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.”
Also: Anna Krohn on Raquel Welch, and Raquel Welch on the Pill’s disappointment - Pages 12-13
Church dedicated to foundress saint is the first in the world:
Archbishop Hickey
BY PETER ROSENGRENAN ESTIMATED 800 people turned out in Amherst Road in Canning Vale last Sunday after-
CORPUS CHRISTI LOOMS
A beautiful feast for all the family
noon to participate in the consecration and dedication of their first Parish Church.
The Church of St Emilie de Vialar is the first parish Church in the world dedicated to the Saint, Archbishop Barry Hickey told worshippers during his homily.
St Emilie is the foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition, who have been in WA since 1855 and involved in the parish since its founding in 2001.
PORTUGUESE PENTECOST Mat de Sousa reports on a colourful gathering
Although the Church is designed to seat 350, a large overflow congregation stood outside the building on a cold and overcast afternoon to witness and participate in the ceremonies.
So many people presented to receive Communion during the Consecration Mass that ministers effectively ran out of hosts to dispense.
Later, Parish Priest Fr Robert Carillo told The Record, of the
800 hosts prepared before Mass only two were left over, prompting Archbishop Hickey to anounce to communicants that receiving the Sacrament from the numerous chalices throughout the church would be sufficient.
In his homily Archbishop Hickey said that the opening of a new church was a sign of unity and maturity in a parish.
From that day on, Mass would be celebrated daily until the Church
NEXT WEEK FR MICHAEL EVANS
As a boy he dreamed of cutting through the jungle to bring the Gospel to deepest darkest Africa. He arrived as a young priest only to find that the Africans drove automobiles and used petrol. When he landed in Western Australia in the early 90s he discovered the spiritual aridity of suburban life on the fringes of a vast desert so set about creating a spiritual oasis on the shores of the Indian Ocean.
■ READ ALL ABOUT IT IN NEXT WEEK’S RECORD
ceased to exist, he said. Meanwhile, whereas parishioners had participated in Masses celebrated in a variety of locations, including a famhouse and the nearby Catholic school, their new church would be the focal point for the parish from now on, he said.
A parish church is a centre for the people and a centre for worship, a place where a parish’s members are meant to see one another
Continued - Pages 10-12
Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday, 26 May 2010
THE Easter Vigil 2010 was graced time at Infant Jesus Parish Morley with nine people being baptised and two people being received into the Church. Those baptised were Mia Filpo, Stuart Collins, Trang Quach, Victoire Assogba Toglo Afi, Eugene Koffi Tona, Johnny and Janice Au, Jarrad and Nancy Davidson. Those already baptised who were received into the Church were Noelene Choudhury and Ashley Dove.
We as a group have been travelling together since February 2009, meeting weekly during school term. The RCIA process was followed and as a result the Holy Spirit did His work amongst us. A team was quickly formed. Those who did not have their own sponsors found that parishioners were happy to step into that role and walk the journey with the Catechumens.
Parishioners who had been through the previous RCIA wanted to give something back and came into the group as supporters which was so valuable. Some of the parishioners involved in the group made by hand 12 shawls for our Catechumens to wear at the Easter Vigil.
Journalists
Bridget Spinks baspinks@iinet.net.au
Mark Reidy reidyrec@iinet.net.au
Anthony Barich abarich@therecord.com.au
Advertising/Production
Mat De Sousa production@therecord.com.au
Accounts June Cowley recaccounts@iinet.net.au
Classifieds/Panoramas/Subscriptions
Bibiana Kwaramba administration@therecord.com.au
Record Bookshop
Reception: Bibiana Kwaramba bookshop@therecord.com.au
Proofreaders
Christine Jaques Eugen Mattes
Contributors
Debbie Warrier John Heard
Karen and Derek Boylen Anthony Paganoni CS
Christopher West Catherine Parish
Bronia Karniewicz Fr John Flader
Guy Crouchback
The Record PO Box 75 Leederville WA 6902 587 Newcastle Street, West Perth Tel: (08) 9227 7080 Fax: (08) 9227 7087
Website: www.therecord.com.au
The Record is a weekly publication distributed throughout the parishes of the dioceses of Western Australia and by subscription.
The Record is printed by Rural Press Printing Mandurah and distributed via Australia Post and CTI Couriers.
This set of shawls is now going to be available for future RCIA groups.
The group bonded and became friends and we are sure that it will continue even after Pentecost which will be the official end of meeting as a group.
Each week parishioners already involved in the parish visited to talk about how our Neophytes can become involved in the parish. Already we have two Neophytes who will be part of the team of the next group which has already started meeting.
The Liturgy Centre, Schoenstatt Shrine, Sisters of Mercy in Tuart Hill and the Personal Advocacy Service provided hospitality to our group and shared and supported us as we glimpsed at different ministries in our Archdiocese.
We also thank these groups, our Carmelite Friars and our parishioners at Infant Jesus for their prayer and guidance for us. It was wonderful to visit our Cathedral for the Rite of Election and participate in that beautiful ceremony in our Mother House. Our group really loved that evening. The RCIA process is a powerful one and Fr Elio Capra SDB speaks brilliantly about how it works. There is a purpose in each stage of it and it became powerfully evident to us as we moved through the year just how the Holy Spirit works through this process.
It has been wonderful to be part of it. My thanks to Cheryl Davini, Mark Grant, Nevellene Linquist and Margaret Linquist for the support they gave as Team.
THE Easter Vigil 2010 was graced time at Infant Jesus Parish Morley with nine people being baptised and two people being received into the Church. Those baptised were Mia Filpo, Stuart Collins, Trang Quach, Victoire Assogba Toglo Afi, Eugene Koffi Tona, Johnny and Janice Au, Jarrad and Nancy Davidson. Those already baptised who were received into the Church were Noelene Choudhury and Ashley Dove.
All are welcome to join with the parish of Ocean Reef for its annual Corpus Christi procession on Sunday 6 June at 3pm. Flower girls are needed for the procession. If any child is interested in participating, meet in the Parish central foyer. Flower petals for the procession will also be needed and can be left in the Church foyer from Thursday 3 June. The parish can be contacted on (08) 9300 4885. Deatils of other parish processions can be found in this edition of The Record
Editor
Peter Rosengren cathrec@iinet.net.au
Journalists
Bridget Spinks baspinks@iinet.net.au
Mark Reidy reidyrec@iinet.net.au
Anthony Barich abarich@therecord.com.au
Advertising/Production
Mat De Sousa production@therecord.com.au
Accounts
June Cowley recaccounts@iinet.net.au
Classifieds/Panoramas/Subscriptions
Bibiana Kwaramba administration@therecord.com.au
Record Bookshop
Reception: Bibiana Kwaramba bookshop@therecord.com.au
Proofreaders
Christine Jaques Eugen Mattes
Contributors
Debbie Warrier John Heard
Karen and Derek Boylen Anthony Paganoni CS
Christopher West Catherine Parish
Bronia Karniewicz Fr John Flader
Guy Crouchback
The Record PO Box 75 Leederville WA 6902
587 Newcastle Street, West Perth
Tel: (08) 9227 7080 Fax: (08) 9227 7087
Website: www.therecord.com.au
The Record is a weekly publication distributed throughout the parishes of the dioceses of Western Australia and by subscription.
The Record is printed by Rural Press Printing Mandurah and distributed via Australia Post and CTI Couriers.
We as a group have been travelling together since February 2009, meeting weekly during school term. The RCIA process was followed and as a result the Holy Spirit did His work amongst us. A team was quickly formed. Those who did not have their own sponsors found that parishioners were happy to step into that role and walk the journey with the Catechumens.
Parishioners who had been through the previous RCIA wanted to give something back and came into the group as supporters which was so valuable. Some of the parishioners involved in the group made by hand 12 shawls for our Catechumens to wear at the Easter Vigil.
This set of shawls is now going to be available for future RCIA groups.
The group bonded and became friends and we are sure that it will continue even after Pentecost which will be the official end of meeting as a group.
Each week parishioners already involved in the parish visited to talk about how our Neophytes can become involved in the parish. Already we have two Neophytes who will be part of the team of the next group which has already started meeting.
The Liturgy Centre, Schoenstatt Shrine, Sisters of Mercy in Tuart Hill and the Personal Advocacy Service provided hospitality to our group and shared and supported us as we glimpsed at different ministries in our Archdiocese.
We also thank these groups, our Carmelite Friars and our parishioners at Infant Jesus for their prayer and guidance for us. It was wonderful to visit our Cathedral for the Rite of Election and participate in that beautiful ceremony in our Mother House. Our group really loved that evening. The RCIA process is a powerful one and Fr Elio Capra SDB speaks brilliantly about how it works. There is a purpose in each stage of it and it became powerfully evident to us as we moved through the year just how the Holy Spirit works through this process.
It has been wonderful to be part of it. My thanks to Cheryl Davini, Mark Grant, Nevellene Linquist and Margaret Linquist for the support they gave as Team.
Young Catholic married couple testify to finding the ultimate joy in living out the Gospel through the power of the sacraments, and in doing so can be effective witnesses of authentic Christian marriage
LIVING faithful lives enriched by the sacraments of the Church is crucial to young people’s hope of being an authentic witness of Christian marriage, a young couple testified at a 12 May Disciples of Jesus event in Osborne Park.
Thirty young people enjoyed an evening of fine wine, live music and a vibrant experience of Christian fellowship at the monthly “Conquest Cafe” experience at Integrity House in Osborne Park where Patrick and Sara Laundy spoke of their experience of being recently married.
The young couple talked openly about the blessings and challenges that they faced during their courtship and ensuing two years of married life.
The Cathedral’s Grand Organ (Dodd) turns 100 late this month and to celebrate this milestone, a very special event is being held at the Cathedral on 30 May at 2pm, including a concert by the Cathedral’s Director of Music Jacinta Jakovcevic, featuring pieces performed at the organ’s Blessing and Opening in 1910 with vocal solos by Daniel
Patrick and Sara answered questions from the young people on various aspects of married life and the raising of their young baby.
Their answers seemed to be received in a challenging and inspiring manner.
The blessing of living faithful lives enriched by the sacraments of the Church was seen as very important in their hope of being an authentic witness of Christian marriage.
Conquest Cafe is the work of the Disciples of Jesus Covenant Community aimed at inspiring young people in living their faith.
The Cafe has been running in Perth since the beginning of 2009 and has had special guests such as Perth Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton, Wildcats chief executive Nick Marvin and star player Kevin Lisch, University of Notre Dame Australia lecturer Nana Howard and Catholic Youth Ministry director Anita Parker.
The next Conquest Cafe is on 9 June featuring the “Urban Missionaries” - members of the Youth Mission Team who have joined 25 years of mission tradition ministering to students in Catholic Colleges.
Doors open at 7pm with a recommended donation of $5 to assist in covering costs.
For more information on Conquest Cafe call Nicole 0438 719 092.
Mullaney and Alexander Platts. The Cathedral organ is one of Perth’s most historic organs –the afternoon also includes the reading of historical anecdotes about its building and installation in 1910 including references to the Cathedral’s history from this time, in particular the rich musical life which thrived at the St Mary’s Cathedral at the time.
The afternoon includes Miss Maud food and beverages served in the Cathedral’s new Parish Centre and adjoining courtyard. The concert is preceded by a historic walkabout led by Richard Offen (HeritagePerth) starting at 1pm at the Cathedral. Ticket details available from BOCS.
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Hickey’s pastoral visit to the Goldfields earlier this month to bless a new residential convent for the Missionary Sisters of Charity proved to be a moment of renewal for the local faithful.
In an open-air Mass he concelebrated in the rear garden of the new convent on Roberts Street in Kalgoorlie, Archbishop Hickey said the very fact the new convent was built is testament to God’s providence, the charity of the locals and the power and growth of the Sisters of Charity’s apostolate. Their original convent in Kalgoorlie – their home since 2005 - was a State Housing Commission Home in the suburb of Golden Grove.
About forty parishioners gathered with the Missionary Sisters as the Archbishop concelebrated with Frs Joseph Rathnaraj and Chris Alambe in the open-air setting as the new convent chapel proved too small for the grand occasion which drew over 40 people.
In his homily, the Archbishop said that due to God’s Providence and the gratitude and the love that the parishioners and the city’s population have for the Missionary Sisters of Charity’s “wonderful work” of caring for the Goldfields community, they needed a larger and more secure residence for them to stay in the parish for their future ever growing apostolate.
He added that Jesus continues His Father’s will down through the centuries; and that by the faithful today, through the aftermath of Easter and Pentecost, the love of God will continue to grow in the 2000’s through the witness, love and trust in God of the faithful. The Archbishop stressed that he was so grateful that the Missionary Sisters of Charity were stationed in the Archdiocese and helping the poor in the Goldfields and in Perth. He said that through the Australian Province of the Missionary Sisters of Charity, they had also started a new Home of Care in East Timor
last year. After the Mass, the Archbishop blessed the convent and chapel, then the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the chapel’s tabernacle.
Sr Maria Lucy MC, the Australian Provincial also came from Sydney for the Mass and home blessing. The Sisters purchased the larger home through a bequest given to them. In the evening, Archbishop Hickey celebrated a moving 6.30pm Saturday Parish Mass in St Mary’s Church in Kalgoorlie for about 150 parishioners. In his homily, he said he knew many priests over the years that had served the faithful in the parish.
The Archbishop, who was born at Leonora in the Goldfields in 1936, was educated by Presentation Sisters and Christian Brothers at Wiluna and Kalgoorlie before attending St Charles Seminary in Guildford in 1950. Reminding the faithful that the Catholic Church is now celebrating the “Year for Priests,” he said they “must pray very hard for our priests and more vocations”.
He said that many good priests needed prayers and support, as the Church has been severely wounded by sex scandals over the years.
He encouraged the faithful by saying that the Holy Spirit will eventually purify the Church from “these terrible, sinful crimes, and the sorrow and pain they have caused to so many families and innocent people”.
At 9am the next morning, Archbishop Hickey concelebrated Mass with Fr Joseph in St John Vianney’s Church in Kambalda for about 30 parishioners. In his homily, the Archbishop told the faithful that while he was now visiting the Goldfields, he wanted to come to Kambalda to meet the parishioners and to celebrate in their church a special Mass for all the priests of the Archdiocese during the “Year for Priests.”
He noted that their church was named after St John Vianney – patron of the Year for Priestsand is the only church in the
Archdiocese named after the patron saint of priests.
Urging the faithful again to pray for many vocations on the feast day of the Ascension of the Lord, the Archbishop told them that the Resurrection and the Ascension of Our Lord are similar in meaning.
Christ’s Resurrection into new life meant that His work of salvation on earth was complete. The Ascension of the Lord meant that now that His work on earth was complete; He now returns to the Father, the Archbishop said.
The Archbishop told the faithful that Christ promised the Apostles before He ascended into Heaven that He would send the Holy Spirit to enlighten their minds, and for them to spread the good news of God’s love and salvation everywhere; which today has spread even as far as Kambalda. He said they must prepare themselves to receive the Holy Spirit the next week at Pentecost Sunday, and that they must live holy lives in the future thanking God for their faith and the gifts of the Holy Spirit through the Sacraments, Masses, and by helping others in the community.
Archbishop Hickey also told the small Kambalda congregation that he was about to begin an evangelisation programme in the Archdiocese where a centre will be set up for the “lost sheep,” of the Church to return. He said that through prayer, the media, publications, emails and willing helpers, he hoped for a successful outcome of the programme.
On his return to Kalgoorlie, he also caught up with many of the parishioners who had just been to the 10am Mass at St Mary’s Church in Kalgoorlie.
Holy Spirit School in City Beach was established in 1964 by the Dominican Sisters and today is a dynamic single stream, co-educational primary school catering for the families of Holy Spirit Parish and surrounding areas for students from Pre-Kindergarten to Year Six.
Holy Spirit has an excellent reputation for providing a welcoming, innovative and academically diverse environment for its students. The vibrant staff, operating within a professional learning culture, is hard working and committed to providing a high level of quality education and pastoral care for the children. There is a strong emphasis on literacy skills and the school is in its second year of implementing the RAISe (Raising Achievement in Schools) program. Other specialist areas include computing, physical education, art, Italian and library. A Challenge Program is also provided in order to extend and support students in their learning. The school works collaboratively with the parish priest in delivering a Sacramental Program that is parishbased, family-centred and school-supported and a close working relationship exists between the parish and the school. Parental involvement within the school is encouraged, along with open communication between parents and staff. Through the support of the parent community, Parents and Friends’ Association and a very active School Board, the success of Holy Spirit School is a tribute to the hard work of parents and their commitment to the Catholic education of their children.
Holy Spirit seeks a creative, effective leader to implement its educational vision, which continues to strengthen the relationship between the family, school, parish and the wider community, sharing the mission of the Church to educate the whole child.
Applicants need to be practising Catholics and experienced educators committed to the objectives and ethos of Catholic education. They will have the requisite theological, educational, pastoral and administrative competencies, together with an appropriate four year minimum tertiary qualification, and will have completed Accreditation for Leadership of the Religious Education Area or its equivalent. A current WACOT registration number and a Working With Children clearance form must also be included.
The official application form, referee assessment forms and instructions can be accessed on the Catholic Education Office website www.ceo.wa.edu.au. Enquiries regarding this position should be directed to Helen Brennan, Consultant, Workforce Relations Team on (08) 6380 5237 or email wrd@ceo.wa.edu.au.
All applications, on the official form, should reach The Director of Catholic Education, Catholic Education Office of Western Australia, PO Box 198, Leederville WA 6903 no later than Thursday 10 June 2010.
BY ANTHONY BARICHAN ancient order devoted to protecting the Holy Land and in service of the papacy is taking their mission to the region of Jesus Christ’s birth and ministry from 10-18 September, helping the dwindling Christian community there to survive.
The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem’s Australian Lieutenancy will host the pilgrimage to Tel Aviv, Mount Tabor, Cana, Nazareth, Tiberius, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, Jericho, Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion, En Karen and Bethlehem.
The tour will include walking the Via Dolorosa (“Way of Suffering”) in Jerusalem, starting with the first Sations at the Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”) and the Chapel of Flagellation and ending at the last Stations in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Participants will also meet with His Beatitude Fuad Twal, who heads the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. For members, a Knight and Lady of the Order are required during the lifetime of their membership to undertake a Holy Pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, but this particular pilgrimage is open to all.
The tour will be led by Robert Peters, Lieutenant of the Order in WA.
For more information, ring 08 9201 2702 or email repeters@iinet.net.au.
Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the WA Knights of the Holy Sepulchre
Come and Join us September 10th - 18th 2010
For any inquiries please just contact Robert Peters, Lieutenant (08) 9271 2702 repeters@iinet.net.au
BY ANTHONY BARICH
NOT so long ago, public Catholic processions for feast days were a staple of Catholic life: giving a public witness to the faith while praying and celebrating a feast day, which gives vitality to one’s life.
Rural settings were particularly popular, as Catholics lined isolated highways with banners emblazoned with images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary or a particular saint.
While a number of parishes bravely processed around their local churches on the feast of Corpus Christi last year, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate are attempting to re-establish a tradition that dates back centuries – the concept of pilgrimage – in the bush.
The Corpus Christi Procession is a public witness to the Real, Substantial Presence of The Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. While their annual Corpus Christi pilgrimage through Toodyay has featured for at least the past decade, the Franciscans, in the spirit of their inspiration St Maximilian Kolbe – who was known, apart for his martyrdom in Auschwitz, for promoting the Gospel through modern media – are trying with renewed fervour to publicly thank God for the gift of His presence in the Blessed Sacrament, which is received at Mass.
Giving thanks is central to the theology of the Eucharist, as the Greek word Eucharistia means ‘to give thanks’.
The invitations of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters is, says 32 year old organiser Friar Gabriel FI, to show, in a “very concrete way, gratitude for God’s Gift par-excellence – His very own Presence which resides night and day in the Most Blessed Sacrament whether people visit Him or not”.
“The gratitude for the gift should in some way, at least, be proportionate to the greatness of the gift. And the gift by nature is infinite because it is God Himself,” Friar Gabriel FI said.
The Toodyay Annual Corpus Christi Mass and Procession is on June 6, with Mass at 10.30am at the church adjacent to Our Lady Help of Christians Franciscan Friary at 36 Stirling Terrace. Participants will then process through Toodyay’s main thoroughfare, giving public witness to the faith, singing and praying.
Friar Gabriel FI, a former professional skateboarder in the US, said that, as the ‘Church militant’ – a term used often by Franciscan St Maximilian Kolbe – the baptised are called to challenge each other to “come out of our comfort zones where we hide for most of the year, and expose ourselves to either receiving admiration or ridicule, in clement or inclement weather”.
It is the Franciscan Friars’ desire for priests, Religious and lay people not to fear the reproaches of men who “might think less
of us”, keeping in mind the words of Christ Himself: Everyone therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in Heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in Heaven (Matthew 10:32-33)”.
And again in Luke’s Gospel, Christ said: “You are the ones who have stood faithfully by me in my trials; and I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father has conferred on me so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom…” ( Luke 22:28).
For info contact 9574 5204, 6278 1540 or 9367 1366.
“Let the whole of mankind tremble the whole world shake and the heavens exult when Christ, the Son of the living God, is on the altar in the hands of a priest.
O admirable heights and sublime lowliness!
O sublime humility!
O humble sublimity!
That the Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God, so humbles Himself that for our salvation He hides Himself under the little form of bread! Look, brothers, at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before Him!
Humble yourselves, as well, that you may be exalted by Him.
Therefore, hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves so that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally.”
- St Francis of Assisi (D 1226)
THE euthanasia Private Members Bill introduced into WA Parliament’s Upper House by Greens MP Robin Chapple on 21 May will put the lives of vulnerable sick and elderly West Australians at risk, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said. The Bill would allow any terminally ill West Australian over the age of 21 of sound mind and able to communicate his or her intentions to ask a doctor to help them end their life. The request must be witnessed by two independent people and assessed by two doctors.
Mr Chapple told the ABC that a draft version of the legislation has been well received by MPs and he hopes the Government will allow it to be debated soon. WA Premier Colin Barnett has said that he will grant Liberal MPs a conscience vote on the Bill, but does not think it will succeed.
Calling on WA parliamentarians to reject the euthanasia Bill, ACL West Australian director Michelle Pearse said that if Mr Chapple’s private member’s Bill succeeds, the ‘right to die’ could quickly become the ‘duty to die’ under the new culture legalised euthanasia inevitably creates.
“Supposed safeguards for euthanasia legislation don’t work,” Mrs Pearse said.
“In Holland where euthanasia has been practiced since the 1990s, 1000 people a year are killed without their consent. The Dutch experience shows that socalled voluntary euthanasia quickly becomes non-voluntary euthanasia.”
Mrs Pearse said that in every Australian state where a parliamentary committee has closely examined euthanasia, the committee has rejected it on account of the way in which the laws to protect life are made inconsistent and dangerously subjective.
The parliaments of three Australian states have rejected legalised euthanasia in recent times – Victoria in 2008, and Tasmania and South Australia in 2009.
It is now time, she said, for West Australians to “rise up against the devaluing and cheapening of human life that so-called ‘voluntary’ euthanasia brings”.
“Euthanasia endangers the lives of the most vulnerable, the people we should be striving hardest to protect. As a society, we should be seeking to ease people’s pain through better palliative care, not promoting killing as an alternative to helping them,” she said. “We should also be considering the message euthanasia laws send to the disabled and elderly. No society has the right to create an expectation that you should terminate your life if you would otherwise be an ‘inconvenience’ to society. This would be a dreadful situation.”
Mrs Pearse said that the West Australian Parliament should be affirming the unique and intrinsic worth of all human beings, no matter what their physical, mental or emotional state might be. She called on all parliamentarians to vote against the Bill.
Christians in the Western world are being martyred via “death by 1,000 cuts” in a war of ideology, the outgoing president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Oceania said at its fouryearly conference on 10 May.
“People of faith were once upon a time fed to the lions, decapitated, crucified and the like,” said Bishop Peter Ingham of Wollongong, Australia, in his homily during the 10 May Mass in Sydney to open the Oceania bishops’ conferences of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and the Pacific.
Bishop Ingham’s term as president ended at the conference, with Archbishop John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand elected as his successor.
“We instead find ourselves today subjected to what you could call ‘death by 1,000 cuts’ with the new mode of martyrdom coming in the form of ridicule, derision and character assassination, as opposed to being silenced through physical death.
“The torture of believers is to be found in the constant attempts to have them relegated to the sidelines, unable to contribute to the morals, laws and structures that make up the fabric of society without significant criticism.
“The new mode of martyrdom is not as bloody as forms of old, but its aim is ultimately the same and its methods no less cruel.
“We seem to be facing an ominous doctrine which attempts to build a society with no regard whatsoever for religion and which seeks to destroy the religious freedom of its citizens - an ideology hostile to Christian faith.
“It has become fashionable to be dismissive of all religion, particularly Christianity. This dismissiveness could be quite aptly described as the new modern method of martyrdom.”
Attempts to redefine marriage and to change traditional understandings about the sacredness of human life, he said, are assaults by “powerful secular forces in our society on truths that cannot be abandoned or compromised without seriously weakening our social framework”.
“Rather than calling for people of faith to remain silent or remove themselves from the realm of public policy and debate, our opinions and contribution should be eagerly sought,” he said.
The weight of evidence would suggest that from our long and rich tradition of Catholic faith and culture we might just have more than a little bit of wisdom to contribute to public debate.
“It is for this reason as much as any other that upholding and securing religious freedom is so vital for society as a whole, not just for believers.”
Bishop Ingham told The Record in a phone interview on 11 May that Pope Benedict XVI and, locally, Sydney Cardinal George Pell are two prime examples of “character assassination” by a secular media that has “publicly proclaimed their atheism in print”.
As an example, Bishop Ingham - who apologised in November 2009 for the abuse of an altar boy in his diocese in the 1970s - noted an 8 May front-page story in the Sydney Morning Herald saying an Irish sex abuse victims group had written to every member of the Irish lower house of parliament to protest any role Cardinal Pell might have in leading an apostolic visitation to help end pedophilia cover-ups
within the clergy there. Bishop Ingham told The Record that Cardinal Pell is not going to Ireland, and the whole story was based on a “rumour”.
The Bishop also noted that the cardinal issued a statement on 8 May stating that “such rumors are completely unfounded and speculative” - yet the Herald did not print it.
The Herald also attacked the Cardinal’s credibility in handling sex abuse cases, but his 8 May statement noted that since becoming Archbishop of Sydney in 2001, he has continued to combat sexual abuse by clergy and to provide support and care for victims through the Australian bishops’ national Towards Healing protocol.
Under Towards Healing, abusers are permanently removed from ministry and victims are encouraged to take their complaints to the police.
In New South Wales, the Ombudsman has to approve the steps taken.
Bishop Ingham said that he also wrote a letter to the Herald two weeks prior, after they “vilified Christ” in a cartoon, but his letter was not printed either.
“He’s our Lord and Saviour … you wouldn’t do that to Muslims or Jews, and I’m sick of us (Christians) getting bashed,” the Bishop told The Record
LAST year’s global financial crisis is having a continuing impact on the poor around the world, with millions more being described by the United Nations as living in abject poverty as a result of the crisis, Caritas Australia Jack de Groot told The Record
The Australian Government’s AusAID said this year that the global recession is predicted to have slowed the pace of poverty reduction in the region. The World Bank recently estimated that the global recession has resulted in an additional 11 million people either trapped or pushed into poverty, in East Asia and the Pacific.
Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion returns for 2010 – which goes towards helping victims of the GFC - are tracking $1 million ahead of this time last year, Mr de Groot said. So far this year, $744,111 has been raised from the Archdiocese of Perth from Project Compassion.
Mr de Groot said that while Australian Catholics’ generosity exceeded expectations last year contributing $8.7 million
in total even with victims of the Victorian bushfires to donate to and the global financial crisis, so far $5.8 million has been received – though the funds will not be confirmed until 30 June.
“We often only think of how the GFC impacts on our own economy, but it continues to impact on the poor due to fuel prices and lack of credit for developing countries to access basic necessities, which means their lives get a lot harder,” Mr de Groot told The Record
In early 2009, the United Nations news service said that, globally, the UN estimates that because of the crisis there will be more than 50 million additional people living in extreme poverty in 2009 than expected before the crisis, compounding the impact from soaring food and fuel prices of recent years. Global economic growth declined from 5.2 per cent in 2007 to a forecast -1.1 per cent in 2009, while the crisis also caused a significant change in the prospects of developing countries.
AusAID confirmed that economic growth in developing countries in 2009 was projected to be 1.7 per cent - substan-
tially lower than the observed growth rate of 8.3 per cent in 2007
AusAID said that Australia’s response to the global recession focuses on protecting current achievements in poverty reduction and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. “AusAID is giving priority to supporting programmes that generate employment and restore economic growth, support delivery of basic services, such as health care and education, and protect the vulnerable,” it said.
Mr de Groot has also welcomed the Australian Government’s Budget commitment to increase the country’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) for 201011 after the Government announced a nine per cent increase ($530 milion) to Australia’s aid programme.
He said that in the 2010-11 financial year the marginal communities supported by aid and development agencies like Caritas Australia will benefit from $135 million set aside for Non-Government Organisations. This additional funding, he said, would enable Caritas to broaden its development initiatives globally.
Latest measures show stress on women is increasing, and taking its toll, new research reveals
BY ANTHONY BARICHOVERWHELMED by the societal requirement to retain the primary carer responsibility despite gaining equality at work, Australian women want more help at home by their spouses and children and some recommend having children earlier, a wide-ranging research paper has found.
Through a focus group, a literature review and a web-based survey with over 950 respondents investigating the conflict between women’s work and life goals and solutions for achieving a better work life balance, independent think tank Women’s Forum Australia found that mothers of children under 15 provide around two and a half hours a day extra work compared to fathers, worth over $13,000 per annum if valued at $15 an hour.
The major casualty of this work life imbalance is women’s self-care, exercise and leisure, the research revealed - although this increases health risks.
This was highlighted by the fact that over half of the survey respondents were willing to pay on average $40 a week to eradicate its negative impacts, and the quality of life impact of work life stress was rated “a little worse than having diabetes”.
Based on the survey, all women want is help from their spouses and children, WFA chief operating officer Misty de Vries told The Record the day after the 160-page research paper, Reality Check: Work Life Balance was launched at the Perth Art Gallery on 20 May.
The research paper was the result of 18 months’ research of
individuals, including men, aged 18-70.
The research showed that up to 47 per cent had curtailed family desires due to other commitments, 16 per cent delay having children and 18 per cent do not have children despite the desire to do so, sometimes as a consequence of not having time for relationships.
Consequently, if this “overarching issue” of work life imbalance is not addressed in society, then Australia’s fertility rate – while having risen over the last two years thanks to the baby bonus introduced by former Coalition Treasurer Peter Costello – will not be enough to sustain the replacement rate and subsequently the economy.
Over 60 per cent feel society demands too much of parents, 52 per cent that extra-curricular activities demand too much and 38 per cent that schools demand too much.
The solutions it proposed included paid parental leave (PPL) and expanding Family Tax Benefit Part B into a comprehensive measure that splits a couple’s family income equally across both adults for tax purposes so there is less marginal disincentive if one partner works few or no hours for pay.
It also proposed access to carer leave and collocated care centres, since women also represent 71 per cent of Australia’s primary carers of the disabled and frail aged.
The paper also proposed widespread education programmes focusing on boys and men, as recommended by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, to “help break down gendered stereotypes of men as ‘breadwinners’ and women as less socially valued carers and unpaid domestic workers.
It also recommended better access to pregnancy and peri-natal support services and retention of the Baby Bonus and Family Tax Benefit Part A, “in recognition of the value and cost of parenting”.
Family lobby warns of Rudd’s ‘bonding time reduction scheme’
THE Australian Family Association has rejected the Federal Government’s 18 week Paid Parental Leave (PPL) at the minimum wage which Treasurer Wayne Swan committed Australia to as of next year, but said Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s proposed business-funded 26-week leave model as “even more unfair”.
The AFA said that under the 2011-2012 Federal Budget Estimates on Children’s Care Support, “waged-mum families” get 65 per cent more than “unwaged-mum families” in the birth year of children, while in the following years, “waged-mum families” get 94 per cent more than “unwaged-mum families”.
The AFA said the Parental Leave Bill needs to give equal payments to unwaged workat-home mothers and paid workforce mothers and needs to make payments directly from the Office of Family Assistance to cut the “burdensome costs of businesses” under the current Bill.
“PPL is really about getting more mums in paid work,” Tempe Harvey, President of Kids First Parent Association of Australia, said in the AFA’s May Family Update newsletter.
Four more called to serve in the
Four young men answer the call of the Good Shepherd in Sydney
BY MATTHEW HODGSONFOUR young men were formally accepted by the Church as candidates for the priesthood at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on 16 May.
Samuel Lynch, 40, Emmanuel Seo, 33, Peter Kwak, 29 and Gregory Morgan, 23 - all seminarians for the Archdiocese of Sydney - moved a step closer to presbyteral ordination with Cardinal George Pell’s formal acceptance of their candidacy to the priesthood.
The candidacy ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney came at the conclusion of the monthly “Cathedral Sunday” undertaken by Good Shepherd seminarians.
Cathedral Sunday commenced with a morning of solitude and silence on the seminary grounds, in which seminary spiritual director Fr Ed Travers MSC gave a conference on the significance of admission to candidacy and described it as a significant step in the journey of priestly formation. This journey consists of three
distinct stages: separation (and ordeal), transition and incorporation. A young man entering a seminary is separated from ordinary life and undergoes a transitional phase where their goal is human and spiritual maturity.
In describing the final phase of the “rite of passage”, Fr Anthony Percy, Rector of the Seminary of the Good Shepherd, said “he reenters society with an enriched
He said that unless the scheme applies to all families equally, it amounts to a “Bonding Time Reduction Scheme by punishing families that prefer to bond for longer”. PPL would go to mainly first class families with mothers in waged work throughout their child-bearing years, he said, while a second class of families would miss out as “their mums would continue to give up income to nurture beyond the government’s capped 18 weeks”.
“We urge that the government’s scheme be amended to make paid parental leave equal for women in paid work and for work-at-home mothers doing the same childcare for their new babies,” the AFA said in a 21 May call for action statement.
However, Mr Harvey also said that while Mr Abbott criticised Labor’s scheme as a ‘Michey Mouse’ effort, his 26-week leave model is “even more unfair”.
“Neither party will gain votes in a bidding war over discriminatory paid parental leave,” Mr Harvey said. A recent Galaxy Poll done for the AFA showed that 64 per cent of all Australians and 71 per cent of parents of 18 to 34 year olds want equal pay for equal childcare.
The AFA said that the government’s Bill “places over 230 pages of onerous and costly compliance requirements on businesses”.
“Simplifying parental leave payments through the Office of Family Assistance would mean that the net cost of extending the scheme to all mothers would be around $300 million, which could be funded from general revenue,” the AFA said.
Reality Check: Work Life
step forward into leadership roles, the vitality of the Church will begin to wane. He proclaimed, however, that”this is not happening and it won’t happen”.
Fr Percy said that the four young men are a sign of great hope for the Church. There are a variety of backgrounds amongst the group.
Mr Lynch is a Sydney-born former lay employee of the Archdiocese; Mr Seo and Mr Kwak are both parishioners of the Korean Catholic Community in Silverwater and Mr Morgan is an English-born graduate of the Sydney secondary school Redfield College.
Mr Morgan described candidacy as a “small but significant step”.
“The prospect of ordination has become more realistic now and I am very excited,’’ he said. “A lot has gone in to these last five years.’’
Balance, a research paper launched by independent think thank Women’s Forum Australia at Perth Art Gallery on 20 May, said that the Federal Government’s PPL announcement assists the two-thirds of women who have previously gone without it and enabling many women and men to stay home longer with their babies, as well as “enhancing women’s longer term workplace connectivity, productivity and wellbeing”.
However, Mr Harvey said that parent care is less risky than day care, as “the gold standard in childcare research”, the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study, shows that babies left in long day care, including nannies and high quality day care, under age three are more likely to have behaviour problems including aggression, depression and lack of cooperation than babies cared for by their own parents.
WFA’s Reality Check research paper recommended work-based childcare centres, the removal of the delay in claiming rebates and greater flexibility of childcare hours.
It also proposed the taxdeductability of childcare, including family day care, grandparents, kin and nannies, to reduce the stress on women suffering from the work life imbalance that is proving detrimental to their health (see main story).
Utilising European models to combine after school care with extra curricular activities, as well as holiday programmes and options for children in their early teens, was also a proposed solution to the work life imbalance.
FURTHER funding cuts to pathology will lead to the sector being dominated by one or two corporate entities and would be especially difficult for Catholic not for profit providers, Catholic Health Australia has warned in its official submission to the Pathology Funding Review currently being conducted by the Department of Health and Ageing.
The submission outlines the dangers of moving to a tendering system, saying there is potential for a savingsdriven selection process to risk Australians’ continuing access to high quality pathology services.
persona - not a different one”.
In his homily during Holy Mass at the Cathedral, Cardinal Pell thanked God for the generosity of the candidates in responding to their call to the priesthood and for the care offered to them by the seminary staff.
The Cardinal urged others to step forward and accept the call to priestly and/or religious life, noting that unless young men and women
Fr Percy noted that the diversity amongst the group is symbolic of “the rich diversity and unity of the Church”.
Two more students from the Seminary of the Good Shepherd were up for candidacy as Eastertide drew to a close: Luke Verrell (Archdiocese of CanberraGoulburn) and Duane Fernandez (Diocese of Wollongong).
- Matt Hodgson is a student at Good Shepherd Seminary studying for the Archdiocese of Perth.
CHA also argues that Medicare rebates should be increased for more complex services that require greater input by a professional pathologist.
After considering submissions, the Federal Government is expected to release a more considered directions paper for further comment.
Continuing to sample Catholic press opinion from around the world, here is an editorial titled “Christ chose frail humans to guide His Church,” which was published on 30 April in the Catholic Anchor, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska. It was written by Joel Davidson, the newspaper’s editor.
Is the Catholic Church separate from the sins of her members? In one sense she is not. The wounds inflicted by one member affect all others, sending shock waves through the whole community.
It is even more difficult when the Church’s spiritual leaders are implicated in grave sins, especially when believers have turned to them for leadership, wisdom and in moments of great joy and sorrow. We are embodied, relational beings, and it is impossible to untangle personal faith from our experience as fellow believers.
That being said, our faith is not in people. If it were, the Church would have fallen to pieces at its conception.
During Jesus’ ministry, the first Apostles shamelessly argued among themselves over who would have greater authority in Christ’s kingdom. They turned away children only to have Jesus take them in. When Jesus was seized in the garden to be crucified, Peter lashed out with the violence of the sword, while many of his fellow disciples ran in fear and utter confusion.
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And just moments before, some of the disciples fell asleep while attempting to pray with Jesus as He pleaded with the Father on the eve of His crucifixion.
And who can forget Judasfrom Christ’s inner circle - the man who betrayed the Lord for a bribe of 30 pieces of silver?
Then we read again of Peter, the one Jesus chose to be the rock of the Church - the first pope. Peter denied Christ three times, as the Lord labored up the tortuous road to Calvary. Later, the apostle Thomas doubted whether Christ really rose from the dead.
From the very beginning, the Church was a tangle of human confusion, fear and weakness. Left to her own devices, it is hard to see how she could have lasted a decade, let alone 2,000 years.
But in all these instances, it was Christ who was the trustworthy guide. He continued to forgive and sanctify. He met His disciples in their weakness and strengthened them for the great work that lay ahead.
For his part, Judas did not return to Christ. Even after sitting at the feet of the Lord, he chose his own way, took his life and lost the call to be one of the first ministers of the Church.
Scripture does not whitewash the Church’s history or make her appear spotless and without sin. Rather, she is seen as completely dependent on the grace of God.
Certainly, circumstances have changed over the past 2,000 years. The Catholic Church is now a global entity with 1.15 billion followers and more than 400,000 priests and bishops. Yet, as in biblical times, human sin still wounds her and causes great suffering.
Sin and suffering, however, have never been the final words. Christ takes broken humanity and redeems it, and from the tangle of sin He still calls for great saints to radiate His presence to the world.
He has done this for 2,000 years and is still sanctifying today.
Yes, we suffer, but not without the unfailing hope that Christ is more powerful than our sin. He established this Church to proclaim the message of salvation and freedom. In His infinite wisdom, Christ chose a broken band of followers to launch this great mission. Our hope today is the same as theirs. We are weak, but Christ is strong and He has promised to remain with His Church always.
In this time of purging and healing, let us turn to the one who began this work and who will see it to completion.
As readers will notice from this week’s edition, The Record has marked an anniversary of a sobering kind: this year the artifical contraceptive known commonly as the Pill has turned 50. To criticise the Pill is, by our contemporary society’s standards, to embrace an obviously ridiculous intellectual position that is, prima facie, anti-woman. It is an article of faith now more or less widely believed (perhaps more than anything else) that the Pill has freed woman from the biological slavery of childbearing and given her the chance to take her rightful place as a productive member of society alongside man. A side benefit of this is that she has a much more interesting and satisfying life as a result. But could there be any problems with beliefs such as these which have come to form such central tenets of the secular creed of Australian life? From such assumptions it could be reasonably deduced that women have been biologically flawed and that Mother Nature herself failed woman at some point along the evolutionary journey; it was not until the invention of the Pill that woman is now whole and complete.
It would also follow that to be a mother is to be something inferior, certainly compared to her glamorous corporate contemporaries. How can any woman compete in the glamour stakes when she is constantly tired, worrying about bills and the home? There in a nutshell you have it, the so-called triumph of the Pill. For this magical little tablet finally made woman acceptable to our society and, apparently, to herself.
Meanwhile, When reading the excellent article by Michael Cook (The Record, 24 March) I recalled a particularly memorable article written in 1964 by E.M. Blaiklock, the Professor of Classics at Auckland University (NZ). Blaiklock compared the brilliant autumn colours of a Canadian autumn with “Toynbee’s inspired image of history’s Indian summer. He saw the grand pageant of [autumn] leaves and saw prophetically beyond its loveliness to the death and sterility which lay so near.”
The migrant family of 12 from Sierra Leone featured in The Record recently is still desperately seeking to rent a minimum 4 bedroom house, preferably in Mirrabooka/Balga or on a bus route to the area. If you can help, please phone St Vincent De Paul Society on 9475 5400.
Peter MurphySt Vincent De Paul Society
Icould not help but note that, of the six pictures of the Veneration of the Cross published in The Record on 2 April only in one was a cross being venerated. In the others it was a crucifix, that is a cross on which was a corpus of the crucified Jesus. Significantly it was in our mother Church, St Mary’s Cathedral, that a cross was being venerated.
Given that it was in Jerusalem, following the discovery of the True Cross, that the veneration of the cross had its origin, that the ritual spread to Churches of the East and West as fragments of the true cross were sent to those Churches, that in the context of the Good Friday liturgy in which, in the gospel, we have proclaimed the death and burial of Jesus and in which the cross is brought into the midst of the assembly with the words ‘This is the wood of the cross on which hung the Saviour of the world. Come, let us worship’ not ‘…on which hangs…’, having a corpus on the cross for veneration is surely in conflict with both the most ancient tradition of the Church and the verbal context of the liturgy.
In the light of this, is not our mother church, St. Mary’s, setting a standard and example that all churches in the archdiocese would do well to follow?
Fr. John Flynn, SAC RivertonAnyone who wanted to censor the excellent issue of The Record’s special edition, which so effectively counterattacked the secular media’s vitriolic vilification of the Pope and the Catholic Church, will also want to censor The Record’s issue of 19 May.
I am referring to the article on page 15 which is headed ‘Sex abuse a “terrifying” example of Church failings: Benedict.’
The warning the Pope proclaimed at Fatima this month deserves to be taken to heart by all clergy and laity: “Today we see in a really terrifying way that the biggest persecution of the Church comes from inside the Church ...”
This infamy is an outrage which all faithful Catholics need to confront, no matter how abhorrent it may be, and The Record deserves to be supported wholeheartedly for its forthright coverage of this dreadful scandal.
He went on to pose the question: “Are we to see in this late flowering of growth and inventiveness the autumn red and gold of our own culture?”
He responded by quoting Monk Gibbon’s warning: “The truth is that civilisation collapses when the essential reverence for absolute values disappears. Men live on the accumulated faith of the past, as they live on its accumulated selfdiscipline. Overthrow these and nothing seems missing at first, a few sexual taboos, a little of the prejudice of a Cato ... But something else has gone as well, the mortar which held society together, the integrity of the individual soul; then the rats come out of their holes, and begin burrowing under the foundations, and there is nothing to withstand them.”
We are witnessing the fulfilment of that prophetic warning. More than any other factor it is, as Michael Cook puts it, the “skewered, uncontrolled notion of sexuality” that has led to the contemporary plague of sexual abuse, while the overall lack of self-control and civilised respect for others has undoubtedly undermined the foundations of our civilisation.
Nothing less than the miraculous restoration of the essential reverence for eternal values and the awareness of the terrible consequences of ignoring those values will save our society from ruination.
Hugh Clift LesmurdieIhave not been on an organised retreat for a number of years, and last weekend took the opportunity to attend a one day retreat at the Redemptorist Monastery organised by the Western Australian branch of the World Apostolate of Fatima.
The Priest who gave the Retreat was Father Joseph Mary Michael McShane who gave excellent talks, telling the Fatima story in detail. It is of great importance that we know about Our Lady’s predictions at Fatima and that we follow her directions in our spiritual journeys.
I was very refreshed by my attendance at the retreat and urge your readers to attend any subsequent retreats and talks which may be arranged by the World Apostolate of Fatima group.
Maureen Mackay PerthIenjoyed the Easter Edition. Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Philosopher wrote, once you label me, you negate me. From reading The Record recently there seems to be a policy of attacking or labelling anything wrong with the current Church on the doorstep of the 2nd Vatican Council. The council is blamed for: people talking in church, not
genuflecting, young people laughing and hugging, being disrespectful, poor sermons, dreary folksy hymns, empty pews and green Catholics being communists, etc. However, Richard Connelly and Catherine Parish articles need to be challenged before they become part of the folklore in our diocese.
They say that:
It is a fact that the Council did not expect all the Bishops to respond quite so unanimously to ask permission to have Mass in the vernacular
Yet, when Pope Paul VI with all the Bishops of the world around him presented this ground breaking and liberating document “Sacrosanctum Councilium” in December 1963, its adoption was passed overwhelmingly: 2147 to only 4 against. Surely our pastors voted this way, because they believed the vernacular would bring the Eucharist intimately closer to the people?
This Councillor Document transcended ecclesiastical or party politics. It was not a pet project of KSC, Catholic Women’s League, or the Young Christian Students Movement. It was for the whole People of God.
The comments about “there were too many mad people running around doing their own thing”… and it continues [today]” is particularly worrying.
I do not believe that the 2147 Bishops of the world or Barry James our own Archbishop, our priests and baptised believers can be categorised as “mad people” doing their own thing.
The Council gave Bishops Conferences the authority to provide their own translations (S.C. No 36:40), nothing very radical in that, it’s called decentralisation and for many Catholics that is the ‘pink elephant’ that isn’t talked about today. Yet many saintly women and men throughout our history have raised this issue, like St Francis of Assisi calling for a renewal of the priorities and structures of the Church; St Bernard of Clairvaux called on Pope Eugene 3rd, to decentralise his government; and Pope Pius XI in his last public address in 1939 said:
The Church, the mystical body of Christ, has become a monstrosity. The head is very large, but the body is shrunken, … and the only way you can rebuild is to mobilise the lay people … you the priests must call upon them to come along with you to be the witnesses of Christ in the world
Ladislas Orsy, (2009) SJ a canon law professor in Rome who was an advisor at the Vatican Council explains:
The expression the Vicar of Christ for the pope entered into use around the 12th century, before than it had been the Vicar of Peter. The 2nd Vatican Council tried to balance its one sided use for the pope by repeatedly insisting that every bishop was a vicar of Christ in his diocese, which is essentially an assertion that there is one episcopate and all who receive the sacrament share it. The pope receives no higher gift in his ordination than the other bishops but is given a much broader field for the exercise of his sacramental power.
Pope John XXIII had faith in the episcopate [not just his own] and it is really the first step to ongoing reform of our Church. Once this faith in Episcopal conferences is restored, hope and love and the Holy Spirit will do the rest. And my guess would be that our response to the current crises in the Church would have been very different.
Additionally the Council wisely also made provisions for experimentation and evaluation of those experiments (S.C. No. 40), it is called a “quality check” today;
which any business or organisation worth its salt implements.
Catherine Parish’s headline “Experimentation after Vat. II linked to the Abuse Scandal” the connection between the two is spurious and irresponsible tabloid journalism by The Record
With my 30 years working in child protection, in my humble opinion, this statement does not reflect the reality of the Council or the world of paedophilia/child abuse.
To answer this particular question, we all need to look at, the corporate hierarchical structure and perhaps, the unintended barriers of our institutional Church such as the Vatican bureaucracy and its 26 departments, with very little accountability or transparency:
Canon law, that sees itself above the law of the land in every part of the world.
National Bishops’ Conferences around the world, that ignored, were in denial, were afraid, and or did nothing and sought to protect the organisation not the thousands of victims.
The centralisation of the Church by curia officials [officially] and through the bishops [unofficially] who didn’t make decisions, were compromised and turned to Rome for guidance - ‘opportune et importune.’
We the People of God who distort the respect due to sacred pastors [Canon 212] into a cult of personality are hurting Christ’s bodythe church in that process. We also did not speak our truth respectfully to our pastors and remained powerless and impotent.
Canon Law’s inability to deal with - the journey - the sacred - the mystery and the uniqueness of our faith in the risen Christ.
Canon Law 129 that stopped the people of God being admitted “into the inner sanctuary” in rebuilding the Church from within. Can you imagine if we had a Grandmother sitting with our pastors when the issue of child abuse was on the agenda, how different the Church response would have been? Fundamentally, Canon Law has failed to keep the spirit of the Council alive.
And finally we the body of baptised believers not believing in our own god given priesthood.
Remember the whole message of salvation is entrusted to the entire people of God.
If, and when we are into blame, where “I am right and you are wrong” mentality exists, then through, this dualistic thinking - we cease ‘being’ the Good News. I experience this article and indeed some others over the past few months as ‘another uninformed assault on the integrity of the Council’. Many Catholics seem to forget that the Council is the 2nd highest teaching authority in our Church, after Pope Benedict.
This type of politicalisation by The Record against Vatican II, its columnist and letter writers and the prominence of the “pro – Latinist” will be the start of a great schism in my eyes, if it is not addressed by all sections of our Church. Let me give you an example of possible consequences that are already happening.
Fr Richard Rohr in his latest book The Naked Now in 2009, stated that the biggest groups of believers after Catholics in the USA are ex-Catholics, people of faith who have walked away tired of the politics of the Corporate Church, and the pettiness of the competing forces amongst the people of God. We also know that young Catholics in Australia are joining the Buddhist in droves. We profess to be Catholics, yet we find it hard to handle diversity. There is unity in diversity; look at the example God gave us in the Holy
Trinity? This is a divine model, why can we not embrace it?
I have a daily reminder with 8 diverse siblings, yet we remain one family most of the time.
We seem to forget that: The Council asks for:
Dialogue and inner conversion, to a vision and new practices because the humble Pope John XXIII saw the need for a new order and for far reaching reform that he called aggiornamento – updating.
Orsy 2009 commented:
Although, he understood much of his project as a return to older traditions ... he did not impose his ideas on the gathered bishops, he asked them to use their own initiatives [which many found difficult] and given this Papal trust they lived up to their providential mandate and from below, they gave a new direction to the whole Church.
We know it was not an easy process in those four years for those of us lucky to live through this period. There was fear, confusion and painful struggles, a bit like the apostles when Christ was crucified, yet, together the Council Fathers through dialogue - prayer and inner conversion gave their people a fresh vision of the Kingdom of God and how to be church. They saw the Church first and foremost as a Communion, ‘communio’ a union of persons in a unique sense-created by the spirit of Christ.
Lumen Gentium in reality gave the people of God priority over the hierarchy which means Bishops have their jobs to do and we have ours, we together are communio “This communio is not identified with any particular group in our church, it belongs to us all.”
And for some conservative Catholics, this is close to heresy.
We know and have experienced that the Church is internally stressed by different female and male voices, and needs, yet inner conversion can only be gained by intelligent and grace filled debates, not blame or name-calling. Can we be more prudent, respectful and charitable to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ when we begin this important dialogue please? If only, because the Council Fathers certainly believed that what they said, did, and wrote during the Council “Pleased the Holy Spirit” (placuit spiritui sancto).
Guido Vogels MSW Vicar Social Apostolate Perth ArchdioceseSome time has passed, and this matter may have already been dealt with, yet I’m intrigued by the article in The Record of 31 March 2010: “The Last 24 Hours”.
This article mentions that Jesus’ nose had been broken by a cudgel. This seems to be at odds with John’s Gospel 19, 36, which claims that in accordance with Scripture, none of His bones had been broken. Scripture states that no bones of the lamb sacrificed for the Passover feast must be broken. And Jesus was clearly the true Passover Lamb.
I would welcome any authoritative comment on this.
Frank D Collins MorleyThank you for two outstanding issues of The Record. You have been very courageous in openly addressing issues of which the leaders of our Church have been tragically silent. The issue of The Record of 14 April
2010 put the personal hell of the victims before our eyes. We were given the facts regarding Pope Benedict and His leadership in bringing the Universal Church in concert when addressing clerical abuse.
Vista 3 (21 April) was outstanding and refreshing. To read of good priests taking positive and visible steps to promote prayer and for our clergy was just fantastic. In this Year of the Priest we at Holy Spirit Parish have celebrated, prayed for and recognised the Sacrament of Holy Orders for both present and past priests.
This horrendous abuse surely must tell us all that priests need our prayers, our support, our love and most of all our acceptance that they, like us, have human frailty. Open discussion by The Record and our parish priest has received significant support and discussion. Holy Spirit sold all of its 14 April 2010, Record by the 9.30am Mass on Sunday. Further copies sent are also being bought.
I pray that we in Perth can have an Archdiocesan novena in the Cathedral before the Year of the Priest has passed for Priests, vocations and the Pope. The Record has shown leadership; let us pray that others follow. Once again thank you. Pax,
Vincent Oswald Wembley DownsUsing the logic of the high priests of Atheism Dawkins, the Courts should be putting the Education Ministers of States in the Dock whenever a teacher sexually molests a child. After all, he/she is responsible, it would seem.
On another matter, as everyone knows and generally accepts, newspapers are not permitted to print hardcore porn or porn even approaching that level. Why then, should it be permitted on the Internet which is just as, if not more, available to and used by underage and other vulnerable people. This sort of thing has no place in civilised society. This is not just a Christian position, as some like to paint it as, since nonChristian Governments of varying types, including Secular and Atheistic ones, severely ban such degrading and filthy stuff. They know that it is harmful to society, leading to all sorts of problems.
Senator Conroy is to be congratulated for his stance on this matter and should be encouraged to keep a tight rein on the situation. Parents need to be vigilant and keep porn and gross violence away from their children. They need all the help they can get. Sorry if some people get all hot under the collar over “censorship”, but censorship becomes necessary when boundaries of common decency and good sense are breached. Commonsense, sadly lacking in today’s Western Society in general must prevail over open slather in such matters. Don’t complain about violence in general and against women if you’re not serious about banning these things.
MJ Gonzalez Willetton WAThe exposure of hygiene malpractice in the Croydon late term abortion clinic highlights that abortion, no matter what the modern twist, is always dangerous; from the old backyard crone to the taxpayer
funded “failed medicos without conscience” who run these rackets. The women patients, whose health and future has been imperilled by the Victorian Brumby Government Law (its ageing peers of both genders cracked a bottle of champagne to celebrate the destruction of a child up to birth), should now seek collectively to find out what sort of workplace practices were in place as the government condoned this particular human “service”. As we are all adults reading this, what is in place is an abattoir for the human baby, and not a very safe place for the mother either.
Maureen Federico Frankston South VICThe public funding of abortion was introduced decades ago by a Labour Government and continued by the Liberals. In fact, the-then health Minister of the recent Howard Government stated that as long as he was Health Minister it would continue.
Eventually, politicians began to wake up to the problems ahead realising, belatedly that this practice would not replace the generations of taxpayers necessary for the future. John Howard’s Government then began to bribe women to have babies by handing out millions in taxpayer dollars to anyone who would produce a child regardless of any means testing.
It seems incredible that so called intelligent men and women governing our country could not see the problems looming, especially when it was well documented from statistics of other countries with the same problem, which occasioned terminology such as “dying western civilisation”.
Books have also been written on the subject including the wellknown Empty Cradle by Alexander Halkias (2004). Interestingly, the only western country replacing its birth rate is America and so it was also heartening to hear that pro-life campaigners had forced President Obama to not permit public funding for abortion, which he finally agreed to in order to get his health reform legislation passed.
If support and alternative options were made available many abortions would be avoided with happy results. It is criminal that such advice is often suppressed and the only advice given for the whole shocking procedure is to proceed and destroy yet another Australian with the sanction of the Government.
It is [past] time that we Christians joined together on these and other vital issues of our times and, as in America, we would be a force to be reckoned with. Fr McGrath suggested a Forum. There is an old saying “United we stand and divided we fall.” We too have a choice.
M WalshEast Perth
Some people protest that society and government should not accept traditional morality.
The Australian Constitution, like nearly all those of Western governments, acknowledges God and presumes all laws will be based on the Judeo-Christian heritage of natural law.
If there were not traditional moral laws “imposed” on society there would be no protection from
the harm done by lying, cheating, fraud, stealing, rape, murder, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, pornography etc.
True freedom and happiness come from doing what we should/ ought to do by natural law; not by doing whatever we feel like doing or prefer to this is best. Otherwise we become slaves to passion or opinion.
The promoters of the false “…-isms” of socialism, Nazism, communism, feminism, materialism, secularism, and unbridled capitalism are recent examples of those who reject God, natural law, and any notion of a transcendent law which might limit their own utopian plans for a “better” society or for their own advantage.
Society cannot function in a moral vacuum. It needs not only physical capital – money, manpower, productivity etc. but also social and moral capital – respect for human rights and duties, honesty, trust, integrity, prudence, courage an most of all meaning and purpose both temporal and spiritual, for life and living. (Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate).
While the various “..isms” exploit the necessary social capital of society, they do nothing to sustain or build it. Like parasites they suck it away as we see everywhere today. Who cares anymore for real community living in the headlong rush of conspicuous consumption?
All institutions of society must snap out of this trance. God help us all if we don’t reform
Fr Bernard McGrath Bendigo VIC50 Ovens Rd. Thornlie
Come Spend one hour with Jesus. Includes Exposition, Adoration, Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet and Benediction. For further details contact Brian Keith on 9459 6724.
When: Every Tuesday at 7pm
St Vincent De Paul Society Group meeting. For further information contact Marie Jones on 9459 2550.
When: Fortnightly on Mondays at 6.45pm
Child Catechist Classes: for children of all ages. Contact Pat Ebsary on 9459 4024.
When: Available after school on Wednesday
Cnr Pelican Parade & Cassowary Drive, Ballajura
Corpus Christi Procession. Please meet at church at 8.55am for 30-minute walk to be followed by Mass at 9.30am.
When: Sunday June 6 A Touch of Ireland at MacKillop - WA Academy of Irish dancing presents an evening featuring seven of Australia’s top dancers supported by a five piece Irish band at the Mary MacKillop Catholic Community Church Hall.
Light supper provided. Beer, wine and soft drinks available at venue. Tickets available from Fr John Jegorow on 9249 1247.
When: Saturday June 19 at 7pm
Continued from Page 1
as brothers and sisters in Christ. “We are speaking of a house of God, a place that is holy. All the Sacraments can be celebrated here now,” he said.
Few see more than one dedication of a parish church in their lives, the Archbishop told the packed congregation. Already those present had seen the solemn entry into the Church, the carrying of the lectionary to the sanctuary, and the sprinkling of the walls and the assembly with holy water.
“The walls are holy now. Soon the altar will be covered with the sacred oil of Chrism, relics will be placed in the altar. It will be lit with candles and incense will be burned upon it, incense that will rise to heaven like
the prayers of the assembly.
“This is a beautiful ceremony - one you will be able to tell your children and your children’s children about,” he said.
Approximately 35 parish priests and auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton, together with Vicar General Monsignor Brian O’Loughlin and Redemptoris Mater Seminary Rector Fr Michael Moore SM were also present to concelebrate Mass with the Archbishop, Fr Carillo and Assistant Priest Fr Denis Sudla.
The Archbishop also paid tribute to the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition, whose foundress had become the official patroness of the parish.
It was their example and that of St Emilie which had been the inspiration behind the naming of the parish, he said.
Coincidentally, he added, the Sisters had arrived in 1855 in Western Australia on board a ship named The Lady Amherst; the name of the street on which St Emilie’s stands is Amherst Road.
During the ceremony the Archbishop placed relics of St Emilie in the new altar with the assistance of parish acolyte John Harkens.
In his own comments at the conclusion of the Mass, Fr Robert Carillo thanked all those who had been involved in designing the church.
He especially mentioned Sr Margaret Mary Gannon SJA, a Sister of St Joseph of the Apparition, who had served as Pastoral Assistant since the inception of the parish 10 years ago.
She had, he said, been a pillar of St Emilie’s from the very beginning.
But so had all the parishioners who, by their donations of time and effort had also been foundations of the parish.
“[They] are the pillars of the Church; Your Grace, I am very proud of them,” he said turning to address Archbishop Hickey.
At the conclusion of Mass Archbishop Hickey told the congregation he would be leaving the brand new vestments he was wearing as a small gift from the archdiocese ot the parish.
Following Mass, most of those attending retired to St Emilie’s School, which stands on the same proerty adjacent to the new church. Parishioners had earlier delivered homecooked food and a feast in every sense
Sr Margaret Mary Gannon SJA, the Pastoral Assistant who has been with the parish since the beginning. PHOTO: PETER ROSENGREN
Ladies of St Emilie’s Parish cover the newly consecrated altar with altar cloths during last Sunday’s ceremonies.
Parish officials discuss last-minute arrangements before the commencement of the dedication ceremony.
The plaque officially recording the church’s dedication and consec Latin phrase ‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam’ translates as: ‘for the greater gl
in the aisles during the Litany of the Saints. 9. Archbishop Hickey, assisted by Fr Robert, sprinkles the congregation and walls of the Church with holy water. 10. Priests file into the Church at the commencement of the consecration ceremony. 11. Acolyte John Harkins waits to install the relics of St Emilie in the new altar. Mr Harkins, a carpenter, also built the new
PHOTOS: PETER ROSENGREN cration. The ory of God.’
Virgin, Foundress of the Sisters of St Joseph "of the Apparition"
Feastday: June 17
Hilton in the 1960s it was then called De Vialar College.
Later it was amalgamated with St Brendan’s Boys College to become what is known today as Seton Catholic College.
When the Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition withdrew from administration of the school at the end of the school year in 1989 the window went to St Emilie’s, the home for retired Sisters in Kalamunda until it also closed. When it was known that patronage of the new Canning Vale parish would be given to St Emilie, the Sisters decided the window would be donated to the parish when the Church was built.
Sister Margaret Mary Gannon SJA, a member of the Congregation, was the parish Pastoral Assistant from its beginning in 2001.
ANNE MARGUERITE ADELAIDE EMILIE DE VIALAR was the eldest child and only daughter of Baron James Augustine de Vialar and his wife Antoinette. She was born at Gaillac in Languedoc, France, in 1797. At the age of 15 she was removed from school in Paris to be companion to her father, now a widower, at Gaillac; but unhappily, differences arose between them because of Emilie's refusal to consider a suitable marriage.
the ceremony. After the ceremonies were concluded for the day hundreds retired to nearby St Emilie’s School, below, for afternoon tea put on by parishioners.
For 15 years Emilie devoted herself to the care of children neglected by their parents and to the help of the poor generally. In 1832, her maternal grandfather died, leaving her a share of his estate which was a quite considerable fortune. She bought a large house at Gaillac and took possession of it with three companions. Others joined them and three months later, the Archbishop authorised the Abbe to clothe twelve postulants with the religious habit. They called themselves the Congregation of Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition. Their work was to be the care of the needy, especially the sick, and the education of children. In 1835, she made her profession with seventeen other sisters, and received formal approval for the rule of the Congregation.
The foundress, in the course of 22 years, saw her Congregation grow from one to some 40 houses, many of which she had founded in person. The physical energy and achievements of St Emilie de Vialar are the more remarkable in that from her youth she was troubled by hernia, contracted in carrying out a deed of charity. From 1850 this became more and more serious, and it hastened her end, which came on 24 August 1856.
burden of her last testament to her daughters was "Love
took place in 1951. -
All foundations of Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition in Australia came from Fremantle. The four French-speaking Sisters sent to WA in 1855 by St Emilie were the last to be personally chosen and assigned by the Saint.
The
one another". Her canonisation
Source: Catholic Online
The parishioners of Our Lady, Queen of Apostles, Riverton, celebrated the Parish Feast in honour of their Patroness on Friday, 21 May.
Archbishop Barry Hickey was the main celebrant at the Queen of Apostles Mass during which prayers were offered for the Pallottine priests who have served the parish for over 50 years – this being the Year of the Priest.
The Pallottine concelebrants at the Mass included two who flew in from Melbourne for the occasion.
The Liturgy for the evening was beautiful and has left a lasting impression on the participants and the congregation.
After the Mass Archbishop Hickey was the chief guest at the social evening and supper which followed in the F. John Luemmen Hall, at which he handed out awards to the Pallottine priests who have served and continue to serve the parish for well over half a century. Father Paul Manickathan SAC, Parish Priest, in a reciprocal gesture, presented Archbishop Hickey with an award for the leadership and pastoral guidance he has given to the parish.
The ceremonial part of the evening over, parishioners were treated to a scrumptious array of finger food and wine.
CANNES, France (CNA) - A film about a group of French monks who were martyred in Africa during the 1990s won the event’s second highest honour at the end the prestigious 12-day Cannes Film Festival on 23 May.
Of Gods and Men, a film by the French director Xavier Beauvois, centers around the true story of seven Cistercian monks who were taken hostage and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists in 1996.
Though the monks were told to return to their native France, the group refused and chose to remain in the conflict-torn region of the Algerian mountains, knowing that they would be martyred.
On 23 May, the movie was
awarded the “Grand Prix” honour, which is the festival’s second highest prize.
Kate Muir, a film critic for the London-based Times Online, called the film the “most intensely passionate” one of the Cannes event, and according to her, during the movie’s premiere the “audience wept”.
In her 19 May review, Muir discussed Beauvois’ depiction of the monks, who lived contemplative lives in the service of the poor in the Atlas Mountains.
In the film, the seven men build strong friendships with their surrounding community and live in relative peace until conflict arises between the local government
May 2010
28 Confirmation, Innaloo - Bishop Sproxton
28-30 Parish Visitation, Greenmount - Archbishop Hickey
30 Confirmation, Port Kennedy - Bishop Sproxton
Confirmation, Embleton - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG
Confirmation, Kwinana - Fr Greg Carroll
Catholic Youth Ministry Mass and Commissioning - Bishop Sproxton
and extremist groups. Though the monks are advised by everyone involved to leave, each one decides to stay and is eventually held hostage and murdered by the fundamentalists.
“The deep humanity of the monks, their respect for Islam
June 2010
and their generosity towards their village neighbors make (up) the reason for our choice,” stated the festival jury who issued the award.
“This movie of great artistic value benefits from a remarkable group of actors and follows the daily rhythm of work and liturgy.”
2 LifeLink Day Webcast for Schools - Archbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton
4 Catholic Faith Renewal Group - Archbishop Hickey
5 A Day with Mary, Maddington - Archbishop Hickey
6 Mass, Gosnells - Archbishop Hickey Italian National Ball - Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG
10 Close of Year for Priests – Evening Prayer at St Mary’s CathedralArchbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton
11-13 Parish Visitation, Rockingham - Archbishop Hickey Parish Visitation, Scarborough - Bishop Sproxton
VATICAN CITY (CNS)The gift of the Holy Spirit creates the unity and universality of the Catholic Church, overcoming barriers of nationality and language and opening people’s hearts to work with and serve one another, Pope Benedict XVI said.
The Pope said on 23 May during his homily at a Mass celebrating the feast of Pentecost that the Church can be a sign and instrument of unity “only if it remains autonomous from every nation and every particular culture.” While he did not mention specific countries or areas of the world in his Pentecost homily, the Pope did offer special prayers for Catholics in China when he recited the Regina Coeli prayer after Mass. Pope Benedict has designated 24 May - the feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians - as a day of prayer for the Church in China. “While the faithful in China are praying for deeper unity among themselves and with the universal Church, Catholics - especially those of Chinese origin - around the world are uniting with them in prayer and charity,” the Pope said.
“The Church is, by its nature, one and universal, destined to live among all nations, all peoples and in the most varied social contexts,” the Pope said.
The gift of the Holy Spirit, poured out on the Apostles on the first Pentecost, continues to be given to Jesus’ disciples, the Pope said.
Where there are tensions and misunderstandings, the Spirit “creates unity and understanding,” he said. And in the modern world, when many people see themselves simply as “individuals in competition or in conflict with one another,” the Spirit “opens them to the experience of communion” and helps them form one Church, he said.
“Unity is the sign of recognition, the ‘calling card’ of the Church,” he said.
The unity of believers is important in parishes and dioceses, Pope Benedict said, but it also is essential that local Catholic communities are in full union with the universal Church and its head, the Pope.
Pope Benedict also that said the Holy Spirit’s constant movement toward unity is a key tool for determining whether a person or action is truly Christian. “If a person or a community is closed off in its own way of thinking or acting, it is a sign that it has moved away from the Holy Spirit,” the Pope said.
But, he said, the Holy Spirit’s unifying action does not grind away all differences among believers; rather, it values different gifts and helps people place them at the service of the entire Church.
“The Church is never a prisoner of political, racial and cultural boundaries; it cannot be confused with nations or even federations of nations because its unity is of a different kind and aspires to cross all human frontiers,” he said.
THE Catholic Bishops of the Philippines have indicated their willingness to work with newly elected President Benigno Aquino, but drawn a firm line against cooperation with the new government leader’s support for a bill expanding government birth-control programs.
Son of the late former President of the Philippines, Cory Aquino, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino won the recent presidential election with 43 per cent of the vote.
He got the support of voters, especially Catholic voters, by stressing the need to fight corruption and poverty and implement radical changes, after years of bad government under outgoing President Arroyo.
His support for the Reproductive Health bill has however undermined his credibility.
Under proposed birth control legislation, which is backed by the United Nations as a way to fight poverty, contraceptive methods and voluntary sterilisation would become widely available. Bishop Nereo Odchimar said Catholic Bishops “have to lobby once again to make our position clear that we are for human life; the respect and preservation of human life is non-negotiable”.
THREE Protestant churches and a pastor’s home were demolished on 15 and 19 May in Kano State in northern Nigeria after a local Shari’a court consented to their destruction.
“It is unacceptable that churches can still be destroyed on the whim of a few extremists,” said an official of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
“These demolitions violate Nigeria’s constitutional and international legal undertakings to uphold religious freedom and freedom of assembly. In addition, the constitution stipulates that non-Muslims cannot be brought before Shari’a courts unless they have agreed to this in advance and in writing; thus there is no valid basis for these demolitions.”
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recently named Nigeria a country of particular concern because of “ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom” there. Fifty per cent of the nation’s 142.5 million people are Muslim; 25 per cent are Protestant, 15 per cent are Catholic, and 10 per cent retain indigenous beliefs.
CITING Pope Benedict, who wrote in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate that “more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) are urging the Senate to preserve federal funding for international anti-poverty programmes.
“While budget constraints are serious and must be dealt with, through foreign assistance reform and other measures, our nation should not balance its budget on the backs of people living in poverty around the world,” notes a 20 May action alert.
DAYS after two Cuban Catholic Archbishops came away from a four-hour meeting with President Raul Castro voicing optimism that conditions would improve for jailed political dissidents, one Cuban human rights activist said he was told the changes would begin on 24 May.
Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino and Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago, president of the Cuban bishops’ conference, told reporters on 20 May that they believed “small steps” would soon begin in the process of improving the conditions for political prisoners.
They said their 19 May session with Castro was “a magnificent start,” but “we are not talking about any commitments,” and that talks would continue between the Church and the government. On 24 May, the Miami Herald daily newspaper reported that Guillermo Farinas, an independent journalist hospitalised in Santa Clara because of a lengthy hunger strike, said he was told the Cuban government would begin moving sick political prisoners to hospitals and allow other dissidents to be detained closer to their homes. Farinas said that Havana Auxiliary Bishop Juan de Dios Hernandez Ruiz told him on 22 May that the changes would begin the following Monday and that eventually some of the jailed political activists could be freed, the Herald reported.
Supporters of the dissidents say there are more than 200 political prisoners in Cuba.
VATICAN CITY - The world of politics and governance requires “a true revolution of love” in which citizens are inspired by the Christian values of solidarity and truth to work for the common good, Pope Benedict XVI said.
For Christians to be effective in the world of politics, which is “a complex art” of balancing ideals and individual interests, they must transform their “intelligence of faith into an intelligence of reality,” which is key for making sound judgments and bringing about true social transformation, he said.
The Pope made his comments in an audience 21 May at a meeting of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. The council’s plenary assembly on 20-22 May focused on the theme Witnesses to Christ in the Political Community Pope Benedict told his audience that the current culture of “confused relativism and utilitarian and hedonistic individualism weakens a democracy and promotes the domination of the most powerful.”
“Authentically Christian politicians are needed” - laypeople who are true witnesses to Christ and the Gospel in the civil and political spheres, he said. Politics needs to be renewed by “authentic political wisdom,” which is open to real dialogue and collaboration with all sectors of society and is not limited by an ideological viewpoint or utopian assumptions, he said.
The Church’s role is not to promote any particular political party or system nor tell people how to run a country, he said.
However, the Church is called to preach the faith, teach social doctrine and give moral guidance on matters regarding public life, fundamental human rights and the salvation of souls, he said.
Assisted by the Church, laymen and women must demonstrate through their personal, social and political lives how Christian faith and values can effectively address
current issues, he said. The lay faithful need to actively participate in political life in a way that is consistent with Church teaching, the Pope said. By using arguments founded on reason and inspired by great ideals, Catholic citizens can seek broad consensus with everyone who cares deeply about defending human life and liberty, safeguarding the truth and the well-being of the family, promoting solidarity with those in need and seeking the common good, he added.
Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, told Vatican Radio on 20 May that the Church needs to give laymen and women proper formation so they live in a way that is consistent with Church teaching and courageously give witness to Christ in the public realm.
He also said attitudes of apathy and skepticism toward the world of politics need to be overcome so citizens will reengage with their communities and promote the common good.
In his address to the plenary assembly, Italian Archbishop Rino Fisichella said the key to transforming politics was for parties
and individual politicians to build broad political platforms that are based on a clear moral and ethical vision of humanity.
Laws impact the way people understand what is right and wrong, he said in his address, which was published in part by the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, on 21 May.
“If a lawmaker trivialises life with laws that make abortion easier to procure or that lead to a human sexuality that is without any rules,” and if laws focus only on preventative measures, he said, then the lawmaker will not have brought about real moral progress within society.
Instead, politicians need to create a political vision that challenges the current culture to be inspired by basic human values, and helps people develop a moral and ethical conscience from which they can be guided in their everyday life, said the Archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Swearing allegiance to uphold a nation’s constitution “should never prevent a Christian in politics from also being faithful to the Gospel,” Archbishop Fisichella told L’Osservatore Romano
VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The successful development of a synthetic cell can have many practical applications, but the technology must be regulated, said the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano
A team of geneticists in the US announced on 20 May that it had created a living artificial cell.
After mapping on a computer the complete DNA code of a bacterium, the team led by J Craig Venter, inserted the synthesised DNA into a bacteria cell, which was then able to replicate and be controlled by the synthetic genome. Synthetic cells could be used to convert carbon dioxide into fuel or to create new vaccines for treating diseases, Venter told CNN on 22 May.
The Vatican newspaper emphasised that scientists had not created life, but had “substituted one of its engines.” Venter’s creation has produced “an interesting result,” which could have many applications, but the new technology “must have
rules just like everything that lies at the heart of life,” it said in an article on 23 May. “Genetic engineering can be used for good,” particularly in treating genetic diseases, it said, however, caution must be exercised as “many people in fact are concerned about the possible future developments of genetically modified organisms.”
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Italian television on 21 May that as long as synthetic cells were used “toward the good, to treat pathologies, we can only be positive” about their development.
However, if they are used in ways that offend human dignity, “then our judgment would change,” he said.“We look at science with great interest. But we think above all about the meaning that must be given to life,” the Archbishop said. “We can only reach the conclusion that we need God, the origin of life,” he added.
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco,
president of the Italian bishops’ conference, told Italian news agencies that the development of the first synthetic cell was a “further sign of human intelligence, which is a great gift of God.”
However, with intelligence comes responsibility, he said. Therefore, any intellectual or scientific advancement “must always measure up to an ethical standard.”
Bishop Domenico Mogavero of Mazara del Vallo, chairman of the Italian bishops’ legal affairs committee, said that the new form of life “is a potential time bomb, a dangerous double-edged sword for which it is impossible to imagine the consequences.”
Human beings must never pretend to be God by artificially creating life, because life can only come from God, Bishop Mogavero told the Italian newspaper La Stampa “Pretending to be God and parroting His power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into barbarity,” he said.
BANGKOK (CNS) - Thai Church leaders urged Catholics to be actively involved in relief work in the Thai capital after the army stormed the main “red-shirt” protest site.
Bishop Joseph Pibul Visitnondachai of Nakhon Sawan told the Asian church news agency UCA News that he wants Catholics to be involved in blood donation drives and visit those wounded in the violence that erupted anew on 13 May.
Key leaders of the anti-government movement surrendered during the 19 May military operation, but riots and fires continued in many parts of the city throughout the afternoon, and violence spread to other parts of the country.
Actions by Catholic volunteers were hindered by security concerns as armed forces cleared central Bangkok of protesters and the government imposed a curfew throughout the city.
“Now we can only urge people to pray for the country,” said Bishop Pibul, who heads the Thai bishops’ Commission for the Law and Economy.
Saying the government is illegitimate, for two months the protesters occupied large areas of central Bangkok, demanding that parliament be dissolved and new elections called.
Thai troops stormed the encampment where the protesters had holed up, bringing an end to the contentious standoff.
Thai church leadership had planned to call Catholics together for a prayer rally in the capital on 23 May, but Bishop Pibul said such
a gathering was in jeopardy after the crackdown.
Church leaders asked the faithful to pray the Rosary for the dead and for the country daily for the rest of the year.
“We call on all sides to stop violence and cooperate to solve the political problems by love and forgiveness,” they said in a statement.
“We call for a return to dialogue to calm down the situation and resolve matters peacefully,” they added.
Several Catholic churches and schools opened their doors as safe
havens to people trapped in the conflict zone on 18 May.
The week of violence, which left at least 41 people dead and hundreds more injured, prompted Thai Catholic leaders to issue a plea for calm and a return to negotiations.
A 17 May appeal from the protesters for a cease-fire and UN-mediated talks was rejected by authorities. The president of the Bishops’ conference said he feared “the country is at the beginning of a civil war.”
Archbishop Louis ChamniernSantisukniran of Thare and Nonseng called for negotiations to begin anew, saying that “an intervention of religious leaders might help to explore new avenues of dialogue and mediation and provide a peaceful solution to the crisis,” Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency, reported on 15 May.
The violence forced nearly all Catholics to stay away from Mass on 16 May at parishes near the protest zone.
Those who made it to Mass prayed for the dead and injured as well as for peace in the country.
BANGKOK (CNS) - As calm returned to the Thai capital and other cities, several clergy ministering in the strongholds of the “red-shirt” protesters called for all parties to work to heal the country.
“There is no winner,” said Bishop Philip Banchong Chaiyara of Ubon Ratchathani, president of the Thai Bishops’ Episcopal Commission for Social Ministries.
“Everyone has lost.
“The healing process must begin immediately even though it is hard to imagine so amid the anger and pain.”
He also urged Catholics to pray for peace and said all sides should work toward solutions to the problems Thailand faces.
“We should not hate each other because we have different political ideologies,” said Fr Vithaya Ngamwong, Vicar General of the Ubon Ratchathani Diocese and pastor of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
The Church is about a halfmile from the city hall that was razed by rampaging protesters on 19 May.
“National reconciliation must start now,” he said.
Archbishop Louis Chamniern Santisukniran of Thare and Nonseng called for negotiations to begin anew, saying that “an intervention of religious leaders might help to explore new avenues of dialogue and mediation and provide a peaceful solution to the crisis,” Fides, the Vatican’s missionary news agency, reported on 15 May.
Modern
Polish
was man of ‘deep conviction, integrity’BY JONATHAN LUXMOORE Catholic News Service
WARSAW, Poland - When a Catholic priest who was murdered by Communist agents is beatified in Warsaw on 6 June it will confirm his place as one of the Church’s most conspicuous modern martyrs.
Polish Church leaders hope the beatification will also recall values for which Fr Jerzy Popieluszko gave his life and revive interest in a remarkable story of Christian courage and witness.
“People are full of expectations here, especially those who directly experienced his work,” said Archbishop Henryk Muszynski of Gniezno.
“He wasn’t a forceful speaker or political activist, but someone of deep conviction and integrity. His sanctity lay in an elementary righteousness that gave people hope even in the worst situations,” he said.
The bound and gagged body of 37 year old Fr Popieluszko, who was well-known in Poland for sermons defending human rights, was dredged from a reservoir on the Vistula River near Wloclawek on 20 October 1984, just 11 days after
he was kidnapped while returning from a night Mass in Bydgoszcz.
About 400,000 people attended his funeral, and his murder was widely credited with helping discredit and undermine communist rule.
The Warsaw Archdiocese launched a canonisation process in 1997 and sent its 1,157-page dossier to Rome in 2001. A decree recognising Fr Popieluszko as a martyr was issued by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 December.
His beatification is a major step toward sainthood.
In a 17 May interview with CNS, Archbishop Muszynski said he had lived close to St Stanislaw Kostka Church in Warsaw, where Fr Popieluszko served in the early
1980s. The Archbishop said he became convinced of the priest’s saintliness after reading his homilies when they were published after the 1989 return of democracy.
He added that the priest was a “very simple, even shy person,” who had become a spiritual leader by virtue of his undaunted “faithfulness to Christ in the Gospel.”
“He was a normal person who knew what awaited him and was afraid, but nevertheless refused to betray this Gospel of truth,” the Archbishop said.
“He stood on the side of people struggling for a free Poland, who’d been unjustly accused of plotting to overthrow the communist state. This was why he had powerful opponents.”
Born into a poor rural family at Okopy in northeastern Poland, Jerzy Popieluszko enrolled at Warsaw’s Catholic seminary in September 1965. He was ordained by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in May 1972 after having his health damaged by two years of military service.
After other pastoral jobs in the capital, he was sent to help at St Stanislaw’s in May 1980 and served as a chaplain to the nearby Huta Warszawa steelworks when strikes in August 1980 led to the formation of the Solidarity union.
In February 1982, two months after Solidarity was crushed by martial law, Fr Popieluszko celebrated his first of many Masses for the Homeland, soon copied
by other priests around Poland. Several times detained and interrogated, he was formally charged in July 1984 with “abusing the function of a priest” and “anti-state propaganda,” although the charge was suspended a month later.
In a March pastoral letter, Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz of Warsaw predicted the priest would serve as an “advocate against relativism and lies” for “all those wielding power,” adding that his teaching had been received by contemporaries “as parched earth receives water,” making him a “living sign of hope for millions of Poles.”
Meanwhile, the priest’s postulator, Fr Tomasz Kaczmarek, said the beatification process had faced delays because of the substantial documentation and complexities of the period, as well as concerns over “ways of remembering his work.” He added that the beatification, at the end of the Year for Priests, would remind clergy of “the way of authentic priestly service.”
“There were never objections to Fr Popieluszko’s martyrdom for the faith or heroic conduct up to his death - these were never doubted,” the Warsaw-based priest told Poland’s Catholic Information Agency on 30 April. “This pastor, who didn’t even have the strength to be a normal curate, nevertheless became the exponent of the nation’s deepest yearnings.”
In February 1985, four members of Poland’s Interior Ministry
were convicted of killing Father Popieluszko, but they were released early after controversial sentence revisions. A former secret police general, Wladyslaw Ciaston, twice was acquitted of ordering the murder.
However, Solidarity supporters have repeatedly blamed senior communists for the death of the priest, whose grave at St Stanislaw Kostka Church, modelled on a Rosary given him by Pope John Paul II, has been visited by 18 million people.
Poland’s National Remembrance Institute, which runs a commission investigating communist-era crimes, has continued to collect material on the killing.
In October, it helped bring charges against two other former secret police agents for seeking to frame Father Popieluszko by planting weapons and illegal leaflets in his Warsaw apartment.
One Warsaw student, Ewa Dryjanska, told CNS on 17 May that Fr Popieluszko’s story was mainly of interest to those who remembered the period, adding that many young Catholics saw his testimony in “political, anticommunist categories.”
However, in his CNS interview, Archbishop Muszynski said he believed young Catholics also were responsive to Fr Popieluszko’s testimony and were impressed that martyrdom could occur in the present day and was “not just something from the past.”
ON SOCIETY, Catholics are less likely than Protestants to say it has improved family life.
The birth control pill has made American family life...
BY AMY V IERBOOM
WITH the 50th anniversary of its availability in stores, we’ve been doused with stories examining the many ways the pill revolutionised society.
WASHINGTON - Fifty years ago this May, the Food and Drug Administration gave its approval for the use of a combination of the hormones progesterone and estrogen that the pharmaceutical company Searle said would prevent pregnancy 99.7 per cent of the time.
Known simply as “the pill,” it was a development that was heralded as the liberation of women from male domination that would lead to fewer divorces and a steep decline in the number of unwanted pregnancies and in the number of abortions. But statistics show just the opposite.
“It’s very easy to find summaries from that time of everything that was promised,” said Helen Alvare, an associate professor of law at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.
“There would be greater equality for women; they would no longer be essentially slaves to their biology,” she added.
“(The pill) was supposed to reduce unwanted births and the number of people looking for abortions and to increase the well-being of children, because only wanted children would be born.”
But it didn’t turn out that way. In a talk called Contraception: Why Not? that has been reprinted or downloaded more than a million times since it was first delivered in 1994, moral theologian Janet Smith said “it was not a stupid expectation” in the 1960s “that contraceptives would make for better marriages, fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abortions”.
“But I think the cultural evidence today shows absolutely the contrary,” added Smith, now a professor of moral theology who holds the Fr Michael J McGivney chair in life ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
There are plenty of statistics that prove her point:
● As the use of the pill became more widespread, the
divorce rate doubled from 25 percent of all US marriages in 1965 to 50 percent in 1975.
Only when the United States had reached the point that all women who wanted access to the pill had gotten it did the divorce rate level off, Smith contends.
● Although the percentage of pregnancies that were “unintended” in 1960 is hard to pinpoint, six per cent of white children and 22 per cent of black children were born out of wedlock that year, Smith says. By the mid-2000s, onethird of white births, 70 percent of black births and half of Hispanic births were to unwed mothers.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy says more than 3 million of the 6.4 million pregnancies in the United States annually are unplanned; about 1.2 million of those result in abortions each year.
● Although abortion did not become legal throughout the United States until 12 years after the advent of the pill, the availability of birth control has not reduced abortions, which totaled more than 45 million between 1973 and 2005.
The number of abortions slightly decreased each year in the 2000s, but few credit the pill for the decline. The Guttmacher Institute says about 54 percent of women who have abortions used a method of contraception during the month they became pregnant.
● The well-being of children has declined by a variety of measures, from depression to diet to the number living in poverty and the number experiencing child abuse or neglect, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.
The belief persists, however, that the pill has had a positive influence on the lives of children, families and especially women.
Fifty-six percent of respondents to a CBS News poll in early May said they thought the pill had improved women’s lives, although men (59 per cent) thought so more than women (54 per cent) did.
Half of the respondents also thought the birth control pill had improved American family life, but opinions differed wide-
ly depending on the respondents’ religion. Only 38 per cent of Catholics and 41 per cent of white evangelicals thought the pill had improved family life, but 52 percent of mainline Protestants thought so.
The margin of error for the CBS News poll was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Alvare, who served for many years as the US Bishops’ chief pro-life spokeswoman, believes that the achievements women have made toward obtaining equal treatment with men have “nothing to do with the chemicals they’ve swallowed.”
Even though women today might have “access to places and positions that once belonged to men,” that “isn’t a full measure of women’s equality and dignity,” she added.
“They are now in all the places where men were, but they have never been seen more as sex objects than they are now.”
The major disconnect caused by the arrival of the pill has been a loss of “the idea that men and women make babies,” Alvare said.
“In any literature today about sex, it seems that unprotected sex makes babies” or even that technology can make babies apart from any human connection.
“That whole package of love, the intimate sharing of life was broken apart by the pill,” she said.
And as technological advances in artificial reproduction are made, “the idea that God plays a role in procreation” is lost in favor of the idea that “technology does or the failure to use it does,” she added.
The Catholic Church’s teaching that artificial birth control is morally wrong was reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI in 1968 in the encyclical Humane Vitae (“Of Human Life”).
Writing recently in a blog for the Ontario-based National Post, Canadian writer Barbara Kay said the pill “coincided with, and arguably caused, the greatest paradigm shift in relations between the sexes in all of human history.”
In the 50 years since its arrival, Kay said, “we have hardly even begun to take an honest cultural measure of what has been gained and what has been lost in the transition.”
Listening to women hailing its arrival and drawn into the nostalgia of it all, as they complained that doctors wouldn’t prescribe it for unmarried women, I recalled that my doctor had given it to me aged 15; along with a talk about STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and an unconvinced look when I promised her that it really was just to treat my acne-prone skin. How much things seem to have changed.
Yet underlying the triumphant stories of the women who embraced it is the disconcerting belief that my fertility is some sort of disease that needs to be ‘managed’; that fertility had, for hundreds of generations before us, inhibited women from being truly happy and fulfilled; and we are now better off. But are we?
Have we, as women, been truly liberated by this pill that promised so much?
The wonder pill allowed for the supposed ‘sexual freedom of expression’ women had all been waiting for. The benefits of hindsight allow us to weigh the outcomes of this against recent reports of the damage the “raunch culture” is doing to our society’s youngest members.
The pill was the bedrock of the sexual revolution that has made raunch reality: sexual gratification with no strings attached; no commitment required.
Further, reliable contraception, where all the responsibility lay with the women, was viewed as a dream pill for many young men not willing to commit to marriage. And so we’ve arrived at the point where I’ve now lost count of the number of girlfriends of mine who can’t understand why their boyfriends haven’t popped the question.
For some of them it has meant trading in the dream of a white wedding and moving in as a compromise. But for many others it has merely built a culture where sex is little more than a recreational activity, having little to do with love and therefore difficult to refuse, even when it isn’t wanted.
Today, delaying childbearing or marriage, or even choosing never to marry at all are not only very accepted lifestyle choices, but in some cases encouraged.
While charting the median age of first marriages over several decades shows the influence of wartime, economics and social trends; few would deny that the pill has played, and continues to play, a significant part in sustaining this upward trend. From the time Whitlam removed the luxury tax on the pill in 1972, making it more affordable for women, to 2008; the median age of first marriages increased from 21 to 27.7 years for women and 23.3 to 29.6 years for men.
This was both cause and effect of the coinciding fight for equality in the universities, workplaces and governments. It is fair to say that the pill was a catalyst for many changes; delaying childrearing has allowed many women to pursue tertiary education and professional careers.
The struggle for equal opportunities in education and the workplace had some undeniably positive outcomes for women in many respects. In that time it was recognised that women, though different to men, were equal.
Today, I don’t think there are any reasonable arguments against women and men being equal, but the effect of the pill was that it encouraged the elimination of some of the important differences. If feminism really is about a woman’s ability to be more like a man, through the avoidance of childbearing, I think we women got lost somewhere along the way.
Surely feminism should be about femininity? I’m not talking about the perfect housewives of 1950’s advertising. Admittedly, it’s difficult to work out the hard and fast rules of what is feminine as opposed to masculine; however, most people instinctively know we’re different, if only because of the very common experience of finding the opposite sex incomprehensible, if not a complete mystery.
While there is a growing body of research looking at the distinctly different ways that males and females develop and act; if anything is going to help us work out what femininity is, surely it is our biologically inbuilt capacity to be mothers. It seems ironic that so much of the feminist movement has hinged on limiting and suppressing that ability.
If we’re going to be true feminists, should this not mean upholding femininity? Should we not be embracing womanhood and what makes women women – and raising those characteristics up as worthy of respect and honour.
The pill promised us choice, while making motherhood out to be a second-rate option, not worthy of our choosing it (at least not before 30, when Mr Perfect will arrive and things will magically fall into place, fingers-crossed).
Society needs to give women a real choice to be mothers, and respect and value it when they do. So I’m all for parental leave, flexibility for mothers (and fathers) in the workplace, and even financially recognising the efforts of mothers who choose to stay home and take care of their children full-time.
If we let women be women, it will not only give men the chance to be the men, but it will also be good for the wellbeing of future generations.
Amy Vierboom is a Law student at the University of Technology Sydney and worked as a legal researcher in privacy and e-commerce for three years before taking up her current position as a researcher at the Life, Marriage and Family Centre in the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. She has a particular interest in areas relating to women, faith and culture. This article first appeared in www.onlineopinion.com.au on 20 May. Photo of Amy above by Giovanni Portelli
After decades of misguided feminism, pop culture icons are realising their folly:
with Anna Krohn
Something interesting is going on when Raquel Welch comes out saying the contraceptive pill has damaged women and girls
Anyone older than about five during the 1960s or 70s remembers THAT film poster which launched Raquel Welch, former beauty contest champion, former weather girl, former retail model into a “bombshell”.
The film was called 1 Million Years BC (1966), and it must be said it was no high minded version of Walking With Dinosours
In fact the movie was just a filmsy excuse to depict Miss Welch in a rather flimsy fur number with matching Ugg boots.
At the time, she was notoriously hailed as the most “desirable female” of the 1970s by Playboy Magazine, that great arbiter of male auto-erotic taste.
It was said at the time that Raquel was the new “Marilyn” (Munro to you Gen Yers) - but unlike that tragic blonde, Raquel was already aware of the excesses of Hollywood and its carnivorous taste for female flesh.
“Being a sex symbol is like being a convict!” she noted. She turned down the more pornified Barbarella which went to the more “progressive” Jane Fonda and
instead took to minor (and less lucrative) parts in such G-rated favourites as McHale’s Navy
Who would have thought, however, that the former Miss San Diego would also prove to be more like a post-liberal feminist than Jane Fonda.
Though sounding like a rough diamond, she thinks more like Pope John Paul II.
Like him, she has a bone to pick
with those dubious heroines of eugenics and population control, the American Margaret Sanger, the spiritual founder of The Planned Parenthood Foundation and the British Dr Marie Stopes (both were influenced by the neoMalthusians and the despisers of the poor, “unfit” and coloured.) This year Marie Stopes’ clinics have hailed 2010 as the “Year of Contraception”.
They opened the year with this heartening message: “A lot of women and men make New Year’s resolutions to give up smoking, lose weight or get fit” why not opt for any one of the rubberised or chemical combos of contraception or abortion recommended on their page “to ensure you avoid any unplanned surprises in 2010.”
Margaret Sanger is touted as the prophet preparing the way for the Pill (50 years old this year) and the great liberator of female sexuality.
During the 1920s Sanger embraced a number of extra-marital lovers along with half-baked psychological justifications for female sexual “joy”.
Supposedly free from the “fear of pregnancy” women would be free “to own and control” their own bodies.
As Dr Michael Waldstein notes in the introduction to his excellent translation to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body - there is a big catch to this “control”.
He cites the dizzy terms in which Sanger writes of this: “Through this mysterious initiation (of contracepted sex) he (her husband or any other bloke she fancies) becomes for her a veritable god - worthy of her profoundest worship...”
Miss Welch wonders about the legacy of contraception, in fact she wonders aloud about especially Margaret Sanger’s legacy: “Since then the growing proliferation of birth control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values,” she writes.
The freedom offered by Sanger’s revolution, has in Raquel’s opinion lead to a new and deeper form of female slavery than even she recognised in her pin-up days: “As a result of the example set by their elders, by the 1990s teenage sexual promiscuity - or hooking up - with multiple partners had become a common occurrence.
Many of my friends who were
parents of teenagers sat in stunned silence several years ago when it came to light that oral sex had become a popular practice among adolescent girls in middle schools across the country.
What she has spotted is the replacement of responsibility, dignity and self-respect, the marks of true “freedom” with the desire to be desired, the worship of the male lust which was so blithely advocated by Margaret Sanger and with which teenage girls are ensnared (even while they think they are being desirable).
While on tour promoting her autobiography Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, Raquel Welch has become quite a voice of contradiction. She describes her book as an attempt to “get behind the image and beyond the image” .
“... For young women of childbearing age (I was one of them) there was a need for some careful soul searching - and consideration about the long-range effects of oral contraceptives.” Far from accepting the Emily’s List mantra of “my body, my choice” or the Marie Stopes website boasting of same day abortions, Raquel Welch reflects upon her awkward and unexpected pregnancy.
With the support of her then husband she decided that “the choice” was “not mine alone to make”.
“During my pregnancy, I came to realise that this process was not about me,” she said. “I was just a spectator to the metamorphosis that was happening inside my womb so that another life could be born. It came down to an act of self-sacrifice, especially for me, as a woman. But both of us were fully involved, not just for that moment, but for the rest of our lives. And it’s scary.
“You may think you can skirt around the issue and dodge the decision, but I’ve never known anyone who could.”
Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again.
Since then the growing proliferation of birth control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.
And as I’ve grown older over the past five decades - from 1960 to 2010 - and lived through this revolutionary period in female sexuality, I’ve seen how it has altered American society - for better or worse.
On the upside, by the early 60’s The Pill had made it easier for a woman to choose to delay having children until after she established herself in a career.
Nonetheless, for young women of childbearing age (I was one of them) there was a need for some careful soul searching - and consideration about the long-range effects of oral contraceptives - before addressing this very personal decision.
It was a decision I too would have to face when I discovered I was pregnant at age 19. Even though I was married to the baby’s father, Jim Welch, I wasn’t prepared for this development.
It meant I would have to put my career ambitions on hold.
But “the choice” was not mine alone to make. I had always wanted to have Jim’s babies, but wasn’t at all sure how he would react. At the time, we were 19-year-old newlyweds, struggling to make ends meet. But he was unflinching in his desire to keep our baby and his positive, upbeat attitude about the whole prospect turned everything around.
I have always loved Jim for how he responded in that moment.
During my pregnancy, I came to realise that this process was not about me. I was just a spectator to the metamorphosis that was happening inside my womb so that another life could be born. It came down to an act of self-sacrifice, especially for me, as a woman.
But both of us were fully involved, not
just for that moment, but for the rest of our lives. And it’s scary. You may think you can skirt around the issue and dodge the decision, but I’ve never known anyone who could. Jim and I had two beautiful children who’ve been an ongoing blessing to both of us.
Later, I would strike out on my own, with my little ones, as a single mother to pursue a career in the movies. It was far from ideal, but my children didn’t impede my progress.
They grounded me in reality and forced me into an early maturity. I should add that having two babies didn’t destroy my figure. But if I’d had a different attitude about sex, conception and responsibility, things would have been very different.
One significant, and enduring, effect of The Pill on female sexual attitudes during the 60’s, was: “Now we can have sex anytime we want, without the consequences. Hallelujah, let’s party!”
It remains this way.
These days, nobody seems able to “keep it in their pants” or honor a commitment! Raising the question: Is marriage still a viable option?
I’m ashamed to admit that I myself have been married four times, and yet I still feel that it is the cornerstone of civilisation, an essential institution that stabilises society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy.
In stark contrast, a lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, “sexual freedom,” has taken the caution and discernment out
of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner.
Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity.
No one seems immune.
As a result of the example set by their elders, by the 1990s teenage sexual promiscuity - or hooking up - with multiple partners had become a common occurrence.
Many of my friends who were parents of teenagers sat in stunned silence several years ago when it came to light that oral sex had become a popular practice among adolescent girls in middle schools across the country.
The 13 year old daughter of one such friend freely admitted to (being sexually active).
“Aw come on, Mom. It’s no big deal. Everyone is doing it,” she said.
Apparently, since it’s not the act of intercourse, kids don’t count it as sex. Can any sane person fail to make a judgment call about that?
Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it’s gotta be pretty bad.
In fact, it’s precisely because of the sexy image I’ve had that it’s important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks!
We’re capable of so much better.
- This article first appeared on CNN.com
Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday. Contributions may be emailed to administration@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9227 7087, or mailed to PO Box 75, Leederville WA 6902.
THURSDAY, 27 MAY
Morley Mental Health Support Group
7-8.30pm at Infant Jesus Hall, 47 Wellington St, Morley. Looking at the Saints, The Life of St Dymphna, Patron Saint of Mental Health. All welcome. Enq: Darren 9276 8500 or Barbara 9328 8113.
Council of Christians and Jews WA INC
7.30pm Temple David Social Hall, 34 Clifton Cr, Mt Lawley. Seminar on The Authority of Scripture, presented by Rabbi Marcus Solomon, Kenneth Arkwright OAM, The Right Revd Dr Anthony Nichols, The Revd Professor William Loader FAHA. $5 members, $10 non-members. Light refreshments served. All welcome.
FRIDAY, 28 MAY
Alan Ames
7pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Jugan St, Glendalough. Mass, followed by talk and healing service. Enq: George 9275 6608.
Medjugorje evening of prayer
7-9pm. All invited to an evening of prayer with Our Lady Queen of Peace, consisting of Adoration, Rosary, Benediction & Holy Mass. This month’s parish is St Mary’s 21 James St Guildford. Free dvd on Fr Calloway’s conversion from a life of drugs, sexual permiscuity and crime to the priesthood available on night. Enq 9402 2480.
FRIDAY, 28 MAY TO MONDAY, 7 JUNE
Fremantle Heritage Week – University of Notre Dame
11am daily tours of the campus with a range of public lectures offered at 1pm on archaeological excavations in Fremantle’s West End, role of Fremantle women in supporting American servicemen and nurses during WWII; the place of icons in the Christian community, Perth’s second Catholic Bishop, Unearthed; Notre Dame’s Art and Architecture. Enq: Rebecca 9433 0611 or rcassidy@ nd.edu.au.
SATURDAY, 29 MAY SUNDAY, 30 MAY
Catholic Faith Renewal - Weekend Retreat
9am-6pm at James Nestor Hall, Catholic Education Centre, 50 Ruislip St, West Leederville. Theme will be Tears of God, Christian Answer to suffering with guest Fr Gino Henriques, CSsR, an International Speaker who has preached to Bishops, priests, and Religious to laity through retreats, seminars and conferences, a postgraduate study in Sacred Scripture and Theology. Enq: 0433 224 541, Rita 0422 917 054.
Catholic Charismatic Renewal Conference
At Gibney Hall, Trinity College, East Perth. Saturday 9am5.30pm; Sunday 10am-5pm. Theme: Moving in the Power of the Spirit, presented by Fr Bob Faricy SJ and Ms Cheryl Nguyen. Evening rally 7.30-10pm. Collections will be taken up. Enq: Pam 9381 2516, Dan 9398 4973.
SATURDAY, 29 MAY
Novena Devotions - Our Lady of Good Health
Vailankanni
5pm at Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. 6pm Mass. Enq: George 9272 1379 or Church Office 9271 5528.
FRIDAY, 4 JUNE
PRO-LIFE WITNESS
On Friday 4 June commencing with Mass at St Brigid’s Midland at 9.30am, followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at abortion clinic, led by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq. Helen 9402 0349.
FRIDAY, 4 JUNE AND FRIDAY 11 JUNE
The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary
9pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Glendalough. Eucharistic prayer vigil on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Each vigil concludes with midnight Mass in honour and thanksgiving of the coming Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary. There will be a winter break in July and August. Vigils will recommence in September. Enq: Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.
SATURDAY, 5 JUNE
Day with Mary
9am-5pm at Holy Family Church, Alcock St, Maddington. Day of prayer and instruction based on the Fatima message. 9am Video; 10.10am Holy Mass; Reconciliation, procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.
A morning Retreat: Inner Freedom and Healing. Talk 2
Presenter: Murray Graham (Inigo Centre Director). Saturday 5 June, 9am-12 Noon. The MacKillop Room, John XXIII College. Donation for the Centre costs. FOr details call Murray on 9383 0444.
WITNESS FOR LIFE
Commencing with Mass at St Augustine’s, Gladstone Rd, Rivervale at 8.30am, celebrated by Fr Eugene McGrath, and followed by Rosary procession and prayer vigil at nearby abortion clinic. Come and pray for the conversion of hearts. Enq Helen 9402 0349.
SUNDAY, 6 JUNE
Food Fair
10am-3pm at the Little Sisters of the Poor, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Lots of food, fun and entertainment. Eat in or takeaway. All proceeds go to the home. Enq: 9443 3155.
Annual Corpus Christi Mass and Procession
10.30am at Our Lady Help of Christians, Franciscan Friary, 36 Stirling Tce, Toodyay. Mass, followed at 12 noon by Procession. Transport from Perth, Des 6278 1540 or Nita 9367 1366.
Secular Franciscan Order Day of Reflection
10am at the Edel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor St, East Perth. You are invited to join the Secular Franciscan Order in WA, concluding with Mass at 2pm. Topics, Dreams, the Path of Descent and Profession in the SFO. Enq: Angela 9275 2066.
Divine Mercy
1.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, East Perth. An afternoon with Jesus and Mary, with homily by Fr Anthony Van Dyke on Body and Blood of Jesus. Refreshments will follow. Enq: 9457 7771.
O’Brien Family Reunion
11am at Geraldton Turf Club. Reunion of the descendants of Michael and Honora O’Brien who arrived in WA from Ireland 150 years ago. The evening before there will be a Family Mass at St Francis Xavier Cathedral at 6pm. All family and friends are welcome Enq: Julie 9921 4242.
WEDNESDAY, 9 JUNE
Chaplets of the Divine Mercy
A beautiful, prayerful, sung devotion held at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Road Bateman, on the second Wednesday of each month commencing at 7.30 pm. It will be accompanied by Exposition and followed by Benediction. All are welcome. Enquiries to George Lopez on (h) 9310 9493 or (w) 9325 2010.
FRIDAY, 11 JUNE SUNDAY, 13 JUNE
Weekend Live In Retreat 6pm at Mary MacKillop Centre, South Perth. Mary MacKillop, Our Australian Saint Retreat, limited numbers. Retreat director Sr Dora Maguire. Enq: Laura 9334 0999 lmccarthy@sosjwa.org.au before 8 June.
SATURDAY, 12 JUNE
Divine Mercy Healing Mass
2.30pm at St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor St, East Perth. Main celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM. Reconciliation in English and Italian available. Divine Mercy prayers followed by Veneration of First Class Relic of St Faustina Kowalska. Refreshments later. Enq: 9457 7771.
SUNDAY, 13 JUNE
Eucharistic Reparation
The World Apostolate of Fatima AUst. Inc. invites you to attend a Eucharistic Hour oin Mater Christi Church, 340 Yangebup Road, Yangebup on Sunday 13 June at 3pm. We will bring with us the National Pilgrim Virgin Statue of our Apostolate. All welcome. Inq: 9339 2614.
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 mid-August 2010. Expect the pilgrimage to be for circa 19 days and could accommodate 28-30 people. Fr Terry Raj will be the Spiritual Director. Enq: Matt 6460 6877, mattpicc1@gmail.com.
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 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 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 2ND WEDNESDAY
Year of the Priest Holy Hour
7-8pm at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. Reflections on St John Vianney, Patron Saint of Priests with Fr Tim Deeter. Light refreshments later in the parish centre.
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.
EVERY THURSDAY
Catholic Questions and Answers
7-7.30 pm 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.
THURSAYS FROM 27 MAY 10 JUNE
Group 50 - a Catholic Charismatic Renewal Prayer Group
Thursdays, 7.30pm, at Redemptorist Monastery, 190 Vincent street, North Perth.
27 May - Prayer and Praise, satellite message from Lalith Pereira, Mass.
3 June - Prayer and Praise, Mass, and Sacrament of Anointing.
10 June - Prayer and Praise, satellite message from Lalith Pereira and Mass.
FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH
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.
Communion of Reparation All Night Vigil
7pm-1am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park. All are warmly invited to Holy Mass, Rosary, Confession and Adoration. Celebrant Fr Bogoni. Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357.
EVERY FRIDAY LUNCH TIME
12.15-12.45pm at The Wesley Uniting Church, William and Hay Sts, Perth. Christian Meditation comes to the City. Ecumenical Christian meditation as taught by Fr Laurence Freeman. All Welcome. Enq: CMC WA 9444 5810, Anne 9335 8142 or christianmeditation@iinet.net.au or www.christianmeditationaustralia.org.
ACROSS
7 Mother of Ishmael
8 “We remember, we ____, we believe.”
10 “I will raise you up on ____ wings …”
12 “… thy will be done on ____”
13 Where the Vatican is
16 With 30D, early Christian celebration
18 “And ____ with you.”
20 Gibson, of The Passion of the Christ
21 St. Angela ____
22 Trappist monk-author
25 ____ of the Covenant
26 “You are the ____ of the earth” (Mt 5:13)
27 Shroud of ____
29 An apostle
31
35
DOWN
1 Site of first miracle
2 False god of the Old Testament
3 ____ Intercession
4 Liturgical ____
5
11 Wife of the prophet Hosea
14 Alpha and ____
15 Catholic poet, T.S. ___
17 “O come, O come ____”
18 Husband of Sarai
19 White for a pope, black for no pope
23 16th century council
24 Bishop’s symbol
26 ____ Heart of Jesus
29 4th Evangelist
30 See 16A
32 First King of Israel
33 “I fear no ___ for you are at my side….” (Ps 23:4)
LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION
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. Phone Neil 9390 6333.
BRICK REPOINTING
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.
ALL AREAS Mike Murphy
Ph: 0416 226 434.
Deadline: 11am Monday
CATHOLICS CORNER Retailer of Catholic products specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. Ph: 9456 1777. Shop 12, 64-66 Bannister Road, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat.
OTTIMO Convenient city location for books, cds/dvds, cards, candles, statues, Bibles, medals and much more. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade (Terrace level), 671 Hay Street, Perth. Ph: 9322 4520. 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 Court (off McCoy St), Myaree, Ph: 9329 9889 (after 10.30am Mon to Sat). We are here to serve.
KINLAR VESTMENTS Quality hand-made and decorated vestments: Albs, Stoles, Chasubles, altar linen, banners etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph: Vicki 9402 1318 or 0409 114 093
ARE YOU BUYING OR SELL ING real estate or a business?
Why not ask Excel Settlements for a quote for your settlement. We offer reasonable fees, excellent service and no hidden costs. Ring Excel on 9481 4499 for a quote. Check our website on www.excelsettlements.com.
Available day or night, 18 year old committed Catholic with own transport. Call Ben McCabe 0451 064 298. USINE
Haddons’ translation of St Augustine “On the Trinity”. Post to 19 Lorikeet Loop, Broadwater WA 6280 or Ph: 9754 4069.
TO LET
Mt Hawthorn area 3 x 1 Duplex (Unfurnished) $350 PW. Ph 0410 222 398 Approx 3 to 6 months.
BEAUTY
Complimentary facial and skin care update. Ph Rose 0417 905 505.
IN MEMORIAM
Lee-Chi, Mary Rose of Broome. Called to God on 7 May 2010. We have been blessed especially with you in our lives. You will be treasured forever in our hearts Eternal rest in the Peace of God. Your beloved husband, Francis, and loving family.
Thanks to Our Lord and Blessed Mother, Saints Joseph, Anthony, Jude, Therese of Lisieux and Blessed Mary MacKillop for a great favour granted. G.
Your advertisement could be very effective here.
Over
the six weeks it was
BY ANTHONY BARICH
WITNESSING the faith and devotion of over a million Catholics at a papal Mass at Fatima earlier this month has opened the eyes of a group of local faithful to the universality of the Church and re-energised their faith.
Scarborough parishioner David Somers joined 26 others aged 12 to 80 from Perth, NSW, Queensland and New Zealand, including several from Perth parishes such as City Beach and Rockingham on a 15-day pilgrimage that coincided with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to
the central Porguguese city. He told The Record that he was “blown away” by the faith of those at the papal Mass. A crowd of an estimated 1.5 million were in attendance to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, two of the children who had visions of Mary in 1917.
Mr Somers, 42 - assistant principal at Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School linked to the parish where Fr Don Kettle, who led the pilgrimage, is parish priest – said that for him, the trip revitalised his
faith and forced him to think more deeply about what it really means to him.
“When you attend your local church each week there may be about 100 people, and you can get into that frame of mind that this is all there is, but this opens your eyes to how much the Holy Father is loved and respected by others around the world,” he said.
He was particularly impressed with the crowd, many of whom consisted of young adults and children, along with the “impressive” number of priests and Bishops that
gave him a more accurate picture of the strength of the Church, as opposed to the image one receives in some Australian parishes, or reading secular media reports about the state of the Church or the faults of its members.
“You hear all this doom and gloom that the Chuch is dying, but that’s not what we took away from the (Fatima) experience - our beliefs are worldwide, the Catholic Church is really, really strong and there are many people dedicated to our beliefs,” Mr Somers said.
He said the experience gave him
the fortitude to live out his own faith in a stronger way, and said that the strong devotion to the Church and to the faith of millions of others taught him much about “how special it is”.
“This opened our eyes to how much the Holy Father is loved and respected by so many othersthey hang on his every word,” Mr Somers said.
“He spoke at the end of the Mass in various languages and they went crazy when Pope Benedict spoke to them in their language at their level.”
