200722

The

S outher n C ross

July 22 to July 28, 2020

reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 5195

www.scross.co.za

Priest: Why I sang at bishop’s funeral

r12 (incl vAT rSA)

A ‘phoenix moment’ for Southern Cross?

Page 3

Centenary Jubilee Year

Cardinal Pell speaks on life in prison

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Fire guts home for children

By ErIN CArELSE

A

CATHOLIC child and youth care centre in Cape Town suffered extensive damage following a devastating fire at the facility on Saturday morning, July 18.

Fire and Rescue services were alerted to a fire at Holy Cross Children’s Home in Parow at around 9:50. The crew from the Belhar fire station was the first to arrive, but due to the intensity of the fire, additional resources were called in to assist in battling the blaze.

According to Brendan Engel, general manager of the home, the fire has left the building uninhabitable.

“The entire place has been gutted, and smells of smoke. It is uninhabitable at the moment; lots of damage has been done,” he said. “The top floor has been completely destroyed, and the water from there has drained into the first and ground floor levels.”

At this stage, management is still waiting for the formal report on the fire.

In the meantime, a team to come and do a clean-up, and clear out the water on the first and ground floor levels.

Thereafter, a structural engineer will assess the building to determine whether it will still be safe to use.

All of the children at the home were accounted for and unharmed. Some of them have been temporarily placed with families and other care centres, with the help of the Department of Social Development.

Some 38 children between three and six years remain in the home’s facility located opposite the gutted premises, as they could not be sent away.

Holy Cross Sister Marion Hendricks said that the traumatic experience has been compounded, especially for the little ones.

“For the children, the fire was not the only traumatic experience. For them, being taken away from what is home for them was even more traumatic. It was heartbreaking to hear and see the children crying and pleading not to go,” Sr Hendricks explained.

Holy Cross children’s home in Parow, Cape Town, was on fire on Saturday morning. Nobody was hurt in the blaze, but the building is now uninhabitable.

Thanks to donations that have been sent in, the staff are busy making up parcels of food and clothing for the children who have been placed temporarily with families and those in the other centres.

Sr Mary Quimpo, provincial superior of the Holy Cross Sisters, and Mr Engel expressed their gratitude to Bishop Sylvester David, auxiliary in Cape Town, for his caring support, and to the people in the archdiocese of Cape Town for the generous response to assist the centre.

Sr Hendricks appealed for donations of items for their approximately 115 girls aged between 2-14 years to replace what was lost to the flames. These include: sleepwear, underwear, school shoes and socks, tracksuits, takkies, school bags, stationery, fleece jackets, jeans, T-shirts, cardigans, skirts, tops, and dresses. Cloth facemasks are also needed.

Donations can be dropped off at the Holy Cross Provincial House in Parow (corner of Delarey Street and Robert Sobukwe Road).

Donations can be made to Account Name: Holy Cross CYCC, FNB branch 200510, Account 62067279317. Use the reference “Fire Disaster”.

A Section 18 A certificate can be issued once the funds reflect in the account. n Contact Bernard Engel for further details on how to help on 083 349-1136.

The

Three Fathers for the price of one: Salesian Father Eoin Farrelly is seen three times during the filming of Sunday’s livestreamed Mass from the church of St John Bosco in robertsham, Johannesburg. (Photo: Sheldon reddiar)

Vatican: Priests are in charge

By JuNNo AroCHo ESTEvES

T

HE Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy issued a new instruction on pastoral care that specifies the role of lay men and women in the Church’s mission of evangelisation and offers guidance in parish reforms and restructuring.

The 22-page document, titled “The pastoral conversion of the parish community in the service of the evangelising mission of the Church”, was released on July 20.

The document also instructs bishops to not designate deacons, consecrated and lay men and women who are given responsibilities in a priestless parish as “pastor, co-pastor, chaplain, moderator, coordinator, parish manager”, which are typically reserved for priests “as they have a direct correlation to the ministerial profile of priests”.

Instead, those with responsibilities should be designated as “deacon cooperator, coordinator, pastoral cooperator or pastoral associate or assistant”, it said.

The instruction is not a “one size fits all”

approach, said Mgr Andrea Ripa, undersecretary of the Congregation for Clergy, but a concise overview of current norms and indications that can be utilised by the different dioceses and parishes according to their unique situations.

The importance of the laity in the parish community was emphasised in the way bishops work on restructuring the diocese, particularly when it comes to closing or merging parishes.

“Dropping plans upon the people of God from above, without their involvement, should be avoided,” Mgr Ripa said.

The instruction underlined that certain reasons were not sufficient for suppressing a parish, including “the scarcity of diocesan clergy, the general financial situation of a diocese” or other situations that are temporary or reversible.

Similarly, legitimate reasons for the deconsecration and sale of places of worship could not include “the lack of clergy, demographic decline or the grave financial state of the diocese,” it said.—CNS

S outher n C ross

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2

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

OBITUARIES

Fr Bernhard Johannes Albers OMI

O

BLATE Father Bernhard Albers passed away in the early hours of July 15 at Lady Selbourne in Claremont, Pretoria, at the age of 89. For the past few years he had suffered from problems associated with a low heart-rate.

Fr Albers was born on November 29, 1930, in Germany and arrived in South Africa as a newly ordained Oblate priest in 1959. He first went to Lesotho to learn Sesotho and then served in several places in Lesotho and the Free State (Tweespruit, Dewetsdorp, Zastron, Koffiefontein, Edenburg, Bloemfontein and Wepener).

In 1976 Fr Albers was appointed administrator of Bloemfontein archdiocese, a post he held for three years.

He then studied for a licentiate in spirituality at the Gregorian University in Rome (1979-82).

He was appointed spiritual director at St Peter’s Seminary in Hammanskraal (1991-94).

In his early years as a missionary, Fr Albers experienced much personal difficulty, being moved to several places for short periods of time.

Eventually came longer periods of stability, and in the 1970s he began doing retreats, finding much fulfilment and discovering a vocation within his Oblate vocation.

When he returned after his studies in Rome, even while being parish priest at Wepener, he was preaching and directing retreats all over the country.

Bishop Sithembele Sipuka, president of the bishops’ conference, paid tribute to Fr Alpers when he received the news of his death: “Fr Bernhard is remembered with a lot of appreciation for the example of his life as a priest and the work that

he did in the SACBC region. He spent a good part of his life doing teaching and formation work in the seminary. While he is known for his no-nonsense approach and being tough, many priests today still remember him as a good guide, teacher and counsellor. Ever since he left seminary work, he has been involved in an important service of giving retreats, helping hundreds of people grow in their personal relationship with God and in fulfilling their Christian mission in the world.”

Fr Albers began fulltime work as a spiritual director and retreat master in 1995. He endeared himself to many individuals and congregations that sought his expertise and wisdom. He was a very disciplined man, who stood up for what he thought was right. But he was also gentle and caring as a spiritual father.

One of those to benefit from his guidance was Holy Cross Sister Francis Grogan. She said: “I knew Fr Albers for over 30 years. Soon after I came to South Africa I made a retreat with Fr Bernhard, and since then he had been a friend, a companion on the journey and my spiritual director.

What a wonderful person. It has been a gift to have had him in my life.” Sr Grogan expresses the sentiments of many who experienced Fr Albers’ spiritual care.

“A number of our Sisters attended his retreats. I myself made a number of directed retreats with him and found he always led me to God,” said Sr Elizabeth Markham, provincial of the Ursuline Sisters of Southern Africa.

The Oblates are grateful for the gift Fr Albers has been to the Church in South Africa, where he spent all his missionary life in

meaningful ministry, mediating the experience of God’s abiding love.

He is survived by two sisters and two sisters-in-law in Germany. Our heartfelt condolences go out to them.

Sr Bernadette Mtimkulu CPS

P

RECIOUS Blood Sister Mary Bernadette Mtimkulu died at the age of 101 on July 5.

The daughter of Julius and Tharsilla Mtimkulu, she was born on November 26, 1918, at Maria Telgte, Mkhoba’s location, in the district of Kokstad.

Maria Telgte was Sr Bernadette’s first school. In 1938, she joined a group of students which opened the secondary school at Lourdes.

In 1940 she entered the teachers’ training college at Mariazell, completing her course in 1942.

In 1944, because of the prospect of entering the convent, Sr Bernadette was transferred to the industrial school

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to teach there.

She was under the care of Sr Imeldis Mülder, who later was to be her superior-general of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood. Sr Bernadette said that for her, as a future candidate for religious life, it was a great grace of God to be looked after by Sr Imeldis.

In 1947, Sr Bernadette was received as a novice in the Precious Blood congregation at St Patrick’s, about 10km from Mthatha in the Eastern Cape.

She made her first profession on January 6, 1949.

Soon after, she was transferred to Mariazell Teachers’ Training College, becoming the first African Sister there.

She understood this to be

the will of God as revealed to her by Abbot Francis Pfanner, founder of the Precious Blood Sisters, and ventured into the unknown believing the transfer to Mariazell was by God’s order.

Apart from classroom teaching, Sr Bernadette directed the Girl Guides and Scouts.

In 1962, she made her final commitment to God at Glen Avent Convent in Mthatha.

The same year, she became principal at St Michael’s mission in Indonyane. In 1964 she was transferred to St Francis’ Training College in Mariannhill.

In 1970, Sr Bernadette was transferred back to Mariazell, to St Michael’s.

In 1981 she became princi-

pal of the Cwele mission school, as well as the Sister in charge of the Precious Blood community there.

In 1986, she retired from teaching. This afforded her the opportunity to give instructions to the catechumens until she was pensioned in 1989.

Even after turning 100, Sr Bernadette was still able to do embroidery on tablecloths to help sustain the CPS province.

A week before her death on July 5, she was hospitalised at St Mary’s Life Hospital in Mthatha for oxygen therapy.

She was laid to rest on July 11, with Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha presiding at her funeral Mass.

Sr Mary Florence Sitwala CPS

Fr Eamon O’Reilly OMI

O

BLATE Father Eamon O’Reilly, formerly of Johannesburg, died on July 12, a day before his 88th birthday, in Ireland.

Fr O’Reilly made his first vows as an Oblate on September 29, 1954, and his perpetual vows exactly three years later.

He was ordained a priest on September 20, 1959.

He came to South Africa in early 1960, accompanied by fellows Oblate Father Joseph

Leathem, who died in March this year.

Fr O’Reilly would spend 53 years in South Africa.

He was first sent to Lesotho to learn Sesotho, and then served in Johannesburg: at Randfontein, Mofolo, Regina Mundi and in Meadowlands, especially during the difficult years of apartheid.

During this time he lived in community at the Oblate House in Florida.

Fr O’Reilly had a reputation of being a healer or herbalist, and people had much faith in his remedies.

His last assignment in South Africa was to the Mazenod Retreat Centre in Germiston.

Upon retirement in 2013, he returned to Ireland and was resident at the Oblate House in Dublin.

He buried in his home parish in Drumlane, Milltown.

Fr Peter Hillen SAC

P

ALLOTTINE Father Peter Hillen, who served in South Africa from 19992007, died on July 18 at the age of 68 in Nigeria.

Fr Hillen spent almost all of his priestly ministry in Africa.

Throughout his time on the continent, he trained Pallottine postulants and worked with funding agencies on Germany and Austria to secure fi-

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Having entered the Pallottine order in his native Germany in 1974, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1979.

From 1985-99 he served in Cameroon before coming to South Africa in 1999 for eight years.

During that time he served St Vincent’s parish in Pietermaritzburg, alongside his Pal-

lottine confrere Fr Vincent Kupiso, who preceded him in death. He also was the superior of his order’s community for a time.

In 2007 he was transferred to Nigeria, where he stayed for the rest of life. Based in the southern region, he built up a Pallottine parish and initiated projects, including a water factory and numerous wells.

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The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

LOCAL

3

Priest: Why I sang at Bishop Mvemve’s funeral

BY ERIN CARELSE

H

Fr Lawrence Mduduzi Ndlovu sings at the funeral of Bishop Zithulele Patrick Mvemve in Johannesburg’s Christ the King cathedral. (Photo: Sheldon Reddiar)

E never planned on singing at Bishop Zithulele Patrick Mvemve’s funeral, but when Fr Lawrence Mduduzi Ndlovu noticed that a pianist had been arranged but there were no singers, he decided to sing for the man who was so important to him growing up and in his vocation journey.

Having just recovered from Covid-19, Fr Ndlovu knew that his chest and voice were not in the best shape, but he cherished the late bishop of Klerksdorp, and wanted his send-off in Johannesburg’s Christ the King cathedral to be special.

“When I arrived I noticed that a pianist was arranged—but there were no singers. So I stood up and went to the pianist” to offer vocal accompaniment, said Fr Ndlovu.

“We rehearsed 20 minutes before the Requiem Mass. I wish we’d had more time because I had not done any vocal exercises or maybe looked at the music properly,” said the parish priest of Our Lady of Peace church in Roodepoort.

He sang anyway and led the music at the Mass.

“As I sang, I kept on thinking to

myself that my breathing is not too good and my low notes are not good and my high notes are shaky and sometimes flat. But I had to continue so that Bishop Mvemve’s funeral may receive the solemnity it deserved,” he said.

Fr Ndlovu has been singing all his life, starting in primary school.

“My family, and especially my grandmother, sang all the time, every day. So we sang at home,” he recalled.

“When I was about age 13, if not younger, I joined the youth choir in my home parish at St Margaret’s in Diepkloof. He would later conduct that choir for more than ten years.”

Growing up in Soweto in those days was a musical feast, the priest said. “There were choir festivals, competitions, concerts etc. Choral music was and is our greatest love.

I have fond memories of attending the Mass Choir Festival with my grandmother as well.”

Later he sang in the choir of St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria, and was house music conductor at some point.

When asked what music he loves, Fr Ndlovu said: “I am a great fan of choral music because that’s where I

Call to light a candle at noon

BY MERCY MAINA

province, and still records the highest death toll.

F

AITH leaders in the Western Cape have designated midday Wednesday of every week as a moment for the people of God to show their solidarity with those who have lost loved ones during the ongoing Covid19 pandemic.

The decision follows a meeting between faith leaders and provincial government officials.

“Faith-based leaders took a decision to show solidarity with all who have lost lives or loved ones during the pandemic.

Wednesdays at 12:00 was the time chosen,” Bishop Sylvester David, auxiliary in the archdiocese of Cape Town, said in a statement issued on Monday.

“All Catholics are requested to either light a candle or to observe a minute of prayerful silence” at noon on Wednesdays, he said.

“This could also be an opportunity to go back to the tradition of praying the Angelus,” Bishop David said, adding that the part of the Angelus prayer, “And the word became flesh”, reminds us “that Christ joined suffering humanity”.

The Western Cape government has made it “illegal to have the body in the Church during funerals—irrespective of whether it is a Covid-19 death or not”, the bishop noted.

Referring to provincial guidelines issued on July 17, the bishop added that during a Requiem Mass, “the hearse could be parked on the church property with the body inside while the funeral service takes place inside the

B

Bishop Sylvester David, auxiliary in Cape Town archdiocese, is among faith leaders calling for the weekly lighting of a candle to show solidarity with all who have lost lives and loved ones due to coronavirus. (Photo: Sheldon Reddiar) church”. The final commendation, he suggested, could take place at the hearse, with attention to all the safety protocols.

“We appeal to all concerned to look at this with understanding as the situation does not change on a daily [but] on an hourly basis,” Bishop David said, adding that “the safety of persons is paramount”.

On Sunday, South Africa was reported to be the “fifth worstaffected” country globally regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.

Until recently, the Western Cape was the country’s worst-affected

ishop David also used his statement to urge priests to inform parishioners “from lowincome households who need to develop some degree of self-sustainability” to collect seeds for their gardens from the local government’s department of labour.

“Parish priests can also have people in need registered as indigents at municipal offices and seek assistance for the ‘One Home One Garden Project’,” Bishop David said in the letter.

“Municipal water may not be used for this project, and explanations will be given on how to make gardening viable under these conditions.”

The meeting between the faith leaders and government officials follows a resolve by the Western Cape authorities to keep faithbased organisations and religious leaders informed of Covid-19 government interventions and communication messages to fight the pandemic in the province.

Following the first meeting between the faith leaders and Western Cape government officials on April 30, the religious leaders submitted their contributions on various issues including “regulations regarding funerals under the national lockdown…and a discussion around the consideration of essential services in these unprecedented times”.

The two parties also established a faith-based secretariat to assist with “regular communication”.—ACI Africa

participated and sang for many years. I love classical music and opera.” He was friends with the late American soprano Jessye Norman, who wrote the foreword to his 2018 poetry anthology, In Quiet Realm.

His favourite South African composer is Prof Mzilikazi Khumalo.

“His work is almost the soundtrack of my childhood. I also love Richard Wagner. He was a genius.”

If Fr Ndlovu wants to kickstart his creative process before he writes or has a big speech or talk to give, he listens to the German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949), especially his four last songs. “They are absolutely transcendent,” he said.

He also loves sacred music like Gregorian chant and some of the Mass settings, such as that dedicated to St Anne.

“I consume everything musically. I believe in what the jazz musician Duke Ellington had to say: ‘There are only two kinds of music: good music or bad music,’” Fr Ndlovu said.

For him, “the human voice is the best musical instrument ever”.

“I love to hear different voices. I love that no voice is the same. I spend a lot of days listening to Jessye

Norman, Leontyne Price, Monserrat Caballe, Sibongile Khumalo and many other singers,” he said.

Fr Ndlovu also enjoys singing hymns and other songs from his childhood.

“I love the structure in hymns and I think hymn-like music is suitable for my voice because my voice is classical-ish; so it is most suitable for formal music—although I am not classically trained and my reading of music is very rudimentary,” he explained.

People have always asked him to record a CD, but according to Fr Ndlovu, he’s never been one to do a half-baked job.

“I have always been put off by the fact that I would have to promote the CD and have concerts and the like, and I just don’t have the time because of the work I do as a priest, lecturer, writer, poet and speaker, with parish work taking most if not all the time,” he said.

But after his bout with Covid-19, “I feel differently about it and am now open to doing it,” he said.

With a twinkle in his eye, Fr Ndlovu added: “Those in the music business should get in touch with me before I change my mind.”

Sr Monica Madyembwa, provincial leader of the Holy Cross Sisters of South Africa, with the 156 food parcels donated by the De La Salle Holy Cross College community of Victory Park, Johannesburg, to the Emmanuel Place of Hope Daycare Centre. Emmanuel Place of Hope was established by the Sisters in Shoshanguve, near Pretoria, providing a safe place for vulnerable children, and is working to supply food parcels to the families and guardians of the children.

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4

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

INTERNATIONAL

Vatican’s releases guide on handling abuse allegations

BY CAROL GLATZ

T

HE Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a 17-page document offering a step-by-step guide for how bishops, religious superiors and canon lawyers are supposed to handle allegations of abuse by clerics against minors.

While nothing in the text is new, nor does it reflect any change to current Church law, the handbook is meant to present clear and precise directions and procedures, as well as attitudes Church leaders should have towards victims, the accused, civil authorities and the media.

Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the handbook, called the Vademecum, was the result of numerous requests by bishops and superiors of men’s and women’s religious orders “to have at their disposal a tool that could help them in the delicate task of correctly conducting cases regarding deacons, priests and bishops when they are ac-

cused of the sexual abuse of minors”.

“The course of justice cannot alone exhaust the Church’s response, but it is necessary in order to come to the truth of the facts,” Cardinal Ladaria said in a statement.

“This is a complex path that leads into a dense forest of norms and procedures before which ordinaries and superiors sometimes find themselves lacking certainty on how to proceed,” he said.

Cardinal Ladaria said the handbook was “designated as version 1.0” and will be subject to future updates.

It will be adapted to any eventual developments of canon law as well as to “respond to new challenges that experience will offer to the juridical treatment of the cases in question”, he said.

The cardinal also said it will be updated in the future with considerations from dioceses and Church institutions whose “qualified contribution will help to correct, integrate, specify and clarify those points that, as is only natural, require

deeper reflection”.

In an effort to help those responsible for handling abuse allegations and to collect testimonials of credibility with regard to the complainants and the alleged victims, the congregation included a form to be filled out, listing what it considers “useful data that those carrying out the preliminary investigation will want to compile and have at hand”.

In an interview with Vatican News Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said it is “the first time the procedure is described in an organised way—from the first report of a possible crime to the definitive conclusion of the cause— uniting the existing norms and the praxis of the congregation”.

He also affirmed that the guidelines ensure that anonymous complaints of abuse, which were often disregarded, are taken more seriously now and that ignoring a complaint “because it is not signed would be wrong”.—CNS

Lead poisoning from Notre-Dame fire worse than first thought

BY BARBARA FRASER

W

HEN Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris went up in flames in April 2019, images were made even more dramatic by thick smoke tinged with yellow as the 417 305kg of lead on the roof and spire melted.

After the fire, French officials said the lead did not pose a health hazard, and relatively few families followed up on a government offer to test their children’s blood for the metal. But some environmental activists were sharply critical of the way officials handled the possible contamination.

