. Yet it serves the salutary function of reminding us that we can expect to be asked one day to render an account, and to be judged on how we acted when confronted with the great life and death issues of our day.

With the question in mind of what should be done during a war, let us consider the untraditional but very bloody war that is being waged today in Asia against unborn girls. The introduction of sonogram technology in Asia has resulted in the practice of aborting girls there en masse. In China, for example, recent statistics indicate that for every 100 girls that were born, 117 boys were born. It is said that if this disparity continues, by 2020 - only 14 years from now - there will be 40 million more men than women in China (which correlates to millions more girls than boys killed).

India has a similar problem. One study that includes a survey of the literature notes that Indian demographers have found a “stark shift towards excessively masculine sex ratios at birth between 1981 and 1991 from near normal” to as high as 124 boys per 100 girls in urban areas. Why is this happening? The study reports that in India “local studies and surveys show that the use of new techniques to detect the sex of the foetus followed by the termination of a female pregnancy has become common among educated and less educated, rich and poor and in rural and urban areas.”

This same study reports that “demographic studies in China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam since the mid-1980s have uniformly shown an increasing rise in the proportion of male births and confirmed that access to sex identification and abortion facilities is widespread and permits new forms of intervention before birth.”

One should not imagine that these millions of unborn Asian girls are being aborted in the first trimester of pregnancy. Nearly all the abortions that are done to “weed out” girls in Asia are gruesome late term abortions of viable or nearly viable babies. We know this because generally a sonogram exam cannot determine the sex of an unborn child before the 16th week of pregnancy and in some cases cannot do so until the 20th week or later.

The practice of aborting only girls focuses thought on the victims of abortion and gives those victims an identity. They are not just “foetuses,” they are girls. Few would deny that the use of abortion in the service of search and destroy missions aimed at girls subjects girls to a terrible injustice. But what is the injustice? Is it the discrimination or is it the abortion? Even a moment’s reflection leads to the inescapable conclusion that the real injustice is not that girls are selected but abortion itself. What is worse, wanting a boy or killing a girl? The only way to preserve both the “right to an abortion” and sex equality is to kill more unborn baby boys. This of course

would not save a single girl but, rather, would only increase the killing of boys to even the score. One would think that feminists would have something to say about sex selection abortion given that its victims are almost exclusively female. However, while there have been women who have spoken out about the matter, the war on unborn girls is on the far, far back burner of the agendas of activist women on the left - if it is on those agendas at all.

One would think that feminists would have something to say about sex selection abortion given that its victims are almost exclusively female.

Hillary Clinton’s remarks to the plenary session of the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference On Women are an example of how the issue is not on the radar screen of American left-leaning activist women when it comes to international feminist concerns. In those remarks Ms Clinton said “it is time to break our silence” and speak out about wrongs directed specifically at women, such as infanticide, the sale of women into prostitution, violence directed at women whose dowries are deemed too small, the rape of women as a tactic of war, domestic violence, and coerced abortion. While alluding to a “history of silence” concerning these problems, Ms Clinton choose to remain silent herself about the use of sex selection abortion to effect the slaughter of millions of unborn girls.

But what can feminists like Ms Clinton

say about sex selection abortion given their commitment to the so-called “right to an abortion”? Some feminists on the left say, not very loudly, that sex selection abortion is wrong, and is permissible to outlaw, because it discriminates based on sex. However, they cannot vigorously assert this argument without jeopardising the “right to an abortion” because the logic of the argument completely undermines that so-called “right.” If an unborn girl has the right not to be discriminated against, she necessarily also has the more fundamental right to life. And if unborn girls have the right to life, it necessarily follows that all unborn children, whether male or female, have the same right.

Others have also noted the silence that surrounds the practice of sex selection abortion and the reason for that silence. A paper published by the US President’s Council on Bioethics states that the practice is “a particularly pernicious form of sex discrimination” but notes “with some sadness” that “almost thirty years of progress on the matter of sexual inequality has not led to any firm public policy proposals to put an end to sex control in the United States or abroad.” According to this source, the reason for this is that “it was widely argued by many feminist-oriented scholars as well as other liberal thinkers that any legal or policy actions taken against abortion for sex control would put the abortion right itself at risk.”

Given the renowned commitment of prochoice feminists to abortion and the farreaching pro-life implications of any argument against sex selection abortion, it is sadly predictable that pro-choice feminists raise no loud protest against the extermination of the female gender in Asia. Men and women bear

from the cold

How ten ordinary men sacrificed themselves for their mates in Shackleton’s doomed expedition to the Antarctic

The Lost Men

The Harrowing Story of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party

By Kelly Tyler-Lewis

■ Reviewed by Francis Phillips

Aequal responsibility for ending this extermination (and all other abortion). But if feminism means anything it means protecting interests that are unique to the female gender. And what greater interest does the female gender uniquely have than that of being defended against systematic extermination? Incredible as it may seem, pro-choice feminists believe there is a greater interest and that that greater interest is abortion - the very means by which the war of extermination against the female gender is being conducted. What other conclusion can be drawn from their silence concerning sex selection abortion? The practice of aborting girls in Asia supplements an older tradition of infanticide that for millenniums was practised against girls and disabled children. It is beyond ironic that there are feminists who aggressively support a means of extending and perpetuating this barbaric ancient tradition on a mass scale. The silence about what is happening in Asia is not consistent with any ideology that seeks to protect the female gender but it is entirely consistent with the “it’s all about me” ethos that underlies the ideology of abortion. So that an American woman can be sure that a child will never impinge on her “lifestyle” or career plans, nothing must be said of the slaughter of countless millions of girls in India, China and elsewhere in the world. And so it is that when faced with a genocidal war on girls - not a figurative war, but a real war where real, live eighteen and twenty week old girls are being singled out and killed in very large numbers solely for the sin of being female - pro-choice feminists are AWOL.

Daniel Mansueto is an attorney and the President of the Board of Directors of the East Los Angeles Pregnancy Centre.

n historian, the author of this account of Antarctic exploration spent two months in Antarctica researching her book. Using personal journals, letters and previously unpublished photographs she has laboriously reconstructed the unknown side to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17. Thanks in part to the film with Kenneth Branagh as the charming, energetic and persuasive Shackleton, most people know the story of how his ship, the Endurance, broke up in polar ice on the Weddell Sea, leaving 22 members of the party stranded on Elephant Island and Shackleton himself with five companions to navigate a 20-foot open boat 700 miles to the island of South Georgia. The extraordinary feat of bringing the castaways to eventual safety is heroic in itself - but it has overshadowed a more generous feat of suffering and sacrifice: the saga of the Ross Sea party. Shackleton’s strategy was simple, on paper at least. In December 1914, as Europe was being slowly engulfed by war, he would sail to Buenos Aires and from thence to the Weddell Sea, there to strike out overland for the South Pole. Meanwhile another ship, the Aurora, with a complementary group of men would sail to Tasmania and from there set sail for the Ross Sea, the other side of the Antarctic continent. These men, the Ross Sea party, would commence

to build a chain of supply depots up to the Beardmore Glacier for Shackleton’s party - their own provisions exhausted - to use as they trekked north from the Pole to meet up with the other team on the other side of the continent.

As we know, the savage and unpredictable Antarctic climate thwarted this neat plan. Shackleton never set foot on the continent and the rudimentary wireless technology of the time prevented the Ross Sea party from knowing this until 1917.

Believing rightly that the success

or failure of Shackleton’s expedition depended on their efforts to lay the depot trail the 10 men chosen for the shore party continued to carry out the explorer’s instructions doggedly in the face of immense obstacles.

As the author notes, they were “ten ordinary men”: two teachers, one clergyman, a geologist, a medical orderly, a clerk, a seaman, a college athlete and two other sailors. Most of them had never met Shackleton before. When asked his plans, the great explorer had announced that “the journey across

is the thing I want to do”. He was unprofessional in his inattention to the small details needed for his expedition. It was underfunded from the start. The Aurora proved to be ill-equipped and the sledge dogs were untrained mongrels rather than huskies. When their ship was forced away from the Ross Sea by severe storms in May 1915 with all its crew, the ten were marooned without enough clothing, food or equipment. It was two years before the ship was able to return.

