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NO BAD KIDS: Girls & Boys Town

KILLING OF A NUN: Life & legacy of Sr Aidan

CATECHISTS’ MINISTRY: What does that mean?

Southern Cross

Est. 1920

The

July 2021

The Catholic Magazine for Southern Africa

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We and our Grandparents 16 SPORTS SUPERSTARS WHO ARE CATHOLIC

SAINT OF THE MONTH: ST ANNE – WITH POSTER!

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Est. 1920

S outhern C ross The

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Our grandparents and us

A

Dear Reader,

T THE RISk OF STATING THE blindingly obvious, all of us have grandparents. They might still be with us, or they might have long departed this worldly realm — maybe even before we were born. And some of us sadly may not know who our grandparents were, for various reasons. But the generational baton was passed down to us by our parents and their parents before them. The DNA of our grandparents lives on in us, and is being passed down to our descendants, if we produce any.

This month the Church celebrates for the first time a World Day of Prayer for Grandparents and the Elderly. When Pope Francis proclaimed that special day earlier this year, he set it for the fourth Sunday in July, so that it would coincide roughly with the July 26 feast of Ss Anne & Joachim, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary and therefore Jesus’ grandparents.

This month, as promised on the cover, we mark the day in a big way. The “Saint of the Month” is St Anne (with the pullout poster, of course), the backcover features quotes on grandparents, veteran family ministry activist Toni Rowland reflects on grandparenthood, and your faithful correspondent chips in with memories of his grandmother. I wonder what my granny would make of being featured in a magazine 126 years after her birth and almost 41 years after her death.

The day dedicated to grandparents calls us to be conscious of the joys and pains of the older generation, and seek solutions to enhancing those joys and alleviating the pains. More regular visits or calls can easily contribute to the joys. The day also issues a call to grandchildren — and, in case the blindingly obvious needs restating, that is all of us — to reflect on their relationship to and with their grandparents. That can be an exercise in gratitude (maybe expressed in prayer, if the grandparent has passed on) or in healing, if the relationship involved hurt.

It’s also a day when grandparents can reflect on their relationship with the grandchildren, and all the intergenerational issues that support or harm these relationships.

It is tempting to romanticise grand-

parents, because most of them are wonderful (and in cases of broken families, often heroic). But not all grandparents are invariably wonderful. Some may lack in love, or sit in judgment, or abuse their grandchildren, or reject them. On July 25, and every fourth Sunday in July thereafter, we ought to offer our prayers for those whose experience of having grandparents is not happy, as we also pray for grandparents who suffer sadness on account of situations relating to their grandchildren.

A

s I wrote the article on my grandmother, the song “Grandma’s hands” by the late soul singer Bill Withers played in my head. As I thought about the second part of the special day this month — the elderly — another moving song came to my mind, also from the early 1970s, and by a singer-songwriter who, like Withers, died in April last year. It’s called “hello in there” and was written by John Prine, then in his early twenties, from the perspective of a pensioner who experiences the loneliness of old age.

Having told his story, the narrator of the song issues an appeal: “So if you’re walking down the street sometime and spot some hollow ancient eyes, please don’t just pass them by and stare as if you didn’t care. Say: ‘Hello in there, hello’.” The song reminds us that care for the elderly also includes companionship for the lonely. That message ties in with the theme which Pope Francis chose for the first World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly: “I am with you always” (Mt 28-20).

But this issue isn’t all about the older generation: on page 25 we show 16 young sporting superstars who are Catholics — some of whom we’ll see in next month’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, and two will feature again in the next issue — and on pages 10-11 we feature the work of Girls and Boys Town SA. Thank you for reading The Southern Cross, and please tell your friends about your monthly Catholic magazine.

God bless,

Günther simmermacher (Editor)

Contents JULY 2021

10

There’s No Bad Girl or Boy Based on the model pioneered by a Catholic priest, Girls and Boys Town SA aims to help troubled youths

12

Keeping It Real In his series on homilies and public speaking, Fr Chris Chatteris advises: ‘Don’t be abstract.’

14

Life, Death and Legacy Of a Nun The author of a new book recalls the life of a Sister who was killed by a mob in 1952

21

Meet gospel star Thandeka Dube

8

Remembering Grandmother Günther Simmermacher recalls his grandmother, and her role in shaping him

25

Mary Is My Background Music A mother explains what putting her toddler to bed taught her about Our Lady

EVERY MONTH 5 FROM OUR VAULTS We review a Southern Cross from 44 years ago

6

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED You ask, and our team of experts replies

24

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Have your say!

25

THE MILLENNIAL CATHOLIC

16 Catholic Sports Superstars

24

Nthabiseng Maphisa reflects on the Church

27

FR RON ROLHEISER OMI On the binding power of hatred

28

RAYMOND PERRIER Why some images in charity are wrong

30

PRAY WITH THE POPE Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on the pope’s universal prayer intention for July

31

Did you know?

In our digital editio n, all links to websites are live.

Just click, and the site opens in your br owser!

Try IT!

PRAYER CORNER Your illustrated prayers, to cut out and collect

32

TWO PAGES OF PUZZLES Two Crosswords, Catholic Trivia Quiz, Wordsearch, Dropped Letters (NEW!) and Anagram Challenge

34

COOKING WITH SAINTS Grazia Barletta tries out recipes from the past

36

...AND FINALLY History in Colour, Inspiring Quotes and a Last Laugh

22

Focus on Grandparents

Saint of the Month: St Anne

17

44 Years Ago: July 24, 1977

FROM OUR VAULTS Priest on political trial

Fr Dominic Scholten OP, secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, has pleaded not guilty to three charges of having owned and/or distributed publications banned by the apartheid government. In cross-examination, Fr Scholten noted that the banned publications found during a security police raid were all from Christian institutes, and discussed South Africa as a police state which tortures political opponents.

He defended the Church’s duty to be involved in politics when politicians violate its moral codes.

With pull-out poster!

Protest against priest’s banning

The SACBC’s Justice & Reconciliation Department has called for protests against the banning of Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa. The banning, writes Fr Finbar Synnot OP, shows “the ruthlessness and inhumanity of the suppression of conscience and speech under which we live”. (Also see backpage)

Catholics hail English queen

In a loyal address to Queen Elizabeth II on her silver jubilee of coronation, the bishops of England & Wales pronounce themselves “heartened and edified” by her “example of highest Christian ideals” in her family life, and her service to “your people at home and throughout the Commonwealth”.

Editorial: Know social teachings

In his editorial, Fr Donald de Beer writes that every Catholic “should know and make known” the social teachings of the Church, as “an integral part of Christian doctrine”.

What else made news in July 1977:

e e

The front-page photo enlarged: Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban met up with 85-year-old Hilda Hounslow, who was his kindergarten teacher in 1921 on Robben Island, off Cape Town, where the archbishop’s father was the lighthouse keeper. Archbishop Hurley travelled to meet Mrs Hounslow in Pietermaritzburg, where she was on holiday.

They viewed old photographs as they reminisced about the days when young Denis and his sister Eileen were in Mrs Hounslow’s charge.

• The Antipolis, a Greek oil tanker, runs aground on the rocks at Oudekraal, Cape Town.

• Deng Xiaoping, purged Chinese leader, is restored to power after nine months as the Maoist Gang of Four is expelled from Communist Party.

• General Zia-ul-Haq overthrows Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first elected prime minister.

• A 25-hour total blackout of New York City results in panic, looting and other disorder.

• British tennis player Virginia Wade wins the women’s singles title in Wimbledon’s centenary year. Swede Björn Borg wins the men’s title, South Africans Bob Hewitt & Greer Stevens win the mixed doubles.

The Southern Cross

5

Your Questions answered

Was William Shakespeare a Catholic?

Q. A friend claims that William Shakespeare was a Catholic? I had not heard that before. Is it true?

Do you have questions about our faith? Send them to: editor@scross.co.za Subject line: Q&A

W

E CANNOT PROVE THAT Shakespeare was a Catholic — nor that he was not. Rather little is known about the writer who lived from 1564 to 1616. While his mother came from a prominent Catholic family, his father, John Shakespeare, held public offices which were not entrusted to Catholics in Elizabethan England.

The records shows that William was baptised a Protestant, as were his three children, paid his taxes to an Anglican church, and was buried in an Anglican church.

None of that rules out that, like many of his contemporary Protestants, Shakespeare had secret sympathies for the Church of Rome at a time when being a “papist” was dangerous. He certainly was not anti-Catholic, and he had so-called

A relic of St Anthony in the church of his birthplace in Lisbon.

Photo: Günther Simmermacher

Q. As a convert to the Catholic faith, I love many things about the Church, but I can’t get my head around the veneration of saints’ relics when these are body parts. Isn’t that a ghoulish superstition?

T

6

HE VENERATION OF THE RELICS of saintly individuals has a long history — dating back to preChristian times. The bones of the Old Testament prophet Elisha brought a dead man to life (2 Kings 13:20-21).

Then, when St Polycarp was martyred in the middle of the 2nd century AD, a contemporary account stated: “We took up his bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together as we The Southern Cross

“recusant” Catholic contacts. He might even have married Anne Hathaway in a Catholic ceremony.

Some scholars claim to detect Catholic sympathies in The Bard’s plays, but those are indications based on interpretation. Other scholars, conversely, claim to find evidence that Shakespeare was a loyal conformist Protestant.

This is a debate neither side of the argument can hope to win, because of the lack of indisputable and conclusive evidence either way.

But it is possible that Shakespeare was secretly a Catholic.

Why do Catholics venerate saints’ relics?

are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom.”

In venerating relics, the Church is not ascribing to them any magical powers, although they may sometimes serve as occasions of God’s miracles. More often, they simply dispose those who view them to strive to live the virtues of that particular saint.

Perhaps St Jerome, who lived from 347 to 420 AD, gave the clearest explanation of relics when he wrote in Ad Riparium: “We do not worship [relics], we do not adore [them], for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator.

But we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order to better adore him whose martyrs they are.”

(Fr Kenneth Doyle)

Radio Veritas founder Fr Emil Blaser OP

Why is radio Veritas limited to Gauteng?

Q. Why is Radio Veritas, as South Africa’s only Catholic radio station, broadcasting only in Johannesburg and not nationally?

I

T IS FAIR TO ASK WHY RADIO Veritas broadcasts only in Johannesburg, as it does on the 576 AM frequency. But it is a problem not of Radio Veritas’ making.

Before Radio Veritas went on air permanently, its late founder, Fr Emil Blaser OP, tried for many years to obtain a licence to broadcast nationally, but the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) refused to license the station on grounds that it was not serving a geographically-defined community. Veritas argued that it served a community-of-interest (namely the Catholic community) which is distributed throughout the country, but ICASA rejected that reasoning. Only when Radio Veritas applied as a community station for Johannesburg — as South Africa’s most populous diocese — did ICASA issue a medium-wave frequency, on grounds that the station would serve a specific geographical community.

Thankfully, Catholics throughout South Africa (and the world) with the means to do so can tune in on livestreams (radioveritas.co.za) or on DStv audio channel 870.

Why does the Church deny St Christopher?

Q. When I was a child, my parents always prayed to St Christopher when we went on a journey. We also had a medal of him in the car for protection. But we learnt years later that the Church says he never existed. Please explain why the Vatican said that?

T

HE SHORT ANSWER IS THAT the life of St Christopher is not attested to by contemporary sources, such as a written reference or evidence of a cult (what we call a devotion), that goes back to around the time he is said to have lived, namely the 3rd century. The Church doesn’t say St Christopher did not exist — how would anyone know?

— but it says that there is no good evidence for his existence.

The story of St Christopher first appeared in Greece in the 6th century. By the 9th century it had come to France, but it spread widely when it featured in the 13th-century Golden Legend, a collection of

hagiographies that was enormously popular in medieval Europe (the same work also spread the legend of St George — who certainly did exist — and the fictional dragon).

The Catholic Church included St Christopher in the calendar of saints only in the 16th century, and even then with limitations governing the celebration of his feast at Mass. It was only between 1954 and 1970 that the commemoration of St Christopher was extended to all Masses. In 1970, Pope Paul VI cut the feast from the universal calendar.

St Christopher, whom legend names as Reprobus, is popular with travellers because, according to legend, he carried Christian pilgrims across a hazardous river. One day the 2,3m-tall giant carried a child to safety — and it transpired that the child was Jesus. Christopher means “Bearer of Christ”.

Whether St Christopher did or

What’s the Ministry of Catechists?

Q. Pope Francis has declared the work of catechists a “ministry”.

I always thought of it as a ministry anyway. What’s different?

P

OPE FRANCIS’ INSTITUTION of the new lay ministry of catechists, with the document Antiquum ministerium (“Ancient ministry”) in May, formalises the vocation of catechists, and revives a ministry of the early Church. An instituted ministry is a type of formal, vocational service within the Catholic Church. It can be either lay, such as lector or acolyte, or ordained, such as deacon or priest.

The new ministry of catechists is for lay people who have a particular call to serve the Catholic Church as a teacher of the faith.

The ministry is “stable”, meaning it lasts for the entirety of life, independent of whether the person is actively carrying out that activity during every part of their life.