Now a new study has found that the amount of lead that settled to the ground and likely seeped into houses downwind of the fire and within about 800m of the cathedral was far greater than officials indicated at the time.

“I knew there was a controversy. I knew there were mixed reports on the government reaction,” geochemist Alexander van Geen of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York City, who led the study, said.

Accompanying his wife on a twomonth sabbatical in Paris early this year, he took advantage of daily walks to collect soil samples from parks, under trees, planters and even cracks in the pavement.

French government-funded studies estimated that about 150kg of lead were deposited between about 800m and 48km downwind from the fire, and that more probably settled out closer to the cathedral. They did not estimate that larger amount, however.

Mr Van Geen’s calculations show that about 900kg of lead probably ended up on the ground, on pavements and streets, and filtered into

Polish cardinal dies at 80

C

ARDINAL Zenon Grocholewski, retired prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, died on July 17 at the age of 80.

A close collaborator with Pope John Paul II and retired Pope Benedict XVI, the cardinal spent almost 27 years working in the Apostolic Signature, the Church’s highest court.

Born in Brodki, Poland, on October 11, 1939, Cardinal Grocholewski was ordained to the priest-

hood in 1963. He then spent more than 40 years working at the Vatican, starting working at the Apostolic Signature in 1972.

He was named secretary of the tribunal in 1982 and head of the court in 1998. The court functions mostly as an appeals court, hearing challenges to previous judgments made by marriage tribunals, Vatican congregations and local bishops.

Pope John Paul ordained him a bishop in 1983, gave him the title

buildings in a 50-degree arc within 1km downwind from the cathedral.

Although officials initially downplayed the risk from lead exposure, clean-up crews were given equipment to protect them from toxic substances at the site, including lead.

In June, when the French government offered to check children’s blood for lead, the results showed about 80 children with levels above 5 micrograms per decilitre of blood, the maximum allowable limit for children set by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the lead exposure lasted a relatively short time, French government officials reacted slowly to the hazard that lead dust posed, Mr Van Geen said.

“They did a lot of testing, but it all happened too late,” he said. “In this situation, it’s the dust on the table where the child is going to eat— that’s what matters.”—CNS Polish Cardinal Zenon Groch olewski died on July 17 at the age of 80.

(Photo: Eric Vandeville, ABACA/ Reuters /CNS) of archbishop in 1991, and made him a cardinal in 2001.

Cardinal Grocholewski was named head of the education congregation in 1999, where he served under three popes until his retirement in 2015.—CNS

Students gather after a midday break at the Methodist school in Igbo Ora, Nigeria, in 2019. Nigeria might not open federal schools until 2021, but Nigerian bishops say continued closure of schools brings untold hardships and gender-based violence, especially among young people.

(Photo: Afolabi Sotunde, Reuters/CNS)

Bishops: Closed schools worsen gender violence

BY PETER AJAYI DADA

S

EVERAL Catholic bishops in Nigeria’s state of Oyo asked the federal and state governments to consider opening schools and churches which have been closed since March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bishops from six dioceses in and around the city of Ibadan said the closure of schools had increased crimes such as rape and other gender-based violence, especially affecting youth.

The federal government says it might not open government-run colleges until 2021, and those graduating from high school might miss their exit exams.

The bishops said in a statement that since citizens had begun to adjust to methods of preventing and living with the pandemic, civil authorities should reconsider the reopening of schools “in a manner that is safe for our children, pupils and staff”.

Regarding an increase of rape in the country, the bishops call it “rep-

rehensible and a horrific sign of moral decadence and decency deficiency in our society”.

“Since all are born of women, rape does not only hurt women, it is also the greatest form of self-degradation by the very perpetrators,” the bishops said. “It is a crime deserving of the strictest corrective punishment and is a sin against God.” They advised parents to do more in teaching their children about honouring and respecting other people, especially women and girls.

“Fathers must set a good example for their children by how they themselves treat their mothers and wives, because children may forget what we say, but they never forget what they see us do,” the bishops said.

They also urged more collaboration with religious leaders on decisions affecting places of worship.

“With facts and figures backing up the arguments and especially as we are in a democracy, decisions that involve large numbers of the people in such a key sector as religion must be seen to be consultative,” they said.—CNS

Rome’s pontifical universities to resume in-person classes

R

OME’S pontifical universities will again hold in-person classes for the upcoming academic year, as they make adjustments to operations during the continuing coronavirus emergency.

After temporarily shutting down in early March—and then switching to online classes for the remainder of the academic year—the Vatican-accredited schools have been directed to make every effort to teach in person for the 2020-21 academic year.

The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education directed in June that ecclesiastical universities should “ensure that the teaching be deliv-

ered primarily and preferentially in the ordinary way with the system of lectures, exercises and seminars held in the presence of students and teachers”.

The pontifical universities, which offer degrees in theology, philosophy, and related disciplines, will also be required to follow all health and safety measures indicated by local authorities.

The Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum, has responded to new difficulties by increasing financial aid opportunities for returning and incoming students.—CNA

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Sunday reflections every Friday online with Fr John Allen Green OFM Only on our website www. scross. co.za

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

Police suspect arson in Nantes cathedral fire F RENCH police suspect arson was the cause of a fire at Nantes cathedral, and have opened an investigation.

The blaze broke out in three places in the Gothic cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul on July 18.

Although more than 100 firefighters contained the flames within two hours and stopped it from spreading to the main body of the church, a 17th-century choir organ at the west end of the building was destroyed with much of the choir area and multiple stained-glass windows.

The mayor of Nantes, in western France, immediately announced a criminal investigation into the fire because it appeared to have started at multiple locations.

A volunteer at the cathedral was questioned and released by police.

The cathedral in Nantes is considered to be a jewel of French architecture. It was begun in 1434 and completed only in 1891. The French government has designated it a historic monument because of

Fire at the cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in Nantes, France, on July 18. Police are investigating the incident as arson. (Photo: Ludovic Stang, Reuters/CNS) its architectural significance.

The blaze was the second at the

cathedral in less than 50 years. In 1972, a fire destroyed so much of its roof that it took 13 years before repairs were completed and it could reopen to the public once more.

Laurent Ferlay, the regional fire chief, told French media that the damage to Nantes cathedral was not as grave as that caused by the previous fire nor comparable to damage caused by the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris in April 2019.

French Catholic leaders announced their shock and sadness via social media soon after the fire broke out.

“I am saddened to learn of the fire at Nantes cathedral,” Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Rheims, president of the French bishops’ conference, tweeted.

“I salute the work of the firefighters,” he continued. “This building, which expresses the soul of a city, is bruised. May the faith, hope and charity which it signifies make us live them [the theological virtues] ever more.”—CNS

G-20's stalling on debt relief ‘sinful’

BY CAROL GLATZ

A

DVOCATES had hoped finance officials from the world’s wealthiest nations would have done more to help desperately poor nations further struggling during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the virtual meeting left many debt-related issues unresolved.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-20, the group of the 20 major economies in the world, met virtually on July 18 for ways to boost the economy and confront the global pandemic and its impact.

“Decisions on further debt payment suspensions, permanent reductions of debt, trillions of dollars of needed aid and extending debt relief to more struggling countries will be left for meetings later this year,” Eric LeCompte, executive director of Ju-

bilee USA, said.

“We had hoped the debt payment suspension for the world’s poorest countries would be continued into 2021, given the severity of the crisis,” he added.

Instead, participants decided those issues would get looked at during a series of meetings later in the year—with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in October and another G-20 meeting in November.

“For them to kick the decision to to the end of the year is sinful” when it is clear millions of people are suffering and even dying as a result of this global health and economic crisis,” Mr LeCompte said.

“We’re incredibly disappointed that they did not even meet our minimal expectations,” he added.

Some of those expectations had been spelled out in a letter Jubilee

USA had drafted; it had received more than 200 signatories from major organisations and faith-based communities ahead of the G-20 meeting.

Addressed to the G-20, the International Monetary Fund and US President Donald Trump, the letters called for expanded debt relief and debt cancellation for developing countries; more aid for countries; new processes to prevent market and financial crises; and measures that confront tax evasion and corruption.

Jubilee USA had “achieved a lot” back in April when “we won debt cancellation for the 25 poorest countries for six months” and the G-20 approved a plan for 73 developing countries to suspend debt payments to G-20 countries, Mr LeCompte said.

“It wasn’t enough, but it was a start,” he added.—CNS

A man looks for food in a dumpster in San Francisco, Venezuela, during the Covid-19 pandemic. (Photo: Humberto Matheus, Reuters/CNS)

Vatican urges solidarity in the face of growing world hunger

A

CCORDING to a new report from the United Nations, an estimated 690 million people went hungry in 2019—10 million more than in 2018.

The newest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report said that billions of people do not have access to nutritious food, usually due to high costs and low affordability.

Addressing hunger and related problems “takes just policies”, Mgr Fernando Chica Arellano told Vatican News.

Mgr Arellano is the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO). He called for greater international cooperation in the face of the report’s findings. “The world has to invest in peace, solidarity, and justice,” he said.

The report was produced by five UN agencies: FAO, the International Fund for Agriculture, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme, and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the foreword of the report, the agencies caution that the 2015 objective to reach zero hunger by 2030 is “still off track”.

The report also predicts that the

Covid-19 pandemic will have caused 130 million more people worldwide to have chronic hunger by the end of 2020.

Mgr Arellano stressed that the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated already existing problems related to food security and malnutrition.

To reduce hunger requires reducing poverty, which takes peace, cooperation, and solidarity, he said.

As a starting point for the Church, he emphasised the need for ecological education and spirituality, as addressed in the sixth chapter of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’.

According to the UN report, Asia has the greatest number of undernourished people, followed by Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The number of hungry people has been rising since 2014, the report shows, though the overall percentage is relatively stable at 8,9%, growing at the same rate as the global population.

The report said that if current trends continue, Africa is expected to have more than half of the world’s chronically hungry people by 2030.—CNS

Cardinal Pell: I knew the Lord was with me in prison

BY MICHAEL SAINSBURY

A

USTRALIAN Cardinal George Pell, 79, a former senior adviser to Pope Francis, has broken his silence two months after the country’s High Court overturned his conviction for sexual abuse of two teens.

“From the first night, I always had a breviary, and I received Holy Communion each week,” Cardinal Pell wrote in an essay for US Catholic magazine First Things.

He said that on five occasions he attended Mass, even though he was unable to celebrate and noted that he “particularly lamented” this at Christmas and Easter.

