The Record Newspaper 27 January 2010

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Notre Dame grabs lead in Palliative Care training

Undergrad UNDA

Nursing students will now be able to study Palliative Care as a Major subject in their Degree courses

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE University of Notre Dame Australia’s School of Nursing in Fremantle has become the first university in WA to introduce a Palliative Care Major at undergraduate level.

While Curtin University has a weekly two hour palliative care lecture as part of its Nursing and Midwifery course and Edith Cowan University has post-graduate qualifications in palliative care at Masters and Graduate Diploma levels, UNDA is the first WA university to offer a full undergraduate course in palliative care. Murdoch University has no palliative care course or units.

The move is significant for the training of future WA health professionals in nursing.

UNDA’s course is the brainchild of St John of God Health Care’s Murdoch Hospice, which wanted to increase knowledge and awareness of palliative care in the community. UNDA also recently appointed Prof Jane Phillips as its chair of Palliative Care at its Sydney campus.

UNDA Fremantle’s Dean of Nursing, Prof Selma Alliex, said that palliative care is often misunderstood by students, and that “some see it as euthanasia with another name”.

“It is important to distinguish Please turn to Page 7

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

-Bishop Matthew Gibney 1874

The end of an era

Death of Dom Paulino OSB, last of New Norcia’s Spanish Benedictines, closes a chapter in this state’s Catholic life that began more than 150 years ago.

BY PETER ROSENGREN Editor

Achapter in the life of the Catholic Church in Western Australia came to an end on 18 January when Dom Paulino Gutierrez, the last of New Norcia’s Spanish-born monks, died. When he passed away at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home in Glendalough, Dom Paulino Gutierrez was almost a century old, having reached the venerable age of 99 years. The Little Sisters had cared for Dom Paulino for the last 12 months of his life and were with him praying beside his bed when he entered eternal life.

Described as the very model of monastic humility by his Abbott, John Herbert OSB,

in his homily at the Requiem Mass for the repose of Dom Paulino’s soul, the last quarter of his life had been spent producing olive oil from the monastery’s ancient groves.

It was therefore a touching, even elegiac, moment when those gathered around his grave in the monastery’s cemetery cast not the traditional handfuls of dirt but olive twigs down on to the coffin, leaving Dom Paulino’s mortal remains covered in a soft carpet of gentle green.

The funeral on 22 January at the monastery was attended by an estimated 200 friends, monastics, monastery supporters and church officials as well as Mr Angel Quintella, the Spanish Consul representing Spain’s Ambassador to Australia.

Also present were clergy from the Archdiocese of Perth including Auxiliary

Jewish question

Laying a wreath at a memorial to Roman Jews, Pope Benedict answers accusations of Pope Pius XII’s actions during WWII Page 11

Bishop Donald Sproxton and Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton.

“He was a man of simplicity and a perfect model of monastic humility,” Abbott Herbert told The Record

In his homily, Abbott Herbert turned to the Seventh chapter on humility in The Rule of St Benedict, the rule written by the great founder of most forms of monastic life over the last 1,500 years or so and which governs Benedictine life and monasteries throughout the world today, to illustrate how Dom Paulino had faithfully served his God and his brothers.

Dom Paulino was born in Villaespasa, near Burgos in Spain, and entered the Please turn to Page 2 Homily for Dom Paulino’s Mass of Christian Burial - Pages 2-3

Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Perth, Western Australia $2 www.therecord.com.au

Dom Paulino OSB, the last of the Spanish-born monks at New Norcia, who passed away on 18 January. He was also the longest serving monk ever in the history of New Norcia. PHOTO: COURTESY NEW NORCIA MONASTERY

UNDA Dean of Nursing Prof Selma Alliex. A Major offered by the School will address an essential area, the Dean told The Record PHOTO: ANTHONY BARICH

Content with pious simplicity, Dom

The following homily was delivered by ABBOTT JOHN HERBERT OSB at the Requiem Mass for Dom Paulino Gutierrez

“Do not worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it.”

Dom Paulino must have heared that message from Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew pretty early on in his life and taken heed, because, given his family history of longevity, if he hadn’t taken heed he would have had a lot of worrying to do, almost 100 years of worry.

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No, Dom Paulino knew from his early years in the little Spanish village in Burgos that if you’re content with simplicity, you’ll never have to worry about anything.

“We were poor” he said, “all 50 families in my village were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor, because we were happy, we had enough to keep us alive.”

Perhaps that’s why Dom Paulino was so content, so happy with the work he was given throughout his monastic life: every job he was given had something to do with either food (he was the miller, the baker, the gardener, the olive oil maker) or clothing (he mended the monk’s shoes and did the sewing), or the body (as infirmarian he cared for the sick) ... in taking up these tasks he didn’t want anyone to worry about not having those things –food, clothing, someone to care for them – the basic necessities of life.

Dom Paulino would’ve had good reason to worry on the occasion, when, after he had completed his novitiate at the monastery of Velvanera, he went to visit his family just before leaving Spain for Australia: “you’ve made a hole for yourself”, they said “so now you must jump in it.” Again the scriptures guided Dom Paulino: as we heard in the second reading from Philippians,

For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.

In leaving his happy existence in rural Spain and taking up the invitation to leave for the New Norcia Mission in faraway rural Western Australia, Dom Paulino was certainly given a place in Christ, because it was Christ who issued the invitation in the first place, through his monastic superior in Spain.

In Dom Paulino we are given the per-

fect example of monastic obedience, a promise he made at his profession, and through that promise of obedience he said ‘yes’ to everything that was ever asked of him. It was not some immature or naive or blind obedience; his “yes” was always grounded in listening, in discerning what was best for the good of the whole community.

“Dom Paulino was content, particularly in his later years, to be alone, but boy did he love community.”

- Abbott John Herbert OSB on Dom Paulino

Even when Dom Paulino said “no”, he gave himself away, because that cheeky smile of his indicated that he really meant “yes” anyway.

So everything Dom Paulino ever did achieved perfection, even if it wasn’t perfect, because everything he did was undertaken firmly grounded in his faith

in Christ, who gave him the strength and courage to accept every task, even in the most difficult of circumstances and conditions.

For most of his life Paulino was afflicted with limited mobility, but the first reading we just heard from Isaiah assures us that in the everlasting life Dom Paulino’s feeble knees are made firm, and he shall leap like a deer.

So Dom Paulino was given a place in Christ here in New Norcia where he lived for 80 years, by which we can see him as the perfect model of another monastic promise he made and kept: stability. Whilst Dom Paulino was thrilled to have beaten fellow Spaniard Fr Maur in the competition to see who would live the longest, he’s beaten every monk who ever lived in New Norcia by being the longest serving monk in our history. Now there’s a good reason for our humble monk Dom Paulino to be a very proud monk indeed.

Humility: now we’re getting to the essence of this most remarkable monk. Most abbots would argue that Chapter Five (on obedience) is the central chapter

Continued on Page 3

End of an era as last Spanish Benedictine goes to God

Continued from Page 1 -astery in El Pueyo in 1924; he came to New Norcia in 1928.

Throughout the course of his life Dom Paulino had served variously in the monastery as baker (one press report estimated he had baked more than a million loaves of bread throughout his life), a miller, a cobbler mending the shoes of his brother monks and finally a maker of the well-known monastery olive oil.

The Spanish Chapter in the life of New Norcia that has ended with Dom Paulino’s passing began in 1846 and was to last 154 years.

It opened when Spanish Benedictines Rosendo Salvado and Joseph Serra arrived at the location to establish a mission for the Aborigines of the area; the following year the monastery’s foundation stone was laid, leading to a place and a tradition unique in Australian history and Church life and known across the nation.

For more than a century and a half, Spanish-born Benedictine monks were part of that story and built the tradition that is New Norcia today. Now that chapter has ended.

However, with the beloved Dom Paulino’s passing a new chapter is begin-

ning. Although the New Year has begun with sadness at his loss, Abbott Herbert told The Record, it also begins with hope and joy.

On 1 February three new novices will take their first vows as members of a monastic way of life that originated with St Benedict more than one and a half millennia ago in a place from which Dom Paulino’s beloved New Norcia took its name – the monastic centre of Norcia in Italy.

As each new novice comes forward to make his vows, Dom Paulino, one strongly suspects, would be very happy at that.

Dom Paulino at work in earlier years at New Norcia as a cobbler, mending the shoes of his brother monks.

PHOTO: COURTESY NEW NORCIA

Paulino was a model of Benedictine monastic life

Continued from Page 2 in the Rule of St Benedict, the rule that governed and guided Dom Paulino for most of his life.

For years now I’ve been arguing that Chapter seven (on humility) is the central chapter, and I know Dom Paulino agreed with me. He agreed with me, because he saw that true humility is the surest path in the journey towards God.

For Dom Paulino, humility was a disposition, a disposition he received by grace. There are 12 steps of humility in Chapter seven of the Rule and Dom Paulino took every one of them.

I hope you’re feeling comfortable, because I want to say something about all 12.

The first step of humility calls us to mindfulness of God and to be aware that God is looking down upon us in every moment.

Dom Paulino was so attuned to the presence of God that he radiated that presence; his face glowed with the inner joy of knowing God through prayer and community.

After the midday meal each day, he would sit on the bench outside his cell, close his eyes, and bask in the sun.

When once I commented on how much he seemed to enjoy this, he said, “I’m cold, and God is keeping me warm.” And so, it was prayer.

The second step of humility calls us to follow the will of God, not our own will. Not only did

in brief...

Caritas aid reaches Haiti quake survivors

VATICAN CITY (CNS)Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based umbrella organisation for Catholic charities, quickly delivered aid to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake but was in urgent need of additional relief materials.

The Caritas staff in Haiti visited devastated areas of the capital Port-au-Prince on 13 January to determine what the immediate needs were. At least 60 tents were distributed to families, and first aid was given to survivors in clinics and hospitals, Caritas said in a statement from its Vatican headquarters.

Joseph Jonides Villarson, head of emergencies for Caritas Haiti, said it was the worst disaster Haiti has experienced.

Dom Paulino understand that all that was asked of him was the will of God, he carried out God’s will happily and without complaint.

“All right, whatever you think,” was his constant refrain.

The third step of humility calls us to accept human direction. Dom Paulino knew what it meant to live under a Rule and an Abbot. Even when he didn’t fully understand what was being asked of him he agreed to put his trust in his monastic superiors.

“Everything he did was undertaken firmly grounded in his faith in Christ, who gave him the strength and courage to accept every task, even in the most difficult of circumstances and conditions.”

- Fr John Herbert OSB on Dom Paulino

I was his Abbot for only a year, but twice I had to ask him to accept the difficult decisions I had to make on his behalf.

At my direction he willingly, without complaint, left his beloved monastery enclosure of 80 years

“Many people have been killed in Port-au-Prince. Their bodies are everywhere on the streets of the capital. People are still under the debris. The hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead and injured. The risk of disease is great,” he said.

Villarson said the streets were filled with people who do not know where to go, and there was a real possibility of violence and more looting.

“There is very little visible presence of the police. Caritas Haiti President Bishop Pierre Andre Dumas of Anse-a-Veau et Miragoane has appealed on the radio for calm and solidarity,” he said.

“The immediate needs are for tents for provisional shelters, covers, clothing, clean water, food, psychological support, first-aid materials, drugs, flashlights and batteries. Caritas has no supplies left,” Villarson said.

Throughout Haiti, Caritas and its partners have warehouses, 200 medical centres and a community network of volunteers who have been mobilised to deliver aid, he said.

challenges he faced. If he could do it himself, he would; if he needed help, he had the humility to ask for it. The fifth step of humility requires the non-concealment of faults.

Right to the very end Dom Paulino availed himself of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I used to wonder, what sin could this holy man possibly have to confess?

But he had the humility to acknowledge his own weakness, and the insatiable desire to purify that weakness so that he could meet his God free from the stain of sin. Mission accomplished.

Dom Paulino was often asked the secret for a long life, and although his answer was often “good bread, good wine, and good olive oil”, he once gave the answer “a clear conscience”.

alone, but boy did he love community.

He didn’t like community meetings and chapters so much, but he was in his element when the community gathered for recreation, for picnics, for barbecues, or for laudates, those special feast days when he knew he’d be receiving a chocolate on his plate at table, a glass of liqueur after the meal and an opportunity to tell stories.

Dom Paulino, thank you for your stories. We promise never to forget them.

The ninth step of humility encourages us to value silence. Although Dom Paulino didn’t see any need for it in choir – in fact, that was another competition between himself and Fr Maur: who could sing the loudest?

and went to Glendalough to be cared for by the Little Sisters of the Poor. That decision was made easier for us all to accept knowing that he was receiving the best care we could ever have wished for, and when visiting him there, we knew he was happy.

To the Little Sisters and their staff, we sincerely say “thank you”.

On one very recent visit I made, Dom Paulino was a bit confused about what was going on at New Norcia and asked who the boss was these days.

Thank goodness he was pleased enough to learn it was me, but then asked me to take him home to die.

It was the most heart-wrenching moment of my first year as Abbot, but again that dear old man accepted my decision that he should stay where he would receive the best care. It is of great comfort for us monks to know that he didn’t die alone; he died at twenty past midnight with a Little Sister of the Poor at his side, both of them in prayer.

The fourth step of humility asks of us patience, particularly patience in suffering. In reading the transcripts of Dom Paulino’s oral history these past days, I was struck by the countless examples whereby Dom Paulino had to endure hardship in every era, every facet of his life.

And, of course, every example displayed his willingness to embrace, rather than run from, the

The sixth step of humility asks that we accept lowliness in deed. I don’t think Dom Paulino had to endure much of that in later life.

Because he was our “model monk” he was regarded with the highest esteem and was treated with much love and kindness.

I imagine, though, that in the early years here, when there were different ‘classes’ of monks, he would’ve had some very difficult moments.

In this regard, he says: “We [lay brothers] were happy with the old style of monastic life and I am happy with the present style; everything is good for me.” Everything is good for me: it’s that sort of thinking that earned him the reputation of being our ‘model monk.’

The seventh step of humility suggests a degree of lowliness of heart, a sort of inferiority. This doesn’t mean falling into a sense of low self-esteem, but rather an acknowledgement that there’s always room for improvement and that others in community may be superior in their own giftedness.

One sure thing that turned on that unforgettable smile on Dom Paulino’s face (apart from a bumper olive harvest, or the sudden death of any parrot that tried to harm any of these precious olives!) was the sheer joy he felt in the achievements of others.

The eighth step of humility invites us to integration into community. Dom Paulino was content, particularly in his later years, to be

I don’t think either of them realised that the competition extended to: whose singing was most out of tune?

I’d better set the record straight: I’m sorry Dom Paulino, but you most definitely won that one.

But regarding silence, one message of condolence we received reminded us that Dom Paulino had the rare gift of keeping his negative thoughts to himself.

The tenth step of humility is not to be too quick to laugh. Dom Paulino was one of the happiest monks I’ve known, and he laughed a lot.

But his laughter was never foolish, his laughter never disturbed the reflective atmosphere of the monastery, and his laughter was never at the expense of another.

The eleventh step of humility calls us to a certain level of seriousness. A wise man is known by his few words. We have lost our wisest monk.

The 12th step of humility is a call to total humility.

That’s why I’ve mentioned every step, because Dom Paulino was humble in body, mind, and spirit. He was humble in every place and in everything he said and did.

And, where did this life of humility take Dom Paulino? He has arrived at the perfect love of God ... in life and in death.

His hope to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, to take his place in the resurrection of the dead, is no longer a hope, but a reality.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

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Left, twigs from olive trees cover the coffin of Dom Paulino as it lies in the grave at his burial. For the last quarter centur y of his life, the beloved monk, at right, produced olive oil for the community.

PHOTO: COURTESY NEW NORCIA

Priests urged online

Pope asks priests to get online, spread the Gospel

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - In a message embracing the evangelising potential of digital media, Pope Benedict XVI asked priests around the world to use websites, videos and blogs as tools of pastoral ministry.

“The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more St Paul’s exclamation: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,’” the Pope said in his message for the 2010 celebration of World Communications Day.

“Priests stand at the threshold of a new era: as new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances, they are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word,” he said.

The Pope’s message, released at the Vatican on 23 January, was tailored to the current Year for Priests, focusing on the theme: “The priest and pastoral ministry in a digital world: New media at the service of the Word.” World Communications Day will be celebrated 16 May in most dioceses.

The Pope said that while priests should not abandon traditional methods of pastoral interaction,

they cannot afford to pass up the opportunities offered by digital media. He said, “the recent, explosive growth and greater social impact of these media make them all the more important for a fruitful priestly ministry.”

For priests to exercise their proper role as leaders in communities, they must learn to express themselves in the “digital marketplace,” the Pope said.

“Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, web sites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelisation and catechesis,” he said.

The Pope emphasised, however, that the Church’s role is not simply to fill up space on the Web. Its overriding aim is to express in the digital world “God’s loving care for people in Christ,” not just as an artifact from the past or a theory, but as something concrete and engaging, he said.

Because digital media cross over religious and cultural boundaries, the Church’s presence requires

sensitivity “to those who do not believe, the disheartened and those who have a deep, unarticulated desire for enduring truth and the absolute,” he said.

In order for priests to effectively use new media, formation programmes should teach them how to use these technologies in a competent and appropriate way, the papal message said. This formation in digital media should be guided by sound theology and priestly spirituality, it said.

“Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ,” the Pope said. In this way, they help give a “soul” to the Web, he added.

Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said the message once again illustrated the Pope’s mainly favourable view of new media.

“The Pope is aware of the limits of new technologies, but he wants to make the point that these new means of communication play a positive role, both in the wider society and in the Church,” the Archbishop said in a briefing with reporters.

Archbishop Celli said the message doesn’t mean that the Vatican now expects every priest to open a blog or a Web site, but rather to make appropriate use as possibilities present themselves. He said that task will probably be easier for younger priests, who are already more involved in new media.

Sceptic to tour Australia

BY ROBERT HIINI Parish Reporter

CLIMATE change critics are back on the front foot, announcing a national tour of two of the most prominent climate change sceptics on the world stage. Lord Christopher Monckton, columnist, business consultant and former science and economics advisor to Margaret Thatcher, will be joined by Australian Professor Ian Plimer, author of Heaven and Earth on a tour that will take in Perth, Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane, Noosa, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide. Both speakers have argued in print, television and online media that human-produced carbon emissions have a negligible impact on temperature and that warming and cooling are instead part of larger historical trends; claims that run counter to findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Two Queensland men, engineer John Smeed and retiree Case Smit, organised the tour at an estimated cost of $100,000 after contacting Prof Plimer while he was accompanying Lord Monckton at last year’s Copenhagen summit, according to Perth Now.

The tour was timed to take place during what is expected to be the rekindling of the climate change debate in Australia as the government seeks to reintroduce its twice defeated emissions trading legislation. Lord Monckton and Prof Plimer will speak at the Parmelia Hilton on Monday, 8 February, beginning at 5.30pm.

Perth Now reported that the Perth event was being hosted by Gina Rinehart, chairwoman of Hancock Prospecting.

According to promotional material, more information on the event can be obtained from Daphne Dhimitri on 9429 8248 or at daphne_dhimitri@hancockprospecting.com.au.

Abortion survivor reveals all

Abortion survivor reflects on her mother's near-fatal choice

BY PATRICIA K ASTEN

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin (CNS)

- Melissa Ohden remembers the moment she knew she'd forgiven the mother who had tried to abort her.

"I was just married a year. I was thinking about how I wanted to be a mum, to have a house," the Sioux City, Iowa, resident remembers. "I was driving on a country road, and all of a sudden it hit me: 'I'm not different than my mother must have been. She must have been thinking all those things, when she found out she was pregnant with me.' That was a humbling moment, to realise that she was no different than me, but she made a different decision than me."

It was 1977 when Ohden's biological mother, a university student in Iowa, tried to end her six month pregnancy by a saline abortion.

The abortion failed and Ohden survived. She was soon adopted and, even though her pediatricians believed she would suffer lifelong complications from the abortion attempt, Ohden had no long-term effects.

Today, a mother herself, she speaks about her experience, her biological parents and their families, her adoptive parents and her own daughter to pro-life groups around the country.

is," she said in a telephone interview with The Compass, Green Bay diocesan newspaper. "We in the pro-life movement talk about unborn children all the time, but we don't hear them. That's one reason the Lord saved my life, to talk about that, about my unborn brothers and sisters."

It's something that resonates with her audiences.

"Every time I go to speak somewhere," Ohden said, "I am so surprised by the number of people who line up to speak to me. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, to tell me their story and tell me how much they are hurting because of an abortion - they are missing out on that person in their lives."

This is also why Ohden founded For Olivia's Sake, a nonprofit organisation that "seeks to peacefully raise awareness of the intergenerational impact of abortion on men, women, children, families and communities."

Olivia is her two year old daughter's name. The name came to Ohden when she was just a few days pregnant in August 2007. She was on Capitol Hill in Washington and preparing to speak when the name came to her. She was thinking about olive branches extended in peace.

"Peace begins in the womb," she said.

"She cried and hugged me and told me I looked like my grandmother," Ohden said.

After years of work, searching medical records and filing petitions in court, Ohden was able to learn who her birth parents were. She has not met them but has connected with several relatives of her father, who is now deceased, and with her maternal grandfather.

Although she is striving for forgiveness, anger and fear resurface at times.

Still, Ohden said she cannot remain angry with her birth parents. Nor can she judge them.

"No matter what decision they made in regard to my life, they are my biological parents, and a part of me," she said. "To reject them would be to reject myself, to hate them would be to hate myself. They are only human, and humans make some terrible mistakes, but it doesn't necessarily make us terrible people."

In fact, through what she acknowledges as God's grace and guidance, she has been able to feel sorrow for her biological parents.

"I can only imagine the amount of pain and suffering that they went through in their lives as a result of this," she said. "I believe that their hardships far overshadow my own."

And she adds that God's grace continues to lead her, this time toward the Catholic Church.

"I'm considering a conversion," said Ohden, who was raised a Methodist. "I listen to Catholic radio and all I watch is Catholic TV. I feel that connection at a deep level."

Ohden's intent with her public speaking is to give a face and a voice to those children who experienced abortion, as she did, but did not survive.

"It's about being able to reflect the true reality of what abortion

Olivia was born in the very hospital where Ohden's life almost ended in abortion. It was a tough decision for Ohden, who almost ran out of the birthing classes there and who had always held her breath "every time I drove past the place."

But it was all part of God's plan for her healing. In the process, Ohden met a nurse who had been working at the same hospital for 30 years, a nurse who remembered her birth family.

Part of the connection goes back to the hospital where her life almost ended before it began.

"There was a priest who prayed outside the hospital where I was to be aborted," she said. "And I know he saved my life."

A protester holds a globe during a demonstration in Copenhagen, Denmark during the UN Climate Change Conference.

PHOTO: CNS

Catholic Croats celebrate their heritage

BY ROBERT HIINI Parish Reporter

CELEBRATING 18 years of statehood, the Croatian Catholic community in Western Australia marked the occasion with a thanksgiving Mass at St Mary's Cathedral; their first in the recently completed building.

Archbishop Barry Hickey joined Croatian chaplain Fr Nikola Cabraja in celebrating the Mass with over 800 people turning out to worship.

The Croatian and Australian flags adorned the sanctuary while young people celebrated their heritage by wearing traditional costume.

Speaking to The Record, Fr Cabraja said that the large attendance was indicative of the fondness that Croatian migrants to Australia feel for their homeland.

He said that the Croatian Catholic community in Perth was made up of different waves of migrants.

While there are many second and third generation children, migrant numbers to Australia “exploded”, Fr Cabraja said, after the bloodshed that devastated the region in the early 1990s.

Fr Cabraja has been Croatian Catholic Chaplian since arriving in Perth in 1971, having St Anne's Church in North Fremantle as the base for the Croatian Catholic Community.

A native of Sarajevo, his then Archbishop put out the call for a priest to volunteer to become a chaplain in Australia with Brisbane and Perth being the two options. He said he is very happy to serve the community here in Perth.

The Croatian community usu-

in brief...

Correction regarding Fr Nguyen story

FATHER Peter Nguyen, our Year for Priests profile subject of last week, was incorrectly

Fr Nikola Cabraja, Croatian Catholic chaplain seen above, is flanked by young people in traditional Croatian dress, holding aloft the Croatian and Australian flags. Banners of St Anne and Our Lady of Croatia can be seen in the background.

CROATIAN CATHOLIC COMMUNITY

ally celebrate a thanksgiving Mass on the second Sunday of January but changed the date this year due to the availability of the Cathedral. As they do every year, a social picnic was held the week after (last Sunday) at the Croatian Club in Gwellup.

reported as being the parish priest of St Luke’s in Woodvale.

He is, in fact, parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Woodlands.

Fr Nguyen was also reported as having been ordained to the diaconate in Auckland, New Zealand, when he was actually ordained a deacon in Melbourne.

The Record apologises for these errors.

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Portuguese celebrate saint that keeps on giving

BY ROBERT HIINI Parish Reporter

PORTUGESE Catholics in Perth joined their compatriots throughout the world in celebrating the Feast Day of St Amaro on Sunday, 17 January.

The community gathered for Mass at the Holy Cross Church in Hamilton Hill, with principal celebrant Archbishop Barry Hickey and Frs Michael Evans and Blaco Fonseca.

A procession around the church grounds and Benediction were followed by a special lunch for invited guests provided by the Oliveira family.

The feast day of Saint Amaro, which formally occurred on 15 January, has been celebrated annually in Perth since 2002, as instigated by the Saint Amaro Association in Perth.

St Amaro is the patron saint of Paul Do Mar and several other villages in the Madeira Islands as well as villages on the Portuguese mainland.

Portuguese community mem-

Universal prayer imminent

The World Wide Day of Prayer will take place on 5 March this year with events to be hosted in churches throughout Perth. A city service will take place at St Andrew’s Uniting Church on St George’s Terrace at 1pm with organisers urging Christians to stay on the look-out for news of events in their area.

Procession around Lake Monger

In honour of Our Lady of Lourdes, a procession will be held around Lake Monger on Friday 12 February, featuring Rosary and hymns. An event billed for the young and old, organisers have asked people to bring torches and to refrain from open flames.

Acts 2 College offering scholarships

Acts 2 Bible College are close to beginning the academic year again with courses to commence on 1 March.

As a first for the preferred provider of ministry training in the Archdiocese of Perth, the college has announced the offer of one full scholarship and three partscholarships for successful applicants in 2010.

Perth Catholic bioethicist to shake things up

ber Lourdes De Sousa told The Record that the saint “represents the ideals of faith, prosperity and safety in all aspects of life” and that St Amaro has played a significant role in the lives of the Portuguese people, “often by granting graces.”

Details about the saint remain unclear as a legendary cultus built up around the figure; a patron saint of disabled people.

Every year the Portuguese Club in Hamilton Hill holds celebrations after the church service in honour of St Amaro where everyone gathers for a traditional lunch of Bacalhau (a codfish dish), Espetada (skewered meat and vegetables) and Bolos do caco (a traditional bread of Madeira) and the celebrations continue with music, dancing and fireworks.

For further information on this or other Portugese community events, contact organiser Fatima Pereira on 9337 8805 or committee member Lourdes De Sousa at mde40597@bigpond. net.au

Fr Joseph Parkinson STL PhD, director of the L J Goody Bioethics Centre, will speak on ethics, faith and conscience as part of St Benedict Parish’s Faith Enrichment Series in Ardross. Organisers say that Fr Parkinson’s talk will give pointers on how to bridge the divide between faith and action.

Christian meditation guru to visit Perth

The director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, Fr Laurence Freeman OSB, will speak at Notre Dame, Fremantle (9am) and at St Joseph’s, Subiaco (7.30pm) on 14 February. The Benedictine will be speaking, respectively, on the topics: Making the Most of Crisis: How a Contemplative Mind Grows and Hope and Change; Christian Meditation in Troubled Times

Portugese Catholics process around the church.

PHOTO: LOURDES DE SOUZE

Environment poses deeper questions

How central is the question of environmental concern to the Pope, and what is the focus of his teaching?

BY BISHOP JULIAN PORTEOUS Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney

POPE Benedict XVI speaks regularly about the environment. It was the subject of his 2010 New Year Message for the World Day of Peace. He entitled his message: If You want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation. A number of days later when he addressed the Diplomatic Corps he made reference to the issues of the environment along with mentioning other matters of international importance.

In his encyclical on social matters Caritas in veritatis (2009), Pope Benedict addressed the connection between what he calls “integral human development” and the use of the natural environment. He devoted some serious attention to the matter of the effects of industrialisation on nature, identifying that excessive draining of natural resources threatens future generations, especially the poor.

Arriving in Australia for the World Youth Day, the Pope, in his opening address to the young people, commented on his experience of flying to Australia in these words: “The sparkle of the Mediterranean, the grandeur of the north African desert, the lushness of Asia’s forestation, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the horizon upon which the sun rose and set, and the majestic splendour of Australia’s natural beauty which I have been able to enjoy these last couple of days; these all evoke a profound sense of awe.”

It is as though one catches glimpses of the Genesis creation story - light and darkness, the sun and the moon, the waters, the earth, and living creatures; all of which are “good” in God’s eyes.

Immersed in such beauty, who could not echo the words of the Psalmist in praise of the Creator: how majestic is your name in all the earth?

The Pope reveals a keen aware-

ATTENTION!

ness of nature. Indeed, most major pronouncements by Pope Benedict make some reference to the environment. One could assume that his many references to environmental concerns reveals that he considers ecological issues a key issue for Catholics. He is being referred to as the “Green Pope” in some quarters.

How central is the question of environmental concern to the Pope - and what is the focus of his teaching?

Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict raises the question of the effect of human activity on the environment from a moral perspective. He addresses the question that occupies the thoughts of many today: is human activity having such a detrimental effect on the environment that we may not be able to pass on to future generations a planet whose beauty and resources are fully available to them?

The Pope explores the question of the moral responsibility human beings have for the future of the planet. He argues for a stewardship of creation that does not just exploit, but that respects the need to preserve natural resources for future generations.

Is he then simply giving a Catholic perspective to the arguments of the Green Movement?

Is the Pope calling on Catholics to embrace the views of the considerable environmental lobby and become fellow travellers with them?

One of the reasons for choosing the theme of the environment for the World Day of Peace this year

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was that it marked the 20th anniversary of the milestone message of Pope John Paul II on the environment when in 1990 his theme for the World Day of Peace was Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation

This earlier document addressed the Christian response to environmental concerns. Pope John Paul spoke of a “lack of due respect for nature”. He spoke of the need to develop a mature ecological awareness. Pope John Paul called for a “new solidarity” to face what he termed an “ecological crisis”.

He comments: “Today the ecological crisis has assumed such proportions as to be the responsibility of everyone. As I have pointed out, its various aspects demonstrate the need for concerted efforts aimed at establishing the duties and obligations that belong to individuals, peoples, States and the international community”.

Pope Benedict asks the question: “Can we remain indifferent before the problems associated with such realities as climate change, desertification, the loss of productivity in vast agricultural areas, the pollution of rivers and aquifers, the loss of biodiversity, the increase of natural catastrophes and the deforestation of equatorial and tropical regions?”

This list reflects commonly held positions concerning environmental issues. It seems that he is supporting commonly held views about the environment, but he adds that the ecological crisis cannot be taken in isolation from other issues. It is here that a divergence with popular ecological attitudes emerges.

It is not uncommon for many involved in the question of the environmental future of the planet to make this a single and isolated issue - the sole focus of attention.

For some it has become the consuming concern of their lives and many have a deep emotional involvement with the needs of the environment.

Their involvement with these issues can assume an almost religious-like fundamentalism. Those committed to the environmental

cause can become so focused on it that they adopt a radical view that unless urgent and drastic action is taken then the planet is doomed.

There is at times a determination that all must subscribe to this view: that matters are moving to some sort of apocalyptic disaster.

Pope Benedict situates the question of care for the environment within the broader context of what he calls “integral development”, a concept that he particularly developed in his encyclical Caritas in veritate

In his World Peace Day Message he speaks of the need to reaffirm “forcefully” the “inviolability of human life at every stage and in every condition, the dignity of the person and the unique mission of the family. There is a need to safeguard the human patrimony of society” which he says is to be found in the values that come from the Natural Law. Concern for the environment must be set within this broader context if it is to be authentic. Rather than absolutise environmental issues, a true consideration of the challenges that humanity faces, needs to be grounded in what the Pope calls “an authentic human ecology”.

The Pope also addresses the danger of absolutising the needs of the environment and placing the needs of the environment before the needs of human beings. He says: “If the Church’s Magisterium expresses grave misgivings about notions of the environment inspired by ecocentrism and biocentrism, it is because such notions eliminate the difference of identity and worth between the human person and other living things.”

He emphasises that we cannot extinguish the “distinctiveness and superior role of human beings”.

The notion of climate change is the current term used to describe what was previously referred to as “global warming”. The term expresses a simple reality – the climate changes. The term, however, is the catchphrase to speak of irrevocable changes to the climate featuring increased temperatures, rising sea levels, more extreme weather conditions - cyclones, more droughts and floods and accompanying all of this the spread of diseases. We are familiar with weather patterns changing on a daily and yearly pattern, the climate, too, has changed over longer periods of time. We all know weather has cyclic patterns. So too history gives abundant evidence to cyclical patterns of climate.

There have been periods of global cooling – Ice Ages – and global warming.

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there is a growing unease about it both within the scientific community and at a popular level. The question of anthropogenic climate change is a hotly debated topic.

In the end, the question becomes: are changes to climate that are being experienced in some places merely part of a cyclic pattern or are they exponential?

This is the critical question.

Whatever the answer, there is no excuse for complacency. Human beings of the 21st century have a responsibility for the future wellbeing of the environment.

However, when one takes the view that changes that are occurring are simply the patterns of climate change which have occurred over the eons, then a more measured response can be taken. If one adopts a view that there are catastrophic and irreversible changes occurring at this moment in history and that unless extremely drastic steps are taken then the planet will be permanently maimed, then the issue is a consuming cause.

The response proposed by Pope Benedict is balanced and not extreme. In his World Peace Day Message he says, “Prudence would thus dictate a profound, long term review of our model of development”.

He proposes that action needs to be taken to reduce the damaging effects of industrial development, but also presents the notion that the issue is not just one of policies aimed solely at the reduction of emissions, but one which looks more seriously at moral and cultural issues.

He mentions the consumerism of many nations. The current concern for the environment causes an examination of the deeper questions of the dangers flowing from human selfishness and a consumerist approach to life. He urges all to reflect on life-style choices.