Many catechists today serve the Church at parish level. That, of course, is also a ministry, but not an instituted one, which requires a

special vocation.

The instituted ministry of catechists will be tied to the diocese and be at the disposal of the bishop for evangelisation efforts even beyond the parish. The catechist collaborates with the local bishop and priests in the teaching of the faith to the local community.

Pope Francis’ letter said that a lay person called to be instituted in the ministry of catechists should have “deep faith and human maturity,” be an active participant in the life of the Christian community, and be “capable of welcoming others, being generous and living a life of fraternal communion”.

Implementation of this new ministry won’t be immediate. It will be up to the national bishops’ conferences to decide the criteria for admission to this ministry and the process of formation, and how this ministry will relate to those who are currently active in parish catechetics but are reluctant to make a permanent commitment in an instituted ministry. (CNA/GS)

St Christophe r carrie s Christ as a boy across a river.

From the Westm inster Psalte r of c.1250.

didn’t exist is really a moot point.

Through our prayers directed at St Christopher, God hears us. He won’t dismiss our petitions just because there is doubt about whether the saint actually existed. Our St Christopher medals and prayers remind us that we are appealing to God in prayer, in this case for travel mercies.

(Günther Simmermacher)

Visit scross.co.za for your Catholic news!

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FAITH OR SUPERSTITION: May we bury St Joseph statues?

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Daswa at 75 THE STORY OF ST CHARLES LWANGA & COMPANIONS

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The Southern Cross

7

Singing for St Anne and the World

For Catholic gospel singer Thandeka Dube, having national success is as important as being a member of her sodality, as she tells DALUXOLO MOLOANTOA.

T

8

Catholic gospel singer

HE VIDEO OF “INKOSI Thandeka Dube Inamandla” (The Lord Holds All Power) is the only one in mainstream South African gospel music to feature members of the “purple brigade” — the St Anne’s Sodality. Aside from her flourishing music career, Durban-based singer Thandeka Dube finds much fulfilment from her membership in the sodality. And this, she believed, had to find expression in the video for her debut single (see www.bit.ly/ 3vnXkjj).

“For me, St Anne’s Sodality represents a fulfilling, rewarding, humbling, and happy place. I always look forward to spending time with the ladies. As busy as I may be with other aspects of my life, I do my best to make sure I don’t miss any of my St Anne’s commitments,” Thandeka says. “We pray, years of age, she remains a church choir Anne’s Sodality Mass Choir. “We sing laugh, cry and sing together. Most im- conductor, and she reads and writes choral music, isicathamiya and mainportantly, the work we do in the music,” Thandeka says. stream gospel tracks. Sadly, we have not Church and the communities is compabeen able to sing together in a while, rable to none. Walking away with the A family choir due to the pandemic,” she says. knowledge that you’ve helped make Thandeka has collaborated with a Her late uncle, also a member of big someone else’s life a bit more bearable choirs in the province, started a family variety of musicians in South Africa, and is priceless.” choir many years ago. “It was made up even internationally. A once-off perThandeka Dube was born in Botha’s of immediate family, cousins, aunts, and formance in Dubai opened the doors to Hill, in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, so on. We used to practise choral music her flourishing music career. “When I in KwaZulu-Natal. She was raised in after work or school,” she says. “We no returned from my performance in Mpumalanga township, between Durlonger practise as a choir as life’s de- Dubai, I was approached by the head of ban and Pietermaritzburg, where she atmands made it challenging for us to the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra to sing tended primary school. She attended keep going. However, up to this day, for Durban’s senior citizens at an event two Catholic high schools — Albini each and every one of our family’s gath- organised by the eThekwini MunicipalGirls’ High in Ntshongweni and St Franerings ends up in song, whether ity. Since that event I have been invited cis College in Mariannhill — before maplanned or not.” a few more times to perform with the ortriculating at a Model C school.

Thandeka is also a member of the St chestra. The last time was in December Apart from her music ca2020, when Durban Tourism reer, Thandeka works in the took the orchestra to the townhospitality industry. She studship. The idea was to sing songs ied at the Durban University of which ordinary people identify Technology, and is currently in with, backed by the orchestra,” her final year of her studies toshe explains. wards a B.Com degree in In 2017 Thandeka co-wrote human resources management. and recorded the theme song Her musical roots are for the Mini World Youth Day deeply embedded in her family. in Durban. She collaborated on “My mother sang soprano in the song with Justin Nanak, a most of the big choirs in fellow Catholic singer and A screenshot of the video of Thandeka Dube’s single KwaZulu-Natal, such as the music producer. “Justin was a “Inkosi Inamandla”, which featured members of the Amazwi KwaZulu Choir, or member of the presiding comSt Anne’s Sodality, to which the singer belongs.

Zulu National Choir. At 70 The Southern Cross

mittee for the Mini World Youth Day conference. When he was tasked to write the song, he had this idea that it should be bilingual and requested that we write it together in English and IsiZulu,” she recalls. The song, titled “The Mighty One”, was released on July 24, 2017 — two days before the feast day of St Anne.

On mainstream radio

Thandeka released her debut single, “Inkosi Inamandla” last October.

It received airplay on local radio stations, eventually reaching the ears of gospel music lovers on mainstream radio stations such as uKhozi FM and Metro FM. “The song’s performance was totally unexpected, especially coming from someone who was a newcomer to mainstream radio. Since the release I have also had the opportunity to share it onstage with gospel music giants such as Ntokozo Mbambo and Nqubeko Mbatha.”

The idea for the song’s video was Thandeka’s. “I wanted it to be an expression of who I am. Hence you’ll see my family, my fellow church members, especially my fellow St Anne’s ladies, and others. These are basically the people that make up who I am. Even my aunt’s dog landed up in a scene,” she says.

“However, for this same reason we received a mixed reaction to it. Some television executive felt that the video was not good enough for their channels. I was asked to make some changes to it. I decided to let it stand as it was because it represents who I am and what makes me. If that means the video is not played on television networks,

then so be it. The fact remains, it will always be around to tell my story,” Thandeka asserts.

Her second single, “Nguwe Olithemba” (In You I Trust) was released in February, and has been nominated for this year’s Independent National Gospel Music Awards, the Ingomas. “It received heavy rotation on Metro FM and uKhozi FM for some weeks after its release. It has also attracted streams from countries such as Ghana, Mauritius and the Unites States. I am filled with gratitude to be receiving so much attention from places so far off the beaten track for South African gospel music.” (See the video at www.bit.ly/3vpBOL5)

Future ambitions

Recently Thandeka recorded a theme song for the Southern African Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations (SAUWCO) with Mam J (Joana Khumalo), a fellow Durban-based

Catholic musician and member of St Anne’s Sodality. In future, she would like to work with other rising Catholic music artists such as The Light Twins, Thulasizwe Ndlovu and Thuso WaSabini. Like those musicians — all of whom have been featured previously in The Southern Cross — she believes that Catholic music artists have to look within and receive support from the Church first before branching out into the mainstream gospel music scene. “I have enjoyed tremendous support from Radio Veritas. In fact, all of my singles were launched on Radio Veritas.”

Yet, Thandeka adds, more could be done to provide a platform for budding music artists within the Church. “If you consider that the Church holds a large proportion of Christians in South Africa, Catholic gospel artists should probably be among some of the biggest out there. We have to harness our own power as Catholics and get behind music artists who fly the Catholic gospel music flag high on the national scene.”

Like many other musicians, Thandeka believes there are three pillars for success in the music industry: hard work, commitment and dedication. And her advice for budding musicians? “Acquire a qualification. It may prove to be challenging to have a professional career while being a recording artist, but it is worth it. Studying equips one to make well-informed decisions, especially at a time when offers are being put on the table. Your talent will always be there; it will never leave you. It’s education first.

The rest will follow.”

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Participating in Public Policy

Where there are no bad boys or girls

A hundred years ago, a US priest bought a farm which became the first Boys Town. Today his model of caring for troubled youngsters is also applied in South Africa, as GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER explains.

L

ONG BEFORE IT WAS A POP HIT FOR THE HOLLIES, the phrase “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother” was the motto for Boys Town USA, a home for troubled boys established in 1917 by Fr Edward Flanagan in Omaha, Nebraska. The priest first heard it said in 1918 by Reuben Granger, an older boy at his home, who had been carrying a fellow resident and polio-sufferer named Howard Loomis up and down the stairs. Asked if carrying Howard wasn’t hard work, Reuben replied: “He ain’t heavy, Father. He’s m’ brother.” That response would become a guide to the organisation: the importance of caring for each other.

Fr Flanagan was born in Ireland 135 years ago, on July 13, 1886, and died suddenly at 61 on May 15, 1948, during a trip to Germany. As a young priest he was shocked at witnessing

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Residents at one of Girls & Boys Town’s Family Group Homes in Cape Town, one of six throughout South Africa.

the appalling condition at homes for children with problems.

To provide an alternative to those facilities, he bought a house in Omaha to shelter six boys. That experiment succeeded and required expansion, so in 1921 he bought a farm to set up a village in which the boys would receive an education and learn a trade. More than that, the residents were to govern themselves, with an elected mayor and council, under his supervision. Fr Flanagan’s view was that “there’s no such thing as a bad boy”. That quote would frame the popular 1938 movie Boys Town, with Spencer Tracy playing the priest.

From that farm outside Omaha, which still exists today, the Boys Town model spread throughout the USA and then to many parts of the world. It came to South Africa in 1958, when the country’s first residential home was established in Magaliesburg, under the leadership of Fr (later Bishop) Reginald Orsmond and from the outset independently from the organisation in the US. Even today, Girls and Boys Town South Africa (GBTSA) is not affiliated with any similar movement in South Africa or internationally.

“GBTSA was born of the compassion, altruism and social consciousness of its founders. Initially, it provided a home for nine youngsters from a local children’s home who had been destined for a so-called trade school. These boys were soon joined by 17 others from children’s homes throughout the country,” explained CEO Lee Loynes. “Since then, the organisation has continued to expand and has included young girls in our programmes,” she added. This necessitated the namechange to Girls and Boys Town in 2004.

Triumph of faith, courage, hope

GBTSA now serves thousands of beneficiaries per year, directly and indirectly. These include the residents in four Youth Development Centres and six Family Group Homes throughout the country — where young people receive education and training — as well as those who are counselled on helplines.

The organisation also offers training courses to all GBTSA staff, families, and educators, and shares its research, undertaken in partnership with the University of Johannesburg, with other childcare professionals to strengthen their work with young

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10

Fr Flanagan sings hymns with some of his boys.

The Southern Cross

Six Family Group Homes each people, families and communities. care for up to ten boys or girls in “These courses address problems regular houses in the community, such as bullying, negative peer preswith a husband-wife team as “famsure, corporal punishment, and ily teachers”. These homes focus on physical and sexual abuse and the family-style living, with an empharesearch study and dissemination sis on social skills-teaching and shares information including remeaningful self-governance by silience factors in care leavers, youth. Currently the homes are lopreparing young people for indecated in Verulam in KwaZulu-Natal, pendence and so on, “Loynes said.

The GBTSA campus in Kenilworth in Cape Town, and These reports are available on Magaliesburg, Gauteng Randfontein in Gauteng.

GBTSA’s website.

GBTSA’s Family Services runs a national hotline (0861-58“The GBTSA journey reflects everyday life in most societies of the world: the tragedy of fear, loss, despair, abuse and neglect 58-58), which provides counselling services for young people, — and the triumph of faith, courage and hope that changes families, and professionals needing advice, short-term counthe way we care for children,” Loynes said. Fr Flanagan stressed selling, and referrals to other support services. the need for spiritual development. “Every child should learn The work of GBTSA is overseen by a board of trustees to pray. How he prays is up to him,” he would say. In keeping which includes Salesian Father Robert Gore and several reliwith this principle, all young people at GBTSA practise their gious and lay Catholics. The homes, helpline and other servown religious beliefs. “Our policy has always been to help ices offered by GBTSA cost money to run, and the youth of all religious beliefs develop the foundation laid by re- organisation is funded through a broad support base. “Most ligion into a shared value system that has sustained the organ- of our donors are private individuals who donate an average isation through the decades,” Loynes said. of R150 per month. We also received modest subsidies from GBTSA’s four Youth Development Centres each accom- the Department of Social Development,” said Loynes. modate up to 70 young people, operating on a peer-group sys“Our greatest hope is that we are able to rely on regular tem of self-government. Youth still elect their mayor and donations to continue meeting our children’s daily needs of council and then govern themselves under the guidance of education, safe homes, food, therapy, and so on — and that adults. This is designed to teach them taking responsibility donors may be able to contribute and support our projects, for themselves and others. These centres are located in Mag- as we rebuild a safe haven for youth in our care.” aliesburg and Kagiso-Randfontein in Gauteng, Tongaat n To learn more and support the work of GBTSA, visit in KwaZulu-Natal, and Macassar in the Western Cape. www.girlsandboystown.org.za

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An Oscar for BOYS TOWN

OT MANY CHILDREN’S HOMES can claim to have received an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but Boys Town was given an Academy Award statue in 1939.

