150819

The

S outhern C ross

August 19 to August 25, 2015

reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 4938

Bishop: Present the ‘dangerous memory of Jesus’

www.scross.co.za

Hiking to the top to find God

Pope Francis’ guide to happy family life

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SA Church gears up for big national Youth Day event

By Stuart Graham

S

OUTHERN Africa’s young Catholics will be given the chance to experience Youth Day this December as the local Church hosts its own version of the event that is next due to be held in Krakow in 2016.

The Catholic Youth Day will take place at the Salesian Bosco Centre in Walkerville, south of Johannesburg, from December 3-6, the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) confirmed at its mid-year plenary in Mariannhill this month.

SACBC spokesman Archbishop William Slattery said the Church wants South Africa’s youth to have its own celebration as the cost of travelling to Krakow in Poland for World Youth Day in July 2016 is too high for most.

“Every three years the pope attends a youth meeting—previously it has been held in places like Cologne, Sydney, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, and the next will be in Krakow,” Archbishop Slattery said.

“It is expensive for the majority of South-

ern Africa’s youth to attend” the Youth Days in cities overseas, “and so we are hosting one here based on the same formula” as the World Youth Days, which were first initiated

by Pope John Paul II in 1985.

The event will include catechetical input from teachers, priests, sisters and bishops and will include various events such as Masses, pilgrimages, stations of the cross, prayer, dramas and religious processions, as well as the experience of fellowship between youths from different parts of the region, Archbishop Slattery said.

He said that young people would have ample time to interact and share at the event. “There will be a lot of music of course,” he added.

Those wanting to attend World Youth Day in Krakow in 2016 would also be given the opportunity to plan for the event.

Each diocese is invited to send 65 youths and five adults to the event. Those wishing to take part should book by 30 September.

Bishops: Let’s talk about race

By Stuart Graham

T

HE SACBC is worried about the lack of national reconciliation and has mandated the Jesuit Institute, Justice & Peace and the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office to work out a process to be used to improve race relations.

Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria said the Church must be more involved in improving race relations and that the issue cannot be left entirely to the government to solve.

“In South Africa it is obvious that people are not coming together adequately and the bishops are worried about it,” he said.

“At a diocesan event it is difficult to bring white and African people together,” the archbishop noted. “We should be doing better in this area. If we are Christians, why is race so important in our country?”

The bishops spent an entire day at their mid-year plenary in Mariannhill this month discussing the topic, he said.

“Racism and healing and reconciliation were subjects of our conversation. If the greatest reality in our lives is that we are children of God together, why then is race and tribe emphasised and allowed to divide us?” he asked.

“The fundamental unit is that we are children of God. We are brothers and sisters of each other. We don’t think about each other as racial beings or tribal beings,” Archbishop Slattery said. Yet, he added, “we put up barriers, contradicting our basic call”.

“If God is not the central point of our lives, then we make ourselves the central point.

Our own identity becomes the chief centre out of which we do everything. It makes us selfish and cut off from others,” he said.

the bicentennial of St John Bosco, the Italian founder of the Salesian order, was marked at the Bosco youth Centre in Walkerville, near Johannesburg. an open air mass was celebrated

by Salesian provincial Fr Francois Dufour, assisted by Deacon mike Nolan, along with Salesian priests from various parishes. the Entrance procession included a marching band as well as Don Bosco youth. During the mass, all the Salesian sisters, priests and cooperators renewed their vows. Seen here are two altar boys with a portrait of the saint, who was born 200 years ago in turin and whose mission was the ministry to the youth. (Photo: mark Kisogloo)

Bishops: Be merciful in marriage breakdowns, support young couples

By Stuart Graham

T

HE Church must be “merciful” and “understanding” towards divorced and remarried people and give more support to single parents and young married couples, the bishops of Southern Africa decided at their mid-year plenary session in Mariannhill.

Archbishop William Slattery, spokesman for the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said much time at the plenary was spent talking about the Synod of Bishops on the Family to be held in Rome in October, and what role the Catholic Church in Southern Africa could play in family life.

“The bishops emphasised that we must be merciful in marriage breakdown because of the difficulties placed on individuals by society,” Archbishop Slattery told The Southern Cross.

“Much emphasis was also put on accom-

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panying young married couples in the early years of married life,” he said.

“This is not the responsibility of only the clergy but of the whole Christian community, particularly happily married and experienced people,” Archbishop Slattery said.

“Emphasis was placed on assisting single parents and not condemning people, but rather helping them to resolve difficulties.

Also, the Church must be very merciful and understanding with divorced and remarried people.”

The bishops called for priests throughout the country to preach on the values of family and marriage.

“The bishops call upon priests and communities in all parishes to use Scripture readings from the 1st to the 27th Sunday for sermons and discussions on family life,” Archbishop Slattery said. n More on the bishops’ plenary on page 2.

2

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

LOCAL

What the bishops discussed

By Stuart Graham

church,” the archbishop said.

The coordinator of the Year of Mercy in South Africa will be Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg.

A

RCHBISHOP Stephen Brislin of Cape Town was re-elected president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) at its plenary session at Mariannhill this month as marriage and racism ranked high on the agenda.

Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria, SACBC spokesman, said the fundamental aim of the bishops in everything that is done in the Church is evangelisation.

“No matter what work the Church does—whether it is at clinics, schools, or skills centres—the bishops want the Gospel element, that element of faith, to come through. The key aim of the bishops is evangelisation,” he said.

“We have built a skills centre in Diepsloot, for example. We want people to learn to be carpenters, bricklayers and IT workers. But we also want to help people and show them that God loves them and cares for them,” the archbishop said.

“We are not trying to propagandise people. We do want them to know that we care about them and that we see them as brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The mid-year plenary discussed a variety of matters. Among other things, the bishops decided to hold their next mid-year plenary, in August 2016, for the first time in Gaborone, Botswana.

Further to issues treated in separate reports in this issue, the bishops focused on the following:

Lenten Appeal The Lenten Appeal collection was up by 7% this year and has reached more than R10 million for the first time.

“The bishops are extremely grateful that in difficult times people are being so generous in finding finance to help their friends,” Archbishop Slattery said.

Translations

the bishops of the Southern african Catholic Bishops’ Conference elected new leaders at their plenary meeting in mariannhill: (from left) Bishop Valentine Seane of Gabarone (second vice-president), archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape town (re-elected as president), and Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of mthatha (first vice-president). the new troika, in which Bishop Seane replaces archbishop Jabulani Nxumalo of Bloemfontein, will assume office in January. general of the conference, with Fr Patrick Rakeketse CSS confirmed as associate secretary-general.

The terms of all the elected office-bearers will run for three years and will start in January 2016.

A second round of elections will be held in the January plenary for the heads of departments in the conference.

Troika election

Year of Mercy

Apart from Archbishop Brislin’s re-election as SACBC president.

Bishop Sithembele Siphuka of the diocese of Mthatha was elected first vice-president of the SACBC—he had served as second vice-president—and Bishop Valentine Seane of Gaborone as the second vicepresident.

Precious Blood Sister Hermenegild Makoro was re-elected secretary

The bishops are making plans on how to celebrate and emphasise the theme of mercy in our national lives after Pope Francis’ call for a Year of Mercy in 2016.

“The bishops spoke about setting aside one special church in each diocese where people can come at any time for confession, counselling and reconciliation,” Archbishop Slattery said.

“Also, they are asking various religious congregations to put together a team of priests to go around the country preaching mercy missions in parishes.”

The year was announced by Pope Francis during a service on the second anniversary of his papal election.

This Holy Year will commence on the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 and will conclude on Sunday, November 20 2016, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The bishops want all active Catholics to make the Year of Mercy one in which they go out to invite back those who have left the Church.

“We ask our communities and parishes to invite friends and those lapsed Catholics to come back to

The bishops have approved seven new Afrikaans texts for use in the Church in Southern Africa.

“Texts have to be translated originally from Latin before they are approved by the bishops,” Archbishop Slattery said. “At this plenary we approved seven new texts.”

The bishops meanwhile are organising a workshop to train translators.

“We have many languages in South Africa and we have to translate the Mass books and scriptures into those languages. We need qualified and professional translators and so we will have a workshop to train and facilitate translators,” the archbishop said.

Exorcisms A full day will be dedicated to exorcisms and driving out “evil spirits” at the bishops’ plenary in August next year.

After that, a three-day exorcism course will be held for all bishops and priests who wish to attend.

Foreign clergy Priests and sisters come from other countries to work in Southern Africa. There will be a special course outside of Johannesburg next year to help new missionaries understand Southern African culture and the Church in Southern Africa.

Lesotho The bishops expressed their solidarity with their “brothers and sisters from the Kingdom of Lesotho” who are living in fear after an outbreak of violence in the country.

“We would like to express that Lesotho is not alone; the bishops and the Catholic community are with you in this time of need,” the bishops said in a statement.

“We have been following the events of your country since the outbreak of violence in August 2014 with shock and dismay,” the bishops said after being briefed on the situation in the land-locked country by a delegation of bishops from Lesotho.

The bishops referred to the June 25 assassination of Lesotho Defence Force commander LG Maaparankoe Mahao, apparently by soldiers.

“This action reflects the predicament that many Basotho people find themselves in: that they are not safe in their own country,” the SACBC statement said.

Political violence erupted in Lesotho last year with prime minister Tom Thabane fleeing the country months before he lost the national election to Pakalitha Mosisili.

Southern African Development Community mediators were forced to intervene in the country last month to prevent a purge of Mr Thabane’s supporters.

Catholic Archbishop Gerard Tlali Lerotholi of Maseru is reportedly on an assassination hit list.

The Southern African bishops called on leaders in Lesotho to seek a lasting peaceful solution through dialogue.

“We call for open dialogue as a way to solve the problems that are facing Lesotho. We therefore need to stand together with all the Basotho people and condemn any form of violence, worse still when it is being done by the state,” the SACBC said.

Kirsten Everett, a Grade 11 pupil of Brescia house School, Johannesburg, was presented with a Special recognition Certificate at the 2015 rhino Conservation awards, hosted by the Game rangers’ association of South africa. Kirsten received the award along with Kelsey hunt, Calvin Erasmus and alyssa Carter. the young conservationists also met Prince albert II of monaco, the patron of the awards. Kirsten is the editor and publisher of the Wildlife SA Newsletter, a global youth newsletter highlighting conservation. She said: “I thoroughly believe the words written at the bottom of the certificate, ‘If the youth inspires, the world will listen’.”

(From left) Kelsey hunt, Kirsten Everett, Calvin Erasmus, Prince albert, tracy henderson, Irene huysamen.

Durban teen event packed

By DyLaN aPPOLIS

T

HE Vuleka Trust in Botha’s Hill was packed with a group of 115 youth ministers, high school catechist and LifeTeen members, as they gathered for the Empower Durban Conference, a weekend of training and spiritual renewal.

St Joseph’s parish in Morningside, Durban, which was the first parish to bring LifeTeen to South Africa, organised the conference.

LifeTeen core member Samantha Howlett said: “We were blessed to have Bishop Barry Wood [auxiliary in Durban] come and celebrate Mass with us.

“Cardinal Wilfrid Napier strolled in to come and greet everyone, and ended up staying for the afternoon listening in on the spiritual renewal, before giving a speech himself. What an honour to have our two shepherds in the diocese sacrifice so much of their time to just be with us,” she said.

Fr Charles Rensburg served as

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the spiritual director for the weekend.

“His preaching and witness changed hearts,” Ms Howlett said.

“Fr Rensburg spoke about how our teens will always ask for more than they can give, and this inspired the youth to lean into Christ and to never give up on them.”

Marisa-Anne Charles, leader of Life Teen at Morningside parish, said the four-hour adoration session on the Saturday was “extremely powerful as people were coming up to Jesus and placing all their fears and troubles before him, just staring straight at him”.

She noted that the queues for confession were long, with some participants accessing the sacrament for the first time in more than ten years.

“The music team lead us in praise and worship, taking people to another level. People were so happy and excited and joyful all the time,” Ms Charles said.

“It was like nothing we have ever experienced before; it was genuine love and joy.”

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the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

LOCAL

3

Bishop: keep dangerous memory of Christ alive

By Stuart Graham

taking part in a discussion on faith in the public sphere were (from left) Fr russell Pollitt SJ, director of the Jesuit institute, Prof adam habib, vice-chancellor of Wits university, Grant tungay SJ, Fr Peter-John Pearson, director of the CPLO, and Fr mokesh morar. also speaking included Fr anthony Egan SJ, rabbi Gideon Pogrund and Sarah motha, an african Buddhist.

Faiths need to engage in public sphere in SA

T

HE Jesuit Institute and the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office collaborated to host a roundtable discussion in Johannesburg on “Faith in the Public Sphere”.

“The dialogue was an opportunity for people of various religious traditions to talk about the role faith plays in South Africa today,” said Fr Russell Pollitt SJ, director of the Jesuit Institute.

Prof Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of Wits University, suggested that religion has played different roles in different epochs, “either broadly promoting tolerance and unity or destroying communities and societies”.

Prof Habib said that if faith-based communities are serious about being part of the democratic narrative and promoting unity, they have the moral obligation to call out a growing right-wing in religion.

He suggested that faith-based organisations begin to look again at the various humanist strands that unite them.

Prof Habib said he believed that because of the deficit of leadership in the political and business sphere in South Africa, the only people who might be able to broker a conversation on the growing inequalities in the country are the religious sector.

“People trust faith-based organisations still, they don’t trust other institutions like unions or government,” he said.

R

abbi Gideon Pogrund noted that religious communities across the board have lost their moral voice because of various scandals. “We cannot hold moral authority if we ourselves are not calling out our own internal scandals,” he said.

The rabbi warned of the danger of politicisation of the religious sphere,

stressing that religious leaders must not be politically partisan.

Sarah Motha, an African Buddhist, said that faith-based organisations must encourage dialogue, peace, education and culture. These, she suggested, are key unifying areas where religious bodies can have an impact.

F

ather Anthony Egan SJ discussed the importance of acknowledging the time when the religion of the ruler was the religion of the state.

“We have moved from such hegemony, but the other danger is now that we withdraw into ourselves.”

Fr Egan noted that the groundbreaking Vatican II document, Dignitatis Humanae (Of the Dignity of the Human Person), recognises religious freedom but impels us “to go beyond simply just dialoguing to finding common ground.”

He said that in the early antiapartheid days some faith-based organisations found it difficult to speak out. “In the Catholic Church, for example, it was only after Archbishop Denis Hurley said that we as a Church have to be involved in combating the system that we saw a shift in the Church’s opposition to apartheid.”

Fr Egan suggested that the religious voice withdrew after 1994 for many reasons. “People were exhausted, key players retired and moved off the scene, and other voices became involved in the new political dispensation.”

The Jesuit Institute and Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office hope to “create spaces where such conversations can take place—within the Church but also with other religious bodies and society at large”, said Fr Pollitt.

Bene Merenti for educator

F

OR many years, Southern Cross readers have been delighted by the photos of children in Bethlehem diocese, Free State, performing in colourful Nativity plays, which appear almost every year in the newspaper around Christmas.

Now the woman who has sent these photos to the newspaper, Dr Rosemary Orpen, has been honoured by Pope Francis with the Bene Merenti papal medal.

It was presented to her at a Mass in Bethlehem cathedral by Mgr George Wagner, cathedral administrator.

Born in the then-Rhodesia but growing up in the Cape, Dr Orpen is an expert on primary education.

From 1972 until her retirement in 1996 she was the principal of Modderpoort Primary School in Bethlehem.

After retiring, she asked Fr Wagner to suggest a project she could serve. He recommended that she join the teaching staff at Glen Ash Secondary School.

For the next 12 years, without any remuneration, she taught English to various classes, as well as being involved in cultural activities—including the Nativity plays.

Dr Orpen retired from the school

mgr George Wagner presents rosemary Orpen with her Bene merenti medal and certificate at Bethlehem cathedral. in 2008. Bishop Hubert Bucher, now retired, asked her to help out at a Catholic pre-primary school, Leratong, in Bohlokong. Again without any payment, she has taught there for the past seven years, and has continued with the Christmas plays.

Fr Wagner has said that he is astonished at how the little children there become fairly proficient in English in only a few months.

The Bene Merenti citation mentioned Dr Orpen’s extraordinary way of living out the Christian faith.

T

HE Church must be irritated into living through the Gospel and the “dangerous memory of Jesus Christ” must be made present, a bishop told religious at a Mass to mark the Year of Consecrated Life.

Bishop Barry Wood, auxiliary in Durban, preached at the Mass which was concelebrated by the bishops of Southern Africa in St Joseph’s cathedral at Mariannhill.

“Make present the dangerous memory of Jesus of Nazareth. Irritate and keep alive in the Church the dangerous memory of Jesus of Nazareth,” Bishop Wood said.

He said the Church needs people of consecrated life who are solemn in their faith and witness to it.

“The world is fed up with speeches,” he said. “It will accept the message only if it is based on the holiness and integrity of the goodness, of the authenticity, of his or her life,” said Bishop Wood, a member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

“We are being asked, ‘Do you really believe what you are proclaiming? Do you live what you believe.

Do you preach what you live’?”, he said.

“Religious are called to communicate an experience of being loved through their presence as a community—in other words, to make God’s love visible.”

After the homily, those at Mass were invited to light their candles and renew their vows before the final blessing. Those celebrating

Bishop Barry Wood (right) preaches to religious at the concelebrated mass (above) held in St Joseph’s cathedral at mariannhill to mark the year of Consecrated Life. their silver and gold jubilees were called to the altar for a special blessing.

“After Mass we all gathered for a bring-and-share lunch in the open,” said Bishop José Luís Ponce de León of Manzini, Swaziland, on his blog.

“It was a great opportunity to greet friends and spend time together.”

Pope Francis dedicated 2015 as a Year of Consecrated Life. On launching the year in November 2014, the pope said that a “radical approach is

required of all Christians, but religious persons are called upon to follow the Lord in a special way. They are men and woman who can awaken the world.”

The Year of Consecrated Life ends on February 2, 2016, the World Day of Consecrated Life. n A recording of Bishop Wood’s sermon is available at www.bhubesi. blogspot.com/2015/08/dangerousmemory-of-jesus-christ-bp.html

THIRTEEN SPECIAL DAYS! 13 to 26 February 2016

The PILGRIMAGE OF THE PEACEMAKERS is a special journey to the land of Christ which will include the great sites of Our Lord in the Holy Land as well as encounters with Palestinian and Jewish organisations working for peace. We will explore the roots of the conflict and see the situation first-hand to enable us to pray for justice and peace.

In Cairo we will honour the 21 Coptic Martyrs slain by ISIS terrorists by visiting Coptic churches and monasteries, and meeting with local Christians to learn from their experiences and offer them our solidarity.

The PILGRIMAGE OF THE PEACEMAKERS is a journey of prayer for peace and of solidarity with our fellow Christians and all people of peace in the Holy Land and Egypt.

Led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin, Catholic top guide Rimon Makhlouf, and Southern Cross editor and The Holy Land Trek author Günther Simmermacher, it will be a pilgrimage in the footsteps and in service of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Pilgrimage Highlights

• All the important sites of Our Lord’s life, death and resurrection in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Cana, Jordan River, Sea of Galilee etc.

• Encounters with peacemakers of the Holy Land, visits to abandoned village, refugee camp, Yad Vashem memorial, a Catholic school in the West Bank and more...

• Visit to Coptic churches and monasteries, incl. Hanging Church of el Moallaqa.

Encounter with Coptic Christians. Plus the Pyramids of Giza, Sphinx, Egyptian Museum, a Nile Cruise and much more...

4

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

INTERNATIONAL

Yearbook recounts Vatican life

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N one thick volume, Vatican offices and departments tell their own stories.

The 2014 edition of the Activity of the Holy See runs to more than 1 600 pages.

Some offices submitted exhaustive reports, including every guest they hosted and every meeting their staff attended.

Others provided more of a generic overview of their main tasks.

Some indications of life inside the mini-state, which is also the headquarters of the worldwide Catholic Church, include facts such as: l 611 people had Vatican citizenship, of whom 78 were “most eminent cardinals” and 108 were members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. l The Vatican fire department responded to 466 emergency calls: five were for small fires, 96 were in response to alarms going off and 82 were for stuck lifts. l The Vatican pharmacy employed seven religious and 53 laypeople in 2014. l During the year, one or more steps were completed in studying possible miracles for 58 separate sainthood causes. The steps are: validation by the local diocese; study by a board of Vatican physicians; study by a board of theologians; and a vote by cardinals and bishops who are members of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. The last step is a decree signed by the pope—that happened only in 17 cases. l During the 2013/14 academic year, 1 086 scholars from 54 countries received permission to do research in the Vatican Secret Archives. An average of 76,2 scholars a day accessed the Vatican Library. l The Vatican gendarmes and other employees of the Vatican Security and Civil Protection Services numbered 194— all laypeople. l The Philatelic and Numismatic Office issued 20 series of stamps, focusing on

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everything from the canonisations of Ss John XXIII and John Paul II to musical instruments (two stamps featuring organs).

The office also published a special commemorative stamp celebrating the 125th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s birth. l Close to 500 journalists were permanently accredited at the Vatican and another 4 126 temporary passes were issued by the Vatican press office to other media people—particularly for the canonisations of the two popes. l For about 3 000 Church workers assigned new positions around the world, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2013-2014 was asked to issue a nulla osta, signifying there is no obstacle based on their positions on matters of Church doctrine.

“In 40 cases, the nulla osta was denied, offering ample motivations. In 19 cases, there was a dialogue that resolved the existing problems,” the yearbook notes. l The doctrinal congregation also dismissed 38 priests and bishops from the

Bishops charge rabbi over church arson

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the Vatican celebrated the 125th anniversary of Charlie Chaplin’s birth in 2014 with the release of special stamps.

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clerical state in 2014, most in relation to the sexual abuse of minors. l Vatican gendarmes wrote 93 tickets for parking or moving violations. l Through the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Vatican’s charity promotion and coordination office, Pope Francis gave more than $612 000 (R7,9 million) to emergency disaster relief efforts around the world and more than $1,6 million (R20,5 million) to human promotion and development projects. l For the Church’s missionary territories, Pope Francis created two new dioceses and 48 new bishops. Elsewhere in the world, the pope established two new Latin-rite dioceses and created 116 new Latin-rite bishops. He transferred more than 140 Latin-rite bishops to new dioceses and accepted the resignations of 124 other Latin-rite bishops, the vast majority of whom reached or surpassed the retirement age of 75. l The number of Catholic schools in the world increased, as did the number of students. From primary school to university, the Catholic Church and its organizations run more than 210 000 educational institutions with a total of close to 58 million students. l In July 2014, each of Pope Francis’ daily tweets in Spanish were retweeted an average of 11 000 times; in the same month, the mini-messages sent out on his English Twitter account were retweeted an average of 8 200 times. A study called “Twiplomacy” has defined Pope Francis as the most influential world leader on the social network based on how many of his “followers” retweet his messages. l In St Peter’s basilica 282 babies were baptised during the year; 183 others were baptised in the smaller St Anne’s church. l The worker’s health office of Vatican City State reported Vatican employees suffered 162 injuries on the job.—CNS

HE conference of bishops in the Holy Land has filed an official complaint to Israeli police against the leader of a radical Israeli movement over his remarks supporting and encouraging the burning of churches.

Fr Pietro Felet, secretary-general of the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, filed the complaint against Israeli Rabbi Bentzi Gopstein and the Lehava movement.

Rabbi Gopstein, who heads the Jewish anti-assimilation extremist movement, Lehava, said in early August that “churches and mosques could be burned”, asserting that “Jewish law advocated destroying the land of idolatry”.

The assembly said in a statement that the rabbi’s remarks “incite hatred and pose a real threat to the Christian religious buildings in the country”.

“The Catholic community in the Holy Land is fearful and feels in danger. A complaint was therefore filed...with the Israeli police,” the statement said.

It urged Israeli authorities to “ensure real protection for Christian citizens of

this country and their places of worship”.

The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz newspapers reported that Farid Joubran, attorney for the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, demanded Israel’s state prosecutor charge Rabbi Gopstein with incitement, “out of consideration of the public interest and of the present danger to churches and Christian communities in the country, and the real concern of further harm to them as a result of this incitement”.

The Franciscans coordinate the reception of pilgrims to the Christian sites in the Holy Land and sustain the Christian presence there.

Catholic concern is mounting as security challenges by Jewish extremists are growing with respect to religious buildings and Christians in areas under Israel’s sovereignty or control.

A June arson attack on the Benedictine Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha, Israel, caused millions of dollars in damage; it is believed to have been carried out

by Jewish extremists.

The church is built on the spot where Christian tradition holds that Jesus miraculously multiplied five loaves and two fishes to feed 5 000 people who had come

to hear him preach, according to the gospel of St Mark.

Hebrew graffiti found at the site read, “False idols will be smashed.” The phrase is part of the Aleinu, a prayer said three times a day by religious Jews.

Israel is considering labelling the arson as a terrorist attack, according to press reports.

The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land reported that “about 43 churches and mosques were torched or desecrated” by Israeli terrorists since December 2009, but it said not a single person has been prosecuted by the authorities.

The attacks are believed to be part of the so-called “price-tag” campaign of terrorism by militant illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank. It exacts a price from local Palestinians or from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their settlement enterprise.

In a late-July arson attack by price-tag terrorists in the West Bank village of Duma, near Nablus, an 18-year-old infant, Ali Saad Dawabsha, was burnt to death.

His parents later died from their burn injuries.—CNS

British composer chosen for Year of Mercy hymn

By CINDy WOODEN

A

BRITISH composer’s work has been chosen as the music for the official hymn of the Year of Mercy.

Paul Inwood (pictured) and 89 other composers around the world had two months to submit their compositions.

Mr Inwood said he had learned in June that his music was chosen and that the Sistine Chapel Choir was about to record it. The only problem was, they wanted a little extra musical flair.

“I spent the next 24 hours writing a brass prelude and interludes and a choral coda” for the ending, he said.

The hymn’s title and refrain, “Misericordes sicut Pater”, is the official Latin theme of the Year of Mercy and translates to “Merciful Like the Father”.

The text of the hymn in Latin and Italian was written by Jesuit Father Eugenio

Costa and was sent to the 90 composers on March 31, just over two weeks after Pope Francis announced the Year of Mercy would open on December 8.

Mr Inwood described his music as incorporating “elements in the style of a Taizé response and a Gelineau tone”, a modern homage to chant often used today when singing the Psalms at Mass and other liturgies. n See the Sistine Chapel Choir’s recording of the hymn in Italian at www.youtu.be/ -N0Dto5s9fg.

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INTERNATIONAL a street artist puts the final touches on a chalk portrait of Our Lady in assisi, Italy, the town of St Francis and St Clare.

(Photo: martha Calderón/ Catholic News agency)

Bishop declared a martyr

By CINDy WOODEN

A

S members of the Syriac Catholic Church face severe persecution in Iraq and Syria, Pope Francis has formally recognised the martyrdom of one of their bishops who was killed in 1915.

Signing the decree recognising the martyrdom of Syriac Bishop Flavien-Michel Malke clears the way for his beatification.

As the Ottoman Empire crumbled in the early 1900s, there were waves of violence and persecution against Christian minorities, especially the Armenians and Syrians. Bishop Malke was the Syriac Catholic bishop of Gazireh, which today is the city of Cizre, Turkey. Although advised to flee, the bishop stayed

with his people, was arrested and beheaded.

Fr Rami Al Kabalan, postulator or promoter of Bishop Malke’s cause, told Vatican Radio: “He played a fundamental role in encouraging the people to defend their faith during that difficult era, during the persecutions of the Ottoman empire.”

One-hundred years after the bishop’s death at 57 on August 29, 1915, “we Eastern Christians are undergoing almost the same persecutions”, the priest said.

“For us, the figure of this martyr gives us courage to defend our faith and live our faith; we do not have to be afraid, despite the difficult circumstances facing all Eastern Christians in Iraq and Syria.”—CNS

S

ELFISHNESS and fear keep too many people ignorant of the suffering of others and prevent them from finding creative ways to express solidarity and to promote peace, according to a statement from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace council.

To promote a reflection on the need for a “conversion of mind and heart” open to the needs of others, Pope Francis has chosen “Overcome indifference and win peace” as the theme for the Church’s celebration of the World Day of Peace 2016.

Announcing the theme for

the January 1 celebration, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said that peace is difficult to achieve when people are indifferent “to the scourges of our time”.

The problems everyone must be aware of, the council said in a statement, include “fundamentalism, intolerance and massacres, persecutions on account of faith and ethnicity”, disregard for human rights, human trafficking and forced labour, corruption, organised crime and forced migration.

Simply increasing the amount of information about the prob-

By CINDy WOODEN

L

IKE their Orthodox brothers and sisters, Catholics formally will mark September 1 as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis has decided.

The day of prayer, the pope said, will give individuals and communities an opportunity to implore God’s help in protecting creation and an opportunity to ask God’s forgiveness “for sins committed against the world in which we live”.

Pope Francis said he was instituting the prayer day for Catholics because he shares the concern of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who initiated a similar prayer day for the Orthodox Church in 1989.

Metropolitan John of Pergamon, who represented the patriarch at the public presentation of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, had suggested there that all Christians join in prayer on September 1.

“This would mark a step towards further closeness among them,” he had said.

Pope Francis said Christians want to make their special contribution to safeguarding creation, but to do that they must rediscover the spiritual foundations of their approach to earthly realities, beginning with an acknowledgment that “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature,” but lived in communion with all worldly realities.

The ecological crisis, he said, is a summons “to a profound spiritual conversion” and to a way of life that clearly shows they are believers.

The annual World Day of Prayer

lems is not enough, the council said: People must open their hearts and minds to the suffering of others.

“Today, indifference is often linked to various forms of individualism which cause isolation, ignorance, selfishness and, therefore, lack of interest and commitment,” the statement said.

The peace day theme and a papal message about it—expected to be released in December—aim to help people reflect on how they can “build together a more conscious and merciful and, therefore, more free and fair world”, the council said.—CNS

Hiking to the top to find God

By GISELLE VarGaS

S

OME people hike to compete, others to challenge themselves. But as the sport increases as a global trend, others have taken it up as a way of drawing closer to God. Take the new “To the Top” initiative from Chile’s Más Allá del Deporte (Beyond Sports) organisation.

These young people, their families, as well as professional and amateur athletes alike are climbing the mountains of Santiago to bring together sports, nature and spirituality.

Walking sticks, water bottles, backpacks outfitted to carry small children—combined with a little joy and fraternity—are among the essentials of these day trips.

The purpose? To see Christ in the beauty of nature and to experience outdoor sports as a means of growing in holiness, said Maria José Correa, a member of the organising team.

“What’s important is to fix your eyes on the goal, to let other people help and encourage you,

to encourage the others and see them as a brother or sister, and to discover for yourself the meaning of those moments when the ascent gets harder,” she said.

During the hikes, the group makes three stops to meditate on both the virtues of athleticism and the Christian life. When they reach the top, they celebrate Mass together with the priest that accompanied them on the climb.

“That God who created all this natural beauty is the same one who made each one of us and has placed within us a desire for the infinite,” said Fr Sebastian Correa, chaplain for the University of Gabriela Mistral.

“This is what leads us always

5

Sep 1: Day of Care for Creation

We must beat indifference to win peace, pope advises

By CINDy WOODEN

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

to seek something beyond. You can see this searching very clearly in sports, because we always want to give more, accomplish something greater, bigger, stronger,” he added.

In the most recent climb this month, the young people placed a cross at the top of Manquehue hill in Santiago. They offered the effort of the climb for their prayer intentions which they wrote down and left on the hilltop.

On that occasion they were accompanied by Chilean tennis player Jaime Fillol, now 69, who is part of the organising team.

“When I was playing at Wimbledon, I went to a church to ask God to help me win the match.

In the end I lost,” Mr Fillol said.

“There I understood that God teaches us to be humble, to understand that victories aren’t necessarily what help us the most in life and make us better people.”

“Sports help you grow in humility and to understand that however important a championship may be, there’s always going to be more transcendent things in life,” he said.—CNA

a man hugs a tree in the forest of Gokarna in Nepal. Pope Francis has declared September 1 as the annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. (Photo: Narendra Shrestha, EPa/CNS) for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis said, will be a time for individuals and communities to “reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live”.

P

ope Francis reiterated the importance of ecology in a radio interview with an Argentinian Catholic radio station.

Caring for all of creation includes paying particular attention to the needs of young people and the aged, Pope Francis told the station operated by Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Campo Gallo.

He spoke for just under an hour

with Frs Joaquin Giangreco and Juan Ignacio Liébana.

When the priests asked Pope Francis about Laudato Si’, the pontiff emphasised the need for everyone to work together to care for each other and for the environment.

“Care for the earth, the water and for all that God has given us,” the pope said.

Pope Francis offered his support to priests and other Church workers who are encouraging people to defend the forests in Argentina’s Yungas and Chaco regions; Argentina has lost millions of acres of forests in the past 30 years to commercial soybean farming operations.

“It’s heartbreaking when they clear forests to plant soybeans,” the pope said.

The encyclical, he told the radio’s listeners, is about more than protecting plants, animals, water, air and soil.

“We must make a great effort and take care of one another so as not to be a sad family; we must take care of the children and grandparents with that tenderness that Jesus taught us to have in caring for one another,” the pope said.

Human beings, he said, were not created to live alone, but as a family.

Today young people need special support to continue being hopeful about the future and in preparing to contribute to society, work and begin families, he said. “I don’t want sad young people, youths who retire” before they even begin to work.

“Young people need to dedicate their lives to great things and do so joyfully,” he said. They need to dream because “those who don’t dream have nightmares”.—CNS

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the successful applicant will be expected to take part in the complete school programme.

Email CV to the principal, Mrs J Milne at principal@lasalle.co.za Closing date: 7 September 2015 Please note that an application will not in itself entitle the applicant to an interview.

The College reserves the right not to fill the post.

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the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

LEADER PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The Editor reserves the right to shorten or edit published letters. Letters below 300 words receive preference. Pseudonyms are acceptable only under special circumstances and at the Editor’s discretion.

Name and address of the writer must be supplied. No anonymous letter will be considered.

Church needs important revival

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

Our hopes for Southern Y Africa’s Youth Day

F

OR many young Catholics, attending the huge World Youth Day gatherings is a dream goal; for most of them, however, that aspiration will not be realised.

The cost of travelling to a host city in another continent is prohibitive for most young South Africans, unless they come from a financially secure background, or have employment which makes international travel affordable, or benefit from the generosity of others through sponsorship or fundraising.

This is a pity, since the potential benefits of attending World Youth Days are abundant, for the individual pilgrims as well as for their communities. This is why many parishes fundraise to send young parishioners to these events.

Most Catholics who have taken part in a World Youth Day will testify to its faith-strengthening properties which go beyond getting a glimpse of the pope.

They will remember the parties and music, but also the reverence with which Catholic youths approached the sacraments, particularly those of the Eucharist and Reconciliation.

They will also recall being inspired by the catechetical sessions, often delivered by bishops, and the sense of fellowship that bonded Catholics from across the globe, even when they spoke no mutual language.

These three elements are essential in building and maintaining a strong sense of the Catholic faith, and through it building a meaningful relationship with Jesus: to have the sacraments as a central part of faith-life, to know and understand what the Church teaches (and what it doesn’t), and to have the concrete experience of being in communion with the People of God. Young Catholics today are under immense pressure to abandon their faith, by proselytising churches and by aggressive Western secularism.

To resist these pressures, young Catholics need a developed faith, a strong Catholic identity and a sense of belonging to the Catholic faith community.

World Youth Days equip participants with these qualities.

The initiative by the bishops of Southern Africa to stage a regional version of World Youth Day therefore must be commended and strongly supported.

As we report this week, the SA Youth Day will be held from December 3-6 in Walkerville, near Johannesburg.

It will mostly follow the structure of World Youth Day events: Mass, catechetical sessions, opportunity for confession, prayer, religious processions, cultural events, encounters and so on.

The event will bring together youths from all over South Africa, Botswana and Swaziland who will experience an extraordinary sense of fellowship. No doubt they will grow in their faith, and hopefully they will pass the benefits of their participation on to parish communities.

There are limitations, however. The appointed venue, the Salesians’ Bosco Youth Centre, has place for only a finite number of participants. This means that each diocese is limited to only 65 delegates, bringing the maximum number of participants to just under 2 000.

Obviously, most people who would like to take part will not be able to do so, and there doubtless will be disappointments. This is unavoidable, but it is wise that the bishops first test what kind of demand exists for an SA Youth Day, and determine what capacity the local Church has to stage such an event, and on what scale.

St John Paul II took a similarly cautious approach when he launched the first couple of World Youth Days in the 1980s.

Demand and the accumulation of experience allowed the expansion of the format, to the point that now some World Youth Days draw international crowds into the millions.

We may hope that in time the SA Youth Day will likewise grow proportionately in popularity, and with it the local Church’s logistical capacity.

It must be the prayer of all the local Church that this will be the first event in what will grow to become a popular tradition in the formation of future generations of Catholics.

OUR editorial “Lure of other churches” (August 5) refers.

Many years ago, while living in England, I attended services and prayer meetings held by an independent church. I found their simple ability to talk to God, as opposed to reciting prayers, refreshing.

However, I found that I could not walk away from my Catholic heritage.

I am an unconventional Catholic, in that there is much in the Church I cannot agree with. I don’t see blind acceptance as necessary.

As I see it, the main issues are these: • The Catholic Church is very good at teaching about God but useless at teaching people to actually know him and form a relationship with him. This I learned from my evangelical friends.

• We had a wonderful English liturgy, almost identical to the Anglican liturgy. We've replaced it with a 19th-century translation, pretty much incomprehensible to anyone under the age of 60 and not that comprehensible to those of us over 60 either.

W

they will be filled to capacity.

But for this to happen there needs to be extensive reform and spiritual renewal to complete the process that Vatican II started.

We need to pray to God constantly that he will raise up and empower Church leaders who can perform this monumental task.

Frank Bompas, Johannesburg

Worldly and spiritual renewal

HILE people speak of the Church as a spiritual entity and call it the Bride of Christ or the People of God, it is also very much an organisation strongly embedded in the secular world.

We need to realise that the Catholic Church competes with numerous other denominations and that Christianity as a whole is strongly challenged by secularism, materialism and many other religions and ideologies.

We simply cannot afford to have dysfunctional and ineffective Church structures and ministries.

The whole arena of religion today is extremely competitive and because we so often continue to offer poor service to members of the Church, people continue throughout the world to leave the Catholic Church to join other Churches where pastoral care, preaching, teaching and Christian fellowship are better.

We need to call another ecumenical council similar to Vatican II to continue reviewing the activities, structures and organisations that exist in the Catholic Church, to make them more effective.

On the local level we need to understand why so many South African Catholics feel the service they get as Catholics is inferior to that from many Protestant and charismatic Churches.

Religion satisfies many human needs and there should be few problems in getting people to become involved in it.

The difficulty is that many in the Church either do not really experience or understand the tremendous power that faith in a caring and compassionate God gives to individuals and to human society or do not communicate it effectively to their members.

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Reciprocity key to dialogue

F

ATHER Christopher Clohessy’s letter on Islam (July 22) seems to downplay, as I understand it, the requirement for reciprocity. In my opinion, all relationships either presume or demand reciprocity.

For instance, in marriage reciprocity is assumed. If I treat my neighbour politely, I demand that he treat me in the same way.

I would go so far as to say that reciprocity is characteristic of all societies and social relationships.

When reciprocity is absent, conflict arises. The purpose of negotiations is to find points of common interest and establish a reciprocal relationship.

When Jesus said: “Love thy neighbour”, he meant that his neighbour was another person, irrespective of who the person was, or how the person thought.

I have been given to understand that in the Quran, the neighbour you love must be another Muslim.

In such a situation dialogue is difficult if not impossible.

I feel that today, with the conflict between Islam and the rest of the world, the need for reciprocity is paramount.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg address, was asking for reciprocity when quoting Byzantine Emperor Manuel II’s dialogue with his Persian interlocutor in which the emperor said the following: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as the command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Pope Benedict found the tone used by the emperor shocking and went on to quote the emperor’s justification for his words: “God is not pleased by blood and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature, faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly without violence and threats.”

In response to the pope’s address, 39 Muslim scholars and clerics published an open letter criticising the content of his address. If the scholars disagreed with the accusation contained in the address, they should just have said that they were open to dialogue. In Opinions expressed in The Southern Cross, especially in Letters to the Editor, do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or staff of the newspaper, or of the Catholic hierarchy. the letters page in particular is a forum in which readers may exchange opinions on matters of debate.

Letters must not be understood to necessarily reflect the teachings, disciplines or policies of the Church accurately.

Letters can be sent to PO Box 2372, Cape Town 8000 or editor@scross.co.za or faxed to 021 465-3850

• There is little fellowship in the Catholic Church. Most parishioners know each other only by sight.

• The ongoing in-fighting between progressive and conservative Catholics does nothing to endear us to anyone!

• Yes, we have access to the riches of history and tradition, but many see the past as just that: the past! It is no longer relevant.

We, as a Church, need to find a way to become relevant again. If we don't, despite the influence of our current pope, we risk becoming what Pope Benedict foresaw: a small remnant, outdated and largely discarded.

Deirdre Lewis, Cape Town

this way they would have disproved the emperor and Pope Benedict XVI. By just saying that they were offended, they were in fact confirming the words of the emperor.

It is also worth mentioning that 138 Muslim leaders, comprising both Sunnis and Shias from 40 countries, welcomed dialogue by addressing a missive to the pope, titled “A common word between us and you”.

Whether the proposed dialogue ever took place or what the results, if any, were, I do not know. Of course, one thing we know is that radical Muslim movements don’t even want to hear about dialogue.

Jeanne Jollivet, Johannesburg

Women’s worth

R

ECENT calls for the equality of women in the workplace have come from many quarters, including from Pope Francis.

Although many are applauding this somewhat patronising appeal, they fail to acknowledge or understand how oppressive a stance it is to declare that women are, or ever will be, equal to men.

For those who believe the fallacy of women being equal to men, let us compare the two in the equation of producing new life.

The man and the woman come together and the woman falls pregnant. The input of the man is minimal, yet very satisfying.

In the months to follow, she will probably suffer morning sickness.

When the sickness subsides, her body will change shape and become grossly uncomfortable, making most daily functions, including sleeping, extremely difficult.

Then the new “bundle of joy” is delivered in excruciating pain or by major surgery. Thereafter, for two to three months, this wholly selfish new addition, who is loved beyond compare, will demand food and ablutions every four hours, until its mother is a near-zombie.

So, in this example, where is the equality? Oh yes, some fathers give a hand here and there…God bless them.

Because abortion is “legal” in South Africa, many couples feel justified in murdering their inconvenient unborn infants. The man is required to say “yes”or “no’. His job is done. And in many cases, he just walks away.

If the decision is “yes”, the woman must endure the horror of the procedure. If the answer is “no”, the woman is still required to continue with the pregnancy. The man may or may not stay to support her.

There are many more examples —but ask any father worth his salt if he considers his wife and mother of his children to be his equal.

Further to this, he would agree that women are more loving, more compassionate, prayerful, more forgiving, generally harder working, dedicated to their tasks and certainly more beautiful.

I urge all women, both working in the Church and in the home, to go on strike until their true worth is recognised. Women are not equal to men, they are worth much, much more—and at least a third more in monetary terms in every endeavour in which they participate or work!

Tony Meehan, Cape Town

PERSPECTIVES

More than prayer and 67 minutes P Gushwell Brooks ope Francis has been aptly described as a rock star. Never, throughout the entirety of history, has a single pontiff drawn as much attention as Pope Francis; thanks in great part to the rise of social media.

His social media presence, his personable approach, his down-to-earth nature, and the fact that he is constantly speaking truth to power, seemingly fighting on behalf of the “little guy”, has endeared him to Catholics, the media and the world at large.

What makes you pay attention to him, though, is not his celebrity, but much rather what he says and how he challenges the world to deal with real, hard issues. Take his current, most popular quote: “You pray for the hungry, then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”

This statement, short enough to constitute a tweet, speaks volumes. It challenges us as Christians in understanding the role of prayer.

Take the issue the pope is tackling here, namely hunger and malnutrition—read into that: poverty.

Since much of it is, in fact, man-made, is it not for us to change?

Much as the pope says in his much publicised and commented on encyclical on global climate change, Laudato Si’, we find that human industrialisation—even of agriculture—has led to a negative shift in global weather patterns. It is really up to large corporates, owned by people, as well as ordinary people, to change our behaviour and resultant impact on the environment.

Prayer on the matter is wonderful. Perhaps our prayers should aim at captains of

industry to abandon the outright pursuit of profits and to adopt instead a sustainable, caring and futuristic approach to the way in which they conduct business.

Or perhaps our prayers may instil a global perspective that makes everyone realise that this planet is the only home we have.

But prayer alone will not have you reconsider buying that fancy SUV emitting high quantities of noxious greenhouse gasses, instead of the smaller – perhaps less fancy, even cheaper – hatchback with a smaller engine and fewer emissions. Prayer alone does not use green, alternative energies as opposed to polluting, fossil fuelbased energy. Something needs to done.

This is Pope Francis’ message and challenge in feeding the poor.

H

owever, a little more than prayer is needed. The same argument applies to the 67 minutes we invest every year in our works of charity on July 18, as many of us did last month.

It is indeed great to have the world

Debutantes of holy rosary high School in Edenvale joined 5 000 other Stop hunger Now volunteers for mandela Day this year.

Pope’s change of tone T O say that Pope Francis is shaking the Church’s establishment tree is to state the obvious—the birds have started flurrying and rotten fruit is falling.

It is easy to measure the progress Pope Francis is making by judging the kind of enemies he is attracting: reactionary conservatives, red-claw free marketeers, fossil fuel companies and so on. I shall limit myself to talking today about the first of these.

By reactionary conservatism I don’t refer to good people who respect tradition and think it crucial for the sake of stability and continuity, which is the majority of Catholics. I mean those who are aggressively anti-modern and seek to return to a supposed “golden past” of how things were.

The reactionary conservatives in the African Church, for instance, are rallying against what they see as the pope’s more relaxed attitude towards homosexuality, with its real and perceived implications on same-sex marriage.

I do understand the concern towards an “imposing of certain values” on people who don’t agree with them, as Cardinal John Njue of Nairobi put it last month.

It is true that the majority of Africans do not accept homosexual relationships as a naturally occurring phenomenon. The question, for me, is whether, for the good of the society, it is correct to compel them into legal neutrality on the matter, even if you don’t ask them to change their moral judgment.

I see nothing wrong with moral judgment, since it demonstrates that one lives by certain values, whether they be conservative or liberal. What I have a problem with is allowing one’s moral judgement— conservative or liberal—to be prejudicial against others who do not share these values.

Pope Francis, a gift from the holy Spirit, writes mphuthumi Ntabeni.

Take the example of capital punishment. I personally don’t believe in it, yet I know that were a referendum to be held in our country, those in favour of it would win by a big margin. Is it correct then for our Constitution to impose these values on the majority who don’t share them? This, I believe, is the question that requires our critical reflection.

T

he Kenyan bishops, through the chairman of their conference, Bishop Philip Anyolo, obviously disagree with the issue of imposing liberal values on Africans who are not liberal, and are aggressively campaigning to table the matter in the coming Synod of Bishops on the Family.

It would be interesting, incidentally, to have a summary of the answers to the synod questionnaire in the Southern African pastoral region after the parish discussion reports have been collated. This would help to complement the recent survey conducted by the Jesuit Institute.

On his visit to Kenya in July, US President Barack Obama tried to throw the cat among the pigeons on the homosexual issue by calling it a civil rights issue.

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talking about Faith

rally and perform acts of charity on what is the late Nelson Mandela’s birthday.

Some of the charitable acts that accompany the day truly make a positive difference in the lives of people.

At the same time, simply invoking the name of Mandela once a year, and doing something for the “betterment of mankind” for one hour on one day a year is really not sustainable. On its own it does little, if anything, in making a difference in the world.

Some may respond that “at least someone’s doing something” and that “some might be spurred to do something more on a more regular basis for their communities”.

That may be true, but we should also be honest and question why we have to invoke the hallowed name of Mandela for people to care about others and do something for them.

Real, tangible, effective change only happens if someone does something about it. For the hungry to be fed we need to pray on the issue—that goes without saying—but we need to actually feed them to satisfy their hunger, here and now.

As tough as it is to believe, these hungry masses remain hungry long after our prayers and long after our annual 67 minutes on Mandela Day.

Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Pushing the Boundaries

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta begged to differ and relegated the matter to the periphery.

As such, homosexual activity remains a criminal act in Kenya, punishable by a maximum sentence of 15 years. I do not understand why other people’s sexual preferences should be criminalised if they are not harming another party.

There is, of course, a hypocrisy in African patriarchal culture. African patriarchy is ever so ready to treat with compassionate understanding the failures of married men to uphold the values of monogamy towards their spouse(s). Adultery is referred to, with a wink, as “one of those things”—“he’s a man, what did you expect?”.

The same applies in the Church’s patriarchy. A priest’s betrayal/failure of his promise of chastity often is treated with compassion and understanding. But the Church is harsh on those who break their marital vows, or remarried divorcees. Its tone is especially harsh on LGBT people.

This is the sort of thing Pope Francis is changing by applying the quality of mercy to the Church’s moral teachings.

Pope Francis is also flushing out the rust of reactionary conservatism that is clogging the arteries of the Church. The moral and social teachings of the Church should easily evangelise the world, without necessarily becoming of the world, when she changes her tone.

Pope Francis is the gift from the Holy Spirit to the Church. His tone is renewing not only the face of the Church, but that of the world also.

As it has been said: only 10% of conflict is due to difference of opinion—the rest is due to the tone of voice.

NEW FOR 2016 5 tO 16 OCt

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

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Point of Faith

How to remain a Catholic

M

OST Catholics would like to enrich their faith and spiritual life—but many, it seems, are not sure how to do so. Some do not understand or appreciate the rituals and ways of doing things in the Catholic Church, so they join other churches that do things in a simpler way.

Such Catholics find the Mass boring, which may be because they do not understand the meaning and spirituality behind the Eucharistic celebration. They want good music, dancing and exciting sermons, they want to laugh and be entertained by a pastor. And, when they leave the Catholic Church for other kinds of worship, they leave behind the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist The Catholic Church indeed has a big challenge and a responsibility to communicate our faith in an understandable and deeper way.

How does one remain a Catholic in the midst of so many churches around us? I would answer that if one puts in a little effort, the Catholic faith grows on its own, gradually encompassing more and more of one’s life.

Firstly we must understand what faith is. It is a belief in a certain truth, namely God. The Church exists to evangelise the truth of God. To remain steadfast in our Catholic faith, we must be consistent in our engagement in the Church.

To act in faith requires our assent to the fact that the Catholic faith is founded in the love of God who is the truth.

Of course, the world is full of temptations, and leaving one’s church is one of them. Peer pressure can be strong, and the proselytising of certain churches can be persuasive.

Many Catholics watch Pentecostal programmes on TV channels (especially since Catholic TV is excluded from South Africa’s screens). They see Pentecostal pastors performing “miracles” on stage, jumping around as they pray, shouting loudly, speaking in tongues. After seeing all this, they compare that with the reverent, dignified Mass and think there is no Spirit in the Catholic Church, that there are no miracles in the Church.

O

f course, that is a false view. Our trials do not vanish by the act of joining another church which advertises its miracles on TV. God does not reward you for choosing another church with more animated preachers.

God hears the humble prayer from wherever it comes. We show our faith actively by conquering all our weaknesses and holding fast to God who is the truth; the graces we receive from God are not dependent on the entertainment offered in a church.

Instead of church-hopping, we must rather become actively involved in parish life. Don’t just go home straight after Mass and then come again next Sunday to again go home straight after Mass.

That can indeed be boring.

Youths should join the parish youth groups (and if the parish hasn’t got one, it is failing the youth). Women can join the women’s association in their parish, and men the men’s associations.

Participate in the activities of the parish.

The fellowship we find in the parish keeps us close to the Church and to God—and it boosts our faith.

We must read the Bible faithfully, and take care to understand it. One needn’t leave the Catholic Church and join another to do that. Even if one goes to another church and yet reads the Bible without understanding it and strong faith, one will not see the effectiveness of the Word of God. The Catholic Church is the house of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:19-22; 1 Tim 3:15). The Second Vatican Council, held from 1962-65, is rich in its teaching on the Church as the Family of God, to which we belong as Catholics.

Our priests are there to gather God’s family together as a brotherhood and sisterhood of living unity, and lead it through Christ and the Spirit of God the Father. We, as Catholics, are part of that family. Why would we want to throw that away?

And, finally, why would anybody want to live without the Eucharist which brings us into deeper union with Christ Jesus and his Holy Church?

576AM

SACRED HEART SODALITY PILGRIMAGE Visiting Paris, Nevers, Paray Le Moniel, Lourdes.

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8

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

COMMUNITY

the women of St anne’s Sodality in mafikeng deanery convened at Boitumelo (modimola village) parish to commemorate the feast of St anne with a mass celebrated by Fr Kabelo mahemo. as the “mothers” of the priests, the women donated groceries to all the clergy in the deanery as well as to the nuns at thapelong convent in mafikeng. their gesture coincided with the 67 minutes for mandela event.

Seen here is Deacon Busang, St anne’s spiritual director, receiving the groceries on behalf of the priests from Sarah monamodi, deanery president of St anne’s Sodality in mafikeng.

St Benedict’s College in Bedfordview, Johannesburg celebrated its Founder’s Day with a mass celebrated by chaplain Fr tony Daniels OmI. In his homily, Fr Daniels encouraged the learners to live by Christian ideals, which often are different from the world, and to live by the rules—those established in society, homes and school—so as to live in harmony with one another.

holy rosary School in Edenvale, Johannesburg, hosted a blood donor clinic collecting 45 pints of blood. Pupils Nthabiseng moloi and Katlego Kgole are pictured giving blood at the clinic. youth at St James parish in Port alfred, Port Elizabeth diocese, were confirmed by Bishop Vincent Zungu (right), assisted by parish priest Fr trymos munyaka (centre) and Deacon John Foster (left).

Pontsho Ndaba made a weekend pilgrimage to Ngome. She is seen with Oblate Fathers andrew Knott and Nkululeko meyiwa, who serve at the marian shrine in the diocese of Eshowe, KwaZuluNatal.

Send us your photos to pics@scross.co.za ...but please have patience: Sometimes we have an overflow of photos awaiting publication.

the rosary group of St Catherine’s parish in Bellair-Queensburgh, Durban, is pictured with Fr Siyabonga mbeje Cmm.

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Cecilia Pitso of St Peter Claver parish in Pimville, Soweto, donated a pull-up flag of the Sacred heart to the Pioneer total abstinence Sodality.

the children’s liturgy group of St Dominic’s parish in Boksburg, Johannesburg archdiocese, were given a presentation on God’s rainbow and his promise to Noah, before they walked in procession to the altar with their monthly donation of food and clothing for the poor.

the youth of Eucharistic heart of Jesus parish in Cambridge, East London, were confirmed by Bishop Vincent Zungu (front). they are pictured with parish priest Fr Varghese Kannanaickal CmI (back centre).

the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

FAMILY

9

Pope Francis’ guide to good family life One hallmark of Pope Francis’ papacy is his concern with the family in daily life. CarOL GLatZ looks back at what the pope has said on the subject.

P

OPE Francis knows the family is made up of real people living in the real world, which is why he often gives down-to-earth advice.

The Catholic Church has long taught that the family is a school of humanity—the first and best place to learn about love and respect, Pope Francis has said. In fact, a healthy society relies on citizens who learn love, responsibility, loyalty, acceptance of others and solidarity from their family relationships.

The pope, a former teacher, has, in a way, been handing today’s families detailed lesson plans, offering guidance in what actually needs to be done. The world Synod of Bishops on the Family, which the pope has convoked for October, also is expected to deliver concrete guidelines for the pastoral care of the family and its members.

By devoting his general audience talks to the family since last December, as well as making the family a key topic of other speeches and homilies, Pope Francis has been offering concrete and, at times, colourful advice, which will give people gathering for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September plenty of material to parse through.

The pope’s approach starts from the bottom up.

He doesn’t begin with a textbook concept or picture-perfect ideal everyone needs to magically become an exact replica of. The family is a real institution made up of very human, and therefore, limited members who need real help.

With examples from his own life and the real lives of others, he points to what is happening “on the ground” and then builds a pastoral plan—what would God’s response be to this reality.

For example, the Christian response to the all-too-typical problem of anger or misunderstanding is to choose the path of dialogue, which requires eating lots of tart “humble pie”, he said in a homily in January 2014.

“Sometimes the plates will fly,” the pope said. But “after the storm has passed”, things have to be worked out as soon as possible, “with a word, a gesture”, so no one ends up “isolated in this bitter broth of our resentment”.

Other similarly practical advice he has given couples: play with your kids more, stop the swearing, be more affectionate and always say, “Please”, “May I” and “Thank you”. Moms and dads must lead the way, he says; they are the most influential role models for their kids.

Kissing in front of the children is a “beautiful witness”, he told parents in June 2015. Children watch their parents carefully and “when they see that dad and mom love each other, the children grow in that climate of love, happiness and security.”

He has told youngsters to go out, discover the world and “build everything together, do everything with love, everything is possible and faith is an event always to be proclaimed”.

Talk to your best friend, Jesus, every day, he told children in December 2014, and be “apostles of peace and serenity” at home and at school.

“Remind your parents, brothers and sisters and peers that it is beautiful to love one another and that misunderstandings can be overcome, because when we are united with Jesus everything is possible,” he said.

G

iving advice to grandparents, the pope has said that families and kids need their prayers, wisdom and gifts to give them the encouragement, hope and faith they often lack in today’s frenetic world.

“We older people can remind ambitious young people that a life without love is barren. We can tell fearful young people that worrying about the future can be overcome.

We can teach young people who are in love with themselves too much that there is more joy in giving than receiving,” he told his fellow seniors in March 2015.

The pope’s dream is that families challenge today’s throwaway culture with “the overflowing joy of a new embrace between young and old people”.

Key to drawing the needed strength and inspiration is reading the Gospel, prayer, confession, Communion and fellowship with the poor, he said in May 2015.

“Imagine how much our world would change if each one of us began right here and now and seriously took care of ourselves and generously took care of our relationship with God and our neighbour,” he told Vatican employees and their families before Christmas last year.

The Holy Family is still the perennial role model for families, the pope has said. Mothers can mirror the same love and attention Mary had for her son, and fathers can exemplify the patience and understanding of Joseph who did everything to support and protect his family.

The real secret, he said, is just to “welcome Jesus, listen to him, speak to him, take care of him, protect him and grow with him” like Mary and Joseph did, and “that is how the world will become better”.

Pope Francis knows families cannot do it on their own. He also insists policymakers and leaders devise and support policies that build up families and neutralise their biggest threats: war, poverty,

Families spend time on St James beach in Cape town. Pope Francis (pictured below) has called the family “the school of humanity” and has frequently offered practical advice about family life. (Photo: Nic Bothma, EPa/CNS) consumerism and economic policies that promote the worship of money and power.

Justice for women must be promoted since, in the West, they face discrimination in the workplace and often are forced to choose between family and job obligations, the pope has said.

Also, women too often face violence in “their lives as fiancees, wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers” and, in developing countries, “women bear the heaviest burden” by having to walk far to collect water, often risk dying in childbirth, and face kidnapping, rape and forced marriages, he said in May 2015.

C

ulture needs a humanising overhaul, too, he said, to ease the pressure on couples to not be afraid of the lifelong commitment of marriage and to see children as a blessing, not a burden.

Pope Francis has been especially vocal about resisting current trends that seek to legitimise same-sex unions, contraception and fluid notions of gender. He warned families in the Philippines against this “ideological colonisation that tries to destroy the family” and takes away human identity and dignity, and he repeatedly has reaffirmed Church teaching that marriage is a lifelong bond between a man and a woman.

Given the many challenges—both within society and within the walls of the family home—Pope Francis regularly praises

ST. KIZITO CHILDREN’S PROGRAMME St. Kizito Children’s Programme (SKCP) is a community-based response to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children, established through the Good Hope Development Fund in 2004 in response to the Church’s call to reach out to those in need. Operating as a movement within the Archdiocese of Cape Town, SKCP empowers volunteers from the target communities to respond to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) living in their areas.

The SKCP volunteers belong to Parish Groups that are established at Parishes in target communities. Through the St. Kizito Movement, the physical, intellectual, emotional and psycho-social needs of OVCs are met in an holistic way. Parish Groups provide children and families with a variety of essential services, while the SKCP office provides the groups with comprehensive training and on-going support.

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the many men and women who are fighting the good fight every day.

Leaders and communities “should kneel before these families, who are a true school of humanity, who are saving society from barbarity” by staying together and safeguarding their bonds amidst difficult conditions, even in poverty and crisis, he has said.

Regular men and women who care for their infirm loved ones, miss a night of sleep and still roll into work the next day are the “hidden heroes” and the “hidden saints” of today, he said.

The pope has urged the men and women who are on the right path to lend a hand to help evangelise and to help other families heal so that the teachings of the faith will touch more people’s hearts and give them the strength to follow God’s will.—CNS

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the Southern Cross, august 19 to august 25, 2015

MEDIA

The Vatican Tapes: A workout for the exorcise crowd Currently on the cinema circuit in South Africa is a film with the provocative title the Vatican tapes. Is it antiCatholic? Is it OK for Catholics to watch? Kurt JENSEN reviews the movie.

A

LOW-BUDGET exorcism flick whose lurid title attempts to mask bad plotting and wooden characters. Yuck, right?

Well, in the case of The Vatican Tapes, which opened in South Africa on August 14, things could, conceivably, have been worse.

With perhaps little funds for gore, director Mark Neveldine focuses instead on the Satan-subduing rite—always a popular spectacle with moviegoers—that takes up his film’s final 15 minutes.

In most cases, the familiar bigscreen sight of men in clerical collars battling demons—or in this instance, the Antichrist himself— swerves at least into broad caricature. At worst, the outworn trope

degenerates into sacrilegious and grotesque parodies of Catholic religious practice.

The Vatican Tapes avoids most of this and is somewhat reverent, with both a relatively straightforward ritual and a taciturn priest, Father Lozano (Michael Pena). He’s a tough guy, a tattooed former military chaplain who maintains his dignity throughout—although he has little to say either on his own behalf or that of the faith.

Appropriate histrionics come from the writhing object of his ministrations, Angela (played by Olivia Taylor Dudley). They’re reinforced by sepulchral Cardinal Bruun (Peter Andersson). Having been possessed himself when he was 12, His Eminence, it seems, is taking Angela’s case personally.

The “tapes” of the title refer to screenwriters Christopher Borrelli and Michael C Martin’s conceit that, since the advent of motion pictures, circa 1900, the Vatican has maintained a secret visual archive—along with more traditional print files—on the subject of exorcism.

This establishment, which looks like a mildewed Makro with stone walls, is chock-a-block with scraps of film and videotape as well as box

michael Pena and Olivia taylor Dudley in a scene from the movie The Vatican Tapes, which is currently on circuit in South africa. (Photo: Lionsgate) after box of written material chronicling the Church’s unending fight with Satan.

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s though to invoke an imprimatur by association, the picture opens with a montage that includes archival news footage of Ss John XXIII and John Paul II, with images of the current pontiff thrown in for good measure.

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Movies with tight monetary constraints often have to resort to this sort of thing to achieve that “ripped from the headlines” feel.

Here, the filmmakers are merely digging for gothic gravitas, an effect that would probably come across more successfully were Pope Francis not, characteristically, beaming with good humour.

The plot—more of a plod, re-

ally—has the forces of the netherworld somehow grabbing hold of Angela during a hospital visit after she slices her hand while cutting a birthday cake.

Not only does this sulphurous intervention further spoil the party, it confounds Angela’s gruff, devout father, Roger (Dougray Scott), her perpetually confused boyfriend, Pete (John Patrick Amedori), and Dr Richards (Kathleen Robertson), the analyst assigned to treat what appears at first to be mere psychosis. (Freud before faith is always the way in these matters.)

Possession gives Angela telekinesis and, for a time, the ability to compel others to commit murderous deeds. Oh, and she’s constantly attended by a raven.

Unlike the one bugging Edgar Allan Poe all those years ago, this bird keeps mum, which, however, doesn’t stop yet another clergyman mixed up in the business, Vicar Imani (Djimon Hounsou), from labelling it “the devil’s messenger”.

Quoth the critic: “Nothing more.”

The film contains some mildly gory violence, occult themes, a sloppy portrayal of Catholicism and fleeting uses of profanity and rough language.—CNS

Warning: Too much TV can give you Alzheimer’s A 25-year-long study has investigated how lifestyle influences the development of Alzheimer’s disease in old age. marK PattISON reports.

A

S if it couldn’t get worse for the television industry, a new study comes out....

Younger people are leaving TV for other modes of visual entertainment—the computer and the smartphone, for example.

This makes TV viewing more and more the province of older people.

Now a study, whose preliminary results were issued in July, suggests that the more television you watch, the more likely you are to get Alzheimer’s disease.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education in San Francisco.

The focus wasn’t squarely on TV, but it was on sedentary lifestyles—of which TV-watching is an obvious part.

The study—which for 25 years has tracked 3 247 people, whose ages at the start ranged from 18 to 30—investigated the association between sedentary lifestyles, cognitive performance and the risk of developing dementia.

Subjected to a minimum of three assessments at the outset of the study, 17% of the young adults reported they were already in the lowest quarter of Americans in terms of physical activity, 11% were in the upper quarter of high TV viewing—at least four hours a day—and 3% admitted to both the low physical activity and the high TV viewing.

Followed up over the next 25 years with questionnaires, and then with cognitive function tests after the end of the quartercentury, researchers said in their abstract: “Compared to participants with higher physical activity, those with low physical activity had an increased likelihood of low cognitive performance,” then added, “Results were similar for high television viewing.”

The abstract added: “Compared to participants with high physical activity and low television viewing, the odds of poor cognitive performance were more than two times higher for participants with low physical activity and high television viewing.”

The researchers’ conclusion: “Long-term patterns of low physical activity and high television viewing in early adulthood were associated with worse midlife executive function and processing speed (two cognitive function tests). These risk behaviours may be critical targets for prevention of cognitive ageing.”

“We really don’t know how important some of these behaviours are,” Tina Hoang, the lead researcher on the study, told Catholic News Service.

M

s Hoang said the study is likely to continue for five more years. However, a research paper on work conducted thus far is in the pipeline for publication in early 2016.

The study’s approach is “a new concept in dementia research,” Keith Fargo, director of scientific programmes and outreach for the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association, said.

“It’s not what happens to you when you’re 60 or 65 to help you decrease your risk. We’re looking at lifetime risk factors.”

Just as parents teach their children healthy eating habits in hopes that they last a lifetime, parents may want to do the same for kids’ viewing habits while dealing with multiple screens, Dr Fargo suggested.

“The takeaway from my perspective is that this is additional data indicating that you have to be aware of risk for dementia over the course of your entire life,” Dr Fargo said.

Previous research has shown that people who watch a lot of TV tend to grow disassociated from the reality happening outside their front door. And TV watchers who focus their viewing on the news tend to not want to associate with the world outside their door because they’ve acquired the sense that the world—as shown by the ifit-bleeds-it-leads mentality of TV news directors everywhere—is not a safe place.

Dr Kristine Yaffe, a professor of psychiatry, neurology and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco and Hoang’s mentor, addressed reporters at the annual Alzheimer’s Association international conference in Washington.

“This is something you can do something about,” Dr Yaffe said. Her prescription: Change your lifestyle and thus lower your risk.

In other words, stop watching so much of the tube.—CNS

CLASSIFIEDS

Fr Noel Winston OFM Cap

C

APUCHIN Father Noel Winston passed away in Ireland on August 7 at the age of 77. He had returned there last November after 47 years in South Africa, because of a terminal illness.

Noel Thomas Winston was born on December 18, 1937 in County Roscommon, Ireland. He entered the Capuchin Franciscan novitiate in Kilkenny in 1958, and was finally professed on October 4, 1962.

He was ordained to the priesthood on June 1, 1966.

The following year he came to South Africa where he ministered for 47 years. Fr Winston served most of these in Capuchin parishes in the archdiocese of Cape Town. He was three years in the archdiocese of Durban and

five years in the diocese of Port Elizabeth.

Fr Winston was much loved by the people of the parishes he served in. Unfailingly kind and welcoming to all, he had a special care for the poor. But perhaps

his greatest gift was the ability to reach out and show a deep compassion for the sick and the suffering in body, mind and spirit.

He was a true pastor and a good listener. In parish work he led by example of his own dedication and prayerfulness.

In April 2014 he was diagnosed with cancer. He decided to return to Ireland in November to be close to his sisters, Kay and Mary.

I visited him in July and witnessed him growing weaker by the day. He approached the coming of “Sister Death” with a great dignity, graciousness and peace.

Fr Winston, our brother in St Francis, was laid to rest in Dublin after his funeral Mass on August 11, the feast of St Clare of Assisi.

Fr Sean Cahill OFM Cap

Pope to speak from Lincoln lectern

By LOu BaLDWIN

A

S lecterns go, it is strictly utilitarian, a simple walnut stand with none of the ornamentation commonly found in mid-19th-century furnishings.

Yet it has a distinguished past and is about to have a distinguished future.

Robert Ciaruffoli, president of the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, has announced that Pope Francis, during his September 26 speech at Independence Hall, will use the lectern that was most famously used by President Abraham Lincoln when he gave his Gettysburg Address.

It is expected Pope Francis will address the issues of immigration and freedom of religion during

his Independence Hall speech, Mr Ciaruffoli noted, adding: “Just as Lincoln addressed the most important issues of his time from this lectern, so too will Pope Francis.”

The battle of Gettysburg took place from July 1-3, 1863, and with more than 50 000 killed, it became the bloodiest battle of the entire American Civil War. Shortly after the Gettysburg battle the decision was made to locate a national cemetery on the battlefield. The date was set for November 19, 1863.

Edward Everett, a former secretary of state, was to give the official oration, and Lincoln “a few appropriate remarks”.

While in Gettysburg they

Liturgical Calendar Year B Weekdays Cycle Year 1 Sunday August 23 Joshua 24:1-2A, 15-17, 18B, Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21, Ephesians 5:21-32 or Ephesians 5:2A, 25-32, John 6:60-69 Monday August 24, St Bartholomew Revelation 21:9-14, Psalms 145:10-13, 17-18, John 1:45-51 Tuesday August 25, St Louis IX of France 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Psalms 139:1-3, 4-6, Matthew 23:23-26 Wednesday August 26 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Psalms 139:7-12, Matthew 23:27-32 Thursday August 27, St Monica 1 Thessalonians 3:7-13, Psalms 90:3-5, 12-14, 17, Matthew 24:42-51 Friday August 28, St Augustine 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, Psalms 97:1-2, 5-6, 10-12, Matthew 25:1-13 Saturday August 29, Passion of St John the Baptist Jeremiah 1:17-19, Psalms 71:1-6, 15, 17, Mark 6:17-29 Sunday August 30 Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8, Psalms 15:2-5, James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

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stayed at the house of a friend. As they were leaving, they decided to take along a house lectern to rest their manuscripts on.

Everett spoke for two hours, then it was Lincoln’s turn. Lincoln spoke for only two minutes, but with words that have resonated down through the ages.

Now Pope Francis will stand behind it to talk to the world about peace and freedom.

His challenge will be to match the immortal words of the martyred Abraham Lincoln, who said, in part: “That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”—CNS

Our bishops’ anniversaries This week we congratulate: August 30: Bishop Graham Rose of Dundee on the 7th anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

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CLASSIFIEDS

IN MEMORIAM

HERHOLDT—Berty.

Passed away august 22, 2003. he is sadly missed by his loving wife and all of his family. may his soul rest in Peace.

SETSUBI—monica maleshwane. Sunday, august 14, 1994 on your departure God was waiting to help us bear our pain, sorrow, suffering and care. We prayed fervently that he had called you and that, with his angels and Saints, you would praise him for all eternity. your family.

PRAYERS

HOLY ST JUDE, apostle and martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke you, special patron in time of need. to you I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg you to come to my assistance. help me now in my urgent need and grant my petitions. In return I promise to make your name known and publish this prayer. amen. In thanks for prayers answered. Leon and Karen.

THANkS be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, For all the benefits thou hast won for me, For all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, Friend,

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and Brother, may I know thee more clearly, Love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, For ever and ever.

snares of the devil. may God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. amen.

PERSONAL

ALMIGHTY eternal God, source of all compassion, the promise of your mercy and saving help fills our hearts with hope. hear the cries of the people of Syria; bring healing to those suffering from the violence, and comfort to those mourning the dead. Empower and encourage Syria’s neighbours in their care and welcome for refugees. Convert the hearts of those who have taken up arms, and strengthen the resolve of those committed to peace. O God of hope and Father of mercy, your holy Spirit inspires us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs. Inspire leaders to choose peace over violence and to seek reconciliation with enemies. Inspire the Church around the world with compassion for the people of Syria, and fill us with hope for a future of peace built on justice for all. We ask this through Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Light of the World, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. amen. Prayer courtesy of the USCCB. ST MICHAEL the archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and LOVING FATHER bless us, the people of AFRICA, and help us to live in justice, love and peace Mary, Mother of Africa, pray for us

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22nd Sunday: August 30 Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8, Psalm 15:2-4, 5, James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I

S law a good thing or a bad thing? Well, obviously it is a good thing, because no society can survive without some grasp of commonly acceptable behaviour, some signposts about how to behave.

The difficulty comes (and religious people are altogether too prone to this deviation) when we make something rigid out of it, instead of a useful guide.

The first reading for next Sunday is quite clear that God’s Law is a privilege for us; the scene is Moses, addressing the Israelites before they make their crossing of the Jordan and their long-awaited entry into the Promised Land.

They are given signposts for how to behave when they are there, if they are to keep the land. So we should not find our hearts sinking when he says: “Listen, Israel, to the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to perform.”

For it is the conditions under which “you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you”.

S outher n C ross

Seek the spirit of the law And he invites them to see how lucky they are, and to imagine the envious comments of other nations, “who will hear of these decrees and will say ‘a wise and perceptive people, this great nation.’ ” And the reason is quite simple: “What great nation is there which has decrees and just laws like all this Law that I am putting before you today?” So the Law is actually a sign of God’s love for us, pointing a way through the complexities of life.

And this is not mindless legalism, either, as the psalmist is aware, for our psalm lists those who are entitled to enter God’s Temple: “those who walk blamelessly and perform justice and speak truth in their hearts”.

Then comes a list of negative (“no slandering a neighbour,”) and positive (“disdaining the wicked, honouring those who reverence the Lord”) qualities, and a summary that we shall do well to meditate upon: “The one who does these things shall not be shaken for ever.”

The second reading for next Sunday is the first of five excerpts from the Letter of James, which some scholars think was originally ad-

dressed to Jewish Christians, and it continues the idea of the law as God’s gift: “Every good gift, and every perfect act of giving is coming down from above, from the Father of lights.”

We are exhorted to become “poets [this is often translated as “doers”] of the word, and not just hearers, deceiving yourselves”.

And one test for us is the simple one, of how we deal with those on the margins of society: “to look after orphans and widows in their tribulation”.

So law is a wider concept than we normally understand.

In the gospel for next Sunday, Jesus’ opponents raise a perfectly sensible question: “Why don’t your disciples act in accordance with the traditions of the elders? Instead they eat their food with impure hands?”

That is what the Mosaic law demands of its devotees, and there are several good reasons for this, not least that of hygiene; but the difficulty is (and we can all fall foul of this) when “it’s the law” becomes a rigid and unbending imposition.

This Jesus indicates by responding with

Prayer for a waking world O

N the feast of the Transfiguration in 1923, Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin found himself alone at sunrise in the Ordos desert in China, watching the sun spread its orange and red light across the horizon.

He was deeply moved, humanly and religiously.

What he most wanted to do in response was to celebrate Mass, to somehow consecrate the whole world to God. But he had no altar, no bread and no wine. So he resolved to make the world itself his altar and what was happening in the world the bread and the wine for his Mass.

Here, in paraphrase, is the prayer he prayed over the world, awakening to the sun that morning in China:

Conrad

“O God, since I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols and make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer to you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

“As the rising sun moves as a sheet of fire across the horizon the earth wakes, trembles, and begins its daily tasks. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour.

“Into my chalice I will pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.

“My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from

every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit.

“Grant me, Lord, to remember and make mystically present all those whom the light is now awakening to this new day. As I call these to mind, I remember first those who have shared life with me: family, community, friends, and colleagues.

“And I remember as well, more vaguely but all-inclusively, the whole of humanity, living and dead, and, not least, the physical earth itself, as I stand before you, O God, as a piece of this earth, as that place where the earth opens and closes to you.

“And so, O God, over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, I say again the words: ‘This is my body.’

“And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, I speak again your words which express the supreme mystery of faith: ‘This is my blood.’

“On my paten, I hold all who will live this day in vitality, the young, the strong, the healthy, the joy-filled; and in my chalice, I hold all that will be crushed and broken today as that vitality draws its life. I offer you on this all-embracing altar everything that is in our world, everything that is rising and everything that is dying, and ask you to bless it.

“And our communion with you will not be complete, will not be Christian, if, together with the gains which this new day

Nicholas King SJ

Sunday reflections

the charge of “hypocrisy”, a word which means “acting”, and he cites Isaiah (a favourite author of his): “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart goes far from me.”

There are times when we have to see doctrines as good servants but poor masters. Jesus continues the argument: “Nothing coming from outside a person can make that person impure; no—it is the things that come from inside the person that make them impure.”

Then he gives some examples: “evil thoughts, sexual acts outside marriage, acts of theft, or murder or adultery or greed or wickedness, or craftiness or indecency or jealousy or blasphemy or arrogance or stupidity—these are the evils that come from within and make a person impure”.

Law is good; but what counts is not so much external observance as inner attitudes.

We shall have to ponder on that, this week.

Southern Crossword #668

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final reflection

brings, we do not also accept, in our own name and in the name of the world, those processes, hidden or manifest, of enfeeblement, of ageing, and of death, which unceasingly consume the universe, to its salvation or its condemnation.

“Lord, God, we deliver ourselves up with abandon to those fearful forces of dissolution which, we blindly believe, will cause our narrow egos to be replaced by your divine presence. We gather into a single prayer both our delight in what we have and our thirst for what we lack.

“Lord, lock us into the deepest depths of your heart; and then, holding us there, burn us, purify us, set us on fire, sublimate us, till we become utterly what you would have us to be, through the annihilation of all selfishness inside us. Amen.”

For Teilhard this, of course, was not to be confused with the celebration of the Eucharist in a church, rather he saw it as a “prolongation” or “extension” of the Eucharist, where the Body and Blood of Christ become incarnate in a wider bread and wine, namely, in the entire physical world which manifests the mystery of God’s flesh shining through all that is.

Teilhard was an ordained Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, covenanted by his ordination to say Mass for the world, to place bread on a paten and wine in a chalice and offer them to God for the world.

We too, all of us Christians, by our baptism are made priests and, like Teilhard, are covenanted to say mass for the world, that is, to offer up on our own metaphorical patens and chalices, bread and wine for the world, in whatever form this might take on a given day.

There are many ways of doing this, but you might want to try this.

Some morning as the sun is lighting up the horizon, let its red and golden fire enflame your heart and your empathy so as to make you stretch out your hands and pray Teilhard’s Eucharistic prayer over an awakening world.

ACROSS

5. Some fed up episcopates will give a false impression (4) 7. More than doubtful (10) 8. Move case to find them in the pack (4) 10. One of the incombustible men (Dn 3) (8) 11. Melons turning to serious (6) 12. Moses summoned them from the people (Ex 19) (6) 14. Like the seed, cast widely (6) 16. Strange tailor on Venetian bridge (6) 17. Redepict what is worn out (8) 19. We share what turns sour (4) 21. Irishman turns chairs for father figures (10) 22. Enthusiasm for citrus peel (4)

DOWN

1. St Rose’s home (4) 2. Shakespearean hero may be successful for nothing (8) 3. Annexes (4,2) 4. One in religious vows (6) 5. Creature in bad, eerie context (4) 6. Legal agent in religious house? (10) 9. Blow that’s neither hot nor strong (4,6) 13. Any decor arranged for clerical state (8) 15. One in the superior’s place (6) 16. Keep in memory (6) 18. Fascinated in part (4) 20. Deacon’s stole (4)

Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

O

NE day, Eve was walking in the garden with God when she told him that sometimes she felt very lonely. ”No problem,” God replied, “I will make you a man for a companion.” And he took some mud and started shaping it when he suddenly stopped.

“Oh, Eve, there’s just one thing about this man I’m making for you,” God said. “You’ll have to tell him he was here first.”

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