Dealing with the danger of selfish individualism, the Pope proposes that we all need to examine ourselves about the level of “universal solidarity” – in other words, how our actions affect others.

The Pope wants to establish a Christian response to environmental concerns that does not on one hand absolutise nature nor on the other hand be callously consumerist.

In his encyclical Caritas in veritate, he summarised his position: “It should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person.

The question we face today is whether evidence of global warming is just another cycle of climate which will eventually reverse itself, or are we human beings –due to increased population and the necessary manufacture and consumption of energy – causing a climate change which is irreversible? The current consensus among many scientists and governments is that the increased release of carbon dioxide emissions from energy production and industry is driving a period of irreversible global warming. Despite widespread support for this view,

“This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism - human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense”.

He balances this comment with a reference to an opposite tendency: “it is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a “grammar” which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation”.

It is clear that Pope Benedict takes seriously the challenges we face in terms of the impact of human activity on the environment. Yet he does not embrace an extreme position of positing a doomsday scenario. He sees the moral implications of issues that have come into sharper contrast in recent times. He urges all people to take the challenges seriously, but proposes that the way forward is the pursuit of deeply human and spiritual values.

UNDA’s 10 years of Nursing

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

THE University of Notre Dame Australia’s School of Nursing in Fremantle will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year with an event organised for each month of 2010 and the launch of a Joint Professorial Chair in Nursing in clinical research with St John of God Murdoch.

Tenders will be put out this week for the position.

UNDA’s School of Nursing started on 28 February 2000 with 25 students and four partners – Fremantle, St John of God and Mercy Hospitals and Kimberley Health Services.

It now has 700 students in its undergraduate programme and partnerships with at least 12 hospitals and clinical partnerships with hundreds nationally and overseas.

Its post-graduate nursing programme opened in 2003 with 12 students; it now has close to 300, and its first PhD student graduated in 2008. Its Mental Health Major commenced in 2007.

Its Vietnam immersion started in 2007, where students spent nearly a month looking after patients in thirdworld conditions, and the School commenced a Nursing Oration in 2008.

Initiatives have also been started to trigger spiritual considerations among students, with a candle lighting ceremony being held for the first time in 2006 for graduates and a ‘Blessing of the hands’ ceremony started in 2002, where Health-Science, Counselling and Medicine students who are about to commence their clinical practicum have their hands blessed with holy oil by the university chaplain.

School of Nursing Dean Prof Selma Alliex, a former lecturer at Curtin University, said their course stands out from secular university nursing courses as their students undertake an ethics unit. Its students also have much clinical exposure in every setting of nursing in rural, remote, community and metropolitan areas.

UNDA’s core curriculum of Philosophy, Theology and Ethics also gives its students a rare insight into dealing with patients of other faiths, and an ability to assist “if people need information beyond the usual scope of hospitals”.

Unusually, its nursing course also stems from an exclusive Bachelor in Nursing which involves scientific components, rather than a Bachelor of Science into which universities often weave nursing. Prof Alliex told The Record that all UNDA Nursing staff are currently practising in the field - another fact that makes the course unique.

Do Catholics lag in evangelisation?

Church Life Survey reveals Catholics behind in evangelising, welcoming stakes

BY ANTHONY BARICH National Reporter

PENTECOSTAL churches are the most inviting, welcoming and actively evangelical churches in Australia, while Catholic parishes are among the lowest, the latest breakdown of the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) has revealed.

While the survey report said youth retention “requires great attention”, it also revealed that young people are more willing to talk about their faith, and that the influence of parents is the most powerful predictor in a person’s childhood of their current religious involvement.

NCLS – a joint project of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Anglicare in the Diocese of Sydney and the Uniting Church in Australia’s NSW Board of Mission – last month revealed its 2006 survey findings to which 22 Christian denominations contributed.

The survey found “substantial variations” between denominations in evangelising acts.

Pentecostals are most likely to look for opportunities to share

their faith with others (29 per cent) and are also least likely to find their faith hard to talk about (16 per cent) compared with 19 per cent overall.

Catholic attendees, meanwhile, also have fewer than the average who find their faith hard to talk about (16 per cent), but also have fewer than average who look for chances to talk about their faith.

Older attendees are generally more likely than young attendees to prefer not to talk about their faith.

Those at ease in talking about their faith are generally younger, highly involved in church life, experiencing personal growth in their faith and are helping people in practical ways.

This younger group, however, finds it difficult to talk about their faith in ordinary language in a secular society.

Pentecostals are also the most inviting denomination (59 per cent). New arrivals to a church are more likely than long-term attendees to invite others, while ‘switchers’ – those who changed denominations – are particularly strong inviters (49 per cent).

Running activities like evangelistic church services, Bible studies, door-knocking, outdoor evangelism, drop-in centres or some other evangelistic activity is significant for a church in several ways, the report stated.

It provides a means of shar-

ing the faith. Research shows that those involved in such programmes are more likely to have invited someone to church in the past year and will be at ease sharing their faith.

Levels of sharing and inviting others to church are also likely to exist where attenders feel their own gifts are recognised and that their contribution is valued.

Asked about their involvement in any activities of their congregation that reach out to the wider community, levels of commitment are highest among the Pentecostals (37 per cent) and Baptists (29), while Catholics (7 per cent) and Lutherans (16) are among the lowest.

Previous research has suggested that a reliance on family faith education and an emphasis on the Catholic school system contributes to Catholic parishes having fewer formal evangelistic programmes than their Protestant counterparts.

In the percentage of churches providing training in outreach and evangelism over the past two years, Catholics are also ranked second-last behind Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Baptists, Churches of Christ, the Salvation Army, Anglicans and Lutherans.

What happens at home and the stability of families has also proved to be the most crucial factor influencing the retention of youth. With only two-thirds of children living in “traditional nuclear fami-

lies”, church activities need to be open to non-traditional family structures, NCLS’s Social trends in Australia and implications for church life report found.

Stable Christian families and marriages can also provide valuable support networks and role models. Just 44 per cent of church attendees indicated they frequently discuss matters of faith at home.

In the Catholic Church, importance is placed on the role of parents educating their children in the faith, and the report stated that “churches that support parents in this are more likely to retain youth”.

Among church attenders who have children aged 15 and over still living at home, 40 per cent of those children don’t attend any church. “Discussing faith at home and the presence of church programmes oriented at youth and a larger church size leads to higher young adult retention,” the report said.

Of 4,400 churches in Australia which returned an NCLS Operations survey in 2006, 49 per cent said they had children attending a youth group.

However, adult attenders were more satisfied with what is being offered children than what is being offered youth, and “with the significant loss in young adult church attenders that begins to occur at this time, this raises a significant concern that churches must con-

Notre Dame’s landmark palliative care course

Continued from Page 1

the difference between the two,” said Prof Alliex, who has been Dean of Nursing at UNDA for five years after two years as its Post-Graduate and Clinical Coordinator.

“Having considered the definitions, it is evident that the imperative to enlighten our students within a Catholic context solely rests with us. With this in mind, the School of Nursing has commenced the Bachelor of Nursing (Palliative Care Major),” she said.

Politicians who often lobby for euthanasia laws to provide an option for those that palliative care can’t help is based on a fallacy, she said, as there is nothing palliative care cannot help.

It is a “whole range of interventions that make the person’s end of life a peaceful, pain-free event. It’s not a cure, nor is it just one strategy”.

It involves pain management, keeping the patient in an environment conducive to a peaceful death of dignity, which, she said, is “such a relative term”. Her idea of dignity is to ensure the patient is kept clean and nourished with the family around them, ensuring that carers don’t cause them more pain. It encompasses mind, body and spiritual needs.

Central to the palliative care philosophy is balancing the patients and their families’ wishes and providing care using a digified approach, which, she said, is “a huge issue for nurses”.

She told The Record that it takes “a special kind of person” to work in palliative care, which is an “emotionally charged, traumatic area”.

“It’s not just looking at what patients are going through, it’s dealing with the impact on their family, which is a big component of caring,” she said.

Several students undertook a trial first-year course last year after a grant from the Queenslandbased Palliative Care Curriculum

for Undergraduate Students helped streamline the programme to tie into the clinical practicum, and will expand to about 10.

The grant enabled UNDA to hire a consultant from SJOGHC to identify pertinent palliative care resources that students can use in all Palliative Care units and to develop palliative care objectives for students to achieve in clinical areas.

This is so that when the students are assessed at the end of the practicum, UNDA can ensure they have achieved all they set out to achieve.

22 February will see the Major in Palliative Care start proper, with Semester 1’s theoretical unit focusing on nursing communications, using a software package related to palliative care to study case studies, treatment options and nursing interventions.

Semester 2 is a 200 hour practicum with students working for SilverChain hospice care.

The course’s second year will see students studying Pharmacology related to palliative care, including disease processes relating to terminal illnesses, in Semester 3, plus another 200 hour practicum at Royal Perth and Princess Margaret Hospitals’ palliative care wards.

In Semester 4, students will study palliative care components involving how people suffer from complex wounds and terminal illnesses.

Semester 5 in third year is a counselling unit relating to palliative care before a compulsory clinical component of 100 hours in Semester 6, where students can choose between acute, community or hospice care. General Nursing students can also choose this unit as an elective.

Prof Alliex said that the launch of the Palliative Care Major is a significant event

for UNDA’s School of Nursing, which after 10 years has taken up “much soul searching and reflec-

tion to identify areas that we as a Catholic university can offer as an area of need”.

A nurse cares for a patient as part of palliative care. UNDA will this year start a Palliative Care Major as part of its Nursing degree.

PHOTO: COURTESY UNDA

New ways parents are taking up challenges

In Perth there are a growing number of groups of men who have begun to meet regularly to talk and exchange ideas on what it means to be a Christian and Catholic father in today’s postChristian (and often anti-Christian) culture. Such gatherings are prompted by a growing awareness that, from a Christian perspective, there are issues abroad affecting families which fathers cannot afford to ignore. The meetings may come in the form of early morning breakfasts, for example, where someone speaks followed by a period for questioning and discussion, or they may be even less formal than that. The topics explored are many, but that they are happening at all is deeply significant for the future of the Church.

Elsewhere in Perth, Catholic families are deliberately gathering and meeting for much the same reason. The Record is aware of groups of couples and families who regularly associate with each other because they have seen the need to take the vocations of Baptism, marriage and parenthood seriously.

Part of the pattern of approach of these families is that they engage in both purely social activities such as camping and picnics as well as formation in their Faith as Catholic Christians. In addition, they engage in what could essentially be described as Professional Development for parents.

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In all the cases described above, one of the themes common to all groups is that they can be described as parents who recognise that they and their children exist in a society which, having cut itself adrift from its spiritual and ethical origins over the last half a century or so since the 1960s, intends to remove their children and their families from the faith of Christianity.

The statistical drift of the young from the Church over recent decades, taken together with associated factors such as the demographic decline of participation in the Church which can be judged by such things as declining Mass attendances, are some of the factors that such parents consider.

Another factor such families hold in common and which distinguishes them from recent generations of Catholic marriages and parenthood is that they take their faith seriously and do not regard it as a one-hour-a-week aspect of their lives. In other words, the vocation of marriage and parenthood is so important that they are making the time and the effort to make it, and not television or the internet, for example, the most important field of work in their faith.

This phenomenon is to be welcomed and greatly encouraged and clearly has deep potential and significance for the future of the lay vocation, and therefore the Church, in Perth.

What is heartening to see in this growth of families and marriages committed to making their own families different from those that surround them in Australia, is to realise that what is really happening is that married couples and parents are taking up their responsibilities after several generations of marriages have failed to understand the nature of the challenges being mounted against their own families by the sophisticated onslaught from the contemporary anti-culture.

As mentioned in an earlier Record editorial, one of the key agents of influence in this onslaught was television, which had the practical effect of dissolving public morals over the space of approximately 20 years from the 1960s onwards.

Television, the wider media, and now mobile phones and the Internet have been the key means of transmitting to the young the allure of materialism and moral vacuousness that have powerfully drawn them away from the life of the Church. They have been the key means of creating peer pressure and social pressure among the young to conform to the media’s messages of rejection of religious faith and objectivity in ethics.

Such families and groups as those already mentioned are doing something previous generations of marriages have not managed to do: taking note and analysing what is happening in our society and culture, and why.

They have analysed the strengths and weaknesses of our society and are increasingly engaged in the process of developing sophisticated, smart and attractive responses to the moral vacuity and crisis of our contemporary culture. In the process they are developing, whether they realise it or not, the vitality of Christian and Catholic marriages and family life as the best and most relevant context possible in which the young can grow and learn how to take up their responsibilities as members of society.

Perhaps most important of all, they are raising children to become outstanding young men and women who seek to do their best in whatever aspect of their lives one cares to mention: work, marriage, faith, society.

The overwhelming responsibility of Catholic marriages and parents today is, of course, their faith – perhaps more than ever at any other time in this nation’s history. However, the reality that this entails is, unfortunately, one with which not everyone within the Church in Australia is comfortable. To survive and prosper is entirely possible for Christian family life, but to do so means such families need to be supremely counter-cultural.

The good news, as evidenced by the growing number of Catholic families and parents who are prepared to take up the challenges of modern life, is that more and more are seeing the vision of Christian marriage and family life, and signing up for it.

Church is just hardly done anymore. Some people noticed me but their glances seemed to be the kind you experience in moments of embarrassment when one quickly turns away from an inappropriate sight or a person you don’t really want to talk to. I suppose what I mean is that to see a man genuflecting appears as something oldfashioned, and I must have seemed like something from another era.

Lately, I have found myself wondering whether I really belong in the Church in this country anymore.

Do I belong anymore?

Not so long ago I attended a ceremony in one of the larger churches of the Archdiocese. It was not a Mass but a special occasion and quite a large number of people of all ages turned up.

I was surprised to see larger than normal numbers of young people present and I found myself watching those around me with some interest. It’s impossible, of course, to tell what others are thinking, much less to judge them, but the way people behave in various situations can, I think, give some kind of indication of what is - or may be absent - within the person.

I saw many people walking around chatting and greeting each other, laughing, shaking hands and so on and, although I am in my early 40s, I felt for the first time like an old man from another time. Entering the church, I had genuflected as I had been taught to do when a child and tried, as I so often do these days, to pierce the weakness of my own faith by fixing my gaze on the tabernacle and hoping for some sense or feeling of connection with the One who I believe is there.

I felt, for a moment, like a dinosaur because I could tell that for any person to genuflect in a

Obituary

Professor Tom Whipple

Born Chatswood NSW, 21 June 1931 Died Perth, 10 January 2010

Reginald Thomas Whipple was truly a ‘gentle’ man with a quiet sense of humour and an old-fashioned courtesy, but who wore the dignity of the scholar.

Few who gathered round him after his faithful attendance at his beloved Latin Mass each Sunday knew the extent of his academic achievements, his eminence in his chosen field, or of his humble beginnings in New South Wales.

Occasionally he might raise an eyebrow at some report of abuse in the Liturgy, or some scandal in the Church, but he was essentially a man of prayer and of concern for others.

He believed that diplomacy and charity achieved far more than confrontation. Probably for this reason he was an effective Chairman of potentially stormy meetings, and was for many years an active member of the State Executive of the Australian Family Association. He worked best behind the scenes and was much respected both by Bishops and his academic colleagues.

Tom Whipple’s early life was a struggle. He lost his mother when he was only four years old and afterwards travelled with his father on horseback from town to town, his father seeking work as a mechanic. His early schooling was limited to attendance at NSW

The churches of my childhood, once places of relative quiet and reverence where a mother or teacher or an uncle might scold you for disturbing them by speaking out loud as if you were in a bus or a loungeroom, were places of prayer, and even, despite all the cheap religious art, places of mystery. Now they look and feel, to me, on Sundays like offices.

People come and go as if they are not in a church at all. Whatever the failings of the Church of an earlier era might have been, I’ve concluded that a sense of reverence has disappeared almost totally from churches in Australia.

I’m not very musical but I cringe every time I have to go through yet another corny 1970s hymn that seems to ooze the impression that to be Catholic is to be ‘nice’ and that because we’re Catholics we can’t disagree with anyone about anything at all.

‘Let’s all clap our hands for Jesus and smile at each other and then hold hands,’ they seem to say, because that’s what Christianity is really about. But it’s the Christianity of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons on TV. Well, if this moronic behaviour is Christianity in Australia today, I want the Christianity of something different. I want the Christianity of a Mother Teresa. I won’t even mention what I think of liturgical dancing.

But to me the Catholicism of the parishes of recent decades looks and feels more and more like some-

bush schools in whatever town his father happened to find temporary work. His wanderings ended at the outbreak of World War II when his father enlisted in the RAAF.

The young Tom returned to Chatswood to be cared for by his grandparents, and two maiden aunts of whom he became very fond. His father died during the war and thus at the age of twelve he found himself technically an orphan.

Through the support of Legacy he was able to attend St Pius X Christian Brothers College in Chatswood. It was there that his academic talents blossomed and his life-long love of literature and the Latin language was born. On leaving school in 1949, he joined the Commonwealth Bank, specialising in Mortgage Financing and Real Estate Conveyancing. For the next 15 years he held various positions that took him to South East Asia and East Africa.

thing bland. In some ways, shopping centres seem to me, awful as they are, to be vastly superior to your average Australian Catholic churches.