Boys Town’s adventure with the movies began in 1938 when the MGM studio, inspired by several newspaper and magazine articles, decided to make a film about the remarkable Nebraska village for boys established two decades earlier by Fr Edward Flanagan. The Irish-born priest was played by Spencer Tracy, fresh from his Oscar win for Captain Courageous. In the interim, Tracy had played a priest in the highly-rated earthquake drama San Francisco. As a life-long Catholic, Tracy knew how to play priests.

Playing the lead opposite Tracy in Boys Town was another Catholicraised actor, Mickey Rooney, who at the age of 18 was already a Hollywood veteran, having started his career as a child-actor during the silent movies era. He played Whitey Marsh, a brash and disruptive presence at Boys Town, who — Spoiler Alert — ultimately confirms Fr Flanagan’s adage that “there

is no such thing as a bad boy”. Another protagonist is played by Gene Reynolds, who would eclipse his acting career by becoming a developer and producer of the classic TV series M*A*S*H. Released in the US on September 9, 1938, Boys Town was a critical and commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1938. And Boys Town the movie made Boys Town the home (and model) known throughout the US and the world.

O

n Oscar night on February 23, 1939, held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Boys Town was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Movie, Actor, Original Script and Director (Norman Taurog). It didn’t win the big prize — in a tough field, that went to Frank Capras’s You Can’t Take It With You — nor director (again, Capra). But Boys Town won Best Writing (Original Story) and, remarkably, Best Actor for Spencer Tracy, who thus became the first actor to win that award in consecutive years.

In his acceptance speech, Tracy spoke glowingly and at length about Fr Flanagan. This prompted a MGM publicist to unilaterally circulate a

Spencer Tracy as Fr Edward Flanagan with Mickey Rooney (right) and Gene Reynolds (left) in the 1938 film Boys Town.

rumour that Tracy was going to give his Oscar to the priest. But Tracy had no intentions of doing so, pointing out, quite correctly, that he had earned “the thing”. So the Academy quickly produced an Oscar statuette for Boys Town, to be presented to Fr Flanagan. Its inscription read: “To Father Flanagan, whose great humanity, kindly simplicity, and inspiring courage were strong enough to shine through my humble effort. Spencer Tracy.”

Tracy and Rooney returned to the subject of Boys Town in 1941 for Men of Boys Town, also directed by Norman Taurog. The sequel was darker than the original, investigating the poor conditions of reform schools for boys, to which the Boys Town concept provided relief. That film, too, was a big success, placing 9th in the box-office rankings for 1941.

ABSTRACT CONCRETE

In preaching and public speaking:

KEEP IT REAL!

Homilies and other forms of public speaking can be undermined by abstract and jargon-filled language which few can follow, FR CHRIS CHATTERIS SJ argues. It’s better to use concrete examples when addressing crowds, as Jesus did when he spoke to people.

I

N HIS HILARIOUS 1966 BOOK Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go, John O’Hayre gives a wonderful example of the pitfalls of abstract language.

According to O’Hayre, this is what the followers of the US statesman Benjamin Franklin believed about voting, which some of his opponents were proposing to make dependent on ownership of property. As an experiment, see if you can follow the argument!

“It cannot be adhered to with any reasonable degree of intellectual or moral certainty that the inalienable right man possesses to exercise his political preferences by employing his vote in referendums is rooted in anything other than man’s own nature, and is, therefore, called a natural right. To hold, for instance, that this natural right can be limited externally by making its exercise dependent on a prior condition of ownership of property, is to wrongly suppose that man’s natural right to vote is somehow more inherent in and more dependent on the property of man than it is on the nature of man.”

Did you get it, or was it gobbledygook? O’Hayre notes that Franklin himself knew that no one would wade through that word-swamp and come out alive, and so he put it thus: “To require property of voters leads us to this dilemma: I own an ass; I can vote. The ass dies; I cannot vote. Therefore, the vote represents not me but the ass.”

This succinct summary makes his point with a concrete, down to earth example to which hearers or readers can easily relate — a donkey. The humorous example also mockingly reduces to absurdity the position which Franklin is attacking. These three elements together — concreteness, a familiar and funny image, and brevity — make the Franklinite policy clear, attractive and memorable. All communicators, including preachers, should take a leaf out of his book: keep it concrete.

Whether we are parents dealing with children, teachers educating students, civil servants informing the public, clergy preaching the Gospel, it’s our job to do the job with clarity and, as Sean Lovett of Vatican Radio once sug-

‘My inspiring sermon this week is titled “Who is Jesus?”, and in it, I’ll simply explain that he’s the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma of which we find the ultimate meaning in our interpersonal relationships...’

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gested, with creativity. This almost always involves the use of the concrete. A splendid Arab proverb on the power of concreteness in communication itself uses a concrete image: “The good orator turns the listener’s ears into eyes.”

The practical argument for concreteness, Protestant theologian Fred Craddock suggests, is that “we are seeking to communicate with people whose experiences are concrete. Everyone lives inductively, not deductively. No farmer deals with the problem of calfdom only with the calf.”

Jesus used concrete style

I’d like to suggest that for Christian communicators, concreteness is actually not an optional extra. Craddock argues that “images are not in fact to be regarded as illustrative but rather as essential [my italics] to the form and inseparable from the content of the entire sermon”.

It seems to me that we have to agree with Craddock for two reasons. Firstly, because of the concrete style which Jesus himself used when communicating the Good News, especially in the parables. If concreteness was good enough for the Lord, then it should be good enough for those of us who also try to communicate his message.

Secondly, and more theologically, the incarnation itself is a divine endorsement of the concrete. Abstraction has its place in communication, but it comes in clear second place as far as God is concerned. In our Judeo-Christian tradition, God speaks through the real events and people of history and, in the fullness of time, through his Son the Word made flesh. “The method is the message,” Craddock pithily puts it.

The incarnate Word, who is a concrete expression of God’s love for us, comes speaking in the concreteness of parables, about fig trees and lost sheep, new wine and the weather. Since these things were created through him, and

have been embraced and sanctified by him in his preaching and in his very being, they are not only useful, but are also sanctified and placed at our disposal for the purpose of our preaching ministry.

But despite all this, communicators are always tempted into abstractions. Craddock maintains that “a fear of concreteness runs through the history of the Church to the present day”.

The fact is that preachers are trained to express themselves in the abstract. For Catholic clergy, this begins in philosophy studies, where we delight in talking about things like “metaphysics”, “ontology”, and so on.

Here are some philosophical theses for the final exams of a Catholic university (which shall remain nameless).

“The categorical syllogism and the hypothetical syllogism”; “The hylomorphic composition of the universal essence of sensible substantial beings.”

You can’t make this stuff up!

These things are all very well for the necessary mental gymnastics that help a student limber up for the study of theology. However, the young student should be told, at the outset and frequently thereafter, that such abstract concepts are technical language and are completely incomprehensible

The barber was amazed that he’d had a ‘canine auxiliary’ all his life and was never aware of it! to most listeners. And even someone who understands “hylomorphism” or “mundanity” might not necessarily want to hear about them in a homily.

Why do we use jargon?

This is not to say that ministers of the word are the only culprits here. We have all been baffled by computer techies who cannot express themselves except in their own abstract jargon. We all do it. Every speciality generates its own jargon, no matter how humble. An Italian professor tells the story of how he was having his hair cut one day when an item came up on the TV in the barber’s shop. The police spokesperson was telling the reporter that some thieves were caught with the help of “canine auxiliaries”.

“Professore,” the barber asks, “what are these canine auxiliaries?” The prof replies: “Dogs.” At which point the barber looks at his mangy hound on the floor and remarks how amazing it is that he has had a “canine auxiliary” all his life and was never aware of it!

Why do we do use jargon?

Well, for one thing it makes us sound more important and learned and profound. Or perhaps we’re afraid of sounding too folksy and corny if we’re down to earth (and folksiness and corn can make people cringe if overdone).

Another reason is that to be concrete is harder work than to be abstract.

To seek out the right image to do the communicative job requires thought, research and imagination. It’s much easier to waffle away with abstractions learned in philosophy and theology than to nail the point down with an appropriate image or story.

The following is a parody, but it does make the point about the difference between Jesus’ concrete and parable-filled way of expressing himself, and that of some learned preachers. The quote is sometimes attributed to Paul Tillich, but I have been unable to track down the source: And Jesus said unto them: “Who do you say that I am?” And they replied: “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma of which we find the ultimate meaning in our interpersonal relationships.” And Jesus said: “What?” n This is the third part of Fr Chatteris’ series on better preaching.

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This was Life and death of a martyr

Sr Aidan

Sr Aidan Quinlan OP in around 1940.

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OMINICAN SISTER AIDAN Quinlan was an extraordinary woman for her time, and she might have been more widely known were it not for her particularly brutal murder and the police massacre that followed it in 1952.

This is the central thesis of my book Bloody Sunday: The Nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre (newly published by Tafelberg).

Sr Aidan, also known as Dr Elsie Quinlan, was killed during an uprising in Duncan Village, East London, on Sunday, November 9, 1952, at the height of the Defiance Campaign led by the African National Congress (ANC). Prior to her killing, police took exception to a legal meeting organised by the local ANC Youth League and used batons, bayonets and gunfire to disperse the crowd. At least eight people were killed and 27 injured before the police withdrew.

Groups of mainly youths then rampaged through the township, venting their anger on symbols of white control. One group beat to death with sticks a white insurance salesman, Barend Vorster, who had come to the township to collect his dues. Another group set upon Sr Aidan when she drove into Bantu Street, near the site of the meeting.

Night of terror

The Irish-born Sister was a medical doctor who ran a clinic at St Peter Claver mission in Duncan Village, about 2km from the place of her death.

Sr Aidan lived at the mission with seven other Sisters — five African and two German. These Sisters managed to escape with the police before rioters

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In her new book Bloody Sunday, MIGNONNE BREIER investigates the mob killing of a Dominican Sister in 1952, and the circumstances that led to it.

Here, the author recalls the life of Sr Aidan Quinlan. looted and set fire to the mission after shouting “Kill the Romans”.

It is believed that Sr Aidan drove into the area, which she usually avoided at weekends, to help the wounded. She was assaulted, stabbed and set alight in her car. Her body was then dismembered, leaving only her torso, part of her head and the stump of one arm. According to subsequent court and oral evidence, her flesh was consumed, either then and there or taken away for muthi by people who believed that by doing so they would gain some of her strength.

A reign of terror followed. Police drove through the township in troop carriers, shooting into and between the densely populated, flimsy houses for hours. Reliable press and police

It is believed that Sr Aidan drove into Bantu Street to help those wounded by police sources put the death toll that day at “at least 80”, rising to more than 200 if one takes account of the injured who died subsequently. Most were buried informally by their families who feared arrest if they appeared at the hospital or mortuary. Thousands fled into the rural areas to escape the wrath of white East London. The authorities covered up the massacre, admitting only to the eight people who were killed when they dispersed the ANC meeting. Four men were convicted and executed by hanging — two for the death of Vorster and two for the death of Sr Aidan.

The riots received widespread press coverage initially, but are barely men-

tioned in histories of the time. It was in the interests of both the apartheid government and the ANC to suppress the facts — there had been appalling violence on both sides. In the process, the lives of an untold number of people — including an extraordinary nun — were hidden from history.

Who was Sr Aidan?

Sr Aidan grew up in Ireland. She was born in 1914 in what is now called Ballydesmond, and went to school in Blarney and Cork City. She decided to become a nun after completing her Bachelor of Science degree at the University College Cork. Although she became devoutly religious in time, she was not particularly religious when she expressed her vocation, to the surprise of her family. At the time there were few opportunities in Ireland for young women, apart from marriage and the religious life. Missionary work appealed to the adventurous young woman.

In 1938 she travelled to King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, to join the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena, commonly known as the “King Dominicans”. The congregation originated in Germany and was founded in 1877 to serve German settlers in the Eastern Cape, primarily as teachers. In 1940 Sr Aidan was sent to Wits University to study medicine, along with the German Sr Amanda Fröhlich.

Sr Aidan worked at Glen Grey Hospital in Lady Frere and the Far East Rand Hospital in Springs before she was sent to St Peter Claver mission in Duncan Village in 1949 to open a clinic. Public health conditions at the time were dire. East London had the

Clockwise from top left: Sr Aidan’s burnt-out car after she was killed by a mob on November 9, 1952 • The cover of Mignonne Breier’s book Bloody Sunday • A grateful patient hands Sr Aidan traditional beer • Mignonne Breier and Dominican Sisters at the memorial to Sr Aidan at St Peter Claver parish in East London.

second-highest rate of tuberculosis infection in the world, second only to Port Elizabeth. There was a high fertility rate among African women, but every second child born died within the first year of life. There was only one municipal clinic to serve the entire location and the “Non-European” wing of Frere Hospital was notoriously overcrowded.

Against these odds, Sr Aidan, helped by only one nursing assistant, Sr Gratia Khumalo OP, battled to provide relief to the suffering in a oneroom clinic. In 1949, according to the King Dominican records, Srs Aidan and Gratia attended to 5 299 patients; in 1950 the total was 20 006; and in 1951 it was 17 240, even though Sr Aidan went abroad during this year. On the Friday before she died, 170 patients attended the clinic. When the Sisters arose at 5:30, they would find patients already waiting outside the clinic.

Many were mothers with children.

In Sr Gratia’s view, Sr Aidan’s greatest achievements lay in her ability to help infertile women fall pregnant. Women travelled from as far as the Free State and Lesotho to consult her. By prescribing pills and a tonic, she “brought peace to families” where the wife’s infertility was an issue. “Her gift for helping women to conceive and fall pregnant was known far and wide,” and there were many babies who owed their existence to Sr Aidan’s treatment, Sr Gratia later wrote. What the medicines contained, she did not say.

Baptisms in extremis

It was a source of distress to Sr Aidan that many of her patients were brought to her when they were already close to death. Patients would try traditional healers and African doctors first,

and come to her only when their treatments failed. If she was unable to treat them, she would call the mission priest, Fr John O’Malley, to come and baptise the patient; if he couldn’t come in time, she would perform the rites herself. Often the patient was already dead and had to be baptised in extremis.

When mothers of sick babies did not turn up at the clinic at appointed times, Sr Aidan worried that the babies might die without being baptised, and visited their homes in the evening.

The African Sisters who lived with Sr Aidan at Duncan Village wrote detailed accounts of her after her death.

They all remarked on her “simplicity and humility” and the way she “was kind to everyone and treated all the

What we said about ‘Bloody Sunday’

L

AST MONTH WE REVIEWED BLOODY SUNDAY, Mignonne Breier’s book on the circumstances of Sr Aidan Quinlan’s 1952 killing. In his review, Günther Simmermacher called it “an important and commendable work”.

“It requires courage and empathy to give a fair account of the mob murder” of the Dominican Sister in East London. “In her forensic study of the killing of the Irish-born nun, Mignonne Breier meets these obligations admirably,” the review noted. “The author skilfully weaves the narrative of Sr Aidan’s life The Southern Cross 15a with the stories of some of those who would play

BOOK REVIEW

Lynching of a nun

Reviewed by

palling: infant mortality Günther Simmermac was enher demic, disease was rife, and public health officials administered BLOODY SUNDAY: The Nun, the De- inoculations to Africans only fiance Campaign and South Africa’s when epidemics posed a threat to Secret Massacre,

by Mignonne Breier. whites. Sr Aidan was a beacon of Tafelberg, Cape Town hope and much-loved, (2021). 285pp. though her popularity T REQUIRES COURAGE also attracted AND some jealousy empathy to give from other meda fair account of ical practitioners the mob murder within the of Dominican community, Sister Aidan Quinlan traditional healers, in East Lon- and don in 1952. In those who resented her forensic study her of evangelising work. the killing of the Irish-born nun, Mignonne Breier Sr Aidan is described meets these obligaas shy, tions admirably. She humble and gentle, but also as provides the coninspiring and cool text in which such under pressure. Her a ghastly crime letters home suggest could have happened. a lovely wit. But vation was In doing so, at to tell Breier doesn’t let Duncan Village she the killers off the was also feeling Sr Aidan’s story. overwhelmed and hook, but she also depressed by what She illustrates assigns at ity for the circumstances responsibil- she experienced. some length the that led to the lynching of Sr The author skilfully Aidan to the police weaves the horror of the poand public officials. narrative of Sr Aidan’s life with the sto- lice massacre. ries of some of those The separate mob who would play murders of the Not one poa part in the events Irish nun and the Afrikaner insurance of that fateful No- liceman was tried vember 9, when agent Barend Vorster the ANC called in Duncan Village Sr Aidan a for that killing meeting as part of on November 9, 1952, its Defiance Cam- spree. Several Quinlan OP took place in the paign. Breier argues midst of what Breier peoconvincingly that ple were persuasively sugput on trial for the even as the meeting gests was the killings of most lethal was held legally Sr Aidan and Vorster, and apartheid-era massacre Breier pro— a dayvides a detailed long murderous account of the frenzy during process against the which police indiscriminatel accused in the y case of the nun’s shot at people, killing killing. Couraup to 214 geously, she also and injuring scores tackles a second more. Invoktrial: that of the despoliation ing the 1920 and 1972 massacres of Sr Aidan’s of Sr Aidan’s Irish body, including reports compatriots, of cannibalism. Breier’s Breier calls the events discourse is at of that November and pains to locate these with a permit, police 9 “Bloody Sunday”. acts came outside to the the realm of racist township with the After a brief scene-setter, tropes. intention to kill (as the nar- they had done Despite its huge (unofficial) rative begins with the previous night Sr Aidan’s child- Kimberley). death in toll, the massacre hood. Born Elsie It was during a lull of “Bloody Sunday” Quinlan in 1914, after does not she the first murderous grew up in a loving form part of the ANC’s police rampage family in Cork. that Sr struggle narrative, Aidan Having decided to enter the religious the township drove her car through barrassment likely because of the emlife, she joined and of Sr Aidan’s murder, into the mob that the King William’s would even if that lynching was kill her.

Town Dominicans not the ANC’s reand came to South sponsibility. Curiously, Africa in 1938. In the apartheid the 1940s she studShattering regime ied medicine at didn’t make much mental images Wits — which exercapital from the brutish propaganda cised an absurd policy Breier provides sufficient murder either of detail of — perhaps because yet segregated academics,desegregated the lynching to to do so would have convey its absolute a reminder hor- turned attention that apartheid was ror, but she keeps to the cover-up of very much practhe account merci- mass the tised even before shootings by its own the National Party fully brief. Even in its brevity, police. the was elected in 1948. reader is left with Even nearly seven shattering mental decades after the im- events it describes, ages. Likewise, the As a doctor Sr Aidan Bloody Sunday reveals account of Barend served the Vorster’s much that was poor, first at Glen killing is distressing, not well-known, Grey Mission Hospiand even known or at the remove of tal at Lady Frere at all. Breier almost 70 years, in the Eastern Cape we shalled her extensive has expertly marfear for the Sisters and later at St Peter and meticulous reat the convent as Claver in Duncan a search into a mob approaches to Village. The medical gripping narrative loot and burn. environment Sr that is fair-minded Aidan worked in, But Breier insists that much her book isn’t an importantand compassionate. This is with Sr Gratia Khumalo of the time only about the killing and commendable of a couple of OP, was ap- white work.

• Günther Simmermache people, even if the original motir is the editor of The Southern Cross 26 The Southern Cross

I

This important book reveals much that was not well-known, or known at all

part in the events of that fateful November 9,” in the midst of what may be the worst police massacre in apartheid history.

“Even nearly seven decades after the events it describes, Bloody Sunday reveals much that was not well-known, or known at all. Breier has expertly marshalled her extensive and meticulous research into a gripping narrative that is fair-minded and compassionate,” Simmermacher wrote.

• Read the full review at www.scross.co.za/2021/06/ bloody-sunday-review/

The Southern Cross of November 19, 1952, reports on Sr Aidan’s funeral and shows the ruins of the torched St Peter Claver mission.

same”. She attended recreation with the other Sisters in the evening and often took the African Sisters to the beach with her at the weekends. She also picnicked with African Sisters at Glen Grey. Such socialising was unusual for the congregation at the time.

Love and resentment

The district surgeon who worked with her at Glen Grey noted her brilliance as a medical doctor, her keen sense of humour, down to earth personality, “motherly charity” and love for motor cars and driving.

Not everyone in Duncan Village liked Sr Aidan, however. Sr Gratia said Sr Aidan would ask all her patients

whether they went to church, and some resented this. There were doctors and nurses in the location who were jealous of her because “she had 20 times as many outpatients as they had”, and her fees were lower than theirs. She raised funds from various sources and did not charge patients for consultations, only for medicines. There were also reports of more general resentment in the community against the Catholic Church at the time.

According to the African Sisters’ accounts, Sr Aidan took her religious duties seriously and spent a great deal of her days in prayer, both on her own and in common with others.

In the clinic she kept a crucifix and a statue of St Martin de Porres, and often prayed to both. When dealing with a difficult medical case, she would put her hands over her face and pray. She died clutching her rosary. I have no doubt that she was following her vocation when she drove into Duncan Village on that November 9, 1952, to meet her fate.

The family and King Dominican congregation were inundated with condolences after Sr Aidan’s death.

Many described Sr Aidan as a martyr of the faith and expressed hope that the Catholic Church would recognise her as such.

Some said they were already praying to her rather than about her. n Mignonne Breier is a former journalist and now a researcher and lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Bloody Sunday is available at good bookstores.

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Memorial for Sr Aidan at St Peter Claver in East London.

St Peter Claver Today: Service and a miracle

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EARLY 70 YEARS AFTER HER death, Sr Aidan’s memory is alive and well at St Peter Claver parish in Duncan Village.

The Sister Aidan Quinlan MultiPurpose Memorial Centre, which was opened in 2016, provides meals for about 200 elderly people and unemployed youngsters who are in special need. The centre also offers a programme of activities (including food gardening) for the elderly and after-school classes for youth.

The parish convent is now called Khaya Aidan, and there is marble memorial to Sr Aidan in the centre of the parish grounds. Next to the memorial is the original crucifix which miraculously survived the burning of the mission on November 9, 1952.

In what is also regarded as a miracle, the mission escaped destruction for a second time in 2018. On October 30 that year, a devastating fire in the surrounding shacks threatened to engulf the parish buildings, including the Sister Aidan Centre, the pre-school, the convent and the church. The Sisters in Duncan Village and in Cambridge East London prayed to Sr Aidan for help.

The gale-force wind that was fanning the fire died down soon afterwards, allowing the firefighters to bring it under control. Although many people in the surrounding shacks lost their homes, no one was seriously injured. At the parish, only a few windows were damaged.

They say it was a miracle.

Saint of the Month: St ANNE

The grandmother of Jesus

She doesn’t appear in the Bible, so what do we know about St Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary?

GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER finds out.

S

AINT ANNE IS ONE OF OUR most popular saints, with many churches dedicated to her, yet we know virtually nothing about her — except that she was the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St Anne isn’t mentioned in the Bible; we know about her from the Gospel of James, which scholars believe was written around 150 AD. Although it was rejected for inclusion in the New Testament and even condemned by Pope Innocent I in 405 (mainly at St Jerome’s instigation), the Gospel of James is the primary source for much of what we believe about Mary, including her perpetual virginity and, indirectly, her miraculous conception.

The Immaculate Conception refers not to Mary’s virgin-birth of Jesus, as many non-Catholics (and possibly quite a few Catholics) mistakenly believe, but to that of Anne with Mary. Accordingly, Mary was conceived through divine intervention and without intercourse so as to preserve the Mother of God free of original sin from the moment of her conception — the creation of the “New Eve”. Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception a dogma in 1854, but the devotion went back to as early as Byzantine times, and the 16th century in particular saw a great revival.

Anne (derived from the name Hannah, meaning “grace” or “favour”) and her husband Joachim (“he whom Yahweh has set up”) were an older couple that had been childless, much to their distress. According to the Gospel of James, one day Joachim went into the wilderness to fast and pray for 40 days. At home, Anne did likewise. As she lamented her childlessness, an angel appeared to her, announcing that she would have a child. By the time Joachim returned from the wilderness, duly apprised of the new circumstances by an angel, his

wife Anne was pregnant.

The child was born prematurely, in the seventh month of pregnancy. In scriptural tradition, this is seen as a sign of favour: Samuel, Isaac and Moses were also born in the seventh month of pregnancy.

Indeed, the story of the conception of Mary is an echo of that of Samuel, whose mother Hannah also fell pregnant late in life after praying for a child.

Anne and Joachim expected their child to be a boy and vowed that he would be brought up in the Temple. As we know, the child turned out to be a girl, but true to their vow, Mary’s parents sent her to the Temple into the care of the priests when the girl was three. Legend says that Mary was fed there each day by an angel.

The legends of St Anne

And that’s where we lose track of Anne and Joachim. Tradition has Joachim die soon after Mary’s birth, but St Anne and the child Mary in a sculpture in St Anne’s church in Jerusalem.

St Anne at a glance

Name at birth: Hannah Born: Possibly around 50 BC Died: Possibly around 12 AD Family: Joachim (husband), Mary (daughter), Jesus (grandson) Feast: July 26 (with St Joachim) Patronages: Grandparents, child care, childless people, pregnancy, mothers, children, homemakers/housewives, teachers, lost articles, miners, equestrians, horse stable staff, carpenters, moving house, lacemakers, seamstresses, used-clothes traders, poverty.

Anne live long enough to help raise her grandson, departing from this world at the age of 62 in around 12 AD. This dating would suggest that she was around 32 when she gave birth to Mary — still quite young by our standards, but fairly advanced in years in a time when women became mothers mostly in their teens and early twenties.

Ancient tradition says that Anne married only once, but in the Middle Ages a legend arose that she was married twice more, to Clopas and then Salomas, producing one daughter in each marriage, all called Mary: Mary of Clopas and Mary Salome, both of whom are mentioned in the Gospels as being present at the crucifixion. The Catholic Church rejects these marriage legends as baseless.

We don’t even know for certain where Anne and Joachim lived. Some legends suggest that they lived in the city of Sepphoris, about 6km from Nazareth. A 5thcentury basilica dedicated to Mary’s nativity has been excavated there. This location would explain how Mary came to live in the village of Nazareth, the Galilean town where she and her husband Joseph raised the young Jesus.

But according to the Gospel of James, when Joachim returned from his penance in the wilderness, he and Anne embraced at the city gates in Jerusalem, placing the couple firmly in the Holy City.

And in Jerusalem, an ancient church named after St Anne marks The Southern Cross

17

The

Ss Anne & Mary

Southern Cross

St Anne and her daughter Mary, in St Anne’s Chapel at Immaculate Conception Basilica in Lourdes

ST ANNE IN ART (from left): 8th-century tempera on plaster (Poland’s National Museum in Warsaw) • 15th-century icon of St Anne and Mary (Benaki Museum, Athens) • Holy Family with St Anne and St John the Baptist by El Greco in c. 1600 (Prado, Madrid) • 17th-century wood statue of St Anne with Mary and Jesus (Cathedral Museum, Santiago de Compostela, Spain) • “The Education of the Virgin Mary” by Jean Jouvenet in 1700 (Uffizi, Florence).

the reputed place of Mary’s birth; a few metres away, a Greek Orthodox church makes the same claim. The 12th-century Crusader church of St Anne is located near the northern wall of the Temple, adjacent to the Pools of Bethesda, and near the gate through which livestock would be driven on their way to be sacrificed in the Temple (today’s Lions’ Gate). A previous church was built on that spot around 450 AD, dedicated to Mary’s nativity, so the location has an ancient tradition. Pilgrims today visit St Anne’s church before they begin the Via Dolorosa.

Its location so near the Temple might also suggest that Joachim and Anne had connections to the priestly class. Indeed, Mary’s older cousin Elizabeth was married to a priest (another pair of mature parents). And if little Mary was indeed raised in the Temple, as the Gospel of James has it, then that would strengthen the idea of the family’s standing among the

Catholic Institute of Education

religious establishment.

So, how did Jerusalem-born Mary end up getting married to Joseph in small, rural Nazareth? We can only speculate. One explanation would have Anne and Mary moving to Galilee after the death of Joachim. In the society of their time, a woman without a man’s protection had no rights and was a social outcast. That is why Jesus would raise the widow’s son at Nain — to give her the protection she needed — and perhaps also why Mary and Martha were so desperate when Lazarus temporarily died. So without Joachim, Anne probably needed a refuge under male guardianship. Such a man might have lived in Sepphoris — maybe one of those two other husbands which the medieval legend marries Anne off to, or maybe a family member. And in Sepphoris, they might have encountered one Joseph of Bethlehem.

Despite so little being known about St Anne, she is an enormously popular saint. She must be so, since she is the mother of Our Lady and the grandmother of Our Lord. And that’s all we really need to know about her.

The feast of Ss Anne & Joachim is on July 26.

Called in faith

to serve

Catholic schools and skills centres

Educating today tomorrow for the common good.

In art, St Anne is often depicted as holding a book, symbolising her role as the teacher of the child Mary, as she is in this work in the church of St Teresa in Dublin, Ireland.

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The Southern Cross

(Photos on page 17, poster and above by Günther Simmermacher)

Memories of my grandmother

In the month for Grandparents and the Elderly, GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER remembers his granny.

T

HIS YEAR WE MARK FOR THE first time the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, which was established by Pope Francis in January and is to be celebrated each year on the fourth Sunday of July to coincide with the feast of Ss Joachim and Anne, Jesus’ grandparents. It will be a good time for us to remember our grandparents, and, if they are still alive and in reasonable proximity, to visit them.

I shall remember my maternal grandmother, the only one of my grandparents who lived long enough to see my birth. Her name was Emilie and she was born in 1895.

As her first-born grandson, I was very special to her, and she was very special to me. I knew I was loved. I spent about a third of my childhood at her home, which was about 2km from our house. As a two-year-old, one day I decided to visit grandmother on my own, crossing a busy intersection to present myself at her door. All the adults were horrified but also a little amused by my unilateral declaration of independence.

My grandmother’s home was a refuge from my noisy family. Whereas at home I had to work to make myself heard, at her place I was the undisputed king, enjoying the benefits of having a granny who liked to spoil her grandson. She was also good company.

Emilie was very witty, and enjoyed playing board and card games.

She loved music, and passed that passion on to me. She bought me my first self-chosen record when I was five years old. I also liked to play her old records. My favourite of those was “Va, Right: Günther Simmermacher as a twoyear-old with his grandmother, Emilie.

Top: Emilie and her husband on their wedding day in 1919.

pensiero”, the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from Verdi’s Nabucco. She didn’t approve of those “hopping birds” with their wild hair making pop music on TV. But I liked the hopping birds — so we watched them!

A living time machine

My grandmother gave me another lifelong gift: a keen interest in the past.

And here I don’t mean world history, though that too is a hobby of mine, but particularly an interest in how ordinary people lived, the anthropology of their times. I attribute that interest to the stories from her life which my grandmother would tell me so vividly.

My favourite one went back to her primary school days, involving the village’s blacksmith giving the hated schoolmaster a thrashing in front of the class for having administered excessive corporal punishment to his son. This must have been around 1905.

As an aside: relatives of people with Alzheimer’s have an opportunity to tap into such memories. Experts advise that one shouldn’t correct (and upset) those suffering dementia with the facts of the present, but rather ask questions about what they are remembering, and join them in the timetravel of their fading memories.

Grandma’s hands Fifty years ago the soul singer Bill Withers recorded what might be the finest song about a grandparent, titled “Grandma’s Hands”. I recognise some of my grandmother in that song. Not the church stuff Withers recalls about his granny — my grandmother did make me pray before bedtime and would exclaim “Mother of God” when presented with upsetting news, but she was not a churchgoing woman. But, like Withers’ grandma, mine would advocate on my behalf when my mother believed I deserved punishment.

And, like Withers, I remember my grandma’s hands. Wrinkly and blueveined, they cooked my favourite meals, handed me sweets, combed my hair (which she always thought was far too long), and held my little hand when we’d walk in the busy city.

My grandmother remained physically and mentally fit till her final year.

In her 80s, she still climbed ladders to fix roof tiles and walked to the local supermarket for her weekly shopping (including every magazine she could find with crosswords).

But as I grew into a young teenager, I had diminishing need for my grandmother. I’d rather hang out with my friends. And I no longer was the boy she had known: I had my own mind, and adopted views on politics and society she did not share. When she died at 85, I was barely a presence in her life — a thoughtless neglect by a typically selfcentred youth which I regret to this day.

So this month especially, I will remember my grandmother and honour her memory. Like that two-year-old toddler, I’ll knock on her door, hoping she’ll open it, at least in my mind. And I shall remember and honour the three grandparents I never knew, for they formed the two people who made and shaped me. I am also because of them.

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IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS dfgmdfgm Families across generations:

To mark the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly on July 25, TONI ROWLAND reflects on relationships across generations in families.

I

HAVE OFTEN WONDERED WHY Radio Veritas has taken to referring to me as Gogo Toni. Is it a badge of honour, of love even, or some kind of compassionate token of tolerance and acceptance of some of the peculiarities of elder age? After all, I have been with Radio Veritas from its early days and laboured long and hard to promote my particular kind of family focus through the Marriage and Family Renewal Ministry (MARFAM).

What is this focus? My late husband Chris and I had grown up in pretty regular kinds of families, with our own parents and the children’s grandparents. Some 40 years ago, when our children were still young, we began to focus on promoting marriage and marriage preparation in the Church.

Over time we understood that there is a lot more to family-life than marriage, even though from a Church perspective that remains the ideal foundation for a family. There are the years before mar-

The elderly are important members of families, to be loved, cherished and cared for riage, then the years during marriage — for me 33 years only, before I was widowed and entered another phase for the next 20 and counting. And our own grandparents could be part of our lives from the day we are born.

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By 2000, when Chris died, we were already grandparents of four and had navigated some of the varied experiences and challenges experienced by so many families these days, with the extended families and in-laws also playing their part. We may talk of the joys and pains of parenting, and the same can be said of grandparenting — except that we have little control over the way our children are bringing up our grandchildren. Families experience the busy nest, then the maturing nest, then probably the empty nest, and then the cluttered nest when grown-up children, having left, come back with their own kids.

Young grandparents

Since 2000 three more grandchildren have joined the restructured Rowland family, and they will sadly never know their Rowland granddad. But they have their other family. It’s not uncommon today, in blended families, for children to have not just two, but up to four sets of grandparents, maybe coming from very different backgrounds. At a time of rising life-expectancy, great-grandparents also feature in four-generation families. Of course, not all grandparents are old.

Teenagers who have children turn quite

young parents into grandparents — something over which the parents have little or no control.

Being grandparents and being grandchildren are a natural part of family life, structurally. But grandparenthood is also a growing and developing system of self-identity and relationships that changes as each generation grows, develops, matures, ages, degenerates and experiences all the facets of life, from pre-birth to health, sickness and death.

Relationships — that’s an area that has interested me through the years of my own journey and also in my work of family ministry. I have tried to promote relationships as a family focus that I believe should be more clearly recognised in Church-life. For many years, MARFAM has promoted July as Grandparents’ Month, linked to the feast of Ss Anne and Joachim, the grandparents of Jesus, and it has been commemorated in many dioceses and parishes.

Pope Francis in his 2016 exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, includes recognition of and care for grandparents and the elderly in his reflections, commenting with much love on the value and importance of intergenerational relationships. “How I would like a Church that challenges the throwaway culture by the overflowing joy of a new embrace between young and old,” he wrote.

Most recently I have experienced the kind of ecological conversion Pope Francis speaks about so much in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ in which he speaks of “The Care Of Our Common Home”, the environment. I believe even more could be made of the importance of “that home”, made up of all families and their realities. So I study family-life in plant and animal ecosystems too, where the whole cycle of reproduction continues as the great manifestation of God’s love. We, as human family, have a greater and more important role to play in creation —

BEATITUDES FOR GRANDPARENTS Blessed are the poor in spirit, as they will not see their grandparents as a mealticket to the future.

Blessed are the gentle, as they will recognise and be patient with the weaknesses of old age.

Blessed are they who mourn, and who comfort the bereaved and lonely in their loss.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, that the old and weak will not be cast aside but be treated with dignity and respect.

Blessed are they who are merciful and who forgive the old for the faults and failings of yesteryear.

Blessed are the pure in heart, who see the old and young as they really are.

Blessed are the peacemakers and the agents for reconciliation between generations.

Blessed are they who accept with grace the wisdom of old age.

Blessed are they who can look back on a life of integrity and know they are loved.

Blessed are they who do not judge their young, so that they will not be judged.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what is right, standing up with courage to defend what they have learned through the years.

Blessed are the old and the young, children, parents and grandparents who acknowledge with gratitude the great gift of life they have been given to share… …for the Kingdom of God is theirs.

and a greater responsibility, because we can and do have the ability to relate to one another in family, in society and creation, to make decisions to love, to build up and break down.

Remember the elderly

Earlier this year, Pope Francis proclaimed an annual World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, to be celebrated on the fourth Sunday of July (this year on July 25). Colin Yorke, a presenter on Radio Veritas, reminded me not to forget the elderly. Not all older people are grandparents. Some never married or had children. Some children have not gifted (or burdened) their parents with grandchildren. However, the elderly are important members of families, to be loved, cherished and cared for when that is needed.

So many elderly — grandparents or not — experience loneliness and sometimes deprivation. That is especially acute now, in the age of high mobility when many families are dispersed across the country or even continents.

But these thoughts of mine are not all new. I have observed gogos and umkhulus playing much-needed roles in caring for grandchildren, in particular during the earlier years of the HIV/Aids pandemic. Grannies, more often than granddads, teach their faith to the young.

Twenty years ago, in 2001, I composed the “Beatitudes for Grandparents”, which is reproduced on this page, to cut out and keep, if you wish.

It is a meditation and a prayer of love which even today says so much to me about both grandparents and grandchildren, their needs, concerns, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. n For more on Marfam and for family resources, visit www.marfam.org.za

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Sydney McLaughlin

Hurdles/Sprint

Peter Sagan

Lopez Lomong

Cycling

Long Distance

Born 7 August 1999 Country USA Catholic Hook: “Everything I’ve been given comes from God”

Born 26 January 1990 Country Slovakia Catholic Hook: Donated bike for Pope Francis’ fundraiser

Born 5 January 1985 Country South Sudan/USA Catholic Hook: Lived in a Catholic-run refugee camp for ten years

Meseret Defar

Tyson Fury

Long Distance

Heavyweight Boxing

Marathon

Born 19 November 1983 Country Ethiopia Catholic Hook: Held up picture of Our Lady after winning Olympic gold

Born 12 August 1988 Country England Catholic Hook: Goes to Mass every Sunday and reads the Bible

Born 27 June 1983 Country South Africa Catholic Hook: Won Comrades races with rosary around his neck

Bongmusa Mthembu

Robert Lewandowski

Football Born 21 August 1988 Country Poland Catholic Hook: Met Pope Francis in October 2014

Katie Ledecky

Swimming Born 17 March 1997 Country USA Catholic Hook: Prays the Hail Mary before races

16 CATHOLIC SPORTS LEGENDS

24

Roger Federer

Simone Biles

Cristiano Ronaldo

Sprinting

Tennis

Gymnastics

Football

Born 21 August 1986 Country Jamaica Catholic Hook: Set world records with Miraculous Medal around his neck

Born 8 August 1981 Country Switzerland Catholic Hook: Meeting Pope Francis “was just the perfect day”

Born 14 March 1997 Country USA Catholic Hook: Patron saint is the Roman martyr St Sebastian

Born 5 February 1985 Country Portugal Catholic Hook: Collects rosaries, “because of my relationship with God”

Lewis Hamilton

Angelo Mathews

Eliud Kipchoge

F1 Racing

Cricket

Marathon

Born 7 January 1985 Country UK Catholic Hook: Wears a crucifix around his neck during races

Born 2 June 1987 Country Sri Lanka Catholic Hook: Priests celebrated Mass when he was appointed SL captain

Born 5 November 1984 Country Kenya Catholic Hook: Kneels and makes the sign of the cross after a run

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Federica Pellegrini

Swimming Born 5 August 1988 Country Italy Catholic Hook: Met Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis

Jen Aragon; Het Nieuwsblad; Jaclyn Lippelmann/Catholic Standard; Mike Blake/Reuters/CNS; Denis Barthel; Federica Pellegrini (CC BY 2.0/CCA-SA3.0)

Usain Bolt

MARY: The background music to my spiritual life

A bedtime ritual for her little son taught THERESA kISER a lot about her relationship with Mary, our Blessed Mother.

F

OR OVER TWO YEARS, EVERY NIGHT IT’S THE SAME: At the appointed time, I gather my freshly-bathed and pyjamaed toddler into my arms, all fuzz and snuggles. We turn off the light in his bedroom and settle into the rocking chair. My son knows the drill, so he tucks his fuzzy head under my chin and cuddles into my arms. Then we begin.

Softly, we rock in the darkness. I recite the bedtime story Goodnight Moon. Then five nursery rhymes, another book, four prayers, and a lullaby. They’re the same words every night, and they’re my child’s bridge between the discoveries of day and the peace of sleep. As we sit together, heart-to-heart, my voice surrounds and comforts him, but I imagine he is not thinking of me. My voice, and our nightly litany, is background music that fades away while he reviews the day and surrenders all his anxieties to calm.

It is a sweet privilege to be his background music, to be that safety that allows him to bound with courage into the world. Sweeter still is the knowledge that although I am not a child anymore, that although I am all grown up, my Heavenly Father has given me this background music, too.

In that ‘Hail Mary’ greeting, Mary smooths out the wrinkles between me and God

Jesus in Mary’s arms

At one time, the Son of God rocked in his mother’s arms, tucking his fuzzy head under her blessed chin as she cuddled and sang to him. The Blessed Virgin Mary was the background music to his earthly ministry. First, it was the beating of her heart at the Incarnation, when Jesus spent nine months safely in the tabernacle of her womb. Then, her voice was the background music at his foretold birth in Bethlehem, and even during an exiled flight into Egypt that lasted a number of years while powerful men sought to take his life.

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Mary was there in the background when Jesus performed his first miracle, quietly and confidently telling the Galilean wedding staff: “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). When Jesus’ time had come, Mary was there, in the background, as her Son obediently met his ultimate suffering: his Passion and death.

Mary had seen him all the way there. And what a gift the Lord passed on: “Woman,” he said, “behold your son.” Her new “son” was to be John, who represents all of us. Then: “Behold your mother” (John 19:26-27). And our mother she is.

Rocking and shocking

It was with a shock that I realised, while rocking my son, that Mary is the background music to my relationship with God in the Church — and quite literally! Every time I pray the rosary, I pray for her intercession 53 times, but each time, the “Hail Mary” fades away as I meditate on that decade’s mystery, which is a moment in the life of Christ.

It was a great surprise, because I had struggled to feel devoted to Mary ever since I turned 13, when I reached — and passed — the same age she was when she gave her worldsaving "Yes" to God.. But now, as a mother, I can understand her differently. She is the background music to my spiritual life: to my relationship with Christ.

“She is an echo of God, speaking and repeating only God. If you say ‘Mary’, she says ‘God’,” writes St Louis de Montfort in True Devotion to Mary. “[Y]ou never think of Mary without Mary thinking of God for you. You never praise or honour Mary without Mary joining you in praising and honouring God.” In that “Hail Mary” greeting, in the repetition of her prayers, Mary smooths out the wrinkles between me and God, pouring his grace into my life and carrying me — as a mother carries her child — to see the King of Kings.

And it’s almost like she rocks me, with my head tucked under her chin. Her warmth endures as her voice fades to the background, so all that remains is for me to embrace the Light of Heaven: the Son she rocked thousands of years ago, who went to the cross for me, and pursues me even now.

Now, and at the hour of our death. Amen. n Theresa Kiser is a children’s book author and public speaker.

Find her online at theresakiser.com. This article was first published on BustedHalo.com.

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Letters

The priests to be

T

HE ARTICLE “SEMINARIANS Speak: The priests we want to be” (May 2021) gave a very interesting introduction to some aspirant priests. It is good to know that some had real-life experience in employment before their seminary studies.

However, I would like to comment on two statements by a seminarian. He stated: “Because without priests, people would not have access to Christ.” That statement is, of course, incomplete, and therefore wrong. If he had said, “… people would not have access to Christ in the Eucharist”, he would be correct.

We encounter Christ in many ways: in private prayer, in the Scriptures, in the love of others, in the poor and suffering. In this time of Covid-19, when few can celebrate the Eucharist, we are not bereft of Christ. Quite the contrary.

He also stated: “I want to be the priest everyone would be talking about.” I hope by that, he means to be a priest of humble, loving service, who doesn’t worry about his public persona.

I suggest that in order to balance the vocations stories, a “companion article” should be written on the experiences of young women religious.

Sue Rakoczy IHM, Hilton, KZN

So, how was Mass?

I

IMAGINE A CONVERSATION LIKE the following is quite common in many Catholic homes.

Husband: “Hello, you’re back!

How was Mass?”

Wife: “OK, I guess. Saw Jane — she’s just become a granny for the third time! Joe looks terrible; face full of sores. He’s having treatment for skin damage. The sun, you know. Saw most

26 The Southern Cross

Opinions expressed in The Southern Cross, especially in Letters to the Editor, do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication or those of the Catholic hierarchy.

of the regulars. Just can’t understand how the Simpsons allow their kids to come to Mass dressed like that! And Vera … the low-cut dresses she wears, all bare shoulders! I don’t know...

“And at Communion time, it seems the whole congregation lines up — just a few exceptions sticking out like sore thumbs. One wonders whether all these people are in the required state of grace! Perhaps it was better in the old days, when the fasting regulations were stricter; at least one could have an acceptable excuse for abstaining!”

“Indeed, dear.”

“Yes, the usual groups of people were busy chatting, separated by ethnicity or language or nationality. Oh, Brett has invited us to a braai next Saturday, by the way.”

“And how was Father’s homily?”

“Uhhh...”

Cecil Cullen, Alberton

ally. His homilies have been of a high standard: well-researched and prepared. I have not even come close to “drifting off” while Fr Jonathan preaches — a possibility in the delivery of homilies Fr Chris Chatteris warns about in his Southern Cross series on preaching.

The Mass is also easy for me to follow as every prayer and hymn is displayed on the overhead, for all to see.

The practice of well-presented livestreamed Masses will certainly go a long way to keeping Catholics from drifting to other denominations and getting lapsed Catholics, like myself, to start attending Mass in person again.

Jerome Adams, Cape Town

In praise of the livestreamed Mass

I

HAVE NOT ATTENDED MASS with any regularity for most of my adult life. This is in complete contrast to what my late mom Mona, a staunch Catholic, instilled in me.

However, when lockdown began in 2020, I started following the Mass religiously, from the convenience of my house, via YouTube. Being a lapsed Catholic, I’d forgotten most of the prayers I had learned parrot-fashion in catechism classes at Our Lady of the Rosary church in Hanover Park, Cape Town.

I have been following the livestreamed Masses by Fr Jonathan Daniels SDB, who is now the priest at Our Lady of the Rosary. I have found the services to be very uplifting spiritu-

That’s not a blessing

I

N YOUR MAY ISSUE, THE CAPTION to the picture at the bottom of page 13 states: “Frs Kgaogelo Ntsie and Tshepo Duik are blessed by their brother priests at their ordination to the priesthood in St Albert’s church in Vosloorus in December 2019.”

It is unfortunately quite incorrect.

The laying on of hands by the priests present is a collegial action, where the priests, in union with the ordaining bishop, communicate the Holy Spirit to those being ordained, and their participation is a prelude to the consecratory prayer which the bishop prays to complete the action.

Furthermore, it is a sign by which those being ordained are being incorporated into the brotherhood of the priesthood, something which is especially celebrated in the sign of peace that follows the other priestly symbols.

Referring to it as “a blessing” is quite incorrect.

Bishop Edward Risi, Keimoes-Upington

The pilgrim’s vessel

Nthabiseng Maphisa: Millennial Catholic

S

HE IS AS GLOWING AS THE moonlight and as radiant as the noonday sun. She is as gentle as the song of the birds at dawn, and she is as vigorous as a raging river. She is as quiet as a lonely street and as vibrant as the colours in her stained-glass windows.

So unique, so wide, so beautiful and so daring is the Church and all who open themselves to her treasures.

In hidden corners and in public circles many speak of the Church as a mystery to be solved. In the distance, we hear the jingling of the keys to the kingdom of God being given to St Peter. And he, that rock upon which the Church is built, receives from Christ our Lord a promise: “…and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” And so, holding fast to this hope, she stands — a rock amidst troubled waters, a vessel for earth’s pilgrims who journey to the heavenly Jerusalem.

In the Nicene Creed, we profess that the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”. I tend to mumble through these words and often forget their meaning. So rarely do we contemplate the nature of the Church, which is her sanctity and her humanity. How paradoxical that is at times.

There is the all too familiar inclination to leave behind our humanity in the misguided belief that doing so will make us fully alive in God. Oh, what clever deceit and weightless untruths there are out there. It should sadden us that this is what people think when they hear the word “church”.

When we tiptoe through the Gospel of Matthew, we find along the shore a man going about his daily business, net in hand awaiting his catch. There, unbeknown to him, in

his midst is the Son of God. The Lord Jesus looks upon him with the eyes of the Father. The Word utters to Peter, still toiling under the sun, and calls to him. And Peter turns to meet the gaze of Jesus. He sees the hand of Christ, the high priest, the head of Christ, the king who will wear the crown of thorns, and hidden is Christ.s sacred heart .

An eternal fisher of men

Peter, the fishermen, turns to behold the body of Christ. It is a foreshadowing of his role in salvation.

Peter will forever serve Jesus as the fisher of men. And here is a prime example of what can happen when we bring our humanity to divinity. Far from being diminished or nullified, our being is transformed, raised, and made fully alive.

We know how the story ends — or rather, how it begins — as there is still so much unfolding. There is brotherly love, divine revelation, vehement denial, reconciliation, and finally acceptance of the mission. Let us go forward in joyful wonder at the Church triumphant alive in her saints, at the Church suffering seen in the holy souls of purgatory, and in the Church militant here on earth guiding pilgrims along the way to the risen Christ.

Sacrament of Salvation Holy beacon of light Call out to every nation Implore the Saviour’s might Guide to eternal peace Our hearts with truth do wrestle When ends our earthly lease We’ll praise the pilgrim’s vessel.

Amen

Pilgrims in St Peter’s basilica touch the foot of a 13th-century statue of St Peter, the rock upon which Christ built his Church.

Photo: Günther Simmermacher

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Give dignity in photos

Raymond Perrier on Faith & Society

T

HE OLD SAYING GOES THAT A picture is worth a thousand words. Since that is more or less the word limit that our esteemed editor gives me each month, I am always interested in the way in which we use pictures to help tell a story.

In the past — in some books, and in newspapers and magazines (like this one) — illustrations were used to add to a written narrative. But the explosion of social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, means that often the picture is the primary way of communicating; the words become secondary. How often do we skim through something and say we have “read” it when in fact we have mostly just looked at the photos?

I was thus intrigued by a recent campaign run by the Catholic News Service (CNS), the informative news agency supported by the US Bishops’ Conference.

The intention was to encourage people to pray not only for those affected by Covid19 but also to remember those others in need of our prayers who are so important and have potentially been overshadowed by our concern about the pandemic.

So there have been calls to pray for families, young people, children and expectant women; for world leaders, social workers, scientists and communication workers; for those who deliver essential services and those who volunteer. And each of these has been led by a positive image of the people on whom the prayer is focused, reinforcing a sense of empathy and solidarity.

There have also been prayers for marginalised groups including prisoners, the homeless and people with disabilities. But here the photos have a very different approach. With these, what is being evoked in us is not empathy but sympathy. Not solidarity, but distance.

The implied assumption is that the reader might well be a young person, or

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28 The Southern Cross

Nosipho Magwaza

Stephen Malatji

James Tshabalala

Nomcebo Khumalo

Tracy Bolt

Bongani Magagasi

Vusi Dube

Richard Nzima

This is how homeless people in Durban were presented in the “Homeless 101” project, a 2019 collaboration between the Denis Hurley Centre and the Daily Maverick. It sought to give, in photos and in text, a human face to the homeless, with photos by Obakeng Molepe. See also www.bit.ly/34juUuE

a communication worker or a volunteer; there is no sense that the reader might actually be part of these other groups.

Yes, they need our help — but “they” remain “they”. There is no notion that they could be part of “us”.

Message in images

Thus, the one picture representing prisoners shows only the hands of a man, covered in tattoos and in handcuffs. He is presented as dangerous — someone we can pray for but not get close to. Certainly, no notion that he might be rehabilitated and become a useful member of society. The person with disabilities is a child with Down Syndrome (being embraced by Pope Francis). The picture is charming, but it reinforces the tendency to think of all people with disabilities as children — in need of our care and our love but not capable of anything much themselves.

The photo for the homeless was for me the most troubling — a man lying in the gutter; we see only his feet, no head, and a container beside him, implying

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that he is drunk. Of course, that is true of some homeless people. But I also know homeless people who wear shoes, who look for work every day, who do what they can to keep clean, who volunteer to help other homeless people, who have faces and names and dreams.

Here’s a good test

A good test to apply is how members of the group depicted would react if they were shown the image. Would they recognise themselves? Would they feel good about how they are shown?

Were they even asked? A great motto (popularised by a South African disability activist) is: “Nothing about us without us.”

Many charities give in to the temptation for “pity pictures” — images that are designed to open our hearts and maybe also our wallets. The quickest way to get money is to show the problem at its worst. The reader is made to feel guilty: giving money is a way of assuaging the guilt. Never mind that such shock tactics become self-defeating. If the images for this flood are not worse than the ones for the previous flood, then they are less effective and so each time we have to “up the ante”.

Hopefully, organisations try to show the solution as well as the problem. But even then they can unintentionally reinforce stereotypes. One example, and it just happens to be the one I noticed, is a video prepared by a Catholic parish which was intended to raise awareness of (and funds for) the good work done

by this church to feed the homeless and to provide healthcare.

A lot of good is said in the video of the need to “see” homeless people, to hear their stories, to recognise their presence in the city.

But the images say something else: not a single homeless person is actually shown in the video as a person. Some are interviewed, but their faces are always blurred in the same way that is used for criminals or people in hiding. They are not given full names so they have no real identity. Those who do appear in the video are in shadow, or with the focus on their ill-shod feet or their calloused hands. They are always shown as passive recipients of someone else’s largesse, incapable of doing anything for themselves.

Repeatedly the shots of homeless people have them sitting on the ground while the viewer is literally, and metaphorically, looking down on them.

An acute contrast

The contrast with the nonhomeless becomes even more acute when juxtaposed against extensive interviews with well-meaning doctors, volunteers and priests who work on the project. Each one of them has a full name and often a title. They are shown being active, doing good, using their skills.

Sometimes they are wearing the prestigious uniforms of a cleric or a medic, sitting in book-lined rooms or clinics to underline their professional status.

The implied message is that “they” (the faceless, nameless, helpless poor) are able to survive thanks to the good graces of “us” (the hard-working, identified, giving classes). I am sure this was not the intention. But sometimes our hidden prejudices are betrayed by our unintentional actions.

In any case, the CNS campaign was about prayer, not fundraising.

In prayer we are being called upon to walk alongside those in need, not to keep them at a distance.

“The communion of saints”, in which we profess our belief every Sunday, reminds us that all of us, as God’s daughters and sons, are united with each other in a shared journey towards the Creator. That is why we should, and can, pray for each other.

And a critical role of Church communications is to help us not to see the “other” but to see our brother and sister.

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

The binding power of hatred

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N MATTHEW’S GOSPEL WE READ: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (18:18) We know this works for love. Does it also work for hatred? Can someone’s hatred follow us, even into eternity?

In her recent novel Payback, Mary Gordon poses that question. Her story centres on two women, one of whom, Agnes, has hurt the other, Heidi. The hurt had been unintentional and accidental, but it had been deep, so deep that for both women it stayed like a poison inside their souls for the next 40 years.

The story traces their lives for those 40 years — years in which they never see each other, don’t even know each other’s whereabouts, but remain obsessed with each other, one nursing a hurt and the other a guilt about that hurt. The story eventually culminates with Heidi seeking out Agnes to confront her for some payback. And that payback is hatred, an ugly, pure hatred, a curse, promised to last until death, ensuring that Agnes will never be free from it for the rest of her life.

Agnes doesn’t know what to do with that hatred, which dominates her world and poisons her happiness. She wonders if it will also colour her eternity: “Her last meeting with Heidi had troubled her belief in the endurance of the ties of love. Because if love went somewhere after death, where, then, was hate? She had understood, in Heidi’s case, that it was the other side of the coin of love. Even after death, would Heidi’s hatred follow her, spoiling her eternity, the cracked note in the harmony, the dark spot in the radiance?

“Since Heidi had come back into her life, Agnes had, for the first time, been truly afraid to die. She had to make herself believe that the love of those who loved her would surround her always … keeping her from the hatred and ugliness that Heidi has shown her. She had to believe it; otherwise … the otherwise was too unbearable even to name.”

Saving power of love

The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, a Catholic, correctly states that to love someone is to ensure that this person can never be lost, that he or she (as long as the love continues) can never go to hell. By that love, the other is connected (“bound”) always to the family of love and ultimately to the circle of love inside of God. However, is this true then too for hatred? If someone hates you, can that

touch you eternally and contaminate some of the joy of heaven? If someone’s love can hold you for all eternity, can someone’s hatred do the same?

This is not an easy question. Binding and loosing, as Jesus spoke of it, works both ways, with love and with hatred.

We free each other through love and constrict each other through hatred. We know that from experience, and at a deep place inside us, we intuit its gravity. That is why so many people seek reconciliation on their deathbeds, wanting as their last wish not to leave this world unreconciled. But, sad fact, sometimes we do leave this life unreconciled, with hatred following us into the grave. Does it also follow us into eternity?

The choice is ours. If we meet hatred with hatred, it will follow us into eternity.

On the other hand, if we, on our part, seek reconciliation — as much as is possible practically and existentially — then that hatred can no longer bind us; the cord will be broken, broken from our end.

Love for hatred

Leo Tolstoy once said: “There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil.” We see that in Jesus. Some hated him, and he died like that. However, that hatred lost its power over him because he refused to respond in kind. Rather, he returned love for hatred, understanding for misunderstanding, blessing for curse, graciousness for resentment, fidelity for rejection, and forgiveness for murder. But… that takes a rare, incredible strength.

In Gabriel Marcel’s affirmation — that if we love someone that person can never be lost — there is an implied caveat, namely, that the other does not willingly reject our love and choose to move outside of it. The same holds true for hatred. Another person’s hatred holds us, but only if we meet it on its own terms, hatred for hatred.

We cannot make someone stop hating us, but we can refuse to hate him or her. At that moment, hatred loses its power to bind and punish us. Granted, this isn’t easy, certainly not emotionally.

Hatred tends to have a sick, devilish grip on us, paralysing in us the very strength we need to let it go. In that case, there’s still another salvific thing remaining.

God can do things for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Thus, in the end, as Julian of Norwich teaches, and as our faith in God’s compassion and understanding lets us know, all will still be well — hatred notwithstanding.

The Southern Cross

29

Photo: Stephanie Keith, Reuters/CNS

PRAY WITH THE POPE Every month FR CHRIS CHATTERIS SJ reflects on Pope Francis’ universal prayer intention

Trump supporters scale walls during the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6.

Be friends with your enemy

Universal Intention: We pray that, in social, economic and political situations of conflict, we may be courageous and passionate architects of dialogue and friendship

ical opponent is bad by definition and by definition nothing good can come from a bad person, therefore anything that the person has done must be undone.

All of us, no matter how fortunate in life, have our disappointments and mise for an attitude which views politiINSTON CHURCHILL fa- cal opponents as enemies to be labelled, resentments, and we naturally seek some culprit. Politicians and media mously quipped in 1954: wounded, defeated and then crushed.

This had begun during the Obama outlets that nurture those resentments “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” If any- presidency when his efforts to work and who point to a culprit — such as a one, Churchill knew what he was talk- with his Republican opponents were foreigner or a supporter of another ing about, having experienced the systematically rebuffed. The stated aim party — act with an incredible lack of horrors of war as a soldier and as a of Republican Senate leader Mitch Mc- responsibility.

Is this negative spirit having a parConnell was to make Barack Obama a politician.

Societies that are blessed with long one-term president. This aim failed, but ticularly bad effect on the world at the periods of peace tend to forget those when Trump came to power in 2017, moment? This is hard to judge, but horrors and can carelessly fall into pat- one of his principal political aims was there are some who think that the politics of some English-speaking nations terns of hostile, partisan behavespecially are struggling with it. iour which create the conditions Those who nurture Some blame the two-party system for a return to the horrors of war. and think that multi-party proporWhen we despise dialogue, we resentments act with an tional representation, common in flirt with violence.

This is what happened to- incredible lack of responsibility continental Europe, could force politicians in the English-speaking wards the end of US President world to dialogue and compromise to expunge his predecessor’s legacy, unDonald Trump’s term of office. His brash and polarising style of leadership, doing anything that Obama had more. Others also blame the coarsening in which he belittled and threatened achieved, in particular his widening of of discourse enabled by the anonymity of the Internet. opponents, encouraged the violent ele- social healthcare. Obama’s critics, with Some commentators on the the help of their media allies, even ments which made up the mob which invaded the Capitol in Washington, managed to make the word “Oba- Catholic Church in the United States think that the divisiveness of politics macare” a kind of political pejorative.

DC, on January 6. has infected the Church to the extent But this event was not only of that there may be a de facto schism ocBlind to goodwill Trump’s making. The event was the reAnd this is another aspect of this curring. It is a sobering thought that we sult of the tenor of US politics for some who proclaim to be the Body of Christ time. Egged on by journalists of the pernicious tendency — the inability to are being dismembered by ideology “shock jock” persuasion (such as the admit that your opponent is capable of and political partisanship. Uncomfortdoing anything good or of having any late Rush Limbaugh), many politicians able memories surface here for South have abandoned the bipartisan ap- goodwill or good intentions. The logic Africans of how politics sundered proach involving dialogue and compro- is as unfeeling as it is flawed: my politChristians from one another during the time of apartheid.

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30

The Southern Cross

St Mary Magdalene prayer

St Mary Magdalene, who by healing became the beloved of Jesus, thank you for your witness that Jesus forgives through the miracle of love.

You, who already possess eternal happiness in His glorious presence, please intercede for me, so that some day I may share in the same everlasting joy.

Amen.

Prayer Corner Your prayers to cut out and collect Do you have a favourite prayer? Please send to editor@scross.co.za

Prayer to St omas the Apostle in times of doubt

Almighty and ever-living God, who strengthened your apostle Thomas with sure and certain faith in your Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly and without doubt to believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that our faith may never be found wanting in your sight. Help our unbelief!

Amen

St Ignatius Loyola prayer Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my whole will, all that I have and all that I possess. You gave it all to me, Lord; I give it all back to you.

Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. Give me your love and your grace; for with this I have all that I need.

Amen

Fourfold Franciscan Blessing May God bless you with DISCoMforT! Discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with ANGer!

Anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with TeArS! Tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger and conflict, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and help turn their pain into joy.

May God bless you with foolIShNeSS! Enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Prayer for Grandparents Lord Jesus, You were born of the Virgin Mary, the daughter of Saints Joachim and Anne.

Look with love on grandparents the world over.

Protect them!

They are a source of enrichment for families, for the Church and for all of society.

Support them! As they grow older, may they continue to be

for their families strong pillars of Gospel faith, guardian of noble domestic ideals, living treasuries of sound religious traditions.

Make them teachers of wisdom and courage, that they may pass on to future generations, the fruits of their mature human and spiritual experience.

Amen - Pope Benedict XVI The Southern Cross

31

Anagram Challenge

Catholic Word Search

Unscramble the clues below to work out which CATHOLIC-THEMED MOVIES hide in these words:

1

SWE P T TO HO P E

2

I F LE E DO LTI SH LI F E

2010s

1960s

3 GO SET TENT BEFOREHAND 1940s

Find these terms from our Catholic faith in the puzzle above!

ACOLYTE BAPTISM BASILICA BISHOP CATECHISM

CONCLAVE DEACON LAITY LITURGY MISSAL

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MONASTERY ORDINATION SAINTS SODALITY TABERNACLE

4

LI B E R A L ME SSE S

5

A N A LO O F N E SS A LA R MS

6

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2010s

1960s

1940s

Place the missing letters to get a quote from the Gospel of Matthew

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A K S A D E N D E T K N U C K S L AV E D O N S I S AYA L L E H G L E N O YA D E A K I T Y O U B U S T B E L O P F I D

Southern Crossword

Across

5. Herb, the wise old man (4) 7. The mule has gone over to the old man (10) 8. An age in history (4) 10. Situated in the home (8) 11. Reach a certain age (6) 12. Covering for those who are late (6) 14. Affectionately, your mother’s mother (6) 16. Discount for the pensioner (6) 17. You may become so after taking the Elixir (8) 19. Say something about rave (4) 21. Where the kings are called together (Rev 16) (10) 22. Mixed nuts may shock you (4)

32

The Southern Cross

DoWn

1. The king who built Samaria (1 kg 16) (4) 2. It’s an illusion (8) 3. Allocate the task (6) 4. Great-grandparents may have written on them (6) 5. There’s a spring on the road to here (Gn 16) (4) 6. Your big old family member (5-5) 9. Time to leave service (10) 13. They are held up for players to quit the game (3,5) 15. Season for those of advanced age (6) 16. Noah weathered it (6) 18. Muscat is its capital city (4) 20. Status of a senior citizen (4)

For all solutions turn to page 34

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Photos: Bishop Stanislaw Dziuba, CNS, Archives, Canonisation Cause of Bl Benedict Daswa

Quick Crossword

ue

Cl

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16

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ac

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17

CODEWORD: Combine the letters in the shaded boxes to form a historical papal name

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Across

3. Adam & Eve’s underwear (7) 4. Birthplace of St Anthony (6) 5. Patron saint of hopeless causes (4) 8. British Catholic author (6,6) 12. SACBC president … Sipuka (10) 14. Simon Peter’s produce (4) 15. Seventh’s word in Apostles’ Creed (8) 16. Pope’s 2020 encyclical (8,5) 17. Penitential season (4) 18. Latin for Father (5) 19. Part of priest’s vestments (5)

20. 19th-c. English saint (surname) (6) 21. Island of 2019 papal trip (9) 22. Dragon-slaying saint (6)

DoWn

1. Recipient of Paul’s letter (5) 2. Swiss priest-theologian, d. 2021 (4,4) 5. Southern Cross cook (surname) (8) 6. Papal summer residence (6,8) 7. St Teresa’s order (plural) (10) 9. Town of Martha, Mary & Lazarus (7) 10. Biblical epics actor … Heston (8) 11. OT book by a woman (4)

The Catholic Trivia Quiz

1. Which future pope visited South Africa in 1962? a) Paul VI b) John Paul I c) Francis

6. How many chapters are there in the book of Exodus? a) 10 b) 20 c) 40

2. Which book in the New Testament features the line: “The truth will set you free”? a) Mark b) Luke c) John

7. Which of these Churches has more reported members than the Catholic Church in South Africa? a) Anglican Church b) Dutch Reformed Church c) Zion Christian Church

3. Catholic author Suzanne Collins is famous for which series of books? a) The Handmaid’s Tale b) The Hunger Games c) Red Rising Saga 4. Which sodality was founded in 1921 in Dublin by Frank Duff? a) Legion of Mary b) Sacred Heart c) St Vincent de Paul 5. Where did Jesus raise the widow’s son from the dead? a) Bethany b) Capernaum c) Nain

8. Who has played both Jesus and St Luke in films? a) Jim Caviezel b) Max von Sydow c) Willem Dafoe

13. Christian group founded by Br Roger (5) 14. SA archdiocese (12) 17. Venda name of Bl Daswa (12) 18. Biggest city in PE diocese (8) 19. US city named after Mexican saint (3,5) 23. Liturgical colour (3)

Q3: Catholic author

Q4: Frank Duff

c) Vitalis of Assisi 11. In which diocese is the town of Plettenberg Bay? 9. Which was the first Church to break a) Oudtshoorn b) Port Elizabeth away from the Catholic Church? c) Queenstown a) Church of Armenia b) Coptic Church 12. Who founded the Christian c) East Syrian Church Brothers (or CBC) schools?

10. Who is the patron saint of pilots a) Marcellin Champagnat and air travellers? b) Jean-Baptiste de La Salle a) John Vianney b) Joseph of Cupertino c) Edmund Rice

Cooking with Saints

Every month GRAZIA BARLETTA prepares a recipe from Catholic tradition in her Cape Town kitchen, and shares it with our readers in text

S

and photos taken exclusively for The Southern Cross by the chef herself.

THIS MONTH GRAZIA BAKED:

ST ANTHONY’S BREAD

AINT ANTHONY OF PADUA was born in 1195 in Lisbon, Portugal, as Fernando Martins de Bulhões. He entered the nearby Augustinian monastery when he was 15 and later joined the Franciscans, whose order was founded only 11 years earlier. He loved the poor and was a mighty preacher. He died in 1232 in Padua, Italy, where he is entombed in the city’s great basilica.

The story of St Anthony’s bread refers to an episode that happened in Regaldina, near the basilica in Padua. A young mother left her 20 months old son Thomas alone in the kitchen while she was making bread. When she returned to the kitchen, she found the toddler face-first in a tub of water. She screamed and desperately prayed to St Anthony and vowing that, if her prayers were answered and Thomas survived, she would donate bread to the poor equal to her son’s weight Her prayers were answered and she did just that. Today’s bread is made in St Anthony’s honour.

The legend was furthered by another instance. We all know how frustrating it can be to have to frantically search for a set of keys.

A French shopkeeper, Louise Boffier of Toulon, had lost the shop door keys. Like the mother in Padua, she vowed to give bread to the poor if somehow the locksmith could open the bolted door without incident. The miracle happened and she too kept her prom-

ise. Louise started a charity dedicated to giving bread to the poor. St Anthony is now best known as the patron saint of lost things. If ever you can’t find something, say this prayer: “Dear St Anthony, please come around: something is lost, and it cannot be found.”

This recipe can be halved. It’s a soft, sweetish tasting bread that can be made in any shape and size. preparation: 160 min • Baking: 20 min servings: 8-10

inGrEDiEnts:

3. knead the dough for about 3-5 minutes until a smooth ball is formed (see image below) 4. Transfer dough to a work surface and shape into a rectangle about 2,5cm thick. Cut into uniformly sized pieces, and form each piece into a ball.

Another option is to make three long pieces and form a plait with the same rectangle. Or make any shape of your choice.

5. Place your dough balls in a greased round baking tin, giving them a bit of room to rise.

If you have chosen a plait, or another shape, place onto a greased baking sheet.

6. Allow rising for about two hours.

7. Preheat oven to 190°C. 8. Before placing the dough into the oven, brush with a little milk and sprinkle seeds or aniseed on top for a variation.

9. Bake for about 20 minutes. Serve with salted butter.

10. Enjoy with the prayer to St Anthony!

• 6 cups of flour • ½ cup soft butter • ½ cup honey • 1 packet instant yeast • 1 cup warm water • 1 cup warm milk

prEpArAtion: 1. Mix flour, butter and salt in a bowl.

2. Combine the milk, honey, warm water and yeast in a medium bowl. Allow the yeast to prove for 5 minutes. Then add to the flour mixture.

Grazia Barletta is an author, book designer, and food photographer & stylist. She can be contacted at graziabarletta1@gmail.com Follow her blog at www.momentswithgrazia.com and connect with Grazia on Facebook/Instagram: momentswithgrazia

PUZZleS SolUTIoNS

SouthernCrossword: ACROSS: 5 Sage, 7 Methuselah, 8 Iron, 10 Internal, 11 Attain, 12 Shroud, 14 Gramma, 16 Deduct, 17 Immortal, 19 Aver, 21 Armageddon, 22 Stun. DOWN: 1 Omri, 2 Phantasm, 3 Assign, 4 Slates, 5 Shur, 6 Great-uncle, 9 Retirement, 13 Red cards, 15 Autumn, 16 Deluge, 18 Oman, 20 Rank.

Anagram Challenge: 1. The Two Popes (2019);

2. Lilies Of The Field (1963); 3. The Song Of Bernadette (1943); 4. Les Miserables (e.g. 2012); 5. A Man For All Seasons (1966); 6. The Bells Of St Mary’s (1946)

Dropped Letters: Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. (Mt 7:7)

34 The Southern Cross

Quick Crossword:

ACROSS: 3 Figleaf, 4 Lisbon, 5 Jude, 8 Graham Greene, 12 Sithembele, 14 Fish, 15 Almighty, 16 Fratelli Tutti, 17 Lent, 18 Pater, 19 Stole, 20 Newman, 21 Mauritius, 22 George DOWN: 1 Titus, 2 Hans Küng, 5 Barletta, 6 Castel Gandolfo, 7 Carmelites, 9 Bethany, 10 Charlton, 11 Ruth, 13 Taizé, 14 Bloemfontein, 17 Tshimangadzo, 18 Gqeberha, 19 San Diego, 23 Red — CODEWORD: Innocent

Catholic Trivia Quiz: 1. a) Paul VI (as Cardinal Giovanni Montini); 2. c} John (8:32); 3. b) The Hunger Games; 4. a) Legion of Mary; 5. c) Nain; 6. c) 40; 7. c) Zion Christian Church; 8. a) Jim Caviezel (Jesus in The Passion of the Christ and St Luke in Paul, Apostle of Christ); 9. c) East Syrian Church (Nestorianists, in 431 AD); 10. b) St Joseph of Cupertino; 11. a) Oudtshoorn; 12. c) Bl Edmund Rice

S outhern C ross P ilgrimages 2022 will be our year!

In 2020 we looked forward to some wonderful pilgrimages, taking us to places of faith such as the Holy Land, Rome, Assisi, Medjugorje, the Oberammergau Passion Play, and the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Then the pandemic closed down travel throughout the world for two years. But after several delays, we are confident that in 2022 the borders will be open again, and we can resume going on pilgrimage. Join us on our spiritually enriching and perfectly arranged journey of faith!

CAMINO TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Official 7-Day Camino 30 Sept to 9 Oct 2022 • Led by Fr Chris Townsend

Walk the ancient ‘Camino Primitivo’ route from Lugo to Santiago de Compostela in this Holy Year!

Bonus: Your luggage will be delivered to your hotel every day!

www.fowlertours.co.za/camino

MEDJUGORJE, ROME, ASSISI, CROATIA Led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin 16-25 May 2022

Before Medjugorje, you will visit Rome (with papal audience in St Peter’s Square), Assisi, Loreto (with the House of Our Lady), and the beautiful Croatian city of Split.

www.fowlertours.co.za/medju

OBERAMMERGAU AND HOLY LAND Led by Archbishop William Slattery OFM August/September 2022

See the great holy shrines of the Holy Land, including the sites of Our Lord’s Passion, before flying to Germany to tour in Bavaria and see the famous Oberammergau Passion Play.

www.fowlertours.co.za/oberammergau

Contact Gail at info@fowlertours.co.za or call or WhatsApp 076 352-3809 *All dates subject to confirmation

Our pilgrimages are expertly arranged by

history in Colour

Final Words Great Quotes on

Grandparents

A snapshot from the past, colourised exclusively for The Southern Cross

‘Grandparents are often forgotten, and we forget this wealth of preserving roots and passing on.’

– Pope Francis (b.1936)

‘There are fathers who do not love their children; there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.’

– Victor Hugo (1802-86)

‘You don’t choose your family.

They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.’

– Archbishop Desmond Tutu (b.1931)

‘Because (grandparents) are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the space between generations.’

– Jimmy Carter (b.1924)

‘It is one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.’

– Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

‘The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.’

– Rev Billy Graham (1918-2018)

‘The problem with our world is that we draw the circle of family too small.’

– St Teresa of Kolkata (1910-97)

‘Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent.’

– Psalm 71:9

Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, banned Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference official, is visited by SACBC president Archbishop Joseph Fitzgerald in the winter of 1977 after the priest was banned by the apartheid government following a four-month detention. He was served the banning order on June 4 that year at Khanya House, the SACBC headquarters in Pretoria, the day before the bishops returned from their ad limina visit to Rome. In 1981, Fr Mkhatshwa would be appointed SACBC secretary-general, while still banned.

In terms of the banning order, which would lapse in 1983, Fr Mkhatshwa was forced to live in a house in Mabopane without running water, electricity, inside doors or a ceiling. The banning meant that the priest’s movements were restricted to Mabopane East and Pretoria. He was not allowed to leave the house between 18:00 and 6:00, and was allowed no visitors, except by permission from a magistrate.

Like many other priests and Church workers, of all races, Fr Mkhatshwa was detained several times. In detention, he was tortured, including by electric shocks.

After his detention in 1986, he successfully sued the state for torture and assault.

In the 1990s it emerged that there had been failed plans to assassinate him.

After apartheid, Fr Mkhatshwa received permission from his bishop to serve in parliament. He was deputy-education minister from 1996-2000 and mayor of Pretoria from 2000-06. He now heads the Moral Regeneration Movement. (See also page 5)

The last laugh

F

ATHER JIM HAD TAKEN DRAMA classes to improve his delivery of homilies at Mass. After the first Mass celebrated with his new skill, Father was quite pleased with himself.

“Did you hear how my voice filled

the whole church?” Fr Jim excitedly asked the sacristan.

“Oh yes,” the sacristan replied drily. “It filled the church so much that several people got up and left to make room for it...”

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