“My Catholic faith sustained me, especially the understanding that my suffering need not be pointless but could be united with Christ Our Lord’s. I never felt abandoned, knowing that the Lord was with me— even as I didn’t understand what he was doing for most of the 13 months.”

Cardinal Pell confirmed media reports at the time that he was in solitary confinement for 13 months from his sentencing in March 2019 until his April 2020 release; he had been sentenced to a term of six years with at least three years and

Australian Cardinal George Pell has written a memoir of his time in prison. (Photo: Mark Dadswell, Reuters/CNS) eight months without parole.

Being held in a single cell is typical for child sex offenders in the Australian prison system, as they are deemed as being at high risk of violent retribution from other inmates.

“I was threatened in this manner only once, when I was in one of two adjacent exercise areas separated by a high wall, with an opening at head height,” Cardinal Pell wrote, adding that as he walked around the prison’s perimeter “someone spat at me through the fly wire of the open aperture and began

condemning me”.

Cardinal Pell, former head of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, described the legal actions against him as “an expensive charade”. He criticised the Australian media as “bitterly hostile” but “with splendid exceptions”.

“Prisoners from many jails wrote to me, some of them regularly,” the cardinal wrote, claiming that one “told me that it was the consensus among the career criminals that I was innocent and had been ‘stitched up’”.

While Cardinal Pell has had his criminal convictions expunged, he remains the subject of a number of civil actions in Australia. The legal test for a criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt; civil cases use the lesser test of the balance of probabilities.

“We are currently investigating a small number of compensation claims that relate to allegations of sexual abuse involving George Pell,” Melbourne lawyer Vivian Waller said.

She said her firm was currently acting in approximately 400 civil claims for compensation against Catholic clergy in relation to allegations of child sexual abuse.—CNS

5

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6

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

The

LEADER PAGE

S outher n C ross Editor: Günther Simmermacher

Falling for lies

I

MAGINE, if you will, a situation in your workplace where a colleague is the target of a whispering campaign.

In the process rumours are being spread which contain evident falsehoods.

As observers of this campaign, we would likely take exception to the dissemination of lies, and hold the people who are party to them—those who originated them and those who pass them on—responsible for failing in ethics and decency.

Indeed, we may say that those who are involved in the spread of calumny are guilty of violating the 8th Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour (or “You shall not lie”).

The same principle must be applied to conduct on social media: those who make up falsehoods and those who disseminate them, knowingly or innocently, are responsible for offending against truth. Those who do, knowingly or carelessly, can be said to be in violation of the 8th Commandment.

In South Africa, the abuse of social media to spread disinformation and misrepresentation for malicious purposes has become widespread.

Last week, a video falsely purporting to be of the funeral of Zindzi Mandela, with the attendant message that “the ANC” is breaking the government’s Covid19 restrictions with impunity, was spread by tens of thousands of social media users.

The video was of a completely different event, held before the coronavirus pandemic.

The facts of the late Ms Mandela’s funeral were easy to establish: it was broadcast on national TV, and the full video of it, in which mourners are clearly seen to be complying with the restrictions, is easy to find on the Internet.

But many respectable people shared the video, and some did so in good faith—thus becoming victims of a deception that involved them in a lie.

The reason why the lie was able to fly is that those who regard, not unjustifiably, the ANC as an organisation that often fails to maintain ethics and good sense, had their preconceived notions confirmed by that false video.

It has been observed that we are always likely to share material that confirms our prejudices. This means that we can, if we are not vigilant, easily become party to a lie.

That can happen even to the savviest of social media users (the

ethical among them usually correct their lapse in judgment by deleting offending posts).

The manufacturers of lies and hoaxes are becoming ever-more sophisticated, experts warn.

And it needn’t be just the secret services of governments that wage cyber warfare by the most cuttingedge means who fool us. We fall just as readily for blatant propaganda.

Recently the mischief-making of Anthony Matumba was uncovered. Matumba, a councillor for the Economic Freedom Front in Makhado, posted a series of outrageously racist tweets under the guise of a white woman, under the handle of @TracyZille.

His apparent aim was to direct traffic to his websites while also sowing racial discord by stirring black anger against whites.

Matumba was not particularly sophisticated in his nasty campaign, but he was clever.

Even at his most outrageous, his Tracy Zille never sounded improbable. “Her” kind of rhetoric is echoed across social media and comments sections.

Like good satire, effective disinformation relies on plausibility.

But even the crassest lies find a willing audience if they confirm the reader’s prejudice.

Recently memes were widely shared in which the ministers of basic and higher education supposedly said the most childish things.

One meme, borrowing from an old joke, had basic education minister Angie Motshekga, a former academic, claim that vegetables come not from farms but from supermarkets.

The subtexts of these memes— presented as factual infographics rather than comedy, and therefore profoundly dishonest—have a troubling racist undertone.

Those who share such memes should be challenged for the reasons behind that action.

What we share on social media reveals much about our opinions, and it can reveal much about our prejudices.

When we share posts that are bigoted, we reveal our own bigotries.

And when we keep sharing untruths, without making attempts at ascertaining the truth, then we reveal ourselves as having a complicated relationship with the 8th Commandment.

This should persuade us all to be very vigilant about what we share, and even like, on social media.

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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.

There’s a death in the family I T is a very sad moment in the history of the Catholic Church of South Africa to learn that our beloved weekly as we knew it will soon be no more.

The Southern Cross ensured that we of the Catholic family of South Africa shared each other’s joys, celebrations and struggles for almost 100 years.

It brought the news of the Church throughout the world into our Sunday homes and made us part of a great Catholic family.

I am deeply appreciative of the editor and staff who have been heroic in this very difficult time for

print media. You have had to work with great generosity in seasons of deep financial uncertainty.

While the present pandemic has been a mortal blow, one is somehow ashamed that we the Catholic Church in Southern Africa have not done more over the years.

I can only imagine the feelings of the editor and dedicated staff who worked so feverishly each week to bring out a new product and who now face entrenchment.

As dedicated people, how sad it is to know that you will no more have the joy of holding each new weekly printed copy in your hands,

Saddened by end of our paper

I

WAS saddened to see your editorial of July 8 in which you announce that The Southern Cross will cease to be the country’s Catholic weekly newspaper. Unfortunately, this has been on the horizon for a while, as you note.

It is sad that so many Catholics do not support our Church and its ventures. Catholics are, for the most part, stingy when it comes supporting things like the The Southern Cross.

Other Christian denominations thrive and are able to build impressive churches and run equally impressive and costly programmes and media activities. They give.

Catholics seem to want to get from the Church but not give.

How much of this is the result of missionaries not teaching locals to contribute?

The demise of the newspaper also points to another problem: Church leadership.

For the most part, except for people like the Jesuit Institute, our Catholic leaders have no vision and no real strategy. They are fast becoming irrelevant. Now they don’t even have a vehicle to inform people that the newspaper is closing.

Not so long ago, instead of encouraging people to support, the Catholic cardinal publicly said he would not back the newspaper. I heard no other bishops coming forward to check him or pledge support to The Southern Cross in response. Are they like President Cyril Ramaphosa, scared to nail their colours to the mast?

I wonder how much influence Cardinal Napier’s childlike outburst had on the demise of the paper? Imagine if he had used the space to call for support instead.

It is a sad moment for you and your staff. Thank you for many years of service.

G Samuels, Bloemfontein

Catholic activist’s voice recalled

I

REMEMBER Thomas Manthata (above), the Catholic activist who died at 81 on July 10 (as reported last week) from our time as members of CARE (Catholic Action for Racial Equality) in Johannesburg in the 1960s and 1970s, when we used to meet at The Grail in Loch Avenue.

Thomas was for me a voice from Soweto—with its burdens and sorrows and social injustices—that carried his cry as a bridge over the divide into the very heart of white and affluent Johannesburg.

He would stand there, ready to speak, eyes closed as though he were searching the very depths of his being and spirit for the light of words that would move us to action for justice.

Thomas spoke carefully and with candour. He spoke with resolve and conviction. He wanted every word to count, to grab us, to make us think, to examine our lives in a situation of institutionalised and oppressive injustice.

I began to see him as a prophet from the deep with a simple but profound message, an urgent challenge: “Hear me my brothers and sisters. Hear me. Let us help each

another job well done.

It is very sad to see something beautiful to which you have dedicated years of life fade from sight and be no more. There is a death in our family this year.

The commitment of some of the present staff to continue to bring out a weekly Southern Cross, in digital format, while working on a freelance basis at substantial financial sacrifice and the promise to relaunch as a monthly magazine does bring some hope and consolation.

One hopes that we as Catholics respond with equal generosity to the promotion of the new endeavour.

Archbishop William Slattery OFM, Pretoria

other to prepare the way for a new society of justice and peace. Walk with me side by side into a new land. Together we can do it. We must do it. We must hurry. Our Christian solidarity and compassion compel us in our quest for a new life together.”

Those years with CARE, the Catholics I met there, courageous men and women of indomitable spirit—priests, religious and laity— helped to reform me and shape the values and issues that troubled my journalism.

CARE members did more. Some were prosecuted, some were banned, some were house-arrested.

Tony Brink once sheltered Albert Luthuli and went to prison rather than pay a fine for employing a domestic worker who had no pass.

Ann Hope introduced us to Paulo Freire and The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paul Goller founded Challenge magazine. Fr Victor Kotze had four of us meet Fr Finbar Synott OP which led to us drafting “Call to Conscience”. Peter Brand founded a night school for black students when it was illegal to do so.

Their witness and actions encouraged me, and others, to question the role of our own faith in the struggle against racism and injustice. This is a journey without end.

Thomas Manthata’s life and mission celebrated the deeds of the Good Samaritan in crossing the road to help struggling humanity.

He calls us to follow him in the words of the Pastoral Plan: To be a community serving humanity in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The plan remains a signpost to the deeper transformation this country so desperately needs.

Sydney Duval, Cape Town Opinions expressed in The Southern Cross do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or staff of the newspaper, or of the Catholic hierarchy.

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

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

PERSPECTIVES

7

In troubled times, keep eyes on Jesus Keenan M Williams Y heart sank a couple of weeks ago when I read the Southern Cross editorial about the future of the publication.

It sank not just because what had become a Catholic tradition in the form of a weekly newspaper would come to an end (and a monthly magazine launched in its place), but rather how it would affect many of the staff and the editor.

In her opening line of her book Retrenchment, Jennifer Ritchie says: “Your world suddenly goes cold and changes, leaving you with the harsh reality of aloneness, the realisation that nothing is secure, and a grim feeling of foreboding.”

Like the Covid-19 stats, retrenchment and job loss too has a face behind each number.

Exactly a year ago as I write, I worked my last day as a content producer and lost my formal employment. The reality of it all was terrifying, and realising that I had a family to feed, with a young baby at home, didn’t calm my anxiety.