My wife and I enrolled our children in a Catholic school in the northern suburbs but have discovered over the last couple of years that a little under half the families are not actually Catholic while the rest are. Of those that are I’ve tried informally guessing how many families come to our local parish and because we’ve attended pretty much every time slot when Mass is celebrated I’m guessing that about five or six of all of the families in our school attend the parish.

Double that figure just to be optimistic and that means that our children are surrounded in a Catholic school by people who, excellent as they undoubtedly are, are certainly not - in a practical way - Christian.

I work in the mining industry so am not familiar with the details of the Church here in WA, but if I had to guess, upfront I’d say there is a real lack of character across the Church. We don’t impress anybody. We Catholics seem to have embraced much of what the world offers us while it has embraced nothing we are supposed to offer it. In fact, I wonder to what extent we have offered it anything.

I think it’s great Archbishop Hickey has spoken on TV in those spots we see occasionally. I think your newspaper is excellent; you offer, if I’m reading you right, a wider perspective. I would suggest a bit more local news could help. The other Catholic papers I’ve seen around this country are just not interesting by comparison and the range of your contributors is pretty impressive.

Wishing you all the best in your efforts.

Name and address supplied

Got something to say?

Back in Australia he gained his diploma in Town and Country Planning at Sydney University and was appointed lecturer and then Senior Lecturer, and in 1976 gained his Ph.D. He served for several years as Associate Professor at Sydney University and while there was instrumental in establishing the Graduate Newman Society. In 1989 he moved to Western Australia to become Foundation Professor of Valuation and Land Economy Studies at Curtin University. He was a leading authority on Land Valuation and was the author of several textbooks on the subject, and over 40 journal articles.

Away from academia and privately at home, he was a loving husband of Patricia (née Stanton) whom he married in 1965, and the proud father of David and Penny. His enthusiasms were for literature, the classics and music - he once wrote Record reviews and was a member of the Wagner Society. He was proficient in Latin and once studied Greek, but he admitted that it brought limited success owing to an uneven struggle with deponent verbs.

Tom Whipple was sustained by his family, his principles, and love of his Faith. He quietly campaigned for easing the restrictions on the Old Rite Latin Mass, rejoicing when the present Pope lifted those restrictions and encouraged its wider use. He was, for a time, the WA Representative of the national Ecclesia Dei Society. He will be greatly missed by all those who were privileged to know him. Requiescat in pace.

Is the war between creationists and supporters of evolution A Blind Alley?

VISTA 2-4

So where was God So was in this?

The mysterious priest raised in Irish Republicanism, a friend of Australian Prime Ministers... The Priest of Riddles

Is there a meaning to Haiti?

200,000 dead; 1.5 million homeless; the chaos of looting and raping, hunger, thirst, disease. The randomness of the deaths - children, an Archbishop, a head of United Nations operations, slum dwellers, police. The Haitians were already living in one of the poorest, worst governed nations in the world. Now they have to struggle with the worst humanitarian disaster ever faced by the UN. Why?

The view taken by most of the media seems to be that you have to be either loopy or stupid to venture an answer. Admittedly, there was some justification for that after the aged evangelist Pat Robertson told his Christian Broadcasting Network that Haitians are a people accursed because they had made a pact with the devil to win their freedom from the French in the 1790s. Idiotic, callous and stupid were some of the kinder responses.

A very different interpretation was given by Hollywood actor Danny Glover. His view was that the disaster happened because the world failed to reach a pact on global warming. Nutty and obscene, said bloggers.

Surprisingly, some Christian spokesmen were unprepared for the question. The Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, told the BBC he had “nothing to say to make sense of this horror”. Well, to tell the truth, he had plenty to say but none of it made a scrap of sense.

Not surprisingly at all, Christopher Hitchens, press officer

for global atheism, said that it had no meaning whatsoever:

“It’s idiotic to ask whose fault it is. The Earth’s thin shell was quaking and cracking millions of years before human sinners evolved, and it will still be wrenched and convulsed long after we are gone. These geological dislocations have no human-behavioural cause.”

The proper response, he believes, is neither prayer nor blasphemy, but nuts and bolts stuff like donating to a worthy charity (he suggests Non-Believers Giving Aid), liberating Haitians from witchcraft, and reducing their numbers by setting up more family planning programmes.

A similar reaction comes from Andrew Brown, a British science writer for The Guardian:

“The only proper responses to an earthquake are manners, or style; and kindness: immediately helping the wounded in the ruins, and neither philosophising nor planning an auto da fé.”

Refusing to philosophise about disaster is the stock-standard response of theological sceptics.

The master of this is the 18th century French writer Voltaire whose Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne and novel Candide ridiculed Divine Providence as an explanation for the cataclysmic Lisbon earthquake of 1755. This had flattened the city in a minute and a tsunami a few minutes later killed thousands in Portugal, Spain and Morocco. As in Haiti, death came for believers and unbelievers alike. It was the feast of All Saints and congregations were buried

Is it really so stupid to ask why this had to happen to the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere while we continue to sip our lattés and download our iPhone apps?

■

By

Michael Cook

under the rubble of their churches. There is no meaning to tragedy, writes Voltaire - “we must cultivate our garden” and not ask pointless questions like “why?”

But isn’t refusing to ask questions deeply anti-intellectual? Humans are the only beings in the universe who seek meaning in their lives; inquiry, be it scientific or theological, is what sets us apart from animals. The very earliest works of Western literature - Gilagamesh, the Book of Job, the Iliad - are attempts to discover why the gift of life is so often accompanied by pain and ends in death. Furthermore, if you deny that there is meaning in natural disasters, there can hardly be meaning in the disasters we wreak upon each other. Were the deaths of a million Cambodians bereft of meaning? of four million Congolese? of six million Jews? of 40 million Russians? - to cite only a few recent calamities. If they were utterly senseless, must we not concede, too, that there can be no hope whatsoever of justice? And, if so, what point, really, is there of striving to right wrongs, heal wounds and console survivors?

If people truly believe that there is no meaning, most of them will end up reacting as callously as US shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, who advised listeners not to contribute to Haiti appeals: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the US income tax,” he said.

The problem for atheists is that the search for meaning always leads to God - to God who weighs our all-too-brief lives in the scales

of eternity, but hidden behind an impenetrable veil of mystery. That’s why they cut question time short, like a politician at an uncomfortable press conference. To use the language of philosophy, they arbitrarily limit their spirit of inquiry to efficient causes and ignore final causes.

The problem for Christians is that definitive answers to our suffering come in the afterlife. It would be more convenient if we could publish them gloatingly on tomorrow’s New York Times op-ed page, to the discomfiture of scoffers, but that is not the way God works. Even Christ on his cross posed the anguished question, “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Dogmas do not give cookie-cutter answers and Christians of every generation have wrestled with suffering and death. Sometimes their answers ring of blasphemy, as in King Lear - “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport”. Sometimes they are optimistic, as in TS Eliot’s Little Gidding - “And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well”. But their questions are all the bolder because they are sustained by the hope that eventually they will know the answer. Without that hope, no wonder Mr Hitchens thinks it is idiotic to use the brains God gave him.

So what is the meaning of Haiti, then? I am not game to venture an answer as to why the wretched of the earth have been swept away and we, the chardonney and latté set, live on to download our iPhone

apps. But it has always struck me that the Christian God does not deal with souls by the gross, but one by one, tenderly, all 200,000 of them. Divine Providence does not mean that we shall never suffer, but that, having suffered, we shall be loved. One of the best expressions of that comes in Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey A monk in 18th century Peru sees five people plunge to their deaths when their rope bridge snaps and hurls them into a canyon. Why them? Why then? He spends six years in research and concludes that “each of the five lost lives was a perfect whole” and that each had been ended by “a sheer Act of God.” The novel’s celebrated conclusion is:

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

In any case, amazing as it seems to the American and British journalists trudging through Port-auPrince, Haitians are sure that there is a meaning to their suffering. As Rosena Roche, whose husband died in the quake, told the Washington Post, “I still have faith in God,” Roche says. “I want to give glory to God.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet

VISTA 1

A child wakes up at a shelter in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on 15 January, three days after a catastrophic earthquake rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation. PHOTO: CNS/CARLOS BARRIA, REUTERS

Evolution and the battle for the soul of the Western world

Evolution issue ‘stirs emotions all over country,’ says biologist

BY GENE STOWE Catholic News Service

NOTRE DAME, Indiana - Prominent Catholic cell biologist Kenneth Miller called for insistence on rigorous science and a clear distinction between science and a scientist’s personal opinions as he helped open a Darwin conference on 1 November at the University of Notre Dame.

Miller, a leading advocate for the compatibility of evolutionary science and religious faith and a leading opponent of nonscientific attacks on evolution in American education, said the battle for science continues despite a long string of court, legislative and election victories.

“Evolution is an issue that divides Americans,” he said, showing a map that indicated local anti-evolution activity in almost every state. “This is an issue that stirs emotions all over the country.”

“We have to come out of the classroom, out of the laboratory. If we do, the American people will choose science every time,” he said.

His talk, Darwin, God and Design: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, was the first public lecture at the conference on Darwin in the 21st Century: Nature, Humanity and God, observing the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his Origin of Species

The international conference drew scholars in a broad range of fields from Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom as well as numerous US universities.

Miller, whose Finding Darwin’s God is in its 29th printing, traced the history of antievolution activity in the US, beginning with the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee, when a biology teacher was put on trial and found guilty of violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools.

The ban on evolution remained law in Tennessee for more than 40 years, and teaching evolution was banned in five other states until the Supreme Court ruled the Arkansas ban unconstitutional in a 1965 case.

Proponents of creationism lobbied state legislatures arguing for “balanced treatment,” and Arkansas and Louisiana legislated the teaching of creation science.

In 1981, a Methodist minister sued Arkansas and the law was overturned.

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing movement to promote intelligent design, which argues that “irreducibly complex” elements of organisms were brought into existence by a force outside nature.

Miller pointed out that the idea is distinct from the transcendent intelligence that theists, including himself, believe created the universe.

He quoted Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 statement: “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favour of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

Also, St Augustine in On the Literal Meaning of Genesis warned that uneducated Christian claims about science based on Biblical texts can cause nonbelievers to reject the salvation message of Scripture, Miller said.

Intelligent design proponents often claim that mainstream scientists are doctrinaire evolutionists unwilling to consider the conflicting idea, but Miller said they are unwilling to submit to the peer review critical to scientific advance.

He said intelligent design as a scientific theory collapsed in 2005 when a federal judge ruled against the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, when it sought to incorporate intelligent design into the science curriculum.

Still, Miller said, “the evolution battle is not finished. It’s the result of a continu-

The shock and awe of evolution

Are God and evolution really incompatible? Not really, if one examines the question carefully...

ing attack against scientific reasoning itself. America’s scientific soul is at stake.”

In a 2006 survey, only Turkey had a lower percentage of people who believe in evolution compared with the US, he said, adding that the US movement is being exported to other countries.

“In many respects, intelligent-design creationism appeals to people because it seems to fill a vacuum,” he said. “Intelligent design seems to explain everything. You just say the designer did it.”

Meanwhile, public attacks on religion by some prominent scientists who use evolution as evidence explain some of the hostility and fear that many people feel.

Appearing to exclude God as creator, for example, leaves people feeling no ground for morality. “Evolution is portrayed not simply as wrong but as genuinely dangerous,” Miller said.

Appeals to the abundant scientific evidence, including transitional fossils and genetic fragments, are important, along with resistance to misguided conclusions that humans are the result of random mistakes.

In fact, the “mistakes” of DNA copying that lead to mutations are necessary for adaptation and survival. Some researchers believe the process makes sentient, selfconscious organisms inevitable. His own view that evolution reflects the purpose of God to create free beings capable of real love is as valid as another scientist’s conclusion that evolution means that the universe is purposeless - and neither is a scientific claim.

“Evolution isn’t random,” Miller said, explaining that evolutionary processes explore what biologists call “adaptive space” and operate within physical and chemical constraints. “I don’t think we are a mistake of nature. Evolution is a tremendously productive and fruitful process,” he added.

Besides, the war being waged by Christians and atheists does no-one any good

BY LESLIE TOMORY

Evolution is almost alone among scientific ideas in the degree of controversy it generates. Part of the reason for this is, of course, that it can be more than a scientific theory, capable of expansion to include philosophical claims about the existence of God or human nature.

Even if restricted to the material order, evolution inevitably has consequences for religion, as its claims must influence our understanding of the process of creation, and of human nature.

The anthropological and theological implications of evolution are so profoundly felt by many that it is rare to find people who do not have an opinion on the subject.

Indeed, it is not uncommon to find people lacking a specialist background in biology willing to hold opinions that contradict those of the overwhelming majority of biologists.

This is a remarkable fact. Few indeed are the well-established fields of scientific inquiry that experience such popular resistance. The resistance to evolution is, furthermore, not limited to a fringe of young earth creationists. There have also been objections to evolution put forward on sophisticated philosophical grounds.

Here, I explore the ongoing debate over evolution. In the first part, I look at the varied meanings of the word “evolution” to explore the nature of the debate.

I claim that simply recognising that there are multiple layers of meaning inherent in how evolution is characterised and described would go a long way to solving its problematic meaning for many religiously-minded people.

In the second part, I propose some key philosophical points that I believe are essential for reconciling a scientific theory of evolution with a Christian belief in creation in the context of Thomistic philosophy.

In the course of this discussion, I take for granted that evolution has been demonstrated on the basis of solid and ever-expanding evidence.

What does “evolution” mean?

The notion of evolution in popular use contains four key ideas, and distinguishing among the most important of these helps to understand the nature of the controversy about evolution, and, I think, can help many to accept its scientific claims.

Among these ideas, one is philosophical, while the other three belong properly to the science of biology.

These three scientific ideas are common descent, the pace of evolutionary change, and the mechanisms underlying evolutionary change. Common descent is the most basic claim of evolutionary theory, which is that every living thing on earth is part of a single family tree.

The evidence for this comes less from the fossil record, although it is present there, than from homology among the structures of living beings.

It is difficult to conceive of any explanation other than common descent for shared genetic coding of both proteins and, in many cases, non-translated nucleic acid sequences, such as the segments which mark the boundaries of genes on DNA strands or control how they are expressed. Homology is also evident in large scale structures in living things, such as in the bone structures of the limbs of tetrapods.

The evident similarity found among all living species demonstrates a relationship between them, and this relationship is effectively explained by common descent from a shared ancestor.

The most basic idea of evolution is, then, a consequence of accepting common descent. It is indeed impossible to conceive of any idea that could possibly explain homology that is not contrived.

How and at what pace evolution occurs are the next two scientific ideas subsumed in evolution. Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, of course, independently proposed natural selection as a mechanism of evolutionary change but they were not the first to explore possible mechanisms.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had proposed the inheritance of acquired characteristics many decades before, and a number of other mechanisms would gain a following in the second half of the 19th century.

The most important of these were mutation theory, which was developed by Hugo de Vries and focused on discontinuous variation in evolution in contrast to Darwin’s gradualism, as well as orthogenesis, which held that the direction of evolutionary change was inherent in living beings and not subject to selective pressures.

“The science of evolutionary biology is very well established, and the residual tension between religion and evolutionary biology harms both.”

The 20th century has seen other possibilities suggested, the most important of which is genetic drift by Motoo Kimura in 1968.

Kimura argued on the basis of evidence gathered from studies in molecular biology that the rate of change found on the molecular level was too high to be accounted for by natural selection alone, and that therefore a good deal of change is not acted upon by selection, meaning that a significant portion of molecular evolution takes place as neutral drift.

These evolutionary changes coming from drift can be either beneficial, deleterious, or neutral.

It is now accepted that natural selection and genetic drift together are the dominant mechanisms of evolutionary change, although Lamarckism is once again being considered as heritable epigenetic changes have been observed.

These mechanisms explain only the material process by which evolution occurs, and not the ultimate causes of evolution.

The final concept contained within the notion of evolution is the pace of evolutionary change. Although gradualism was dominant in Darwin’s thinking, the second half of

the 19th century witnessed the rise of other opinions regarding the pace of evolutionary change, the most important of which was mutation theory’s large jumps.

The rediscovery of genetics, with its emphasis on clearly distinct expression of genes, gave further impetus to mutation theory’s jumps.

This changed, however, with the forging by Theodosius Dobzhansky among many others, of the modern or neo-Darwinian synthesis in the 1930s.

This united Darwinian mechanisms with Medelian genetics and the study of population dynamics.

Gradualism was once again the dominant opinion, although it was somewhat modified in the 1970s.

It was at this point when Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould put forward their theory of punctuated equilibrium, which argued that evolution proceeds by bursts, followed by long periods of stasis.

Their arguments were based on observations of the fossil record which seems to indicate that on the whole, evolution proceeds in this uneven way.

The bursts should not, however, be understood as occurring in a few generations.

Rather, these bursts are only rapid when considered on geological time scales spanning millions of years, and speciation events occur over thousands of generations, making punctuated equilibrium a form of gradualism.

Is evolution necessarily atheistic?

These three scientific ideas subsumed within the notion of evolution do not contain any materialistic or atheistic philosophy in themselves, which is the fourth idea sometimes contained within the term evolution.

This atheistic notion, which I call evolutionism, is a philosophy that claims that the material process of evolution dispenses with the need for a creator.

It argues that evolution demonstrates that humans are not in any way special, that we are merely the products of a material process, and therefore are fundamentally material in nature.

The science of evolution, according to this philosophy, has replaced the need for a divine creator, and postulates that there is no necessity in the emergence of humans.

We would then be solely the products of

material forces, and completely contingent on them. It is therefore erroneous to believe that we somehow hold a necessary and central place in the universe in which we live, or that, by implication, we exist by the express will of a creator.

There are, of course, many people, among them prominent scientists, who have claimed and continue to claim that the scientific notions of evolution do indeed necessarily imply such a materialistic philosophy.

Richard Dawkins is among the most vocal proponents of such a philosophy, arguing that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”.

This strident atheism does not, however, help their scientific work in any way and, on the contrary, is the source of so much of the controversy that rages over it. It is a fundamental mistake, however, to accept their bundling of the three scientific evolutionary ideas with what I have termed evolutionism.

“Accepting theistic evolution does not diminish the beauty and awe we can feel when contemplating creation.”

Rather, a more sophisticated response would be to show that the three scientific notions in any form are compatible with theistic philosophy.

In many cases, however, the reaction of religious believers to the materialistic claims of evolutionism is not to simply reject the assertion that evolutionism necessarily follows from scientific ideas.

Rather, they tacitly or unconsciously accept the bundling of evolutionism with the science, and then see no option but to attack a part or all of the scientific ideas of evolution as a way of cutting support for the philosophical claims of evolutionism.

In doing so, however, they find themselves in the awkward situation of attacking a solidly established science, ultimately motivated not by objections to the science per se, but by the illicit bundling of evolutionism with the science.

Young earth creationists are the first and crudest variant of this reaction, but they are by no means the only one.

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement accepts common descent to varying degrees,

but rejects the established mechanisms of evolutionary change.

The arguments of ID proponents are structured in the way I have outlined. Reacting to evolutionism, they have chosen to go on the attack against natural selection and genetic drift. They recognise that common descent is evident and they accept it.

It is clear, however, that their motivations are at least partially to recreate a place for God in a science of evolution.

This is an effort that I believe is futile, and has been adequately refuted.

We must bring God into evolution not on the order of material causality, as ID hopes to do, but on a philosophical level. It is to this question that I now turn.

Final causality

Final causality has lurked behind many of the arguments against evolution coming from religious believers.

William Paley made famous the watchmaker argument, which is the best-known form of an argument based on final causes. Paley in fact borrowed the argument from the Dutch philosopher Bernard Nieuwentyt, and it has been rehashed in many forms since, most recently by proponents of ID with their argument from irreducible complexity.

The basic form of the argument from final causes runs like this: since complex biological systems are composed of different parts coming together for specific purposes, and since such a construction of parts can only be the product of a mind designing this system to meet a particular purpose, then a complex biological system, like any system where parts come together for specific ends, must be the product of a wilful and intelligent designer. Biological systems, and hence living beings, cannot therefore be the product of any process that does not originate from a wilful and intelligent agent having a specific end in view.

Any claim that evolution as a material process is a cause of the finality of biological systems is therefore incorrect.

The irreducible complexity argument goes further and claims that since parts of microbiological systems serve no function except as in a complete system, they cannot have evolved gradually, as a half-formed system is useless and cannot be acted upon by selection. Therefore the whole system must be the product of an intelligent designer.

The flaw in the argument from final causes lies in the second premise: that final causality is always the product of a wilful and intelligent designer.

The key point is to recognise that it is an undemonstrated assumption that every system in which some form of final causality is present must necessarily be an object constructed by a wilful and intelligent agent.

This, however, is an invalid assumption because it makes no distinction between the type of final causality found in biological systems and that found in human-made artefacts.

Anything made by human hands has an external or extrinsic final causality: it is made to serve a purpose external to itself, such as a chair for sitting on. Biological systems, however, typically exist for an internal or intrinsic purpose: they help the creature which possesses the systems in question to survive and thrive in some way. For example, horses have not evolved saddles.

Having made a distinction between the kinds of final causality, it is also possible to accept that they can have different sources. Evolutionary theory, and natural selection in particular, is a demonstration that the internal final causality of biological systems does not have an intelligent and wilful agent as their source.

There is, furthermore, significant evidence that biological systems are co-opted to perform different functions than they originally evolved to fill, often losing parts in the process, and that therefore the internal final causality of biological system changes as evolution proceeds.

A clear case of this is limbs. Their uses vary from wings for flying and swimming among the birds, to grasping among primates, and walking in many species. Such change in

function also occurs on smaller scales as well, such as with the components of the flagellum, which are homologous with toxin injection systems in some bacteria.

A further problem with an argument from final causes is that it assumes that the system in its current form is a reflection of its evolutionary history. That is, it assumes that the biological system has been built like a watch, with the designer putting together the final product from parts based on a blueprint.

As the changing use of systems demonstrates, however, biological systems are not watches built from scratch for a single purpose. Their uses change with evolution, and as this happens, newly useless parts disappear, and the current form of new systems no longer reflect their evolutionary history. There is a somewhat different, less mechanistic, and more philosophical form of the argument from final causes.

Based on Aristotelian philosophy, it is sometimes argued that evolution as a material process cannot be the cause of the capabilities or potencies found in living beings. Animals have greater capabilities than plants because they have senses and are able to know things.

Plants lack these powers, but are able to reproduce and grow, unlike the non-living world.

Greater capabilities, however, cannot be given by an agent or force that does not already possess those same capabilities, and evolution as a purely material and non-living process cannot be the cause of life, of growth, of sensory awareness and of the mental faculties of animals. One needs a cause that is somehow proportional to its effects, and evolution, as a material force, is not proportional to the effects it supposedly brings about.

As with the argument based on final causes, the flaw here lies in the assumption that evolution, as a material force lacking the capabilities it confers on animals, cannot be the cause of these powers. If one strictly holds to this assumption, then evolution is an a priori impossibility, no matter what science may tell us.

This, however, is a dangerous situation to be in, especially as the source of this assumption is the Aristotelian philosophy that has been modified many times in the face of the growth of scientific knowledge.

This philosophy held the perfection of the heavenly spheres, the immovability of the earth, and the existence of the four fundamental elements of fire, air, earth and water. These ideas and more were set aside in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary coming from astronomy, physics and chemistry.

Likewise, the science of evolutionary biology demonstrates that it is possible to acquire these capabilities by the ordering forces at work in evolution.

The study of emerging complexity is an important and growing element of how such highly ordered systems can emerge through the action of evolutionary forces, although much work still needs to be done.

Philosophical resistance to evolution

How can theistic philosophy and evolution taken in its established scientific sense be reconciled? Or are those who bundle evolutionism with the science correct?

It is in fact many religiously-minded people who argue that it is not possible to effect such a reconciliation, and put forward philosophical arguments against it.

I believe that such a reconciliation is indeed possible, and that there are six key philosophical points that need to be considered for this reconciliation to take place. These are: contingency, final causality, divine providence, primary and secondary causality, and order. What I present here is the bare outline of what such a reconciliation could look like, recognising that its brevity cannot do it full justice.

Contingency

One concern that religious people have regarding evolution is that somehow, it makes

Continued on Vista 4

Charles Darwin, top and Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller. IMAGES: CNS

God v evolution: a war doomed from the start

Continued from Vista 3

us simply into products of chance, or more specifically, that evolution shows that our existence is dependent on events that could very easily not have happened.

An asteroid striking the earth and wiping out the dinosaurs so many million years ago is just the most dramatic of such contingent events which influenced the evolutionary history of life on earth that ultimately produced us.

There are uncountable other events that, had some conditions been slightly different, we would simply not be here.

This question of randomness and historical contingency, which has frequently been the subject of debate in the context of a theistic approach to evolution, touches on this point.

If the processes which at least in part drive evolutionary change are random, does this not remove any possibility that humans are the product of a divine will?

An evolutionary demonstration of the radical contingency of our existence is not, however, problematic from a theistic point of view.

On the contrary, in traditional Christian philosophy, the entire universe, including man, has been seen as philosophically contingent, meaning that it is possible that it not exist.

There is only one necessary being, and that is God.

In this sense, any scientific demonstration of the radically contingent nature of our existence can be seen as a scientific proof of a concept that has long been part of Christian philosophy: it is or was possible that we not be.

There is then no need to resist the contingency that evolution demonstrates.

There are some who have argued that the chance element of evolution is somehow atheistic by its very nature.

While it is certainly possible to claim that the randomness of events in the evolutionary history of life on earth lies outside of divine providence or excludes the possibility of providence, this is not part of the science of evolution, being a claim that is of its very nature a philosophical one.

The mathematics of randomness in evolutionary biology is no different than that found in so many other sciences, such as quantum mechanics or gas dynamics.

If evolutionary science is atheistic because it makes use of statistics, than so is much of the rest of modern science.

It is, however, a mistake to think that divine providence functions always through necessary causes, as most of the time it functions through contingent ones.

One further problem with the view that the scientific randomness of evolution entails atheism is that it implies that the action of divine providence is somehow detectable by statistical analyses.

This, however, is problematic, not the least because no one claims that the current state of our statistics as applied in the sciences completely describes all causality in the material world, let alone detecting the action of divine providence.

Primary and secondary causality

If evolution is a sufficient explanation for life on earth, does this mean that there is no place for God in this process?

This exclusion is valid only if we understand God as a secondary cause. A problem with seeing God as functioning in an anthropomorphised way to create biological systems and species by miracles is that it reduces His creative action to functioning on the order of secondary causality.

As I have discussed above, God in general does not function through his extraordinary providence, as our own experience suggests.

Rather, He respects the nature of His creation and allows it to function according to that nature. His action in the world is not, however, excluded because of this respect He has for His creation.

Rather, He is able to function through the nature of His creation, and He raises its dignity by having it participate in His will according to its nature, as He does in our own lives.

God wants to act through us, without removing the dignity we derive from being real causes.

He wants to act through us precisely so that we can have the dignity of being real causes.

When God functions in this way, working through and respecting the nature of the universe He has created, He functions as the ultimate cause of things by holding them in being and guiding the course of events according to His ordinary providence.

Trying to make God into a secondary cause, whereby He sets aside the laws of the universe to create the first flagellum or ostrich is fraught with difficulty, both scientifically and philosophically.

On one hand, there is the God of the gaps problem: one’s belief in God is threatened when an “ordinary” secondary cause is found to explain a problem that God was being made use of to explain.

On the other, there is the problem of trying to explain why God is such a strange designer: he seems to act as if he is a material biological process, leaving behind a messy trail of vestigial organs, inefficiency, brutality and disease.

When God is understood as the primary cause of being, these problems disappear, or at least move to a different order.

We do not need to ascribe the limitations of evolution to God, just as we do not need to ascribe human limitation to God, even though He wants to use us as His instruments.

philosophical argument against evolution is based on order.

The argument has many forms, but basically it proceeds from the highly ordered nature of biological systems.

They are very complex, and function very well under many different environmental conditions.

They are so highly ordered that science is continually exposing further levels of complexity in their functioning.

If we cannot yet even approach creating systems of such complexity and order, then surely it is foolishness to believe that such systems are the product of the material forces of evolution.

Many times, it is claimed that this argument is exactly what Thomas Aquinas was arguing in

biological systems as products of natural forces can be viewed as a proof for the existence of God.

Removing the natural forces from this vision of order, however, deprives the argument of the strength needed to make it a proof for the existence of God, and makes it merely an argument for an intelligent designer or an anthropomorphised deity, and a weak argument at that.

Providence

Does evolution do away with the continuing action of God in creation?

If evolution is a sufficient cause to explain life on earth, at least in its material form (ie, excluding the human soul), then have we

his fifth proof for the existence of God.

The order of the universe is certainly a way of appreciating the existence of God, but this order cannot be reduced to something that a created intelligence could be the cause of, because if it were, then this order would not be the proof for the existence of God, but rather an anthropomorphised version of Him.

A biological system, if looked at only as a final product, can indeed be the product of a created intellect, as the ID proponents who allow that an alien could be the designer recognise, and hence does not prove the existence of God.

By contrast, a complex biological system which is seen as the product of the natural laws of the universe cannot be reduced to a product of a created intellect.

A created agent has no power to both create and maintain the laws of the universe such that these laws produce living beings. Only God does.

Hence, looking at highly ordered

banished God from creation, like the deists of the 18th century did? Is there any room for divine providence in an evolutionary view, which excludes a wilful designer on the material order?

Traditionally, a distinction has been made between extraordinary and ordinary divine providence.

Extraordinary providence is a miraculous intervention of God, whereby the ordinary proceedings of the universe are suspended by a direct divine intervention in the world. The ordinary providence of God, however, is His will acting in the world through the causality inherent to this world, and completely according to its nature.

Because of this, it is totally hidden in any local sense, meaning that no scientific experiment can discover the ordinary providence of God.

Our own human experience of the action of God in this world is through this ordinary providence. Very rare are people who claim to experience miracles, but surely believers do not deny divine action

in our lives because we do not have much experience with the extraordinary providence of God.

Indeed, for most people, God must be found in His ordinary providence, and seeking Him elsewhere will inevitably result in disappointment.

In addition, the ordinary providence of God is no less wonderful and beautiful than His extraordinary providence, and in many ways evolution, as part of the ordinary providence of God, demonstrates this.

We can be in awe of the beauty of the living world in its micro and macro scales, without having to claim that they are products of the extraordinary providence of God.

Indeed, it increases the awe believers can feel when confronted with biological systems if we can understand them as products of the ordinary providence of God acting through evolution.

Conclusion

At the end of this year celebrating Darwin’s work, it is regrettable that there still exists some tension between religion and evolutionary science, even if it does not stem so much from official doctrines as from the feelings of believers. Some of this tension is inevitable given the atheistic claims of evolutionism, but there are ways to reconcile evolutionary science with theistic philosophy, as many people have done, and as I have outlined here.

The science of evolutionary biology is very well established, and the residual tension between religion and evolutionary biology harms both.

On one hand, it makes the scientific work of evolutionary biologists suspect in the eyes of many, and on the other, it makes religion appear like a regressive force.

It is far better to reject the bundling of evolutionary biology with evolutionism, the real crux of the problem, than to wage a war over the minutiae of evolutionary biology, which should not be problematic from a religious point of view.

Finally, accepting theistic evolution does not diminish the beauty and awe we can feel when contemplating God’s creation.

On the contrary, God’s is manifest in his works, including in evolution.

Leslie Tomory writes from Canada. This is an edited version of his piece published on Mercatornet.com. He has just finished a PhD in the history of science and technology at the University of Toronto.

Kids bitz ARTISTS WEEK OF THE

SPOTLIGHT ON SAINTS

St Blaise

St

Blaise devoted the earlier years of his life to the study of philosophy, and afterwards became a physician. In the practice of his profession he saw so much of the miseries of life and the hollowness of worldly pleasures, that he resolved to spend the rest of his days in the service of God. From being a healer of bodily ailments, he became a physician of souls, then retired for a time, by divine inspiration, to a cavern where he remained in prayer.

When the Bishop of Sebaste in Armenia died, Blaise, much to the gratification of the inhabitants of that city, was chosen to succeed him.

St Blaise at once began to instruct his people, as much by his example as by his words, and the great virtues and sanctity of the servant of God were attested by many miracles. From all parts, the people came flocking to him for the cure of bodily and spiritual ills.

When the governor of Cappadocia, Agricolaus, began a persecution by order of the Emperor Licinius, St Blaise was seized. After interrogation and a severe scourging, he was hurried off to prison. While he was under custody, a distraught mother, whose only child was dying of a throat disease, threw herself at his feet and implored his intercession. Touched at her grief, he offered up his prayers, and the child was cured.

We honour him on 3 February.

COLOUR

254.PETERANDCORNELIUS (ACTS10:1-8,24-48)

BIBLE ACCENT:

In the Bible, the term “gentile” refers to anyone who is not of Jewish descent. When the disciples began to preach to gentiles as well as Jews, they did not expect the gentiles who became Christians to adopt the practices of the Jewish tradition.

The apostle Paul preached openly against two levels of Christianity, meaning those who were Jewish and those who were not. Instead, in his Letter to the Romans he said God would judge every person “on the basis of faith” and not heritage.

The Acts of the Apostles says that the early followers of Jesus became known as Christians, a term we still use today to refer to people who believe in Jesus.

Q&A

1 What did the angel tell Cornelius to do?

2 What happened when Peter spoke to Cornelius and his family?

WORD SLUETH

254.PETERANDCORNELIUS (ACTS10:1-8,24-48)

CHILDREN’S HILDREN STOR Y TORY

PETER IS TOLD IN A VISION TO VISIT CORNELIUS

By Joe Sarnicola

CORNELIUS was a centurion who believed in God. He prayed every day, and he gave offerings to the Jewish people. One afternoon an angel appeared to Cornelius and said, “Your prayers and almsgiving have ascended as a memorial offering before God. Now send some men to Joppa and summon one Simon who is called Peter.”

As soon as the angel left, Cornelius sent two of his servants, along with a soldier, to find Peter.

At noon the following day, Peter went up on the roof to say his prayers when he had a vision. In his vision, he saw animals that, according to Jewish laws, could not be eaten.

A voice told him to eat what he saw, but he answered, “Certainly not, sir. For never have I eaten anything profane and unclean.”

The voice replied, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”

Three times this happened. As Peter was wondering what the strange vision meant, the voice said to him, “There are three men here looking for you. So get up, go downstairs, and accompany them without hesitation, because I have sent them.”

Peter went with the men to the home of Cornelius. Cornelius told Peter about the visitation by the angel.

Then Peter understood the meaning of his own vision, so he said to Cornelius and the members of his household, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”

Peter summarised how Jesus came to earth and was crucified and rose again, and that Peter had been a witness to all of those things.

While Peter was speaking, the Holy Sprit came down upon those who were hearing him, and they began to glorify God. The men who had accompanied Peter were amazed that the glory of God had now been given to the gentiles as well. Cornelius and many others were baptised that day.

After Peter had returned to Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians asked Peter about what had happened. Peter explained his vision and what the Lord had done with Cornelius and his family.

“As I began to speak,” he told them, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning ... If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?”

Chandlah McCosker

Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School

Teeni Mucciarone

Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School

“He saw in a vision evidently about the ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.” ACTS10:3-4

Vietnam Archdiocese protests police violence as parish under siege

The Hanoi Archdiocese has strongly protested the continuing violent attacks against Catholics at a Dong Chiem parish, after a Redemptorist brother was severely beaten and left unconscious.

The Archdiocese reports that a delegation of Church officials, visiting the Dong Chiem parish to investigate reports of police harassment, “was completely besieged as police at checkpoints prohibited any outsiders to get in.” At the checkpoint, Br Anthony Nguyen Van Tang was brutally assaulted by police officials and carried away, unconscious, by his colleagueswhose clothes were soaked with the Redemptorist brother’s blood.

Attacks on parishioners at Dong Chiem have become commonplace, the Hanoi Archdiocese charged, and police are blocking all entrances to the church, leaving the parish virtually under siege. The Redemptorist order in Vietnam has also lodged an official protest, demanding an end to the police action that began with the demolition of a crucifix at the parish cemetery.

Catholics in Hanoi fear that the government will use its propaganda machinery to stir up public sentiment against Catholics, leading to mob violence against prominent Church targets. Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet has reportedly taken refuge outside the city to avoid confrontations, recognising the likelihood that pro-government crowds will demonstrate outside his residence, demanding his resignation. Elsewhere in Vietnam, a court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced several human-rights activists to prison sentences ranging from five to 16 years. The sentences came after trials conducted under heavy security, rousing protests from human-rights activists.

Government blasts ‘Belgian Ratzinger’ election

Pope Benedict XVI named Bishop André-Mutien Léonard of Namur, a member of the International Theological Commission, as Archbishop of Malines-Brussels on 18 January, succeeding the influential Cardinal Godfried Danneels.

Archbishop Léonard is known for his forthright defense of Catholic moral teaching and his support for Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict’s motu proprio on the extraordinary form of the Mass. Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx condemned the choice. “Church and State are separate in Belgium, but when there are problems in our society, all the social partners sit down around a table, including representatives of secularism and of religion,” she said. “Cardinal Danneels was a man of openness, of tolerance and was able to fit in there. Archbishop Léonard has already regularly challenged decisions made by our parliament. Concerning AIDS, he’s against the use of condoms even while people are dying from it every day. He is against abortion and euthanasia … The Pope’s choice could undermine the compromise that allows us to live together with respect for everyone.” The nation of 7.8 million is 73 per cent Catholic. It has 3,928 parishes, 6,489 priests, 11,771 Sisters and 201 seminarians. The ratio of seminarians to Catholics makes Belgium one of the world’s most “vocation-poor” nations.

Austrian Cardinal apologises to Medjugorje Bishop for visit

Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has written to Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar apologising for any problems he might have caused with his “private” visit to Medjugorje in December. Bishop Peric, who heads the diocese in Bosnia-Herzegovina where Medjugorje is located, had complained that the Austrian Cardinal’s visit lent credence to the reported apparitions there. Bishop Peric, who has strongly cautioned against acceptance of the apparitions, wrote to Cardinal Schönborn earlier this month, expressing “regret” about the Austrian Cardinal’s visit, saying that it had aggravated problems in the Mostar diocese.

Muslim rioters attack Nigerian Catholic parish

At least 40 people were killed when a Muslim mob attacked worshippers outside a Catholic parish church, sparking a major riot. About 200 young Muslim militants assembled at the home of a man who had been accused of killing Christians in riots that took place in November 2008.

From there they assaulted parishioners at the nearby Catholic church before setting fires at local Protestant churches as well. Christian groups responded angrily and fighting spread across the Jos area.

Synod to unite Christians against extremists

Christians must face violence, extremism in Middle East with courage

BY CAROL GLATZ Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Christians in the Middle East are called to be courageous builders of peace in a region too often marred by violence and oppression, said the outline for the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East. Islamic extremism, too, represents a threat to everyone in the region and must be confronted by Christians banding together with Muslims who share the same concerns, it added.

The theme of the Synod, scheduled for 10-24 October, is: The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness: ‘The community of believers was of one heart and mind’. The quote is a description of the unity of the early Church from the Acts of the Apostles.

The Synod’s outline said the two main goals for the October assembly were “to confirm and strengthen Christians in their identity through the Word of God and the sacraments and to deepen ecclesial communion among the particular churches.”

A renewal of faith and improved ecumenical collaboration also will help Christians better understand their role in Muslim societies and how they can aid their nations by being authentic witnesses of Christ, it said. The only way to find the strength to overcome the fear or desperation often felt by the Christian minority and to carry out the mission to “assist your church and your country to grow and develop in peace, justice and equality for all citizens” is to deepen one’s faith, it said.

The lineamenta, or outline, of the Synod’s theme was released during a Vatican press conference on 19 January. The document contained dozens of questions about some of the problems confronting Christians and how the Church can better prepare people for the challenges they face. Bishops’

Christians and Muslims share some of the same concerns, especially regarding the threats of atheism, materialism, relativism and indifference, said the outline, and working together to overcome these tendencies is needed.

Living in a region caught up in so many military conflicts can make working for peace seem impossible, it said, “considering that war and violence are virtually forced upon us.”

“The solution to conflicts rests in the hands of the stronger country in its occupying and inflicting wars on another country. Violence is in the hands of the strong and weak alike, the latter resorting to whatever violence is within reach in order to be free,” it said.

Christians must courageously denounce those who oppress, who work against their country’s best interests, or who resort to violence in order to overcome oppression, said the outline.

conferences and other groups in the region were asked to respond to the questions by 4 April. The responses will form the basis of the Synod’s working document.

A major problem many face in the Middle East is political conflict, for example: the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, divisions in Lebanon and the war in Iraq, which has “unleashed evil forces within the country” that target all Iraqis, the document said.

The increasing influence of Islam on politics and the retreat of Christians from political life, as can be seen in Egypt, have led to intolerance, inequality and injustice, it said.

In some countries, authoritarian regimes force all citizens, including Christians, to silently accept the status quo, it said. The influence globalisation is having on cultures, including in the Middle East, can help promote human rights, but it also risks destroying local value systems, the institution of the family and spirituality, it said. Responding to threats to traditional values, Islamic fundamentalism has spread - blaming the source of all social ills on neglecting Islam, it said.

“These extremist currents, clearly a threat to everyone, Christians and Muslims alike, require a treatment in common,” it said.

It will take a great deal of courage for Christians to convince people that violence has led only to failure and that, with dialogue, “peace is the most realistic path to follow even though the majority of people might reject it.”

The Middle East is the cradle of Christianity, it said, yet Christians have been emigrating from the region in increasingly greater numbers. “We bear a grave responsibility not only to maintain the Christian faith in these holy lands, but more still to maintain the spirit of the Gospel among Christian peoples and (in) their relations with non-Christians,” it said.

Despite its small size, Christianity plays an irreplaceable role in the Middle East, it said, because it upholds the values of peace, justice and forgiveness, which are fundamental to promoting the common good.

While global policies and local politics “will likely have an impact on a decision to stay in our countries or emigrate,” the faithful will find reason to stay in their home countries when they accept their vocation as Christians - finding hope and strength in God and working to bring peace and justice for all, the document said.

Christians are called to proclaim the message of Christ “despite difficulties and persecution,” it said.

Pope to discuss ongoing fallout with Irish

Pope convenes Irish Bishops for talks on priestly sex abuse

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI has convened Ireland’s Bishops for a two day meeting at the Vatican to discuss the ongoing fallout from the priestly sex abuse scandal in the country.

The meeting will take place from 15-16 February and was expected to include the heads of major Vatican agencies. The Vatican press office confirmed the meeting, but did not specify what would be on the agenda.

According to sources in Ireland, the Pope will address the Bishops and each Bishop will have seven minutes to offer his views on the crisis. The meeting was expected to produce some concrete pro-

posals, with final reflections by the Pope. Each Bishop was then to return to his diocese for 17 February Ash Wednesday liturgies, addressing Catholics on how the Church intends to move forward.

The Vatican meeting was announced as the Pope was preparing a special pastoral letter to Irish Catholics on the sex abuse cases and the damage it has inflicted on the Church. Bishops said they expected the papal letter to outline several initiatives, including public services of repentance for Irish Bishops and priests.

Last November, a report by an independent Commission of Investigation, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, looked at the handling of 325 sex abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the years 1975-2004.

The report concluded that during those years, rather than being concerned about the vic-

tims, Catholic leaders were more interested in “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets.”

The report caused widespread indignation among the Irish faithful and criticism of Church leadership, as well as calls for the resignation of some Bishops.

In December, the Pope discussed the situation with Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland, president of the Irish Bishops’ conference, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin. In a statement afterward, the Vatican said the Pope shared “the outrage, betrayal and shame” felt by Irish Catholics over the sexual abuse cases and announced his intention to write a pastoral letter. Since then, four Irish Bishops who were named in the Murphy report have offered their resignations.

Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet

Bishop André-Mutien Léonard

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn

A Christian prays during Mass at St Justin Church in the West Bank town of Nablus in January. Pope Benedict XVI has announced a Synod on the Middle East to take place in October. The Pope said the Synod would look at various problems faced by minority Christian communities. CNS

Benedict visits Rome synagogue

Visiting Rome synagogue, Pope honours memory of Holocaust victims

BY CINDY WOODEN Catholic News Service

ROME - Laying a wreath at a memorial to Roman Jews rounded up by the Nazis in 1943 and joining in a standing ovation to a dwindling group of Holocaust survivors, Pope Benedict XVI broke the ice with Rome’s Jewish community even before he began to speak.

The Pope made his first visit to Rome’s main synagogue on 17 January, strongly affirming the Catholic Church’s commitment to improving Catholic-Jewish relations, its respect and appreciation for Jewish faith, its condemnation of anti-Semitism and his own hope that Catholics and Jews can work together to bring biblical values back to society.

Pope Benedict began by telling some 1,500 people packed into the synagogue that he came to “confirm and deepen” the dialogue and to demonstrate “the esteem and the affection which the Bishop and the Church of Rome, as well as the entire Catholic Church, have towards this community and all Jewish communities around the world.”

But he also responded to a widespread impression within the Jewish community, especially the community in Rome, that Pope Pius XII did not do enough to speak out against the Holocaust. Pope Benedict’s decision in December to advance the sainthood cause of Pope Pius led for calls within the Rome community for the visit to be cancelled and some people boycotted the meeting.

The Pope said he could not come to the synagogue without remembering the Jews of Rome “who were snatched from their homes, before these very walls, and who with tremendous brutality were killed at Auschwitz.”

“How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children?” he asked.

While many people remained indifferent to Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews, he said, “many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with

courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude.”

Throughout the meeting, Holocaust survivors, wearing light and dark blue striped scarves, and their children wept at mentions of the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. Without mentioning Pope Pius by name, Pope Benedict told them: “The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”

Welcoming the Pope to the synagogue, Riccardo Pacifici, President of Rome’s Jewish Community, said the only reason he was born was because his father had been hidden by nuns in a convent in Florence, but many others were not so lucky.

“The weight of history is felt even at today’s event because there are wounds that are still open and cannot be ignored. For this reason, we also respect those who decided not to be here today,” he said.

Pacifici told the Pope: “The silence of Pius XII during the Shoah is still painful today.”

If Pope Pius had spoken out more loudly, he said, “maybe he would not have been able to stop the death trains, but he would have sent a signal, a word of comfort, of human solidarity, for our brothers and sisters who were transported to the chimneys of Auschwitz.”

Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, spoke about the responsibility of people of faith to protect God’s creation, starting with human life and human dignity.

“The silence of God or our own incapacity to hear his voice in the face of the world’s evils is an inscrutable mystery,” the rabbi said. “But the silence of man is on a different level; it makes us wonder, it challenges us, and it does not escape justice.”

The rabbi said that despite continuing tensions, Catholics and Jews must move forward in their dialogue.

All of the speakers mentioned Pope John Paul II’s visit to the synagogue in 1986 and every mention was met with clapping, but the longest applause came when Pope Benedict greeted the retired chief rabbi, 94 year old Elio Toaff, who had hosted Pope John Paul’s visit.

In his speech, Pope Benedict said that “the closeness and spiritual fraternity” of Catholics and Jews flows from sharing the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament.

“It is in pondering her own mys-

Pope appoints another woman undersecretary of Vatican council

Pope Benedict XVI has named a laywoman undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, marking the first time in more than 20 years that a woman has served as undersecretary of a pontifical council.

The appointment of Flaminia Giovanelli was announced at the Vatican on 21 January. At the justice and peace council, she succeeds Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, who held the position until 2006. The post has been vacant since then. Giovanelli, 61, is a political scientist who has worked at the council since 1974.

As a council official, she had been responsible for issues dealing with development, poverty and labour from the point of view of Catholic social teaching.

The last woman to serve as undersecretary of a pontifical council was Rosemary Goldie, an Australian, who held the position from 1966-76 at the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

Giovanelli will not be the highest-ranking woman at the Vatican, though. Salesian Sr Rosanna Enrica serves as undersecretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

In a 21 January statement, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Justice and Peace Council, said the appointment of Giovanelli “demonstrates the concern of the Church for the promotion of the dignity and rights of women in the world,” which is one area of special concern to his office.

tery that the Church, the People of God of the New Covenant, discovers her own profound bond with the Jews, who were chosen by the Lord before all others to receive his word,” he said.

Pope Benedict said the Ten Commandments are central to the values that Christians and Jews share with each other and must share with an increasingly secularised world.

Acknowledging one God as the creator of the universe, calling for respect for human life and upholding the dignity of the traditional family, the Ten Commandments are “a beacon and a norm of life in justice and love, a ‘great ethical code’ for all humanity,” he said.

The Pope told his audience that while Christians and Jews pray to the same God, “they often remain unknown to each other. It is our duty, in response to God’s call, to strive to keep open the space for dialogue, for reciprocal respect, for growth in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time, which invite us to cooperate for the good of humanity in this world created by God.”

After the Pope’s visit, Rabbi Di Segni told reporters, “I think the speech calmed the atmosphere,” which was tense after Pope Benedict advanced the cause of Pope Pius. “My first reaction is decisively positive,” the Rabbi said.

Pacifici, the president of the Rome community, said, “I think he understood what we were saying.”

Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, told reporters that Catholics and Jews still have many issues to discuss and resolve, but the Pope’s visit marked a strong step forward.

Anna Foa, a member of the community and a historian who regularly contributes articles to the Vatican newspaper, said, “I was very content. I think it went really well. I believe the Pope’s speech marked an opening on several points,” including “the irrevocable nature” of the Jews’ covenant with God, the horror of the Holocaust and his firm commitment to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching of respect for the Jews.

“I think it was a speech filled with great openness and I hope it means it will be possible to leave behind us all these misunderstanding and these real differences, which exist on many points. But you engage in dialogue with people who disagree,” she said.

Giovanelli, who was born in Rome and went to high school in Brussels, Belgium, earned a political science degree from La Sapienza University in Rome, a diploma from the librarian programme at the Vatican Library and a degree in religious studies from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Since 2006, she has served on the Joint Working Group of the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches.

Jewish writer blasts media treatment of Pius XII, Benedict XVI

The Vatican newspaper has reprinted a 20 January Corriere della Sera article blasting media caricatures of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Pius XII in their dealings with Jews.

The article was written by the French Jewish intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who discussed how the words and deeds of the two Popes belied the media caricatures. Mr Lévy also drew attention to the little-known fact that Rolf Hochhuth, whose 1963 play The Deputy created the ‘black legend’ surrounding Pope Pius XII, defended Holocaust denier David Irving in a 2005 interview with a German publication Junge Freiheit

Notre Dame task force calls for new policies, research on life issues

A task force appointed in September by Holy Cross Fr John Jenkins, President of the University of Notre Dame, has issued a set of preliminary recommendations designed to “broaden and deepen the pro-life culture” at the university.

The recommendations include undergraduate “witness to life” research opportunities in various academic disciplines; adoption of a policy statement on the university’s “support for Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death”; and guidelines on how to “avoid formal or immediate material complicity in evils such as abortion and torture” in charitable gifts and investments.

The Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life also urged the university to find “strategies to make its current supportive policies toward pregnant students better known”; to create and support conferences, consultations and courses “intended to inform the campus community on issues pertaining to life”; and to encourage its alumni to be involved in pro-life witness at their own parishes.

Co-chaired by law professor Margaret Brinig and John Cavadini, chairman of the theology department and director of the Institute for Church Life, the task force was created at the start of the current academic year following what Fr Jenkins called “the vigorous discussions surrounding President (Barack) Obama’s visit” to the campus in May. Fr Jenkins’ decision to invite President Obama to deliver the commencement speech and present him with an honorary law degree set off a firestorm of criticism by at least 70 US Bishops.

Fr John Jenkins with pro-abortion US President Barack Obama during the May 2009 Commencement speech which drew fire from at least 70 US Bishops.

Pope Benedict XVI greets Rabbi Elio Toaff, the former chief rabbi of Rome, during the Pope’s visit to the main synagogue in Rome on 17 January.

PHOTO: CNS/ L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTERS

Faith, prayer helps me be a better person

Rachel McCann

Ifind the best way to pray is when I am home by myself. Generally, it is before I go to bed. It is a nice time to reflect on what I have, what I want to achieve for the future and the people I want to look after. I don’t set a time every day to pray on the dot but when I am alone I want to be thankful for the things I have. It is nice to talk to God about something like that.

How I Pray

I am really close to my family, especially my nana on my dad’s side. She is a very devout Catholic and is always lighting candles for us in Church. I pray for her health and safety. Both my nanas have been role models for me for different reasons.

with Debbie Warrier

When they found out that I won the 2009 Australian Catholics Young Journalist Award they were getting copies of the Australian Catholics magazine (where the competition was being run) and showing me. I said, “Yeah, I know. I have already seen this one.”

I entered the competition because it was part of a school assignment at Santa Maria College. I wrote about a Croatian fisherman who fled the Nazi occupation of his country as a child in World War II, questioned his faith because of his wartime experiences and found it again in an Egyptian camp where he resettled with his family. He is now an Australian resident. My teacher said the best articles would be entered into the magazine. Mine was one of the four chosen. When I found out I had won the Senior Section award I couldn’t speak! It was very exciting.

Amber is a very close friend from school and she encouraged me to do the competition. She is a great role model for me. She is Catholic too and has no problem telling people, “That’s my religion and that’s what I believe in.” That is what I love about Amber and being around her.

So many people love her for that. She has so many friends and so many guy friends. It just shows you don’t have to hide your religion. You can express it and still be really beautiful and friendly.

We have the most gorgeous parish priest, Fr Francis Ughanze. He is one of the funniest guys I know. What gets me is when he sees me he’s like, “Rachel, how are you? How’s your brother?” He’s Catholic but he lives his life like anyone else. He is so friendly and he has got a really powerful faith.

When he is talking in Mass and reflecting on the Gospel he always has really relevant things to say, particularly about our society. He is not afraid to say it.

So Fr Francis is definitely a strong influence on my faith.

Some of the traditions of the Church are not based on the beliefs of modern society. Young people have a lot of challenges facing them. Practising their faith may seem un-cool. I am not the most devout Catholic but I think the beliefs, values and rules of the Church are ones that anyone should follow and believe in. It is about treating other people right and respecting yourself.

That is what I find most valuable in my faith - the way it can help me be a better person.

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

Meet the unknown Nobel laureate

In clear view

By Guy Crouchback

Despite his Nobel Prize, the name of Norman Borlaug, who died recently aged 95, is relatively unknown. This is also despite the fact that he was described recently by Gregg Easterbrook in The Wall Street Journal as arguably having “saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived”.

Born in the USA, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations, teaching governments and farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the modern agricultural techniques which brought about what came to be known as The Green Revolution.

It was this that prevented the global famines which were widely predicted when the world’s population increased rapidly after World War II.

In 1943, Borlaug went to work in the black-blocks of Mexico, researching on new high-yield, low-pesticide “dwarf wheat”.

Today, this forms a substantial portion of the wheat which feeds the world.

Borlaug stepped up this work in 1950, when the world was producing 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people.

Easterbrook says: “By 1952, with Borlaug’s concepts becoming common, production was 1.9 billion tons of grain for 5.6 billion men and women: 2.8 times the food for 2.2 billion people. Global grain yields more than doubled

Norman Borlaug

during the period, from half a ton per acre to 1.1 tons; yields of rice and other foodstuffs improved similarly.

“Hunger declined in sync: From 1965 to 2005, global per capita food consumption rose from 2,798 calories daily from 2,063, with most of the increase in developed nations.

“In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation declared that malnutrition stands ‘at the lowest level in human history,’ despite the global population having trebled in a single century.”

Biologist Paul R Ehrlich wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over ... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked upon now.”

Ehrlich continued that: “I have yet to

meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971,” and: “India couldn’t possibly feed 200 million more people by 1980.”

Even as this was being written. Borlaug’s techniques had multiplied India’s crop production and were spreading all over the undeveloped world. India was becoming a food exporter.

Famines remained in certain parts of the world, such as parts of Africa, but they were the result of bad government, not the failure of agricultural science.

Borlaug was scornful of trendy Western environmentalists who stated that it was somehow culturally “inappropriate” for Africans, Indians and East Asians to use modern farming techniques.

Of environmental lobbyists he stated: “Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists.

“They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger.

“They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels.

“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertiliser and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

He served for six years as a trustee for the Christian non-profit organisation Bread for the World.

Science philosopher Denis Dutton said recently that for the catastrophist, India becoming a food exporter was disturbing.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. They blame Borlaug for spoiling the fun.”

Do we forgive those who aren’t sorry?

Forgiving the unrepentant

In an earlier column, you said we must always be prepared to forgive those who have hurt us. Does this apply even when they are not sorry for what they have done? I thought even God did not forgive those who are not sorry.

By Fr John Flader

First of all, you are right in saying that not even God forgives us if we are not sorry. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this clear when speaking of those who go to hell: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice” (CCC 1033).

If the person were to repent, God would forgive them and embrace them in His merciful love. But if they are not sorry for having offended Him, they cannot enter into the communion of life and love with God that is heaven.

Returning to your question, forgiving someone who is not sorry is always hard. Does God expect us to do it? Looking at the Scriptures, the answer seems to be clearly yes.

First of all, Jesus does not make any distinctions when He tells us we must always forgive our neighbour. After giving us the Our Father He adds, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you;

but if you do not forgive men their tres-

passes, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt 6:14-15).

It would seem from this that it makes no difference whether our neighbour is sorry or not for having offended us. We must always forgive him.

Then too, Jesus gives us His own example of forgiving people who are not sorry for having offended Him.

On the Cross He asks the Father to forgive those who are tormenting Him: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).

It is almost certain that among those who were crucifying Jesus there were some – perhaps many – who were not sorry at all for what they were doing. But Jesus still asked the Father to forgive them.

When He asks us to love one another as He has loved us (cf Jn 13:34), He is undoubtedly asking us to forgive those who are not sorry for having hurt us, just as He asks the Father to forgive those who have hurt Him.

Another important consideration is that we cannot be at peace with ourselves, with our neighbour or with God until we have forgiven everyone who has hurt us, independently of whether they are sorry or not.

We would not want to face our Lord in the judgement with the burden on our soul of not having forgiven someone who has hurt us.

And we could not pray the Our Father sincerely, saying “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”, if there is someone we have not forgiven.

It seems clear from all these passages that we must be ready to forgive everyone who has hurt us, regardless of whether they are sorry or not.

Included in the act of forgiving is asking the Father to forgive them, as Jesus did. And if they are not sorry, we can

ask the Father to grant them the grace to be sorry. If they know we have forgiven them, this very fact can make it easier for them to repent. We should remember too that we can never be certain that the other person is not sorry for having hurt us. Perhaps they were not sorry last month, or last week, or yesterday for that matter, but for all we know they have since repented.

We should always give them the benefit of the doubt. In short, it is a source of great joy and peace to forgive everyone who has hurt us.

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

Book Review

THE RIDDLE OF FATHER HACKETT

by Brenda Niall

Pub. National Library of Australia, Canberra

REVIEWED BY

‘RTONY EVANS

ead no history, only biography’ a father advises his son in a now seldom-read novel by Disraeli, and then justifies his remark by arguing that good biography is ‘history without the theory’.

True to this advice The Riddle of Father Hackett is not only an engrossing account of an interesting life, but also a history of the times in which the subject lived, both in Ireland and Australia.

It is a book that will grip all those who have Irish connections and, further, all those who are interested in the history of the Australian Catholic Church – which should include the majority of readers of The Record

The author begins by suggesting that biographies of priests are rare because priests lead - for the most part - hidden lives, and much of their work is of a confidential nature – not the sort to attract a publisher. Such might have been the case with Fr Hackett SJ but Brenda Niall, an experienced biographer, had the advantage, when a child, of a family friendship with the priest in his latter years. His humour, his courtesy, his disarming candour and stories of his early life in Ireland, made a lasting impression on her.

Much later, Niall realised that there was a lot more to that spare, quick-moving, bicycling Jesuit than appeared on the surface. This was confirmed when, long after his death from a cycling accident in 1954, the Jesuit archive collection of Hackett’s letters and diaries was made available to her. The result is an exciting, and, at times, a poignant tale.

William Hackett was born into a large middle class family in Kilkenny in 1878. His father was a well-established Catholic doctor whose popularity, reputation and health suffered when he publicly appeared on a platform with Parnell, the tarnished leader of the Home Rule Party in Westminster. Tempers flared and missiles were thrown by an angry crowd.

While riding in a carriage with him, a stone intended for Parnell hit Dr Hackett in the eye, smashed his glasses, and permanently affected his sight.

Charles Stewart Parnell –“The Chief” - was the hope of the Republican cause until his involvement in a squalid divorce case and his subsequent marriage to Mrs Katherine O’Shea.

Here was an act that split the rigorously orthodox Catholic country, ended Parnell’s career, and, in the short term, severely damaged the Republican cause.

The Bishops condemned him; many clergy preached against him. The nation divided on the issue, and even the daughters of Dr Hackett were, for a time, banned from attending their convent school.

The young William, also of school age at the time, could not but be affected by these events.

REVIEWS

His loyalty to his father and the family’s friendship with Parnell sowed the first seeds of his life-long Republican sympathies. Later, these grew and matured when, as a young priest, he witnessed the poverty of his people, the injustices of absentee landlords and the revengeful tyranny of the British troops, the ‘Black and Tans’, after the Easter Rising of 1916. The ‘Riddle’ of Fr Hackett SJ is to what extent he was involved in the resistance movement against British rule in Ireland and why he was suddenly sent out to Australia by the Jesuit authorities. Niall makes clear that he was not a participant in military activities, his role was more likely to be as an intermediary, a source of information, a messenger.

His was clearly humanitarian work. What makes the story of his life so compelling at this point was his friendship with the leaders of the Republican cause, with Michael Collins, Erskine Childers, with Eamon de Valera and others. Their revealing correspondence with Hackett enriches the story.

The priest was due to meet Michael Collins in Cork on the night before the fatal skirmish that ended with the untimely death of the Nationalist leader.

Fr Hackett’s closest friendship seems to have been with Erskine Childers and his wife Molly, whose letter to Hackett (then in Australia) recounting the execution of her brave, utterly sincere patriotic husband is almost unbearably moving. Erskine Childers is best known for his classic spy tale, The Riddle of the Sands, revered by all yachtsmen and from which, of course, the title of Brenda Niall’s book is derived. Bound by obedience as a member of his Order, Fr Hackett took up his new life in a Melbourne Diocese in the Spring of 1922. ‘My world has been turned upside down’ he wrote. It is to the biographer’s credit that this second part of the book is no less absorb-

Book Review

ATHEIST DELUSIONS: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

By David Hart

REVIEWED BY TONY

Oing than the first. With the autocratic, eccentric Dr Daniel Mannix ruling the Diocese at that time, we are never far from Irish politics and Fr Hackett maintains his connections with his old country. He is appointed by Mannix as chaplain adviser to BA Santamaria’s ‘Movement’, clandestinely set up to fight communist dominance of the Unions. There is much new material revealed here concerning Church politics of the 1950s derived from the author’s employment in Santamaria’s office at that time

With the practical support of Mannix, Hackett set up and directed the Catholic Library in Melbourne (now known as the Caroline Chisholm Library).

He held seminars and lectures and amassed a valuable collection of books which he invariably had difficulty paying for. He believed in the imperative of educating and encouraging a Catholic intellectual elite and for this purpose was closely involved in establishing the Newman and Campion Societies in Melbourne.

In between times, this busy man was variously teacher, priest attached to St Ignatius parish, Richmond, and Principal of Newman College, Kew. The latter post evidently was not one of his successes. He was a poor administrator who favoured intellectual accomplishments in young Catholic men rather than sporting ones, and fell foul of the influential Old Boys Association. The dispute ended in his humiliating dismissal.

Perhaps the most memorable and amusing scenes in the book concern the irksome friendship between Mannix and Hackett and how, for 14 years, Fr Hackett was commanded to accompany the ageing, grey, autocratic Archbishop on his austere six weeks’ holiday at Portsea on Port Phillip Bay. Mannix was demanding of Hackett’s time and relied on his company even though he could appear ungrateful, curt, and at times insulting. Hackett referred to himself as Mannix’s poodle.

This is a fascinating journey through the life and times of a truly meritorious priest who engaged with the world but was not worldly, and who never compromised his vocation to the priesthood.

The Riddle of Father Hackett is clearly ‘history without the theory’ and is highly recommended.

Tony Evans’ biography of the architect William Wardell, Building with Conviction is to be published by Connor Court early this year.

EVANS

ne of the smaller books published by that prolific British historian, AL Rowse (1903-1997), was entitled The Use of History. The work was directed mainly at young people to encourage them to study history, listing among its many virtues the necessity of a knowledge of history on entering many of the professions, its pleasures, and how a knowledge of history is the key to understanding the behaviour of humans when confronted by challenging situations. History helps us to understand ourselves.

Rowse’s little book appeared immediately after World War ll and, although the author himself was known as a querulous, arrogant academic, his colleagues generally were, at that time, a fairly peaceful lot and confined their polite disagreements to relatively minor matters.

The study of history was then enjoying a peaceful interlude ruffled only by Rowse’s more controversial book claiming to prove the identity of the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Hugh Trevor-Roper’s erroneous claim that the Hitler Diaries were genuine.

But that serenity and polite discourse associated with history studies was about to change. The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the awful truth of Stalin’s Gulag and concomitant propaganda, showed that history could be used as a powerful weapon employed to support a chosen ideology. This certainly was not one of the uses of history that Rowse would have had in mind.

With the publication of George Orwell’s 1984 in the same year as Rowse’s book, the predictions of ‘Big Brother is watching you’, ‘Newspeak’, and government control of history, entered the language as ominous bywords. The famous quotation from the book, ‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,’ was recognised as a truism.

History would be no longer a disinterested study conducted in a gentlemanly fashion; from 1984 and beyond, much history became imbued with relativist theory; teachers, feminists, politicians, journalists, as well as many historians, would either carelessly, or deliberately, reinterpret past events to suit their prevailing ideology. Inevitably, war broke out - the ‘history wars.’

Upright, but severely wounded in the wars, has been Christianity, or more specifically, the Catholic Church, battered and bleeding from the writings of fashionable atheists whose ignorant and often-deliberate misuse of history, appeals to a vast, credulous public.

Attacks on Christianity, published in novel or non-fiction form, are as old as the invention of printing itself, but the latest round in the long campaign was launched with the appearance of Dan Brown’s notorious Da Vinci Code (described by one reviewer as ‘barely literate’).

Then came Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, followed by Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith

The latest salvo is fired by Professor of Philosophy, Daniel C Dennett, with a work entitled Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

No doubt they will keep coming.

Each of the above-named (with the possible exception of Dennett’s book) is popular and easy to read, and - including Dennett - uses false history as a weapon with which to attack religion, and, specifically, the Catholic Church. The authors cite the usual suspects - the calumnies always aimed at the Church by popular sceptics: the treatment of Galileo, the ‘true nature’ of the Crusades, the bloodthirsty Inquisition, and the burning of heretics and witches and, lumping all religions together, accusing ‘religion’ of being at the heart of all wars

and strife. The constant barrage of antiCatholic propaganda (for that is what it amounts to) is bound to inflict injuries on those without sufficient historical knowledge to launch a counter-attack. In mixed social gatherings, one or other of these books is bound to be discussed.

For those caught in the crossfire and, indeed, anyone who merely wants a learned, authoritative response to the ‘professional atheists’ accusations, I recommend most strongly Professor David Hart’s new book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Here indeed is the counterattack we have been waiting for. As Catholic lay apologist George Weigel puts it, ‘This is Hart in full, all guns firing and the band playing on the deck.’

Hart contends that much of today’s popular anti-Catholic writing is based not only on profound conceptual confusions but also upon facile simplifications of history or even outright historical ignorance. He supports each of his counter-arguments with impressive erudition arguing that Christianity was the most radical revolution in Western history – a revolution, which transformed the ancient world. Compassion, pity, and charity as we understand them, he states, are not objects found in nature like trees or butterflies but are historically formed by cultural convictions that, without Christianity, need never have arisen at all.

This is a book soundly recommended to battle-scarred Catholics. Hart rallies the faint of heart, like Henry V before Agincourt: He shows how, in case after case, atheist publicists have misused history to bolster their creeds.

He calls them ‘the bad, popular historians’ who repeat or invent the myths they perpetrate. The simplifications they promote, he laments, tend to determine how most of us view the past.

“Christians ought not to surrender the past” he writes, “but instead should deepen their own collective memory of what the Gospel has been in human history. Perhaps more crucially, they ought not to surrender the future to those who know so little of human nature as to imagine that a society ‘liberated’ from Christ would love justice, or truth, or beauty, or compassion, or even life”.

David Hart is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Theology, Providence College, in the USA. He writes often with a touch of humour.

He deplores the decline in standards of contemporary religious criticism. Much of it, he thinks, is inconsequential and rubbishy but has to be answered because of its popular appeal.

Towards the end of the book, Hart admits he doubts the survival of Christianity in Europe and looks ever hopefully towards Africa, Asia, and the Far East where rescue may be found.

He writes that although for centuries the Christian story shaped and suffused our civilisation but ‘now, however, slowly but relentlessly, another story is replacing it and any attempt to reverse the process is probably futile.

This touch of gloom does not detract from Hart’s fighting spirit. His fearless counter-attack and his erudition, his disrespect for shoddy history, cannot but raise the spirits of those of us who tend to ‘sit by the waters of Babylon and weep’. Rowse, and even the agnostic Orwell, might have approved.

Order the book now ...

Fr Hackett on left with Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne.

PANORAMA

A roundup of events in the Archdiocese

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

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

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

FRIDAY, 29 JANUARY

Medjugorje Evening of Prayer

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

SATURDAY, 30 JANUARY

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

SUNDAY, 31 JANUARY

Celebration of Feast of St Brigid

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

TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY

MMP Cenacle Mass

10.30am at St Augustine Church, 38 Gladstone Street, Rivervale. Rosary followed by Holy Mass, celebrated by Fr Paul Carey. Come and join us for our 1st Tuesday Cenacle.

BYO lunch to share. Enq: 9341 8082.

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes

7pm at Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. Mass and Novena.

3 February, 7pm Novena: 4 February, 7pm Novena and Blessing of Children: 5 February, 6pm Eucharistic Adoration, 7pm Mass, Anointing of the Sick and Novena:

6 February, 6pm Vigil Mass and Novena, fete later:

7 February, 6pm Novena: 8 to 10 February, 7pm Novena: 11 February 7pm, Concelebrated Mass with Fr Andre FMM. Enq: Gordon 9377 4722 or Judy 9275 5827.

TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY TO THURSDAY, 4 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes Novena in Three Parishes

7pm, 2 February at St Peter’s Parish, Wood Street, Inglewood. Mass, Novena devotions, procession and Benediction. Bring a plate. 3 and 4 February at 7pm Novena devotions, procession and Benediction. Children will be blessed at the 4 February celebrations.

WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY

The Great Adventure – A Journey through the Bible

7-9pm at St Simon Peter Catholic Church, Prendiville Avenue, Ocean Reef. Discover a deeper insight into God’s ongoing plan of salvation for the world. How the Bible timeline unlocks the many questions of biblical places and events. How and where the various books of the Bible fit in. An Easy-to-Follow Programme you will not want to miss. Enq: Monique 9300 4885 or Dominic 0447 053 347, 6253 8041

FRIDAY, 5 FEBRUARY

Pro-Life Witness

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

Healing Mass

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

FRIDAY, 5 FEBRUARY TO SUNDAY, 7 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes Novena and Mass in Three Parishes

7pm, 5 February; 6pm, 6 February, and 5.30pm, 7 February at All Saints Parish, 7 Liwara Place, Greenwood. There will be Mass, Novena devotions, procession and Benediction. The elderly will be blessed at the 7 February celebrations. Bring a plate.

SATURDAY, 6 FEBRUARY

Day With Mary

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

Witness for Life

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

SUNDAY, 7 FEBRUARY

Divine Mercy

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

Taize Worship

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

MONDAY, 8 FEBRUARY TO THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes Novena and Mass in Three Parishes

6pm, 8 February at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, Girrawheen Avenue, Girrawheen. Mass Novena devotions, procession and Benediction. 9 February at 7pm Novena devotions, procession and Benediction. 10 February at 7pm Novena devotions, procession, Benediction and blessing of the sick. 11 February at 7pm, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, Mass, Candlelight procession and Benediction. Burning of petitions. Bring a plate. Enq: Jim 0411 615 239 or 9342 6049.

WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY

The Julian Singers - Rehearsals

7.30-9.30pm at Adel Quinn Centre, 36 Windsor Street, East Perth. We are inviting new members to come and join this Liturgical Choir. Come along to enjoy singing and friendship. Enq: Chris 9276 2736 and Mary 9443 3963.

THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

Group 50 Prayer Group

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

Healing Mass for those touched by cancer 7pm at Ss John and Paul Church, Willetton. Prayer to St Peregrine, Patron Saint of those with cancer, veneration of the relic and Mass with anointing of the sick. Enq: Lumen Christi Centre 9223 1339.

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY

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

SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

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

Divine Mercy Healing Mass

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

SUNDAY, 14 FEBRUARY

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes St Catherine’s Catholic Church, Gingin. 12 noon, BYO lunch, 1pm Holy Rosary, Exposition, Hymns, Benediction and Blessing of the sick followed at 1.30pm with Marian Procession. 2.30pm Holy Mass at the Grotto. 3.30pm tea provided. Transport booking, Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877. Transport cost $15 per person return. Please confirm coach bookings by 7 February. Enq: Sheila 9575 4023 or Fr Paul 9571 1839.

TUESDAY, 16 FEBRUARY

Laurence Freeman OSB Talks

Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, 9am at Notre Dame University, Mouat Street, Fremantle. Talk on Making the Most of Crisis: How a Contemplative Mind Grows. Enq: ccreedon1@nd.edu.au or 9433 0580.

7.30pm at St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Salvado Road, Subiaco, talk on Hope and Change; Christian Meditation in Troubled Times. Charge is $5. Enq: christianmeditation@iinet.net.au or 9444 5810.

Faith Enrichment Series - Fr Joseph Parkinson STL PhD, Director L J Goody Bioethics Centre

7.30 to 9pm at St Benedict Parish, 115 Ardross Street, Ardross. Talks on, ethics, faith and conscience and discuss how to apply ethics to our daily lives, bringing our Faith to life, explaining the role of conscience in decision making and giving us strategies for living a moral life. The presentation will be followed by coffee and tea. Enq: Wim 0421 636 763.

MONDAY, 22 FEBRUARY

Study Course

4pm at the Resources Centre for Personal Development, Fremantle. The study will be on pastoral care, prayer and the study of relationship principles in the New Testament. Enq: 9418 1439 or 0409 405 585.

FRIDAY, 26 FEBRUARY

Medjugorje – Evening of Prayer

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

GENERAL NOTICES

Ecumenical World Day of Prayer

The service has been prepared by the World Day of Prayer Committee of Cameroon. The theme for the service is ‘Let everything that has breath praise God.’ We invite you to join in a service in your area. Contact your nearest church or check your local paper close to 5 March for the time and place of your local service. The city service will be held at McNess Hall adjoining St Andrew’s Uniting Church situated at the corner of St George’s Terrace and Pier Street, Perth commencing at 1pm.

Perpetual Adoration

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

Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation2010 Enrolments and Scholarships

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

Acts 2 College of Mission and Evangelisation Bible Study Sessions for Parishes

Commencing 27 January at 7.30pm, 30 January and 6 February from 10am to 4pm respectively at 67 Howe Street, Osborne Park. Genesis to Jesus, complete the course and be trained to deliver it in your own parish

for Lent and Easter. All resources provided. Registration required. Enq: Jane 9202 6859 or 0401 692 690.

EVERY TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY

Adventures in Matthew

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

EVERY SUNDAY

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation

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

Latin Mass

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

EVERY MONDAY

Lunchtime Meditation

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

EVERY 2ND WEDNESDAY

Year of the Priest Holy Hour

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

EVERY 1ST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

Taize Prayer

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

Holy Hour

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

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

Sacred Heart Catholic Society

7pm at Our Lady of Assumption Church, 356 Grand Promenade, Dianella. There will be Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary and prayer. All welcome. Enq: Franco 9275 4504.

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the Two Hearts

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

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life

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

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

ACCOMMODATION

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

FURNITURE REMOVAL

duty

28 Type of sin

29 John Paul II’s given name

31 Old Testament high priest

32 “For our ____, He was crucified…”

33 ____ wide the doors to Christ

35 Easter flower

36 Son of Eve

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

GUADALUPE HILL TRIGG www.beachhouseperth.com Ph: 0400 292 100.

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

BUILDING TRADES

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph: Nigel 9242 2952.

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

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

HEALTH

FREE Therapeutic Massage for women, Inglewood, Ph: 9473 0989.

LOSE WEIGHT STAY HEALTHY Herbalife. Free support. Ph: 02 9807 5337

COUNSELLING

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHOTHERAPY www.peterwatt.com.au, Ph: 9203 5278.

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

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

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

KINLAR VESTMENTS

Quality hand-made and decorated vestments: Albs, Stoles, Chasubles, altar linen, banners etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph: Vicki 9402 1318 or 0409 114 093.

FOR SALE

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

ALL AREAS Mike Murphy

Ph: 0416 226 434.

IN MEMORIAM

KIRKWOOD (MAUREEN) In loving memory of my darling Mother, who died on 3 February 1985. Twenty-five years have passed since that sad day, but your love remains fresh in my heart. Thank you for being so wonderfully good to us, and so kind to all people. May God be with you always, Mother Darling, and with dear Pappa also. You are both constantly in my prayers. May Perpetual Light shine upon them. May they Rest in Peace. Moira.

MAJOR, THE HONOURABLE

DEREK IAN DE SOTO-PHILLIPS

1929-2009. Departed this life in RPH, 20/12/09 attended by his wife, family and friends. Mrs Patricia de Soto-Phillips.

BOOK REPAIRS

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

NEEDED

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

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

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Walking with Him

3 W St Blaise, bishop, martyr (O), St Ansgar, bishop (O)

Gr 2 Sam 24:2.9-17 Forgive your servant

Ps 31:1-2.5-7 The guilt of my son

Mk 6:1-6 This is the carpenter

1Cor 12:31-13:13 Faith, hope and love

1 M

Gr 2 Sam 15:13-14.30;16:5-13 David cursed

Ps 3:2-8 The Lord upholds me Mk 5:1-20 Gerasene demoniac

2 T THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD (Feast)

Wh Mal 3:1-4 The Lord is coming

Ps 23:7-10 Let the king enter

Heb 2:14-18 The fear of death

Lk 2:22-40 An upright man

4 Th Gr 1Kings 2:1-4.10-12 Follow God’s ways

1Chr 29:10-12 The ruler of all

Mk 6:7-13 The Twelve summoned

5 F St Agatha, virgin, martyr (M)

Red Sir 47:2-11 David praise God

Ps 17:31.47.50-51 God’s way perfect Mk 6:14-29 For what shall I ask?

6 S St Paul Miki and companions, martyr (M)

Red 1Kings 3:4-13 A discerning heart

Ps 118:9-14 Let me not stray

Mt 6:30-34 Rest for a while

THE LAST WORD

Defining the relationship

BY EVE TUSHNET

For twenty-five years I've lived with him, Fought him, starved with him. For twenty-five years my bed is hisIf that's not love, what is? - Fiddler on the Roof

D"o you have a personal relationship with Jesus?"

This is the question we fear on airplanes, the question we recoil from in doorbell encounters. Most Catholics I've come across don't use this language. Should we? What can be gained by thinking about faith as a "personal relationship"?

The obvious criticism is that "relationship" is a cardboard word, flexible yet thin. Think of the difference between the man who confides to his friend, "I want to have a relationship with her!" and the man who says, "I want to marry her." Which one do you want to say to God? The language of "personal relationship" lacks the fervour, the Divine madness, of bridal mysticism. It sounds, to many Catholic ears, like the Song of Songs rewritten by the Hallmark Corporation.

And yet, thinking in these terms can be illuminating, if we allow ourselves to be honest about all our relationships. Think of your spouse, your brother, your parents, your friends, your childrenanyone to whom you bear a duty of love. These are your "personal relationships," and they are importantly similar to your duty of love of God.

All of these relationships have their seasons: sudden startled appreciation, hot anger, serene comfort, resigned indifference, renewal. All of these relationships can involve us in resentment, humiliation, annoyance and anguish. This is true even though we recognise our duty to love these people. In fact, it's often true because we're so painfully, unavoidably aware of that duty.

Why would we expect our personal relationship with God to be any less fraught?

That relationship is a vow, not a feeling - or, more accurately, a vow that encompasses the entire range of human feeling. Too often, we pretend that our feelings about God are fluffier than they are; or else we mistake a sense of abandonment by God for proof that there is no God. But unfluffy feelings, and even anguished feelings of abandonment, are often part of loving relationships. God didn't promise, "I will never break your heart." Instead, we have the words of Psalm 51: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."

We need to keep in mind that it's okay to challenge God - Abraham did it. It's okay to howl at God in desperation - Job did it. It's even okay to laugh at God - Sarah did it. All of them still understood themselves to be bound to God, to hold Him as their Lord, even as they expressed themselves in ways that wouldn't make the parish council happy.

We shouldn't be content to remain in a place of anger at God, or ironic distance, or wilful rejection, just as we

wouldn't be content with those attitudes toward the humans we've pledged to love. But we should be able to acknowledge that those emotions are often part of our loving relationships. Fighting with your wife doesn't mean the marriage is doomed (let alone that it's "already over," in the modern divorce parlance). Even the bride of the Song of Songs sought her lover in the streets "but did not find him."

It would be hard to argue that Therese of Lisieux, or Mother Teresa, lacked a "personal relationship with God." And yet, for both of them, that relationship was often experienced as loneliness and abandonment. Therese said she had been "assailed by the worst temptations of atheism."

Mother Teresa wrote that she experienced "just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing." She wrote of a feeling of "terrible separation." She lived in the moment of Christ's cry

from the Cross: "My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?"

And yet both Therese and Teresa spoke of God as someone real and known, someone Whose withdrawal left salt water in the footprints of His past consolations. All Christians must seek to enter into the life of Christ, to be baptised into His death so that we might rise in His life; Mother Teresa received the terrible gift of being baptised into His crucifixion. That is one way to have a relationship with God. It is a real gift, just as martyrdom is a gift.

This interpretation of the "personal relationship" language might help us remember that the best place to wrestle angels is in church. The best place to box with God is on your knees before the Eucharist. Fight like you fight with the people you love, heartfelt and raw and needy. Be willing to submit, to admit you were wrong, to kiss and make up; but be unwilling to give up or go away.

If that's not love, what is?

Alleluia in the Dark

BY DANIELLE BEAN

Last weekend, we attended a funeral Mass for a four month old baby girl. She was the beloved daughter of my husband's cousin and his wife.

These are the kinds of life events that threaten to expose me for the faith fraud I fear that I am. It's easy to say we have faith when all goes as we would choose. But when we face unexpected tragedy, we are left alone with our limitations. Our weak and vulnerable human hearts are laid bare.

When bad things happen, some of us might realise that while we've been praying the words, "Thy will be done," what we really meant was "Thy will be done . . . as long as it's not X, Y, or Z."

Some of us might have to admit that when we prayed, "My God, I place my trust in You," what we really meant was, "I trust in You, as long as X, Y, or Z never happens to me or anyone I love."

The truth be told, many of us unconsciously consider protection from catastrophic events to be part of an unspoken "deal" we have with God: I'll believe in You, and I'll obey Your laws, so long as nothing bad ever happens to me or anyone I love. I know I have been guilty of practising this kind of "faith," and it's uncomfortable when life events expose me for the weak and faithless creature I really am.

The day after I learned of our family's recent loss, I stooped to tie my three year old son's shoelaces.

"Where is God?" he asked me suddenly.

Where, indeed? I wanted to clutch him close and cry, "You tell me! Where is God in this mess of a fallen world where sinless babies die and leave their families grieving?"

But I didn't do that.

"God is everywhere," I answered, forcing a smile to convince him.

"Yes," he nodded his head knowingly, as if he had been only testing me anyway. "But most of all, He's in the tabba-nacka at church."

Seeing his small mouth work its way around a mispronunciation of "tabernacle," I felt a rush of confidence in his childlike faith. Christ tells us to have faith like little children; the older and more "grown up" I get, the more that makes sense to me.

I do believe. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes falter. I sometimes feel like the anxious father we meet in the Gospel of Mark - the one whose son is possessed by an evil spirit. This is the man to whom Jesus said, "O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?"

I am part of that generation. The father's answer to Jesus' question becomes my own humble prayer when I find it hard to have faith.

"I do believe," the man told Jesus shakily. "Help my unbelief" (Mk 9:24).

The Mass we celebrate for a small, baptised soul who left us before she was capable of sin is not a Requiem Mass. It is a "Mass of the Angels," with a focus on confident joy.

Attending this Mass with grieving family members, I was particularly struck by the words of confidence and light that make up this rite. These stood in stark contrast to the darkness and the pain of loss that enveloped us.

At a Mass of the Angels, we thank God for a young life and sing Alleluia. Our loved one is with God. We know the Good News and it is cause for celebration. We do believe; help our unbelief. Where is God? He is right here with us. He is calling us closer to Him. When we are reeling from the pain of enormous losses, it can be excruciatingly hard to answer. We are crushed, broken, and sick with grief. Our small shoulders struggle beneath the weight of the Cross. But we need not answer for ourselves. It is at times like these that the Church herself answers for us - with a song. Her sweet clear voice cuts through the cold and the dark as she sings: Alleluia. With the patient, tireless trust of a child, she sings Alleluia, in the dark.

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