They were “ten ordinary men”: two teachers, one clergyman, a geologist, a medical orderly, a clerk, a seaman, a college athlete and two other sailors.

It is a testimony to human courage that the shore party did not simply give up and lie low in the hut at Cape Evans built by Captain Scott’s ill-fated expedition, spending their time hunting seal for food and blubber and whiling away the long weeks and months until rescue with cards, quarrels and an old set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Knowing they could only trek through the frozen land during the short Antarctic “summer” - November to mid-February - they managed to build five depots between January and March 1915 in the expectation that Shackleton and his men were relying on them. Conditions were appalling: drifts, pack-ice and crevasses impeded their progress, the temperature fell to -15 at night; they suffered from snow-blindness and frostbite and their clothing never dried. In one two-and-a-half hour period they progressed 150 yards. Another time it took them 11 hours to move one mile. On another occasion they spent three days gaining seven miles. Sixteen dogs died during this period. Victor Hayward, who volunteered for the position of “general assistant” wrote, “We have to relieve Shackleton at the Beardmore Glacier 400 miles distant without

Discerning the truth of Medjugorje

Continued from Vista 1 strongly supported Medjugorje in various private statements; the Vatican has never confirmed those statements.

After Pope Benedict was elected, it was rumoured that as a cardinal he had once traveled incognito to Medjugorje, and that as Pope he could be expected to officially approve the site as a Marian shrine.

In his February visit to the Vatican, Bishop Peric said he spoke to the Pope about these rumors, and that the pontiff only laughed in surprise. Pope Benedict, who headed the doctrinal congregation for 24 years, once said the multiplication of Marian apparitions was a “sign of the times” and should not be discounted. But he has also

counselled prudence, even when it comes to apparitions officially recognised by the Church. Behind the Vatican’s careful approach is a basic church teaching: that public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, and that no private revelation, however interesting, will add anything essential to the faith.

Yet some, like Mgr Arthur Calkins, a Vatican official and a member of the Pontifical International Marian Academy, believe that while apparitions do not furnish new truths of faith, they can help Catholics understand them better.

Private revelations recognised by the authority of the Church “may serve to bring home to the faithful truths which are already known, but

not fully appreciated,” Mgr Calkins said in an interview.

“The apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima, for example, brought home to the faithful the need for prayer, penance, conversion of heart, reparation for sins. “All of this expands on the doctrine of the mystical body of Christ,” he said.

Like several other experts at the Vatican, Mgr Calkins declined to offer any opinion about Medjugorje.

Marian expert Donal Foley, in his new book, “Understanding Medjugorje,” reviews the public evidence, particularly from the early days of the reported visions, and says that, “sadly, the only rational conclusion about Medjugorje is that it has turned out to be a vast, if captivating, religious illusion.”

In a phone interview, Foley listed several factors that make him dubious: contradictions over how long the apparitions would continue, the excess number of messages, their questionable and sometimes “silly” content, excess focus on inexplicable “signs,” and the credulous local culture in Medjugorje. Other writers have used the 25th anniversary as an occasion to celebrate Medjugorje.

Elizabeth Ficocelli’s “The Fruits of Medjugorje” offers more than 200 pages of what she says are “stories of true and lasting conversion.”

In a special anniversary edition of “Medjugorje, The Message,”

any equipment to speak of…” This summed it up.

Mackintosh and Spencer-Smith being dragged on their sledgethey were still at their work during the Antarctic winter when the temperatures often fell to -50. Their poor sledging diet of pemmican and dry biscuits brought on severe attacks of scurvy, bringing about the slow death of the kindly, cheerful chaplain and photographer of the party, Arnold Spencer-Smith, whose body was buried in a snow drift. Two other scurvy sufferers, Mackintosh, the often irascible oneeyed commander of the shore party, and Hayward attempted to return to the base camp when still weak and without provisions. They never arrived and their bodies were never recovered.

Yet against all the odds the Ross Sea party managed to drag 4,500 pounds of supplies, sledging over 1,356 miles to lay the chain of depots.

Later, when they were reunited with Shackleton and learnt that their sacrifice had been in vain, the survivors of this magnificent enterprise built a cairn for their fallen friends with an epitaph taken from the poet Swinburne: “Things done for gain are nought/but great things done endure”, adding words of Browning which were more exact: “Let me pay in a minute life’s arrears of pain, darkness and cold.” Pain, darkness and cold had certainly been some of what it was about; courage, camaraderie and stoicism were the rest. Kelly TylerLewis tells the story of the “ten ordinary men” soberly and with a fine grasp of detail, carefully balancing it with an account of what happened to their drifting ship’s crew while they laboured on shore. Sometimes her chronological and other data threaten to overwhelm the narrative itself. In books of this genre, her story cannot equal the classic, personal accounts of Captain Scott’s own Journal or Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World. But it is a tale worth telling.

- Francis Phillips writes from Bucks, in the UK.

Vicka Ivankovic

Wayne Weible says that more than 30 million people have made the trip to Medjugorje, where what is “arguably the greatest apparition in recorded Marian history” is still going on.

What future? Abortions based on gender mean that in China 117 boys are born for every 100 girls. By 2020 there will be 40 million more men han women.

Opinion

the family is the future

Money sense important for children

■ With Derek Boylen

Christians often have an aversion to money. The “root of all evil,” “serving two masters” and all that. Unfortunately, though, money is a fact of life.

For many parents this aversion extends to teaching our children about money too. However, as Christians, this is an important aspect of our parental responsibility; just like the sex talk. If we don’t take the initiative of teaching our children about money they will get the default setting. The default setting is society’s message of the day. As always the “message of the day” is that having money is the source of happiness. If you have lots of money then you can have lots of things and things will make you happy.

Christians know this is a lie. The only true source of happiness is a life lived in Christ. The question for Christian parents then is how

i say, i say

and what do we need to teach our children about money.

Most of the financial problems that we would like our children to avoid fall into three main categories:

1. Accumulation of debt

2. Failure to stick to a budget

3. Living a consumptive lifestyle.

These are three good reasons why Christian parents need to make teaching our children about money intentional. It’s not something you can do overnight, it’s a lifelong lesson. The first and most important lesson that will have the strongest and most lasting impact on our children will be our own dealings. If we want our children to have integrity in the way they handle money then we need to be an example of what we preach.

There are lots of other opportunities to teach our children too: shopping, visits to the zoo, holidays, and don’t forget giving at Mass and to special causes or groups in need.

And what are the benefits? Well, aside from the spiritual, research shows that there are many other practical gains from having good money skills. People with good money skills often have a better marriage. Conflict over finances is a leading contributor to divorce for many couples.

Secondly, good skills for managing money can lead to a less stressful and more responsible life.

And a last benefit is that with

Learning to count pennies: Christian parents need to teach their children how to be money wise.

good financial skills there is less likelihood of our children becoming a financial burden to others and society, including us parents.

Many terrible things have happened because of “love of money.” However, money can also be used in an ethical and responsible way

to make the world a better place. As parents we bear the responsibility of teaching our children how. comments to production@therecord.com.au

The way to be happy is to make others happy

■ With Guy Crouchback

One lotus-eater day I found myself sprawled on the sofa at my daughter’s house, watching a DVD of “Da Kath and Kim Code,” a clever and welldeserved send-up of the adsurdities and intellectual pretentiousness of The Da Vinci Code.

Kath and Kim are among my favourite contemporary Australian stars, not only because they are clever and sharp-eyed (their alter egos, the plummy-mouthed saleladies, are incredibly like some I know in the Western suburbs), but also because they have something important to say.

