The Record Newspaper 23 June 2010

THE R ECORD

Missal guidance system

Australia’s Bishops and liturgists are preparing the way for the introduction of the new prayers of the Mass, expected to be in use by Easter 2011. They are also seeking to circumvent potential problems.

Love at first sight, and it was while she was sleeping

BY ANTHONY BARICH

Australia’s Bishops could be on the verge of recommending a three to five-month “roll-out” period of the new prayers of the Mass for parishes and communities to implement the newly translated Missal, expected to be introduced by Easter 2011. Australian Catholic University Theology senior lecturer Dr Clare Johnson will present the Australian Bishops’ National Liturgical Council later this month with seven possible models with which to implement the new Missal translation due out by Easter next year.

Addressing liturgists in Perth and Bunbury last week, the Bishops’ liturgy office executive secretary addressed key misunderstandings about the Mass among clergy and laity and outlined how an Australian-produced catechetical resource will attempt to mend these.

Full report - Vista 2-3

Cardinal Pell makes history S

ydney Cardinal George Pell ordained six men to the priesthood on 11 June at St Mary’s Cathedral - the largest group of ordinands in Sydney since 1983.

The newly ordained priests - Fr Nen Dang, 56, Fr Robert Doohan, 47, Fr Joseph Gedeon, 37, Fr Kim Ha, 36, Fr Andrew James, 36 and Fr Joseph Guinea, 31, will all serve the Church in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

of the paper.

Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Perth, Western Australia $2

the Parish. the Nation. the World.

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

-Bishop Matthew Gibney 

Sleeping beauty: Perth woman Jeanette Della-Bona was asleep on a bus in Croatia in 2009 during a 12 month holiday abroad when Ante Zubac, a Croatian-born architect living and working in New York who was visiting his parents in their village, caught sight of her. That was pretty much it for him. The couple married in St Anne’s Croatian Community Church in North Fremantle last Saturday, 19 June before a delighted congregation of relatives and friends. After the wedding ceremony Mr and Mrs Zubac knelt in front of a statue of Our Lady to consecrate their marriage to her special intercession before departing for the reception.

PHOTO: PETER ROSENGREN

The Record is inviting you to send in your Catholic wedding photos. Send to office@therecord.com.au together with brief details: names of the couple (including maiden name), name of Church, name of celebrant and date of Marriage.

The new English translation of the Roman Missal is seen at its presentation to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on 28 April. The new English edition is a translation of the Latin edition promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 2002. The new translation, which adheres more exactly to the Latin, took eight years to produce.

PHOTO: CNS/ARCHBISHOP TERRENCE PRENDERGAST

St Charles students take crucial

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BY STEPHEN GORDDARD

ARCHBISHOP Barry

Hickey received four young men as candidates for the priesthood on 15 June.

Francis Birrell, Thomas Zurich, Mark Baumgarten and Anibal Leite da Cunha were received as candidates for the priesthood by Archbishop Hickey at St Charles Seminary in Guildford.

In an intimate ceremony, believed to be the first of its kind in St Charles Seminary, the Archbishop met with candidates for the diaconate at the Guildford seminary for them to make a solemn profession

AT A GLANCE

Forthcoming events around the Archdiocese

Youth retreat

2-4 July: Catholic Youth Ministry (CYM) mid-year retreat focusing on the spirituality of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, who said, “I want to live and not simply exist.” What does it mean to live?

In Mark 10:17 a man asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” This question will be explored at the CYM Retreat. Retreat chaplain: Fr Roman Wroblewski SDS. An 18+ event, $100 for all food and accommodation.

Where: Eagles Nest Youth Formation Centre, 1406 O’Brien Rd, Gidgegannup.

Email admin@cym.com.au or call 9422 7912 to register by 28 June. For more information, visit: www.cym.com.au .

of faith, a solemn petition for the reception of the Order of Diaconate, before finally declaring their solemn commitment to celibacy.

Gathering in the Seminary’s chapel before the Archbishop, with Rector Mgr Kevin Long looking on, Daniel, Cyprian, Emmanuel, Anibal Leite da Cunha and Francis Birrell put their hands on a Bible placed in the middle of the altar and made their profession, petition and declaration of celibacy.

The profession of faith, petition and celibacy declaration were then signed by each of the candidates and witnessed by the Archbishop.

The candidates spoke of

Bl Mary MacKillop Ballajura

Italian Blessed

was a struggling student who excelled in mountain climbing. He had complete faith in God and persevered through university, dedicating himself to helping the poor. He died at age 24 and was beatified in 1990. PHOTO: CNS

Every Sunday: Five Loaves and No Fish - The parish of Bl Mary MacKillop is trialing a new project to provide New Norcia bread after weekend Masses. In collaboration with New Norcia Bakeries in Malaga, there are five varieties of bread on offer to purchase via the parish. Parishioners are invited to place an order for their bread one week in advance or better still, to pay and place a standing order in advance.

Available to order: Upright Casalinga Sourdough ($6); Upright Seven Grain Sourdough ($6); Upright Olive Rosemary and Sundried Tomato Bread Sourdough ($7.50); 100% Spelt Sourdough ($7.50) and Upright Pain de Campagne Yeasted ($6).

how moving and inspiring an experience it was for them to be making their declarations with their fellow candidates in front of the Archbishop.

“It was very edifying,” said one candidate.

“He met with each of us individually afterwards for a casual chat about how things were going and to get to know each of us even more.”

After already beginning much of their formation, admission to candidacy is an important affirmation of the call to priesthood, and a heightening of more serious preparation in readiness to be ordained.

Then, on 18 June, Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton bestowed the ministry of Lector to Francis Birrell, Mark Baumgarten, Trigo Ngoma, Simeon San, Cyprian Shikokoti and Conor Steadman and the ministry of Acolyte to Francis, Natale Florio and Quy Lam at St Charles Seminary.

During his homily before the institution of the ministries, he spoke to the seminarians about the importance of their witness through the proclamation of the Word of God and the service of others.

The function of a lector or reader is to proclaim the Word of God, except for the Gospel, in Mass.

In specially instituting these six young men to this ministry, they will strive to increase their efforts in acquiring an increasingly warm love and deeper knowledge of Sacred Scripture to assist their proc-

lamation of it. The acolytes are appointed in order to assist the deacon and the priest in the liturgical celebrations, especially in the celebration of Mass. They assist in distributing Holy Communion as an extraordinary minister, exposing the Blessed Sacrament for adoration and reposing it among other important services.

According to “The Rite of Institution of Readers and Acolytes”, from The Rites of the Catholic Church, a collection of liturgical rites and texts as revised by mandate of the Second Vatican Council under Pope Paul VI, Acolytes should learn all matters concerning public divine worship, and their spiritual meanings, while being an example through their service to all.

Five seminarians will also be ordained to the deaconate on 20 August at Mary MacKillop Church in Ballajura - four for the Archdiocese of Perth (Daniel Boyd, Cyprian Shikokoti, Emmanuel Di Mobi and Anibal Leite da Cunha) and one for the Diocese of Broome (Francis Birrell), making a total of seven St Charles Seminary students being ordained deacons in their transition to the priesthood this year already.

That total will increase to eight in October with another seminarian, Mark Payton, set to be ordained a deacon for the Archdiocese of Perth while completing studies at the North American College in Rome.

St Charles Seminary second year student

Pier Giorgio Frassati

St Charles Seminary student Quy Lam with Perth Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton during the ceremony where the acolytes received the cruet of wine before the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

PHOTOS: STEPHEN GORDDARD

steps as seminary continues to bear fruit

What candidates for the diaconate pledged to the Archbishop, Church and the people of God on 15 June:

● The Profession of Faith

Recited the Nicene Creed

Promised to “hold all and everything concerning doctrines of faith and morals which have been defined by the Church ...” and to acknowledge the mystery of the Church, her Sacraments and the primacy of the Pope.

● Declaration before Ordination to Diaconate

A petition for the reception of the Order of Diaconate: “I acknowledge that I know fully the burdens and other consequences that flow from the said sacred Order, and these I freely wish and propose to assume and, with the grace of God, I resolve to keep them most faithfully during my whole life.”

“... I am prepared to give an example of virtue in work and in word ...”

● Celibacy Declaration

“I ______, confirm that I understand the full meaning of celibacy in the life of a priest, and promise with God’s help, to observe this way of life.”

This statement particularly is fully written out by the Candidate who then reads it out before finally signing it, along with the Archbishop.

Highlights the significance and seriousness of this particular declaration and the committedness of the candidates who accept its challenge.

This is signed by the candidate and witnessed by the Archbishop.

Guadalupe on the market

ADVERTORIAL

A well-known Scarborough beachfront property themed around Our Lady of Guadalupe is on the market. It features a prominent majolica - a tin-glazed white pottery often painted with bright colours - of the traditional image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The property styled in the tradition of Mexican architecture is made up of five beach houses suitable for holidays or living with spectacular views to the south, west and north along Perth’s coastline.

The five brightly coloured (green, pink, yellow, blue and orange) residencies stand side by side facing the ocean, with the residence known as the Green House having the largest garden. The property was formerly a prominent Art Deco era home site. It was renovated and painted bright blue by hospitality personality David Bianchi and colloquially known as “The Blue House.” It was

The

purchased amid much controversy by a Malaysian princess who demolished the site and had plans to build a “palace.”

However, the site remained vacant. It was purchased by the current owners who developed “Guadalupe Hill” with the site once more becoming the location of iconic landmark buildings.

Both the colourful exotic homes and unusual majolica have become a rich part of the local coastal fabric due to their prominent location and interesting and neo-Mexican design It will be sold by Realmark’s “Set Date Sale” process by agent Scott Swingler on 0403 344 649.

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Above: Archbishop Hickey confers candidacy for the diaconate and priesthood onto Francis Birrell.

Below, clockwise from top left: Archbishop Barry Hickey confers candidacy for diaconate and priesthood to Anibal Leite da Cunha; Bishop Donald Sproxton hands the Bible to Mark Baumgarten as the candidate promised to proclaim the Word of God faithfully; Archbishop Hickey confers candidacy for diaconate and priesthood onto Thomas Zurich; Bishop Sproxton hands the Bible to Cyprian Shikokoti as he is conferred to the ministry of Lector.

Mercedes’ new centre empowers students

Mercedes College opens unique centre for students with disabilities

BY JULIE CAMERON

MERCEDES College has opened a unique centre to assist the transition for students with varying disabilities to employment and independent living post-high school.

Mercedes’ 1937 Art Deco building, called Rostrevor, was refurbished with the Federal Government’s $200,000 BER NSP funding, and the centre was renamed the Coolock Centre, after Sisters of Mercy foundress Catherine McAuley’s residence in Dublin.

The Centre, together with the $850,000 refurbished canteen, are two of the College’s recently completed projects funded by the Government’s BER programme.

The Catholic Education Office provided a further $10,000 to furnish the flat with a lounge, bedroom, kitchen, laundry, bathroom and work room. Students chose the furniture, electrical and household goods.

The Centre will form an integral part of learning for the Mercedes College Special Education students. Eleven students with varying disabilities at Mercedes College are part of the Education Support Unit (ESU) which provides a programme aimed at developing independent life skills.

The ESU programme has been

running at the school since 1968. In addition to literacy, numeracy and IT skills embedded in real life experiences, it involves the students undertaking a number of learning and practical experiences including budgeting, planning, paying bills, banking and shopping. On Fridays, students go shopping and buy food, which they will now be able to bring back to the flat, learn to cook and enjoy their meal together.

are taught how to cook before they all sit down and enjoy what they have made.”

The programme provides essential knowledge in a home setting and opportunities for them to learn to sew, make a bed, read a recipe, wash and iron clothing and keep safe. Transperth has also provided the girls with “transport training” - learning how to ride the bus and rail transport systems. They recently went by train to Fremantle, visiting stations along the way.

An important part of the programme is the girls’ Enterprise work called Beadazzled where they make their peg dolls and jewellery. The Godly Playpeg People are set in a nativity scene and sold at College functions with funds going to Sisters of Mercy charities.

They also make and sell their own jewellery with bracelets, necklaces, earrings and key chains.

This work is linked in with the Business Management and Enterprise course, which is a Curriculum Council subject.

gramme is a Therapy Focus, which is school aged intervention therapy group, helping the girls with conversation and personal care. Outside agencies, such as the Cerebral Palsy Association, also come in and work alongside the girls with their Teacher Assistants. In due course, the Coolock Centre will provide an opportunity for other Catholic schools to come and practise similar programmes in an independent setting.

The Mercedes students will provide written instructions which will be placed in the rooms to enable users of the facility knowledge on how to use the facility and equipment. They will also be given the opportunity to develop their leadership skills by providing assistance when visitors are doing their own programmes.

Sr Vedette Lendich, who leads the programme with a dedicated group of teacher assistants, said the essence of this programme is to provide the girls with the knowledge and skills that we all need every day.

“The Centre provides a setting for the students to learn everyday skills - how to budget and shop, cook, wash and iron clothes and look after a house,” she said. “Every week we take the girls shopping for food, then we come back and they

The girls are integrated into all the options, Homerooms, Pastoral Care, Sport and Health. Year 10, 11 and 12 students complete preliminary units from Senior Secondary Courses in English and Business.

They have a heavy focus on work placement, helping them to make the transition to work and looking at post-school options.

The older students are involved in work placements on a Monday with the Water Corporation and Gattos, the Christian Book Shop.

Another part of the ESU pro-

Mercedes College principal Sheena Barber said the Centre will “will provide our Education Support students with another opportunity to further develop their skills by providing assistance when visitors are doing their own programmes”.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith visited the Coolock Centre on 9 June to support what the college did with the government funds.

During the visit, Ms Gillard and Mr Smith also answered questions by senior students of Mercedes College - based near St Mary’s Cathedral in Perth’s central business district - on leadership opportunities for women in business and the community and life in politics.

Youth given a global experience of humanity

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE Edmund Rice Institute of Social Justice (ERISJ) is running a series of workshops this year to empower people on a local level to work for social justice by connecting them to a global experience of humanity.

Caritas Australia’s Global Education Advisor Janeen Murphy, who has worked with Caritas’ partners ‘on the ground’ in Uganda, East Timor, Cambodia and India, will address the first workshop

at 10am on 26 June at ERISJ’s Fremantle headquarters at 24 High Street.

The workshop includes 12 intensives that present key challenges for public engagement, understanding and action for justice, targeted at persons aged 15 and up.

It also identifies activites centred around the ‘Be More’ slogan that Caritas Australia has launched this year. The ‘Be More’ concept, which

encourages online participation, is inspired by the words of martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero, “Aspire not to have more, but to be more”. Participants set themselves five challenges – personal, family, local, national and global – and they track their lifestyle changes and take action for social and environmental justice. In the process, they sign up and create a profile page.

The ERISJ workshops encourage participants to become part of the solution to global poverty and suffering, live a life that does justice, turns compassion into “doing more than just donating money” and grasp what it is to put Catholic social teaching into practice, a statement from the Centre said.

ERISJ director David Freeman told The Record that the workshops are intended to “extend a helping hand where it’s needed most”, by giving practical skills and simple ways to contribute to solutions for urgent global issues such as poverty.

Term

(9.30am -12noon)

Term two: WORKING WITH THE BEREAVED 12th May – 30th June, Eight consecutive Wednesdays (9.30am – 12 noon)

Term three: GOOD COMMUNICATION IN PASTORAL CARE

July -15th September, Eight consecutive Wednesdays (9.30am – 12 noon)

Term four: HEALTHY CARER….

Cost of attendance is on a sliding scale of six rates, starting at $25 for students and unwaged up to $150 for government and corporate sponsored participants.

For more information contact 9432 2400.

13th October – 1st December, Eight consecutive Wednesday (9.30am- 12 noon) These courses are designed to assist the development of existing skills, so that the Pastoral Carer will Minister even more effectively, with competence and confidence.

Course fees $110.00 Per term or $400.00 for all terms

Mercedes College ESU (Education Support Unit) student Mikaela Powell with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith cooking muffins in the kitchen of the new building built partly with Federal Government funds. PHOTO: COURTESY MERCEDES

Janeen Murphy with her children.

Gulag survivors’ 50 years of marriage

A Perth couple who have entured their fair share of suffering early in life celebate a milestone of love

A PROMISE that Janusz and Leokadia Zejdler – suvivors of Stalin’s notorious Gulags - made on 4 June 1960 at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Northam to be with each other for the rest of their lives remains as strong as ever after 50 years.

The children booked them a weekend at Burswood Resort for their anniversary and they attended Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral that weekend for the occasion.

The pair were born in Poland just nine months apart yet had to travel half way around the world to meet in Northam some 16 years later. As Leokadia’s father Jan had a government position, they were automatically targeted to be taken to Siberia when she was aged five during the Second world war in 1940 as part of Joseph Stalin’s ethnic cleansing operation, where they worked in the underground mines, and people suffered malnutrition due to lack of basic necessities.

“They had to work hard and be self sufficient - as there was no wood to light fire, they had to go picking up cows’ dung to burn it to keep warm. Fortunately, some locals helped them out, otherwise they didn’t make enough to live,” Janusz told The Record

Leokadia’s father joined the Polish army when he was eventually released, but he soon passed away due to his debilitated condition. Her grandparents and father did not survive and are buried somewhere in Siberia. Leokadia’s mother and brother, when released from Siberia, travelled through many eastern countries camps, and arrived in Australia on 14 February 1950. Her first job at age of 16 was

in Cunderdin Hospital, progressing to the Royal Perth Hospital Nursing. Their strong faith that God always looked after them and would one day find a better life helped them survive.

At age 10 Janusz and his mother, having survived ethnic cleansing, were taken to Germany. At one stage during their journey they were lucky to escape the gas chamber owing to a malfunction and were sent to do farmwork until the end of the war.

Having arrived in WA on 2 of March 1950, Janusz’s first job was on the railways.

Leokadia and Janusz eventually met at a social. Their friendship

blossomed and they married. They have three children, one son Janusz (Jnr), two daughters, Grazyna, who lives in Canberra, and Michelle who is in Perth. All three have established their lives and enjoy good and responsible professions.

“We enjoy good relationships, being good friends in our adult lives,” they said, which they attribute to their practice of the faith imparted to them by their parents. “We enjoy the friendship of our Kalamunda Holy Family Parish and its parishioners with Fr Paul Raj as the ever-forward thinking priest - the quality of a good leader of his flock,” they told The Record

Malaysians go all out for WYD 2011

THE Malaysian-Singaporean Catholic Community of Australia, formed in June last year as a special ministry to their own and Aboriginal youth, is hosting a dinner dance on 3 July to send its young people to World Youth Day Madrid 2011.

The group, formed in June last year, will host the event at The Vasto Club in Balcatta. All 500 tickets have already been sold out, plus special invitations have been given to Archbishop Barry Hickey, his Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton, the director and deputy-director of Catholic Education WA, and the Malaysian and Spanish ConsulGenerals.

More events are planned to fundraise ahead of the WYD2011 event in Madrid, including another dinner dance in October and a cocktail party at the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre in February 2011.

Under the inspiration of Malaysian-born Fr Roy Pereira - a priest of the Diocese of Bunbury now relieving as parish priest at Kwinana while Fr Phong Nguyen is on a sixmonth sabbatical – the group was formed as a continuous effort to send youth to all subsequent WYDs.

Bishop Sproxton gave his blessing to the ministry on 20 February and welcomed the group’s mission:

● To support, prepare and fund youths for continuous Catholic World Youth Day celebrations,

● To reach out to underprivileged youth through caring, spiritual growth and faith,

● To enhance the spiritual, social, and leadership skills of the children and youth of tomorrow,

● To deepen and nourish families and children in their Catholic faith formation

and growth through pastoral and spiritual needs,

● To be a source of comfort, solace and strength to new migrants into the fold,

● To assist, support and work closely with all like Ministries and Movements, both nationally and globally,

● To bear witness to Christian belief, value and faith.

The group’s chairman Soma Muthucumaru told The Record that Bishop Sproxton said that Malaysia/Singapore is a multi-ethnic country with rich religious experiences and urged them to share these religious experiences with their Australian-born children and other Australians.

He also said that he would be “very open” to the community having a full-time chaplaincy.

The group hosted its first major event celebrating Malaysian Independence Day on 31 August last year at the Perth Convention Centre and, in three months of organising, over 350 people attended.

The group’s vision is to deepen, strengthen and nourish the Christian faith amongst the Malaysian-Singaporean Catholic Community, particularly the youth, and its neighbours by “sharing the Peace, Joy and Light of Christ our Lord”.

Its ministries involve providing spiritual development and fellowship to children and adults, Aboriginal youth, new migrants and fellowship.

The group is still forming a secretariat and plans to acquire a suitable premises within the Perth metropolitan area.

For more information on the ministry contact Soma Muthucumaru on 0403536805, Basil Augustine on 0413653701 or Catherine Chua on 0433923083.

CEO Sleepout nets over $2m

THE Society of St Vincent De Paul has raised more than $2.6 million with its inaugural national CEO Sleepout.

Vinnies’ annual CEO Sleepout was held on 17 June, and for the first time took place in all capital cities across Australia. Among the 684 high fliers taking part were billionaire mining magnate Twiggy Forrest of Fortescue Metals Group, Mark Scott, CEO of the Australian Broadcasting Service, and entrepreneur millionaire businessman, Dick Smith.

In Perth, 98 of the city’s top business and community leaders slept out at the WACA ground on the Thursday night to raise awareness and vital funds for Australia’s homeless as part of the Vinnies CEO Sleepout.

In WA, there are 13,391 homeless and for just one night, these participants gained a small insight into what daily life is like for these many thousands of people, with 32 per cent of WA’s homeless aged just 12 to 18 years.

Participants in the Perth Sleepout included Andrew Forrest, CEO Fortescue Metals Group Ltd, James Pearson, CEO Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA, John Poulsen, Managing Partner Minter Ellison, Ray Wardrop, General Manager Channel Seven, Elton Swarts, Executive Chairman WA Business News and Suzanne Ardagh, WA State Manager Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Above: Janusz and Leokadia Zejdler, survivors of Stalin’s notorious Gulags in Siberia, pictured recently. Right, the couple photographed at their wedding 50 years ago.

New Sydney priests out to change world

In a night 27 years in the making, six men ordained to priesthood in Sydney

BY MATTHEW HODGSON

Seminary of the Good Shepherd

SYDNEY Cardinal George Pell ordained six men to the priesthood of Jesus Christ on 11 June at St Mary’s Cathedral - the largest group of ordinands in Sydney since 1983.

The newly ordained priests - Fr Nen Dang, 56, Fr Robert Doohan, 47, Fr Joseph Gedeon, 37, Fr Kim Ha, 36, Fr Andrew James, 36 and Fr Joseph Guinea, 31, will all serve the Church in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

The ordinations took place on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, the last major feast in the Year for Priests, which closed on that same day.

In his homily during the Ordination Mass, Cardinal Pell thanked God for the generosity of the candidates and for the efforts of the formation staff in preparing the men for ordination (both past and present).

Cardinal Pell spelled out the attributes required of a priest. He said they need to be “strong, wise and compassionate” and that they need to “do the hard things that their people need them to do.”

In addition to being pastors of their established flock, they also need to be fishermen and bring in new people.

The Cardinal referred to the New Evangelisation as an essential element of a priestly ministry in the 21st century.

He emphasised the instructions of the late Pope John Paul II: “Preach outside the traditional communities.”

The Cardinal then looked to the future.

He noted the huge population increases expected in the Archdiocese of Sydney and appealed passionately to young men in the congregation.

“We need help,” Cardinal Pell told the congregation gathered for the ordinations.

“There have to be young men here tonight thinking about becoming a priest. Come. Step forward.”

He also urged young women to step forward and enquire about a

vocation to the Religious or consecrated life.

In line with tradition, the newly ordained priests went out to all corners of the Archdiocese to celebrate “Thanksgiving Masses.”

Fr Joseph Gedeon celebrated his Thanksgiving Mass at Holy Family Church in Maroubra on 13 June.

At his invitation, the homily was preached by Fr Anthony Percy, Rector of the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Sydney.

Fr Percy reflected on major elements of the formation process: “the seminary is a long and testing experience ... [seminarians] need to go into the desert with Christ: pray for them.”

Fr Percy also reflected on the symbolism of the ordination ceremony itself.

He pointed to the ordinands’ prostration as a symbol of their emptying themselves in order to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The laying on of hands by the Bishop is a sign of the coming of the Spirit and the laying on of hands by all concelebrating priests present is a sign of the unity of the priesthood.

Ordination, however, is just the start, Fr Percy said.

“The big question you must answer, Fr Joe, is this: are you weak enough to be a priest?” Fr Percy asked.

Fr Percy went on to clarify this question: “We have been chosen because we are weak, not because of our gifts and talents.

“God chooses the weak to make them strong,” Fr Percy said.

He instructed Fr Joseph to know his limitations and know Christ.

“You will be a great priest if you do this - you will change the world,” he said.

After his Thanksgiving Mass, Fr Joseph, who grew up in Lebanon, described his state of mind in one word: “overwhelmed.”

He paid tribute to St Rafqa, a Lebanese Maronite Nun, as the main inspiration to following his call to the priesthood.

Providentially, the commemoration of the canonisation of St Rafqa is 10 June, the day before Fr Joseph’s ordination date. When asked what he was most looking forward to in his priestly ministry, Fr Joseph replied, “serving the people of God.”

- Matthew Hodgson is studying at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd for priesthood in the Archdiocese of Perth

Cardinal George Pell ordains one of the six men to the priesthood at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.

Top: the six men lie prostrate on the sanctuary at their Ordination Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. Above: Concelebrating priests pray over the new ordinands. The priest with gold vestments laying his hands on the newly ordained priest on the right is Perth-based Fr Anthony Van Dyke OP. Below: Concelebrating priests pray over the newly ordained priests at St Mary’s Cathedral.

PHOTOS: ANICETO SANCHEZ

Porter broke promise on Swedish research: ACL

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE West Australian Barnett Government has not met its election commitment to properly investigate the Swedish model of prostitution regulation, the Australian Christian Lobby said on 21 June.

WA Attorney General Christian Porter announced on 21 June that brothels would be legalised in industrial and commercial areas, five days after The Record reported his plans after he told a Belmont community forum on 8 June that the Swedish model would not limit prostitution as well as his model.

On 8 June he also discredited evidence by Gunilla Ekberg, the expert adviser to the Swedish Government in the development and implementation of their legislation who was brought to Perth to advise MPs who ended up passing the previous Labor Government’s Prostitution Amendment Act 2008.

The ‘Swedish model’ involves outlawing the buying but not the selling of sex, and an extensive education programme of the police and legal professions, as well as educating young boys in schools, based on the premise that all prostitution is abuse, legal or not.

Having researched Ms Ekberg’s original documents, Mr Porter said she sources herself, her own anecdotes of conversations she’s had with people and newspaper articles “which themselves do not have proper sources”.

He noted that she also cites a group of reports issued by County Police of Stockholm, which say that in Sweden there has been some success in reducing street prostitution but “on the other hand, we do not know whether it has had any effect on prostitution overall”.

On whether the extent of prostitution has increased or decreased, he quoted the Swedish Government’s National Board of Health and Welfare as saying: “We cannot give any unambiguous answer to that question.

“At most we can discern that street prostitution is slowly returning after swiftly disappearing in the wake of the law against purchasing sexual services, but that refers to street prostitution, the most obvious manifestation.

“In regards to other areas, ‘hidden’ prostitution, we are even less able to make any statement.”

From this, Mr Porter concluded: “So I would counsel caution against believing on face value some of the quite expansive and, in my view, unsubstantiated positives that people have attached to the Swedish model.”

ACL WA director Michelle Pearse said Mr Porter must explain how State-sanctioned brothels could meet the most basic workplace health and safety standards.

“How would he protect young women from being recruited into the most dangerous profession on the planet?” Mrs Pease said.

“WA is about to follow the failed experiments by Labor Governments in Queensland, the ACT and Victoria where legalised brothels have led to a massive

Chesty Bonds under fire for latest Tween fashion: a bra

GRASS-ROOTS movement

Collective Shout is taking on iconic Aussie underwear manufacturer Bonds and its bra marketed to eight year olds by calling for it to be removed from sale immediately.

expansion of the harmful sex trade in both its legal and illegal forms.”

While Mr Porter said that prostitutes could report abuse to police under his model, Mrs Pearse said that the recent case of an underage girl dying in a legal brothel in the ACT underscored the implausibility of making work in brothels safe.

“ACL opposes legalising brothels because of the dangers to young women and believes the law should target the demand side of the sex trade which is the men who use prostituted women,” she said.

Mrs Pearse said that a report by the US Bureau of Public Affairs cited a study into the trauma prostituted women face and revealed that 60 to 75 per cent of women in prostitution were raped, 70 to 95 per cent were physically assaulted and 68 per cent had post traumatic stress disorder in the same range as ‘treatment seeking combat veterans’.

“Why would the WA Government sanction an industry where this occurs?”

As the Federal Government has just launched a marketing campaign aimed at reducing violence in relationships, Mrs Pearse asked the WA Government: “If Australia says ‘No’ to violence against women than why would the Government seek to sanction brothels where women are raped and assaulted?

“If the WA Government was truly seeking the best interests of the community, it would not allow prostitution to occur in any area.”

At a public meeting arranged by Federal member for Swan, Steve Irons, the Attorney General stated that he believed prostitution was ‘morally objectionable’.

Mrs Pearse questioned the rationale of the government in legalising an industry that is ‘morally objectionable’.

“The reason that prostitution is morally objectionable is because it is an injustice to the women involved, and it is an injustice to the wives and families of the men who use prostituted women,” Mrs Pearse said.

Instead of legalising the industry, ACL has called on the WA government to shut down all brothels and implement a law similar to Sweden’s, which penalises the buyer rather than the women who are exploited in the industry.

Mr Porter told the 8 June community forum that shutting down all brothels was impossible.

“Children as young as eight do not need padded bras and if some are developing early, as Bonds claims, a crop top is all that is needed for support and to meet any issues of modesty,” Melinda Tankard Reist, founder of Collective Shout, told the Sydney Archdiocesan communications office.

In February this year, the group was responsible for another bra aimed at young girls being withdrawn from sale. Sold as Tweenage bras at Best & Less stores across the country, these push-up bras for Australia’s tween age group defined as between six and 12, promised to give flatchested pre-pubescent girls “adult curves.”

Collective Shout instantly protested, pointing out “adult curves” were unnecessary in children who had not yet reached puberty, and citing the ‘Tweenage’ bras as yet another troubling example of the sexualisation of children by corporations and manufacturers.

Withdrawing the bras from sale, claiming they had been intended for a women’s petite range of 8 AA to 12B, the compa-

ny apologised, saying Best & Less prided itself on its strong family values and had strict guidelines relating to the sale of products for young people.

Less than four months after the Best & Less Tweenage bras were withdrawn from sale, one of Australia’s most well-known, mainstream underwear companies is marketing a similar bra to eight year old girls.

“This is a further reflection of the sexualisation of our children and what has long been known as middle childhood, the period from nine until 14, which is an essential and critical part of growing up, is fast disappearing,” Melinda said.

Psychologist Dr Michael CarrGregg, former Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne, said a bra for eight year olds “blurs the line between what is a little girl and what is a woman and in doing so violates an important societal norm that

states that children should not be seen as sexual objects”.

Bonds’ general manager Kate Hann defended the company’s “Soft Cup Bra” for eight year olds, insisting that the line has been “driven by consumer needs,” arguing that girls were maturing earlier, sometimes as young as eight.

Mrs Tankard-Reist, mother of four including three daughters and author of last year’s best seller Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls, said that in most cases, any ‘so-called development’ by the age of eight is simply fatty deposits rather than evidence of a child entering puberty and the emergence of breasts.

Professor Louise Newman, Director of the Monash University Centre for the Development of Psychiatry and Psychology, said that, from a mental health perspective, young children do not have the critical awareness and capacity to evaluate sexuality in popular culture, and “it can definitely affect their self image, self representation and self esteem”.

Dr Emma Rush, lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics at Charles Sturt University and co-author of the Australian Institute Report Corporate Paedaphilia: The Sexualisation of Children in Australia, said that is is “troubling” for “a family company such as Bonds” to produce such a bra.

Michelle Pearse

brief...

In growing cities, people need quiet places for prayer:

Pope

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Modern men and women cannot be holy without prayer, and in modern cities they will not learn to pray unless they are given guidance and a quiet place, Pope Benedict XVI told a group of Bishops from Brazil.

“You must create places and occasions where - in silence, in listening to God, in personal and community prayer - people can find and experience Jesus Christ who reveals the authentic face of the Father,” the Pope said on 18 June.

The Pope met Bishops from Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo states - the socalled “Catholic heartland” of Brazil - at the end of their “ad limina” visits to report on the status of their dioceses.

He told the prelates that their mission as Bishops is “to courageously teach the truth that must be believed and lived” and to help their faithful grow in holiness even in the midst of growing, bustling and loud cities.

Trinity boys make history

BY GLYNNIS GRAINGER

TRINITY College boys were the first candidates to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation in the newly-renovated St Mary’s Cathedral on 3 June.

The evening was a special community event for the school and the culmination of many weeks of preparation.

Sixty boys from Year 6, two from the senior school and one girl from Mercedes College received the Sacrament from the two celebrants, Archbishop Barry Hickey and Fra Oscar Aguilera.

Gordon Dean, Assistant Head of Religious Education said: “The atmosphere in the Cathedral was prayerful and all who attended agreed that the beautiful environment enriched an integral part of the candidates’ faith journeys.”

He said the school programme has four components: the home programme, which is run by the parents; an overnight retreat for the boys; community service and the Catholic Education Office guidelines.

The home programme runs over three weeks where families meet in small groups, so parents are able to take an active role in the preparation of their boys to receive the Sacrament.

The retreat at Trinity College’s Camp Kelly at Dwellingup involves time for reflection and sharing of the boys’ experiences about their faith journeys in a bush setting.

“We encourage as many parents as possible to be part of the retreat,” Mr Dean said.

The highlight of the retreat is usually a Mass or paraliturgy prepared by the boys, making a con-

nection with God prior to their Confirmation.

The size of St Mary’s Cathedral enabled more family and friends to share in the celebration and encouraged the extended family to be further involved in such an important event for the boys.

Mr Dean said special thanks go to the following people: Deacon Damon Gorian, Cathedral supervisor Tony Meyrick, sacristans Tom and Angela Mahady and Cathedral organist Jacinta Jakovevic for the part they played in making the ceremony such a special occasion.

He also thanked the Trinity College senior choir and Athena Litis for their inspiring singing, the altar servers and Year 5 parents who served tea and coffee after the celebration.

The Confirmation programme and service was one of the many opportunities provided for Trinity College boys to experience the family as a faith community, Mr Dean added.

Sydney event offers Faith formation with fun thrown in

A

WYD-inspired Sydney gathering

proved so

popular last year it’s getting a repeat performance in July. You might want to be there.

ONE of the most inspiring week-long events - which is also a lot of fun - is coming to Sydney again next month.

It is SCENE 2010.

The Sydney Congress Embracing the New Evangelisation (SCENE) brings people from all parts of the Catholic Church together for a celebration of Catholic life and evangelisation.

SCENE was held last year to continue the spirit of World Youth Day. It was such a success that it is on again this year, offering pilgrims a chance to prepare for the next adventure - WYD Madrid.

The week will incorporate parishes, communities, movements and speakers from around Australia as well as a number of international religious and laity from France, the USA and England.

OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENTS 2010

JUNE

25 Confirmation, Thornlie – Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

25-27 Parish Visitation, Nedlands – Archbishop Hickey

26 30th Anniversary Mass of Willetton Parish – Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

The week, from Monday, 12 July to Friday, 16 July is packed with activities.

There will be catechesis sessions, forums and talks on evangelisation, including street evangelisation, workshops, pub talks, faith

27 Confirmation, Scarborough

forums and of course daily mass.

In fact every day and night features a variety of activities for SCENE delegates.

Some of the challenging talk topics include Reclaiming Masculinity; The Genius of Womanhood; Angels and Demons -The New Age; Climate Change - Rethinking the Science; Does Religious Freedom Matter and Human Reason and Catholic Faith.

Many of the events will be at St Mary’s Cathedral, however city workers will again have the opportunity to see those “men with long grey robes and beards” skateboarding around Martin Place and entertaining the crowds with their music.

This is the Catholic Underground formed by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in New York as a cultural apostolate.

Their concerts, which begin and end with prayer, are hugely popular with young people all over the world.

This year at SCENE, Catholic Underground will also perform

30 Conclusion of Northbridge History Project – Archbishop Hickey JULY

4 Induction of Filipino Chaplains, St Mary’s Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey

with front-liners Gary Pinto, Joseph Gatehua and Steven Kirk. Organiser and patron of SCENE, Bishop Julian Porteous, who is the Episcopal Vicar for Renewal and Evangelisation for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, said of last year’s SCENE, “It was a unique event and, similar to presenting World Youth Day to Australia prior to 2008, it was not easy to describe or explain to priests and laity beforehand. Like WYD, it was something to be experienced and discovered.

“Those who participated in the event have spoken very highly of the experience and urged us to do it again.

“We have. And this year SCENE will again be a celebration of Catholic life and a statement about the vitality and mission of the Church in Australia.”

Details and registration information for SCENE 2010 is available from the SCENE website: www.scene.org.au.

To visit the Catholic Underground go to www.catholicunderground.net/home.html.

BUSINESS CARD DIRECTORY

Catholic Underground, the cultural apostolate of the Fransiscan Friars of the Renewal (FFR), from New York perform at SCENE 2009.

PHOTO: GIOVANNI PORTELLI

Left: Fra Oscar Aguilera and Archbishop Barry Hickey during the Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral; above: Trinity College students during the celebrations; below: Archbishop Barry Hickey and Fra Oscar concelebrate Mass.

PHOTOS: GLYNNIS GRAINGER

Tai Chi and Christianity: a response

In April, The Record ran an exclusive column by Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Julian Porteous, saying that aspects of Reiki, Tai Chi and Yoga are adverse to Christian principles.

Perth Catholic JingPing Wong, a Tai Chi and Chinese martial arts teacher and trained civil engineer, is a graduate of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, debates some of Bishop Porteous’ points in this edited response.

Iremember sitting in one of Bishop Porteous’ classes at the JPII Institute in Melbourne and was quickly impressed with his wisdom, his method of teaching and warm personality. I hold him in great respect.

I commend the Bishop for his efforts to caution Catholics against potential spiritual and philosophical dangers with certain practices, given the growth of the New Age movement around the world.

However, I disagree with some of his conclusions regarding Tai Chi. His admonitions would have been valid if certain distinctions and qualifications were made, but they were not and his article did not do justice to the truth of the discipline of Tai Chi, to the goodness of its culture of origin and to those who have benefited from it. His description of Tai Chi teachers as crafty tainted the practice and those who teach it, obscuring any of its possible goodness.

Tai Chi has much in common with Christianity

An Australian-born Chinese, I grew up in a family with a strong adherence to a Chinese intellectual

and moral tradition and was raised with a strong affiliation to Tai Chi and its philosophy.

As a young adult, I had a profound conversion experience that led me to re-discover the Church and embrace it. Re-considering Tai Chi through the eyes of faith, I have concluded that it and Taoism intrinsically support and prefigure Christianity.

The lived tradition of Taoism that became inherent to the Chinese mind is an outlook of life, ethics and human relationships that has much in common with the Christian ethos.

Tai Chi pre-supposes Christian Revelation, and I believe it awaits its fulfilment in the Catholic faith.

What is Tai Chi?

In China, the traditional and predominant use of Tai Chi has been for self-defence, health and self-cultivation. It is a physical and intellectual discipline with a lofty goal of personal moral reformation.

It is about the practice of virtues, especially humility and sensitivity toward others. I have noticed that most who take up Tai Chi seriously are usually intelligent, gentle and mature people who value the important things in life. Some are devout and committed to the Christian Faith.

In the West, spiritual usages of Tai Chi exist, but usually these are associated with the New Age movement. In China, sects have adapted Tai Chi to their own beliefs and practices, including Gnosticism. But this is not the conventional or pure form of Tai Chi.

I believe it is these New Age ‘versions’ of Tai Chi that have been caught in the radar of Bishop Porteous. In this case, his and others’ warnings against this re-marketed version of Tai Chi would be well justified. However, to do so without proper nuances and clarifications risks throwing Tai Chi and Taoism (the philosophy on which Tai Chi is based) out with the bath water.

What about Tai Chi, divinisation and psychic powers?

Tai Chi is not about divinisation and psychic powers. This highly spiritualised lingo comes more from associations with Gnosticism or the New Age movement in the

West. Such an approach is foreign to the conventional Chinese mind. The majority of those in oriental countries who practise Tai Chi in parks and hospitals are doing it for much the same reasons as you would see people going for a jog along the river. They want peace and to clear their minds of stress after a hard day’s work.

Is Taoism at odds with Christianity?

The short answer is no. To say that Taoism denies the existence of good and evil is a misunderstanding of its basic tenets. To say that practising Tai Chi requires people to abandon their faculties of reason and moral thinking is not correct. Bishop Porteous correctly noted that Tai Chi is based on a philosophy called Taoism, which is a philosophy of natural law. It is grounded in the natural order (thus, worldly) and hardly exceeds it. However, when Bishop Porteous talks about Taoism as having a spiritual origin and religious worldview that is at odds with the Christian worldview, I ascribe this interpretation to the more recent influence of the New Age.

The most accurate readings of Taoism emerge from the great classics, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Jing (~500BC) and the Analects of Confucius (~500BC), which are both about striving for human perfection through the virtue, morality and learning.

The hallmark of Confucius’ teaching is “self-cultivation through education to arrive at virtue”. This has become the lived tradition of Taoism in China for over 2,500 years and has become intrinsic to the Chinese ethos. I believe this is congruent with fundamental elements of Christianity.

Grace Builds on Nature

Examples from early Church history show how elements of other ancient pre-Christian philosophies like those of Aristotle and Plato were incorporated into Christianity. Subsequently, these philosophies played an integral role in the development of the understanding of Christian doctrine and in the inculturation of Europe.

The same can be said of Taoism for the Orient. Taoism is a natu-

ral philosophy which predates Christian Revelation. It is essentially a question and a resolution. It is a sublime expression of the heart of a civilisation that has quietly contemplated the deepest yearnings of the human heart over several millennia. It asks, “What are the laws of Heaven?” and exclaims, “That I may fulfil my humanity, I wish to align myself to Heaven’s Decrees!” It patiently awaits its answer. Heaven revealed the answer 500 years later: Christ. And so for the hundreds of millions of people who are predisposed to the Taoist and Confucian philosophy in our world today (whether consciously or unconsciously), we have many who are ripe and ready to hear the Gospel. Grace builds on nature. And Taoism is a platform proffered for the work of grace.

Renowned western Catholic and Christian scholars in our own era have already begun to do the work.

CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man uses the term “the Tao” as shorthand for Natural Law. Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft frequently refers to the “Tao” and Taoist concepts in his own writings.

What does the Church say about the Tao?

The Second Vatican Council calls for inculturation of all cultures by the Faith. It calls Christians to “recognise, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men” (Nostrae Aetate n.2).  How fertile the ground is for evangelisation of China if we are prepared to do this. I believe the lived tradition of Taoism effectively disposes a person’s mind, reason and sentiment to receiving the knowledge of Christianity.

Knowing this can enable us to evangelise in ways that dynamically appeal to the intellect and sentiments of people from this cultural background.

The Church teaches that there are elements of truth, goodness and beauty outside the physical bounds of the Church.

The Second Vatican Council says that it is the Church’s mission to recognise, purify and sanctify these so that they may be brought to fulfilment in Christ and offered as a gift to Him (Apostolicam

Actuositatem , n 5). Through Taoism the Church can bring the rich and complex culture of China to its perfection by permeating it with God’s life and grace.

Thus, in its newness it has potential of bearing numerous and wonderful life-giving fruits for the Church and for the world. China was once called a sleeping giant. Today it looks as if the giant is awakening. There are millions waiting to benefit from Christian dialogue and inculturation. There are also many of oriental cultural backgrounds living in Australian cities. Their spirits yearn to know the revelation of Grace from Heaven that the West has been privileged with for so long. Is it not our honour and duty as Christians to help see it brought about?

The Pope, The Wise Man of the West and noble China

Last year Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the renowned 16th century Catholic missionary Fr Matteo Ricci for his genius in evangelising China. When Ricci arrived in the Orient, he was astounded at the sophistication of its culture.

He exclaimed that while Europe had the greater scientific and mathematical methods, China had a high culture at least as noble, if not more, than his own.

In order to engage in cultural dialogue and evangelisation, Ricci studied and became an exemplary Taoist and literary scholar and won the hearts and minds of many of his Chinese contemporaries.

He converted thousands of Chinese to Catholicism and almost reached the Emperor before he died in Beijing.

Pope Benedict praised Ricci, whose cause for beatification opened in 1983, for his “peculiar capacity in approaching, with full respect, Chinese cultural and spiritual traditions in their totality”.

Taoism lays the foundation for the Christian faith in China, and Ricci testifies to this in his use of Taoism for Christian evangelisation of the Orient.

We stand at the brink of a new epoch of the Church’s mission of evangelisation, in continuation of its great and Sacred Tradition.

I believe Taoism is of crucial relevance to Australian Catholics today.

Jing Ping can be contacted on adihs7@gmail.com.

Perth man Jing Ping Wong demonstrates Tai Chi exercises. Mr Wong is a graduate of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne and says Bishop Julian Porteous’ warnings about the practice of Tai Chi are accurate for Westernised forms that have been infected by New Age values and beliefs, but not for the pure and traditional Chinese form. PHOTOS: ANTHONY BARICH

The Last Supper rene

BY ANTHONY BARICH

AUSTRALIA’S Bishops could be on the verge of recommending a three to five-month “rollout” period for parishes and communities to implement the newly translated Missal, which is expected to be introduced by Easter 2011.

Australian Catholic University Theology senior lecturer Dr Clare Johnson will present the Australian Bishops’ National Liturgical Council with seven models later this month with which to implement the new Missal translation due out by Easter next year.

One model will be chosen by the NLC and recommended to the Permanent Commission of the Bishops’ Conference.

If the Permanent Commission approves the model at its August meeting, it should hit dioceses around Australia for parishes and communities to start studying by the end of this year, giving them a number of months before the expected release of the One Body, One Spirit in Christ interactive DVD resource in July this year.

The DVD resource which explains and demonstrates the Roman Missal’s changes, structures and history, will be produced by Australian company Fraynework for every Englishspeaking country.

Fr Peter Williams, executive secretary of the Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, told The Record that, while the changes are the biggest since the current translation was issued in 1975, a shorter roll-out period may be recommended among models that propose between three and 12-month periods.

“It’s not my decision; it’s the decision of the Permanent Commission. I can’t imagine the Bishops, knowing them as I do, they will be looking for a longer roll-out rather than a shorter one,” said Fr Williams, who was Director of Liturgy for World Youth Day, including the re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross through the streets of Sydney.

In adopting whatever model the Bishops recommend, local dioceses, parishes and communities can change it at their discretion to suit their own needs.

“It’s not a one size fits all,” Fr Williams said.

Dr Johnson will make the presentation at NLC’s 28-29 June meeting in Melbourne, where it will also identify the needs of the

local Church in Australia that are not covered in the DVD resource.

The NLC will also prepare for Australian dioceses parish bulletin insert articles, laminated Mass cards with the new texts, particularly the people’s parts, a PowerPoint presentation of the reworked texts and hymns, homily notes for priests on the new texts and parish commentators’ notes.

These will be downloadable for free on the ACBC website and Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy page.

These measures are a response to learned experience from the implementation of the current translation, when “the catechesis that should have been done was not done as well as it could have been”, Fr Williams told a group of over 150 Perth parish, school and community representatives at the Westminster Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre on 17 June.

“There is a general agreement that there was so much going on at the time in the Church in the post-Vatican II environment that the sustained teaching on the Eucharist and participating in Mass, what it means and how it should be celebrated, was largely missed,” he said.

Fr Williams also announced the foundational essays on which the DVD resource is based.

The DVD’s Celebrating the Eucharist section is based on an essay by Sister of Charity Janet Baxendale, a Professor of Liturgy at the Archdiocese of New York’s seminary.

Part of the Crafting the art of Liturgy section was based on an essay by Canon Alan Griffiths, a priest of the Diocese of Portsmouth, UK, chair of the Diocesan Liturgical Buildings Advisory Committee and teacher at a seminary in the south of England.

Living a Eucharistic life was written by Mgr Kevin Irwin, Dean of the Catholic University of America’s School of Theology. The essay that underpinned Exploring the Mass was by Mgr Paul McPartlan, Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at the Catholic University of America. The Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy also hopes to have received by its 28-29 June meeting an independent report on Mass music settings, which will recommend a final six from 60 that were submitted from Australian composers.

Dioceses can still use other hymns already in use in any event.

BY ANTHONY BARICH Analysis

Some hesitation remains in Perth about the new Missal translations moving closer to their Latin and Scriptural foundations.

In a meeting with over 150 liturgists and representatives from parishes, schools and other communities around the Archdiocese on 17 June at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre, Fr Peter Williams, executive secretary of the Australian Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, clarified several contentious issues on which he was questioned.

How successfully the newly translated Missal is implemented upon its expected arrival by Easter 2011 depends largely on how priests, their lay or Religious parish liturgists and the faithful in general make use of the “key cornerstone” of catechesis: the One Body One Spirit in Christ interactive catechetical DVD resource.

Directed by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), Australian company Fraynework produced this resource to help Catholic communities understand the new translations.

The Australian Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy will also produce homily notes, laminated cards with new texts and reworked hymns and other resources to help Catholics understand that the Mass is more than just “something you listen to”, as Fr Williams said.

Using examples from the DVD resource, Fr Williams attempted to change some common misperceptions about fundamental issues regarding the

Mass. These misperceptions are largely due to the general Catholic public’s ignorance of the meaning of the Mass, and the intentions of many of those who attend.

When asked during the forum whether the Doxology would be changed to become more meaningful, as, presently, the Great Amen seems flat, Fr Williams replied: “That presumes of course that people have an understanding (of) parts of the Mass … and often I’ve found over the last umpteen years since I have been celebrating Mass - which is a long time now - we still have large numbers of people who are ‘the silent attenders’ at Mass.

“I still celebrate Mass sometimes where up to one third of the congregation don’t say anything. Now, that’s a problem. For whatever reason, they don’t feel that they need to engage in the parts of the Mass that belong to them. That’s an education process.”

PRIESTS UN-CRITIQUED

Fr Williams told parish and school liturgists both in Bunbury and Perth last week that priests can develop “carelessness” in the liturgy because the way they celebrate Mass goes uncritiqued – unlike, say, homilies.

“There’s a sense in which priests rarely have anybody say to them from the assembly about the way in which they celebrate Mass,” he said at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre.

“Often we’ll have people say to us, ‘that was a great homily, Father’, or ‘that was terrible, it was only worth 20 cents in the plate’ or something like that. But very rarely does anybody ever say, ‘I thought the way in which you celebrated Mass

was very prayerful and very very rare.”

“So, as a result of that, the way in which priests lead litu often goes uncritiqued. Over time, it’s very easy for anybo … I wouldn’t say bad habits, lessness sometimes.”

For this reason, he said th the art of Liturgy” section of Body One Spirit in Christ DV cal resource is not meant exc priests, but I would certainly priests and those who are re the production of the Liturg at this section very, very car very important section of th

The Last Supper, the event which, under Christ’s orders, the Catholic Church tontinues today in remembrance oof His Passion,

Fr Peter Williams, executive secretary of the Australian Bishops’ Commission for Liturgy, addresses Perth liturgists last week.

PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Carravaggio’s Supper at Emma for us as to how the early Chu

ewed: our new Missal

reverent. It’s e style of the urgical prayer r a period of ody to develop , but a carehe “Crafting f the One VD catecheticlusively for y hope that esponsible for gy would look efully. It’s a he resource.”

AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT

On 17 June, Fr Williams was confronted, as he was during the national liturgists’ conference in Perth in February, by someone who believed the change from ‘and also with you’ to ‘and with your spirit’ was “just not on”.

Fr Williams noted that Fr Andrew Wadsworth, the new General Secretary of ICEL, said in the DVD resource that the language used in liturgical prayer is not the language used in everyday speech.

“When we are engaged in the liturgy, I’m not talking to you and you’re not talking to me, we are actually in a conversation with God and we are in the action of worship,” Fr Williams said.

While the translators of the 1975 version “sincerely” believed that the language to be used in the Liturgy should be “in a sense pared down to be as simple as possible”, those charged with translating it this time, “and particularly the people in the Holy See”, believe the Church needs to “offer something richer … that is more elevated when we are engaged in the business of worship”.

He said many people have complained about the new “and with your spirit” response replacing “and also with you”.

The Holy See and the translators believe, however, that the language of the current Missal, “in some senses has served well but it hasn’t entirely captured the richness and the tradition of a Church that has been praying for 2,000 years, so they sought to … elevate the language”. While Fr Williams conceded this would be a difficult transition, he stressed that the new translation is “not unintelligible”, as some people have told him. “Having been intimately involved in the translating process over 10 years, I’m here to tell you that it’s not unintelligible. But it is different. And it is a different register”.

He recommended that people who have such fears should “sit with the texts”.

When the Holy See allowed Bishops’ conferences to adopt the Missal in the vernacular, the English and Portuguesespeaking Bishops’ conferences were the only ones in the world to adopt “and also with you”.

The adoption of “and also with you” originates in an ecumenical body in the 1960s and early 70s seeking to establish common texts amongst the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other Churches. Some of these Churches – especially

The history of the Roman Missal

2000 - Third Latin edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

2001 – Holy See promulgates Liturgiam Authenticam (“the authentic liturgy”), the guiding principle for translators of the Third Latin edition of the Roman Missal into English.

2001 – At the request of Leeds Bishop Arthur Roach, chairman of ICEL (International Commission on English in the Liturgy), work started to help prepare a catechetical resource to assist implementation of a new translation of the Missal.

2002 - Third Latin edition of the Roman Missal published

25 March, 2010 – Recognizio (approval for use) of the new translation signed by Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Worship Congregation. Editorial changes, however, still need to be made before it is published.

This will include the prayers and Order of the Mass in the Latin Missal and those adaptations peculiar to Australia: the feast of Mary MacKillop and prayers on Australia Day, Anzac Day and for drought, bushfires and floods.

This also includes the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which tells us how to celebrate Mass.

28 April, 2010 – The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments’ advisory committee Vox Clara (“Clear Voice”), chaired by Sydney Cardinal George Pell, presented Pope Benedict XVI with the completed translation of the third Latin edition of the Roman Missal.

Under Chapter 9, each Bishops’ conference can make local adaptations on posture, gesture, liturgical colours and materials used for making sacred vessels and construction of altars when building new churches or renovating old ones.

Over the past eight years various drafts (Green Books) of new translations were given to the 11 English-speaking Bishops’ conferences for consideration and wider consultation with whomever they want.

Australia’s Bishops have been voting during their Plenary Meetings each May and November over several years on segments of the Missal issued in Grey Books (final form of the translation). They required two-thirds of the Bishops’ votes to pass before being presented for the Holy See’s Recognizio

the Lutherans - were “not overly all that happy with the result”, he said, but went along with it for the sake of “ecumenical convergence”.

ROAD TO EMMAUS

A fundamental source of inspiration for the Mass and, subsequently, the Missal, is found in the story of the road to Emmaus in Luke’s Gospel.

This, Fr Williams said, provides a “very early biblical template for us as to how the early Church community understood the Eucharist”. The story tells how the disciples who were on the road had the Word broken open to them by their mysterious friend who joined them on the journey and how it was only when they got to the table in the inn that He said the blessing and broke the bread, and it was at that point they recognised Him.

“Here we see a very clear indication of the early Church’s understanding and the importance of the Eucharist,” he said of the story, which is given a special mention in the DVD resource.

HISTORY

That this story, and the Last Supper, are part of a grand tradition which has been mined to re-translate the Roman Missal is a point Fr Williams stressed to the liturgists gathered in Perth.

“We need to remind ourselves that we come from a very long and glorious liturgical history as Catholics. It isn’t something that happened in 1970 or in 1975,” he said. “In fact, there is a very complex and rich history to the liturgical life of the Catholic Church that reaches right back all the way to the Last Supper, which is the foundational event.”

SCRIPTURE

In overseeing interviews with priests and Bishops about the Mass and his involvement with the translation process over a decade, Fr Williams told the Perth gathering that a key discovery (or re-discovery) was the plethora of biblical images that abound in the Latin prayers, which were in many cases lost in the “clamouring from the Bishops” to get the current translation out in 1975.

“The source for most of our Latin prayers are either the Bible or the writings of the early Church Fathers,” he said.

The new text seeks to recover those biblical images and to try to express those in the translation of the prayers, so that Catholics are formed in the faith just by listening to them and praying them, as one American Monsignor in the DVD resource said.

“Of course, principally, what we are doing when we celebrate the Eucharist is that we are becoming engaged and immersed in the Pascal mystery, which is the Passion and death, the resurrection and the ascension of Christ,” Fr Williams said. As that same Monsignor said, his hope for this new translation is that Catholics learn that “what we pray is what we believe and to get our heads around the prayers to shape our belief. So I’m concerned that the new translations be received as a rich source of prayer to shape belief, to shape our lives.”

Another interviewee on the DVD said that the Mass is “not just an isolated part of our lives in which we come away for a while and try to be holy, as it were”.

“The Mass is only effective really if we can go forth … and live the Mass, live the Gospel reading,” the speaker said.

Death and Resurrection.

aus (1606), the scene that Fr Peter Williams says is the template rch community understood the Eucharist.

Off

the cuff:

tracking the Pope’s words the world missed because...

Benedict’s subtle yet powerful quotes on celibacy are not

Pope Benedict’s greatest explanations of key tenets of the Catholic faith are often unscripted

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Throughout his five-year pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has made some of his most interesting comments off the cuff, often during questionand-answer sessions with priests. His late-night meeting with 10,000 priests on 10 June was a good example. Although questions were prepared in advance, the Pope’s responses were unfiltered and impromptu - the kind of “organised spontaneity” for which his mind is apparently hard-wired.

Unfortunately, the world often misses out on these talks for a number of reasons. His vigil with priests ended close to midnight and a Vatican text wasn’t made available until several days later. Moreover, the Pope used concepts and terms that weren’t exactly user-friendly to the mass media. His response on priestly celibacy was a case in point and deserves a closer look. He was asked by a Slovakian priest to “enlighten us about the wisdom and the authentic meaning of ecclesial celibacy”.

The Pope’s angle of attack was unusual. He did not speak about Christ’s own celibacy or the history of the celibate priesthood, or about any of the practical questions connected with the requirement of celibacy in the Western Church.

Instead, he said priestly celibacy was a way for the priest to become more united with Christ and his mission, in an anticipation of “the world of the resurrection.” In celibacy, he said, the priest is pulled forward toward “the new and true life” of the future.

That creates a problem with the contemporary mindset, which seeks to close off God, the Pope said. “It is true that for the agnostic world, the world in which God does not enter, celibacy is a great scandal precisely because it demonstrates that God is considered and lived as a reality,” he said. In the eyes of critics, the influence of God in this world “is supposed to disappear,” he said.

In Pope Benedict’s analysis, the world’s problem with celibacy is not really about sexuality, but about the priest’s commitment to the call of a higher power. He then turned to marriage and developed another rather surprising thesis: that celibacy has more in common with marriage than with the single lifestyle - which, he said, is increasingly fashionable today. “But this not getting married is something totally and fundamentally different from celibacy, because not getting married is based on the desire to live only for oneself, to reject any definitive bond,” he said.

In short, he said, people who reject marriage in favour of “complete autonomy” are saying “no” to commitment. Celibacy is the opposite, a “yes” to God’s plan that is not unlike “the definitive ‘yes’ of marriage,” he said.

“Therefore, celibacy confirms the ‘yes’ of marriage with its ‘yes’ to

the future world,” he said. Almost as an aside, he added that he was speaking of marriage as “the natural form of being man and woman,” which he said was “the foundation of the great Christian culture, of the great cultures of our world.”

“And if this disappears, the root of our culture will be destroyed,” he said.

In his final point, the Pope referred to the priestly sex abuse cases that have been the focus of so much attention in recent months. Some critics have suggested that mandatory priestly celibacy may be a contributing factor in the crisis.

The Pope turned that idea on its head, saying that “celibacy, as the criticisms themselves show, is a great sign of faith, of the presence of God in the world.”

For that very reason, he said, celibacy is a “scandal” in the eyes of many people.

“We know that next to this great scandal, which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our own shortcomings, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make people think: ‘But they don’t really live on the foundations of God,’” he said.

“But there is so much fidelity,” the Pope added. He then prayed that God would “help us to free ourselves from the secondary scandals.”

Pope Benedict often uses language that is difficult for the mass media to understand and interpret, and here was a good example.

Take the word “scandal.” To the media, it means disgraceful action that damages the reputation of an institution - just as the Church has been damaged by sex abuse by priests.

But in this talk, the Pope was using the word in two very different ways. Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, further explained the Pope’s remarks to CNS in a lengthy e-mail. In saying that the strong faith demonstrated in celibacy is a scandal to the world, the Pope meant that it challenges - in a positive sensethe dominant cultural mentality, Fr Lombardi said. For the Pope, this is the “primary necessity” of the faith, the spokesman said.

The Pope’s reference to the sins of priests as “secondary scandals” was widely quoted and drew criticism from sex abuse victims’ groups. But Fr Lombardi said the Pope meant the phrase not to imply that priestly sex abuse scandals were unimportant, but to indicate that they have nothing to do with “the very nature of the Church, and in fact contradict it.”

In this sense, Fr Lombardi said, they are of a second order, working against the Church’s primary mission.

While acts of abuse can be “very serious and very damaging or absolutely terrible, they are of a completely different type because they are opposed to the ‘positive scandal’ of good witness of the faith and of Christian life,” Fr Lombardi said.

Such subtleties might have been understood by the priests who listened to the Pope’s extemporaneous talk. For journalists, it was a reminder that Pope Benedict doesn’t speak the language of sound bites.

soundbite-friendly

Priesthood is about service, not status: pontiff

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - A priest who seeks status rather than the will of God will be a slave to himself and to public opinion and will never discover how God wants to use his personal gifts and talents for the good of the Church and the world, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Being ordained a priest requires “the courage to say ‘yes’ to the will of another,” knowing that God and the Church will not erase his individuality, but will help him become all he can be, the Pope said on 20 June, just before ordaining 14 new priests for the Diocese of Rome.

The 14 men, who studied at four different seminaries in the city, promised the Pope their fidelity, expressed their desire to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments and accepted celibacy as a way to consecrate themselves completely to God.

As the congregation invoked the assistance of all the saints, the men laid face down on a rug before the main altar in St Peter’s Basilica. Then, one by one, they knelt before Pope Benedict as he placed his hands on their heads and ordained them to the priesthood.

“The Church counts on you; it counts on you very much. The Church needs each one of you,” the Pope told them in his homily.

“The priesthood can never represent a way to achieve security in life or to gain a position in society,” he said.

A man who sees the priest-

hood as a way to gain status obviously does not understand what it means to be a priest, but he also will never be free or happy, the Pope said.

If status is what a priest is looking for, he said, “he will have to flatter; he will have to say things just to please people” and follow fads, “depriving himself of a life-giving relationship with the truth.”

The path of true discipleship, which includes taking up the

cross, “is the sure path for finding true joy,” the Pope said. A large part of that joy comes from being able to celebrate the Eucharist, “holding in our hands the bread of heaven, the bread of God, who is Christ, the grain broken in order to be multiplied and to become the real food for the life of the world,” he said.

“It is something that cannot but fill us with deep awe, lively joy and immense gratitude,” the Pope told the new priests.

Pope Benedict XVI ordains 14 priests for the Diocese of Rome in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on 20 June.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

Pope Benedict XVI congratulates a newly ordained priest during an ordination Mass in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on 20 June. The Pope ordained 14 priests for the Diocese of Rome. PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

Eucharist central to our ability to love

Eucharist gives believers strength ‘to love one another,’ Cardinal says

BY GRETCHEN KEISER Catholic News Service

COLLEGE PARK, GeorgiaJesus’ commandment to His followers to love one another as He loves them might be daunting, but He gave believers the gift of the Eucharist “so we can live this life of love,” said Cardinal Sean P O’Malley of Boston.

“He loves us first. He loves us to the end. He loves us to the point of laying down His life for us. He loves us while we are still in sin,” the Cardinal told attendees at the Atlanta Archdiocese’s Eucharistic congress on 5 June.

The Eucharist “strengthens us. It challenges us,” he said, and it comes to God’s people through the priesthood.

“This wonderful gift (the priesthood) makes the Eucharist available everywhere for all times.

“Many today find the teaching too hard to believe and simply stop coming.”

However, “Jesus’ words and actions assure us He has left us a miracle of love in the Eucharist,” he said.

“Our God loves us, and the Eucharist is a celebration of that saving love.”

At the same time, the Mass “reminds us of our need for repentance and conversion,” the Cardinal added.

Cardinal O’Malley was the homilist at a morning Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament on the second day of the Archdiocese’s 15th congress.

The annual event is an exuberant, colourful gathering of Catholics who come to listen to speakers, pray in silence before the Blessed Sacrament, go to confession and enjoy a public celebration of their faith.

The theme of the congressTo Sanctify the Christian Peoplewas chosen by Atlanta Archbishop

Wilton D Gregory from the prayer of priestly ordination. He chose it in honour of the Year for Priests, declared by Pope Benedict XVI last June. The special year ended on 19 June.

The congress opened on 4 June with an evening Mass celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Luis R Zarama of Atlanta and a healing service.

The agenda included general sessions and workshop tracks in English, Spanish, French and, for the first time, Portuguese. A latenight session was held for young adults.

The diversity of the Archdiocese’s faith communities was illustrated by banners that were part of the procession leading into the Benediction service on 5 June inside the Georgia International Convention Centre.

There were about 100 of them, carried by people from parishes in every part of north Georgia, from Catholic schools and lay groups, including Spanish Cursillo, nocturnal adoration soci-

eties, Knights of Columbus councils, Legion of Mary, lay associates of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Marriage Encounter, the Catholic charismatic renewal and Vietnamese, Korean, Hispanic, Filipino, Nigerian and Haitian Catholics.

During one of the general sessions at the congress, Archbishop J Michael Miller of Vancouver, British Columbia, reflected on the Year for Priests.

He said that through the observance, the Pope had offered priests and laity an occasion to reinforce an awareness and knowledge of “the extraordinary gift of grace an ordained minister represents for the Church and the world.”

In recent discourses, the Pope has spoken of why the priest’s role as sanctifier is so important, he continued.

“Every man and woman is called to holiness. The priest has a role to play as an instrument in fostering that holiness,” the Archbishop said.

In growing in holiness, a per-

son moves out of himself or goes beyond himself, the Archbishop said. The transformation of a person’s inner being makes him the property of God. That person is set apart to love the world as God does, he said.

“An intimate friendship with God is the foundation of our holiness,” Archbishop Miller said.

About 73 priests came over the two days of the congress just to hear confessions of some of the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people there.

An adoration chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was placed throughout the day was always filled with 75 to 100 people silently praying.

“I come every year. I love it,” Hung Nguyen, a computer programmer, told The Georgia Bulletin, Atlanta’s archdiocesan newspaper.

“I don’t look at how big or how

successful it is. I look for the touch of God in people’s hearts.”

The eucharistic congress is needed “to revive the hearts of all people,” said Nguyen, president of the parish council at Our Lady of Vietnam Church in Riverdale.

“We come to worship Him and adore Him ... We can see a big picture of God’s people. An event like this strengthens our faith, no doubt about it,” he said.

Deacon Dennis Dorner, chancellor of the Archdiocese and chairman of the congress steering committee, said he thought this year’s event was “easily the smoothest we have had” in his five years of involvement.

“Working on the congress committee is a labour of love,” he said. “When you think of all that Jesus does for us, how could we not respond with our best efforts in a celebration of His real presence in the Eucharist.”

A well celebrated Mass is the best catechesis: Pope

Eucharist is not understood, laments

Pope

ROME (Zenit.org) - The doctrine of the Eucharist and its relevance for believers is not sufficiently understood and must be a catechetical priority, Benedict XVI told participants at the convention for the Diocese of Rome at the Basilica of St John Lateran on16 June.

The Holy Father told his diocese that a “more profound knowledge of the mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord” is a necessity for the communities of Rome.

“At the same time,” he added, “in the missionary spirit that we wish to nourish, it is necessary to spread the commitment to proclaim such Eucharistic faith, so that every man will encounter Jesus Christ who has revealed the ‘close’ God, friend of humanity, and to witness it with an eloquent life of charity.”

The Pontiff went on to give a reflection on the Eucharistic mys-

tery, considering Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary and how it is memorialised. He acknowledged that “sacrifice” is no longer a popular word.

“However, properly understood,” he said, “[sacrifice] is and remains fundamental, because it

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

reveals to us with what love God loves us in Christ.”

Benedict XVI affirmed that Mass itself, “celebrated in the respect of the liturgical norms and with a fitting appreciation of the richness of the signs and gestures,” fosters and pro-

motes Eucharistic faith. “In the Eucharistic celebration,” he said, “we do not invent something, but we enter into a reality that precedes us, more than that, which embraces heaven and earth and, hence, also the past, the future and the present.

This universal openness, this encounter with all the sons and daughters of God is the grandeur of the Eucharist: We go to meet the reality of God present in the body and blood of the Risen One among us.”

It is because of this, the Holy Father affirmed, that liturgical prescriptions are not mere “external things” but “express concretely this reality of the revelation of the body and blood of Christ.”

Hence, he contended, the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself, well celebrated.

Later in his address, the Bishop of Rome noted how the Eucharistic celebration must lead to charity.

“Feeding on Him we are freed from the bonds of individualism and, through communion with Him, we ourselves become, together, one thing, His Mystical

Body,” he said. This surmounts the differences of profession, class and nationality to form “one great family, that of the children of God.”

“When we receive Christ,” the Pope added, “the love of God expands in our innermost self, modifies our heart radically and makes us capable of gestures that, by the expansive force of good, can transform the life of those that are next to us. [...] A celebrated Eucharist imposes on us and at the same time renders us capable of becoming, in our turn, bread broken for brothers, coming to meet their needs and giving ourselves.

“Because of this, a Eucharistic celebration that does not lead to meet men where they live, work and suffer, to take to them the love of God, does not manifest the love it encloses.

“To be faithful to the mystery that is celebrated on the altars we must, as the Apostle Paul exhorts us, offer our bodies, ourselves, in spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God in those circumstances that require dying to our ‘I’ and constitute our daily ‘altar.’”

Above: Boston Cardinal Sean P O’Malley distributes Communion during Mass for the Daughters of Mary religious community in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Cardinal was part of a small group of US Bishops assessing damages following the 12 January earthquake. Several members of the community perished in the quake. Right: In a crucial part of his priestly ministry, Cardinal O’Malley blesses a young patient on the grounds of St Francis de Sales Hospital in Port-auPrince, Haiti on 2 March. He told a Eucharistic congress earlier this month that the Eucharist, which is central to the priest’s ministry, gives believers strength to love one another. PHOTOS: CNS/TOM TRACY/ GEORGE M. MARTELL, THE CATHOLIC FOUNDATION

Pope Benedict XVI censes the altar during the ordination Mass for 14 priests in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on 20 June. The Pope told participants at a convention for the Diocese of Rome that a well-celebrated Mass is the best catechesis a priest can give.

Obama loosens funding ban for prostitution, trafficking agents

THE Obama administration has loosened a ban on international aid to organisations that support prostitution or sex trafficking, the National Catholic Register reports. Under the new policy, an organisation receiving United States funds may have an “affiliated entity” that advocates for prositution and sex trafficking.

Religious talk suppressed at World Cup

ENGLAND soccer striker Wayne Rooney has been blocked from discussing his Catholic faith by an English Football Association official at the World Cup. Rooney had offered an explanation about why he wears a prominent cross and Rosary beads around his neck when he’s not playing: “I’ve been wearing them for about four years now and you don’t usually watch training (to see them). I obviously can’t wear them in games. It’s my religion.” That prompted a further question, but Mark Whittle, the FA’s head of media relations, interrupted Rooney in the off-camera briefing by saying: “We don’t do religion”, according to a report published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

European court gives Orthodox patriarch win over Turkey govt

THE European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favour of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Contantinople in a case against the government of Turkey. The court in Strasbourg ruled that Turkey must return a building that once housed an orphanage. More important, the court recognised the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a legal entity with the right to own property. The Turkish government has never recognised the patriarchate, treating the Orthodox body as a local religious community with no national or international status.

‘Gaza blockade hurts Christians’

THE pastor of the only Catholic Church in the Gaza Strip says that the effect of an Israel blockade is to “undermine people’s lives.” Fr Manawel Mussallam said that the blockadeaimed to weaken the Hamas terrorists who control the Gaza Strip - has had a debilitating effect on innocent civilians, stunting trade and bringing the local economy to a virtual standstill. “There are no differences between Christians and Muslims because we all suffer the same way,” he said.

Fear keeps Pakistan parliament from repealing blasphemy law

BISHOP Max John Rodrigues of the southern Pakistani city of Hyderabad told Fides that while most Pakistanis support the repeal of the blasphemy law used to oppress religious minorities, fear of retaliation keeps members of parliament from doing so.

“Christians and other religious minorities have been struggling for years against the law, promoting a national and international campaign, and most Muslims in Pakistan are also against the law,” said Bishop Rodrigues. “A handful of extremist Islamic groups want to keep it and are ready to mobilise to this effect: when in the past, announcements or attempts to abolish the law were made, public protests halted the process immediately. Today in parliament many members are afraid: they are intimidated, a possible target for extremist attacks,” he continued. “Our country is engaged in fighting terrorism, targeted murders, bomb explosions against our institutions and against the security forces. Those in power fear for their lives, and this keeps the situation at a standstill.”

Irish Bishops’ same-sex plea

THE Catholic Bishops of Ireland have issued a statement calling upon legislators to reconsider pending legislation that would give same-sex partnerships the same legal standing as marriage.

“This is not compatible with seeing the family based on marriage as the necessary basis of the social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and State,” the Bishops argued. They called attention to the Irish constitution’s guarantee that the government would “guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded.” The Bishops also asked parliament to amend the legislation to protect the conscience rights of individuals who uphold “the objective moral order and the teaching of the Gospel,” and the autonomy of churches.

Legionaries plumb the priesthood amidst crisis

Legionaries host Year for Priests conference on Good Shepherd figure

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - As part of the closing events for the Year for Priests, the Legionaries of Christ hosted top Vatican officials for a conference on the priest as the “image of the Good Shepherd.”

The 8 June event came as the Legionaries themselves were struggling with revelations that their founder, the late Mexican Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, had fathered children and sexually abused seminarians, the focus of a major Vatican investigation.

While the Vatican has made it clear that Fr Maciel’s “most grave and objectively immoral conduct” calls for “a path of profound revision” in the order, Vatican officials have had no reservations about supporting the Legionaries’ academic and spiritual initiatives.

The conference on the priest as Good Shepherd was scheduled before the most recent disclosures about Fr Maciel.

In opening remarks, Fr Gabriel Gonzalez, director of a Legionaries’ spiritual institute for priests in Rome, made a vague reference to the scandal and the wider sex abuse crisis in the Church when he said it was paradoxical and perhaps providential that “we have seen the figure of the priest wounded in a particular way in the year dedicated to him.”

“In these circumstances, reflection on the mystery of the priesthood becomes more necessary than ever,” he said. He added that even “the most negative aspects of the humanity” of individual priests take nothing from the greatness and beauty of the priesthood.

Fr Pedro Barrajon, the rector of the Legionaries’ Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, said the Year for Priests has been a difficult but significant one for Legionaries because of the “discoveries of the past.”

“For us it’s a reminder to return to what we ought to be, as priests or seminarians,” Fr Barrajon said.

“This is an encouragement. On one hand, it says the priest is full of weaknesses, and the Church and other people suffer from that, for which we are truly sorry. But at the same time, we cannot abandon a vocation that’s been received. So we have a commitment to go forward on a path of priestly holiness,” he said.

Addressing about 300 priest and seminarian participants, most of them from the Legionaries’ university, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera said holiness is a require-

ment of every priest. “Our vocation demands that we be saints, and we cannot be content with anything else. If the priest is not a saint, everything crumbles to the ground,” he said. Evangelisation depends on priestly holiness, and holiness depends on how closely the priest is configured to Christ, he said.

Cardinal Canizares, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, said “vigorous prayer” - personal and liturgical - was key to the priest’s ministry.

He said he was convinced that if every priest said Mass and prayed a half-hour privately each day, then “the Church would live a new spring.”

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said in a talk that the Church’s first pastoral challenges today come from inside the Church and “our own priestly being.” Priests need to understand first of all that in ministry they are servants, not managers or functionaries, he said.

The cultural challenges to priestly ministry are many and varied, Archbishop Fisichella said. He said priests need profound formation today to deal with an “epochal change” in the fundamental notions that have shaped human civilisation for thousands of years, including the concepts of nature, man, rights, justice, truth, beauty and even God.

He said priests above all need to be able to communicate effectively with contemporary culture, and that requires an ongoing attention to the cultural trends that help determine modern beliefs and lifestyles.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, celebrated Mass with participants at the end of the conference.

Pope meets Legionaries leader

POPE Benedict XVI met with Fr Alvaro Corcuera Martinez del Rio, the Superior General of the Legionaries of Christ, in a private audience on 17 June.

Fr Alvaro

The Vatican offered no information about the content of their discussions.

The Vatican announced in May that Pope Benedict XVI would appoint a delegate to oversee the affairs of the Legionaries of Christ.

That announcement came after an apostolic visitation of the Legionaries to assess the damage done by the “objectively immoral actions” of the order’s founder, Fr Marcial Maciel.

One key question raised by critics of the Legionaries has been the extent to which the order’s current leaders were responsible for the founder’s misdeeds.

The Order issued a statement in May saying that no one in the current leadership was aware of Maciel’s wrongdoing.

The Legionaries are now waiting for Pope Benedict to name his delegate and clarify the scope of his authority over the Order.

Don’t jump at schools funding: Catholic Ed

ENGLAND (CWN) - THE Catholic Education Service in England is advising administrators of Catholic schools that they should resist the government’s campaign to reorganise themselves as “academy” schools with public funding.

The Catholic Education Service reminded the Catholic school

chiefs that although the government currently supplied 90 per cent of their funding, the remaining 10 per cent gives them a measure of independence. The government’s new plans for “academy” schools leave many questions about independence unanswered, the Service noted in a letter to 2,000 schools.

“The funding opportunities may initially seem attractive to schools but remember there is, as yet, little precise detail on this and the payment of our 10 per cent to capital costs at present buys our sector a degree of valuable independence along the lines of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’,” the Catholic Education Service said.

Bishop Max John Rodrigues

Wayne Rooney

Barack Obama

Members of the Legionaries of Christ attend Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican on 16 December. PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

A good priest is ready to suffer for people

Juneau Bishop, priests issue pastoral on strong and holy priesthood

BY CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

JUNEAU, Alaska -

To mark the close of the Church’s Year for Priests, Bishop Edward J Burns of Juneau and the diocese’s nine active priests issued a pastoral letter highlighting the importance of dedicated priests working with one another as well as the Catholic faithful to strengthen the Church.

The Bishop and priests also apologised for the clergy sex abuse scandal and said they “seek to repair what has been damaged.”

Issued on 6 June, the letter noted some of the challenges priests face today and praised priests who have been strong examples of faith at local parishes and missions along with those who have spoken publicly in defense of Catholic social teaching.

Bishop Burns noted in the introduction that pastorals are usually written just by the Bishop but said he wanted to write this one with his brother priests to illustrate the need for them all to work together to strengthen the Church.

But that will not happen by their efforts alone, he acknowledged, pledging to work with all Catholics in the diocese, “utilising the gifts and wisdom of the Holy Spirit in

order to focus on the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ through the traditions of our Church.”

“The priesthood challenges every one of us to grow and change to meet the needs of the people we serve,” the pastoral said.

“Celebrating the Sacraments gives us the opportunity to enter deeply into people’s lives with the light of Christ and the love of God,” it said.

A priest is called to follow the example of Christ, as a spiritual father and shepherd, and like a

good father, must always put family first and “his own interests last,” it said.

“A good priest, like a good father, is always ready, if necessary, to suffer and sacrifice on behalf of his people.”

The strength of the priesthood comes from living “the fullness of the vows and promises” made at ordination, such as chaste celibacy and “a life lived simply” for God and his people.

Regarding the sex abuse scandal, the pastoral said that “although the

Cardinal a ‘wounded healer’

English Cardinal cites past mistake, says he wants to help remove abuse

BY SIMON CALDWELL Catholic News Service

LONDON - An English Cardinal severely criticised for his mishandling of a paedophile priest said he has become a “wounded healer” who aimed to help rid the Catholic Church of the evil of child abuse.

Cardinal Cormac MurphyO’Connor, retired Archbishop of Westminster, told Irish priests gathered at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, near Dublin, that his ministry as a Bishop was marred by a single mistake made in the 1990s while he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, in southern England.

“The things I remember about my life as a priest are not the successes but rather the failures, and one particular and painful failure occurred 10 years ago when, owing to my grave mishandling of a priest who was an abuser, I was attacked and vilified for nearly two years,” the Cardinal said in a 15 June speech at Ireland’s national seminary and pontifical university.

“How well I remember the feelings of failure and isolation and shame, not so much for myself but for my family, my diocese, for the Catholic people of England and Wales who, to a certain extent, felt the shame of my own failure and of child abuse in general,” he said.

“But I also began to understand in a new way, by talking with victims, the pain and grave damage done to them,” he said.

“I say this to show, I suppose, that I myself am not free from blame but have had to learn from mistakes to become, as someone described it, a wounded healer.

visitors to Ireland after a series of clerical abuse scandals.

He has been given responsibility for the Archdiocese of Armagh, Northern Ireland, historically seen as the most pre-eminent of the four Irish Archdioceses.

The Cardinal said he was invited as a guest speaker to Maynooth Union 2010 - a celebration bringing together the “jubilee classes” of priests ordained in 1950, 1960 and 1985, along with many others - before his appointment.

He told the priests that their sense of loss, betrayal and mistrust was nothing compared to suffering of the victims of abuse.

He also invited his audience to learn from St Luke’s Gospel account of the “road to Emmaus,” when Jesus mysteriously accompanied two disciples mourning his crucifixion. He explained how the story suggested that hope and renewal could grow from shame and devastation.

great majority of priests have never been involved in such misconduct and regard it with horror, we as a presbyterate are called to pray for forgiveness.”

“We are plagued with the continuing reports of scandalous behaviour by a few of those who are supposed to be our leaders and mentors,” it said.

“With you, we, your Bishop and priests, experience a deep sense of disillusionment, confusion, mistrust, betrayal, embarrassment and hurt.”

The pastoral described the “dark cloud of scandal” as a stumbling block to faith and trust. To best address it, the Bishop and the priests pledged to “foster healing, restore confidence, and become a more effective instrument of God’s grace and salvation in our age.”

They acknowledged that for healing to take place and for the Church to grow, church leaders must “apologise sincerely and wholeheartedly to our people for the evil they have suffered, especially to the victims of abuse by priests and to the families of those victims.”

They also pledged to continue to ensure the protection of children from such abuse in the future.

In the letter, they offered their “deepest apology to those who have suffered the humiliation and degradation of sexual abuse perpetrated by any priest or other Church ministers”.

“We are sorry for the failures of our church leaders, especially its priests, to recognise and acknowledge the lasting harm caused by such abuse,” they said.

They also noted that “an apology for the sins and failings of our past is not sufficient to restore justice” which they hoped to begin to do with prayer, continued care for abuse victims in the Juneau Diocese and aggressive efforts to safeguard children.

Bishop Burns and the priests stressed that they would continue to look to God for strength and they urged Catholics in the diocese to do the same.

They noted a decline in Sunday Mass attendance and stressed that “weakened standards of morals thrive in an environment” where Catholics have “given up on” the Sacraments of Penance and Communion.

“Let us renew our Christian commitment to worship God every Sunday, to keep holy the Lord’s day, and thereby draw blessings down upon our families, parishes and missions,” they wrote.

The pastoral letter expressed hope that “Christ’s saving presence” would help the Church get through its current challenges just as it aided the Church through previous difficulties.

“We pray with confidence that the Church in our time will be filled with His saving grace which will strengthen us all,” it said.

BP oil leak a ‘lesson in humility’: Vatican speaker

“From that experience I learned yet again to pray for perseverance, obedience to my vocation, and of suffering in a way which I did not expect and which, in the end, brought some positive benefit because of the national safeguarding policies, procedures and structures which are now in place and used in all our parishes and dioceses in England and Wales.”

He referred to his appointment of Fr Michael Hill as chaplain to Gatwick Airport, near London, despite receiving credible allegations against him.

Fr Hill went on to abuse again, and one of his victims was a 14 year old boy confined to a wheelchair because he had cerebral palsy. The priest was later jailed for five years.

In May, Pope Benedict XVI named the 77 year old Cardinal, who was born in England to Irish parents, as one of nine apostolic

“My sense is that we are on that same road as those disciples,” said Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor.

“Though the recent revelations about child abuse and the failure at so many levels of the Church’s leadership can make it difficult, I believe we can have confidence in the road that we are walking. I want to assure you, there is the joy of resurrection after suffering and death.”

The Cardinal said it was clear that the Church could not repeat the “formulas of the past” that had given rise to the abuse crisis.

“Some have spoken of this time as the ‘dark night’ of the Church in Ireland,” he said.

“Yet, painful though the dark night is, we know it is also a time of learning; a time of purifying and of trusting. In the dark night, all we have is our faith that God has not abandoned us.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The “sense of powerlessness and delay” in resolving the worst offshore oil spill in US history offers a lesson about the limits of technology, a Vatican official said.

Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said in a commentary on 19 June that the leaking BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was a disaster “of enormous proportions, and getting worse.” He compared it to the 1984 chemical factory explosion in Bhopal, India or the 1986 meltdown of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

“What is striking in this case is the sense of powerlessness and delay in finding a solution to this disaster faced by one of the largest and most technologically advanced oil multinationals in the world, but also by the most powerful country on earth,” Fr Lombardi said.

“It seems incredible, but it is a fact. This is not the eruption of

a volcano, but a relatively small man-made hole in the seabed. Yet, in two months, expert scientists and technicians, leaders in their field, have failed to plug it,” he said.

The Vatican spokesman said he hoped people would draw from the disaster a lesson of prudence and care in the use of the earth’s resources.

“Perhaps we can also draw a lesson in humility,” he said.

“Technology will advance. But if a relatively simple production process leaves us so helpless, what will we do if much more complex processes get out of hand, such as those affecting the energy hidden in the heart of matter or moreover in the processes of the formation of life?” he said.

Fr Lombardi noted that the issue of responsible use of technology was addressed by Pope Benedict XVI in his latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”).

Bishop Edward J Burns of Juneau, Alaska, right, embraces a fellow bishop during the sign of peace at Mass on the opening day of the US Bishops’ annual fall meeting in Baltimore on 16 November. PHOTO: CNS/BOB ROLLER

British Cardinal Cormac MurphyO’Connor, retired Archbishop of Westminster, has been named by Pope Benedict XVI to lead the visitation of the Archdiocese of Armagh, Northern Ireland.

PHOTO: CNS/NANCY WIECHEC

Workers contracted by BP scrape oil from a beach on 23 May in Port Fourchon, Louisiana after it was inundated by the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig. For nearly a month, roughly 210,000 gallons of oil per day have been gushing from BP’s broken Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

Christians are under ‘considerable pressure’, so...

One of the most prominent Catholic voices in the Englishspeaking world on the sex-abuse crisis, Islam, and the future of Christianity in an exclusive MercatorNet interview. His new book is on sale from The Record Bookshop.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, is one of the leading Catholic voices in the Englishspeaking world. He has just published a collection of 80 homilies, speeches and pastoral letters, Test Everything: Hold fast to what is good. MercatorNet asked him about the future of Christianity in a time of tension and anxiety.

Mercatornet: You gave one of your most powerful homilies at the beginning of World Youth Day in Sydney. You used the Biblical image of dry bones clattering together, coming alive. Christianity today looks a lot like dry bones, in many ways. What signs do you see of spiritual renewal?

Cardinal Pell: In most parts of the world and even most parts of Australia I do not think the Catholic community looks like dead bones. We are under considerable pressure. There is a continuing, very slow decline of practice, probably slower in the Sydney Archdiocese than nearly any other part in Australia.

But there are many initiatives. I am particularly pleased with the progress we are making in our Catholic schools. We are building on the To Know Worship and Love programme of religious education which has been in use now seven or eight years, and recently there has been an appointment of youth ministry or faith development co-ordinator in each secondary school.

So we have had a welcome turnaround. At the recent launch of my Pentecost Statement at the Catholic Church at Liverpool, probably more young people there came from school-based groups rather than parish groups. That is a bit of a change. The popularity of silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament initially came as a surprise. On reflection, of course, the absence of silence in the life of so many of our young people probably indicates that this act of silent worship is very appropriate and much needed by them.

Wherever the figure of Christ is presented to young people, a goodly percentage of them respond, and respond favourably, to the call to repent and turn their hearts. Unfortunately, in some cases people work hard to avoid mentioning Christ. They talk about the environment, social justice, possibly life issues, the role of women, global warming, the poor overseas, anything except Christ’s call to repentance and conversion. That has got to be central, and when it is central we make some significant progress.

Mecatornet: The sex abuse

scandal has been dragging on for some time and undoubtedly there is more to come. Do you think that the Catholic Church can ever recover from this crisis?

Cardinal Pell: There is no doubt the Church, and its moral authority, have been damaged and this wound is being exploited by the enemies of the Church. But life goes on. We are called to repentance and renewal.

It is certainly not a crisis equal, for example, to the French Revolution, or the rise of Communism or Nazism, or World War I or World War II. It varies in intensity even in different places in Australia, in different countries. Right across the nation we have had good procedures in place since 1996.

The first and most important element is to face up to the truth and do what we can for those who have suffered, the victims. Then we have to have procedures in place to deal with crimes and abuse. We are certainly heading in the right direction in this country. We have faced up to, and are facing up to, this terrible and wounding challenge.

Mercatornet: You seem very impressed by the Fatherhood of God in Christianity. Does that give

40 years ago. The old denominational rivalries have almost completely disappeared. That means that good Christians in the other Churches and denominations will often listen to what we have to say. The fundamental tension now is between the Judaeo-Christian point of view and the secular, irreligious point of view.

There is plenty of suffering in our prosperous society, sickness, often psychological sickness, sadness, and death, which the permissive society brings with it. Pope John Paul II was right to describe our way of life, when it goes wrong, as representing a culture of death. We believe in life and love and if we practise what we preach, people will be more inclined to listen to what we have to say. As society becomes more chaotic, with a higher percentage of people wounded and sad, this must increase the opportunities for the Church to reach out to teach and help and heal.

Mercatornet: What is the point of teaching doctrines which most Catholics, let alone others, will reject – like bans on divorce and contraception?

Cardinal Pell: Christ Himself was rejected. We do not do focus polling to find out which Christian

it an edge on Islam?

Cardinal Pell: Christianity, Catholicism in particular, has an edge on Islam. I am tempted to say: in every way. Islam is a regression, culturally as well as religiously.

I do not think it compares in any significant way with Christianity.

I say that because there is much less about love in the Koran than there is in the writings about Christ in the Gospels and the New Testament.

Islam is fundamentally handicapped because it does not recognise the divinity of Christ. The Incarnation is an immense advantage. In Christ, God came down to our level. So when we see Christ teaching and acting, we have an insight into God himself.

Another point is that while Christians certainly endorse and explain and emphasise the differences between men and women, we believe in a fundamental equality between men and women in God’s eyes according to the teachings of Christianity. That is very different in Islam.

Mercatornet: Secular states, you argue, subtly discourage discussion of ultimate questions. Does that give Christianity an opening?

Cardinal Pell: Christianity has openings in every society but we have particular opportunities today in Australia that possibly were not there to such an extent 20, 30 or

way of life is based upon individualism and that can quickly degenerate into old-fashioned selfishness.

At World Youth Day I said that one commitment is worth a thousand options, and we need to say that regularly to our young people, and show them adults who opt for the good and the true and the beautiful, and stick with those options.

Mercatornet: The Trinity and the Redemption are comforting Christian doctrines, but there doesn’t seem to be much need for them in a comfortable society like Australia. How can you expect people to connect with them?

Cardinal Pell: Well, the Redemption is not difficult to explain. Nearly everybody, once they have reached a certain level of maturity, recognises that even in our prosperous and wonderful society there is plenty of sadness and sickness. All is not well in the world. It never was.

was a lot like ours – theological dissent, disputes between science and faith, aggressive atheism and so on. Yet it was also the age of notable converts like Newman. Does Catholicism attract converts today?

Cardinal Pell: The situation has moved on a lot from the Victorian age which saw deep hostility between the Christian denominations. That is no longer present. Amongst the minority of highly educated scientists and thinkers in the Victorian era, many of them were very confident that they would see the demise of religion in a generation or so. That has not happened and nobody is claiming it will happen now.

teachings are popular and acceptable across the community and then only teach them. The Cross is a sign of contradiction and there is a significant element in Catholic teaching which contradicts many human desires and accepted practices. The reflexes of our society are still heavily influenced by Christianity, so calls to faith and hope and love in many ways are congenial to Australian society, as is our call for social justice.

In morals, as well as in coping with human weakness, we have the wonderful Christian teaching on forgiveness. If there are blind spots in society, one of the roles of the Church is to point those out. In our pansexual and permissive society there are many blind spots around marriage and family and sexuality and life. The Church is called to throw Christian light on these murky situations.

Mercatornet: Young people, including Catholics, seem allergic to commitment. In a post-modern world, is that going to change?

Cardinal Pell: That is part of the story but it is not the whole story. Undoubtedly people are encouraged to keep their options open. It is closely connected with the spread and the availability of education to more and more people, the reluctance to marry early, delaying childbearing, so as not to curtail careers. The whole western

There is a flaw that runs through our hearts and right through society. The defect is not just in the structures of society. It is in the human heart. In other words, we need to be redeemed.

The particular Christian teaching that redemption is offered to us through the suffering death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is as provocative and remarkable as it ever was.

There is a confused and often incoherent yearning for transcendence, especially in our young people.

Not in all of them, of course, but it is shown not just in the popularity of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, of silent adoration, but also in the way even semi-religious young Catholics are pleased to be at what they might call a good Mass, one that is well put together. There is also this search among the New Age alternatives, all sorts of forms of superstition, and people there are looking for something beyond the ordinary.

Whatever the future might be it will not be full of agnostics, or scientific and arid non-believers. The alternative to genuine and beautiful religion, as exemplified in Catholicism at its best, is a rampant superstition and often a superstition which is not conducive to health or well-being or justice at all.

Mercatornet: The Victorian era

Undoubtedly, in many parts of Europe religion is in decline, Christianity is in decline. That is not true in the United States. I do not think it is as bad in most parts of Australia. What is different from the Victorian age is the resurgence of a militant and a fundamentalist Islam, and the rise of terrorism. There are some secularist views which use this form of religion to attack all religions. Our task is to point out that religions are very different and that the fruits of genuine Christianity and Catholicism are very different from the fruits of even mainstream Islam, not to mention the radical difference between Christianity and the Islamist terrorists.

We do have some important converts here in Australia. I think of Les Murray, the poet. Even percentage-wise, we are not receiving as many intellectual converts as in the United States, although there is a small but steady stream here in Australia.

Many of our converts are coming from the Australian-Chinese, the Australian-Vietnamese, and those from Asian backgrounds; dozens and dozens and dozens such people are coming in every year. We also have a small, silent, and unpublicised stream of converts from Islam. Often they have to keep this quiet for their own peace or for the peace and security of their relatives at home.

But genuine Catholicism, when it is believed and lived, and especially when there are traditions of service, always attracts converts. That means, of course, we have to have people in the public square explaining the advantages

Abortionists get over $1b of US funds

Abortion-promoting groups got nearly US$1 billion in federal funds

BY NANCY FRAZIER O’BRIEN Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON - Six organisations that perform or promote abortion received at least US$967 million (AUS$1,103,885,643) in Federal funding in fiscal years 2002 through 2009, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report, made public on 16 June, looked at government funding given to Advocates for Youth, the Guttmacher Institute, International Planned Parenthood Federation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Council of the United States, and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

GAO had been asked for the report by Rep Pete Olson, R-Texas, and 30 other members of Congress, including five senators.

“With the national debt over US$13 trillion - costing every American US$118,000 - we must apply strict scrutiny to every Federal dollar allocated,” said Olson at a 16 June news conference at the US Capitol.

Abortion and Federal Funds

A

GUTTMACHER

“That this tax money is spent by organisations that offend the majority of Americans (who oppose taxpayer funding of groups that promote or perform abortions) only further justifies the need for this alarming report,” he added.

The GAO report showed the following government funding:

● Advocates for Youth, US$8.7 million.

● Guttmacher Institute, US$12.7 million.

● International Planned Parenthood Federation, US$3.9 million.

● Planned Parenthood Federation of America, US$657.1 million.

● Population Council of the United States, US$284.3 million.

● Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, US$300,000.

The totals for Advocates for Youth, International Planned Parenthood, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council covered the years 20022009, while the totals for the other three were from 2002 to 2008.

Nearly all the reported expenditures in the report (about US$942 million) were by programmes administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services or the US Agency for International Development.

The remaining US$25 million

came from programmes administered by the US departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture or Justice.

USAID also shipped “contraceptive commodities” valued at US$7.6 million to affiliates of the International Planned Parenthood Federation during the time period studied, but that spending was not included in the total, the report said.

“Additionally, for Federal fiscal years 2002 through 2005, complete obligation and disbursement data for awards made through USAID’s overseas-based missions were not available,” the GAO said in the report. “As a result, obligations and disbursements in this report may understate the actual amount of Federal funds provided to the selected organisations and their affiliates.”

The GAO noted that during most of the time covered by the report, the Mexico City policy was in effect. It required foreign non-governmental organisations receiving Federal funds for family planning to agree that they would not actively promote or provide abortions as a method of family planning in other countries. The policy was revoked in January 2009 by President Barack Obama.

Rep Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, said US funding of “the abortion industry at home and abroad” has significantly increased since

Obama’s election. “When Obama shredded the Mexico City policy, he opened the floodgate of taxpayer funds to pro-abortion NGOs” such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Smith added at the 16 June news conference. “It is time for Americans and especially Congress to take a second look and defund” those organisations.

Earlier in the month, Smith, a Catholic who co-chairs the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, expressed opposition to a Senate committee’s vote to overturn the longtime ban on abortions in military medical facilities.

“Our military facilities should be a place of hope and healing, not intentional destruction of innocent human life,” he said.

“This amendment will mean that as many as 260 military medical facilities worldwide will now be in the abortion business.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee recently voted 15-12 in favour of an amendment to the annual Department of Defense authorisation bill that would delete a ban on abortion in military facilities signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Smith said he did not expect the House, which has already passed the Defence bill without the amendment, to approve the change if the legislation comes back from the Senate with the amendment.

Mother, child given priority in maternal death crisis

Vatican urges measures to lessen number of maternal deaths

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The Vatican has urged the international community to implement social and health care measures to reduce what it called the “shocking” number of maternal deaths around the world.

Such improvements should include better access to antiretroviral medications by African mothers who are HIV-positive, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to UN agencies in Geneva. Introducing a minimum age of 18 years for marriage could also help reduce the maternal death rate, he said.

Archbishop Tomasi addressed a maternal mortality panel of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 14 June.

Experts estimate that 350,000500,000 women die each year during or shortly after pregnancy.

Archbishop Tomasi noted that most maternal deaths occur in the developing world, and he said there was a strong correlation between maternal mortality and neonatal death. Each year, about three million babies die during their first week of life, 3 million are stillborn and another 2.3 million die during their first year of life, he said.

The Catholic Church has a long history of caring for mothers and newborns, especially through its hospitals and maternity and pediatric clinics, he said. The Church takes a holistic approach that gives priority to the rights of mother and child, including the unborn, he said. “Policies aimed at combating maternal mortality and child

mortality need to strike a delicate balance between the rights of the mother and those of the child, both of whom are rights bearers, the first of which is the right to life,” he said. He pointed to specific improvements that can be made in social and health sectors to prevent maternal deaths, including universal pre- and postnatal care, adequate transportation of medical facilities, skilled birth attendants, appropriate antibiotics, and clean blood and water supplies.

All these “are measures that could benefit both mothers and their children,” he said.

Most importantly, he added, if the international community wants to reduce maternal mortality rates, “respect for and promotion of the right to health and of access to medications must not only be spoken about, but also be put into action, by states as well as by nongovernmental organisations and by civil society.”

The most maternal deaths per live births happen in African countries where prenatal care is not easily accessible. Countries with the highest

Lawmakers called to recognise natural moral law: Benedict

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Respect for human dignity and for human rights is an obligatory result of a natural moral law that everyone is capable of knowing and following, Pope Benedict XVI said. “When natural law and the responsibility it implies are denied, the path toward ethical relativism opens dramatically, both on an individual level as well as on a political level,” leading to the threat of totalitarianism, the Pope said on 16 June at his weekly general audience.

The key to natural law, he said, is recognising the dignity of each person and every human life.

Continuing a series of audience talks about important Church figures from the Middle Ages, Pope Benedict spoke about St Thomas Aquinas and his teaching on the relationship between faith and reason and on the relationship between grace and natural law.

In his theology, St Thomas Aquinas taught that “faith consolidates, integrates and enlightens the patrimony of truth acquired by human reason,” and reason helps theology explain faith, he said.

St Thomas wrote that despite sin, human nature is not “completely corrupt,” and the gift of God’s grace, communicated through Christ, “heals, strengthens and helps nature pursue the desire innate in the heart of every man and every woman for happiness,” he said.

Grace helps Christians reach the heights of moral perfection, but reason is also essential because that is the faculty needed to discern how best to apply the virtues and the moral teaching of the Church, the Pope said. Human reason alone can recognise the requirements of

natural moral law - “that which is good to do and that which is best to avoid in order to pursue the happiness that everyone seeks and which also requires taking responsibility for others, the search for the common good,” he said. While grace helps people approach perfection, “according to St Thomas, all people - believers and non-believers - are called to recognise the requirements of human nature expressed in natural law and to be inspired by it” when formulating their laws, Pope Benedict said.

Right: St Thomas Aquinas CNS

PANORAMA

A roundup of events in the Archdiocese

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

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

THURSDAY, 24 JUNE

An Hour For Sheen Concert

7.30pm Trinity College, Trinity Ave, East Perth in Gibney Hall which has recycled airconditioning. Featuring Yan Kee Soprano; John Meyer Pianist; St Joseph’s Chamber Choir and Poet and Raconteur June Glen, all highly trained and talented artists. Special preview of the Film Servant of All, a biography of Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J Sheen. This DVD will be available on the night. Presented by the Fulton J Sheen Society Inc. $27.50 includes warm refreshments. Concessions for Seniors, Pensioners and Students. Enq and Bookings Daniel 9291 8224 . Email sheensociety@globaldial.com.

Morley Mental Health Support Group Workshop

7–8pm at Infant Jesus Parish Hall, 47 Wellington St, Morley. Please bring a plate to share. Topic: An Introduction to “Taking control of your life”, facilitated by Barbara Harris. Interested in coming along? If so, contact Thelma on 9276 5949 or Darren on 9276 8500 or Barbara Harris on 9328 8113.

FRIDAY, 25 JUNE

MEDJUGORJE-EVENING OF PRAYER

All are warmly invited. 7-9pm at All Saint’s Chapel, 77 St George’s Tce, Allendale Sq, Perth for ‘An Evening of Prayer’ with Our Lady Queen of Peace. Evening consists of Adoration, Rosary, Benediction and Holy Mass. Free DVD on Fr Donald Calloway’s conversion from life of sexual promiscuity, drugs, alcohol and crime to priesthood. Enq 9402 2480 or email medjugorje@y7mail.com.

SATURDAY, 26 JUNE

Novena devotions in honour of Our Lady of Good Health Vailankanni

Holy Trinity Church, Embleton followed by the Vigil Mass at 6pm. Enquiries Church Office 9271 5528 or George Jacob 9272 1379.

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE

Day of Reflection

St Paul’s Church, 106 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. 10.30am Rosary Cenacle, followed by Holy Mass & Talks, concluding 2pm. Celebrant & Speaker: Fr Timothy Deeter. Bring lunch to share. Tea/coffee supplied. Enquiries: 9341 8082.

SUNDAY, 4 JULY

Divine Mercy

An afternoon with Jesus and Mary will be held at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, Perth at 1.30pm. The main celebrant for the afternoon will be Fr Hugh Thomas CSSR - Homily on Our Lady of Perpeptual Help. Refreshments will follow afterwards. Enquiries call John on 9457 7771.

SATURDAY, 10 JULY

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

Sts John and Paul 5 Inham Ct, Willetton-Brentwood Programme as follows:

8.30am - St Padre Pio DVD

10am - Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary. Divine Mercy, Silent Adoration and Benediction.

11am - Holy Mass, celebrant Fr Tiziano Bogoniu, St Padre Pio Liturgy, Confessions available.

12pm - Bring a plate for a shared lunch. Tea and coffee supplied. For more information contact us on 6278 1540.

Divine Mercy

The Divine Mercy Healing Mass will be offered at St Francis Xavier’s Church, Windsor St, East Perth at 2.30pm. The main Celebrant will be Fr Marcellinus Meiilak, OFM. reconciliation in English and Italian will be offered. Divine Mercy prayers followed by Veneration of First Class relic of St Faustina Kowalska, Refreshments afterwards. All enquiries call John on 9457 7771.

GENERAL NOTICES

Perpetual Adoration

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

Perpetual Adoration

Sacred Heart Church, 64 Mary St, Highgate. All that is needed is for each one of us to be willing to spend one hour a week with Jesus so that all the hours are covered with one person in the Chapel. Available times, Monday 2-3am, 4-5am, Saturday 11am-12 noon, Tuesday 11am12 noon, Sunday 2-3pm, 3-4pm; Thursday 7-8pm. Enq Helen 9444 7962.

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

The Church of St Jude in Langford is seeking to put together a visit to Jordan, the Holy Land and Egypt, leaving 8 September 2010. The duration of pilgrimage is expected to be 15 days and could accommodate 28-30 people. Fr Terry Raj will be the Spiritual Director. Enq Matt 6460 6877, mattpicc1@gmail.com.

EVERY SUNDAY

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

EVERY SUNDAY AND MONDAY

Extraordinary Form of Latin Holy Mass 11am Sunday and 7.30pm Monday except 3rd Monday of the month, at St Joseph’s Parish, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood, Religious Life

2-3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington St, Morley. The hour includes Exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, Scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray that those discerning vocations to the Priesthood or Religious life hear clearly God’s loving call to them.

LAST MONDAY OF EVERY MONTH

Christian Spirituality Presentation 7.30-9.15pm at the Church hall behind St Swithan’s Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie. Stephanie Woods will present The Desert Period of Christianity, 260

to 600AD. From this time period came the understanding of the monastic lifestyle and contemplative prayer. No cost. Enq Lynne 9293 3848.

EVERY TUESDAY

Novena to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and Benediction

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

EVERY WEDNESDAY

Holy Spirit of Freedom Community

7.30pm at The Church of Christ, 111 Stirling St, Perth. We are delighted to welcome everyone to attend our Holy Spirit of Freedom Praise Meeting. Enq 9475 0155 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

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

EVERY THURSDAY

Catholic Questions and Answers

7-7.30pm at St Joseph’s Parish Centre, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean. Catechesis learned easily with questions and answers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Adult learning and deepening of the Catholic Faith, with Fr John Corapi DVD series, 7.30-9pm.

EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Group 50 – Catholic Charismatic Renewal Prayer Meeting

7.30pm at Redemptorist Monastery, 190 Vincent St, North Perth. Prayer and Praise, Mass and the Sacrament of Anointing. All welcome. There will be no meeting on 1 July 2010.

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigil

All warmly invited 7pm-1am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park. Mass, Rosary, Confession and Adoration. Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357.

Mass for Vocations

7pm at the Sisters of the Poor, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Celebrated by Fr Doug Harris, followed by Holy Hour and Benediction, refreshments will follow.

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s Church, 93 Wood St, Inglewood. Benediction, Praise and Worship followed by Mass with Fr Sam and Fr Joseph Tran as celebrants, later fellowship. Enq: Priscilla 0433 457 352.

EVERY FRIDAY LUNCH TIME

Christian Meditation comes to the City

12.15-12.45pm at The Wesley Uniting Church, William and Hay Sts, Perth. Ecumenical Christian meditation as taught by Fr Laurence Freeman. All Welcome. Enq: CMC WA 9444 5810, Anne 9335 8142 or christianmedittion@ iinet.net.au or www.christianmeditationaustralia.org.

BIRTHS

in brief...

Vatican denies Polish Archbishop who resigned has returned to ministry

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The Vatican has denied reports that it lifted restrictions on a Polish Archbishop who resigned because of sex abuse allegations eight years ago.The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, said June 19 that there was no basis for reports that retired Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan had been “rehabilitated” and restored to active ministry.

“The criteria and restrictions estab-

lished in 2002, which have been followed up to this time, will not be modified,” Fr Lombardi said. He said that meant Archbishop Paetz would not be able to preside over public liturgical ceremonies. Archbishop Paetz, now 75, resigned under pressure in March 2002 after allegations that he had sexually abused seminarians in his western Archdiocese. The action came after a four-month Vatican investigation.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Benedict Paul Goodman, 4kg 70g

Your announcement of the birth of a child, grandchild, niece, nephew or friend could make this even more special by placing it in the newspaper for everyone to see.

BIRTHDAYS

BAPTISMS MARRIAGES

ANNIVERSARIES

DEATHS

Patrick B Mohen

The Mohen Family wish to thank everyone for all your expressions of sympathy at the passing of brother Patrick.

Text only: $10.00

Text with photo: $20.00

Limit of 30 words per announcement.

To place an announcment in next week’s issue, please contact production@therecord.com.au.

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

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

GUADALUPE HILL TRIGG www.beachhouseperth.com

Ph: 0400 292 100.

HEALTH

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHOTHERAPY

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

LOSE WEIGHT safely with natural products. Free ongoing support. 02 9807 5337.

LAWNS

WRR LAWN MOWING and Weed Spraying. Get rid of Bindii & Jojo clovers, city of Stirling only. Enq 9443 9243, or 0402 326 637.B

BOOK BINDING

BOOK REPAIR SERVICE

New Book Binding, General Book Repairs, Rebinding, New Ribbons; Old Leather Bindings Restored. Tydewi Bindery 9377 0005.

TRADE SERVICES

BRENDON HANDYMAN

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

PLASTERING homes and renovations. Ph Neil 9390 6333.

BRICK REPOINTING

Ph: Nigel 9242 2952.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd

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

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

MINI EXCAVATOR HIRE Trenching and civil works. Daniel Mob 0428 170 379.

FURNITURE REMOVAL

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

FOR SALE

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

PEEKABOO CORNER Good quality & affordable branded kids’ clothing. For boys & girls 0 to 6 years. Don’t miss out 20% discount for first 20 customers. Errina: 0401 454 933. Email: peekaboo.corner@gmail.com or visit www.peekaboo-corner.blogspot. com.

ORGAN FOR SALE Old fashioned chamber organ. Wilcox and White. Meridian Gonn USA. Photo and details email:gschaefer@ amnet.net.au or call George on 08 9386 1695.

CHURCH KNEELERS

Pair of splendid jarrah three metre kneelers. Photo and details email: gschaefer@amnet.net.au or call George on 08 9386 1695.

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

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

OTTIMO Convenient city location for books, CDs/DVDs, cards, candles, statues, Bibles, medals and much more. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade (Terrace level), 671 Hay St, Perth. Ph 9322 4520. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm.

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

Naples Cardinal under investigation

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - As Italian magistrates continue a wide-ranging investigation into public works contracts and suspected kickbacks, they have informed Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe of Naples that he is a subject of the investigation.

The investigators are looking at contracts Cardinal Sepe made with government officials while he was head of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples in 20012006. Italian newspapers speculated that the Cardinal sold property below market value to a government minister who then allocated public funds for work on the Vatican building housing the congregation.

There are also questions about how the

KINLAR VESTMENTS Quality hand-made and decorat-

Cardinal helped a government official - now under investigation - find an apartment. At a press conference in Naples on 21 June, Cardinal Sepe said: “I always did everything with maximum transparency. “I always acted in accordance with my conscience, having the good of the Church as my only objective,” he said. In addition, the Cardinal said, every financial decision made while he was prefect of the congregation was reviewed by the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and by the Vatican Secretariat of State. Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said in a statement on 20 June that the Vatican supported Cardinal Sepe “in this difficult moment.”

“Cardinal Sepe is a person who has worked and works intensely and generously for the Church and for the people entrusted to him and who has a right to be respected and esteemed,” Fr Lombardi said and hoped his visit would contribute to strengthening such talks.

THE LAST WORD

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Rwandan woman Immaculee Ilibagiza saw evil and survived. Instead of choosing revenge, she chose God’s way of love. The best-selling author will be in Perth next week proclaiming her message to the world signed...

From Rwanda, with Love

BY MARK REIDY

Despite the atrocities witnessed by Immaculee Ilibagiza during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, she believes that there is a root of love planted in the heart of every person.

The evil that fuelled the ruthless slaughter of over one million Tutsi people does not occur overnight, she said, but begins when a small stone is cast in hate and the ripples carry their momentum to those around.

But God, she says, who is the source of all love, will always be stronger.

“The Devil exists”, she told The Record in an exclusive telephone interview from New York shortly before leaving to speak in Australia and Perth.

“It is almost like I have seen it, but we have the choice not to accept it”.

With most of her family and friends slaughtered by gangs of machete wielding Hutus in the carnage that ripped apart the spiritual and moral fabric of her country, Immaculee would seem to be justified in seeking retribution for her tragic loss, but instead she now travels across the world preaching the power of forgiveness and love.

Hidden in a tiny bathroom with seven other women for 90 terrifying days, Immaculee said that it was only the grace of God that allowed her to step beyond her indescribable grief and anger, but it did require her to firstly make a decision to forgive.

Whilst cramped in her tiny prison she chose to turn away from the hate that beckoned and tempted her and focus on God’s presence amidst the horror.

What she discovered was a depth of love that lifted her above the horror that was festering around her.

“Life on earth is like a blink” she discovered, “Heaven is what matters”.

When people ask her where God was when murder and rape systematically ravaged her country, she says that He was always there.

“At first I struggled to find an answer”, she acknowledged, “but deep down I could feel Him in my very bones and heart.

“He has asked us to love one another and we did not do it. It is a message that is as real as ‘do not touch the stove’”, she says passionately, “And when we choose to ignore it there are consequences”.

Immaculee now lives in New York with her husband, Bryan and two children, seemingly a lifetime away from the memories of the nightmare that she endured. She has now found peace and longs to bring that message to all who will listen. In recent visits she has witnessed a new beginning for her country and the healing power of forgiveness that is mending its deep wounds.

But she also knows that many still remain trapped in the hate and the hurt.

“One can only leave the pain of Rwanda”, she shares, “when one has left it in their heart”.

The wisdom of Immaculee: “God has given us the power of free will”, she said, “And it can be a dangerous freedom.”

“We don’t need religion to know God. God is love.”

“The worst plague in today’s world is confusing truth to make it wrong and to make lies right.”

In Perth

Immaculee Ilibagiza will speak at the University of Notre Dame

Tuesday, 29th June 2010 7.30pm

The Drill Hall Mouat Street, Fremantle

Please RSVP to reserve your seat: rsvp@nd.edu.au or Ph Jane Pike: 08 9293 3968

Review

Left to Tell

By

Immaculee Ilibagiza

REVIEWED BYMARK

REIDY

Left to Tell is a journey into the depths of fear and hate that most of us will never have to experience, but ultimately it is a story of redemption, forgiveness and a glimpse into the heart of God.

In 1994 Immaculee Ilibagiza was forced to spend three months hidden in a tiny bathroom with seven other women as the horror of the Rwandan holocaust, which claimed up to a million Tutsi victims, closed in on them. Her recollection of that unimaginable nightmare is simultaneously

Other Immaculee books

Our Lady of Kibeho

Thirteen years before the bloody 1994 genocide that left more than a million Rwandans dead, the Virgin Mary began to appear to three young people (aged 17, 20 and 21) in the remote village of Kibeho, in south-west Rwanda. Through the visionaries, Mary warned of the looming holocaust, which could be averted if Rwandans opened their hearts to God and embraced His love.

burdensome and mesmerising. I found myself weighed down by the dimension of evil that Immaculee describes, but equally fascinated by her unfolding intimacy with God within this darkness. This book delves into the extremes of spirituality and human emotion, from the depraved to the Divine, and forms a bridge of hope between them.

Immaculee takes the reader on a journey from her tranquil preholocaust life, through the sickening genocide and finally to a place of peace again. It is a journey that is emotionally draining, but ultimately deepened my faith with an understanding that the love of God can overcome even the most depraved elements of human nature.

It is difficult not to become personally involved in this story as Immaculee shares the reality of

Miraculous events occurred in the tiny village and tens of thousands journeyed there. For years the seers spoke of God’s love, sending messages, they insisted, not only for Rwandans, but the world. Mary also sent messages to government and Church leaders on how to end the ethnic hatred simmering in their country. She warned that Rwanda would become a “river of blood” if it continued. Some listened but few believed and the warnings tragically eventuated in 100 horrifying days of savage bloodletting and mass murder in 1994.

After two decades of rigorous investigation, Our Lady of Kibeho became the first and only Vatican–approved Marian site in all of Africa. In Our Lady of Kibeho, Immaculee writes of her personal experiences of these visions and visionaries and how they formed her faith before, during and after the holocaust. Her desire is to bring their messages of love and forgiveness to the rest of the world.

In Led by Faith Immaculee takes the reader through her post-holocaust journey as she struggles through heartache and hardship to survive and find meaning in her life. She navigates a bleak and hostile world with only an abiding faith in God to guide and protect her.

d i i

Immaculee labours along with her country to heal from the wounds of war and to keep hope, love and forgiveness alive. Finally she is able to look back on her extraordinarily painful journey and truly understand why God had spared her.

- Immaculee’s books are available from The Record Bookshop

her fear, anxiety and anger as she details the murders of her family and describes the “visions of hell” that she was forced to witness. But she bares her heart and soul, not with a desire for revenge, but rather with the message that only God can penetrate the evil that she experienced.

There is gut-wrenching honesty as she wrestles with her cascading levels of grief and her temptation for vengeance, but amidst her despair she chooses to forgive and emerges with a yearning to unite a nation whose fabric has been seemingly torn beyond repair.

While most readers may be shaken by the details of horror that are portrayed in these pages, it is one well worth taking, as the journey from hate to hope, fear to forgiveness, may well be a life changing one.

Mataba (Immaculee’s village)

Immaculee Ilibagiza will tell her remarkable story in Perth next week.