I remember calling my wife and letting her know that the show I had worked on had been scrapped because it didn’t generate enough advertising revenue. It was a tough call to make, but her words—”We will get through this”—calmed my spirit.

And I remained hopeful that something better would come. As weeks went

by I kept checking my inbox and refreshed my call log in case the radio station called me again, but... nothing.

A wedding in Germany took my mind off things, to an extent, but when we arrived back home that feeling of uncertainty returned again.

As I drove back from yet another job interview, I remembered the scene of Jesus walking on the water. He calls Peter out on the water to walk upon it with him.

Peter gets out of the boat and walks towards Jesus. But when he sees the waves moving below him and feels the strong

wind beside him, he begins to sink.

And as he sinks, Jesus holds out his hand and lifts him up. Together they walk on the water and get back into the boat.

At first, I didn’t take much note of this story, but that seed had been planted.

As I continued to search on various job sites, I also began working on my own projects. Things started looking a little more positive, even though that anxiety of not knowing where the next pay cheque would come from was stressful.

Fast forward and a new year with possibilities dawned. “2020 plenty” and “My year”, I heard people saying. There was also that popular phrase of “having 2020 vision”. I remember drawing up my New Year’s resolutions, and as I still struggled to find work in my field, I had more hope as one of my projects began picking up some traction.

The virus messes everything up Then, as fast as I could say “amen”, the virus arrived in South Africa.

At that stage I had also made a debut as a newsreader at a commercial radio stations. But then South Africa went under lockdown. Before I could sign a formal

Jesus’ walk on the water is depicted in a mosaic in the Duc in Altum church in Migdal at the Sea of Galilee.

We need one another T HERE is a lovely song that came to mind for me at this time, with the threat of Covid-19 ever closer. It is called “You Needed Me”, a hit in 1978 for Canadian singer Anne Murray (younger readers may recall the 1999 version by Boyzone).

As I read through the words and thought about them I realised that it works both ways, “You needed me” and “I needed you.” We need to cry, to face our confusion and our fears.

We need to express our fears and be listened to. We need to listen and to hear one another. We need faith, we need God, and to be able to look forward to eternity.

You gave me strength to stand alone again To face the world out on my own again You put me high upon a pedestal So high that I could almost see eternity You needed me, you needed me It may be a love song about different human needs but it seems relevant too for me at this time.

It worries me that among all the important messages about the necessary responses to protect ourselves and each other I don’t hear messages about speaking to one another in families about dying and death.

There is quite a focus on depression and anxiety for all of us, but actually verbalising dying and death, and also our fears, is a valuable family asset.

Of course, death is a sad and morbid subject which people tend to want to avoid, but surely it is necessary too to prepare all family members of all ages for the possibility of death—especially now and especially too when it concerns older people who we know are most vulnerable.

Some of us may remember that during

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During the lockdown, grandparents miss the physical contact with their children and grandchildren. the time when HIV/Aids was ravaging families, a project of creating “memory boxes” was promoted for children to collect mementoes of their parents who were dying.

We must be prepared Pope Francis did address the topic in his encyclical Amoris Laetitia in a beautiful passage about eternal life and reunion: “If we accept death, we can prepare ourselves for it. The way is to grow in our love for those who walk at our side, until that day when ‘death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more’.

“We will so prepare ourselves to meet once more our loved ones who have died.

The better we live on this earth, the greater the happiness we will be able to share with our loved ones in heaven. The more we are able to mature and develop in this work, the more gifts we will be able to bring to the heavenly banquet,” the pope wrote.

Our MARFAM family theme for the

Talking Faith

contract at the radio station my future again was uncertain. And with schools shut I could no longer run my antibullying campaign.

The future for me, as it is for many South Africans, and so too for the staff of The Southern Cross, is a stressful and uncertain one. It’s a difficult time, but as I write today that story of Jesus and Peter on the water comes back to me.

We are currently on rough seas, but Jesus calls us out to walk on the water. He calls us to keep our eyes fixed on him, no matter how rough our storm may be.

This is a time when our faith will be tested, where our commitment to carrying the cross and walking with him will be put to trial.

But I have hope, I have faith that this too shall pass. As Anglican Bishop Michael Curry once said in a sermon on Jesus and Peter walking on the water: “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

And as we keep our eyes on Jesus— though difficult, though stressful and even when we almost throw in the towel—may we remember that he is there with us, every step of the way, his hands out stretched as he wants to walk with us.

And do you know what’s the highlight of that story? It isn’t Peter and Jesus walking on the water, but rather when they get back into the boat: the storm has passed and the clouds have vanished and the sun is shining again.

Like then, now too, with our eyes fixed on the Prize, we will get through this, this too shall pass, and we shall see a sunnier day. Just don’t lose the faith.

Toni Rowland

Family Friendly

month of July has been “Grandparents are Family Roots”. This is chosen because July 26, upcoming Sunday, is the feast of the grandparents of Jesus: Ss Joachim and Anne.

I’m sure the women of St Anne’s Sodality will find a way to commemorate their day, but it is also an important day for all families when a special prayer and blessing can be offered for grandparents.

We oldies are families’ history books— or maybe fossils. Grandparents, possibly particularly so in African culture, root families in their culture and their past. They play many practical roles too as carers and money banks.

But it also works both ways. We are needed, but we also need the younger generation.

One of the hardships for me in lockdown has been the lack of physical contact with my children and grandchildren. I’m not a very hands-on granny, not a bragbook granny, nor a baby-loving granny, but still like to be more a part of their lives.

In fact, I do rely on them too, especially the skills they have which I took for granted: “Please fix my computer or TV, or teach me about Facebook and Zoom.”

Now I get to talk to them on Zoom while I get requests from them, “Please granny can I borrow....”

On the question of fears and grandparents or all older people: Some time ago I tried doing a small survey with some residents in our retirement village about our fears.

Continued on page 11

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In August, Pope Francis asks us to pray for those at sea. (Photo: Apostleship of the Sea)

Chris Chatteris SJ

Pray with the Pope

Pray for those out at sea Universal Intention: We pray for all those who work and live from the sea, among them sailors, fishermen and their families.

SUPPOSE fishing still has a romantic attraction because it is the last real hunting left in a world in which the production of food has been mostly domesticated.

Perhaps the fish farm and factory boats will finally kill off ocean fishing, but for the time being there are still vast numbers of small and vulnerable boats which head out onto the deep to seek the fisherfolk’s daily bread.

One sea-song puts it with Celtic poignancy thus: “With our nets and gear we’re faring/On wide and wasteful ocean/Sweating or cold, growing up, growing old and dying/As we’re hunting for the bonnie shoals of herring.”

Fishing is hard. And the fisherman’s livelihood is precarious because the hunt is not always successful, as the Gospels remind us when Peter told the Lord that they had toiled all night and caught nothing.

All hunting, fishing included, is dangerous.

Again, we recall the terrifying storm encountered by the disciples on the lake.

It doesn’t sound as if much has changed. You just have to look at the small fishing vessels in Cape Town to see it. They are often rusty and in very poor repair generally, and many of their crews don’t look in very good shape either. The men look battered by both poverty and the weather.

According to some reports, crews of fishing boats putting out from some developing countries endure conditions of semi-slavery, signing contracts in a language they cannot understand and ending up in debt-bondage from which it is hard to escape because their passports can be impounded by the ship’s captain.

The stark fact is that it’s extremely difficult to regulate and police the high seas, and so it is easy for people with flexible consciences to get away with exploitation and brutality.

The same Celtic folksong song describes it graphically: “O the work was hard and the hours were long/And the treatment, sure it took some bearing,/There was little kindness and the kicks were many,/As we hunted for the shoals of herring.”

I

Exploitation even on cruise liners Apparently it’s not necessarily much better on board the bigger ships. Even the luxurious cruise liners have been criticised for the treatment of their crews, though generally things are better than for fishermen.

But long hours, poor pay, cramped quarters, contract labour and various types of abuse—including sexual exploitation—are said to be common.

The more cynical companies mix the nationalities of their crews in order to limit cohesion among the sailors in case there are complaints. It is a policy of divide and conquer.

Some companies register their ships in Panama or Liberia precisely because the labour and employment laws in those countries are lax and corruptly enforced.

The international nature of seafaring also makes it easier to exploit people. Labour is plentiful among the peoples of the poorest countries who are by definition the most desperate and therefore more likely to put up with poor conditions of work.

Filipinos, Indonesians and Bangladeshis are frequently in the majority of those who work out of sight below decks cooking and cleaning.

The Covid-19 crisis has compounded all the difficulties of crews of all kinds of vessels, from fishing boats to luxury liners.

Confined and crowded spaces are inherently hazardous places to work in these days. No seafarer can “work from home”.

It is worth remembering when we next buy a cheap fish meal that such economies are often made at the expense of workers whose lives are extremely hard and who are invisible to us.

8

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

MEDIA

This is a ‘phoenix’ moment The transformation of The Southern Cross from newspaper to magazine will change the local Church forever, writes FR S’MILO MNGADI. It may become a ‘phoenix’ moment, but it also calls the SA Church to a time for profound introspection.

A

S from October 2020, the only national Catholic newspaper in South Africa, The Southern Cross, will become a monthly magazine.

This was reported by its editor, Günther Simmermacher, in the editorial of the July 8-14 issue.

He also added another sore fact: all fulltime staff, including himself, will be retrenched, and the magazine will be a responsibility of a freelance team.

Quite a number of Catholics have reacted with shock and sadness to this news.

The Southern Cross would have been in print for 100 years in October. The change of format and the return to freelance editorial/content production represent a closure of a chapter in history.

This development will forever change the face of the Church in South Africa.

However, like all tragedies, it is a challenge for reflection and self-introspection for the Church in South Africa, and a lesson for the worldwide Church, particularly in our region. It is a “phoenix” moment.

Firstly, the emergence of digital media and its invasion of the media space has been detrimental to print media across the board.

People find little or no reason to buy newspapers for the news which they would have already consumed digitally in real-time.

Lack of interest in profound analyses due to the increasing culture of “sound bites” adds to this.

As a Church, we have to read these “signs of times” vis-a-vis our work of evangelisation and homiletics.

Secondly, The Southern Cross’ inevitable transformation has occurred far sooner than predicted, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lockdown measures forced parishes, its major point of sales, to close down, and this resulted in a financial blow. The limited digital subscription base introduced a decade ago could not keep the paper afloat.

However, the pandemic is not the cause of this development, it just speeded it up.

Covid-19, save for its fatal effects, does not introduce anything new to the world but simply exposes infrastructural and institutional integrity or lack thereof.

It is the proverbial “torrential rain, heavy flood and ferocious storm” of Matthew 8:2425 testing the strength of the foundation. Is it a rock or just sand?

Thus, this transformation of The Southern Cross invites us to analyse foundational

The last-ever printed edition of The Southern Cross, of March 25, is parcelled on the floor of the newspaper’s office. The front-page lead issues the advice that in the coronavirus crisis, we must be “church at home”. By coming out every week digitally throughout the various stages of lockdown, The Southern Cross has aimed to be a presence of the universal Church in the domestic Church. Inset are front-pages of Southern Cross editions from each of its first ten decades. In October the publication turns 100 years old. challenges in order to avoid a similar fate in the future.

Some of the issues at play:

l The lukewarm attitude of the Church towards the means of social communications as a vital, essential and indispensable tool of evangelisation does need attention.

South Africa has a Catholic population of about 4 million people. However, it has only one national newspaper (and one radio station, Radio Veritas, with a very limited wavelength imprint), and two archdiocesan newspapers, published monthly (Johannesburg) and quarterly (Cape Town).

The rest of the dioceses have some digital presence via social media and websites. Unfortunately, the former is usually not administered properly and have become “free-for-all” platforms with no editorial control. The latter are, largely, skeletal and mainly not “up-to-date”. l The “monarchism” of English as a language and the prioritisation of the urban interests is a challenge for the Church in South Africa. Generally, The Southern Cross has followed the same route.

People love their languages. They sense when their interests are not prioritised nor their experiences reflected. They, then, do not

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pledge their support to such a venture or withdraw it if they had. l Not specific to the South African Church is the issue of clergy and laity relations. While there are many areas where the two cooperate meaningfully, tensions do exist.

They are simultaneously both latent and active, overt and covert, asymptomatic and symptomatic.

These limit ecclesial success, compromise the Church’s development and hamper her evangelisation efforts, including The Southern Cross which is entirely lay-run save for one cleric, a bishop, serving on its board of directors. l Another cancer that needs to be mentioned is “parochialism”, which I also call “parish or diocesan narcissism”.

Many people think only about their own parish. Some do manage to go beyond to the deanery and the diocese, largely thanks to ministries and sodalities, a different animal altogether.

The concept of a national Church newspaper becomes an anomaly in such a context.

This lack of the sense of the “national Church” becomes evident if there is an issue to be lobbied with government. Only interest groups take it up, not the whole Church. l Related to this is a clear division in thought among the members of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) on a number of issues. This, in itself, is not strange but very normal, natural and, even, canonical.

However, its management from the point of view of communications can be greatly improved to avoid side-effects.

The classic example was when the president of the SACBC on behalf of the bishops’ conference pledged support for The Southern Cross, and a senior bishop outright did the opposite in the letters page of the same edition (April 15-21, pages 1 and 6 respectively).

Thus, the “scaling down” of The Southern Cross provides us with a systemic catalyst for much-needed ecclesiastical renewal, if handled properly and honestly.

We trust that just as “all things work out for good for those who love God and are called for God’s purpose” (Romans 8:28), so shall it be for The Southern Cross and the rest of the local Church in South Africa. n Fr S’milo Mngadi is a priest of the diocese of Mariannhill. This article was originally published on Imbisa’s website at www.imbisa.africa.

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

HOLY LAND

9

From left: The church of St Lazarus in Bethany in the West Bank • Pilgrims inside the supposed tomb of Lazarus in Bethany • Inside the mosque/chapel of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, with the rock that bears what tradition says is a footprint which Jesus left as he ascended into heaven. (All photos: Günther Simmermacher)

Where Jesus was a feminist In part 9 of our virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we go with GünTher SIMMerMACher to Bethany and the summit of the Mount of Olives.

saders were expelled, the church was remodelled to serve as a mosque.

The Mount of Olives

W

E know Bethany as the town near Jerusalem where Jesus’ friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived— and thus the place where the story of Jesus’ path to the Passion, as we saw earlier this year in the “Path to the Passion” series (CLICK HERE).

Today Bethany is a Christian Arab village of 3 600 known to the locals as al-Azariyyah, which means “Place of Lazarus”.

Like Bethlehem, it is located in West Bank territory, on the other side of the Mount of Olives. And it is also walled off by Israel’s separation barrier, separating it from Jerusalem.

In one place, like an echo of the communists’ method of separation in Berlin, the wall runs through the middle of the road.

Residents who work in East Jerusalem, ordinarily ten minutes’ drive away—and, importantly, in international law not part of Israel—must either take a daily roll of the dice to see whether they are allowed through the Israeli checkpoint, or they must make a 45minute detour to get to their place of work or their children to school.

Jesus’ domicile during his visits to the Holy City often was with his friends in Bethany.

During the pilgrimage seasons, accommodation in Jerusalem was scarce and expensive, so travellers of modest means, such as Jesus and his followers, would stay in nearby villages, such as Bethany.

The Gospels reveal Mary and Martha as close friends of Jesus— so intimate that they freely rebuked him for not arriving sooner after Lazarus’ death.

They were also bickering sisters, perhaps both keen to impress Jesus in their own ways.

While Mary was hanging on to Jesus as he held forth on matters theological, Martha conscientiously did the dishes, because they won’t do themselves.

And you feel for Martha when Jesus rebukes her for prioritising household chores over his words of wisdom (Luke 10:38-42). But practical Martha, the more sympathetic of the sisters and the one more likely to get hitched, is of secondary importance in this story. Keep your eyes on Mary.

A very unusual pupil The Gospel’s account of Mary being positioned “at Jesus’ feet” has some relevance even today.

Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet is a code for being instructed by a master. So Mary was Jesus’ pupil, a disciple.

This was quite revolutionary at

Pilgrims enter the mosque of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The lower half of the once open-roofed chapel is from the old Crusader basilica, the upper part was built by Muslims when they turned the chapel into a mosque in the 12th century. a rampantly patriarchal time when women were regarded as being of little worth, never mind being disciples of spiritual masters. Mary’s place was supposed to be next to Martha, doing the dishes.

Jesus was, by the standards of his time, a radical feminist. By teaching and empowering women—there is little doubt that he also instructed Mary Magdalene, and note how he chose a woman at the well to be his first gentile apostle—Jesus elevated their status in the nascent Christian sect.

Alas, the status of women in the early Church steadily diminished, and even in more recent eras the Church has not always succeeded in following Our Lord’s example in the way it treats women.

Theodosius and Arculf both reported seeing it, in 518 and 680 respectively. The church escaped destruction in the Persian invasion and various Muslim persecutions.

It was the Crusaders who demolished it to build a new church over the tomb of Lazarus. That project was funded by King Fulk and his daughter, Queen Melisande of Jerusalem, who also established a fabulously wealthy convent dedicated to Mary and Martha, with the queen’s young sister as abbess. After the Cru-

On the other side of Bethany is the Mount of Olives, the threepeaked ridge that rises to the east of Jerusalem’s Old City, across the Kidron Valley.

The valley is now dry, but in ancient times it was a waterway.

The famous skyline of the Old City, dominated by the golden Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, is the view from the Mount of Olives. On the other side of the mount, the desert begins.

It seems that Jesus had at least three sanctuaries on the mount, aside from his occasional domicile at Bethany. Here he prayed, slept and wept.

At the foot of the mount, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was arrested, and from its summit he ascended into heaven.

And it is on the peak where groups typically begin their pilgrimage to the Mount of Olives— starting, ironically, at the place where the story of God becoming man ends: the chapel of the Ascension.

Where Jesus left earth The chapel is in fact a small mosque. It is a plain—and, truth be told, underwhelming—structure.

It does, however, contain a rock with the imprint of what vaguely resembles a left foot, the obvious implication being that the imprint was left by Christ’s size 9 as he ascended.

The existence of the supposed footprint, and a matching right one, was documented in the 4th

Focus on Lazarus But when pilgrims visit Bethany, the primary focus is not so much on Mary and Martha as it is on Lazarus. It has always been so.

In the fourth century, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea and the Bordeaux Pilgrim of 333 located the tomb of Lazarus in a crypt at Bethany. Fifty years later, the pilgrim Egeria described a ceremony at the “Lazararium”, on the seventh Saturday of Lent: “Just on 1:00 everyone arrives at the Lazarium, which is Bethany... by the time they arrive there, so many people have collected that they fill not only the Lazarium itself, but all the fields around.” This overcrowding explains why soon after the church was expanded.

The Lazararium was destroyed in an earthquake and a new church was built. The pilgrims

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century. The other footprint was taken by Muslims; some say to the Dome of the Rock.

The little octagonal mosque sits in the courtyard, surrounded by the remaining walls of a Crusader basilica which had been constructed over the ruins of a succession of earlier churches.

The Crusader church was open to the sky, the better to allow the risen Christ to ascend symbolically in perpetuity.

After Saladin defeated the Crusaders in 1187, the basilica was at least partly demolished, but its exterior walls were preserved, presumably to function as a fortification.

Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet and share our belief in the ascension, so they converted the chapel of the Ascension within the church to a mosque.

We can observe the split in the architecture: the lower section of the structure is a remnant of the Crusader church, the upper part was built by Muslims.

In the end, it was never used as a mosque because great numbers of Christians came to venerate here, as they would through the centuries. In a show of admirable magnanimity, the Muslims built another mosque next door instead.

For the feast of the Ascension, Christians are allowed to set up altars in the courtyard of the chapel, for worship and celebration.

It is a big event for the Christians of the Holy Land. Only this year it was very quiet, because the coronavirus limited the number of participants. n This is an edited extract from Günther Simmermacher’s The Holy Land Trek. Next week: Descending the Mount of Olives

10

The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

REFLECTION

Look at what you do have Back in 1986, FR LaRRy KaUFmann CSsR was detained by the apartheid security police. That old experience of lockup found echoes 34 years later in the Covid-19 lockdown, as he relates in the second article of a two-part reflection.

daughter, a beloved son of an AllIs-Grace God.

The gift of sharing

T

HE security police detained me at about 1am on the night of June 12-13, 1986.

They told me to take an extra jersey and a toothbrush.

It would be five days before I saw a change of clothes when family were finally allowed to bring extras. Deprivation One. I did not have my book of the Divine Office with its daily selection of psalms as the Prayer of the Church, nor did I have my bible.

Deprivation Two. I could not celebrate the Eucharist—besides which wine would have been forbidden in prison (doesn’t that sound familiar today?). Deprivation Three.

Early morning coffee? Don’t be silly. Fresh fruit and vegetables?

Forget it. Samp and beans for you, old chap. Deprivation Four.

A walk in the sun? In two weeks—I never saw the sun. We were never allowed out of that wing of the prison. Deprivation Five.

Deprivation, loss and diminishment can open your eyes to what you do have, to the things that really matter, to essentials, to that subtle distinction our brainwashed minds try to hide from us, to the difference between “I want” and “I need”.

Deprivation teaches us, in the words of that old song, “the simple bare necessities of life”.

We’ve been confronted with something similar during the corona lockdown.

If prison life has given me one advantage here, it is that what we have been deprived of recently does not have the sudden intensity of lockup in prison.

Even if alcohol has been banned again, there might still be some around in the first weeks to get used to the idea, perhaps even to ration it.

But to get to my main point: deprivation can be seen as a gift from God—as my fellow Redemptorist Father Cyril Axelrod talks about the deprivation of his sight and hearing as a gift from God— because it forces us to think about

In 1986, Redemptorist Father Larry Kaufmann was detained by the apartheid regime. Some 34 years later, he found that many of the insights he gained from that experience were helpful in making sense of the time of coronavirus lockdown.

(Photo: Brittani Burns/Unsplash) what we do have, not just materially but, more important, spiritually.

Who needs a prayer book when you can go inside your heart and pray? It forces us to think about what really matters in life. If you excuse my temporary lapse into crudity, with F-all in prison, I gave thanks for the three great Fs I do have: faith, family, and friends.

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and the rest will be given you as well.

An inner freedom From his prison cell in the 17th century during the English civil war, the poet Richard Lovelace wrote: “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”

There is something that no one and nothing can imprison: one’s deepest centre and truth.

St Paul alludes to this when he says that nothing whatsoever can separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

In my first days in prison I felt that I had lost that conviction. I

felt like a blind person groping in the dark for a lost sock.

In fact, I’ve watched my deafblind friend Fr Cyril doing just that—groping for a lost sock—refusing all help from me.

But one day the prison warden

I opened the bible’s cover in which was written: “To Larry, Matthew 3:17, your Dad.” came in with a large bible and said it was mine, sent by my father. It wasn’t really mine, so I knew the old man had devised a plan.

I opened the cover in which was written: “To Larry, Matthew 3:17, your Dad.” Straight away I went to the text he cited. It read: “You are my

beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

My father, in his own love and support, had also mediated God the Father to me, the Father of Jesus who heard those words first.

These are words which, as Albert Nolan OP writes in his book Jesus Today, provided Jesus with his centre, his core truth, which was for him a source of radical freedom throughout his life. He maintained that heart-freedom even when suffering verbal abuse, physical torture, and eventual crucifixion.

In Christ we are radically free, free in lockup and free in lockdown. Free in sickness, and free even from the fear of death.

My dad used to say, “All is grace—even chance.” By chance, we are living through a time of pandemic. Where’s the grace in it?

Each one of us will have to explore a personal answer to that.

But we must not lose that cursed sock in the process—and if we do, find it quickly.

Stand strong in the truth that no matter what, you are a beloved

Years ago I started writing a full account of my detention in 1986, but I dropped the project as I felt there was already plenty of prison literature.

It has been a good experience lately though, calling to mind some of the lessons I stored in my memory 34 years ago and relating them to similar challenges—physical, emotional and spiritual—during these strange times we’re living through together, brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

While there were 27 of us in detention in the maximum-security wing of Pietermaritzburg New Prison, apartheid practices were still applied.

The four whites were held in their own cell, although we were free to mix during the hours when we could roam up and down the corridor (there wasn’t much else to do).

But the mealtimes became embarrassing. Generally, we sat on the floor against a wall along the length of the corridor to eat our meals served on a tin plate. Three times a week the four whites were given chicken or fish to go with the samp, pap or rice.

There was no way we were going to hive off surreptitiously to a far corner and consume these privileged delicacies. So what we did was divide the chicken or fish into 27 portions—basically a tiny mouthful each for the entire community of detainees.

The same practice applied when the five diabetics got milk instead of the sickly-sweet powdered orange juice. They would splash a dash of milk into the cups of the rest of the community.

Among the many memories of my time in detention, this sharing of food and drink stands out most graphically. It was more than the fact that the gesture afforded no more than a taster—it was the principle of solidarity that was experienced in real life terms.

How true this must be too for the age of coronavirus!

But don’t let me start preaching, which is an occupational hazard.

Let me simply express deep gratitude for the many acts of solidarity and community I have experienced through others these past months: messages sent, messages forwarded, little humorous video clips on WhatsApp, phone calls— and, yes, food and drink too, far in excess of the tiny morsels of chicken and fish I gave away those many years ago.

Thank you!

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The Southern Cross, July 22 to July 28, 2020

Fr Christopher Lockyer OMI

O

BLATE Father Chris Lockyer died at 78 on July 14 at Nazareth House, Durban, after patiently enduring much suffering for a number of years with spinal problems and Parkinson’s disease.

Those who visited Fr Chris know that his endurance was marked by spiritual resignation; he did not complain, only stoically reported any discomfort.

Fr Chris was born into an Anglican family on June 20, 1942. He attended a Catholic school and made many Catholic friends.

After school, he worked as a salesman for almost seven years.

He was, during that time, a member of the Young Christian Workers and the St Vincent de Paul Society. He had an interest in joining the Anglican ministry.

However, at the age of 23 he was received into the Catholic Church and soon after explored a contemplative vocation with the Carthusians. But within the year and with the support of his parents, he was accepted into the Oblate novitiate in Germiston. He made his first vows on February 17, 1968, and his final vows exactly three years later at Cedara.

Fr Chris was ordained a priest on June 20, 1974, his 32nd birthday. His first task after his studies was to learn isiZulu. He served as assistant parish priest at Emmanuel cathedral (1975-77) and at St Anne’s, Sydenham (1977). He was appointed parish priest of St Anthony’s, Durban, an appointment that lasted one year (1978).

In 1979, Fr Chris was appointed full-time chaplain to a number of hospitals in Durban, particular to St Augustine’s and Entabeni. He spent the rest of his life in his ministry—33 years!

As he liked to tell the story; “They appointed me, and forgot about me. So I just continued.”

And he did so with faithfulness and dedication.

His softly-spoken manner and gracious nature endeared him to patients and staff alike. During the 1980s he lived with the Marist

Brothers, as their chaplain.

During this time he also preached a number of retreats that left a deep impression. His favourite icon was the face of the Saviour in the Divine Mercy picture, which had a prominent spot in his prayer space.

A

lifelong friend, Michael Buckle, who was a fellow scholastic in the 1970s, says: “Fr Chris Lockyer was a naturally reticent person who nevertheless was very warm and caring to those in need of support or comfort. A very humble man, he had no qualms in seeking advice when that was necessary.

“A loyal friend, with a sly sense of humour, he could catch you unawares if you weren’t paying attention. It speaks volumes of his character and rapport that he was spiritual director and confessor to a good many of his fellow priests.

His calm and caring demeanour will be greatly missed by many.”

Fr Scott Davidson CSsR was one of those priests who benefitted immensely from Fr Chris’ spiritual wisdom. He first met Fr Chris when he was in matric at St Henry’s College in Durban, when Fr Chris supplied for the chaplain at a day-retreat. “What struck me

was his gentleness and holiness,” says Fr Davidson.

A meeting two years later and an invitation to coffee led to regular visits which became informal spiritual direction sessions.

“At some stage he steered the conversation around to vocation.

He always let the Holy Spirit lead and never forced his own ideas on me,” Fr Davidson says.

“Chris had a great ability to listen, often hearing what you weren’t saying but should’ve been saying. So good was he as a listener that he shared little of himself.

“I often felt, when he said Mass, that he was talking to God only and both of them had forgotten that anyone else was there.

“And as he grew older, he said he needed fewer and fewer books—Scripture was more than enough.

“Chris radiated gentleness and peace and I think I never saw him truly angry. He imperceptibly changed my life and helped me find who I am. I will always be grateful,” Fr Davidson says.

Fr Lockyer is survived by niece Susan and nephew Terrence, children of his late brother. His sister-in-law Denise died in February this year.

Terrence Lockyer said: “I had only the slightest glimpses of Fr Chris’ work, but one need not have spent long in his company to have a sense of the many lives he touched.

“There was scarcely an occasion on which one did not meet somebody who knew him, and indeed at our mother’s funeral, one of the congregation, having heard me mention him in a eulogy, asked if he was a priest in Durban: she remembered him from the parish she attended in childhood,” Mr Lockyer said.

The Oblates are eternally grateful for the life of their brother Fr Chris Lockyer. He always remained in the background, but expressed the compassion of the crucified saviour to those to whom he ministered.

FROM OUR VAULTS 51 Years Ago: July 23, 1969

Pope hails moon landing Pope Paul VI has praised the first moon landing in what The Southern Cross calls a “dramatic and unscheduled speech from his summer retreat”, Castel Gandolfo. The pontiff had followed the live telecast on his colour television. But he warned that “war and hunger should not be forgotten in the race to conquer outer space”.

Pledging loyalty to the pope Top lay Catholics in England and Scotland, and high-ranking clergy in Ireland and West Germany, have reaffirmed their loyalty to the pope.

YOUR CLASSIFIEDS

11

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Death changes everything.

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We need one another always Continued from page 7 We had some fun checking on what they are.

Is there fear of falling, of spiders, of getting sick, of setting fire to the house and more? An important fear too is losing one’s mind, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or living too long.

It is all very well for the president to speak of the need for caring for older persons, but not all of us want to live longer if we do not see a purpose in life any more. And we need to face such realities and ideally be able to share.

While praying the rosary on my early morning walk I meditated on the value of our prayers for our grandchildren in a very particular way.

A granddad I interviewed for my “Family Matters” show on Radio Veritas told me he prays for his 29 grandchildren by name every day.

They may be beautiful and doing well, or they may be addicts, gang members, dropouts. Certainly there is as much stress in their lives as there is in ours, if not more.

I have been promoting a Movement of Prayer of Grandparents for Grandchildren.

That certainly can contribute to our reasons for living and address our needs and theirs.

There is no doubt that we do need one another—to love, cherish and appreciate, to understand, forgive and make peace in our relationships as grandparents and our own children and grandchildren.

Long before the funeral these are the matters that will help us to Rest in Peace. n For resource materials on grandparenting and families, loss and bereavement search www.marfam.org.za

Southern CrossWord solutions

SOLUTIONS TO 925. ACROSS: 5 Oils, 7 Simple vows, 8 Sari, 10 Authored, 11 Subtle, 12 Relics, 14 Stored, 16 Mutual, 17 Archival, 19 East, 21 Archdeacon, 22 User. DOWN: 1 Uses, 2 Splinter, 3 Legate, 4 Doctor 5 Oslo, 6 Lower class, 9 Adulteress, 13 Lutheran, 15 Device, 16 Melody, 18 Hear, 20 Tang.

Liturgical Calendar Year A – Weekdays Cycle Year 2 Sunday July 26, 17th Sunday of the Year 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12, Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-130, Romans 8:28-30, Matthew 13:44-52 Monday July 27 Jeremiah 13:1-11, Responsorial psalm Deuteronomy 32:18-21, Matthew 13:31-35 Tuesday July 28, St Victor Jeremiah 14:17-22, Psalm 79:8-9, 11, 13, Matthew 13:36-43 Wednesday July 29, St Martha 1 John 4:7-16, Psalm 34:2-11, John 11:19-27 or Luke 10:38-42

Thursday July 30, St Justin de Jacobis and St Peter Chrysologus Jeremiah 18:1-6, Psalm 146:1-6, Matthew 13:47-53 Friday July 31, St Ignatius Loyola Jeremiah 26:1-9, Psalm 69:5, 8-10, 14, Matthew 13:54-58 Saturday August 1, St Alphonsus Liguori Jeremiah 26:11-16, 24, Psalm 69:15-16, 30-31, 33-34, Matthew 14:1-12 Sunday August 2, 18th Sunday of the Year Isaiah 55:1-3, Psalm 145:8-9, 15-18, Romans 8:35, 37-39, Matthew 14:13-21

Catholic award for hit movie The movie Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, has received the International Catholic Film Bureau award in West Berlin.

British people are ashamed Cardinal John Heenan of Westminster has said that British people are “thoroughly ashamed” of their country’s sale of arms to one side—the federal government—in the Biafra civil war in Nigeria.

Editorial: Debate fruitfully with care In his editorial, Fr Louis Stubbs writes that differences between Catholics can be “fruitful” provided that “reasonable care is used” in debating these disagreements.

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18th Sunday: August 2 Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3, Psalm 145:8-9, 1518, Romans 8:35, 37-39, Matthew 14:13-21

H

OW much do God’s gifts cost? Put the question like that, and you see immediately (I hope) that the answer is obvious.

In the first reading for next Sunday, all that is asked of us is that we should be thirsty (which we are) and that we should have no money: “Come—receive grain and eat, come without paying and without cost: drink wine and milk!”

It is an extraordinary invitation, and it asks a question which (think about it) is an obvious one: “Why spend money on what is not food?”

And then, because God is in charge: “Listen very carefully—and eat good food.”

To qualify for this gift is simple: “Pay attention and come to me, and you will live, and I shall make a covenant with you, a permanent one with my beloved David.”

We can never fully grasp the extraordinary generosity of God. This generous God is the one known to the author of our psalm for next Sunday: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and great in love.”

This is, of course, the God who is known to Jesus, whom the psalmist goes on to characterise as “good to all, compassionate to all his creatures”, and “you give them their food

S outher n C ross

God’s gifts don’t cost

Nicholas King SJ

at the right time”, and, with a lovely image of God’s generosity, “you open up your hands and satisfy the desire of every living creature”.

All we have to do, it seems, is to ask: “The Lord is close to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.”

Dimly we should be beginning to grasp that this is a God who longs to be generous, not one who is going to give us an invoice.

Paul has an eye for the things that really matter, and in our second reading for next Sunday he is giving the Romans reasons for having confidence in what God has done for them in Christ.

Our passage is one of those “purple passages” that make us overlook all his defensive irritability, as he exclaims, powerfully: “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”

Then he offers a list of such possible obstacles: “tribulation, being in a tight corner, persecution, having-nothing-to-eat, havingnothing-to-wear, or risk or pangas”.

He does not mention lack of money in this list, but we know without asking that not even that is an obstacle.

Then he produces another list: “Death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come,

have no need to go away; give them something to eat yourselves.”

The ungenerous disciples get out their calculators: “We’ve got nothing but five loaves of bread and two fish.” That, they clearly feel, should put an end to the nonsense of feeding the crowds; but not a bit of it, and Jesus simply says: “Bring them here to me.”

Then a certain amount of stage-setting takes place: “He ordered the crowds to lie down on the grass, took the two loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven and blessed, and broke, and gave the loaves to the disciples. And the [incredulous] disciples gave them to the crowds.”

Then we watch the result: “They all ate, and were sated. And the surplus of the fragments came to 12 full baskets!”

Then a final piece of mathematics: “Those who ate were: men, about 5 000; not counting women and children.”

Which takes us back to the question with which we started: “What was the final bill for that picnic?”

Permission to feel human I

T is normal to feel restless as a child, lonely as a teenager, and frustrated by lack of intimacy as an adult; after all we live with insatiable desires of every kind, none of which will ever find full fulfillment this side of eternity.

Where do these desires come from?

Why are they so insatiable? What is their meaning?

As a young boy, the Catholic catechisms I was instructed from and the sermons I heard from the pulpit in fact answered those questions—but in a vocabulary far too abstract, theological and churchy to do much for me existentially.

They left me sensing there was an answer, but not one that was of help to me.

So I quietly suffered the loneliness and the restlessness.

Moreover, I agonised because I felt that it was unholy to feel the way I did. My religious instruction, rich as it was, did not offer any benevolent smile from God on my restlessness and dissatisfaction.

Puberty and the conscious stirring of sexuality made things worse. Now not only was I restless and dissatisfied, but the raw feelings and fantasies that were besetting me were considered positively sinful.

That was my state of mind when I entered religious life and the seminary immediately after high school.

Of course, the restlessness continued, but my philosophical and theological studies gave me an understanding of what was so relentlessly stirring inside me and gave me sacred permission to be okay with that.

It started in my novitiate year with a talk from a visiting priest. We were novices, most of us in our late teens, and despite our commitment to religious life we were understandably restless, lonely, and fraught with sexual tension.

Our visitor began his conference with a question: “Are you guys a little restless?

Feeling a bit cooped up here?” We nodded.

He went on: “Well you should be! You must be jumping out of your skins! All that young energy, boiling inside you! You must be going crazy! But it’s okay, that’s what you should be feeling if you’re healthy! It’s normal, it’s good. You’re young; this gets better!”

Hearing this freed up something inside me. For the first time, in a language that genuinely spoke to me, someone had given me sacred permission to be at home inside my own skin.

My studies in literature, theology and spirituality continued to give me that permission, even as they helped me form a vision as to why these feelings were inside me, how they took their origins and meaning in God, and how they were far from impure and unholy.

L

ooking back on my studies, a number of salient persons stand out in helping me understand the wildness, insatiability, meaning, and ultimate goodness of human desire.

The first was St Augustine. The now-famous quote with which he begins his Confessions—“You have made us for yourself,

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Sunday Reflections

powers, height, depth [and we are not quite sure that we understand him here, but we hang on determinedly], or any other created thing is going to be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And we know perfectly well what Paul’s answer will be if we ask: “And what about having no money, Paul?”

Of course, money is not the problem in the Gospel for next Sunday, though getting some peace and quiet might be.

Jesus is reacting to Herod’s grotesque murder of John the Baptist, and “went up from there to a desert place and some privacy”.

But they were watching him: “And when the crowds heard, they followed him on foot from the cities.” And we should notice his generosity; he does not say, “I’m trying to get away from the crowds” or “That will be 20 shekels per head.” Instead Matthew tells us that “he was gutted for them, and he cured their sick people”.

At this point, the disciples intervene: “It is a desert place, and the hour has now passed.

Get rid of the crowds—for them to go off to the villages and buy food for themselves.”

Compare that with what Jesus says: “They

Southern Crossword #925

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final Reflection

Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”— has forever served me as the key to tie everything else together.

With that as my secret for synthesis, I met this axiom in Thomas Aquinas: “The adequate object of the intellect and will is all being as such.”

That might sound abstract but even as a 20-year-old, I grasped its meaning: In brief, what would you need to experience to finally say, “Enough, I am satisfied”?

Aquinas’ answer: “Everything!”

Later in my studies I read Karl Rahner.

Like Aquinas, he too can seem hopelessly abstract when, for instance, he defines the human person as “obediential potency living inside a supernatural existential”. Really?

Well, essentially what he means by that can be translated into a single counsel he once offered a friend: “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we ultimately learn that here, in this life, there is no finished symphony.”

Finally, in my studies, I met the person and thought of Henri Nouwen. He continued to teach me what it means to live without ever getting to enjoy the finished symphony, and he articulated this with a unique genius and in a fresh vocabulary.

Reading Nouwen is like being introduced to yourself, while still standing inside all your shadows. He also helps give you the sense that it is normal, healthy, and not impure or unholy to feel all those wild stirrings with their concomitant temptations inside yourself.

Each of us is a bundle of much untamed eros, of wild desire, longing, restlessness, loneliness, dissatisfaction, sexuality, and insatiability.

We need to be given sacred permission to know this is normal and good because it is what we all feel, unless we are in a clinical depression or have for so long repressed these feelings that now they are expressed only negatively in destructive ways.

We all need to have someone to come visit us inside our particular “novitiate”, ask us if we are painfully restless, and when we nod our heads, say: “Good! You’re supposed to feel like that way! It means you’re healthy! Know too that God is smiling on this!”

ACROSS

5. The kind of painting for the sacrament? (4) 7. Does the novice take them with ease (6,4) 8. Mother Teresa’s habit? (4) 10. Written by St Paul himself? (8) 11. Bustle around making a fine distinction (6) 12. What remains of the holy ones (6) 14. Kept for future use (6) 16. Kind of respect we feel for one another (6) 17. Rich lava about where the records are retained (8) 19. Direction of the feastdays (4) 21. An accord he changed for the senior cleric (10) 22. Employer (4)

DOWN

1. Exploits unfairly among the abuses inside (4) 2. Could this be a relic of the True Cross? (8) 3. He represents the pope outside (6) 4. Like Church’s St Augustine, but not medical (6) 5. Solo Scandinavian diocese (4) 6. You won’t find senior students here (5,5) 9. The woman accused in John 8 (10) 13. Martin’s new church (8) 15. Eve and CID made a piece of equipment (6) 16. Tune of the hymn (6) 18. …, O Israel, the Lord our God is one (Dt 6) (4) 20. St Ignatius has setback about sharp taste (4)

Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

A

LL the children were lined up for Father to hear their first confession.

When it was Johnny’s turn, the priest asked him to confess his sins, and the boy confessed: “Father, I threw a stone at Paul.”

“That was a very misguided thing to do,” the priest said patiently.

“No, it wasn’t misguided at all,” said little Johnny, “I hit him.”

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