When a certain well-known Australian playwright complained

in The Bulletin of 12 October, 2005, about going on a cruise with a lot of vulgar, philistine Australians, someone posted on Tim Blair’s admirable website that the thought of “a lefty luvvie trapped on a cruise

ship with a load of Kath and Kims” was actually much funnier than any of his own comedies.

Our playwright had moaned that, instead of being in the company of sensitive souls like himself, “The

ship was stacked to the gunwales” [I doubt it actually had them] “with John Howard’s beloved ‘aspirational Australians’.”

He continued with horrified disgust that: “It struck me that this cruise ship was a kind of metaphor for Australia. Cruise ship Australia, all alone in the south seas, sailing to God knows where. And in fact, like Australia, many of the passengers didn’t care where we were headed.” [Actually, the fact nearly one Australian in 20 is in tertiary education right now suggests we take where we are headed pretty seriously.] “The cruise itself was the thing. The sunbaking, the chatter, the eating, the very solid drinking, and the all-important on-board entertainment. And what entertainment: we had shuffleboard, Uno tournaments, jackpot bingo, trivia quizzes, funky jazz dance classes, quilting, scavenger hunts ...

“At night there were island deck parties with giant conga lines shouting ‘Ole! Ole!’ ... There were also the nightly shows in which well-drilled Australian dancers did segments from American musicals. And if you wanted something after that, there was always a big-screen, feel-good American movie in which true love triumphed and gooiness flowed like

treacle ... there was no inquiry into anything.” Unlike these aesthetic untermensch - he went ashore at Noumea for “the one must-see item on our list ... the marvellous Renzo Piano-designed Tjibaou Cultural Centre ... The statement of the way art evolves and differentiates as the imagination flowers was striking.”

“All is vanity,” the Old Testament tells us. Countless stories caution us against the vanity of wealth and power, and the spiritual perils of excessively pursuing them. Kath and Kim, I think, caution us against more subtle temptations, such as the vanity of intellectual snobbery and the insidious belief that having refinement, education, good taste and judgement necessarily mean spiritual superiority.

Kath and Kim, with their ghastly taste and philistine lives, their half-educated pursual of every passing fad, are not people I want for friends or neighbours, but they have strength, optimism, enjoyment of life and an implied thankfulness for it, a basic healthiness, which some people of greater educational and cultural refinement might do well to aspire to and not despise. We are all on a ship sailing to God knows where, and there might be worse company.

“Look at moie”: Jane Turner stars as Kath in Kath and Kim.

Undercover nuns help Afgan youngsters

KABUL, Afghanistan. For the past year and a half, three Catholic nuns have been working with children with mental disabilities in Kabul.

The three sisters, from Pakistan and Poland, work for the Association for Kabul Children, set up in response to Pope John Paul II’s plea to save Afghan youngsters.

“As Catholic nuns, we work wearing clothes like local women, head covered, without our order’s habit, but we always carry Jesus in us,” Sister Ela, a Polish nun from the Franciscan Order of Mary, told AsiaNews.

“All we do, all our life is for Christ. But here our work is humanitarian and must be so,” the religious added.

Each morning, Sister Ela, and Sisters Janila and Erasia, from the Dominican Missionaries of St Catherine, wait for their children to arrive.

“We are like a school. Parents bring their children around 7am and we start our practices,” Sister Ela said.

There are seven children with special needs, boys and girls whose age ranges from 6 to 10, mostly affected by cerebral palsy.

“Each one suffers from a different problem,” Sister Ela continued. “After some playing we start

the actual treatment. The more advanced learn to write - not so much phrases, but a few letters. We teach the others how to go to the

bathroom or how to eat on their own.” Sister Ela said that some “need physiotherapy to learn basic move-

Charismatics reach 120 million

One of the new ecclesial entities that came to Rome for the vigil-ofPentecost meeting with Benedict XVI used the opportunity to discuss a key question: Where to go from here?

Back in 1967, a group of students and teachers at Duquesne University, in Pennsylvania, gathered together with the aim of opening up their hearts more fully to the Holy Spirit. Since then, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has touched 120 million people. One of the CCR leaders who came to Rome recently was Patty Mansfield, an original attendee at the 1967 gathering.

Mansfield told me how encouraged she felt witnessing the lives that have entered into a deeper relationship with Christ via the Charismatic Renewal.

“And here we are today,” Mansfield said, “trying to be faithful to the gifts and charisms given to us by the Holy Spirit in the beginning, always accepting them with obedience and gratitude as Pope John Paul II told us to as well.”

The CCR promotes an experience of the first Pentecost, and a renewal of the fervour of baptism and confirmation, via an experience known as “baptism in the Spirit.”

It is what Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa explains as not being a sacrament, “but that’s related to several sacraments.”

“The baptism in the Spirit,” says the preacher for the Pontifical Household, “makes real and, in a way, renews Christian initiation. At the beginning of the Church, baptism was administered to adults who converted from paganism and who made […] an act of faith and a free and mature choice.”

Mansfield said the CCR provides the context for this experience today and pointed to this meeting as an opportunity to clarify “what role the CCR has in revitalising society’s

experience of the Church today.”

Organised by the Vatican-based International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (ICCRS), the meeting was characterised by discernment and humility.

ICCRS President Alan Panozza told me: “We’ve had a chance to reflect on what we’ve done right but also on our mistakes that we’ve made over these years.”

Reports from dozens of countries told of stories of conversion, rises in vocations, healings, ecumenism, prayer meetings, life-in-the-spirit seminars and social ministries. What emerged was a call to adapt the enthusiasm of CCR to a more developed social awareness. Father

Bart Pastor of the Philippines gave a fiery homily last Saturday where he challenged the leaders to “move beyond merely bringing Churches alive.”

He urged them to “add a charismatic flavour to community outreach with actions that express zeal.” The priest further cautioned them not to “turn in on ourselves but always outward.”

ICCRS President Panozza added: “But we can’t underestimate the potential of our prayer groups and Bible studies back home.

“Our primary call is to help convert hearts using the same spirit of Pentecost; then lives are naturally changed.”

dren,” she said. “They don’t really know how to cope with their children’s afflictions.”

The family is a strong institution in Afghanistan, so “despite poverty, children are never abandoned,” added Sister Ela. “You would be hard-pressed to see any in the streets, and if you do it is only because they are begging for some money for their sisters and brothers.”

The three nuns are not alone. Some locals - a cook, a cleaning lady and a guard - provide help.

“Life with the Afghans is peaceful,” Sister Ela observed. “Our neighbours know about our religion and they respect and help us. During the latest disturbances in Kabul last month they welcomed us into their homes for a few days.

“More importantly, many people have expressed their gratitude for our work. Our centre is the only one in the city that works with mentally disabled children. This is a huge problem, and more money is needed.”

ments.” And in the afternoon the parents come and take them home.

“Our task also means being close to the families of the affected chil-

The Association for Kabul Children has plans for expansion, said the nun: “But for now, we are keeping our feet on the ground, surviving thanks to donations, and cannot make plans that are too ambitious.”

- Zenit.org

Killed in action

Continued from Page 1 when Americans pray for those killed in action.

An eye-witness account of Fr Capodanno’s final moments recounts how early in a battle he was shot in the hand but refused to be evacuated. “A few hours later a mortar shell landed near him and left his right arm hanging in shreds,” the unnamed soldier reported. “Once again he was patched up and again he refused evacuation. There he was, moving slowly from wounded to dead to wounded, using his left arm to support his right as he gave absolution.”

Finally, running out to help yet another wounded solider, Fr Capodanno was shot down by machine gun fire and killed.

Fr Louis Lasiello, a rear-admiral who is chief of Navy chaplains, said that it is now more appropriate than ever to honour Fr Capodanno at a time when American soldiers continue to risk their lives in Iraq.

Announcing the cause, Fr Louis Lasiello said: “Fr Capodanno is more than a person of extraordinary military accomplishment ... he is also a Christian who lived an exemplary life of extraordinary virtue, a person who, through the testament of his life, offers all believers a model of faith to inspire them to live, more deeply, their own Christian vocation.”

He said it was fitting that the chaplain’s canonisation cause be opened on Memorial Day, when Americans “take time and honour their dead with flowers, flags, memorial speeches and, of course, with prayer”.

Addressing 1,500 people at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, he said: “It is no mere coincidence that today, at yet another time of national emergency, and at a time set aside to honour

America’s heroes, at this particular time, the Church would single out one of these heroes and celebrate their unique contributions to both their country and to us, the people of faith.”

A military biography records that “Marines affectionately called Chaplain Capodanno the ‘grunt padre’ for his ability to relate well with soldiers and his willingness to risk his life to minister to the men.” “Grunt” is American army slang for an infantryman. He extended his one-year tour of duty in Vietnam by six months to continue serving with his men.

The New York-born chaplain was killed at the age of 38. His citation for the Medal of Honour, records: “In response to reports that the 2nd Platoon of M Company was in danger of being overrun by a massed enemy assaulting force, Lt Capodanno left the relative safety of the company command post and ran through an open area raked with fire, directly to the beleaguered platoon.

“Disregarding the intense enemy small-arms, automatic-weapons, and mortar fire, he moved about the battlefield administering last rites to the dying and giving medical aid to the wounded.”

Ray Harton, of Georgia, who was a 20-year-old marine serving alongside Fr Capodanno, said that he was there at all hours to offer support and guidance to the men.

Mr Harton told the National Catholic Register that the chaplain exuded an aura of calm and a spiritual power that helped many men through difficult times.

A tribunal set up by the Archdiocese for the Military Services will now gather information about Fr Capodanno’s life and virtues for eventual presentation to the Vatican Congregation for Saints’ Causes.

Bed of rocks: A woman and child sleep on a Kabul street in the late afternoon after spending the day begging in Afghanistan’s capital city. Photo: CNS / Martin Lueders

Filled with the spirit: Angela Rizzo and Nora Caruso pray during a charismatic renewal service at St Gertrude Church. Photo: CNS

The World

Love the buzzword at the Vatican

Sex, marriage: Pope discusses love, Vatican official discusses sin

■ By John Thavis

In early June, Pope Benedict XVI drew favourable attention when he said the Church does not want to “suffocate” the joy of love by its teaching on sexuality and marriage.

What many noticed was the Pope’s positive approach - his recognition that young people, in particular, feel an “urgent call to love” and his insistence that the Church’s goal was not to place barriers in their path.

He said the hurch’s teaching should not be seen as one “no” after another, and urged church leaders to implement a pastoral “strategy of intelligence” that takes seriously people’s questions and doubts.

The following day, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family published - without warning -- a 60-page catalogue of modern sins against the family and responsible sexuality.

Signed by the council’s president, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, it said that “never before has the natural institution of matrimony and family been victim of such violent attacks.” It condemned a long list of practices, including cohabitation, birth control, divorce, gay unions, and the “abusive interference by the state” in some sex education

programs. The document shocked many readers when it said couples who limit their family size to one or two children are, in effect, living in a “marriage willingly made sterile.” As for abortion, it said the act itself was an “abominable crime” that should not remain unpunished by civil authorities. The difference in tone between the Pope and one of his top aides did not go unnoticed. The Pope was solidifying his reputation as a gentle teacher; Cardinal Lopez

Trujillo came off as an ecclesial “Terminator.”

“What this document is missing is love,” said the Rev. Maria Bonafede of Cardinal Lopez Trujillo’s text. The Italian Waldensian’s remark deliberately alluded to the theme of Pope Benedict’s very popular first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”).

The contrast illustrated an ageold problem for journalists in Rome: How much weight to give various Vatican pronouncements. In this

case, should the two interventions be taken as complementary sides of a strategy - the Pope extending an open hand to potential allies and the cardinal delivering a knockout punch to opponents?

The Pope, at Cardinal Lopez Trujillo’s request, will preside over the Fifth World Meeting of Families in July in Spain, a country where church and state are engaged in pitched battles on family issues. While most of the attention will focus on what the Pope says at

the events, some saw the pontifical council’s document as the Vatican’s bottom line on the issues.

But the situation is slightly more complicated than that.

Cardinal Lopez Trujillo has a history of issuing documents that are deliberately downplayed by the Vatican press office. And while the Colombian cardinal inevitably makes headlines, there are many inside the Vatican who would not want him to be seen as a spokesman for this pontificate.

Interestingly, the cardinal’s latest document was handed out unannounced to reporters, without a press conference. And then the text simply disappeared from view. Ten days later, it still hadn’t been released on any of the Vatican’s Web pages, including the council’s, and it wasn’t printed or even referred to in the Vatican newspaper.

The document was dedicated to Pope Benedict. But there was no indication that the text had been approved or even seen by the Pope prior to publication. The Pope would probably have found little to disagree with in the text; occasionally in his first 14 months as pontiff he has spoken about these same issues. But he has presented his teachings about marriage, sexuality and the family in the context of a wider discussion about key relationships - between God and humans, the body and the spirit, and freedom and fidelity.

This approach has won him praise across the spectrum, in Italy and beyond. CNS

Christ’s guidance needed by many World Cup heals in East Timor

Refugee children play World Cup soccer tournament in East Timor

There was no satellite TV feed of the World Cup for the 13,000 refugees crammed into the Don Bosco centre outside Dili, but spectators cheered on Brazil and Portugal all the same. The players wore the shirts of the national clubs, but a bit smaller, since each 20-person team was made of boys in the 10-13 age range, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand. Brazil and Portugal were so popular when the teams were drawn up that each had an A and B squad, identified by different colour shorts. England, Germany, Italy and Spain rounded out the field. “We are One” was the theme, as Kirsty Sword-Gusmao, East Timor’s first lady, told the crowd at the start of the three-day tournament. The friendly competition is good for the children, and it is good to create a strong team, working together, she said.

“This shows that all children playing football here are one, not ‘lorosae’ or ‘loromonu,’” she said, referring to the local terms for “east” and “west.”

Unrest in Dili in May and June has driven more than 50,000 people into makeshift refugee camps

in and around the capital, leaving its streets to gangs claiming to represent easterners or westerners. Numerous houses and other properties have been looted or burned.

Trouble started in April following the government’s decision to fire more than a third of the 1,400member army. Nearly 600 soldiers were dismissed after they went on strike claiming discrimination and a lack of promotion, most of them from the west.

The remaining 800 soldiers were mainly from the east. The June 10-12 soccer tournament was conducted by the Don Bosco centre so the children could have fun and be able to focus on something besides the current crisis in the country.

The skills-training centre six miles west of Dili is the largest of the refugee centres, and approximately half its 13,000 temporary residents are children. In the final match June 12, Brazil B emerged the champion with a 5-4 victory over Portugal A.

“We want the children to have time to play even though they are refugees,” said 26-year-old Jeronimo Hendrique Bastista, the coordinator of the tournament. The tournament was created in collaboration with the US bishops’ Catholic Relief Services, the local church’s Caritas organisation for relief and development, UNICEF and the first lady.

Pope says Jesus draws people close to him through the Eucharist

■ By Carol Glatz

Jesus calls out and urges people to draw close to him through the Eucharist so he can transform them as he transformed simple bread and wine into his own body and blood, Pope Benedict XVI said. Christ’s guidance and nourishment are urgently needed, the Pope said, since so many people in the world are lost, confused or tormented by physical or spiritual hunger.

The Pope celebrated the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ on June 15 during an evening Mass outside Rome’s Basilica of St. John Lateran. Afterward he led a eucharistic procession through the streets of Rome from St. John’s to the Basilica of St. Mary Major while kneeling before the Eucharist in the back of a modified flatbed truck.

Speaking to some 50,000 faithful gathered outside St John’s, the Pope said in his homily that the Eucharist is truly “bread from the heavens” that not only provides spiritual nourishment, but is the

way in which God gives himself to his people. When the faithful gaze at Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, Jesus “is drawing us toward him, inside his mystery, through which he wants to transform us like he transformed the host” from being simple bread into the body of the divine, he said.

During the Last Supper, Jesus chose bread and wine as the signs through which he would become eternally present in the world after his death, the Pope said. Made from just flour and water, bread is often considered the food of the poor, who are precisely the people Jesus promised to be close to, the Pope said. But bread also represents a harmonious “synthesis” of earth and sky, humans and God, he said. While humans work the earth, plant the seed, harvest the sheaves and knead the dough, it is also thanks to God’s gifts of making the earth fertile and providing rain and sunshine that put food on the table, he said.

The Pope emphasied the importance of never taking God’s gift of creation for granted, especially water, when there are “people and animals dying of thirst” in areas of the globe parched dry from desertification. Bread is also a sign of unity and a symbol of Christ’s victory over death, said the Pope. The many grains of wheat become one bread, one body and it is only

by dying when it is cut from the ground, milled and cooked, that the grains can become bread that feeds the world, he said.

Inside “the grain of wheat is hidden the sign of hope” in a world in which all things die, he said. Through Christ’s death, “he became bread for all of us and, with that, a reliable and living hope,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jesus chose wine to be another sign of his real presence in order to “express the exquisiteness of creation: the joyous feast that God wants to offer us at the end of time,” the Pope said.

At the end of his homily, the Pope called on God to continue his guidance and help show the Church, priests and the faithful “the right path” to follow. He urged God to look to “humanity that suffers, wanders with insecurity” in a world full of doubts and to give bread to feed people’s souls and bodies. After the Mass, dozens of cardinals and bishops, hundreds of priests, and religious men and women, as well as thousands of laypeople, set out on foot under a setting sun in a eucharistic procession to the Basilica of St Mary Major, just more than a mile away.

The 79-year-old Pope Benedict carried the monstrance to a white truck that was draped with a goldcoloured canopy and green garlands. CNS

Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est” (“God Is Love”) is seen published in various languages.

PHOTO: CNS

The World

Blix gives Pope weapons update

Former UN weapons inspector presents Pope with world weapons report

■ By Carol Glatz

The former UN weapons inspector monitoring Iraq, Hans Blix, met with Pope Benedict XVI and presented him with a report on the world’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

At the end of the Pope’s June 14 general audience in St Peter’s Square, the Pope greeted and spoke with the 77-year-old Swedish diplomat for a few minutes on the steps of the basilica, before greeting other pilgrims.

Blix was in Rome as part of a world tour presenting a report titled “Weapons of Terror,” which outlines ways the world can reduce the dangers of weapons of mass destruction.

The 227-page report was the result of an independent, two-year study conducted by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, headed by Blix.

The report concludes that as long as nations stockpile chemical, biological and nuclear arms “there is a high risk that they will one day be used by design or by accident,” he told reporters in Rome on June 13.

The report was first presented on June 1 to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York. Blix was to present the report at the World Council of Churches in Geneva on June 15.

Blix came under the media spotlight before the US-led invasion of Iraq, when his statements about Iraq’s weapons’ program contradicted the claims of the US administration.

Blix, who at the time was chief of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in charge of monitoring Iraq, accused the US and British governments of exaggerating the weapons’ threat in Iraq in order to bolster support for the 2003 war against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Blix told reporters on June 13 that he remembered Pope Benedict

spoke of “peace through truth” in his January World Day of Peace message.

While there was no explicit mention of Iraq in the Pope’s peace day message, titled “In Truth, Peace,” the Pope did write about the lies of history that have fuelled wars.

The Pope wrote, “How can we fail to be seriously concerned about lies in our own time, lies which are the framework for menacing scenarios of death in many parts of the world?” The Pope’s message also said the “truth of peace” requires governments that possess or seek nuclear weapons to “change their

course” and firmly commit to a progressive nuclear disarmament. In an interview with Vatican Radio on June 14 after meeting the Pope, Blix said international weapons inspections aim to seek the truth. “We know that the inspectors I led (in Iraq) ended up documenting the truth much better than the CIA or the British secret services,” he said. He told Vatican Radio’s Scandinavian program that the Pope told him the Vatican is working to see the same kind of disarmament that the independent commission is lobbying for, so “in that sense one can say that we are allies.”

US on to China

A US resolutionhas criticized the actions of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association “in their coerced ordination of priests Joseph Ma Yinglin and Joseph Liu Xinhong” as bishops. Two other resolutions were passed by the House on June 12, including one that condemned China’s increased religious persecution. The other resolution urged remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. However, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a press conference on June 13 that the House resolutions were based on “groundless accusations” that interfered with China’s internal affairs “under the pretext of religious affairs and human rights.”

In testimony before the House, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-California., said: “Sometimes what is selfevident to civilised, democratic governments is sadly lost on the Chinese leadership in Beijing.”

In late April and early May, the government-sponsored Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association ordained two priests as bishops without papal approval. Pope Benedict XVI immediately denounced the ordinations.

“Everywhere else in the world Pope Benedict XVI selects the bishops, not communist atheists in some government politburo,” said Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. He added that China is obligated by its own constitution and international treaties to ensure religious freedom. “It has failed miserably to live up to this sacred obligation,” Lantos said.

“Thickheaded” decision on embryonic research in Europe

The European Parliament’s recent decision to approve funding for embryonic stem-cell research is “a fundamental mistake” based on a logic that is “tragically utilitarian,” said the Vatican newspaper.

L’Osservatore Romano said in its June 16-17 edition that European leaders seem to have adopted a “thickheaded” and “blind secularism that denies not only the religious convictions of the majority of its people, but also the inviolable rights of the person.” Earmarking

the world in brief

US abortion challenge

money for research on cells drawn from human embryos represents “an unacceptable reversal of God’s plan for humankind,” it said.

Though the budget plan passed on June 15, members of the European Parliament were divided on the issue. It was narrowly adopted with 284 votes - 249 voted against the plan and 32 abstained.

The EU research policy and budget still needs approval from national ministers in the European Council, after that it will return

The Supreme Court has accepted a second case challenging the constitutionality of the federal law that prohibits the procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

The court agreed on June 19 to review a January ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three federal appeals court rulings that have found the 2003 law unconstitutional.

The new case is Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood.

In February the court agreed to hear an appeal of a 2003 ruling by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals, apparently on somewhat different legal grounds from the newly accepted case.

for a second vote in the European Parliament.

The ruling would allow the funding of research using human adult and embryonic stem cells, but not the use of cloned stem cells. The production of human embryos solely for research purposes would not be financed, and it would also be limited by the legal restrictions each EU member state has adopted on stem-cell research.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said

That case is Gonzales v. Carhart, brought by a Nebraska abortion doctor who successfully challenged that state’s law banning the same procedure.

The court ruled 5-4 in 2000 that the Nebraska law was invalid because it lacked an exception to allow partial-birth abortion when the life or health of the mother is in danger.

Legionaries follow Pope

The head of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Alvaro Corcuera Martinez del Rio, met with Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience in the Vatican on June 16.

The meeting came about a month after the Vatican asked the founder of the Legionaries, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, to not

the ruling was an “anti-human” decision because it ignores the seriousness of “experimenting on a live human being.” In an interview on June 16 with Vatican Radio, he said Europe has forgotten the lessons it learned from its past in that it must not justify using and destroying human life with the possible success of curing debilitating diseases.

In a June 18 article published in L’Osservatore Romano, he said the wartime medical experimentation conducted by the Nazi regime on

exercise his priestly ministry publicly after investigating accusations that the priest sexually abused minors.

Father Corcuera said he told the Pope the Legionaries and the associated lay movement Regnum Christi were in “the most complete adherence” to the Pope and his ministry. -CNS

Prayers for refugees

Pope Benedict XVI offered his prayers for the millions of refugees around the world living far from their homelands, often in very precarious conditions.

After reciting the midday Angelus prayer June 18, the Pope spoke about the United Nations’ June 20 celebration of World Refugee Day.

humans resulted in the Nuremberg Code and later the Declaration of Helsinki, which both outline ethical standards for conducting experiments on humans.

The directives include two rules - forbidding that scientific interests override respect for human life and demanding that the person involved in the experiment have legal capacity to give voluntary consent, he said. Research using human embryos violates both rules, he added. -CNS

Pope Benedict said the annual event is an effort to “draw the attention of the international community to the condition of many people who are forced to flee their own lands because of serious forms of violence.”

While offering his prayers for refugees, he also called on Catholic communities and organisations to offer them concrete help and on the international community to do more to ensure respect for the human rights of refugees.

The Pope had met June 17 with Jan Eliasson, president of the General Assembly of the United Nations and foreign minister of Sweden.

The Vatican said the central theme of the Pope’s meeting with Eliasson was “the process of globalisation,” especially the problem of “the scant recognition of the religious dimension” of human life.

Pope Benedict XVI shakes hands with former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix at the end of his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican on June 14.

Photo: CNS

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

(Universal)

In this loud and ludicrous third installment of the adrenaline-charged series, a drag-racing rebel (Lucas Black) is sent to live with his estranged father in Japan, where he befriends a fellow American (rap artist Bow Wow) who introduces him to Tokyo’s underground racing scene, running foul of its mob-connected champ (Brian Tee) when he falls for the gangster’s girlfriend (Nathalie Kelley).

Director Justin Lin delivers more of the same requisite high-octane race sequences, but, as before, there’s little plot under the film’s flashy hood, and its glamorisation of reckless driving is troubling. Much hazardous and illegal behaviour involving teens, some violence, objectification of women, several implied sexual situations including same-sex kissing, suggestive wardrobe and dancing, and scattered crude language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III - adults.

Movie Reviews

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties

(20th Century Fox)

Trivial, if innocuously entertaining, sequel to the 2004 comedy based on the Jim Davis comic strip, in which the wisecracking, lazy orange housecat (once again computer animated and lethargically voiced by Bill Murray) travels to England, where he inadvertently switches places with a pampered blueblood feline (voiced by Tim Curry) who has just inherited a castle, finding himself in the cross hairs of the estate’s kitty-hating, next-in-line human heir (Billy Connolly) while enjoying the royal treatment from the manor’s barnyard staff of talking animals (voiced by the likes of Bob Hoskins, Vinnie Jones and Rhys Ifans).

Directed by Tim Hill, the follow-up improves on the first, but the bland script once again relies heavily on the kind of screwball sight gags and slapstick that the kiddies may find amusing, but - even at a mere 75 minutes - may induce accompanying adults to take a catnap. Some mildly crude humour. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-I - general patronage.

The Omen

(20th Century Fox)

Effective remake of the 1976 supernatural thriller about an American diplomat (Liev Schreiber) and his wife (Julia Stiles) whose adopted son (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) turns out to be the Antichrist.

Slickly crafted and well acted with a fair amount of suspense, director John Moore’s virtual scene-by-scene update is a hodgepodge of Christian symbolism, biblical prophecies, nonscriptural inventions and occult mumbo jumbo, resulting in the sort of silly pop-religious junk food that should not be taken too seriously.

Some disturbing scenes of violence, including an impaling, a decapitation, a dog mauling, a hanging suicide and a person getting hit by an automobile; a misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine; an instance of rough language and profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L - limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.

The Break-Up

(Universal)

Tepid but fitfully affable romantic comedy charting the deterioration of the relationship of an art gallery assistant (Jennifer Aniston) and a loutish Chicago tour bus operator (Vince Vaughn) who ultimately learns to be a more considerate person. Director Peyton Reed draws good work from the stars, especially the effortlessly appealing Aniston and a scene-stealing Judy Davis, though the protagonists from the start seem distinctly incompatible.

Underneath the not-very-funny funny

business, there are some universal truths about relationships, but the setup never quite rings true, and the script should be much sharper. Considerable profanity and crude language and an instance of rough language, some crass sexual banter, partial nudity and a permissive view of premarital relationship. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L - limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.

Cars

(Disney)

Delightful computer-animated movie set in a world of anthropomorphic autos about a cocky racecar (voiced by Owen Wilson) which, while en route cross-country to compete in a prestigious championship, is unexpectedly detained in a neglected desert town, where his growing friendship with the town’s four-wheeled residents (voiced by Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt and Larry the Cable Guy, among others) effects a change of heart regarding fame in the fast lane.

Co-directed by John Lasseter and Joe Ranft, the film has a full tank of humour and emotions - not to mention bar-raising visualswhile its solid storytelling imparts a charming message about taking the time to appreciate what really matters in life. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-I - general patronage.

Our classifications: the bottom line

The Record’s movie reviews come from the Film Office of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

These reviews, and any other reviews which appear in The Record, do not purport to be the last word on films, videos and DVDs. The ratings focus upon family suitability rather than artistic or entertainment value. Parents (and grandparents and other guardians) must make up their own minds on what is appropriate for their family. The ratings used by The Record are:

A-I: for general patronage

A-II: for adults and adolescents

A-III: for adults

A-IV: adults, with reservations (an A-IV classification denotes problematic films that, while not morally offensive in themselves require caution and some analysis and explanation as a safeguard against wrong interpretations and false conclusions)

L: limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L supplements the A-IV classification

O: morally offensive

PANORAMA a roundup of events in the archdiocese

Sunday June 25

PARENTS & FRIENDS’ FEDERATION OF WA INC.

Invites members of Catholic School Communities to the Annual Conference & AGM at Mercy College, Koondoola. Conference Mass 9am, 52nd AGM 10am, Conference Opening 1.30pm (Hon. Ljiljanna Ravlich, MLC), Sessions on Reporting to Parents, Outcomes Based Education and Upper Secondary Courses of Study. Preceded by the Annual Conference Dinner, 7pm, Sat. 24 June 2006, Royal Perth Yacht Club, Crawley. Conference program and Registration details from PFFWA 9271 5909 or 9271 5901.

Sunday, June 25

ETERNAL WORD T.V. NETWORK ON ACCESS 31: 1  2 PM

Mother Angelica’s miraculous healing that enabled her to walk without braces / Mike Manhardt with Jeff Cavins [Life on the Rock] This program was first broadcast in the 1990s. Mother Angelica is currently well and alert, although still unable to participate in live programs, due to the effects of a stroke. We regret that it did not go to air on June 11, as had been advertised, due to a transmission problem. Postal address, The Rosary Christian Tutorial Association, PO Box 1270, Booragoon 6954. Enquiries 9330 1170.

Sunday June 25

INTERNATIONAL FOOD FAIR

International Food Fair at 10am. To be held in our Parish Hall, Lot 375 Alcock Street, Maddington This is a fundraising venture to help with costs associated with the 3 Servite Sisters from Myanmar who will be arriving in our Parish at the end of the month. If you have any questions you can ring Father Francis Ly on 9493 1703 (Presbytery) during work hours.

Sunday June 25

AUSTRALIA’S FINEST GOSPEL PERFORMERS

Our Lady Of The Rosary Church, Angelico Street, Woodlands 2pm to 4.30pm. Featuring Western Australia’s Finest Gospel Performers. – Camelot, Gospel Train, Indij Spirits, The Cranfields, A Cappella Praise. Tickets - Adults $12 - Children $2. Advance purchase only. For tickets and information contact Carmel Charlton 9446 1558 or erichancock@swiftdsl. com.au. Tickets also available from Zenith Music, 309 Stirling Hwy, Claremont.

Monday June 26

SPIRIT LED DECISION

Christian Life Community invites you to lean more about spirit led decisions and Ignatian spirituality at their enquiry night. 7.30pm. St Thomas More College, Mounts Bay Rd Crawley. For further details phone Veronica on: 9310 1147 or Trish: 9345 3729.

Wednesday June 28

MAXIMISING OUR INNER STRENGTH

The General Public and John XXIII College Parents are Invited to Attend “Maximising Our Inner Strength” Presenter Carol Bush (Clinical Psychologist). 7.30AM TO 9.30PM. JOHN XXIII COLLEGE The MacKillop Room (formerly the Multi-Purpose Room) Cost - $10 (Donation Unwaged) Further Details from Murray Graham on 9383 0444.

Friday June 30

LA SALLE COLLEGE QUIZ AND AUCTION NIGHT

La Salle College is holding its 2nd annual quiz and auction night at 7.30pm in the Laurence Murphy Hall at La Salle College. Tables are of 8. BYO snacks and cool drinks only. Alcohol will be on sale. Tickets can be purchased from the College Office at $10 each. Should you have a business and be in a posi-

tion to donate, please contact Sabrina Lynsdale at the College on 9274 6266 and your company will be acknowledged in our Delagram and Western Lasallian.

Friday June 30

HEALING FIRE  BURNING LOVE

God is Love - the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Our Lady of the Missions Catholic Church, 270 Camberwarra Drive, Craigie. 7.30pm – 9.00pm Come and experience the reality of Jesus’ personal love for you, listen to the Word and talk given by Fr Samedi and receive a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit during prayer and praise. For God so loved you that he gave his only begotten Son. For more information please contact Jenni Young on 9445 1028 or mobile 0404 389 679.

Saturday July 1

WITNESS FOR LIFE PROCESSION

The next first Saturday Mass, procession and Rosary vigil will commence with Mass at 8.30am at St Anne’s Church, Hehir St Belmont. We proceed prayerfully to the Rivervale Abortion Centre and conclude with Rosary, led by Fr Paul Carey SSC. Please join us to pray peacefully for the conversion of hearts. Enq: Helen 9402 0349.

Saturday July 1

DAY WITH MARY

St Brigid’s Church, 64B Morrison Rd, Midland. 9am5pm. A video on Fatima will be shown at 9am. A day of prayer and instruction based upon the message of Fatima. Includes Sacrament of Penance, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, sermons, Rosaries, procession of the Blessed Sacrament and stations of the cross. Please BYO lunch. Enquiries – Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate – 9250 8286.

Sunday July 2

DIVINE MERCY

An afternoon with Jesus and Mary at St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth, at 1.30pm.

Program: Holy Rosary and Reconciliation, Sermon: with Fr Tony Vallis on St Thomas the Apostle followed by Divine Mercy prayers and Benediction. Enquiries: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Sunday July 2

MIDLAND ANTIOCH YOUTH MASS

St Brigid’s Church, Midland, at 6pm, celebrated by Fr Don Kettle, Archdiocesan Youth Chaplain. Followed by supper in the parish hall. Antioch 7.30pm to 9.30pm, guest speaker Angelo Papicio. All youth welcomed between the ages of 16 –23. Michael 9296 0349, Kieran & Gail Ryan 9274 4887 (parent couple).

Thursday July 6

TAIZE PRAYER

Taize Prayer at Our Lady of Grace, Kitchener St, North Beach. Ist Thurs in the Month. (6 July). 7.30pm. Enq: 9448 4888.

Thursday July 6

MOTHERS’ PRAYERS MASS

11am, St Jerome Parish, Cnr Rockingham & Troode St, Munster WA. For all mothers and grandmothers coming together to pray for their children. Fathers, grandfathers welcome. This is a wonderful and necessary opportunity for God to hear and act upon the hearts and minds of mothers joining together as one here on earth. (Enjoy fellowship following the Mass over a cup of tea or coffee.) For information please contact Veronica Peake on 9447 0671.

BUILDING TRADES

■ BRICK REPOINTING

Phone Nigel 9242 2952.

■ PERROTT PAINTING PTY LTD

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

■ PICASSO PAINTING

Top service. Phone 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505.

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.

FOR SALE

■ NATIONAL VESTMENT BUSINESS FOR SALE

Home run from WA for 4 yrs. Kinlar vestments serves all Christian churches. Approx. 300 clients. Purchase includes, patterns, materials and goodwill. Call John Ryall: 9378 4752

■ HOME BUSINESSES

Redirect part of your supermarket shopping mail order. Buying environmentally friendly safe products. Home business potential. Part or fulltime. www.aussiehomebiz.com.au/

FURNITURE REMOVAL

■ ALL AREAS

Mike Murphy 0416 226 434.

25 Investiture Mass for the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey

27

Friday July 7

TWO HEARTS DEVOTIONS

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the

First Friday of the month will begin with Mass on Friday evening at 9pm followed by exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosaries, Hymns, prayers throughout the night. Concluding with Mass on Saturday morning at 7am in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Please come even for an hour. 9409 4543.

Friday July 7

PROLIFE PROCESSION MIDLAND

The first Friday Mass, procession and Rosary vigil will be commencing at 9.30am with Mass celebrated at St Brigid’s Church, Midland. The Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate will lead us. All invited to witness for the sanctity of life and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enquiries: Helen 9402 0349.

Friday July 7

ALAN AMES TALK AND HEALING SERVICE.

Mass, talk and healing service at 7pm. St Bernadette’s Catholic Centre, Cnr Grand Ocean Blvd & Strasbourg Ramble, Port Kennedy.

Tuesday May 2 - Friday July 7

CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY

Term 2 for: Family & Friends Support Groups of Substance Abusers are on Wednesdays 7–9pm, Substance Abusers Support Groups are on Tuesdays 5.30 to 7.30pm & Friday’s All day Group for Substance Abusers is from 9.30am to 2pm including Healing Mass on Fridays @ 12.30pm during term. Rosary is from Tuesday to Thursday at 12.30 to 1pm.

Friday July 7-9

ANNUAL FAMILY FORMATION WEEKEND

The Schoenstatt Family Branch invites you to a family faith development weekend. To be held at the IHD centre at Jarrahdale pm Friday 7 July to afternoon 9 July. Working with the theme of hoping and daring to be more than mediocre with our faith, this weekend combines live-in accommodation, faith development discussions with other parents just like you, Sunday Holy Mass, socialising and some fun, for all the members of your family. The Spiritual Leader will be Fr Ivanhoe Allies. Bookings will be required by June 18 to confirm accommodation. For registration and/or additional information contact: Sister Renee: 9310 5461, or Terry Huxtable: 9399 2349.

Sunday July 9

FATIMA DEVOTIONS

The World Apostolate of Fatima Aust Inc invites you to attend Devotions, Rosary, Sermon and Benediction, in the Sacred Heart Church, Mary Street, Highgate at 3pm. Confessions will be heard during the recitation of the Rosary. Enrolment in the Brown Scapular will follow the conclusion of Devotions. All are very welcome. Enq: 9339 2614.

Monday July 10

COUNTRY DAY OF REFLECTION

You are warmly invited to the Country Day of Reflection at St Patrick’s Church York. Commencing

9.30am. Morning tea, followed by Rosary cenacle, talks, concluding 2pm with Holy Mass. Speaker: Fr Peter Meo. Please bring individual lunches, and blanket (Church may be cold). Tea/coffee supplied. Enquiries: Josie 9641 1477.

Sunday July 23

EVERYTHING OUT OF LOVE, WITH JOY.

A TALK ON “GOD IS LOVE”.

The Schoenstatt Family invites you to a “Family Day” on 23rd July 2006 at the Shrine, 9 Talus Drive Armadale. The day is offered to all families in the Archdiocese of Perth to highlight the importance we place on Family life. Guest speaker - Fr. Ivanhoe Allies, a Schoenstatt Father from Sydney. The day commences at 10 am for registration, followed by a talk then BYO lunch. Afterwards there will be group discussions on aspects of the talk and sharing of feedback between groups of families. Concelebrated Holy Mass led by the Most Rev. Bishop Peter Quinn at 3pm. Separate activities and program for Youth and Children. All warmly welcomed. Any inquiries please contact Sr. Renee on 9399 2349 or Terry & Ann Maree Huxtable on 9310 5461 or Ralph & Monica Perez on 9457 0762.

Saturday August 19 - Wednesay August 23

INTERNATIONAL PILGRIM VIRGIN STATUE

Return visit of Fatima International Pilgrim Virgin Statue to Perth. Venues include St Patrick’s Basilica, Fremantle, Redemptorist monastery, concluding with Mass, and crowning at St Mary’s Cathedral 22 August. (Queenship of Mary). Further details to follow. Enquiries: 93418082, Mobile 0413 707 707.

Sunday September 17

KOORDA CHURCH 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Our Lady of the Assumption Church at Koorda will celebrate its Golden Anniversary this year on September 17. Past Parish Priests and past parishioners are invited to come and join us for the celebrations. Anyone who has any photos they would like to include in a display is welcome to send them to Kath Gosper at PO Box 68, Koorda 6475. You could send copies or we will copy and return them to you. The day will commence with Mass at 10.30am, to be followed by lunch at the Recreation hall.

Sunday September 24 to Saturday September 30

FIVE DAY DIRECTED RETREAT

At the Redemptorist Monastery Retreat House, 190 Vincent Street North Perth. Director: Fr Joe Carroll CSSR. For more information contact Jan Broderick on 9328 9736.

AL ANON FAMILY GROUPS

If a loved one’s drinking is worrying you – please call Al Anon Family Groups for confidential information meetings etc… Phone Number on 9325 7528 – 24 hrs.

ATTENTION COUPLES

Have you or your spouse been diagnosed with a mental illness? Depression? Anxiety/Panic Attacks? etc. Could you do with some help understanding your/their illness? Do you know how to get help

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

■ BED AND BREAKFAST

Holiday Accommodation. B&B. Pt Mandurah Canals. Boutique B&B. Walk to CBD. www. mymandurah.com/pmcanalb&b.html. 9535 2252 or 0438444707.

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

■ DENMARK

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

PAINTINGS

■ CHRISTIAN ART WORKS

Wide range of secular and Christian paintings and art works. Tel: 9358 1886.

PAINTINGS

■ WINDOW CLEANERS

For sparkling clean windows. All areas. Phone

Gerard: 041 44 888 09 or 9343 2668.

■

Tydewi

handcrafted fine bindings, journals, leather recovering. Repairs fo all your books, liturgical, bibles, missals and statues. Ph. 9293 3092.

28 Civic Reception for the Ambassador of Spain - Fr Brian O’Loughlin VG

29 Ordination of Permanent Deacons, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton

30-2/7 Episcopal Visitation, Cottesloe - Archbishop Hickey Episcopal Visitation, Whitford - Bishop Sproxton

when you need it? We can help you to help each other through the Unconditional Love Program. For more information contact Amanda Olsen: 0407 192 641, or email: mandyfolsen@bigpond. com.au.

TUESDAY NIGHT PRAYER MEETINGS

St Mary Cathedral Parish Centre, 450 Hay Street, Perth, 7pm. Come join us! Overcome the burdens in life making prayer your lifeline with Jesus. Personal healing in prayer, Rosary, meditation, Scripture, praise in song, friendship, refreshments. Be united with Our Lord and Our Lady in prayer with others. Appreciate the heritage of the Faith.

EVERY SUNDAY

Bullsbrook Shrine Sunday Pilgrimage Program. Shrine of Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Rd Bullsbrook. 2pm Holy Mass, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with Holy Rosary. Reconciliation is available before every celebration. Enquiries: 9447 3292.

FIRST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

The Santa Clara Parish Community welcomes anyone from surrounding parishes and beyond to the Santa Clara Church, corner of Coolgardie and Pollock Sts, Bentley on the 1st Sunday of each month for devotions in honour of the Divine Mercy. The afternoon commences with the 3 o’clock prayer, followed by the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Reflection and concludes with Benediction.

Saturdays PERPETUAL HELP NOVENA DEVOTIONS

Saturdays 4.30-5pm. Redemptorist Church, 190 Vincent Street, North Perth.

ART EXHIBITION

Art exhibition every Saturday and Sunday at the Parish Hall, Star of the Sea church, Cottesloe, cnr of Stirling Highway and McNeil Sts 11am – 4pm. All proceeds from the sale towards the extension of St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Is alcohol costing you more than just money? Alcoholics Anonymous can help. Ring 9325 3566.

BLESSED SACRAMENT ADORATION

Holy Family Church, Alcock Street, Maddington. Every Friday 8.30 am Holy Mass followed by Blessed Sacrament Adoration till 12 noon. Every first Friday of the month, anointing of the sick during Mass. Enq. 9398 6350.

PERPETUAL ADORATION AT ST BERNADETTE’S

Adoration: Chapel open all day and all night. All welcome, 49 Jugan St, Glendalough, just north of the city. Masses every night at 5.45pm Monday to Friday, 6.30pm, Saturday and the last Sunday Mass in Perth is at 7pm.

Wednesdays SIGN LANGUAGE COURSE

Australian Sign Language (Auslan) Classes are offered free of charge at Emmanuel Centre on Wednesdays at 1pm. If this does not suit you, other arrangements can be made. Please contact Fr Paul or Barbara at Emmanuel Centre, 25 Windsor St Perth 9328 8113.

QUEEN OF APOSTLES SCHOOL

If anyone has information on Queen of Apostles School, Riverton, used to go there or knows anyone who did please do one of the following to tell the extension group – Call 9354 1360 and ask to speak to Veronique or email your information to veronequeregnard@gmail.com.au or janellekoh@yahoo.com.au or you can put your information into the box in the office at Queen of Apostles School. Thanking you in anticipation.

LINDA’S HOUSE OF HOPE APPEAL

To enable us to continue to provide and offer support for girls wishing to leave the sex trade we need your help. We have achieved already with your assistance new offfices which are now complete at the rear of the shelter and are fully functional. Further donations are also required to enable us to complete the internal layout of the shelter itself. Please send donations to Linda’s House of Hope PO Box Z5640, Perth, St George’s Tce 6831. Ph: 0439 401 009. All donations over $2 are tax deductible.

The Last Word

N e w r a i n b o w s : a series on society and Church

Christendom is gone

■ By Tony Paganoni CS

Christendom refers to past historical times when the Church and civil society lived and worked jointly, while retaining their specific autonomy and freedom of operations. Christendom no longer exists, at least in western Europe and in Australia. Perhaps, this is why some have voiced the desire for a Christianity beyond Christendom.

In the Church’s documents Christianity refers to either the collection of all local churches, essentially forming the universal Church; the ensemble of Christian churches or oecumene, as was displayed in the Middle Ages; or a more contemporary understanding of Christianity, where faith is a human’s free response to the Grace of God, revealing itself in the innermost recesses of the heart.

Pope John Paul II, in his “Redemptoris Missio,” observes that the presence and mission of the Church is in a state of transition.

This is particularly noticeable as countries of ancient regimes become “mission lands”; former “mission lands” show signs of great vitality and exuberance; and those who are baptised either lose their faith or openly admit they no longer belong to the Church. In countries such as Australia, North America and much of Europe, the transition to a diffuse state of secularisation has meant the abandonment of most forms of Church practice and devotion.

Church leaders and practitioners are aware that the Church is going through a series of transitions.

The old apparatus of sacramental practice is not only drawing fewer and fewer faithful, but also being questioned as to their relevance and meaning.

In many countries, the Church,

having lost its major status, is finding that the old sacramental signs have lost much of their strength.

In the document “Communion and Community,” Italian bishops speak of a necessary transition, without which there is no future for a Christianity built on following social traditions.

Transition is a testing time. The unavoidable historical test may suggest several options open to Church leaders and their communities.

Does this mean entertaining the hope of sugar-coating old ways to appease consumers?

Does it mean an acceptance in the belief that old ways will survive the present onslaught, and rise again at some future date?

Or does it rather imply that, while not rejecting existing programs, we should resolutely begin to embrace the new ways that are capturing the attention of a consistent number of believers?

Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana