The Record Newspaper 25 October 2006

All Saints & All Souls: November 1 & 2

What comes next?

Things that everyone can know about the next life (and why we should be entirely comfortable with the thought of getting there).

VISTA 1-4

Benedict urges West to keep the faith

Pope says Western countries are rejecting their Christian heritage at their own peril

VERONA, Italy (CNS) - Addressing Italian Catholic leaders, Pope Benedict XVI said that unless the West returns to its Christian roots it will be unable to dialogue with other religious cultures.

The Pope did not mention Islam in his speech but his theme was one he has explored with increasing frequency in regard to dialogue with Muslims: that the followers of non-Christian religions like Islam mistrust the West’s secular drift. He spoke in the northern Italian city of Verona to some 2,700 Church delegates of the Fourth National Church Convention, a pastoral planning meeting held once every 10 years.

The pontiff arrived in Verona under heavy security and was welcomed warmly as he rode through the city in a popemobile.

The pope’s speech explored a favourite topic of his 18month-old pontificate: that personal faith should have a cultural impact, particularly in areas of the family, marriage, protection of human life and education.

While praising the vitality of Italian Catholic organisations and the country’s religious traditions, the Pope said Italy shares in a dominant Western culture that tends to exclude God and religion from public life.

He warned that the human being is increasingly considered as a simple product of nature and thus susceptible to being treated “as any other animal,” which leads to a weakening of moral and ethical norms.

“It’s not difficult to see how this type of culture represents a radical and profound separation not only from Christianity but more generally from the religious and moral traditions of humanity,” he said.

As a result, he said, Western culture “is not able to undertake a real dialogue with other cultures in which the religious dimension is strongly present.” Nor is it able to respond to the fundamental questions about the meaning of life, he said.

The Western culture’s focus on rationality as the measure of all things and its “overly individualistic” ethics have led to a real risk of “detachment from the Christian roots of our civilization,” he said.

One specific area the Pope developed in his talk was that of traditional marriage and the family.

He said the Church’s “no” to what he termed “weak and

Continued - Page 3

A Letter from Archbishop Hickey Homeward Bound

I am very pleased to be home in the Archdiocese after a three-month sabbatical. It seems a long time but it passes very quickly.

After a number of conferences and meetings in Korea, the Philippines, Melbourne and Fiji, I spent a month in Jerusalem. This was the most intense and fruitful part of my sabbatical. I spent the month deepening my understanding of scripture in the Holy City, the City of Jerusalem made holy by the presence of Abraham, King David, the prophets and of course Jesus himself. I did not travel much in the Holy Land, as my aim was to study, reflect and pray in order to come home with a fresh biblical understanding of the vocation of the Church in today’s world, and a new enthusiasm drawn from the scriptures. I might even have written a small book about important insights I received in Jerusalem. Time will tell. I certainly read much, listened and wrote much.

After a short break in Italy I found our pilgrimage in Cairo, Egypt, to travel down to Mt Sinai, where Moses

received the law from God, and the two tablets of stone on which were engraved the Ten Commandments. Our visit was awe-inspiring, awesome in the true sense. Among the high arid mountains one could feel the presence of Almighty God, and easily summon up the vision of Moses ascending the cloud-topped mountain to commune with God for weeks. One could also imagine the twelve tribes of Israel ranged around the foot of the mountain on the nearby plains, waiting anxiously and not too patiently, for the return of Moses. One could also see the people setting off again into the desert carrying the Ark of the Covenant in a tent or tabernacle, carried on poles of the long journey of forty years.

All of us stood in awe at the mystery of God coming so close to his chosen people, as we now marvel at the even closer presence of God among his people in the person of his Divine Son, Jesus.

Initially our pilgrimage was to go to Jerusalem and other places in the Holy land. Because of the war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah,

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we went to a different Holy Land, Asia Minor, our modern Turkey, and followed the footsteps of St Paul, St John and surprisingly, Mary, Mother of Jesus. At Ephesus we traced the steps of St Paul who spent three years there. We read again his subsequent letter to the people of Ephesus. We also saw the ruins of the great basilica of St John, the Evangelist. St John, tradition tells us, went to Ephesus during the persecutions elsewhere,

and provided a place also for Mary, in obedience to Jesus’ wish on the cross – “This is your mother”.

To our great joy we went to Mary’s house, not long ago discovered, now a beautiful sanctuary on a hilltop overlooking Ephesus. At our Mass there, one of our pilgrims was received into the Church, baptised, confirmed and given his first Holy Communion. It was an unforgettable moment.

Via Patmos and Samos we went to Rome where we attended, in the best seats, a public audience with Pope Benedict XVI. The crowds attending astonished us. The Pope spoke beautifully and showed himself a true spiritual father to people from all over the world.

When the pilgrims went home I went to Sicily for a few days to attend the feast of Our Lady at a small town on the Sicilian coast called Capo D’Orlando. Two years ago the local Bishop attended the same

feast at Fremantle, at the Blessing of the Fleet. Many people from Capo D’Orlando and surrounding areas came to Fremantle and Perth many years ago and established the celebration in Fremantle. I have also been to the nearby town of Patti where the feast of Our Lady of Tindari is celebrated. That is also seen in St Patrick’s Basilica in Fremantle.

If you want peace and quiet, friendliness and genuine devotion, go to Capo D’Orlando. What a relief from the crowds in Rome, Istanbul and Cairo. I can recommend it.

Now it is back to work in the Diocese. I look forward to returning and resuming my duties again after a truly refreshing and useful sabbatical.

Let me record my sincere thanks to Bishop Don Sproxton and to Fr Brian O’Loughlin VG for accepting the governance of the Diocese in my absence and for doing it so well.

Better late than never

■ By Sylvia Defendi

The Record The Parish. The Nation. The World.

It has almost taken two years, but funds have finally come through for the WA branch of Caritas Australia. Last week $30,000 was finally paid into the agency’s bank account, reminding the Catholic aid agency of the millions of people who where given aid in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian Tsunami disaster. Unable to send funds off-shore, the Lotterywest grant was able to indirectly help victims, by funding the Australian aid agency. “We jumped at the opportunity,” said Archdiocesan

Director for Caritas Australia, Ann Fairhead adding that the need for extra staff to cope with processing donations for the Tsunami appeal was overwhelming. A constant flow of donations that lasted until November 2005 precluded Caritas from submitting the grant application until January of this year, delaying immediate payment.

Lotterywest CEO Clyde Bevan said the grant was tricky to process because it was a ‘once-off.’

In thanks to all who assisted the many Caritas projects, an annual update will be hosted at St Pius X Church hall in Manning on November 9.

Apostolic Brothers: Pope Benedict XVI and Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey greet one another in Rome.

Chairman of Lottery West Clyde Bevon and Caritas Australia’s Ann Fairhead.

Christian life key to dialogue with religions

Continued from page 1

deviant forms of love and the counterfeiting of freedom” is in reality a “yes” to authentic love.

The Pope urged Italian Catholics to continue the moral and legislative battle against public recognition of forms of union that end up destabilising the family.

Italy has so far resisted efforts to legalise gay marriage.

He also called for protection of human life in all its phases, from conception to natural death.

Abortion is legal in Italy, and a recent poll found that 58 percent of Italians favoured some form of legal euthanasia.

The Pope said Catholics should advance their arguments in a positive and convincing way in the public forum.

But he said that means, before all else, strong personal faith.

“The starting point for being a Christian - and therefore the origin of our witness as believers - is not an ethical decision or a great idea, but the encounter with the person of Jesus Christ,” he said.

He praised the Italian Church’s large network of social programs, but said it was important to keep them free from ideological influence or partisan political sympathies.

The Church, he said, does not want to act as a political agent, but counts on educated Catholic laity to work to implement the Church’s teachings about justice and morality.

The Pope also encouraged the Italian Church to resist what he called an “internal secularisation that threatens the Church of our time”.

Later in the day, the Pope celebrated Mass for 50,000 people who packed Verona’s soccer stadium.

Among those in attendance were Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and other leaders from across the political spectrum.

In his homily, the Pope said that after 2000 years of Christian history - including the witness of martyrs and saints who have left their mark on every corner of their country - Italians need to ask themselves

Worl Youth Day song competition open

The search has begun for an anthem to celebrate the world’s largest youth event – World Youth Day 2008 (WYD08).

Australian songwriters have been invited to compose an inspirational tune for WYD08, which will see as many as 500,000 young people gather in Sydney in July 2008.

Previous World Youth Day events have been distinguished by a memorable song; Sydney’s organisers are looking for our own stirring anthem – one that symbolises the Australian context, the youth audience and the religious theme of the event.

The composer of the winning song will win a trip for two to Rome where the song will be launched and performed publicly for the first time.

“The competition will be a great way for young Australians to get

involved in the spirit of World Youth Day,” WYD08 Coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher OP said.

The song will incorporate the WYD08 theme of Jesus’ final words on Earth: ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.’ Acts 1:8.

“There is already so much to stimulate creative young songwriters here, but the chance to write a vibrant and memorable song for the biggest event Australia has ever seen is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Bishop Fisher said.

The competition is open to all Australian citizens and entries close on 30 November.

Details and applications for entry can be found at www.wyd2008.org

World Youth Day is the largest youth event in the world and will attract an anticipated 500,000 pilgrims from 15-20 July in 2008.

how their faith is lived and communicated in modern times.

He urged Italian Catholics to recapture the energy of the apostles, who faced hardships as they proclaimed Christ as saviour to a skeptical world.

“It is necessary to go back to announcing with vigor and joy the death and resurrection of Christ, the event that is the heart of Christianity and the fulcrum of our faith,” he said.

The Pope added that this main message of Christianity does not bend to the times.

“In a world that changes, the Gospel remains the same,” the Pope said.

“The good news always remains the same: Christ died and rose again for our salvation.”

The Pope celebrated the liturgy on an altar made of the pink marble that is characteristic of the Verona region.

As the Pope made his way out of the stadium, shaking hands and blessing children, he was serenaded by a choir and cheered by the crowd.

Santa Maria College

Moreing Road, Attadale WA 6156

Applications are invited for the following position of Wedding Coordinator (Sacristan)

An information package can be obtained from the College website www.santamaria.wa.edu.au or by contacting Loretta Wholley, Mission Leader on (08) 6330 0244 or whol@santamaria.wa.edu.au

Closing date for applications: Monday, 13 November 2006

I’m John Hughes, WA’s most trusted car dealer

Do I guarantee that when people come to do business with me, they will be treated with courtesy, sincerity, professionalism and ef ciency?

I say “I want your business and I m prepared to pay for it” and “I stand behind every car I sell”. Is that really true?

Is it true that I have over 40 technicians who are dedicated to getting my used cars in rst class condition before sale?

Is it true that every year for the last 17 consecutive years

I ve been Australia s top selling Hyundai dealer?

Is it true that if somebody buys a used car from me, I will pay for a pre-purchase RAC or similar inspection?

I have a warehouse selling cars under $10,000. Is it true that I offer a full money back guarantee within one week?

Keeping the faith: Pope Benedict XVI speaks at the Fourth National Church Convention, a pastoral planning meeting for Italian church delegates held once every 10 years, in Verona, Italy.

PHOTO: CNS

US bishops tighten up on Eucharist

Bishops say those who deny Catholic doctrine should think twice about receiving holy Communion

■ By Nancy Frazier O’Brien

WASHINGTON (CNS) - A Catholic who “knowingly and obstinately” rejects “the defined doctrines of the Church” or its “definitive teaching on moral issues” should refrain from receiving Communion, according to a document that will come before the US bishops at their November 1316 general meeting in Baltimore.

The document, “Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist,” requires the approval of two-thirds of the members of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for passage.

In an introduction, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, New Jersey, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, said the draft document was the result of a proposal to the bishops in November 2004 by Archbishop John J. Myers of

Newark, New Jersey, for a statement on how Catholics should prepare to receive the Eucharist.

“He envisaged this document as applying to Catholic faithful, not just to politicians or those in public life,” Bishop Serratelli said.

Archbishop Myers’ request came after a presidential campaign in which some bishops had criticised the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and said he and other Catholic politicians who supported abortion should be refused Communion under canon law. But a footnote to the draft says that it is not intended “to provide specific guidelines” to the provision in canon law that says that Catholics “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” should not be allowed to receive Communion.

“In order to receive Holy Communion we must be in communion with God and with the Church,” the document says. “If we are no longer in a state of grace because of mortal sin, we are seriously obliged to refrain from receiving Holy Communion.”

Among examples of such sin, the document cites “committing deliberate hatred of others, sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult, or physical or verbal abuse toward

Time to celebrate

October is a big month of celebrations for women who relish their commitment to the Catholic Church

■ By Sylvia Defendi

An English woman’s dream to build a strong relationship between Catholic women and the Church is being celebrated globally during October, on the centenary of the foundation of Catholic Women’s League.

Former Anglican Margaret Fletcher inaugurated the League in October 1906 after striving for a wider role for women in the Catholic Church that would in no way take them away from loyalty to the local and Universal Church.

With the full approval and encourage-

one’s family members or fellow workers, causing grave physical or psychological harm; murder, abortion or euthanasia.”

Other “serious violations of the law of love of God and of neighbour” listed in the draft include swearing a false oath, missing Mass on Sundays or holy days without a serious reason, “acting in serious disobedience against proper authority,” sexual activity “outside the bonds of a valid marriage,” stealing, slander or involvement with pornography.

The document criticised those

ment of Archbishop Bourne she started one of the first organisations of Catholic laywomen in Europe. The League came to Western Australia in 1937 and there are presently organisations in every state, with a national membership of over 7000 women.

WA will be celebrating the League’s centenary on October 29 with 10.30am Mass at the Redemptorist Monastery in North Perth, followed by lunch.

Over 100 women are expected to attend the special day, coming from as far north of WA as Geraldton and as far south as Albany. State secretary for the Catholic Women’s League WA, Margaret Ker, said clergy from around the state will also attend the event to help celebrate with the organisation’s members.

“We will also be joined by our special guest, national president, Mary Schultz,” she said.

PRINCIPALSHIPS

ST MARY’S SCHOOL,DONNYBROOK

St Mary’s School is a small rural coeducational primary school with an enrolment of 85 students from Kindergarten to Year 7. The school was established in 1916 by the Sisters of Mercy and is located 250 kms south of Perth, in the heart of the south west’s orchard country.

St Mary’s offers a curriculum based on the integration of faith and life that promotes the religious, social, cultural and physical development of each student. The School Board and the Parents and Friends’ Association work closely together to support the school with resources and educational programs. The academic program includes specialist teachers in Music, Art, Library and Information Technology and the school is entering the second year of the RAISe (Raising Achievement in Schools) Literacy program.

LIWARA CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL,GREENWOOD

Liwara Catholic Primary School is a double stream, coeducational primary school with an enrolment of 528 students from Kindergarten to Year 7. The school was established in 1974 with the strong support of the All Saints’ parish community and within the Mercy tradition.

Since then, a tradition has been established between the committed professional staff and active parent body to work together to maintain the meaning of Liwara, as being a “community gathered together”. The school’s mission is to nurture students to become independent “faith-filled, confident and fully rounded life-long learners”.

The school consistently focuses on developing the curriculum and is in its third year of the RAISe (Raising Achievement in Schools) Literacy program. Liwara is a pilot school in the KidsMatter program and the establishment of the Science Connections program within the school.

Surrounded by trees and playing areas, the school buildings include 17 class teaching areas, a well equipped library, art room, IT/computer room and learning support areas that are central to the teaching/learning process. The successful applicants will be expected to take up these positions on 1 January 2007, however, the commencement dates are negotiable with the

who “give selective assent to the teachings of the Church.”

But Catholics who have “honest doubt and confusion” about some Church teachings “are welcome to partake of Holy Communion, as long as they are prayerfully and honestly striving to understand the truth of what the Church professes and are taking appropriate steps to resolve their confusion and doubt,” the draft says.

“If someone who is Catholic were knowingly and obstinately to reject the defined doctrines of the Church, or knowingly and obstinately to

repudiate her definitive teaching on moral issues, however, he or she would seriously diminish his or her communion with the Church. Reception of Holy Communion in such a situation would not accord with the nature of the eucharistic celebration, so he or she should refrain.”

If a person who “is publicly known to have committed serious sin or to have rejected definitive Church teaching and is not yet reconciled with the Church” receives Communion, it could be “a cause of scandal for others,” giving “further reason” for the person to refrain, the bishops said. The document says Catholics should get ready to receive Communion through both “remote preparation” - prayer, Scripture reading, frequent confession and other steps - and “proximate preparation”. The bishops said elements of proximate preparation include maintaining “reverent silence” before Mass begins; refraining from food and drink for an hour before receiving Communion; dressing “in a modest and tasteful manner” at Mass; listening attentively to the Scripture readings and homily; and actively participating in the Mass “with our whole hearts and minds and bodies.”

Ex-assistant parish priest gone but far from forgotten

Long haul was worth the trek for loyal Bateman parishioners

■ By Sylvia Defendi

The parishioners from St Thomas More Church in Bateman are a loyal bunch, to say the least.

Over 200 parisioners were all too glad to travel 130km to visit their previous assistant priest, Fr John Daly, and his new parish in Goomalling for an annual picnic get-together on October 15.

“Before I left Bateman parish, some parishioners said they would make Goomalling the destination for their annual picnic,” Fr Daly said.

“I didn’t think too much more about it, but sure to their word the day was

organised and a huge crowd attended.” Monsignor Michael Keating, parish priest of Bateman, led the group to the wheatbelt town and filled Goomalling’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church to capacity with more than 250 people.

Goomalling parishioner Karyn Cronin said she had never seen anything like it before in their Catholic Church.

“Not only did we receive an enormous boost to our faith knowing that so many other people have centred their lives on Jesus Christ, but it was also affirming for our community to see so many young people enjoying this day in the life of our Church,” Fr Daly said.

Mosignior Keating was thrilled with the annual picnic, saying that “the event effectively brought the city to the country and highlighted the great support each parish had for one another”.

Sacrosanct: US bishops say more respect must be shown to the Eucharist.

Good times: Bateman parishioners Christine Paltride (left) with her sister, Elizabeth Baickdeli and Elizabeth’s husband Hooman Baickdeli gather for a picnic with Goomalling parishioners.

Reaction proves need for dialogue

Vatican says controversy shows importance of dialogue with Muslims

■ By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -

Relaying Pope Benedict XVI’s best wishes to Muslims around the world, the Vatican said recent controversy over a speech he made in Regensburg, Germany shows just how important it is to continue dialogue.

On October 20 the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue released its 40th annual message to Muslims set to celebrate the end of their monthlong Ramadan fast.

French Cardinal Paul Poupard, who signed the message, said the discussion surrounding the Pope’s message - and especially an October 15 letter to the Pope from 38 Muslim scholars - demonstrated not only the importance of Catholic-Muslim dialogue, but also the willingness of Muslims to engage in the process.

The Muslim scholars’ letter offered a critique of Pope Benedict’s remarks in Regensburg, Germany, and pointed out Islamic teachings they felt he misunderstood.

But the scholars’ letter praised his commitment to dialogue, specifically on the relationship between faith and reason.

“An exchange of views and a reflection on the fundamental theme of the speech - the relation between reason and religion - has begun,” Cardinal Poupard said.

The Vatican’s Ramadan message said the controversy and protests that followed the Pope’s remarks about Islam in September “demonstrate clearly that, however arduous the path of authentic dialogue may be at times, it is more neces-

sary than ever”. In his September speech about faith and reason, the Pope quoted the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who said: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Specifically in reference to the use of violence to force conversions, the Pope said some have argued that God is absolutely transcendent for Muslims and therefore not bound up with “any of our categories, even that of rationality”.

The Pope’s remarks were greeted with angry demonstrations in some countries, numerous calls for an apology and Muslim attempts to demonstrate that Pope Benedict had either simplified or misunderstood their beliefs.

On several occasions, Pope Benedict expressed his regret that some Muslims found his speech offensive, and he met personally with ambassadors to the Vatican from countries with a Muslim majority. Speaking to Vatican Radio, Cardinal Poupard said: “Almost everyone understands what the Pope said.”

This is despite the accounts of the speech presented by reporters who, “at the beginning, distorted everything a bit”.

The central point of the 2006 Ramadan message was a call for Christians and Muslims to cooperate in building cultures and societies marked by solidarity, justice and peace. In the face of the world’s problems, the message said, “the credibility of religions and also the credibility of our religious leaders and all believers is at stake”.

“If we do not play our part as believers, many will question the usefulness of religion and the integ-

rity of all men and women who bow down before God,” he said.

“In those places where we can work together, let us not labour separately.

“The world has need, and so do we, of Christians and Muslims who respect and value each other and bear witness to their mutual love and cooperation to the glory of God and the good of all humanity.”

Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, secretary of the dialogue council, said the message was sent to the presidents of bishops’ conferences and to their offices for interreligious relations, which deliver the text to local Muslim leaders.

Archbishop Celata, who had just returned to the Vatican from a visit to Turkey, said the Regensburg speech had put some Turkish Muslims “on guard” before the Pope’s planned November visit to their country, as did remarks made before he became Pope in which he questioned the wisdom of allowing Turkey into the European Union.

However, the archbishop said he had no doubt that the people of Turkey would greet the Pope with hospitality and respect.

Mgr Khaled Akasheh, head of the council’s section for relations with Muslims, said Catholics and Muslims should rejoice not only at the progress made in dialogue over the past 40 years, “but for the fact that we can speak about our problems”.

“An atmosphere, a culture of dialogue has been established and is developing,” he said, despite “difficulties and problems.”

He said it is obvious that after the Pope’s Regensburg speech, faith and reason will be the topic treated in the Vatican’s four formal dialogues with Muslims - with representatives of Egypt’s al-Azhar University, with Muslim leaders from Iran, from Libya, and with the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue.

We’re living in a nightmare: Iraq Caritas workers

Caritas workers on the ground in Iraq open up about the horror of living in the troubled country.

■ By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The war in Iraq has made day-to-day living “a nightmare,” with violence, poverty and malnutrition on the rise since the start of the US-led invasion, said an official of the Catholic Church’s charity network.

The head of Caritas Internationalis’ Middle East desk, Sebastien Dechamps, said “the needs are immense” for the people living in Iraq and for the thousands who have fled to neighbouring countries.

Run by local staff for the past 15 years, Caritas Iraq has reported that the humanitarian situation has visibly worsened since 2003, Dechamps said.

“Daily life has become a nightmare. You hardly have one hour of electricity per day, access to food, water, health, education has deteriorated,” he wrote.

“But most of all, the lack of peace, the violence and the anarchy

are everywhere and give a sense of hopelessness.”

Some studies have shown a 35 per cent increase in poverty since 2003, and a Pentagon study released in August “estimates that about 25.9 per cent of Iraqi children examined were stunted in their physical growth due to chronic malnutrition,

which is on the rise,” he wrote. Staff at Caritas centres meet “the human face of poverty” every day as they reach out to those most in need: the sick, the poor, infants and children suffering from severe malnutrition, the Caritas officer wrote.

The chaos and violence on the ground has made monitoring

humanitarian conditions and determining an accurate death toll very dangerous and difficult for organisations like Caritas.

On October 12 the British medical journal, The Lancet, published a survey that estimates 601,000 civilians have been killed because of violence since the US-led invasion in 2003.

The survey said that taking into consideration a margin of error in the statistics, civilian deaths caused by violence could range from 426,000 to 794,000.

However, US President George W. Bush and some other government and military officials dispute the accuracy or credibility of the report.

Another independent British group, Iraq Body Count, for example, puts the toll based on media reports at 43,000 to 48,000 civilian deaths.

Dechamps wrote that the difference between 40,000 and 600,000 innocent people dead “is of no moral/human interest” as both figures “are appalling”.

However, he said he and his colleagues “don’t see why (The Lancet) study would not reflect reality”.

Caritas workers in Iraq, he wrote, “would confirm that they

probably don’t know a single family who would not have lost at least one member to violence in the last three years.”

The general feeling among Iraqis is that “this is a civil war, people are afraid, most of them have no more hope in the future,” said Dechamps.

“Iraqis are fleeing from their country by the thousands.”

These are families who have sold everything and “are just looking for a ‘normal life’ where kids can go to school,” he said.

The study published in The Lancet was done by the John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University School of Medicine in Baghdad, Iraq.

The study gathered data from 47 clusters of 40 households each throughout the country, which it then projected on a national level.

The interviews were done from May to July.

The researchers said that their methodology was the same used by others to determine civilian deaths as a result of wars in Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo and Sudan.

The 601,000 deaths through violence represent 2.3 percent of the Iraqi population of 26 million.

Dialogue: Muslim Ahmed Elgamal talks with Father Sidney Griffith during the first meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Dialogue of Northern Virginia at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society centre. PHOTO: CNS

More terror: Soldiers secure the scene of a suicide car bomb attack in Kirkuk, about 150 miles North of Baghdad.

PHOTO:CNS

Iraqi Christians in danger of fading into oblivion

Former Iraqi minister says the only solution for Christians is their own governorate

■ By Regina Linskey

WASHINGTON (CNS) - A new administrative region for Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq is the only solution to keep them from disappearing from the Shiite-majority country, said Pascale Warda, the former Iraqi minister of displacement and migration.

Warda said minorities in Iraq - Assyrian Christians, Chaldean Catholics, Shabaks, Yezidis, Turkmen and others - do not want a divided Iraq.

“We would like to organise a democratic and federalist Iraq,” she said.

Michael Youash, project director of the Iraqi Sustainability Democracy Project, said the administrative region with local jurisdiction would encompass the Nineveh plain and minority lands in the western part of the Dahuk region. All minorities, without exclusion, could live in the region, they said.

Exact borderlines have not been drawn, he added. Dahuk and the Nineveh plain, historically a region where Christians lived before they were displaced by clashes between Assyrian and Iraqi troops in the 1930s, are in northern Iraq.

Youash said the administrative

region, or governorate, is guaranteed under a constitutional provision allowing creation of such areas for minorities. Support from the Iraqi Parliament and the US government and its local representatives is needed for the governorate, he said.

Youash and Warda, who spoke at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, met recently with others and officials

from the National Security Council, the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the State Department to discuss the new administrative region.

Youash said that in the short term “the Nineveh plain areas to the north are already absorbing” a large number of minorities, but no functioning infrastructure is in place to support them.

The majority controls the use of

international aid, said Youash. If supported by the US government, the new governorate would provide a local security force that would enforce the law, Youash said.

Warda, an Assyrian, said US and European officials have told her that they have ignored the Nineveh plain because it is a relatively peaceful area.

The Iraqi people are “deeply grateful for their liberation” and the end of the terror of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but “hope is rapidly dying,” Warda said in a statement released at the press conference.

Currently, Christians are being targeted by terrorists, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, according to a field study and statement from the Iraqi Sustainability Democracy Project. In northern Iraq, particularly in the areas of the Nineveh plain, Mosul and the regions around Arbil and Dahuk, Kurdish authorities have been seizing Christians’ land, cutting off water supplies and stunting their reconstruction and development, the field study said.

Warda said that in mid-October, 13 Christian women were kidnapped and killed for rejecting the Islamic dress code. An Orthodox priest was kidnapped on October 9 and found decapitated two days later in Mosul, reportedly for not doing enough to condemn comments Pope Benedict XVI made about Islam in a speech in Germany. Churches have been vandalised and bombed.

Saints a sign of a Church alive

Pope John Paul II broke new ground in so many ways the mind boggles.

He was the most traveled Pope, he met more people (in over 1000 general audiences he met an estimated 16 million), he met many government leaders in 38 official visits, 650 audiencest or meetings with heads of state and 212 audiences or meetings with heads of government.

But the most vexing question

– to believers and casual observers alike – is why on earth did he canonize so many people? He canonized more than all his predecessors before him put together.

Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”

(Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, and Luke 18:25), so how and why did JPII give almost 500 people a free pass into eternal happiness? And

can he do it? He celebrated 131 ceremonies of beatification during which he proclaimed 1282 Blessed and 50 canonizations for a total of almost 500 Saints.

For starters, of course he can – Jesus told the first Pope, St Peter, in Matthew 16:19: “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven; whatever you you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”.

In other words, whatever the Church says, goes - assuming, under faith, it was guided by the Holy Spirit in making these decisions.

And the answer to why did he do it is less complex than we’d think.

In Tertio Millennio Adveniente, he said all these canonizations show “the vitality of the local Churches, which are much more numerous today than in the first centuries and in the first millennium”.

Christians have been fleeing Iraq disproportionately, according to their numbers in the country. Experts estimate that less than half of the 1.1 million-1.2 million Christians who were in Iraq before the US-led war began in 2003 remain in Iraq today.

However, Youash said, most Christians who have left Iraq have not applied for refugee status in other countries, an indicator that they wish to return.

Youash said that reactions from officials at the recent Washington meetings were mixed; he “sensed trepidation” from the State Department, while others acknowledged “the strategic benefit.”

Support from Washington would make the process smoother, Youash said, although he and Warda agreed that the venture was ultimately an Iraqi process.

The Rev. Keith Roderick, an Episcopalian and the Washington representative for Christian Solidarity International, said at the press conference that the US government was actually slow to react in supporting the governorate; the European Parliament passed a resolution supporting it last April.

Rev. Roderick said the governorate “will provide a place where people (minorities) can go for a safe haven.” Youash said that in the long run the minority administrative region would work toward the democratisation of Iraq. He said the governorate “represents the real role of pluralism in Iraq”.

He conceded in his opening address to the Extraordinary Consistory in Preparation of for Jubilee Year 2000 that popular opinion was that he was being trigger-happy in canonizing so many.

But he was adamant there were no special favours granted.

It simply reflected reality – a relieving and somewhat sobering thought given the “culture of death” JPII said we are currently living in.

The trouble with being Michelangelo

When building St. Peter’s, great minds did not always think alike

■ By Cindy Wooden

While the outcome invokes awe, the construction of St Peter’s Basilica was not a smooth project that brought together hundreds of artists and artisans thinking only holy thoughts.

Backbiting, criticism and running to the Pope to tattle occurred repeatedly during the 120 years it took to build the world’s largest church.

Letters relaying gripes and a stinging satire written in 1517 are on display at a Vatican exhibit marking the 500th anniversary of

the beginning of the basilica’s construction.

The modest exhibit housed in a gallery in St Peter’s Square runs from October 12 to March 8.

Of course, the story of the basilica’s construction is not mainly one of controversy, even though a building project so massive, so expensive and involving Italy’s greatest Renaissance artists was bound to hit some snags.

The exhibit offers visitors a tiny hint of what the site’s fourth-century basilica looked like; a sampling of drawings for projects dropped, changed or realised; a brief look at how other artists paid homage to St Peter; and a short reflection on the basilica’s importance in the lives of three well-known Catholics.

A well-worn pair of sandals belonging to Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a tattered habit belonging to St Francis of Assisi and a facsimile of St Therese of Lisieux’s

handwritten autobiography are part of the exhibit’s final section, “Devotion to the Apostle Peter.” St Therese, writing from her Carmelite cloister at the age of 22,

recalls a pilgrimage she made to Rome with her father and other French pilgrims when she was 14 years old. She recounts her emotion at finding herself in the city

where Sts Peter and Paul preached and were martyred. Mother Teresa’s sandals are sitting next to her 1948 handwritten letter to the Vatican asking to be released from the

War only fans terrorist flames

Waging war won’t eliminate terrorism, says Jesuit magazine

■ By Carol Glatz

ROME (CNS) - Waging a war against so-called “rogue states” does not and will not eliminate terrorism, but it feeds the violent fanaticism that leaders aim to eliminate, said an influential Jesuit magazine.

“In order to fight terrorism, it is necessary to shelve any notion of war - worse when ‘preventative’ war - against an Islamic nation” and instead adopt other measures such as beefing up intelligence and freezing funds channeled to terrorist organisations, said an editorial in the magazine La Civilta Cattolica.

The October 21 editorial, reviewed by the Vatican prior to publication and released to journalists two days prior, discussed the consequences of waging wars against Afghanistan and Iraq in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.

It said that military action and invasion did not help the United States succeed in reaching its goals of capturing Osama bin Laden or the head of the Taliban, Mullah

Mohammed Omar. And while elections and the establishment of democratic constitutions went ahead in both Afghanistan and Iraq, there still is no “real control throughout (each) country,” since ethnic factions “have rapidly regained their power,” the magazine said.

After the war in Afghanistan, in fact, terrorist training camps resurfaced there which today draw young, “aspiring terrorists” living in Europe, it said. And Iraq, too, has become a magnet for suicide bombers “from everywhere” to

fight against “the Western invaders,” while, before the war, “there were no terrorists in Iraq” under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial grip.

La Civilta Cattolica said “waging war against countries that host, fund or train terrorist groups appears to be a grave political mistake because war not only does not destroy terrorism, it fuels and proliferates it”.

Forces from Western, nonMuslim countries invading Islamic countries create “a serious offence against Allah” because the situation represents a usurpation of his

divine authority, which then motivates radical elements to “defend Islam from Western aggressors,” the editorial said.

The Jesuit-run magazine said there are more effective measures in what will have to be a long-term struggle against terrorism.

Leaders must emphasise that “the fight against terrorism is not a battle against Islam” and they must “avoid political and military actions that might seem to embroil, humiliate, and deride Muslims”.

Leaders must find a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which represents an open wound for many Muslims, it said, and leaders “must give up the idea of imposing democracy on Islamic peoples.”

Democracy must come about from the citizens’ own initiative and have the consensus of its own people as well as respect their culture and values, the magazine said.

It added that intelligence operations and police efforts aimed at pinpointing terrorist cells must be given precedence in the fight against terrorism while national security agencies must be even more willing to coordinate efforts and exchange information.

Finally, it said, in order to deal a serious blow to terrorism, the channels or sources of funding for terrorist activity must be found and frozen.

Fisher lashes out at critics of Catholic stem cell

Fisher straightens the media record on hospital “ban”

■ By Paul Gray

Sydney’s Episcopal Vicar for Life and Health, Bishop Anthony Fisher, has issued a statement highlighting the background to his widely reported remarks on the use of stem cell therapies in Catholic hospitals.

Secular newspapers last weekend reported that the Church would ban potentially life-saving therapies developed from embryonic stem

cells from use in Catholic hospitals.

These reports followed Bishop Fisher’s remarks to a parliamentary inquiry into human cloning legislation. This week the Bishop said that he had been questioned closely, at the inquiry, on the potential use of therapies developed from embryonic stem cells.

He said he answered the questions by stating he thought it highly unlikely there will ever be therapies from embryonic stem cells.

In the meantime, he told the committee that “we are working in all our Catholic health and research facilities to ensure that the medically and ethically best care is offered

to all.” This care includes work on adult stem cell therapies “that show far more promise than embryonic stem cells,” he said.

However, the bishop also said the Church would never provide unethical treatments in its hospitals, “such as treatment that involved killing some to save others”.

Bishop Fisher said that he was pressed about whether this was fair to patients. In reply, he said that people knew very well that Catholic hospitals do not provide abortions, IVF or sterilisations, and they go elsewhere if they want those things.

Nonetheless, many people choose Catholic hospitals because they

French churches unite for life

OXFORD, England (CNS)

- French Church leaders urged Christians worldwide to oppose capital punishment, and they criticised governments for using “the pretext of a struggle against terrorism” to frighten their populations.

“France abolished the death penalty 25 years ago, and this decision has never been questioned,” leaders of the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches said in a joint statement.

“In a troubled and divided world, where capital executions are still practised on a mass scale, it is more important than ever that Christians unite in a single denunciation, calm but firm, of this punishment that contravenes hope in the reception of divine mercy,” the leaders said.

The statement was published in French newspapers to mark the October 10 World Day Against the Death Penalty, sponsored by Amnesty International and other legal and human rights groups.

It said French churches viewed the abolition of capital punishment as “a measure which respects the inalienable dignity of man and life” and said churches would support movements and associations struggling to extend the ban worldwide.

position

want the medically and ethically

best kind of care, Bishop Fisher added. In his address to the Senate Community Affairs committee inquiry into cloning on October 20, Bishop Fisher highlighted the fact that the Catholic Church embraces stem cell research “as long as it is conducted in ethical ways.”

He criticised the bills presently before parliament, saying they “propose that we cast aside ethical considerations such as the foundational principle of medical research ethics, pri-mum non

nocere, first do no harm, in pursuit of experimental goals, commercial opportunity, retention of researchers and seductive claims of treatment for almost anything”. “Too little attention is being given to the moral rubicon which will be crossed in the process,” Bishop Fisher told the committee.

He also lashed out at critics of the Church in this debate. “They accuse us of superstition and erect a quite false opposition between science and religion,” he said.

“We should be very clear about this,” he said. “The Catholic Church is the oldest and largest health care provider in the world.”

Michelangelo had completely changed the building plans without consulting or informing anyone.

Packing heat: Insurgents patrol a road in Al Ramadi, Iraq.

PHOTO: CNS/REUTERS

letters to the editor

Saints top the stars

■ By Elizabeth Lev

Talk about angels and demons ... last week treated us to a fascinating study in the sacred and profane life of the Eternal City.

The first odd coupling was the juxtaposition of Rome’s first international film festival the same week as the canonisation ceremony of Bishop Rafael Guízar Valencia, Mother Théodore Guérin, Father Filippo Smaldone and Sister Rosa Venerini.

Police escorts shuffled Sean Connery to lunch here and Leonardo DiCaprio to dinner there, while 10,000 Mexican pilgrims scurried excitedly from church to church in thanksgiving.

As newspaper headlines assaulted Romans with the burning dilemma of who had more sex appeal - the Nordic Nicole Kidman or the Mediterranean Monica Bellucci - another kind of beauty was being showcased at St Peter’s.

From a certain point of view, there exist similarities between the saints and the stars. Like Mother Théodore, Nicole Kidman left her native country to find success in the US. Like Kidman, Mother Théodore had to deal with an unhappy and unfruitful relationship with a man possessed of unsound religious views. Kidman was married to Scientologist Tom Cruise, and Mother Théodore had endless difficulties with the bipolar bishop of Vincennes.

But while many may argue that Kidman has found the fountain of youth with her teenage good looks at the age of 40, Mother Théodore has found eternal life in heaven and left a greater legacy today in her schools and Christian witness than the film industry will ever match.

Sister Rosa Venerini and Monica Bellucci both came from central Italy near Rome. Sister Rosa was a role model to women as she founded schools and, not content with giving the girls a good education, she gave them (in Benedict XVI’s words) “a complete formation,” with firm references in the doctrinal teaching of the Church. Bellucci was, well, a model.

Horrific history

Fitting end

I was very interested in the articles regarding the opening of the crypt containing the remains of Bishop Griver and Bishop Gibney.

My late father showed me the crosses in the floor when I was 10 years old. As a teenager he had lived in East Perth and attended Bishop Gibneys funeral Mass.

As well I have the book on Bishop Grivers life written by Archbishop Goody, and I have researched visits made to Albany by him, and Fr (later Bishop) Gibney, in the mid and latter 19th century.

The fact that the remains of these two memorable bishops will eventually be laid to rest in a new crypt with Archbishops Clune, Prendiville, Goody and Foley when the Cathedral is completed will be a visual monument to the decades of service put in by these hard working men of God.

PO Box 75, Leederville, WA 6902

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

Bellucci would seem a likely candidate to play St Rosa in a film of her life - after all, Mel Gibson cast her as Mary Magdalene in “The Passion of the Christ.” But perhaps Bellucci didn’t research her character, as she seems to have forgotten the part about “sin no more”. The actress-model has made her own attempt at educating young women - most recently during last year’s debate about the Italian referendum to Law 40 which governs artificial procreation and embryo testing. Bellucci’s public statements at the time included the Radical Party catch phrase of the year, “What do politicians and priests know about my ovaries?” In Bellucci’s case, those who have seen her films probably know more than they would like.

The canonisations demonstrated how women can and do teach by example. The holy lives of the new saints dedicated to ensuring education and formation for all women, rich or poor, stand in dramatic contrast to the glamorous lives of these actresses who often seem to aspire to perpetual girlhood.

The better question for the newspapers would be - who are the real stars here?

For Life, for Death

A more sobering form of this urban schizophrenia manifested itself elsewhere in Rome. As lawyers, doctors, theologians and scientists gathered in the shadow of St Peter’s dome to discuss the dignity of motherhood and the practice of obstetrics, a little further up the road, the International Federation of Professional Abortion and Contraception Associates was meeting.

The pro-life group met under the auspices of MaterCare, an association of health professionals dedicated to improving the lives and health of mothers and their unborn children throughout the world, through initiatives of service, training and research, in accordance with the teaching in Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae.”

Extraordinary people gathered there, including brilliant scientists and committed men and women who have made remarkable sacrifices to promote the culture of life. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, were but a few of the Vatican officials who came to speak and lend their support.

The International Federation of Professional Abortion and Contraception Associates was meeting to hear and discuss addresses such as “How to Introduce Medical Abortion in a Country,” “Abortion as a Human Right: Recent International Human Rights Body Decisions” and “How to Overcome the Resistance against Medical Abortion.”

They met on the Via Aurelia, which was the ancient route for pilgrims coming to Rome seeking new life. It would have been more appropriate for them to meet by the Colosseum, a more fitting icon of the practices they promote.

Ironically, although the words “freedom” and “rights” run abundant in the mission statement of the organisation, the group did everything in their power to suppress the freedom and rights of the Italian pro-life organisations.

Human Life International and the Catholic political movement Militia Christi were obliged by the Rome police to hold their demonstration a half-mile away, and an accredited ZENIT reporter was refused entry to the conference.

The apex of absurdity came on the morning of October 13, when the abortion group opened its conference with keynote speaker Emma Bonino, the Italian minister for international trade and European affairs, while at the exact same time her boss, Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who appointed Bonino to her position, was visiting Benedict XVI. It seems like the sort of farce of which the pagan Romans of antiquity were so fond.

Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University’s Italian campus. She can be reached at lizlev@zenit.org.

In a recent issue of the Brisbane Catholic Leader I found Michael F Tonti - Filippini’s letter “Regrets of Past” (15/10/06) both interesting and compelling. Whilst reading about the story recounted by the elderly Melbourne lady to Michael’s mother concerning the maltreatment of Victorian Aboriginals, I saw parallels with white villainy in many other parts of Australia both past and present. Michael’s mother’s friend stated that Aboriginals were slaughtered and their young women of 15 years of age shipped to England. Why? Because they had had the audacity to kill a few stock on the newly acquired white man’s land. In those times skewering the odd “jumbuck”, (Aboriginal for a sheep), generally brought a cruel and disproportionate response. Let me give you a case in point: several years ago a caring and erudite publican from Stanthorpe, Queensland, informed me of an experience he’d had in the Northern Territory. As a new publican in an outback hotel he had noticed the absence of Aboriginals in the town. Curious about this, he one day made the observation to a solitary elderly drinker in the bar. The rejoinder was chilling. The whites had “fixed them up” long ago. In a gesture of mock friendship, these perfidious “pioneers” had invited the local, indigenous inhabitants to come and help themselves to generous serves of “free tucker” in town. Men, women and children came to avail themselves of this “kindness” - and infamy took on a new and more sinister definition. All the food had been carefully laced with arsenic.

The hungry participants took their fill and returned home to the bush - where an agonizing death was soon to befall them.

The still-proud and still not sorry raconteur concluded thus, “The next day we went out with rifles and humped off those that were still alive.”

Pope Benedict XVI, with concurrence from many other people of good will, has recently been emphasising that a worthy level of nationhood for the “Great South Land” cannot be achieved until the serious wrongs of the past have been properly acknowtledged and forgiven.

Laurence Ginnivan Porepunkah VIC

Pollies unworthy

It is the time of the year again for school awards to be given out. Are we once again going to have Catholic schools asking politicians who have voted in abortion, who are seeking to change laws to bring in cloning, euthanasia and samesex marriages, handing out these awards to our children and being

Noel Inglis Albany

lauded as people that Catholic children should look up to?

Surely there are many worthy citizens who are working for a better, more moral world that should be given this privilege.

P Spencer Lesmurdie

Policy flawed

Very soon State Attorney General Jim McGinty will introduce an amendment to the Guardianship & Administration Act 1990 (“the Act”) for the appointment of so-called “enduring guardians” for persons who are unable to make reasonable judgments (usually incapacitated relatives)

These and other “responsible persons” will be empowered to give advanced health directives (AHD) to doctors so that neither the doctors nor the guardians will be in peril of any criminal charge which can extend from criminal assault to manslaughter or even murder. Whether this amendment is serious derogation of ethics or reduces the uncertainty for doctors is a matter of individual perception and judgment.

What the amendment will not change (and should not) is the common law rule that if the enduring guardian happens to be a beneficiary of the will of that incapacitated person who dies as result of that AHD then that person stands the risk of losing the benefit which they would receive under that will.

It is against public policy for a person to benefit by the death of person where the beneficiary could have prevented that death.

Persons who might in future become enduring guardians under the Act should give serious consideration to this risk - which also extends to jointly held property.

M J Bateman Perth

Watch this space

In response to the page 1 story “Priest beheaded” (19/10), unless the Pope and other Christians can read and understand where these horrific acts are coming from, and set their faces without flinching against the reversion to barbarism that is occurring, the same pantomime will be playing in another 1400 years. The insistence on nonMuslims being humbled, paying special moneys, having their limbs mutilated and being beheaded are all taught in the scriptures of Islam.

Even putting up a sign opposing the Pope’s speech was not sufficient humiliation for that Orthodox parish, in the eyes of the Islamists. The Muslim scriptures do not have the Ten Commandments, nor consistent commands to love other human beings of all sorts.

The page 12 heading that the “slaying terrifies” Iraqi Christians is more than a millennium out of date - they have been terrified of the Arabs’ violence ever since the Arabs invaded Iraq more than 1000 years ago. The fact that a Syrian Orthodox cleric is NOT part of the Pope’s religion is of no interest to Muslims - all fall under their ban, including Muslims with whom they disagree. The well-reported civil war in Iraq is one of many Muslim versus Muslim wars and persecutions around the world.

The seizure of the young women, tastefully described in this news item as being “abused”, covers the kidnapping, raping, forced “conversions” and “marriages” in polygamous cesspit situations, and then threats to behead them if they “re-convert” to Christianity, and the “lawmakers” refusing to allow divorce even if the Christian families can rescue their daughters and send them to safety. It is part of the idea of “breeding out” non-Arab races.

Congratulations to The Record for not following our overseas cousins in backtracking.

John C. Massam Greenwood

Bishop right

The Perth City Council has joined the culture war that has been going on in the western world ever since the collapse of Communism in Europe.

It has voted $43,000 for the annual gay parade and S20,000 for the Christmas pageant. Three or four times more people attend the Christmas pageant and yet the offensive gay parade receives twice the support.

Gay Mardi Gras are one of the visible signs by which the Muslim world judges the values of the Western World.

Julie Bishop is right in calling for a re examination of the values we teach. Endorsement of Gay Mardi Gras is surely not consistent with these values.

John Barich

Vista

All Saints & All Souls: November 1 & 2

On earth as it is in Heaven

Theologian Jacques Maritain thought Heaven is closer than many people think

Death. We all think about it, and possibly more than we care to admit. Chances are we’re all frightened of it, and devastated when it comes to someone close to us. But Christians are not – or should not be – terrified of death. After all, Christians know more explicitly than any other religion what comes after death. There is even a description of it by St John in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

Despite St John’s description, we can’t possibly know what Heaven

All Souls & All Saints

Jacques Maritain

is like – it’s impossible to comprehend because Heaven is completely outside any experience we have had

here on earth. All that we know is that it will be perfect joy in the direct experience of God forever.

Although it is beyond the scope of mere words to describe, does this mean we can’t know anything about heaven?

One contemporary thinker who thought not was Jacques Maritain, one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, and a convert to the Church. Maritain also had a lifelong interest in social justice and was, in 1948, one of the key authors of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. In fact, he once said, while Catholics call their church a Church of the Resurrection, they are largely ignorant about what this might mean.

The Church in Heaven and the

Church on earth, he said, are really one and the same Church operating under different states. Anglican writer Canon Edward Norman wrote something very similar in London’s Telegraph newspaper, pointing out that to belong to the Church is to belong to the only institution in the world that exists simultaneously in time - and out if it. This means, wrote Norman, that to belong within the sheepfold of Christ is to be able to draw directly on the infinite power of Heaven itself anytime one wants to. Maritain said that the living link between the two states of the Church – that in heaven and that here on earth, is the Mass. “The liturgy,” he wrote, “is wholly turned towards heaven - and heaven lis-

tens to it.” Here on earth we think that what constitutes heaven is the vision those who are already there enjoy of God. That’s true, he said, but it is not the whole of their life.

Just as Jesus had a human and a divine life here on earth, so also do those in heaven have a divine life. But they also have a human life outside of the vision of God while still penetrated by its radiance.

Their lives are glorious and transfigured.

“They love God from the moment they see Him… without their free will having to exercise itself… but with regard to the whole universe of creatures they continue to exercise their free will… [but] without being able to sin.”

CONTINUED OVERLEAF

Keep in mind the unknown saints - they’re waiting to help us all

■ By Jacques Maritain

Why do I speak to you especially of those now in heaven whom we have known? It is because of a certain idea that I have in my head, concerning the Church in Heaven. It seems to me that in turning towards the Church there we must obviously think first of Jesus and Mary, the Holy Angels, and of the great saints whom the Church proposes for our veneration.

But there is also a special role to be recognised for the non-canonisable chosen, the unapparent saints whom we have known

and who have known us here on earth. They have carried with them to Heaven the memory of their friends.

They continue to love them as they loved them, not only with the supernatural love which derives from the Beatific Vision… but also with human love, elevated and transfigured by this supernatural love, and with the love of charity with which they loved them here on earth.

Both humanly and divinely, they interest themselves in their affairs and have views concerning them. In short, they continue in the vision the special concern which they had for them on earth, and the prayer which they offered for them. On the other

hand, we who continue to live here on earth, and who have known these non-canonisable chosen who begin their eternity while we

are still on earth, we remember and invoke them. Not being inscribed in any official list of saints, who will remember them when we have finished with this planet? They will enter into anonymity; no one here on earth will pluck them by the sleeve to ask them for a helping hand.

Those of whom I speak are in a sense our contemporaries, and form a kind of fringe through which with the passing of time the Church of Heaven is still in contact in each generation - in physical continuity, so to speak, or, if you prefer, psychological continuity, with the Church on earth.

Source: edited excerpt from ‘Apropos of the Church of Heaven,’ in Notebooks, by Jacques Maritain, Magi Books, 1984.

Continued from Vista 1

Talking with the angels

But wait, as the advertisements on TV say, there’s more.

“On the other hand there is between them and the angels in the midst of whom they are as equals, intellectual communication dependent on the free will of each. Each person in heaven is master of his thoughts and opens them freely to whomever he wishes. And all are co-citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, over which the Lamb reigns.”

And even before the Resurrection there is in Heaven an immense and perpetual conversation going on all the time. Maritain says that part of this will be the angels telling “us the story of this poor earth, for how can one think of all that has passed in the flux of time, charged with so much beauty, so much love and distress, being lost forever? There is the memory of the angels.”

New arrivals and an alternative history

Meanwhile, he says, at each instant of discontinuous time (there is no time as we understand it in

traditions

heaven) there are also events talking place. For example, new individuals arrive constantly from earth after they have died, and they are welcomed by those already there, and friendships are formed. Who ever thinks of Heaven as a place where we make new friendships, albeit eternal?

New souls are also arriving constantly from Purgatory, a state of purification for those who have sinned but have not chosen to turn away from God before they die.

And every time that someone who has turned away from God or not known Him is converted here on earth “there is joy and thanksgiving among all the saints of Heaven. All this makes a great history, in a duration different from our history.”

Do they forget us?

Are those in Heaven aware of what goes on here on earth, or are they now completely focused to the exclusion of everything else on the new supernatural life they now lead?

On the contrary, says Maritain, they are deeply aware of what goes on here on earth, and deeply committed to doing their part to help bring all humanity to God so that

The Month’s Mind Mass

■ By

Anthony Barich

The Month’s Mind Mass is set to make a comeback, if the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Perth has anything to do with it.

Fr Brian O’Loughlin, also the parish priest of Claremont’s St Thomas the Apostle parish, believes that, with All Souls Day coming up on November 2, the time is right to renew the concept which is believed to have originated in Ireland.

The practice, where a memorial Mass is celebrated a month after a loved one dies, is still practised in modern Ireland, North America and in some Italian communities in Australia.

we too can experience what they themselves are now living: “And in this world which they have left to live outside of and beyond the whole universe and space, they are still present in this world by their love and by their action, and by the inspirations which they give us and by the effects of their prayers.

“And the love which they had on earth for their loved ones, they have kept in heaven, transfigured by glory… You remember the saying of St Theresa of Liseux: “I wish to spend my heaven doing good on earth” – this saying goes a long way, in the direction of what one could call the ‘humanism’ of the saints even in Heaven.”

Plunging like lightning, rapt in adoration

Maritain emphasised the immediacy, or absolute closeness of the next life to this one. It’s a very encouraging thought. In fact, he said, it is already present. “And yet the other world is present in our world, it plunges into it like lightning – invisibly. In each tabernacle there is Jesus in glory in His humanity and His divinity… They are all there, to

Fr O’Loughlin sparked interest in the idea when he held a Month’s Mind Mass in August for Dorothy Townsend, an organist for St Thomas the Apostle for a year and at St Paul’s in Swanbourne for some 50 years before that.

“I think it’s good and could quite easily be revived as a way of praying for the deceased, and also for the faithful departed generally,” he said.

Prayers for the faithful departed have always been part of Catholics’ expression of Catholic piety; and November 2, as the universal day for commemorating the faithful departed, reminds us of the beauty and charity to pray for the deceased.

When Fr O’Loughlin was a child growing up in North Fremantle, his parish at St Anne’s, now the base of a Croatian community, and all other parishes would hold three Masses one after the other on All Souls’ Day. The first Mass was for the intentions of the Holy Father, the second for the priest’s own intentions and the third for the faithful departed.

crowd behind Him, not sacramentally present, certainly, but present by their attention, their adoration of Jesus and their love for Him, and also by their love for us… Virtually all the saints of heaven are in your chapel, around the tabernacle. And, actually, in a more special manner, those who love you and whom you love in particular, and who adore Jesus with you.”

But even if we find this hard to imagine, he advises, it doesn’t matter. We can still love those we know who have gone before us: “And if there is a terrible curtain between the invisible world and the visible world, love enables us to pass behind, it is the same love of charity which is in them and in us.”

“From this point of view we can understand the importance of exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and of adoration. It is the door of Heaven open on the earth. And we look through this door with eyes of faith.”

Maritain very much deplored the way in which the idea of the Communion of the Saints was being eroded in his time. He wanted to recover the profound familiarity between ourselves here in this life and those who have gone to the next life that was once a more visible

That custom disappeared with other changes in the 1960s but November 2 is still observed as almost an undeclared holy day of obligation, as Catholics attend Mass on that day. But Fr O’Loughlin says that Month’s Mind Mass is not only a good idea, it is badly needed.

“The faithful departed can’t pray for themselves but do rely on the prayers of those who are journeying through this life and can pray for them,” he said.

“If people are reminded of it then when it does come round a month after the death of a relative or friend then they can come to Mass themselves or request the priest to offer Mass for that intention.

”It is significant - when I was young I didn’t know anything about Halloween, now you see school children going around trick or treating. It’s actually an aberration of all saints day – the day we pray for all the undeclared saints.

“All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day go together to remind us that we are on a journey.”

Getting tidied up for Heaven

■ By Fr Benedict Groeschel

This is the place to say something about the much misunderstood and denied doctrine of Purgatory, what the Eastern Orthodox Christians call the place of expiation. Unfortunately, Purgatory has had a very bad press. Many people grew up with an image of Purgatory as hideous pools of fire with naked holy souls bobbing up and down like French fries in a fast food emporium. The Council of Trent condemned making the temporal punishment in Purgatory sound hideous (“The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.”).

St Catherine of Genoa, who wrote a marvellous book on Purgatory, maintained on the basis of her mystical experience that it is a vast improvement over this life and that the holy souls have no regrets except that they haven’t finally taken their place in heaven:

against the will of God, against His intense and pure love bent on nothing but drawing them up to Him.

“And I see rays of lightning darting from that divine love to the creature, so intense and fiery as to annihilate not the body alone but, were it possible, the soul. These rays purify and then annihilate. The soul becomes like gold that becomes purer as it is fired, all dross being cast out.”

Life a journey towards Four Last Things

There is a rich literary tradition of stories which deal with the afterlife. And there is some poverty associated with that tradition too. We need think only of some of today’s TV shows about ‘ghosts’ and the supernatural to see the poverty. The richness, sadly, can be harder to find.

One of the shining samples from the treasury of literary tradition exploring the Four Last Things - death, jugement, heaven, hell - is the short story Leaf by Niggle by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien. Tolkien, a cradle Catholic who was influenced by the Oratory tradition associated with Cardinal John Henry Newman during his youth, was an author who can be described as so deeply Catholic, you almost don’t notice his Catholicism. This remark is true of Lord of the Rings. It is arguably true of all his writings. It is certainly true of Leaf by Niggle Leaf by Niggle is an apparently simple tale about a man who wishes to finish a painting. The man, Niggle, is a country artist who specialises in

characteristic of earlier Christianity. In recent years John Paul II did much to help this recovery. The loss of this familiarity, Maritain said, had been disastrous. One would think from more recent developments “that we believe stupidly that this multitude sleeps in the beatific vision and no longer wishes to see us, and has forgotten us.”

Considering those who are canonised or canonisable saints, Maritain pointed out that not only can we ask them to pray for our intentions but they have intentions too, especially concerning the missions with which they were entrusted during their lives here on earth. So we should pray for their intentions as well. After all, a Saint Dominic is presumably still deeply interested in the Dominican order that he founded (and which is celebrating its 800th anniversary in late 2006). But in a quite beautiful little meditation, Maritain then turns from the ‘official’ canonised saints to the unknown:

“… there are in heaven not only all the elect who have passed through the sufferings of Purgatory and have been delivered, but also all those elect, whom I believe immense in number, who have been on earth unapparent saints.”

“I mean that, except as regards the heart’s secrets, they led among us a life like everybody. If there was a heroism in their life, and there was without any doubt, it was a perfectly hidden heroism. And they passed straight to heaven, because they died in an act of perfect charity. It is for them also, for them above all, I believe, that each year the Church celebrates All Saints’ Day. It is of the immense mass of the poorand of the little people of God that it is necessary to think first of all here, I say of all those who practiced to the end self-abnegation, devotion to others and firmness of the virtues.”

“…And these saints who concern us and whom we have known – do you believe that they have forgotten us? That they do not desire to help us, and that they do not have a better idea than we do about what is best for us, and that they do not have their own intentions concerning the things of the earth

“As for paradise, God has placed no doors there. Whoever wishes to enter does so. All merciful God stands there with His arms open waiting to receive us into His glory.

I also see, however, that the divine essence is so pure and light filled much more than we can imagine that the soul that has but the slightest imperfection would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than appear thus before the divine presence.

“Tongue cannot express nor heart understand the full meaning of purgatory which the soul willingly accepts as a mercy, the realisation that that suffering is of no importance compared to the removal of the impediment of sin.

“The greatest suffering of the souls in purgatory, it seems to me, is their awareness that something in them displeases God, that they have deliberately gone against His great goodness. In a state of grace, these souls fully grasp the meaning of what blocks them on their way to

traditions

Trading New York for Purgatory

■ By Fr Benedict Groeschel

I’d trade New York for Purgatory any day of the week. It’s clearly upscale from Jersey City, where I started out in this life. I’m actually looking forward to it with hope, because I like to travel and visit new places, and I have lots of friends in Purgatory. Once you are there, you are certain of eternal life which makes it a great deal more pleasant than our scary journey here, which, according to St Paul, we should follow with fear and trembling.

Protestants have always misunderstood the purpose of Purgatory, even though nowadays you seem to hear them praying for the dead at funerals. (No point in praying

God. This conviction is so strong, from what I have understood up to this point in life, that by comparison all words, sentiments, images, the very idea of justice or truth, seem completely false. “I am more confused than satisfied with the words I have used to express myself, but I have found nothing better for what I have felt. All that I have said is as nothing compared to what I feel within, the witnessed correspondence of love between God and the Soul; for when God sees the Soul pure as it was in its origins, He tugs at it with a glance, draws it and binds it to Himself with a fiery love that by itself could annihilate the immortal soul.

“In so acting, God so transforms the soul in Him that it knows nothing other than God; and He continues to draw it up unto His fiery love until He restores it to that pure state from which it first issued. As it is being drawn upwards, the soul feels itself melting in the fire of that love of its sweet God, for He will not cease until He has brought the soul to its perfection. That is why the soul seeks to cast off any and all impediments, so that it can be lifted up to God; and such impediments are the cause of the suffering of the souls in purgatory.

“Not that those souls dwell on their suffering; they dwell rather on the resistance they feel in themselves

‘The Catholic Doctrine’: Dr Samuel Johnson though Purgatory to be ‘most reasonable.’

for the dead if there’s no Purgatory, because the dead would already be in heaven or hell.) The Church has always taught that Christ alone saves us and merits our salvation. We certainly do not do that in Purgatory. And no one ever thought that we did. The most succinct argument I ever heard on Purgatory came from a great old

“Since yesterday, I have been surrounded by a multitude who unceasingly pray and pray, in penetrating tones, and a reverence beyond anything I have ever known..”

We can hardly paint a horrible picture of Purgatory and still say that the dead who are on their spiritual journey toward their heavenly reality are safely in the hands of God. An interesting event took place in the life of the foundress of the Sisters of the Cenacle, St Marie Thérèse Couderc.

Just a few days before her death, her ears were filled with heautiful celestial choral singing. She described it thus:

“I do not know what is happening... One might think that illness has robbed me of my right senses. Since yesterday, I have been surrounded by a multitude who unceasingly pray and pray, in penetrating tones, and a reverence beyond anything I have ever known.

“They chant also in solemn tone hymns, psalms, and liturgical prayers. They supplicate, they moan with pain, they adore the Divine Majesty. They praise that Majesty with a unity, a harmony, a faith, a hope, a love ineffable. I believe they are the souls in Purgatory.

“For hours at a time I am thus taken up in them, for in spite of myself I am forced to join them. At times I am affrighted, for they envelop me, they draw very close to me. They are suffering and they

Continued VISTA 4

Protestant gentleman, Dr Samuel Johnson. In one of his many arguments with Boswell he said, in response to a question:

BOSWELL: “What do you think, Sir, of Purgatory, as believed by the Roman Catholicks?” JOHNSON:

“Why, Sir, it is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion that the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits; and therefore that God is graciously pleased to allow a middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suffering. You see, Sir, there is nothing unreasonable in this.”

BOSWELL: “But then, Sir, their Masses for the dead?” JOHNSON:

“Why, Sir, if it be once established that there are souls in Purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them, as for our brethren of mankind who are yet in this life.”

- From Arise From Darkness, by Fr Benedict Groeschel

trees. He has spread out within his rundown home an enormous canvas on which, bit by bit, he is attempting to create the most elaborate and magnificent tree, which he sees, in its perfection, dimly, with his mind’s eye. In executing this mammoth task, he is constantly interrupted. Niggle is a decent man, but feels continually irritated by the interruptions of neighbours and friends. Finally, on a stormy night, a neighbour who has had an accident urges him to travel miles on a bicycle to seek assistance. Grudgingly, Niggle agrees. Only after several hours of cycling and repeated drenching does he discover that the neighbour’s problem was not so serious after all, and that he need not have ventured out of doors. Niggle subsequently catches a serious cold. By degrees, we become aware that Niggle must go on a journey. This day soon comes. Niggle is summoned to travel by car and by train, and is given very little time to pack. He is given no time at all to finish his wonderful painting. On the journey, Niggle becomes aware that he must change his habits. Whatever the destination is that he is intended for, he is unable to travel there. He is now obliged to spend time in a series of unpleasant tasks, which bore him. He also overhears authoritative voices discussing his case. One of them argues sternly that Niggle is a hopeless case. Another argues more charitably in his favour. In time, Niggle adapts to the boring job he must do, and even begins to derive some satisfaction from it. Soon after, he is allowed to travel further on the journey. Niggle finds himself now able to walk freely in the open air. In the distance are mountains which he is unable to climb. Instead he is given the task of creating a garden in the lowland wilderness where he now resides. During this time he is re-united with his one-time neighbour, the one who sent him on the useless errand. Niggle must learn to help this neighbour and teach him about gardening. Together, the pair adapt to the changed environment of their new lifestyle. The story ends before Niggle achieves his final goal, living in the mountains. But there is hope that he is undergoing sufficient transformation, so that, eventually, he may one day complete that journey. There is also the inspiring prospect of laughter emanating from these far hills. This is clearly where he wishes to go, as each of us might, in his place. When we have learned to love and work sufficiently well, it seems, we will be allowed to go there. Various interpretations have been offered of the story Leaf by Niggle by JRR Tolkien. One interpretation given in the impressive biography of the author by Tom Shippey is that the great unfinished artwork, the tree by Niggle, symbolically stands for Tolkien’s own great literary creation, the world of Middle-Earth. Another completely different interpretation is that the story is an allegory about purgatory. In Christian tradition, purgatory is a state between earthly existence and that of heavenly bliss. It is a time of purging, purgatorio, but also a time of learning to love. The imperfections which prevent the Christian soul from attaining heaven must first be wiped away. This wiping away can be seen as a process of learning new habits. And which habit above all must be learnt? The habit of love.

If we take this interpretation, we see the journeys of Niggle as an exercise in learning, or re-learning, virtues or habits which have only been imperfectly acquired. Like most of us, Niggle is a decent enough soul, but he certainly has the potential to love better than he does. To be Christ-like, he must identify compassionately with the irritating neighbour, even when that neighbour is at his most irritating. This Niggle is able to do, though only through the gracious arrangements made for him by the “authorities” in the story. These authorities seem a pretty clear intimation, to me at least, of the figures of the Blessed Trinity. Others may see these personalities differently. They are background figures only, though they come more into the foreground as our hero comes closer to his goal. Their true character seems to be revealed in the final paragraph of the story, when their laughter echoes across the hills.

In another world, meanwhile, both Niggle and his neighbour are largely forgotten. Their life now is largely unthought of. All that remains to the citizens of their one-time rural community is a fluttering piece of paper blown about on the wind - a leaf drawn by the artist. This leaf by Niggle, aspiring citizen of heaven, is a solitary, incoherent reminder of a world and a destination we do not yet know. Like the leaf, this story calls to each of us as we seek to make meaning of human existence.

- Paul Gray

In procession: This stained glass window portrays the saints processing into Heaven. French philosopher Jacques Maritain pointed out that going straight to Heaven after we die should be regarded as the normal process. Purgatory and Hell are the things that are abnormal, he said. This is one reason why the Church promotes sanctity so strongly; it’s how we’re meant to be and it’s entirely feasible. PHOTO: CNS

The man: Fr Benedict Groeschel

Continued from Vista 2 and their friends of the earth?”

Do many get to heaven?

Addressing the idea of whether many or few eventually make it to heaven, Maritain emphasised that to pass straight from this life to Heaven is the normal way of progressing. Purgatory and Hell, on the other hand, are the abnormal

All Saints & All Souls: November 1 & 2

things. Whether there are many people in either of these places does not affect the question of what is meant to happen.

His own opinion was that many more get to Heaven than don’t:

“I am persuaded that the idea of the greater number of the chosen imposes itself and will impose itself more and more on the Christian conscience.

“Firstly, for a doctrinal reason.

Come and be in communion with them

All Saints and All Souls Masses around the archdiocese

Here are just a few of the Masses that will be celebrated on All Saints and All Souls days which The Record picked as covering most of the metropolitan area in the north and the south. We couldn’t get to everyone on time, unfortunately, but every parish will be celebrating Mass on each of these days and all it takes is a quick phone call to your parish to find out what times the celebrations of the Eucharist will be in your area.

Come and pray for the intentions of all those in Heaven - and for those still on the way. They’ll certainly be returning the favour.

Armadale – St Francis Xavier

Wednesday, November 1: 9am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 8am

Bateman – St Thomas More

Wednesday, November 1: 8am and 7.30pm

Thursday, November 2: 7am, 9am and 7.30pm

City Beach – Holy Spirit

Wednesday, November 1: 6.45am

Thursday, November 2: 6.45am

Cloverdale – Notre Dame

Wednesday, November 1: 9.15am

Thursday, November 2: 8.30am

Ellenbrook – St Helena’s

Wednesday, November 1: 7.30am and 8.30am

Thursday, November 2: 7.30am and 7pm

Continued from VISTA 3

show it in a heart rending way. I would indeed be delivered from this: I have asked Our Lord to deliver me, but He does not hear me.”

When the Mother General was told this by the dying saint, she advised her to speak to her confessor about the singing.

The Mother General writes: “When I visited her again, all

Thoughts

On the one hand, there is God who “wills that all men be saved” and who sends His Son to redeem them by the death of the Cross.

On the other hand, there is man who… evades the love of God. Who can be persuaded that man through his evasions is stronger than God through His love?

“This does not exclude there being perhaps a great multitude in Hell, but it does mean that there is

surely a much greater multitude in Paradise.

Prayer is the key Maritain urged every Christian to pray for the intentions of those in Heaven. In fact, he said, “I would say that for a singularly greater part than we believe, the intentions of Heaven with regard to the earth and its goodness for us are frustrated or

Wednesday, November 1: 12.10pm and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 12.10pm and 7pm

Greenmount – St Anthony’s

Wednesday, November 1: 9am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 8.15am and 7.30pm. 3pm – rosary and blessing of graves at Midland cemetery.

smiles, she looked at me and said: “The Father told me not to fear. He believes that these are the souls in Purgatory. Since they are friends of God, because they love Him and are beloved by Him, they are in His Eyes a blessed society.

“I have not slept this night. They have not left me. I have seen among them some of our own. I have seen many priests and religious. When

to inspire I

f you liked the excerpts contained in this article, they - and much more - are available in Fr Groeschel’s excellent book written for those going through tough times.

Arise From Darkness is available from The Record for $25 + postage

Contact Linda or Kathi on: (08) 9227 7080 or via: cathrec@iinet.net.au

Kalamunda – Holy Family

Wednesday, November 1: 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 9am

Midland – St Brigid’s

Wednesday, November 1: 9.30am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 7am, 9.30am and 7pm

this morning I had received the Sacred Host, they intoned the Te Deum

“At the fourth verse, in spite of every effort I made to be attentive as usual to Our Lord, I was forced to follow them and to sing with them: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.

“It was most wonderful. I would have to live a very long time before I could forget that harmony, those accents, that reverence of which nothing on earth can give even a suggestion.

“Every verse was sung with a feeling suited to the praise or the appeal which it expressed.

“When they came to the last verse ‘In thee, Lord, have I hoped: let me never be confounded,’ they sang it at least ten times, with a humility and ardour, a confidence overflowing with love. They are there all the time. I cannot understand why they are not heard. Don’t you hear them now?”

“Again she said to me:

“They are a multitude. Among them are the voices of men, the voices of women, the voices of children .... Oh, how they pray: how they sing! Oh, if we could pray as they do! How rough, how unbe-

paralyzed by our neglect to pray, and especially to pray to the saints of the Church triumphant - exemplary saints and unapparent saints - and especially to pray for the intentions of these saints and for the purpose of the Church of Heaven.

Source: Apropos of the Church of Heaven, talk given in 1963 to the Little Brothers of Jesus in Toulouse, France, reproduced in Notebooks, by Jacques Maritain, Magi Books, 1984.

Mirrabooka – St Gerard Majella

Wednesday, November 1: 9am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 9am and 7pm

Morley – Infant Jesus

Wednesday, November 1: 7am, 9am and 7.30pm

Thursday, November 2: 7am, 9am and 7pm

Rockingham – Our Lady Star of the Sea

Wednesday, November 1: 7.30am and 9.45am (St Joseph’s Convent: 8am)

Thursday, November 2: 7.30am and 7pm. (St Joseph’s Convent: 8am)

South Perth – St Columba’s

Wednesday, November 1: 10am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 5pm

Victoria Park – St Joachim’s ProCathedral

Wednesday, November 1: 6.45am and 12.10am

Thursday, November 2: 6.45am and 12.10am

Wanneroo – St Anthony of Padua

Wednesday, November 1: 7am, 9am and 7pm

Thursday, November 2: 7am, 8.30am and 7pm

West Perth – St Brigid’s

Wednesday, November 1: 7.30am and 9.30am

Thursday, November 2: 7am, 9.30am and 7pm

Whitford/Craigie – Our Lady of the Mission

Wednesday, November 1: 7am and 9am

Thursday, November 2: 7am and 9am

Mass times can also be found on the archdiocesan website at www.perthcatholic.org.au but should still be checked with the parish for any changes made since posting on the web.

coming in comparison is our way of praying! Where, indeed, is our reverence?”

If one thinks about death, it’s helpful to think about what comes after it.

It stands to reason, as Dr Johnson pointed out, that most of us will be

Oheaded toward Purgatory, so it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time thinking about that wonderful preparation for our final entrance into the Kingdom of God. If you happen to be a canonisable saint, it’s not necessary to do this, but otherwise I think it is time well spent.

A PRAYER

HOLY SPIRIT, enlighten my mind that death may not be my enemy, that I may not fear it in an unseemly way for a Christian, that I may not run from death, so that when death comes and takes those dear to me, I may welcome their release from this valley of tears although I am myself deeply moved and even deprived by their departure from this world.

Let me know that death reminds each of us of the infinite reality of life with you. Let me see all things in the perspective of death and everlasting life. And let me not be filled with grief either at the anticipation of my own death or the experience of the death of those dear to me.

Rather, strengthen my faith, that in the midst of this changing world I may always come closer to you, who never change and who await me and those dear to me together with the Father and the Son in life everlasting.

Fremantle – Basilica of St Patrick

All Saints & All Souls: November 1 & 2

Agencies celebrate eternal life

■ By Sylvia Defendi

The spirit of children, who have passed into eternity, brought 25 people representing seven Catholic agencies together in celebration on August 31.

An inaugural graveside Eucharist was celebrated at York Cemetery by Fr Donald Kettle, head of Catholic Youth Ministry and parish priest of York, Fr Stephen Cooney.

It was the first time Mass had been celebrated at the York Cemetery, which is the resting place for the remains of many children, most of whom died due to the 1918-19 outbreak of Spanish Flu.

Members from Catholic Mission, Caritas, Catholic Outreach, Planned Giving, Catholic Youth Ministry, the West Australian Council of Religious Institutes, and the Archdiocesan Liturgy Office all gathered to share some sacred space.

“It is probably the first time that Caritas and Catholic Mission have got together in this way,” said Director of Catholic Mission, Francis Leong; adding that the event was inspired by the spirit of Miranda Leong, who died in August 2005 at two and a half years of age.

“A child’s presence with God should inspire each of us in the work we do, to bring God’s love to all.”

“The importance of having time together is to reaffirm our com-

mon sense of God’s presence in the work we do daily,” commented Mr Leong.

The sucess of this pilgrimage has opened the opportunity for further engagement between WA’s two primary aid agencies.

“Both Catholic Mission and Caritas hope to foster solidarity between Archdiocesan agencies through future joint events and that children, not just Miranda, have that power to make us recognise what is essential in the work we do.”

Mr Leong also spoke of a new program being run by the Catholic

life, the universe and everything

Mission office where paerticipating retired priests celebrate Mass for souls in Purgatory.

For each Mass the person who has requested the celebration of the Eucharist is asked to give $15 for missions instead of the usual stipend that many offer for such Mass for dead friends or relatives.

“It means that God’s love on earth is being fulfilled as we pray for those in purgatory. They have an impact on our world here,” he said.

Further information and details are available by contacting Catholic Mission on 9422 7933 and speaking to Mr Leong.

Is Limbo evolving out of existence?

■ By Mark Reidy

The fate of infants who died before they being baptised into the Church has been an issue of contention since the earliest Christian writers. A gathering of the International Theological Commission several weeks ago to study the concept more profoundly indicates that the Church believes that more clarity is required on this topic.

The term “Limbo”, derives from the Latin, “limbus”, meaning “hem” or “border’. It appears that the concept entered Catholic theological tradition around the 11th century as a way of balancing the necessity of baptism for salvation against a merciful and loving God. It was understood to be a place or condition specifically for unbaptised infants who had died and it was believed to be a separate entity from heaven, hell or purgatory. Here infants would not suffer the sensory pains of Hell and may experience a certain natural happiness.

Although the Church has never officially defined Limbo, it became more or less assumed in theological literature prior to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s. St Gregory of Nazianus (325-389) wrote, “It will happen, I believe... that those last mentioned (infants without baptism) will neither be

Opinion

High stakes in the cell race

■ By Anna Krohn

Over the recent months a number of developed nations have been embroiled in emotionally loaded public discussions about extending the social, legal and ethical “limits” in the use of human embryos for stem cell technology.

In Australia, as in the other countries, those who oppose stem cell research involving the destruction of cloned human embryos and the potential exploitation of women and the sick are frequently labelled as “obstructionist”, “theologically obsessed”, “unenlightened” and lacking in compassion.

Such tabloid rhetoric has become a regular feature of the passionate proponents of embryonic stem cells. The high stakes of professional kudos, genuine hope for the sick and commercial gain make the

“holy grail” of embryonic stem cell research a heady concoction.

Those caught up in the quest, are high on enthusiasm, hard sell and confidence but lacking in dispassionate far-sightedness and prudent disinterest- virtues society might expect of both scientists and civic leaders. Take a recent Adelaide headline which proclaimed: “Sick women ‘should give eggs for research.”

Though acknowledging that it was unlikely that embryonic stem cell research would yield any useful treatments for 15 years or more (if at all) the Professor claimed that “young” women suffering genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis were keen (or should be keen) to “donate eggs for their own self”.

Now let us take a deep breath and consider this statement. So young women with CF or diabetes are supposed to line up with enthusiasm for a risky and uncomfortable hormonal regimen, (probably made more dangerous by their existing conditions) in which their ovaries are stimulated (and sometimes over-stimulated) and with the risk of “high blood pressure, fluid accumulation in the limbs, formation of blood clots..” as well as “minor side effects”. Good therapeutic thinking!

Then they are meant to be willing for their eggs to be “harvested” for researchers who will create multiple

experimental cloned embryos- over whom the women have no claims, no connection and no knowledge? What about their future plans for having a family or their loneliness if they don’t? What about the deeply embedded Australian reluctance

to accept that anyone can “own or trade” in body parts, let alone in embryos? When he says he “has faith” in these women, is the inference that sick young women are being selfish if they have an inchoate belief that

admitted by the just judge to the glory of heaven nor condemned to suffer punishment, since, though unsealed (by baptism), they are not wicked...”

In 1984 Cardinal Ratzinger, Now Pope Benedict XVI, stated that Limbo was only a theological hypothesis and had never been a defined truth of the faith.

Following the gathering of the International Theological Commission in October, 2006, commission member, Father Paul McPartlan states that, “We cannot say we know with certainty what will happen (to unbaptised babies), but we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them to salvation.”

The final version of the document is expected to be released in 2007.

their own reproductive organs, ova and their embryos are “precious” and should not be treated in this way? Are they obstructing “progress which might help others” especially the biotech companies with an interest in the research?

What does the scientist mean by saying that such research will be “for their own self”? Does he seriously believe that in 15, or 20 years or some indefinite time in the future these then not-so-young women (if alive) will really have a claim to ownership or benefit in the “outcomes” of such research?

Recently, Lord Winston a prominent and eminent British supporter of embryonic stem cell research warned: “I am not arguing that it should not be funded, it is just that we must not make exaggerated claims. In the long term they will come to haunt us.”

Pope Benedict XVI reflected at recent conference devoted to Stem Cell Research both adult and embryonic, that Christians need both careful hope and unstinting moral realism in relation to the promise of regenerative cell research. He commented with target-hitting clarity: “Progress becomes progress only if it serves the human person and if the human person grows: not only in terms of his or her technical power, but also in his or her moral awareness.” Indeed.

Remembering: Father Stephen Cooney O.praem., Parish Priest of York, and Don Kettle from the Catholic Youth Ministry lead prayers of the dead in the York cemetery; they were joined by members of seven Catholic agencies from Perth.

The World FEATURE

UK pulling out of the nosedive

Churches face a continuing fall in attendance

The numbers of Sunday churchgoers is still falling in England, according to a report published on September 18 by the British organisation Christian Research. The decline, however, seems to be slowing.

The report, the 2005 English Church Census, shows that from 1998-2005 “only” half a million people stopped going to church.

The good news was that this was half the loss sustained in the nineyear period prior to 1998.

The press release accompanying the report was titled, “Pulling out of the Nosedive,” and it claimed: “Many churches in England are in a healthier state now than seven years ago.”

The census found that there are two major reasons for the slowing decline: the number of churches are growing; plus there was a considerable increase of ethnic minority churchgoers, especially blacks.

The data were collected from surveys sent to 37,500 churches, of which about half responded. The attendance figures are those for Sunday, May 8, 2005.

According to the census 6.3 per cent of the population, just over 3.1 million people, are now in church on an average Sunday, compared with 7.5 per cent in 1998.

Just over a third of churches, 34 per cent, are growing. This compares with 21 per cent in 1998. A further 16 per cent are stable, up from 14 per cent in 1998. The proportion of churches in decline has

fallen from 65 per cent in 1998 to 50 per cent.

Nevertheless, the losses from declining churches outweigh the gains from those with increasing numbers. And this continuing decline is taking place in a situation where church attendance is already at extremely low levels.

The Catholic and Anglican churches accounted for over half of the numbers in the census, with each having just over 800,000 people in church the day the data were collected. Next in order of numbers were the Methodist, Pentecostal and Baptist churches.

Numbers for the Catholic Church were slightly ahead of the Anglican level. But compared with 1998 the decline in attendance for the Catholic Church was much greater than for the Anglicans.

In 1998 the Sunday participation for Catholics was just over 1.2 million, meaning that in the previous seven years their numbers have dropped by almost a third.

Another problem is that churchgoers are significantly older on average than the population. No fewer than 29 per cent of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16 per cent of the population.

Believers in the younger age groups also tend to go to church less often, and there is a progressive decline in belief as age drops, with very few churchgoers in the younger age brackets. Less than 10 per cent go to church in the 20-29 age group, and this falls to five per cent in the 15-19 group.

Regarding the question of increased participation by eth-

nic groups, the census found that blacks now account for 10 per cent of all churchgoers in England, with an additional seven per cent from other non-white ethnic groups.

Catholic problems

A more detailed look at the situation of the Catholic Church came in another report, published this summer by the Pastoral Research Centre. Over a three-decade period Mass attendance has declined by 40 per cent, according to a summary of the report published in the Times newspaper on July 4. The report covered the period 1963-1991.

Over the same period baptisms were halved, while marriages and confirmations plunged by 60 per cent. As well, first Communions declined by 40 per cent and the number of adult converts fell 55 per cent. According to the Times, more recent figures, from 2004, show little improvement in the situation.

Numbers going to Mass on a Sunday in 1991 in England and Wales stood at 1.3 million, declining to 960,000 in 2004.

The website for the Catholic Church in England and Wales also publishes statistics that reveal similar trends.

The number of diocesan clergy fell from 4755 in 1981 to 3765 in 2003. Religious-order clergy fell from 2,266 to 1,363 in the same period. The number of marriages in Catholic churches fell precipitously, from 29,337 in 1981 to 11,013 in 2003. The website estimated weekly Mass attendance at 915,497.

Last April 10 the Telegraph newspaper published a detailed article

on the situation of Catholic monasteries and convents. Citing official figures the article said that only 12 people entered monasteries in 2004, thus continuing a decline that has persisted in recent decades.

Vocations to monastic orders were 107 in 1982. By 1990 this had fallen to 52, and in 2000 only 20 entered. The total number of monks in England and Wales now stands at 1345, many of them elderly.

The situation of nuns is similar. In England and Wales their numbers stand at 1150, and vocations continue to decline. In 1982, 100 women entered convents; by 2000 this fell to 22.

In 2004 there were only seven vocations, with a slight increase to 13 in 2005. In Scotland the situation is no better. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop and metropolitan of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh, has published a plan involving closing many parishes.

According to a report on June 11 in the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, the number of priests could halve in some areas due to parish amalgamations.

The average age of priests in Scotland is now above 60 and the number of active priests in the Edinburgh Archdiocese is expected to fall from the current 63, to just 34 in a decade’s time.

Scotland now has just over 200,000 practising Catholics, a decline of 20 per cent compared with a decade ago. The Church of Scotland, commonly referred to as the Kirk, now has a bit over a halfmillion who attend services, down from 1.3 million in the 1960s.

“It can die”

The Chicago Tribune newspaper last May 11 examined the crisis of faith in Britain. The article noted that 72 per cent of the British people called themselves Christian in the 2001 census, but only eight per cent regularly attend services. “Britain is showing the world how religion as we have known it can die,” Callum Brown told the Chicago Tribune.

Brown is a historian at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He was pessimistic about the future, observing that after two generations of people with little experience of regular church participation, it will be difficult to turn the situation around. A new ad campaign is trying to reach young people in order to overcome this problem. The campaign’s tactics, among them an image showing Christ’s face on the side of a beer glass, have come under criticism for their superficiality. The campaign is being organised by an ecumenical group, the Churches’ Advertising Network.

Another tactic of the campaign, reported the Telegraph on September 15, is setting up a page for Jesus on the MySpace Internet site, a social networking page very popular among adolescents. Amid doubts over the future of organised religion in Britain, a column from Guardian newspaper writer Madeleine Bunting called for a greater contribution by faith in today’s society. In her June 19 column Bunting observed that there is “a vacuum of purpose, value and meaning,” in the major groupings on the political spectrum.

Continuing decline: A report published on September 18 by the British organisation Christian Reserach shows Sunday churchgoer numbers in England are still falling, but seems to be slowing.

PHOTO: CNS

The World

Fertility: a power struggle we can’t win

Contraception hurts couples, society, bishops say in draft document

■ By Nancy Frazier O’Brien

WASHINGTON (CNS)Contraception introduces “a false note” that disturbs marital intimacy and contributes to a decline in society’s respect for marriage and for life, the US bishops have said in a draft document that will come before them at their fall general meeting in Baltimore.

The brief document, called “Married Love and the Gift of Life,” is intended for use as a brochure and is in question-and-answer format.

Developed by the US bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities in collaboration with the committees on Doctrine and Marriage and Family Life, the document strongly supports natural family planning, saying it “enables couples to cooperate with the body as God designed it”.

“When couples use contraception, either physical or chemical, they suppress their fertility, exerting ultimate control over this power to create a new human life with God,” the draft said.

But because natural family planning “does not change the human body in any way, or upset its balance with potentially harmful drugs or devices, people of other faiths or

of no religious affiliation have also come to accept and use it from a desire to work in harmony with their bodies,” it added. The bishops disputed the view that the Church’s opposition to contraception means that Catholic couples must “leave their family size entirely to chance”.

“In married life, serious circumstances - financial, physical, psychological, or those involving responsibilities to other family members - may arise to make an increase in family size untimely,” the document said.

“The Church understands this, while encouraging couples to take a generous view of children.”

That’s where natural family plan-

ning comes in, the bishops said.

The method helps couples avoid pregnancy by refraining from intercourse for the few fertile days around the time of the woman’s ovulation.

“A couple need not desire or seek to have a child in each and every act of intercourse,” the draft document said.

“And it is not wrong for couples to have intercourse even when they know the woman is naturally infertile.

“But they should never act to suppress or curtail the life-giving power given by God that is an integral part of what they pledged to each other in their marriage vows.”

Recalling warnings from Popes Paul VI and John Paul II that a “contraceptive mentality” would lead to more abortions and other evils, the bishops said, “These predictions have come true.

“Today we see a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases, an enormous rise in cohabitation, one in three children born outside of marriage, and abortion used by many when contraception fails,” the draft document said.

“A failure to respect married love’s power to help create new life has eroded respect for life and for the sanctity of marriage.”

The bishops also cautioned Catholics that newer forms of contraception, such as the “morningafter pill,” may cause an abortion if taken after a sperm and egg have joined. In an introduction to the draft, Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, chairman of the pro-

life committee, said Catholic couples “report using contraceptives at about the same level as those of other faiths or of no faith” and that only four per cent of Catholic married couples use natural family planning.

The target audience for the document is Catholics “engaged to be married, newly married or contemplating marriage”; priests and seminarians; and other lay Catholics, the cardinal said. The draft was presented to couples in marriage preparation classes in four dioceses - Peoria, Ill.; Phoenix; St. Augustine, Fla.; and San Diego - and 78 per cent found the document to be “welcoming/helpful” in tone, he added.

Discussion and a vote on the document were to take place during the November 13-16 meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, taking place in Baltimore. CNS

Couples wishing to learn more about natural family planning can do so by contacting:

Natural Fertility Services: 1800 114 010 9223 1396

Billings: 1800 819 841

Natural Fertility Care: 9440 4530

From corporate to contemplation Students healing power

Pope urges university students to help heal culture, identity crisis

■ By Cindy Wooden

Pope Benedict XVI has urged university students to help heal “the crises of culture and identity” by searching for truth and meaning in their studies and their lives.

Inaugurating the academic year in Rome, where university classes begin in October, Pope Benedict visited Pontifical Lateran University on October 21 and met students and professors from all the city’s pontifical universities after an October 23 Mass.

In speeches to both groups, the Pope said education should hone a student’s thirst for truth and for meaning, especially when his or her studies are taking place at a Vatican-chartered university.

When the student bodies and staffs are combined, the pontifical universities in Rome make up a group of about 15,000 people from all over the world.

In his October 23 speech in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope reminded the group of “the priority importance of one’s spiritual life and the need, alongside cultural growth, for a balanced human maturation

and a deep ascetic and religious formation.” The {Pope said that studying theology and other subjects in preparation to serve the Church “presupposes an education in silence and contemplation because it is necessary to be able to hear with one’s heart the God who speaks.”

In his October 21 speech at Lateran University, where he dedicated the remodeled library and an auditorium bearing his name, Pope Benedict said pontifical universities must challenge students to look for more than just new experiences.

Students, he said, want help responding to questions about the meaning of their own lives and about human existence.

“Overvaluing ‘doing,’ obscuring ‘being’ will not help restore the fundamental balance needed to give one’s existence a solid foundation and a valid goal,” he said.

Catholic universities, he said, must help students aspire to know and love God and to follow him by obeying his commandments.

Pope Benedict pointed to the fable of Icarus who flew with wings held together with wax; although his father warned him to stay close, Icarus tried to soar higher and higher, but the sun melted the wax, the wings fell apart and Icarus plunged to his death. Seeking “absolute freedom,” Icarus found only a great crash and death.

Tennessee woman moves from corporate world to life of contemplation

■ By Fran Rajotte

Carole

Beauchemin

really loved her job as facility consultant with the car company Saturn. The Tennessee resident travelled every other week to Texas to oversee a number of Saturn dealerships. She enjoyed travelling, loved the people with whom she worked, and made a great salary.

This experience was soon to change, because what she didn’t realise was that God was calling her to a different way of life.

Now a Passionist nun, Sister Mary Beauchemin eventually became less satisfied with her life even though she was at the height of her career. “The more successful I had become, the emptier I felt,” she said.

In 1999, after five years with the company, she asked Saturn if she could take a two-year sabbatical and the company agreed.

“Saturn was the most ethical company for whom I had ever worked. Not only are they concerned for their customers, but for their employees as well. They were most gracious to grant me this leave of absence,” she told the

Tennessee Register, newspaper of the Nashville Diocese.

During her sabbatical she went to Georgia to visit a Trappist monastery once a month as a lay Cistercian, and then moved to the area and lived with three other laypeople in community.

“I didn’t remain there very long because I needed more structure,” Sister Mary said. “When I searched the Web, I found the Passionist nuns of St. Joseph Monastery in Whitesville, Kentucky, and after three weeks living there, I realised it was everything I wanted. I knew that it was the right place for me to be.

“It has been the right place for others too for six decades. The Passionists marked their 60th anniversary in Kentucky on October 15 with a Mass of Thanksgiving cel-

ebrated by Bishop John J. McRaith of Owensboro, followed by a public celebration for family and friends. The sisters, part of a contemplative branch of the Passionist congregation founded by St. Paul of the Cross, follow a traditional monastic life of work, penance and contemplative prayer. They are the female counterpart of the Passionist priests who share a mission to remember the passion and death of Jesus and to promote others to contemplate it.

The Passionist monastery in Whitesville hosts a number of Dominican sisters from the Nashville area for retreats several times per year. Sister Mary, administrator of the retreat house on the monastery grounds, said several laypeople visit and make retreats there as well.

Passionist Sister Mary Beauchemin, top right, with Passionist Sisters. PHOTO:CNS

A better message: US Bishops Committee wants to change hearts, not bodies. PHOTO: CNS

The World

Non-Catholic quotas not the way

Church officials nix British idea for quotas at new religious schools

■ By Simon Caldwell

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has criticised a British government proposal to impose quotas of non-Catholic students in new publicly funded religious schools.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, England, chairman of the Catholic Education Service, said in an October 17 statement that the bishops were “vehemently opposed to the imposition of quotas on Catholic schools because it will mean turning away Catholics and could well lead to more division.”

The archbishop said he would reject any attempt to impose quotas of non-Catholic students as “social engineering.”

Lord Adonis, parliamentary undersecretary of schools, announced in an October 17 debate in the House of Lords that an amendment to the Education and Inspections Bill would require new religious schools to accept up to 25 perc ent of students from other religious backgrounds or those who had no religious background in an attempt to further “community cohesion.”

Oona Stannard, director of the Catholic Education Service, an agency of the bishops’ conference, said the proposal represented “political interference” in Catholic education.

“We utterly oppose quotas or proportions on admission to faith schools,” Stannard said.

“Such measures are ill-thought out, divisive and would be unworkable in practice.”

She said that “nothing could be further from the truth” than to suggest that Catholic schools were to blame for a lack of community cohesion.

The more than 2000 existing Catholic schools, which are 90 per cent funded by the government and 10 percent by parishes and dioceses,

are attracting increasing numbers of non-Catholic families because of their success.

Government inspection results compiled by the Catholic Education Service in an October 13 report called “Quality and Performance: A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools,” showed that Catholic schools performed consistently better than other schools both in terms of educational achievement and in the personal development of students. Although students at Catholic schools shared the same

socioeconomic backgrounds as those from other schools, the report showed that they were less likely to suffer from bullying, racism and harassment than their secular counterparts, and their attitudes, behaviour and relationships were generally “excellent.” Attendance figures at Catholic schools are also higher than at non-Catholic schools.

Archbishop Nichols said in London at the launch of the report that he believed the success of Catholic schools lay in their “willing acknowledgment of the spiritual nature of the human person and that spiritual nature is only understood in relation to the Creator and the final purpose of life.”

“If you omit all of that we will never achieve a harmonised and multicultural society, because we will be dealing with a reduced notion of the human person,” he said.

In a letter to school officials on October 19, Archbishop Nichols urged them to contact their political representatives to protest the quotas. He said the amendment would remove control of school admissions and that it was being brought forward without discussion with the Catholic Church. “The government is telling us that, left to ourselves, we are socially divisive. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said in the letter.

Anglican and Jewish schools are also successful compared to secular schools and are also growing in popularity and demand.

The Church of England has opposed the proposed quotas as an unnecessary intervention.

Missionary remembered

More than a month after Consolata Sr Leonella Sgorbati was gunned down in Mogadishu, Somalia, she was remembered for her missionary work.

Archbishop Alain Lebeaupin, the Vatican’s nuncio to Kenya, celebrated a memorial Mass for her on October 21, the day before World Mission Sunday, in Nairobi’s Flora Hostel chapel.

During his homily, the archbishop said it was sad that Sr Leonella died at the hands of the people to whom she had dedicated her life, but he added that religious life was simply a sacrifice for others.

Sr Leonella, an Italian nun, worked at a children’s hospital and was running a nurses’ training school in Mogadishu when she was shot, along with her bodyguard on September 16.

Archbishop Lebeaupin told the hundreds of Consolata nuns who attended the memorial service that missionaries like Sr Leonella must be ready to give their lives to others. Among those present were three of the four nuns who had worked with her. After the Mass, Archbishop Lebeaupin travelled to Nazareth Cemetery, about 15 miles northwest of Nairobi, to offer more prayers for Sr Leonella at her grave site. According to a nun who was with her after she was shot, Sister Leonella murmured, “I forgive,” three times before dying. Her funeral was on September 21 in Nairobi.

Imprisonment a mission of faith for priest who spent 12 years in jail

ROME, OCT. 10, 2006 (Zenit. org) - Far from considering his imprisonment in Vietnam a tragedy, Father Joseph Nguyen Cong Doan sees it as a mission of evangelization.

Speaking on Vatican Radio, the priest commented on his 12 years in a Vietnamese jail, accused of being a counter-revolutionary.

Father Doan, 65, is a native of Vietnam, and was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus in 1970.

He was studying in Rome at the Biblical Institute when, in 1975, he was sent to Vietnam shortly before the fall of Saigon.

The city name was changed to Ho Chi Minh City in 1975 when the Communist government took over.

“The first 15 years” in the coun-

the world in brief

Politicians on notice

try, “that is, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, were very hard due to prejudices caused by history,” explained the Vietnamese priest on Vatican Radio.

Because “Western colonialism generated great confusion between the Church and colonialism itself ... there were many prejudices which made life hard. The Communist government suspected the Church of being an accomplice of colonialism, so the Church suffered from very tight control measures,” said Father Doan.

Speaking of the years he spent in prison, the priest said: “I never regarded this sentence as a tragedy.

For me it was a mission.”

It was a mission “with the prisoners, because it was the only way they

Catholic politicians who publicly support abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage “jeopardise their own spiritual well-being” and should not receive Communion, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix says in a new booklet.

Called Catholics in the Public Square, the 45-page booklet includes 29 questions and answers about the separation of church

could have a chaplain,” as “priests could not enter prisons.”

In prison, “we were able to help much in clarifying numerous aspects, very many suspicions against the Church,” “and a sort of dialogue was born,” he said.

Priestly presence

There were “political prisoners and ordinary prisoners” in the jail. However, “the presence of a priest was very respected, including by non-Christians,” said the priest.

Moreover, “many means” were found “to celebrate Mass discreetly and to distribute Communion and the sacrament of reconciliation to Catholic prisoners,” stated Father Doan.

“The Church has always sought to contribute and cooperate in

and state, anti-Catholic discrimination and Catholic participation in public life.

Published in English and Spanish by Basilica Press, it is intended as the first in a ‘Shepherd’s Voice’ series.

Bishop Olmsted said there are some issues on which Catholics may disagree with the hierarchy such as the just-war theory or capital punishment.

“Despite these examples there are other issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, that are always wrong and do not allow for the correct use of prudential judgment to justify them,” he wrote.

rebuilding the country after so many years of war. Thus, little by little, a good relationship has been created.

“The seminaries are also full of young people. There are now seven seminaries in the country. It is still not enough, but it is already a lot,” he explained on Vatican Radio.

In so far as professing the faith at present, without the risk of persecution, Father Doan said that “problems are still perceived for those Churches that declare themselves to the government, but everything is public for the Catholic Church; therefore, they are no longer afraid of Catholics.

“The clearest teaching is that of St. Peter, who says we must always be prepared to give the reason for

“It would never be proper for Catholics to be on the opposite side of these issues.”

All are missionaries

All Christians are called to be missionaries, sharing the good news of God’s love in their families, workplaces or in far-off lands, Pope Benedict XVI said.

“Mission starts from the heart,” he said during his midday Angelus address on October 22, which was World Mission Sunday.

the hope that is in us, with love, patience and respect... So, after many years, the Church in Vietnam has been able to create a dialogue, and, every year, the Holy See can send a delegation to the country to address several questions regarding the life of the Church ... though there are no diplomatic relations between the two states,” he added.

“All this is the result of the spirit of love, patience and respect, as St. Peter affirmed,” said Father Doan. Vietnam has over 80 million inhabitants, more than 80per cent of whom do not practice any creed. It is estimated that Catholics number more than 6 million and it is thought that between 80-90per cent of Catholics are active.

“The love that moved the Father to send his Son into the world and (moved) the Son to offer himself for us to the point of dying on the cross, that same love was poured by the Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers,” he said.

Converted and saved by love, every Christian is called to proclaim “the good news that God is love and, in this way, save the world,” the Pope said.

Because mission is a matter of sharing the love of God, every Christian can and must be a missionary, he said.

Learning crisis: The British government proposes to impose quotas. PHOTO: CNS

We cannot presume to judge Judas

Apostles

Ths week we continue our series of reflections on each of the apostles given by Pope Benedict XVI. This week, Judas and St Matthias.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, On completing today the review of the Twelve Apostles called directly by Jesus during His earthly life, we cannot fail to mention the one who always appears in the last place: Judas Iscariot. We want to associate him with the person who was later chosen to substitute him, namely, Matthias.

The name Judas alone arouses among Christians an instinctive reaction of reprobation and condemnation. The meaning of the name “Iscariot” is controversial: The most used explanation says that it means “man from Queriyyot,” in reference to his native village, located in the surroundings of Hebron, mentioned twice in sacred Scripture (Joshua 15:25; Amos 2:2).

Others interpret it as a variation of the term “hired assassin,” as if it alluded to a guerrilla armed with a dagger, called “sica” in Latin. Finally, some see in the label the simple transcription of a HebrewAramaic root that means: “He who was going to betray him.” This mention is found twice in the fourth Gospel, that is, after a confession of faith by Peter (John 6:71) and later during the anointing at Bethany (John 12:4).

Other passages show that the betrayal was underway, saying: “He who betrayed him,” as happened during the Last Supper, after the announcement of the betrayal (Matthew 26:25) and later at the moment Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:46.48; John 18:2.5).

However, the lists of The Twelve recall the betrayal as something that already occurred: “Judas Iscariot,

who betrayed him,” says Mark (3:19); Matthew (10:4) and Luke (6:16) use equivalent formulas.

The betrayal, as such, took place in two moments: first of all in its planning phase, when Judas comes to an agreement with Jesus’ enemies for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-16), and later in its execution with the kiss he gave the master in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:46-50).

Anyway, the evangelists insist that his condition of apostle corresponded fully to him: He is repeatedly called “one of The Twelve” (Matthew 26:14.47; Mark 14:10.20; John 6:71) or “of the number of The Twelve” (Luke 22:3).

Moreover, on two occasions, Jesus, addressing the apostles and speaking precisely of him, indicates him as “one of you” (Matthew 26:21; Mark 14:18; John 6:70; 13:21). And Peter would say of Judas “he was numbered among us, and was allotted his share in this ministry” (Acts 1:17).

He is, therefore, a figure belonging to the group of those whom Jesus had chosen as companions

and close collaborators. This poses two questions when it comes to explaining what happened. The first consists in asking ourselves how it was possible that Jesus chose this man and trusted him.

In fact, though Judas is the group’s administrator (John 12:6b; 13:29a), in reality he is also called “thief” (John 12:6a). The mystery of the choice is even greater, as Jesus utters a very severe judgment on him: “Woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed!” (Matthew 26:24).

This mystery is even more profound if one thinks of his eternal fate, knowing that Judas “repented and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent blood’” (Matthew 27:34). Though he departed afterward to hang himself (Matthew 27:5), it is not for us to judge his gesture, putting ourselves in God’s place, who is infinitely merciful and just.

A second question affects the motive of Judas’ behaviour: Why did he betray Jesus? The question

raises several theories. Some say it was his greed for money; others give an explanation of a messianic nature: Judas was disappointed on seeing that Jesus did not fit the program of the political-military liberation of his country.

In fact, the Gospel texts insist on another aspect: John says expressly that “the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him” (John 13:2); in the same way, Luke writes: “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of The Twelve” (Luke 22:3).

In this way, one goes beyond historical motivations, explaining what occurred by basing it on Judas’ personal responsibility, who yielded miserably to a temptation of the evil one.

In any case, Judas’ betrayal continues to be a mystery. Jesus treated him as a friend (Matthew 26:50), but in his invitations to follow him on the path of the beatitudes he did not force his will or prevent him from falling into Satan’s temptations, respecting human freedom.

In fact, the possibilities of perversion of the human heart are truly many.

The only way to prevent them consists in not cultivating a view of life that is only individualistic, autonomous, but in always placing oneself on the side of Jesus, assuming his point of view.

We must try, day after day, to be in full communion with him. Let us recall that even Peter wanted to oppose him and what awaited him in Jerusalem, but he received a very strong rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men” (Mark 8:32-33).

After his fall, Peter repented and found forgiveness and grace. Judas also repented, but his repentance degenerated into despair and in this way it became self-destruction.

It is an invitation for us to always remember what St Benedict says at the end of Chapter 5 - fundamental - of his Rule: “Never despair

Once a priest, always a priest

The Priest, the Beggar and the Pope

■ By Kitty D’Encer

A young man had a vocation to the priesthood, so his bishop sent him to study in Rome. He was duly ordained priest and served in his diocese for some years. Then his bishop sent him to Rome again on a course of further study.

Whilst there he used to visit a small church in Rome to say his office and to pray. At the door of this church sat a group of beggars seeking alms, and one of these made him feel uneasy for some inexplicable reason.

So he went back to him and asked: ‘Do I know you?’ ‘Yes’, the beggar replied, ‘I studied for the priesthood with you here in Rome, and was ordained’. The priest was aghast. ‘Whatever happened to you?’ He was told: ‘I encountered crisis after crisis in my life and eventually renounced the priest-

hood. I had my priestly faculties taken from me. I lost everything and am reduced to begging’.

The Priest’s Concern

The priest could not get the beggar out of his mind, and prayed constantly for him. The study course he was attending was drawing to an end, and the students were invited to receive individual blessings from Pope John Paul II. They were forbidden to speak to him personally. However, as the priest knelt to receive the blessing his mind was so full of the beggar that he blurted out: ‘Holy Father, please pray for X who sits begging outside a church in Rome. He was ordained priest, but has resigned the priesthood and had his priestly faculties removed’. He hardly had time to finish when he was hustled away by the indignant attendants.

An invitation

A few days later the priest received an invitation and he hurried to the church and found the beggar. ‘Come quickly’, he said, ‘we are to dine with the Pope’. ‘Impossible’, replied the

beggar. ‘How could I visit the Pope in this state?’

The priest insisted and helped the beggar to tidy up. Then together they

of God’s mercy.” In fact, “God is greater than our hearts,” as St John says (1 John 3:20).

Let us remember two things. The first: Jesus respects our freedom. The second: Jesus waits for us to have the disposition to repent and to be converted; he is rich in mercy and forgiveness.

In fact, when we think of the negative role Judas played, we must frame it in the higher way with which God disposed the events.

His betrayal led to the death of Jesus who transformed this tremendous torment into a space of salvific love and in self-giving to the Father (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:2.25).

The verb “betray” is the Greek version which means “to give up.” At times its subject is also God himself in person: Out of love, he “gave up” Jesus for us all (Romans 8:32).

In his mysterious plan of salvation, God assumes Judas’ unjustifiable gesture as the motive for the total giving up of the Son for the redemption of the world.

On concluding, we wish to recall also he who, after Easter, was chosen to replace the traitor. In the Church of Jerusalem, two were put forward to the community and then lots were cast for their names: “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias” (Acts 1:23).

Precisely the latter was chosen, and in this way “he was enrolled with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:26).

We do not know anything more about him, with the exception that he was a witness of Jesus’ public life (Acts 1: 21-22), being faithful to him to the end. To the greatness of his fidelity was added later the divine call to take Judas’ place, as though compensating his betrayal.

We draw a final lesson from here: Although there is no lack of unworthy and traitorous Christians in the Church, it is up to us to counterbalance the evil they do with our limpid testimony of Jesus Christ our Lord and saviour.

set off for the Vatican. They crossed St Peter’s Square and entered by the great gates where they were met by Monsignor Dziwisz, the Polish priest who was secretary to Pope John Paul II and is now Archbishop of Krakow.

He conducted them to the dining room where His Holiness awaited them. After introductions had been made, they sat down to a lovely meal. When the dessert stage was reached the Pope signalled to his secretary who rose, and beckoning to the priest to follow him, left the room. After about 15 minutes the Pope recalled them and the meal concluded normally. Nothing was said about what happened during their absence.

It was time to leave, and as they crossed St Peter’s Square, the priest, overcome with curiosity asked eagerly what had transpired whilst they were away from the room.

The Beggar’s Story

This is what the beggar told him: “When I was alone with the Holy Father he turned to me, and said: ‘Father, please hear my confession’.

In great confusion, and distress, I replied: “1 cannot do that. I have renounced the priesthood. My priestly faculties have been taken from me. I am no longer a priest”. He looked at me with loving compassion. Then he raised his right hand, and wagging his finger at me, said: “ONCE A PRIEST, ALWAYS A PRIEST”. After a long pause he told me: ‘As Bishop of Rome and Head of the Catholic Church I could restore your priestly faculties to you … but you would have to ask’. I was overwhelmed and close to tears as I said simply: Please Holy Father... please!’

Then he heard my confession and restored to me my priesthood. Afterwards he repeated his original request and I heard the confession of Pope John Paul II.

After a pause for prayers and meditation he said: ‘When you leave here I want you to go to the church where you have been begging and seek out the parish priest. I am appointing you curate in that parish with special responsibility for the beggars who seek alms at the church door’.

The betrayal: Pact of Judas 1308-11, by Ducio di Buoninsegna.

Reviews

Deeply troubled? Call your conscience

Martin Scorsese arguably made Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta’s careers. He’s about to do the same with Leonardo DiCaprio.

■ By Anthony Barich

The Departed Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio; Matt Damon; Jack Nicholson; Mark Wahlberg; Martin Sheen; Alec Baldwin.

Don’t be deceived by the R rating for Martin Scorsese’s latest contribution to depictions of gangster warfare. The Departed (Warner Bros.), a hardhitting tale of two rookie cops in South Boston, inspired by the 2002 Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs,” is quality viewing.

Many will understand the rating, which was rightly applied for the movie’s strong brutal violence, pervasive language, drug references and strongly implied sexual content, and be turned off. But Christians should not be dissuaded from seeing this thinking that Scorsese is in any way endorsing any of the above.

Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting fame) plays Colin Sullivan, an ex-altar boy who, as a child, came under the criminal influence of notorious mob boss Frank Costello (a less-insane than usual and more calculating Jack Nicholson), who disparaged the Church’s teachings and told him that you have to take what you want in this world. Colin becomes an informant for the mob.

His adversary is Leondaro DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, the reason why Christians can get some semblance of a moral out of this script. Straight from the police academy, Costigan is secretly assigned by senior officers Capt. Queenan (a fatherly Martin Sheen) and Sgt. Dignam (a nasty but moralistic Mark Wahlberg) to infiltrate Costello’s crime ring.

Both young cops are eventually pushed to the mental breaking point in their double-dealing roles, each desperate to uncover the other’s identity. Neither is aware that they share the same love interest, psychiatrist Madolyn (Vera Farmiga).

Some say this is Scorsese’s best since Goodfellas, and his script demands more from

All saints and all souls

DiCaprio than anything he’s ever worked on. All cast members are exemplary, including a comical Alec Baldwin as Capt. Ellerby, head of the Special Investigations Unit, and Ray Winstone as Costello’s henchman. The film, buttressed by solid performances and Scorsese’s super-charged cinematic bravado, keeps us absorbed.

In this sort of film, a high quotient of violence is to be expected, and though Scorsese doesn’t exactly wallow in it, there are some strong sequences that will be hard to take. Less dramatically sound is the nonstop barrage of expletives.

Each character in this film clearly has inner demons to fight, and none more so than DiCaprio’s Costigan. Brought up in two seperate worlds - one with his father, a notorious crook, and one with his mother in a white-bread existence. It is the duality of his upbringing that leads Sheen to recruit him as a double agent. This same element is what drives Costigan’s demons. Despite the mindless excesses of sex and murder around him, Costigan despises Nicholson’s Costello for his heartless, murderous nature.

The fact that Costigan constantly battles with the death and mayhem around him despite his rough upbringing reveals the central importance of a conscience and, more

than that, the need to act on it rather than just knowing what is the right thing to do without bothering to go through with it. In Costigan’s case, he puts his life at risk by sticking to his morals, by refusing to kill unnecessarily (if at all) while trying to protect his secret identity.

Costigan has a sexual encounter and noth-

ing is done to denounce it being done before marriage, but, unfortunately, this is the society we live in - not that this excuses the film.

Having said that, DiCaprio pulls off his conflicted and deeply troubled character well, and this represents the pin-up boy finally coming of age. He has to, or he would sink like a lead balloon in Scorsese’s demanding script. Surrounded by established heavyweights like Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg and Baldwin, his character reflects where his career is at: a kid, now in his mid-20s, realising he can no longer survive on his looks alone and play for sympathy votes with the women by being the vulnerable, misunderstood youth. He’s playing with the big boys now. He is the only one in the movie with a visible conscience (except his virtual surrogate father, Sheen) in a world where appearances are not what they seem; where cops are baddies and gangsters are cops.

Justice is eventually served in the end, but not in the way any of us would expect. In fact, it’s almost Shakespearean (I may have given too much away there). The film contains pervasive rough language, racial epithets, profanity, extremely crude expressions, heavy violence, grisly images, nongraphic sexual situations and encounters, and irreverent remarks about the church. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L - limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.

Our classifications: the bottom line

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

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

A-I: for general patronage

A-II: for adults and adolescents

A-III: for adults

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

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

O: morally offensive

A modern Ebenezer for Christmas

Five People You Meet in Heaven

■ By Joseph Thomas

You don’t have to try awfully hard to hear organ music playing softly in the background as Mitch Albom takes you on a strobe-like excursion through heaven in the company of an ordinary guy who becomes a sudden resident of paradise in Albom’s feel-good fable, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” (Hyperion, $19.95).

Albom is the author of the much acclaimed (and rightly so) “Tuesdays With Morrie.” In “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” he is once again dealing with the death experience, although this time the deceased is a fictional character known only as Eddie, the last name presumably being of little import because Eddie is to be understood as a stand-in for Everyman.

Eddie, the chief maintenance man at Ruby’s Pier - the kind of seaside amusement park that inhabits everyone’s memories of growing up - is 82 when he finds himself crossing the

great divide thanks to a heroic effort to place himself between death and a charming little girl caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a ride suddenly malfunctions.

Or maybe, given the way the story unfolds, it’s really the right place because it’s the place where she is supposed to be, allowing Eddie to “atone” for a previous end-of-life moment about which he knew nothing although he played a role in it.

Whatever the case, Eddie is not greeted in heaven by a choir of angels or St Peter but by a former sideshow freak he had barely known, one whose life had this hidden connection to his own boyhood. There follow meetings with his World War II commanding officer, with his estranged father, with his devoted wife and with an Asian girl he didn’t know existed but who knew him well and had been waiting for him. Each of the five helps reveal Eddie to himself, imparting a fresh “lesson” as part of the process.

Albom, of course, uses the lessons to say something to us about the interconnectedness of life, about life as a beginning rather than an end of its own, about the need to forgive and be forgiven, about love as a continuum tran-

scending loss and about the extraordinary nature of the ordinary.

It would be easy to snicker about the sentimentality on display, I suppose, but Albom has a knack for filling each of his little tales - and there are stories within stories here - with poignancy and then connecting one piece with another. To help pull the threads together he relies on a series of flashbacks to birthdays significant and seemingly insignificant to Eddie’s development.

Wounded and traumatised in World War II, Eddie was shunted aside by his father, lost his devoted wife when she was 47, and wound up doing the one thing he did not want to do in life: taking up his father’s maintenance duties at Ruby’s Pier so he would be close enough to take care of his mother.

In a melancholy moment (which seems rather unheavenly, come to think of it), he laments, “I didn’t do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost.”

Given the format, it is not surprising that “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” is filled with the sort of aphorisms that find their way into Reader’s Digest, that contem-

porary repository of things wise, witty and banal. Some samples:

- “All endings are beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”

- “We are all connected... You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.”

- “Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.”

- “No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”

- “Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.” And so on and so on.

If I found anything irksome, however, it was Albom’s heavenly pyrotechnic displays: “A sudden wind lifted Eddie, and he spun like a pocket watch on the end of a chain. An explosion of smoke engulfed him, swallowing his body in a flume of colours. The sky seemed to pull in ..., then it shot away and exploded into jade. Stars appeared, millions of stars, like salt sprinkled across the greenish firmament.”

Such excesses aside, anyone looking for an uplifting Christmas gift might find that Eddie’s story throws off a warm glow.  CNS

We’re the good guys: Leonardo DiCaprio (left) is recruited by Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg.

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Sunday October 29

ETERNAL WORD TELEVISION NETWORK ON ACCESS 31

1-2pm: To parents of teens: what you need to know / Jason Evert, followed by Preparing for the teen years / Jerry Usher with Steve Wood [The Carpenter’s Shop]. Videotapes available on requeSt RCTA, P.O. Box 1270, Booragoon 6954. Phone: 9330 2467.

Sunday October 29

WORLD CENTENARY OF CATHOLIC WOMEN’S LEAGUE

Members of the Catholic Women’s League of WA will be celebrating the Women’s League Centenary, founded in England by Margaret Fletcher in 1906. Mass will be celebrated at the Redemptorist Monastery, 190 Vincent Street, North Perth at 10.30am followed by a lunch at the Royal Park Hall at noon. Members, ex-members and their families are most welcome to attend. For more information contact Margaret Ph: 9328 8978 or Fay Ph: 9284 3084.

Monday October 30

COUNTRY DAY OF REFLECTION

St Patrick’s Church, York. Join us for a Day of Reflection commencing at 10am with Rosary Cenacle, followed by talks, concluding with Holy Mass at 2pm. Talks given by Fr Michael Graugham (SSC). Reconciliation available. BYO lunch & name tags. Tea/coffee provided. Enquiries: 9641 1477 or 9641 1501.

Monday October 30 to Thursday November 2

FR MICHAEL GAUGHRAN

Marian Movement of Priests. Fr Michael Gaughran SSC, (responsible for the MMP in English speaking countries) will be visiting WA, giving talks at various venues. Please check the advertisement in this issue for details. Enquiries: 0413 707 707 or 9341 8082.

Tuesday October 31

MONICA & AUGUSTINE PRAYER GROUP.

The next meeting of the Monica & Augustine prayer group will be held at St Thomas the Apostle Parish, 2 College Rd Claremont at 7.30pm. There will be an opportunity for prayer and sharing, please bring a plate for the shared supper. For enquiries or further details, please phone Fr. Brian O’Loughlin on 9384 0598 or email: claremont@perthcatholic.org.au.

October - December

CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY

Term 4 – Until December 12 2006. Tuesdays

5.30-7.30pm Substance Abusers Support Group & 7pm Lectio Divina at Immaculate Conception Church, East Fremantle. Wednesdays 7-9pm Family & Friends Support Groups. Fridays 9.30am-2pm Substance Abusers All Day Support Group including Healing Mass at 12.30pm.

Wednesday November 1 ALL SAINTS DAY MASS

8.45am Holy Hour then Low Mass at St Francis Xavier Church, East Perth. 12.10pm Low Mass and 6.30pm sung Mass at St John’s Pro-Cathedral, Victoria Avenue, Perth. All welcome. Enquiries: Fr Michael Rowe 9444 9604.

Friday November 3

PROLIFE PROCESSION MIDLAND

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

Friday November 3

ALLIANCE AND TRIUMPH OF THE TWO HEARTS

1st Friday/Saturday all night vigil. Holy Mass 9pm Friday at St Bernadette’s Church, 49 Jugan Street, Glendalough. Followed by all night Eucharistic adoration with Rosaries, hymns etc and silent adoration. All welcome, for any length of time, to

make reparation to the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Reconciliation 7am and Mass 7.30am Saturday. Enquiries: Fr Doug Harris 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

Friday November 3

TWO HEARTS DEVOTIONS

Allendale Square Chapel, St Georges Terrace, Perth. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the first Friday of the month. Commences with Mass at 9pm, followed by Rosaries, prayers, hymns, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on the hour through the night till 7am Saturday morning Mass to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Enquiries: 9409 4543.

Saturday November 4

DAY WITH MARY

St Jude’s Church, Prendiville Way, Langford. 9am to 5pm. A video on Fatima will be shown at 9am. A day of prayer and instruction based upon the messages of Fatima. Includes Sacrament of Penance, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons, Rosaries, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enquiries: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

Saturday November 4

WITNESS FOR LIFE PROCESSION

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

Sunday November 5

DIVINE MERCY

An afternoon with Jesus and Mary will be held at St Joachim’s Pro-Cathedral on the corner of Shepperton Road and Harper Street in Victoria Park at 1.30pm. Program: Holy Rosary and Reconciliation, Sermon: with Fr Anthony Van Dyke on Holy Souls and All Saints followed by Divine Mercy prayers and Benediction. Enquiries: John 9457 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.

Thursday November 9

CARITAS AUSTRALIA ANNUAL UPDATE AND THANKS

St Pius X Parish, Manning - Parish Hall, Cnr Ley & Paterson Sts, Manning. 6.30pm (Registration) –8.30pm (includes refreshments). Theme: “Does my love in action make a difference?” Guest Speakers: Beth Doherty and Anna Orchard from Caritas. No charge however bookings are essential by Thursday 2nd November Tel: 9422 7925.

Saturday November 11

THE ANNUAL HOLY MASS AT THE GROTTO

On Richard & Judy Priestley farm at 10.30am. Please bring a chair and a hat. BBQ meat will be provided for lunch. You will be most welcome. Directions: Take Great Eastern Highway to El Caballo Blanco. Turn South on to Wariim Road and go 1.8kms, turn left into Chinganning Road and go 2.2kms. Allow 40 min from Midland.

Sunday November 12

KRISTALLNACHT ‘NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS’. MEMORIAL

SERVICE

Council of Christians and Jews Western Australia Inc. Address by the Hon. David Malcolm AC QC, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame, Australia. Temple David, 34 Clifton Crescent, Mt Lawley at 3.00 pm.

Sunday November 12

ANOINTING OF THE SICK

Bullsbrook Shrine. To be administered for spiritual and physical healing during Holy Mass on the second Sunday of each month at the Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation, 36 Chittering Road, at 2pm. All welcome. Emquiries: 9447 3292.

■

Thursday November 23

PRESENTATION SISTERS’ 50TH ANNIVERSARY

St Augustine’s School Community invites all interested parties to attend a celebration to acknowledge the service to St Augustine’s School, Rivervale. This will take place in the school grounds at 9am, followed by morning tea. For catering purposes, RSVP by 2/11/06 on 9361 6158.

TUESDAY NIGHT PRAYER MEETINGS

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

Every Sunday BULLSBROOK SHRINE SUNDAY PILGRIMAGE PROGRAM

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

Wednesday December 8 MASS IN HONOUR OF BLESSED MARY MACKILLOP

At 6pm, Sisters of St Joseph Chapel, 16 York St, South Perth. Everyone welcome. Also now available Josephite/Mary MacKillop 2007 Calendar with inspirations from the writings of Blessed Mary MacKillop. Contact 93340999

First Sunday of the Month

DEVOTIONS IN HONOUR OF THE DIVINE MERCY

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

BLESSED SACRAMENT ADORATION

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

Wednesdays SIGN LANGUAGE COURSE

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

QUEEN OF APOSTLES SCHOOL

If anyone has information on Queen of Apostles School, Riverton, used to go there or knows anyone who did please do one of the following to tell the extension group – Call 9354 1360 and ask to speak to Veronique or email your infor-

mation to veronequeregnard@gmail.com.au or janellekoh@yahoo.com.au or you can put your information into the box in the office at Queen of Apostles School. Thanking you in anticipation.

ST COLUMBA’S BAYSWATER

Information is sought from past and present parishioners of St Columba’s Catholic Church (Roberts St Bayswater) for inclusion in a written history (1905 – 2007) of the parish. Photographs of Parish Priests, parishioners and events depicting the original and current Church greatly appreciated. Contact: Carolyn Kelly, St Columba’s History, PO Box 47 Bayswater 6053 WA. Telephone: 9271 1988.

LINDA’S HOUSE OF HOPE APPEAL

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

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Is alcohol costing you more than just money?

Alcoholics Anonymous can help. Ring 9325 3566.

ATTENTION COUPLES

Have you or your spouse been diagnosed with a mental illness? Depression? Anxiety/Panic Attacks? etc. Could you do with some help in understanding your/their illness? Do you know how to get help when you need it? We can help you to help each other through the Unconditional Love Program. For more information contact Amanda Olsen: 0407 192 641, or email: mandyfolsen@bigpond.com.au.

AL ANON FAMILY GROUPS

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

The Last Word

Resisting a moral climate change

Catholic obstetrician says countries are not protecting a doctor’s right to conscience

■ By Carol Glatz

Catholic obstetricians who respect the dignity of motherhood and the life of the unborn risk disappearing in societies where abortion is legal, said the head of an international group of Catholic obstetricians and gynecologists.

Obstetricians who oppose having to perform abortions as part of their training or in their practice at public or private health care facilities sometimes face “a sort of medical totalitarianism” and feel tremendous pressure to “do it this way or not at all,” Dr Robert Walley, founder and executive director of MaterCare International, told Catholic News Service.

Walley and some 60 other obstetricians from 14 countries were in Rome from October 11-15 as part of the fourth MaterCare International workshop for Catholic women’s health specialists.

Part of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, MaterCare was founded in 1995 to “serve the culture of life” wherever mothers and their children are neglected or abandoned, said the British-born doctor. This year’s workshop looked at ways the dignity of motherhood and the practice of obstetrics could be protected and promoted.

“Like the dinosaur who was frozen out by a climatic change, that’s happening to us,” Walley said, explaining that Catholic obstetricians who wish to avoid being involved with abortions are being “frozen out by the climatic change that occurred when abortion was brought in 30 years ago.”

When he started his studies more than 35 years ago, Walley said obstetrics was a prestigious and even joyful profession because the doctors were helping “the cocreators” of life bring a new child into the world and “the outcome was always happy.”

But all that changed with legalised abortion, he said, and most practitioners “became depressed.”

“It doesn’t matter what side of the argument you’re on with the abortion issue, nobody wants to spend their life doing abortions if you’re a trained surgeon, a trained gynecologist,” he said.

But he said the largest factor that has led to the drop in new recruits for obstetrics and gynecology is the climate of litigation.

“There’s a crisis in obstetrics because no one wants to go into it,” he said.

“The world now expects perfection and we can’t guarantee that,” he said.

Patients often sue the obstetrician, which then discourages people from continuing or even getting into this field. Walley said he had no idea how great an impact legalised abortion would have on his and other doctors’ lives and careers. He lived and trained in England, but was soon forced to leave when Britain’s state-run

National Health System required him to perform abortions.

“I said, ‘No,’ and they said, ‘No, you have to do it and if not you have to either change your specialty or leave.’ And I chose to leave,” he said.

He moved to Canada, where he joined the faculty of a new medical school, and while the school did not require him to teach or perform abortions, “they weren’t

conscience clause when new regulations required abortion training in all residency programs.

Dr John Seeds, professor and chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, said half his residents are practising Catholics and that they openly enjoy their studies, even at this public, secular university.

He did, however, caution against an attitude of what he called “paternalism” when it came to doctors or health care workers not providing patients with information on procedures or services that go against their own religious beliefs.

“To deny a patient proper information so they can make an informed choice … is paternalistic,” he said, but “choosing not to do harm” by refusing to carry out

happy I had a particular view of things, and that pursued me until I retired from clinical practice last year”.

“Every civilised country has always recognised conscientious objection even in the time of war, but not in the time of abortion, and it’s an outrage,” he said, adding that many countries, especially in Europe, do not protect a doctor’s right of conscience.

However, more than a decade ago the US Congress passed legislation that provided a protection of

“There’s not this evil cloud” hanging over them that would have come with a requirement to study or perform abortions, said Seeds, chair of MaterCare USA.

Fr George Woodall, professor of moral theology and bioethics at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum university, reaffirmed the importance of protecting the right and dignity of conscience, saying conscience does not reflect mere personal opinion or feelings, but reflects an individual’s desire to pay witness to truth.

in brief

Autism linked with tv and bad weather

What have television, bad weather and autism have in common? Plenty, according to new research led by Michael Waldman of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. The incidence of autism has grown tenfold over the past 30 years, from one in 2500 children to one in 166 children in the United States - with similar levels elsewhere. Apart from general agreement that both genetics and environment play a part in the condition, very little is known about what causes it. One smoking gun is the growing amount of television and related media watched by very young children, due to the growth of cable TV, VCRs and DVDs in the last few decades. Waldman and colleagues figured the highest rates of TV watching would occur in places where there was more rain and/or snow, and these places would have higher rates of autism. Analysis of data for three states - California, Oregon and Washington - showed autism rates were positively linked to levels of precipitation. And data from California and Pennsylvania showed a link between autism and the percentage of households subscribed to cable TV. “Our precipitation tests indicate that just under forty per cent of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation, while our cable tests indicate that approximately seventeen per cent of the growth of autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s is due to the growth of cable television,” they conclude. The researchers also point out their findings are consistent with concern in the medical community about the exposure of young children to electronic media.

Married couples now a minority in America

an abortion, sterilisation or euthanasia “is not paternalistic”.

It is morally licit, he said, for health care workers to look after a patient before or after her abortion “provided they don’t endorse it” or participate in preparations for the procedure.

“Counselling for an abortion is equally gravely wrong,” he said, even though some doctors think they should be part of state-run counselling programs in the hopes of dissuading the woman from having an abortion.

Married couples have slipped into a minority in the United States over the past five years. The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 per cent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples - with and without children - just shy of a majority, and down from more than 52 per cent five years earlier. The figures apply mainly to people in the 25 to 34.agegroup. (Among Americans aged 35 to 64, married couples still make up the majority of all households.) The survey estimated that that 5.2 million couples, a little more than 5 per cent of households, were unmarried, opposite-sex partners. Other estimates put households of male couples at 413,000 and female couples at 363,000. In all, nearly one in 10 couples were unmarried, and one in 20 household consisted of people living alone. It appears that many unmarried couples consider living together as a practical step from a financial and time management point of view, and a “test drive” for marriage. But delay also means couples are “finding they’ve gotten so good at being single it’s hard to be at one with another person,” suggests Steve Watters of Focus on the Family.

Kicker: Dr. John Bruchalski hugs patient Iris Ryan, who is 36 weeks pregnant, at the conclusion of her visit to the Tepeyac Family Centre in Fairfax, Virginia. Bruchalski, a Catholic, does not prescribe birth control. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING

Kicker: Dr. John Bruchalski chats with Iris at the end of her visit to the Tepeyac Family Centre as receptionist Maureen Dundon looks on.

PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING