ROSARY CELEBRATION: 1000 people turn up at Bove’s farm Page 3
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South wall has now moved 350 mm - over 12 inches
Bunbury’s St Patrick’s Cathedral will have to be demolished after damage from freak winds a fortnight ago has continued to worsen, it has been confirmed.
The south wall of the cathedral has now moved 350 millimetres, or over 12 inches,
The historic building is in imminent danger of collapse at any time.
Structural engineers who surveyed the continuing decay of the cathedral have also expressed concern for public safety.
The fate of the historic 84-year old Cathedral was confirmed by the insurers of the Cathedral following receipt of the report from structural engineers commissioned to survey the damaged building.
“The Engineer states in his report that the Cathedral continues to move. New cracks are appearing daily and the original cracks are enlarging at an alarming rate” Bishop Gerard Holohan of Bunbury said last week.
“The windows and walls have significant horizontal displacement and the roof has visible signs of deformation… the northern wall has taken on the shape of a dog’s leg. There is a risk of total collapse” he said.
Bishop Holohan informed parishioners at Masses on the weekend that structural engineers had said damage was worsening to the extent that it was now too unsafe to undergo further examination and was in danger of collapse at any time.
The Bunbury Diocese has lodged an application for demolition to ground level with the City of Bunbury.
“The engineer has expressed concern for public safety and has caused additional measures to be taken over and above those already implemented.
“The Cathedral has been locked, additional fencing has been installed in case of collapse. Surveillance by security guards has been extended to around the clock,” Bishop Holohan said.
He told parishioners he hoped it would not take more than a couple of years to build a new Cathedral.
As head of the Vatican department responsible for helping the world’s children, Fr Patrick Byrne has seen it all - from child soldiers to trafficking of children. He’ll be in Perth to speak in mid-June and wants to share with listeners ways in which we can help. You should be there Page 6
Pro-life supporters were encouraged by the presence of three newly elected state politicians at this year’s Rally for Life at Parliament House in Perth on May 26.
Troy Buswell (Member for Vasse), John Castrilli (Bunbury) and Dr Graham Jacobs (Roe) joined over 250 others as Archbishop Barry Hickey, Richard Egan, State President of the National Civic Council, Pastor Rob Furlong from the Church of Christ and several other politicians addressed them.
The Rally was chaired by Reverend Dwight Randall, President of the Coalition for the Defence of Human Life, who led the gathering in a minute’s silence for the souls of the 57,000 unborn children who have been put to death in Western Australia since 1998.
Mr Randall made the point that if a minutes silence were dedicated to each individual it would have to be maintained for over forty days.
Archbishop Hickey explained the legacy of Pope John Paul II who called the world to recognize the culture of death that is has embraced in so many places. However, he said, young people are now responding to this call because they are becoming appalled at the loss of life they see around them through abortions, cloning, drugs, preventable diseases, suicide, violence and war.
Pastor Rob Furlong specifically focused on the injustices of the Terri Schiavo case in the US and joined Richard Egan in emphasising the need to fight proposed legislation currently being prepared in WA.
Mr. Egan said that the “Medical Treatment for the Dying Discussion Paper” claimed to protect doctors who claimed to provide treatment but Continued - Page 2
Steven Lawrence won admiration as an AFL star and premiership player for Hawthorn. These days the Sydney University chaplain wants to promote the Theology of the Body VISTA 1-2
Candida D’Silva was crowned May Queen at Holy Family Church’s May Queen Ball in Maddington last Saturday evening.
Last Friday, Archbishop Hickey showed his support for life, speaking in front of some 300 people who gathered for the Rally for Life at Parliament House. Here is what he said.
■ By Archbishop Barry HickeyThe recent decline and death of Pope John Paul II captured the attention of the world’s media for days, even weeks as they recognised the significance of the event - the passing of one of the world’s great moral leaders.
Even unbelievers paused, wondering to themselves whether the life and death of John Paul held some message for them as well.
Many have tried to explain the impact of this man in political terms, linking him with the overthrow of communism, the freedom of Poland, a voice in world affairs.
I see him more as one who exposed the moral bankruptcy of the secular society, the threats to life and freedom of a world without God. And I see him as one who could offer an alternative – love and life.
Most world leaders cannot afford to do that because their very existence depends on being part of the power-play and the moral compromises of international politics.
Mercifully the Pope was an independent moral force which not even an assassin’s bullet could stop.
What he saw in the secular values of modern society was the growth of a culture of death. Despite all the technological and medical advanc-
es that contribute to the well-being of millions of people, he saw an inbuilt fault line that led not to life but to death. The absence of God’s ultimate authority in truth and morality led to a relativism whereby anything could be made to appear legitimate if one wanted it to.
Let me give examples of what I mean.
Without God, why should unborn life be sacred? For that matter, why should any life be
The
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sacred? Without God, why should marriage and family life deserve special protection? This is only one of a number of choices of sexual lifestyles - surely.
Without God, why should anyone bother whether human embryos are tiny human beings or not?
If they can be used to cure diseases, use them. Why look for alternatives like adult stem cells?
Without God, the elderly have not much value really. They drain the economy and use up money
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that could be left to others. My point, and the point John Paul II was making so strongly, is that life is from God and only God can take it. The secular view is we are God and we can do what we like.
This attitude leads to bad and tragic decisions and laws and creates a mentality that human life is cheap, disposable - in other words, it leads to the creation of a culture of death.
John Paul II was one who exposed the moral bankruptcy of the secular society, the threats to life and freedom of a world without God.
Thank God the young are beginning to reject this view because they are appalled at the loss of human life all around them; the number of abortions, the frantic race to clone human embryos only to destroy them, the deaths due to drugs, to depression, hopelessness and suicide, the wastage of war, the deaths due to violence and preventable diseases.
Enough of the culture of death. Listen to the voices of the young that have received the special heritage of John Paul II, calling for stable marriages, children as the fruit of love, human sexuality as an expression of love and commitment, the right of all children conceived in the womb to live, the care of the elderly till they are called to eternal life by God.
These voices, these young people who love life and want to love, not to condemn, are trying to build a culture of life, not death.
Listen to them. Listen to them today.
Continued from page 1
...it was more concerned about withholding medical intervention in the treatment of the sick. He encouraged those in attendance to continue to oppose such considerations. “I do not want to be here in seven years time”, he said, “and know that 100’s or even 1000’s of people have been unnecessarily killed because we did not do enough to stop this legislation.”
MLC Barbara Scott referred to the “moral abomination” of the cloning techniques adopted recently by Korean and British scientists and of the regression of society to, “the law of the jungle” that was prevailing in relation to the elderly and the unborn, in which only the strong are empowered.
Dr Graham Jacobs, a GP for over 25 years who has delivered over 1000 babies, agreed that the most dangerous places to be at present was in a womb or a Nursing home. President of the Christian Democratic Party, Gerard Goiran, referred to prolife issues as “the most important of the 21st century.” The children who played on the parliament steps during the rally reflected the message of hope that was being conveyed. Recently retired MLC, Paddy Embury exhorted those in attendance to always pray for politicians and also to affirm them with personal letters of encouragement. “Let us stick to what we know is right,” he told the crowd, “And right will eventually win.”
A round 1000 people were in attendance at Bove Farm near Busselton for the 25th Anniversary May Rosary Celebration held on Sunday May 1. The celebrations included concelebrated Mass led by the Bishop of Bunbury, Gerard Holohan, with priests from the Diocese and Perth. Mass was followed by a Rosary procession around Bove Farm and the day concluded with Benediction.
Bishop Holohan told participants that they were called to be a part of the new evangelisation of the gospel, and to share their faith with others who have drifted away from the Church.
This could be done primarily by individuals witnessing to their Faith in their families, schools and workplaces through their daily lives. The Holy Spirit will help us and guide all in living the Christian life, just as He did in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was the first disciple of the Lord, said Bishop Holohan. 1000
The year 1979 was a very special year for the Bove Family on whose farm the celebration is held annually. In that year Luisa Bove, after much prayer, felt she had been touched by God in two special ways: an inexplicable healing from ongoing illness and the conversion of her husband Luigi to God and the Church.
To acknowledge and thank God for the many special graces received through the intercession of Our Lady, the May Rosary Celebration on Bove Farm was begun.
The first May Rosary Celebration was held under the small statue of Mary contained in the naturallyoccuring crevice of the large tree, which is located next to the stone grotto.
The site began to regularly attract pilgrims. Visitors reported receiving abundant graces through praying the Rosary together. All this time the people who came to Bove Farm grew deeper in their love for Jesus and Mary.
The stone grotto was constructed in 1987 in honour of the Marian Year declared by Pope John Paul II. It was blessed on the first Sunday of May in 1998 bringing great joy to all present.
It was then suggested that people meet every first Sunday of the month to pray the Rosary and to sing hymns to God and His Holy Mother. Thus the monthly Cenacle, which still continues, commenced at Bove Farm.
After much prayer, construction of the Chapel commenced in 1997 with the generous support and collaboration of pilgrims, friends and locals. Our Lord’s Real Presence in the Chapel’s tabernacle continues to bring wonderful graces and blessings to all coming to the Shrine. It has and will always be the joy of the Bove Family to open the gates of the Shrine to all who would like to come and pray. Vistors continue to come, many in thanksgiving
for graces they have received from God through the Blessed Virgin. Luigi and Luisa would therefore like to praise and thank God for all the blessings they have witnessed in the lives of others as well as
those they have personally received. They would also like to extend their thanks to all the bishops, priests, benefactors, pilgrims and friends who have made this 25-year journey possible.
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Sr Cosmas, whose life and work with women and girls in Uganda was reported on by Jamie O’Brien in The Record (May 19) has asked that the paper pass on her gratitude for all the support which she received after the article’s publication.
“On behalf of all the people back in Uganda I just want to let readers know their donations will be used to alleviate the suffering of the people there,” she said.
Anyone interested in supporting Sr Cosmas can contact Jamie O’Brien at The Record for further details.
The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, presided over Confirmation 2005, two ceremonies at the SuperDome, Homebush, on Sunday May 22 in which 5000 candidates received the Sacrament of Confirmation.
The candidates were joined by 35,000 sponsors, parents, friends, Eucharistic ministers, ushers and parish members who filled the SuperDome as the cardinal welcomed them as “full members of the Catholic Church”.
Cardinal Pell said in his homily at Confirmation 2005: “This sacrament leaves a permanent seal on the soul of each person confirmed, which can never be repeated and can’t be erased, no matter where the long years ahead may take these children.
“They will always belong to Christ, be enrolled in his service and therefore guaranteed God’s protection in the last times if they want it.
“Our faith is something precious; to know that God loves us, to know the difference between right and wrong, to know that God will forgive any sin or crime if we are sorry and repent. These are great advantages, wonderful blessings.
“I pray that through this Confirmation and Eucharist today you will believe more strongly that the Lord is God in heaven above
and on the earth beneath; that you will keep the commandments given to you for your own well being and for the well being of your descendants after you.”
Music, lights, a huge cross as the centrepiece and song and prayers in many languages created a wonderful atmosphere as the candidates from more than 100 parishes and ethnic communities received gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Dylan, a Year 6 student from Our Lady of Mt Carmel, Mount Pritchard, says: “Having my Confirmation at the SuperDome was pretty cool, but I was nervous because I was standing in front of thousands of people.
“It is a rare opportunity to be confirmed in the SuperDome and is something I will always remember.”
Classmate Tu An agrees. “I feel very special to have been confirmed at the SuperDome with so many other children from different parishes,” she says.
Bishop Anthony Fisher, convenor of Confirmation 2005, the only Confirmation service in the archdiocese this year, says he hopes it will be a “turning point” in the lives of these children.
“I don’t imagine Confirmation is magic, suddenly turning them all into saints and martyrs ready to conquer the world,” he said.
“But I think for a significant number of them this will be such a major event in their lives - perhaps a turning point.
“I hope after they have seen the
pictures and video that they won’t just view it as a spectacular, but a moment of grace.” He added: “I have been going around the schools, meeting the kids who were to be confirmed and there was such a buzz, an excitement among them which was quite contagious. What they will have over the rest of us who were confirmed in our parishes is the expe-
rience of a much bigger Church. “I think this year with the dying of Pope John Paul II and his funeral, the election and installation of a new pope, these kids have watched on television the bigger Church. Now they have experienced it for themselves, seeing a group much bigger than their parish, seeing the whole diocese together.
“I hope that they will take that
Bishops across NSW have supported a plea by the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Francis Carroll, for a special day of prayer for rain on June 12.
The appeal coincides with a $250 million-plus Government-backed drought package to aid suffering farmers across the country.
Catholic agencies and clergy in drought-affected areas have painted a “frightening” picture for the coming months with farming families facing a winter of “uncer-
tainty and great fear”. Some towns could run out of water within six to nine months, leaving families and communities facing “severe consequences”, they say.
“The desperate plight of farmers, graziers and local rural communities worsens by the day in vast areas of Australia,” said Archbishop Carroll, who revealed that parts of his archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn could be counted among some of the country’s worst affected regions.
He has called for Sunday, June 12, to be “a special day of united prayer” for rain.
The Bishop of WilcanniaForbes, Bishop Chris Toohey,
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described the situation as “very serious”. He said people regularly pray for rain in his diocese, which covers 53 per cent of the State.
“This is no ordinary drought – and that statement is coming not from me, but from people who have been here a lot longer than I have,” he said.
“They’ve never seen anything like it.
“Places like Brewarrina in the north of the diocese are like Mars. The land is just terrible. You couldn’t possibly grow anything on it.
“People really have to come and see what it is like – that is the only way you can appreciate the seriousness.”
The Bishop of Bathurst, Bishop Pat Dougherty, says people in his diocese are desperate and are “facing an uncertain winter with great fear”.
“The great problem is that we are entering our fifth straight year of drought and because of that, the effects have been devastating,” he said.
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“Many families have already left the land over the past five years –and at a great loss. The only people left are those who have managed to persevere over that time.”
More than 2000 people gathered at a drought summit in the NSW town of Parkes recently to call on the government to dramatically overhaul the way drought funding is managed.
Nine-tenths of the State is currently in drought and climatologists say that there may be no rain for months to come.
Bishop Dougherty says that
areas such as Girilambone and Dubbo have been suffering the effects of drought for the past four years with no sign of a break in the weather.
If there is no major rain for the coming months, the “picture is terrifying”, he said. “I heard somebody say recently that if the drought continues, one third of the people working on the land will have to leave. That figure is very frightening.”
But Bishop Dougherty and other community agencies have warned of the more serious consequences of the drought, including depression and suicide.
“Rural people are very resilient, but they are also slow to reveal the real difficulties that they are facing,” he said. “It’s very hard to find out who hasn’t got enough money, who can’t send their kids to school and who is suffering mentally.”
The vice-president of the Bathurst diocesan council for the St Vincent de Paul Society, Patricia Jehner, says the mental health situation in her area is “diabolical”.
“In the worst cases, it can lead to suicide,” she said. “Many people don’t want to believe this, including the Government, but it is happening out here.
“There have been attempts – thank God they’ve been saved – but the situation remains serious.”
Fr Tony Hennessy of Orange said the people do not have the backing to cope adequately with the drought. “The Church is doing all it can, but the Government and city folk need to lend a helping hand.”
away as a memory that they’re a part of something that’s much bigger.”
Cardinal Pell was assisted by Bishop Fisher and Bishop Julian Porteous, retired Sydney Bishops Geoffrey Robinson and David Cremin and Bishop Sir Desmond Moore, retired Bishop of Alotua, Papua New Guinea, plus 80 other bishops and archdiocesan priests.
Catholic schools ‘vital’
“Catholic schools play a vital role in the evangelising mission of the Church,” says a statement that the US Catholic Bishops will be asked to adopt in June. The nation’s bishops are to meet in Chicago from June 1618. The proposed statement is titled “Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium.”
“Our young people are the Church of today and tomorrow,” it says. “It is imperative that we provide them with schools ready to address their spiritual, moral and academic needs.” The statement says, “We are convinced that Catholic schools continue to be the most effective means available to the Church for the education of children and young people... We must continue to give all parents the choice of an education which no other school can supply - excellent academics rooted in sound Catholic values.”
VATICAN CITY (CNS)Proclaiming the Gospel in Burundi includes working to bring healing and reconciliation after the civil war and supporting the restoration of democracy, Pope Benedict XVI told the country’s bishops. Meeting the bishops on May 28, the Pope praised their efforts on behalf of “the promotion of peace and reconciliation in the country, especially in this period of electoral rounds.” Bishop Jean Ntagwarara of Bubanza, president of the bishops’ conference, told the Vatican’s Fides missionary news agency that priests and religious had been appointed to most regional election committees.
Sent to cover Maddington Parish’s May Queen Ball, Kerry Connelly found hersefl drafted as one of the judges
It was a great night for 28-year-old Candida D’Silva, who was crowned the winner of The Holy Family Church’s May Queen Ball.
Candida D’Silva was astonished when she received the title of “May Queen”on her birthday no less.
When speaking to Candida I asked her why she had entered, she said her boyfriend had urged her to enter.
The May Queen Ball is one of many fundraising events held by the Holy Family church in Maddington each year.
The ball has returned after a short break, and is set to be an annual event.
More than 200 parishioners and guests attended the evening on May 28 at the Maddington community centre.
Committee member Francis Williams said, “We weren’t expecting this number of people to show up, we had to go and fetch more tickets.”
A wonderful 3-piece band entertained guests throughout the night and I was presented with the pleasure and task of being one of the judges, alongside paprishioners Shirley Bowen and Ravi Naidu, to help decide who would become May Queen.
Twenty-two beautiful young ladies entered the contest at the venue, and dazzled the judges with a showcase of their individual style, posture, elegance, confidence and winning smile.
Once votes were tallied, it was obvi-
ous it was a close race, with just one point separating the Queen and two runners up.
Aside from ticket sales at $15 per person, other money was raised by raffle tickets and food sales.
The amount raised on the night totalled over $2000, Members of the fundraising committee were proud to call the evening a success.
All funds raised will go towards fencing and refurbishing the church grounds.
The May Queen Ball is set to return next year, and until then, other fundraising activities are in the planning.
There is a South Indian breakfast
being planned for September, and food fairs organised throughout the year.
Another big event will take place on October 18, when a group of 11 pilgrims, aged between 55 and 82 years old, will be taking a wooden crucifix, two metres in length, on a pilgrimage to a shrine in Europe.
If you would like to be a part of this journey by name and spirit, there is a way; you can make a donation.
To obtain a donation form, or for any enquiries on mentioned events, contact Francis Williams on (08) 9459 3873, or 0404 893 877.
All donations go directly to the Holy Family Church and are tax deductible.
- Kerry Connelly
■ By Jamie O’Brien
Archbishop Hickey led a crowd of 150 people around the perimeter of St Mary’s Cathedral to commemorate the Feast of Corpus Christi last Sunday May 29.
The feast is traditionally celebrated in the Latin Church on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to solemnly commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
For 15 minutes, the Archbishop led the people carrying the monstrance and a passing fire engine even turned off its sirens as a sign of respect.
The Cathedral Choir led the group of people singing hymns.
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should not occur again.
Archbishop Hickey called for public support for the services of St Vincent de Paul during the blessing of the society’s Winter Appeal in Bassendean on May 18.
Approximately 80 people attended the launch held at one of the Society’s Vincentcare houses. Peter Kennedy from the ABC hosted the morning and the Appeal was officially launched by the state Minister for Health, Mr Jim McGinty.
The launch was held to appeal to Western Australians for assistance in raising funds to provide hope, dignity and comfort to those in the Community who will be experiencing difficulties this winter.
Society State President, Brian Bull, emphasised the importance of St Vincents’ philosophy of providing help with dignity so that people are being empowered to regain control of their lives.
He said that the socoiety’s aim is, “to provide a hand up not just a handout”. Miles, a Vincentcare resident, epitomised this philosophy when, during the launch, he thanked all those in attendance
and acknowledged the efforts of St Vincent’s’ staff and volunteers who had made such a difference in his life.
Mr Bull said that the Society provides a diverse range of services that assist over 155,000 people in Western Australia each year. He said that both staff and volunteers endeavour to provide emotional and spiritual support as well as material aid.
There have already been a high number of calls this year for food parcels and other essential items as winter approaches.
As the weather gets colder there is expected to be an increased number of requests for assistance from those struggling to pay heating bills as well as for warm clothing and blankets.
The Society’s core work is home visits, which enables them to personally assess the needs of those they are serving. They can then address immediate needs as well as providing support and services for long-term benefits.
Following the official speeches at the launch, students from St. Michael’s Primary School sang several songs and guests enjoyed a light breakfast.
Financially: These will be used to assist with food, clothing and accommodation and other essential items as well as helping to provide a range of services.
Volunteering: There is currently a need for volunteers in a number of service areas.
Donations: Blankets, clothing, pots and pans, non-electrical kitchen items.
Other suggestions
Fundraisers: Schools and Community groups are encouraged to hold fundraising activities.
Workplace Collections: Organise for staff to bring in items that can be dropped off at their Retail Centres.
What to do
● For monetary donations contact 13 18 12 or visit website: www.vinnies. org.au/wa
● For Volunteering enquiries ring 9475 5400.
● All items donated can be dropped at any of St Vincent de Paul’s 43 Retail Centres.
■ By Jamie O’Brien
Redemptoris Mater Seminary Rector Fr Michael Moore SM celebrated 25 years of priesthood last weekend amongst many friends and even his former rector, Fr John Thornhill SM. Fr Moore, a Marist Father, was ordained in Camden New South Wales by Bishop William Murray on May 31, 1980.
“For the millions of refugees in the world: may they receive brotherly love and concrete aid from all Christians.”
Mission intention: “For Christians: may they come to an ever deeper realisation that the Most Holy Eucharist is the pulsing heart of the Church.”
DATE: Friday, 17 June 2005
TIME: 7pm to 9pm
VENUE:
Catholic Pastoral Centre of Our Lady of the Mission 40a Mary Street, Highgate
RSVP
Catholic Mission on 9422 7933 or The Record on 9227 7080 Or email us at catholicmissionperth@bigpond.com
Key Note Speaker - Fr Patrick Byrne SVD
Fr. Patrick Byrne SVD, Secretary General of the Pontifical Society of the Missionary Childhood (“The Church’s Champion for Children in Poverty”).
Fr Patrick, as a Vatican representative on UN committees, has been to all the world’s trouble spots to monitor the plight of children and facilitate concrete responses to address their immediate and long-term needs in collaboration with local and international agencies with similar goals.
This public forum has been organized by the Catholic Mission Office in Perth and Bunbury in conjunction with the Record. It is hoped that this forum will not only affirm the concern we all have for the suffering of children around the world, but give us practical pointers to the seeds that we can sow today that will make a difference tomorrow.
● Children in the world: 2.2 billion;
● Children living in poverty : more than one billion;
● Children with no access to health care in developing countries: 1 out of 7;
● Daily rate of under-5 children mortality for lack of preventative measures against illnesses: 29,158 per day;
● Death rate of children in 2003: 10.6 million;
● Life expectancy for a child born in Japan: 85 years;
● Life expectancy for a child born in Zambia: 33 years;
● Number of child deaths as a direct or indirect result of wars since 1980: 3.6 million;
● Children sexually exploited: 2 million;
● Estimate of new HIV-infected children in 2003: 5 million;
● Estimate of sexually transmitted diseases for Under 25-individuals: 2.5 million;
● HIV-AIDS orphan children : 15 million (of these , 80% living in Sub-Saharan Africa);
● Number of homeless children between the ages of 11 & 15 years; 90 million;
● How much would it cost to ensure every child has access to basic education? US$6 billion;
● How much would it cost to ensure every child has access to drinkable water? US$9 billion;
● Global military expenses in 2003: US$956 billion;
● Just 0.1% of the world’s income would eliminate child poverty worldwide.
Back in the 1990s Steven Lawrence was one of the icons of Australian life - an AFL football player, a grandfinalist. It’s guys like Steven that many young Australian men want to be like - stars on a field who win admiration from the crowd for their prowess and bravery. But in the years since then Steve has led the way for young men in another way - towards a higher, truer, standard of bravery and manliness than is often found on the fields of AFL glory - helping them to discover the dignity of their identity as men and to take up their responsibility to women, work and family life accordingly, a responsibility not understood or embraced by many men in today’s world. His work also involves talking about some uncomfortable subjects, and also helping men to see that what they are called to live with their bodies and their hearts is not Puritanism (which is what they are persuaded to believe) but nothing less than the fullness of life and love - God’s plan for them.
■ By Jamie O’Brien
Former Hawthorn footballer Steve Lawrence gave a revealing talk to approximately 100 parents last Friday night at Santa Maria College, many of who were looking for support in explaining to their children what sexuality is all about.
The following day the ex-footballer who is now Catholic Chaplain at Sydney University spoke to young people in a day-long seminar at the college.
Mr Lawrence was particularly motivated in the area of educating young boys who, he said, need particular help in recognising that they are not alone in their struggle for sexual purity.
Many boys have been affected by pornography and masturbation, but this is not an insurmountable obstacle in their journey towards healing.
What the Church teaches and understands about sexuality, and what other people think it believes are two completely different things.
“Young people tend to think deep down the Church is against sex,” he said. That might be the impression that some Christians have
given but it is definitely not the Catholic view. “That is a puritan psychology, not a Catholic understanding,” said Steve.
“God’s law is for our happiness.
“God made sex, and it is good.”
Mr Lawrence also spoke about the woundedness that comes from sexual problems, some of which can come from parents who do not live out their married love and responsibility to each other and their children.
The good news is that woundedness, while difficult in some ways to overcome, is not insurmountable in the quest for sexual purity and healing. For this to happen “each one of us has to allow Christ into our life.”
Meanwhile, “our temptations are linked to our wounds.”
Mr Lawrence has also more recently begun talking to young people in non-Catholic schools about the concept of Theology of the Body, looking at how it can appeal to young people’s reality in light of creation and the redemption of Christ.
“Some of them need to hear it otherwise they won’t believe.”
Steven illustrated his theme for parents with five points that have been promoted strongly as part of the solution to achieving
a balanced sexuality andf maturity for young people by Molly Kelly, a well-known speaker in the area of chastity. These are:
● Build up - the process of building up the lines of communication.
● Tear Down - the lies that proliferate and pollute young people’s minds, particularly from publications aimed at young people.
● Define - define the problem clearly for the sake not only of the parents but the young as well.
● Discuss - discuss the subject with honesty and sensitivity.
● Challenge - appeal to their sense of what is right and noble by challenging them to embrace a higher standard than what is presented to them by society.
“Young people like to be challenged,” he said,
Mr Lawrence contrasted this with an example he knew of a young man who told a Bishop that his parents didn’t love him because they let him do anything he wants. The lesson was clear: parents must give young people what they need, not what they want. It will make a world of difference.
More stories inside
There is almost no greater pressure for young men than being invited to watch pornography and to risk being ridiculed as abnormal if they say no. So what did Steven Lawrence do when teammates suggested watching a porn movie?
■ By Joanna LawsonRecalling some of the situations that he has had to negotiate to stay true to his Catholic faith, Steve Lawrence used the example of trying to convince his Hawthorn team mates to watch a Sean Connery movie instead of a pornographic one when he was new to the club.
“I felt like there was a spotlight on me, and I just had to say something,” said Steven, half-laughing at the recollection.
“I said, ‘Let’s go and watch the Sean Connery movie, it’s meant to be really good!’ I just didn’t want to watch the pornography, and I didn’t sound half as eloquent at the time.
“There was one guy in particular who challenged me on it, and asked “Why don’t you want to watch it?’
“Sweat poured from all over me, and I was going to myself ‘What will they think of me?’, but I just said ‘Because I think it is wrong.’
“I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had inadvertently become a leader to my team mates.”
Stories like this are common among young Catholics who are on the outer of many social groups because what they believe is contrary to what is so popular almost everywhere else.
Speaking mainly to young men and women on Saturday at Santa Maria College, Steve gave reasons for the teachings to which so many teenagers find it difficult or embarrassing to adhere.
Parents and teenagers in Perth were given the opportunity last Friday and Saturday to
hear Sydney University Catholic Chaplain and former Hawthorn footballer Steve Lawrence, and the Respect Life Office’s Clare Pike speak on the Church’s teachings on physical expressions of sexuality and love.
Our late Holy Father Pope John Paul II, wrote and published a theology on the subject of the human body and sexual conduct, naming it aptly, the Theology of the Body.
129 audiences on the subject were given by the Pope from the years 1979 to 1984, and the extensive theology covers the nature of maleness and femaleness, why God created us differently, and the role of the human (body, mind and spirit) in each of the vocations.
Steven brought these teachings to Santa Maria College via a series of workshops organised by the Santa Maria Ministry and the Respect Life
Office. Saturday’s workshop began with Mass celebrated by Father Anthony Van Dyke whose homily was about living a life that is beautiful, and an example to others.
After a short introduction, Steve Laurence began his session on the Theology of the Body, explaining that the sex drive is a fundamental and powerful force within us for the good and development of spouses and to ensure procreation and growth of our species.
However as humans, with choice, reasoning and conscience, it is unreasonable to expect that we would behave as the other animals and live according to urges.
He also explained why marriage is the setting for a physical relationship between a couple.
“Marriage is a promise to give yourself to a person unconditionally. It is the image of God, as the
A look that tells her she’s beautiful: the answer to pornography
Evil is the absence of good, and even in pornography we have a choice about that.
■ By Peter RosengrenThinking about what the name of a woman portrayed in a pornographic advertisement might be is one way men can help overcome pornography’s depersonalisation of women in their own thinking, Steven Lawrence told men last Saturday at the Santa Maria College seminar. Women might not understand how difficult it is for men these
days who are much more susceptible to pornography’s effects, and basically find themselves confronted with pornographic images in advertising virtually everywhere, he said.
“I wonder what her name is – this personalises what pornography depersonalises,” he said. However he also prays for women whose beauty and bodies are used in pornographic and semi-pornographic ways by the advertising industry.
“I try to pray for the person who is portrayed, for her sisters and brothers, for her family, for her ‘need’ to be portrayed like that,” he said. However the way in which women’s bodies, physical attractiveness and beauty are used also
cause women to suffer as well, he pointed out.
“It’s extremely difficult for women when this is the way they are made to feel they are supposed to look – then it becomes a great suffering for women,” he said.
He urged men to recognise this and change the way they look at women, not only for themselves but for the good of women as well,
“Guys, we need to realise that women need to be looked at in a way that honours and respects them,” he urged. “We have to ask God that our looking can be healed, and that our looking can be healing – that they realise that men can see them for their true beauty.”
sexual embrace has creative power,” Mr Lawrence told the audience.
When questioned on whether it is acceptable for engaged people who are intending to marry to begin a sexual relationship, Mr Lawrence responded by saying that engagement is the intent to promise, it is not the promise.
“When you make love to your husband or wife you are giving yourself to them wholly and exclusively. “If you don’t intend to remain with them wholly and exclusively for the duration of life, then you are lying to them, lying with your body. Religious or secular, that statement rings true for all.
Clare Pike of the Respect Life office spoke on vocation. Her session centred on the awesome power of God’s love, and the openness the individual has to have
to be led to their fullest potential by God’s will.
In a time where we consider little but our senses and what they find immediately pleasing, Clare led a small workshop on how to identify the many fears and stumbling blocks to finding true happiness, which is ultimately God’s desire for each of us, using the quote of Saint Ignatius:
“The deepest desire of our heart is God’s will for us.”
With the audience joining in, fears of failure, rejection, the unknown, and foregoing things that we enjoy in our current lifestyles were listed among many obstacles to hearing God and taking the path that he wants for us.
The Archdiocesan Respect Life Office, which has many resources to help young people and parents, can be contacted on (08) 9375 2029.
The second evening of youth consulation, in which Archbishop Hickey and Bishop Sproxton invited young people to give them their ideas on youth formation and evangelisation, produced vigorous discussion and encouraging signs of religious and spiritual life among young Catholics at the Como parish centre on Tuesday last week.
After a lifetime of activity in the lay apostolate in Perth and Canberra, John Barich, of the Australian Family Association, opened the evening with comments on the importance of the lay apostolate and the need for individuals to have a support group in answering the call to holiness – in his case the Secular Franciscans and later the Knights of the Southern Cross.
The first request from the young delegates was for more support for young women considering religious life. There were many priests and two seminaries with whom young men could discuss priesthood, but not many nuns to help young women who wanted to explore religious life.
Clare Pike, of the Respect Life Office, (who was actually there to take notes for the Archbishop) invited young women in that situation to contact her (9375 2029).
“There are lots of things going on, a lot of young women are looking into this. There is a real renewal taking place,” she said. Another young woman said people with disabilities have gifts to share, but have difficulty getting into the Church and various groups. The Church is trailing the secular world in this and parishes need to generate more accessibility in its broadest sense.
Archbishop Hickey said he had recently received a letter on this subject. He believed it was time for all parishes to provide physical
access to all premises, to expand access to liturgy by at least having an audio loop and word projection, and to provide access at the human level to all aspects of parish life.
There were requests for the Church to do more to set up resource groups to encourage lay formation.
One suggested that parish priests seemed to be wary of losing people from parishes and sacramental life when they joined lay groups, but this was misplaced. He had not come back to the Church because of schools or parishes but because the lay group he was in had taught him a personal relationship with God.
The Catholic Youth Ministry again offered its website (cym.perthcatholic.org.au) as a focal point for communication and said it was committed to establishing an effective network for youth groups.
A YCW representative suggested their principle of See-Judge-Act (See a situation, judge how Jesus would respond, and take the appropriate action) was a valuable pattern for formation in the lay apostolate.
A lawyer said that many young professionals were proud Catholics even though they had given up the practice of the Faith after school, and many were now returning, often influenced by their admiration for the late Pope’s influence in the world. There was a need for strong leadership to influence this pattern, and in return the Church would gain strong leadership. The power of the Catholic Faith was never more evident than in its service to people who were ostracized, such as at The Living Centre which supported people with HIV/AIDS.
Another said it was nearly impossible for parishes separately to do something for young people. There was a need for parishes to combine and centralise youth Masses and youth activities.
The Acts2 College offered courses that
Gentleness is an aspect of real strength■ By Mark Reidy
“If we don’t teach our sons strength, we cannot expect gentleness”, former AFL star Steve Lawrence told staff and associates at The Record office in Leederville on May 26.
Mr Lawrence, the Convener of Catholic Chaplaincy at the University of Sydney, was in Perth to speak at Santa Maria College on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. He believes that in a society that has been permeated by contraception and pornography it is necessary for men to follow the example of Christ. Boys must be taught to be strong in their faith and attitudes so that they will not embrace any lifestyle choice they
encounter. “If they are only taught gentleness”, he said, “then we are actually only teaching them to be weak. True gentleness can only be borne through strength.” He believes that it is only with this strength and conviction that men will truly be able to embrace their spouse or future spouse, as they will then be able to follow the example of Jesus for His Church and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the glory of their wives.
Mr Lawrence also spoke of sexual wounds becoming avenues to holiness rather than obstacles to God. He said that we could, as Christ did, overcome areas of temptation and sin through prayer and choice. But we must first learn to draw on His strength and not our own.
unraveled the Bible for life rather than for theological degrees.
A young woman doctor said that the richness of the Church’s teachings on sexuality and personhood could be promoted more. “I come across so many young women who have never heard of it. We need to ensure that all students hear the truth presented passionately in schools.”
A homeschooler said that most students had no idea what the Church teaches or why. “When they begin to see the truth in relation to life, they will be drawn to the Church.”
A young man said that The Record is underutilised. “It costs a buck and is a bargain. We need to make better use of The Record discovery and even Catholic school newsletters to spread the word about youth activities.”
about God) said that all groups should have some part of their effort devoted to evangelisation. “People get such a surprise to find Catholics out there.”
A teacher said that a Year 12 discussion in preparation for the evening decided that religion started not with going to Mass, but in discovering God. This meant they needed inspiration and a place where they could discover something at their own pace, and possibly a website where they could ask questions anonymously.
Another said that students needed to learn in their own language; some of the youth groups had been to her school and had been very successful.
Fr Michael Moore SM, Rector of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, introduced the subject of evangelisation, saying that the Church has Jesus Christ risen from the dead, but the incredible riches of the Church go only to those who come to the Church in faith. Does the Church also have some sign that people can see when they don’t have the glasses of faith? he asked.
St John’s Gospel answered with two such signs: the love Christians have for one another, and their unity in Jesus.
Jesus is the answer to people’s alienation; they can find Christ in a Christian, if they can find one.
A representative from the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry said that many Aboriginal people were strong in their faith because they could see themselves in the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Because He was not shown any respect and not accepted for who He is, Aboriginal people would identify with Him in their desire for respect and to be loved for who they really are.
A member of the CYM TAG team (Truth
Someone suggested the preparation of a kit for single mothers to empower them to introduce their children to God, and to show appreciation of them as parents.
A young woman from Personal Advocacy Services said that mentally handicapped people needed the chance to make friends in groups to develop their life in the Church. The Director of PAS (9275 5388) said the participants “have a great gift to offer us if we draw them into the Church because of the way they love God and their way of being”.
Many young professionals are proud Catholics even though they have given up the practice of the Faith after school.
A young woman said the sex-drugsalcohol image is not really a culture, it is a stereotype. Most high school age students were not involved in it and we should celebrate them, just as we should celebrate the young people who go to Church instead of bewailing those who don’t.
A member of True Love Waits said that just doing a bit of study and getting a group together to discuss the truth about sexuality is a great way of formation.
A High School teacher said that all RE teachers should be practising Catholics; about half the RE teachers in her school were and it made a big difference to the passion in the classrooms. The RE program was good, but it needed a Theology of the Body segment.
Archbishop Hickey said there was plenty in the program about sexuality, but it was not arranged as Theology of the Body would be. He would take up the idea. He also totally agreed that all RE teachers should be practising Catholics and had made his views known.
Bishop Sproxton said it was wonderful to see so many young people with so much love for the Church and announced that he wanted four young people for the Archdiocesan Evangelisation Committee he chairs. He had all four of them within minutes of the close of proceedings.
■ By Paul Gray
The most insidious feature of the priesthood scandals of recent years is not the sin of the few.
It’s the underlying attitude, in many minds, that perhaps we don’t need the priesthood at all.
Many non-Christians, and even some ill-formed Catholics, have asked the question: must there be priests? The fact that this question is probably asked more often by people outside the Church than it is by faithful churchgoers does not detract from the importance of the question.
Clearly, the tiny proportion of priests who have engaged in the monstrosities so widely dwelt upon by the media are priests who have wandered far from their sacred calling. The vast majority of priests have not.
Yet questions about the role and meaning of the priesthood have been a feature of the period of Church life since Vatican II. For every faithful Catholic who still believes in the priest’s irreplaceable Eucharistic role, at least one baptised Catholic has been lost to the regular practice of the sacramental life, during this time.
And that is putting the situation kindly. The numbers of the lost are probably far higher.
The irrepressibly brilliant Pope Benedict XVI – Joseph Ratzinger – put his finger on the heart of this problem in a book written as long ago as 1983: Journey Towards Easter.
Pope Benedict XVI has been
described by leading members of the Jesuit Order in Australia as “intelligent” and “a serious and competent theologian.” Who could argue with them?
In my view, Pope Benedict XVI will rank with the great Cardinal John Henry Newman as the towering Christian intellect of his age. A glimmer of this can be perceived in his writing in passages like the conclusion to “Journey Towards Easter,” where he discusses the priesthood.
I say a “glimmer” because the English translation does not necessarily do the Pope’s commentary full justice.
Nevertheless enough light shines through to reassure Catholics that in Benedict XVI, they have a leader who surpasses his critics, at the intellectual level, like a Class I thoroughbred burning off a field of clodhoppers on a fine day at Flemington.
“Along with the recapture of the Old Testament, there is a need to overcome the anathematisation of the sacral and the mystification of the profane,” the Pope says.
“By its nature Christianity is a ferment and a leaven. The sacral is not something closed and completed, but something dynamic.”
Some words need explaining here. First, anathematisation. In older times, Church leaders often declared unacceptable ideas ‘anathema’ – and those who believed them were rejected, despised, punished.
Pope Benedict is saying that these days, anything sacred, or “sacral,” in association with the priesthood, is often treated with the same kind of suspicion and marginalisation.
So, for example, a priest who insists on a fully reverential attitude in the sanctuary during Mass is sometimes regarded as “behind the times.” Those who consider themselves progressive may say: ‘relax and get with it Father. We don’t need all that solemnity.’
The existence of this kind of commentary in our churches is evidence of this “anathematisation of the sacral” at work. It needs to be opposed by reason.
Second, profane. Profane means worldly, the opposite of the sacred; but the problem in today’s world is that too many Christians simply don’t see the difference.
They treat mundane matters of the world as though they were deeply important. Ordinary, shallow things like owning a well-
stocked cellar or the latest model car. When priests as well become absorbed in these things, they have lost the plot in a significant way. So may their flocks.
Third, sacral. A lot of Christians look at the priestly sacrifices talked of in the Bible as something that belongs to ancient history, and to
ancient history alone. But the New Testament idea of Jesus himself, the living sacrifice for humanity’s sins, contradicts that directly. This means that the Old Testament still matters.
Benedict XVI dwells on the words of Psalm 16 as being central to the very concept of the priesthood: ‘The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup. It is you who will give back to me my inheritance.’
As the Pope explains, the Levites – the priestly people – alone among the tribes of ancient Israel did not own land, but lived on offerings to God. This meant that the priest’s life was – and is - at the same time “privilege and risk.”
“To live not in virtue of possessions but by the sacrifice means, for the one praying: to live in the presence of God, in intimate recourse to him, thus giving stability to one’s own existence.”
Finally, leaven. A leaven makes bread rise – but it’s also an element which is foreign to the dough it works in. Without the leaven, you have flat bread.
So it is with Christianity and culture. Unless we introduce faith to the monotonous social and moral landscape surrounding us, things will remain the same. If we do introduce it, it will produce dramatic results.
The danger today, the Pope has warned, is that Christianity often fails to make itself seem sufficiently different from whatever it is that the world puts on offer. “The priest has received the mandate: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’ (Mt 28, 19,)” Benedict XVI writes.
“But this dynamic of mission, this [inner] opening out and ampleness of the Gospel, cannot be translated by the formula: ‘Go into the world and become world yourselves,’ [or] ‘Go into the world and conform yourselves to its worldliness’.”
Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the priesthood – the special ministry of Christ – is fundamentally different from the world it is sent to stir. It must look the part.
■ With Derek Boylen
I love doing romantic things for Karen. I dream of doing something romantic every week but at best it usually turns out to be once a month. Each time I try to make it something new and different, a little surprise, something that simply says, “I love you”.
In 2001 Karen became pregnant with our first child and had terrible
morning sickness. She had recently taken a new job and was extremely busy with work. It was at this time that I had one of my romantic brain waves. I thought it would be lovely to go for a romantic stroll along the beach under the light of the full moon. So one Thursday evening (I couldn’t choose when the moon was going to be full) I set the alarm for 2am (I can’t help it if the best time to see the moon reflecting off the ocean is in the wee hours of the morning). At 2am the alarm went off and I awoke bright and enthusiastic, Karen was somewhat less than that (I planned it as a surprise). Karen was surprised all right but not in a nice way. An hour later we tumbled back into bed. I think at that point Karen appreciated the sentiment. Come Friday afternoon I don’t think I had even that to fall back on.
Romance is extremely important to the life of a marriage. Acts of
romance are the ways that we celebrate the joy of being married. Sure, all marriages have their ups and downs, good days and bad days, but when we do something romantic for our spouse we are affirming our commitment to our marriage.
When we think back to when we first started dating, romance came easy. With plenty of hormones running around our bodies and our newfound joy, doing romantic things came naturally. With time, though, our early romantic energy began to wain. With time the nature of romance changes. Rather than being a hormone driven desire, it becomes something more pre-meditated and well thought out, with the experience of a relationship behind it. For couples who have been married for some time, acts of romance become a true expression of real love. These acts are not driven by the urge of hormones but a genuine desire to show love to our spouse,
they become a real act of love. Also, with the years, we come to know our spouse far more intimately. The romantic things we do aren’t just something nice, they are something that we know will really make our partners happy. For instance, I don’t take Karen for moonlit walks at 2am on a weeknight any more. If it has been a little while since you have done something romantic for your spouse then here is Derek’s own top five list of romantic things to do.
1. Leave a note of love for your spouse. Either before you go to work or do the shopping, grab a piece of paper and make a quick note telling them that you love them. All it needs to say is “I love you!”
2. Give them a flower. It’s a classic. Bring one home, pick one from your neighbours garden or while you are out walking. Either give it to them or surprise them, leave it on their pillow or on the drivers seat.
3. Light a candle with dinner. It’s such a simple thing but it tells whoever did the cooking that their effort was appreciated and that sharing a meal with them does more than just meet your dietary requirements.
4. Take your betrothed out for dinner. A variation on the theme is to go on a picnic just the two of you. My parents are early risers and they will often have a picnic barbeque breakfast together on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
5. Bring them breakfast in bed. You don’t always have to go for broke either (bacon, eggs, the lot). If you are the one who usually gets up first, then, while you are getting toast and coffee for yourself make some for your spouse too. Alternatively, if your spouse is usually the one up first then get up early occasionally and have breakfast with them before they go to work. It’s a nice way to begin the day together.
Revenge of the Sith, episode III of Star Wars, succeeds in doing what I thought would be near-impossible: it comprehensively fills in the action after Attack of the Clones and meshes the story more-or-less seamlessly into the first Star Wars film, Episode IV, A New Hope, released in 1977.
Within Revenge of the Sith, the corruption of Anakin Skywalker and his transformation into Darth Vader is completed, the republic is overthrown, Obe-Wan and Yoda are driven into exile and Luke and Leia are born, their mother dies, and they are adopted out. The design of ships, uniforms, etc, also changes subtly towards that of Episode IV, and we see the beginning of the first Death Star.
There have been reports that George Lucas has claimed the film is about the dangers of overweening American Imperialism. I find this a bit hard to swallow. Certainly, like The Lord of the Rings, one of the film’s themes is that power, even when originally intended to do good, tends to corrupt (although, and also as in The Lord of the Rings, some powerful people remain uncorrupt). If one looks for allegory, however, there are any number of possible real-world applications (the evil Emperor could be taken to stand for Saddam Hussein, for example).
If Lucas did say this he may have been making a not-particularlycourageous bid for the approval of the rabidly anti-American Cannes art-film mafia, and the anti-Bush Hollywood mafia, both of whom have turned their noses up at his previous films. If so, he is possibly making a Faustian bargain such as Anakin Skywalker came ultimately to regret.
Anyway, the overarching theme of the whole series is the spiritual question and mystery of redemption, not politics. There are plenty of politics in the first three films (ie episodes I, II and III) dealing with the overthrow of the old republic and the confusion and destruction of the Jedi, but the real conflict is on a different plane. Lucas said in a Time Magazine interview in 1999:
“I put the Force into the movie to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people - more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system. I wanted to make it so that young people would begin to ask questions about the mystery.”
Lucas continued that to him indifference to the question of the existence of God was the worst thing that could happen to a person:
“I think there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about that God, I’m not sure ... I would hesitate to call the Force God. It’s designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery... what eventual mani-
festation... their faith takes, is not the point of the movie.”
I argued in my book Return of the Heroes that the essential plot of both Star Wars and The Lord of The Rings is Everyman’s journey through life to the final encounter with Death - a defeat which would be both unbearable and total save that Death itself (symbolised by Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, and the Emperor in Star Wars, both robed in black) is overthrown by a “eucatastrophic” outside intervention (in Star Wars, the redeeming power of love, which neither the Evil Emperor nor the good sages like Yoda and Obe-Wan foresaw).
The talk in Star Wars of the good side and the dark side of the Force sounds dualistic for most of the series, but in the end, and contrary to what even the good sages seem
an interesting and thought-provoking essay written shortly before the release of the film:
“Why did Anakin go over to the dark side? This is a crucial question and Lucas must provide a plausible and sensible answer because the Darth Vader role is really the foundation of Star Wars. Without the dark side there is no Vader and without Vader there is no Star Wars.
“A key to Lucas’s answer to this question lies in Yoda—the gnome super-sage of the Jedi council. When little eight-year old Anakin was presented to the council Yoda said that he was too old to be trained as a Jedi and warned of the danger he presented. However, it could not have been age alone that disqualified him because Yoda himself trained Luke Skywalker - a young adult - in the
esis of humanity, depriving man materially, socially, and spiritually and contributes especially to the fragility of family bonds. Even in its most platonic form, it leaves scars of resentment, detachment, and fear that can last for generations.
“Abandoning his own mother would no doubt be the most immediate and troubling of all because he knew the pain of abandonment all too well. In fact, after she died in his arms, the young Jedi went on a murderous rampage killing all the men, women, and children of the Tusken Raider tribe that were in the vicinity of his mother’s death. This was the real beginning of his move to the dark side.
“Slavery plays the central role because it was a casual factor with Anakin not growing up with a father, his abandonment of his
ited, in visual symbolism as well as dialogue, is less simple-minded than is the case in many films with more highly-regarded intellectual pretensions and credentials.
The science leaves a bit to be desired, and here a lot of suspension of disbelief is called for: battles fought in the vacuum of space would be soundless, for instance, and, as far as we can guess, would be fought at great ranges, not with space-ships jammed side-by-side. In one major breakdown of continuity, the Emperor flies to Darth Vader’s rescue on a distant planet apparently taking only minutes to make the trip.
This is the darkest of the Star Wars films, inevitably so, since it deals with Anakin Skywalker’s fall and ruin, and it is impossible to imagine any way it could have
to have believed, Evil is shown to be not the Ying-Yang equal or complement of Good, but is overthrown by it. The dark side of the force is, Yoda says, “quicker, easier, more seductive” than the good side, but in the end it is merely negativity - moreor-less meaningless. Evil cannot, despite appearances, really be an equal but opposite to good. This is essentially very close to traditional Christianity.
Revenge of the Sith is not explicitly Christian nor anti-Christian, but a Christian would not disagree with most of its implied values. The source of Anakin Skywalker’s corruption and downfall is precisely that which Evelyn Waugh, Tolkien and countless other Christian writers have warned against: by trying to stop death in his own way and at any price he is in effect setting up a rival good to God’s - and ends up killing the ones he loves anyway. The planet on which the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader is completed is, perhaps not co-incidentally, very like a vision of Hell.
There are other interpretations. US writer Mark Thornton said in
original Star Wars movie. It also is not genetic predisposition because Luke Skywalker is Anakin/Darth Vader’s son.
“Yoda could have some special power to read minds or to see the future, but whatever the case may be, his insight into Anakin requires a rational and tangible basis. I believe that Anakin’s acceptance of the dark side is based on three factors. First, he was a bastard. Second, he and his mother were slaves. Third, he abandoned his mother when he was set free from slavery only to return years later to find that she had been horribly brutalised, surviving just long enough to die in his arms.
“These three environmental factors can be seen preventing Anakin from becoming a Jedi and instead lead to his succumbing to the dark side. In fact, we can see any one of these factors leading a young person down the wrong path to accepting evil. The difficulties of single-parent households are wellknown, easily understood, and are known to fall heavily on the children themselves who often become involved in criminal and destructive activities. Slavery is the antith-
mother, and his mother’s death. (Fatherhood, or the lack thereof, combined with the role of mentoring is the key dynamic feature that runs throughout the six-part Star Wars series.) In the galactic Republic, slavery was only practised in the port city ... on the planet of Tatooine. This city was controlled by mobsters and was based on businesses and trade that the government sought to suppress, such as gambling and pod racing. This would suggest that in the absence of the black market slavery might not have existed in the Republic. Therefore we can trace Anakin’s problems back to government intervention in the economy.”
The action scenes are spectacular and non-stop to the point of being head-spinning, and the dialogue is by no means as unintelligent as it might be. The Emperor’s justifications for the gradual consolidation of power into his own hands sound quite convincing, and, one feels, may even originally have been sincere. The bad people do not become evil because they are intrinsically evil, but because the good in them is corrupted. The way this is exhib-
been concluded happily. There is not even much of the note of grim resolution on which The Empire Strikes Back closes. There are only a few hints at the end that, to quote Tolkien, “a light from the shadows shall spring” - we see the babies Luke and Leia. None of the six films in the series is really intended to stand alone, and no doubt we shall soon have festivals where all six episodes of Star Wars are shown in consecutive order, requiring dedication and endurance on the part of the audience akin to attending a Wagner opera.
Lucas has apparently abandoned an earlier scheme of making nine or ten Star Wars films, but is it too much to hope this idea cannot be revived?
I saw Revenge of the Sith on a day I needed a temporary escape from work and I cannot complain that it did not provide it.
I have to agree that the “M” classification is justified, both because of the film’s darkness and because the violence, while not exactly gruesome, is probably at too high a level for young children. Some of the scenes could be very frightening.
Working to ensure that babies of HIVpositive women are born healthy and stay healthy and that their mothers survive to raise them is an important part of promoting a culture of life, said Cardinal Renato Martino.
The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, spoke on May 27 at an international conference on preventing AIDS among children in Africa. The conference was sponsored by the Rome-based lay Community of Sant’Egidio.
The conference was attended by health ministers from 19 African countries as well as European and North American government officials and representatives of pharmaceutical companies, donor agencies and HIV-positive African women with their healthy babies and toddlers.
Cardinal Martino told the conference, “It is a moral obligation to give a future of hope to Africa, which in turn will give hope to the world.”
The Community of Sant’Egidio has been providing HIV testing, counselling and free drug therapy to people with AIDS in Mozambique
since 2002. The program, DREAM - Drug Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition - also has begun in Tanzania, Malawi, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Kenya.
More than 30,000 people in the six countries have turned to DREAM for testing; more than 11,000 of them are HIV-positive and almost 5,000 of them are following the full “triple-cocktail” drug and treatment regime for AIDS.
Two Sant’Egidio physicians told the conference that in their program “more than 1,100 babies have been born healthy to HIV-positive mothers, and the transmission rate is less than 2 percent.”
Without treatment, the motherto-child transmission rate is about 35 percent, but the mother’s life expectancy - and therefore that of her newborn and her other children - is drastically reduced.
Josefa Graciosa Jardim Madeira, a 37-year-old woman from Mozambique, is one of the mothers treated by DREAM. She said that when she was pregnant in 2003 a nun convinced her to go to Sant’Egidio and be tested for HIV.
“I will never forget; it was the morning of June 10. For me, it was a terrible day, but a lucky day at the same time,” she said.
Madeira tested positive for HIV,
so Sant’Egidio put her on antiretroviral therapy in the 25th week of her pregnancy, supplemented her family’s food and helped her keep to the therapy protocol.
Unlike many programs to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in Africa that rely on drug treatment only around the time of the baby’s birth, the DREAM program provides complete, long-term drug therapy for the women, who will continue taking the antiretroviral drugs for the rest of their lives or until a cure for AIDS is found.
Madeira had a baby girl, who appeared healthy, grew well and developed normally.
“At 18 months I had her tested” for HIV, she said. “The result was negative. For me, it was a great joy, an immense joy. I, a seropositive mother, gave birth to a seronegative daughter.”
Dr Maria Cristina Marazzi, one of the DREAM leaders, told the conference that Sant’Egidio and the Italian Institute of Health are about to publish a study on motherto-child HIV transmission among women enrolled in DREAM.
The study, she said, “offers precious indications on the safety of the maternal milk of women treated with the antiretroviral drugs, dissolving our last reservations and indicating the women can go back to breast-feeding their babies.”
Katherine Marshall, an adviser to the World Bank, told the conference the world was facing “a moral imperative” to focus more time, energy and resources on children and AIDS, including preventing transmission, treating HIV-positive children and caring for AIDS orphans.
She said faith-based institutions are taking the lead, but more can and should be done to forge links between nongovernmental organisations and major public and international institutions.
Marshall also said the majority of HIV-positive people in the world are women, and no one is doing enough to listen to their experiences, tailor treatment programs to their needs to help them with their children and correct the social situations that place them at risk. CNS
The Catholic tradition of giving the Eucharist to the dying ensures that instead of dying alone they die with Christ who promises them eternal life, said Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan.
“Death is no longer the darkness feared and avoided, but the loving embrace that identifies us with the Lord Jesus,” said the cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers.
The council sponsored a May 21 study day on “viaticum,” as Communion is called when given to a dying person.
Cardinal Lozano’s opening address to the symposium was published on May 22 in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
The cardinal told participants that the Eucharist is always a source of life, a “medicine for immortality.”
When a person is dying, he said, the Eucharist ensures that physical death is accompanied by the fullness of life won for all believers through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
“Through contact with viaticum,
our death ceases to be the last frontier and converts the tomb into a cradle, into an authentic birth” into eternal life, he said.
“Many speak of the tremendous solitude of death because no one can take another’s place and because we each must die individually,” the cardinal said.
“This is true, but for a Christian, through viaticum, this solitude is not as terrifying as it first appears.
“In the Eucharist received as viaticum we find ourselves in a complete and intimate union with Christ, who dies in each of our deaths, not in the darkness of annihilation, but in the light of the resurrection,” he said.
Cardinal Lozano also said Catholics should take comfort from the knowledge that every Eucharist is celebrated in communion with the Blessed Virgin Mary, all the saints and believers around the world.
Receiving the Eucharist, the dying are “accompanied by them in the definitive moment of our passing and they help us take the fundamental step toward absolute happiness,” he said.
The cardinal told symposium participants that giving Communion to the dying is the most important single pastoral act they can perform, because it leads the faithful to the fullness of new life in Christ.
While accolades abounded after South Korean scientists reported a breakthrough in producing human stem cells, church ethicists condemned the creation and destruction of human life that was involved.
Alberto Oh Il-whan, director of the Cell Therapy Centre at the Catholic University of Korea, warned that the cloning of patientspecific stem cells, as announced on May 19 in the journal Science, could “easily lead to human cloning, not for therapeutic purposes,” reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.
As reported, the breakthrough research by Hwang Woo-suk and Moon Shin-yong of Seoul National University used genetic material from the skin cells of 11 patients with serious diseases or spinal cord injuries.
By inserting the DNA into eggs donated by unpaid volunteers, the researchers successfully produced blastocysts, or early-stage embryos, from which they took stem cells genetically matched to each of the patients, destroying the embryos in the process.
Embryonic stem cells can develop into any of the various specialised cells that form organs and other parts of the body.
Medical research is exploring their use to treat various diseases
and conditions. Almost all Korean media ran stories praising the breakthrough by Hwang and his team.
Oh told UCA News on May 23 that he acknowledged Hwang’s scientific achievement, but “scientists should be cautious of (the technique), since the science is like a double-edged sword.”
Jesuit Father Dominic Woo Jaemyung, a moral theology professor at Jesuit-run Sogang University, told UCA News on May 23, “It is ultranationalistic for local media only to have highlighted scientific achievement without warning of its danger in the view of bioethics.”
Chosun Ilbo, a national daily newspaper, reported on May 20 that Hwang said he had received approval from three bioethical review panels before embarking on the cloning research to ensure that his work would avoid controversy.
“If he was really concerned about the bioethical issue, he should not have begun the research, since destruction of a human embryo for experimentation violates human life, which begins when sperm meets an egg,” Father Woo said.
Father Paul Lee Chang-young
of the Korean bishops’ bioethics committee told UCA News that the Korean bishops have said that “research for creating embryonic stem cells using human embryos directly violates human life, because extracting stem cells from those embryos kills a living human embryo.”
In response to Hwang’s comment that he has no intention of “using this method to produce babies that were clones,” Father Lee countered, “Even if that were so, it is possible that other scientists will use it for that purpose.”
Hwang also argued that his team’s research “is limited to finding a way to cure disease.” Father Lee called this an excuse to exaggerate the importance of embryonic stem-cell research “by making the development of therapeutic medicine its cause.”
Bishop, women released in Philippines after hostage drama
Bishop Emmanuel Cabajar of Pagadian and 14 women and girls taken hostage by armed men were freed on May 25 and were heading back to their diocese in the southern Philippines, a local church official reported.
“Bishop Cabajar’s group is now driving back to Pagadian escorted by police and military,” said Imelda Balasabas, a parish secretary in Lakewood, reported UCA News, an Asian church news agency based in Thailand.
Balasabas told UCA News on May 25 that Bishop Cabajar and four women arrived at the Mary Queen of the Apostles Parish rectory earlier that day in the bishop’s pickup truck after the hijackers freed them.
The freed hostages ate and rested at the rectory before policemen came to interview them, Balasabas said. “The rectory was crowded with parishioners who heard the news on the radio,” the parish secretary said. Police and military men surrounded the rectory.
Redemptorist Brother James Villahermosa, who works in Bishop Cabajar’s house, told UCA News that the bishop had offered himself as a hostage in an attempt to free 14 women and girls captured by three armed men who hijacked a bus late on May 24.
When soldiers at a checkpoint ordered all the men to come down
from the bus for a “body and bag search,” the three hijackers pulled out their guns and ordered the driver to continue on to Zamboanga City with the 14 passengers.
The driver reportedly drove on for two hours until the bus reached another checkpoint near the Pagadian city boundary. “This time, the driver jumped off the bus and left the women in the hands of the three abductors, and there was a standoff,” Brother Villahermosa said.
He said a military official contacted Bishop Cabajar to ask his
help in negotiating the release of the women. The bishop arrived at the site and joined in the negotiations. Around midnight, the brother said, the bishop “offered to exchange places with the women” and the hijackers agreed. However, the captors and the bishop felt it was safer to exchange captives during the daytime, at which point the bishop returned home.
When the bishop returned to the site, however, the hijackers apparently had changed their minds and refused to release the women, saying they did not trust the military’s
promises to let them go. At around 1pm, Bishop Cabajar agreed to go with the women and their captors, bringing them in his truck, as the military had shot out the tires of the bus.
The bishop and the other hostages were abandoned by their captors in Lakewood, reported the British Broadcasting Corp. The bishop went on to celebrate a thanksgiving Mass.
Balasabas said the bishop would not speculate on the identity of the hijackers. “All he said was they were young men,” Balasabas said. -CNS
The Archdiocese of Westminster has told lay Catholics they must help take over church functions as the number of priests declines.The archdiocese - England’s most populous but one of the smallest geographically - set out the principles behind its proposed reorganisation in a document called “Graced by the Spirit: Planning Our Future Together,” published May 26.
The document dictates how the archdiocese will change in the years ahead amid shifts in population from traditionally Catholic areas and as numbers of priests return to the levels of the 1940s after peaking between 1950 and 1970.
The document said the laity will take over some of the functions carried out by priests in areas such as worship, pastoral care and administration.
“It is desirable and advantageous in itself that the Church encourages the development of the gifts of all the baptised,” Cardinal Cormac MurphyO’Connor of Westminster said in his foreword. “In other words, the reorganisation and development of the diocese should not be undertaken just because there may be fewer priests in the years to come.” He said the plan would promote a “more active and committed apostolate of lay people to assume new tasks and responsibilities in the mission of the Church at the same time as continuing actively to promote vocations to the priesthood.”
A prominent Spanish politician has apologised to a church leader for an incident in which two politicians joked with a crown of thorns.
A photo of the incident showed Pascual Maragall, the Socialist president of the regional government of Catalonia, taking a picture of a political colleague wearing a crown
of thorns in a Jerusalem souvenir shop. Both men are laughing in the photo, which appeared on the front page of nearly every Spanish newspaper on May 22.
Immediately on his return to Spain from the official Middle East visit, Maragall met with Archbishop Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona to apologise.
The Catalonian president’s office said Maragall had “expressed personally his respect for the beliefs of
Italy’s new restrictions on artificial reproduction and embryonic research will be under review in a June 12-13 referendum.
The poll’s proponents are seeking to repeal several aspects of the so-called Law 40, which was passed by a narrow margin in Italy’s Parliament last year.
Passage of the law was led primarily by Catholic legislators who called for greater rights for the embryo and by politicians who called for regulating a branch of science that had become known as “the Wild West” for its lack of regulation.
While the Church says all artificial fertilization outside of the sexual act in marriage
the Christian community” and that the event with the crown had taken place “without any malice on behalf of those involved.”
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Barcelona would not elaborate and told Catholic News Service, “The interview with Senor Maragall took place in private.”
In a May 23 statement, the Spanish bishops’ conference registered a “vigorous protest” at the politicians’ use of a “symbol of the
is wrong, it supported Law 40 as the first step toward establishing the basic rights of the embryo.
Though Law 40 does not fully reflect Church teaching, Catholic leaders do not want to see parts of it repealed by the referendum, fearing the consequences of bringing about more deregulation and further threatening the rights of the human embryo.
A revised Program of Priestly Formation that the US bishops will be asked to adopt in June is far more explicit than the current program on criteria for admission to a seminary.
The program, which must be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the bishops and approved by the Vatican before it takes effect, sets
passion of Christ as an object of jokes and laughter.”
The Spanish bishops also said they regretted that the incident had occurred just outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which the delegation had visited.
“Occurring somewhere that is so visible and beloved by Christianity has affected in some measure the whole Church and has brought the name of Spain into disrepute all over the world,” the statement said.
national norms and principles that must be applied in all US seminaries. Like the fourth edition in 1992, the fifth edition of the program speaks of four dimensions of formation that seminarians must develop and integrate in their years of preparation for priesthood: intellectual, pastoral, spiritual and human.
Those dimensions were spelled out by Pope John Paul II in “Pastores Dabo Vobis” (“I Will Give You Shepherds”), a 1992 document on priestly formation issued only months before the fourth edition was adopted.
Lithuanian bishops said they are concerned by a rapid growth in the occult. “We see two dimensions of this concern,” Cardinal Audrys Backis of Vilnius said during a May 19 press conference.
Franciscan Father Artemio
Vitores Gonzales, the Spanish-born vicar of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, also described the incident as offensive.
“It occurred a few metres from the site of the crucifixion and of the Holy Sepulchre, and it is precisely the crowning by thorns that marks one of the most dramatic moments of the passion of Christ,” Father Vitores told the Spanish press.
“First of all, the proliferation of occult practices undermines the basic values of society and the common sense of people; they are (also) incompatible with the Catholic faith,” Cardinal Backis said.
“Secondly, superstitions, magic and sorcery present a serious problem for society on the whole, as they ruin one’s personal initiatives (and) self-confidence and undermine the bonds of solidarity,” he said.
In a pastoral letter, the Lithuanian bishops said using items like the horoscope practitioners of the occult can control a person like a marionette.
“Participation in the rituals, organised by the shamans from Russia, pose an extremely serious threat to one’s spiritual integrity,” the letter said.
For children attending Catholic schools induction into the sacramental life of the Church has always been part of their primary education experience.
Achieving the same involvement for those outside the Catholic school system has always posed pastoral problems.
In recent times specially trained volunteer lay catechists are the mainstay of out-of-school parish classes for children preparing for first Reconciliation, Holy Communion and Confirmation.
Overcoming the isolation of rural areas called for special initiatives.
In the past the Motor Mission Nuns were a very effective force. Working in teams of two, they drove thousands of miles to conduct religious classes for country children in government schools and in their homes. With regular contact they built a close rapport with their pupils and their families who often provided the nuns with overnight accommodation.
Speaking at the launch of WA’s first Motor Mission team at Tambellup in 1959, the Bishop of Bunbury Dr L.J. Goody described the initiative as “bringing the Bushies Scheme to its full flowering.”
The Bushies’ Scheme referred to was uniquely West Australian when developed in the 1920s.
Interestingly the scheme - the brainchild of Father (later Monsignor) John T. McMahon - stemmed from a layman’s demand for action. In October 1922 Father McMahon, then Diocesan inspector of Catholic Schools was visiting Kellerberrin. There he met Dan O’Leary who had recently taken up land 60 miles from the nearest township.
“Do you intend to do anything for the children of the bush? If the State sends my children secular instruction by post, why cannot you send them religious instruction in the same way,” O’Leary asked the young cleric.
Writing of that encounter later, Monsignor McMahon described the challenge as fair, but not easily answered. The first positive response was the launch in February 1923 of a correspondence, Religion by Post scheme.
Three nuns from the Loreto, West Perth and Victoria Square Mercy Orders conducted the correspondence lessons. Where parents helped children results
were deemed satisfactory. But visits to country centres convinced Mgr. McMahon more personal contact was needed. So the idea evolved of bringing isolated Catholic children into a centre for a week or more of concentrated religious instruction.
The first Bushies’ school-camp, restricted to boys, was launched on 22 December, 1925. The Brighton Hotel, Cottesloe was the venue, the ballroom the main dormitory. The hotel was unlicensed at the time and owner T. J. A. Molloy provided it free of charge. He also paid for a bus to take the boys on outings.
The 110 boys, aged from eight to 16, came from as far south as Denmark to Menzies in the north and from wheatbelt and Group Settlement districts. Some 40 of them had never previously seen the ocean.
For three weeks the boys received intensive religious instruction, plus participated in devotions such as the Rosary and benediction. The daily morning Mass was often celebrated in the open at the Loreto grotto.
There was time for some fun. The boys proved keen on cricket. With pride McMahon was able to report that his Bushies easily accounted for the teams of “townies” they played against.
Showing aptitude in another field, one hot afternoon a small English-born boy reputedly ate 14 ice-creams.
The Cottesloe camp was successful but it was decided such events would be more effective if participants were brought together at their nearest convent school. This allowed more personal follow-up contact by the nuns with the children and parents within the country parishes.
Nuns of the teaching orders gave up their holidays for the Bushies. Parish families supported the schools with practical help. The scheme became part of the Diocesan programme for Catholic action in rural areas.
It enabled hundreds of children to be absorbed into the sacramental life of the Church, receiving the sacraments of Confession, First Communion and Confirmation, sometimes all on the same day.
The WA Scheme was adopted in dioceses throughout Australia and New Zealand.
The Catholic Record was a strong supporter through Aunt Bessy’s Children’s Page. From 1931 to 1939 the page raised over 3000 pounds for the Bushies Scheme.
Friday June 3-5
HOLY SPIRIT OF FREEDOM COMMUNITY ANNUAL
CONFERENCE FOR THE BUNBURY DIOCESE
Will be held in Pemberton, the conference theme is “Living Flame Transforming Love” and all are invited to be a part of this Festival of Praise and Worship. For more details, bookings and accommodation alternatives contact Lisa on 9776 0323 or Connie on 9776 1092.
Friday June 3-4
ALL NIGHT VIGIL
All Saints Chapel, Allendale Square. Devotion and Feast days of The Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Commencing with Mass at 9pm Friday followed by Rosaries, Hymns, Prayers and concluding with Mass at 7am Saturday. Enq 9409 4534.
Saturday June 4
WITNESS FOR LIFE PROCESSION
Commencing with Mass at 8.30am at St Anne’s Church, Hehir St Belmont. We proceed prayerfully to the Rivervale abortion centre and conclude with Rosary, led by Fr Paul Cassey SSC. Please join us to pray peacefully for the conversion of hearts. Enq 9402 0349.
Saturday June 4 DAY WITH MARY St Thomas the Apostle Church, Cnr College Road and Melville Street, Claremont 9am to 5pm. A video on Fatima will be followed by a day of prayer and instruction based upon the messages of Fatima. Includes Sacrament of Penance, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on the Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries, procession of Blessed Sacrament and Stations of the Cross. Enq Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.
Sunday June 5
DIVINE MERCY
An afternoon with Jesus and Mary at St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth at 1.30pm. Holy Rosary, Reconciliation and Sermon on Our Lady of Perpetual Help with Fr Hugh Thomas CSSR followed by Divine Mercy prayers and Benediction. Enq John 9467 7771 or Linda 9275 6608.
Thursday June 9
HEALING MASS
In honour of St Peregrine, patron of Cancer sufferers and and helper of all in need, will be held at the Church of SS John and Paul, Pinetree Gully Rd (off South St) Willeton. Commencing at 7pm with Veneration of the Relic and anointing of the sick .
Enq Noreen Monaghan 9498 7727
Saturday June 11
MEETING JESUS IN JOH N’S GOSPEL
A morning retreat. Presenter: John Prendiville (Jesuit Priest). Cost: Donation. Multi-Purpose Room. John XXIII College. 9.30am-12pm. Registration, Murray 9383 0444.
Sunday June 12
GOSPEL FOLK CONCERT 2PM 4.30PM
St. Michael the Archangel Chapel, 50 Ruislip Street, Leederville. Featuring WA’s Finest Gospel Performers A Cappella Praise – Uplifting Spiritual & Ecumenical, HarmonyUs – Sing along with a touch of bluegrass, Danni Stefanetti – Young singer guitarist & songwriter, Melalueca Road – A dynamic duo of quality, Gospel Camelot – Perfection and Harmony, Josephine Bakhita Choir – Authentic African Gospel. Tickets No door sales & numbers limited. Available now. Enq and bookings Carmel Charlton 9446 1558.
Sunday June 12
THE SISTERS OF ST JOSEPH OF THE APPARITION
The Srs of St Joseph of the Apparition are celebrating 150 years of presence and mission in Australia. This will be officially celebrated with a Mass at St Patrick’s Basilica Fremantle at 11am. Chief cel-
ebrant will be Bishop Don Sproxton and past pupils, Associates and friends are welcome to attend.
Sunday June 12
FATIMA HOLY HOUR
The world Appostalate of Fatima will hold a Holy Hour in the Immaculate Conception Church, East Fremantle. In this special year of the Eucharist, let us spend an hour in th ecompany of Mary, to make Eucharistic reparation to her Divine Son. All welcome.
Wednesday June 22
MOTHERS PRAYERS MASS
9am, Our Lady of Grace Parish, Kitchener Street, North Beach. For all Mothers and Grandmothers coming together to pray for their children. Fathers, Grandfathers welcome. This is a wonderful and necessary opportunity for God to hear and act upon the hearts and minds of mothers joining together as one here on earth. Enq Veronica Peake 9447 0671.
Sunday July 3
GATE OF HEAVEN
Please join us this Sunday at 7.30pm on 107.0 FM, Radio Fremantle, for more Global Catholic Radio. This week we will feature: (1) The Ten Commandments with Fr Benedict Groeschel “The
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Found one flat, gold, handmade cross, near Applecross jetty. Suspect been in grass for long period. Tel: 9364 3029.
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In July and August to look after your home and pets. Please call Natalie on 0417 976 028
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One antique, gold, tassled earring with garnets in Fremantle on New Year’s Eve. Tel: 9364 3029
■ RETREAT
from the every-day pressures of life and experience Benedictine hospitality at the Monastery Guest-house. Situated 132 kms north of Perth in the historic town of New Norcia. Twin rooms with en-suites or single rooms. Join the monks for daily prayer and Mass. Directed retreats by arrangement. Tariff by donation, suggested donation $60 full board. Inquiries: Guesthouse sec. phone (08)
JUNE
3 Visit Confirmation Candidates of Divine Mercy College - Archbishop Hickey
Mass for Feast of Sacred Heart, 7.30 pm, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey
Confirmation, Leederville - Bishop Holohan
3-5 Parish Visitation and Confirmation, Innaloo - Bishop Sproxton
4 Parents and Friends Annual Conference Dinner - Archbishop Hickey
5 Confirmation for Divine Mercy College, St Mary’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey
7 Visit Confirmation Candidates at John XXIII College - Archbishop Hickey
8 LifeLink Day Internet Launch for Schools - Archbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton
Confirmation, John XXIII College - Archbishop Hickey
Visit Confirmation Candidates, St Anthony’s School, Greenmount - Bishop Sproxton
9 Presentation of Youth Book to Yr 12s at Iona Presentation College - Archbishop Hickey
Confirmation, Trinity College - Fr Brian O’Loughlin VG
Sixth Commandment”. (2) Life On The Rock with Fr Francis “Chastity and Homosexuality”. Donations toward the program may be sent to Gate of Heaven, PO Box 845, Claremont, WA 6910.
Saturday July 9 CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY INVITES YOU TO OUR ANNUAL
FUNDRAISING DINNER
At South Fremantle Football Club at 7pm. For more details please contact us on 9319 8344.
REFLECTION AFTERNOONS
Challenge of Living as a Eucharistic Community in the Modern World. For everyone involved in Eucharistic Ministries or Service. Speakers include Archbishop Hickey. Topics: Engaging Our Youth, 12 June; Spirituality, 10 July; Evangelisation, 7 August; Challenge of Change, 21 August, Redemptorist Monastery, 2- 4 pm. Phone 9422 7902
SUNDAY CHINESE MASS
The Perth Chinese Catholic Community invite you to join in at St Brigid’s Church, 211 Aberdeen St (Cnr of Aberdeen and Fitzgerald) Northbridge. Celebrant Rev. Fr Dominic Su SDS. Mass starts 4.30pm every Sunday. Enq Augustine 9310 4532, Mr Lee 9310 9197, Peter 9310 1789.
LITURGY OFFICE OFFERING EXCELLENT WORKSHOPS
Leadership for Music Ministry 9 June, 23 June, 28 July and 25 August. Cantors for the Country: To give people confidence and practical skills to lead the singing in country parishes 13 August and 22 October, Combined Liturgical Ministry Workshop No 2 28 June. Phone: 9422 7902
THE GINGINCHITTERING PARISH
Wish to thank all kind people who contributed to
the success of our Multicultural Food Fair by gifts of food, attendance and advertising. May God bless you!
CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Confraternity of the Holy Spirit has been sanctioned in the Perth Archdiocese, our aim is to make the Holy Spirit known and loved, and to develop awareness of His presence in our lives. If you would like more information please call WA Coordinator Frank Pimm on 9304 5190.
CROSS ROADS COMMUNITY TERM 2 26TH APRIL TO 1ST
JULY
Family & Friends Support Groups of Substance Abusers on Wednesdays 7pm–9pm, Substance Abusers Support Groups on Tuesdays 5.30–7.30pm & Fridays all day Group for Substance Abusers 9.30am–2pm including Healing Mass on Fridays at 12.30pm during term. Weekday Rosary at 12.301pm. Our new address is 4 Preston Point Road, East Fremantle behind Immaculate Conception Parish.
SECULAR FRANCISCANS IN WA
You are invited to find out more about following Franciscan way of life as a layperson. Contact the group nearest you and come along. Midland fraternity meets on the second Friday of each month at 1pm, contact Mary 9377 7925. Balcatta fraternity meets on the third Sunday of each month at 3pm contact Dunstan 9276 9415. Perth fraternity meets on the fourth Sunday of each month at 2.30pm contact John 9385 5649. Dardunup fraternity meets on the third Sunday of each month at 1.30pm contact 9721 6815.
CATHOLICS EXPERIENCING THE BIBLE
An exciting opportunity to learn more about
10 Confirmation, Greenmount - Bishop Sproxton
10 & 11 Confirmation, Beaconsfield - Bishop Quinn
10-12 Visitation and Confirmation, Hilton Parish - Archbishop Hickey
11 Installation of the Rt Revd Roger Adrian Herft, St George’s Cathedral - Archbishop Hickey, Bishop Sproxton
12 Mass for Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition celebrating 150 years, Fremantle - Bishop Sproxton Confirmation, Canning Vale - Mgr Thomas McDonald Confirmation, Girrawheen - Fr Brian O’Loughlin VG Confirmation, Manning - Mgr Timothy Corcoran
14 Visit Yr 11s at Mercedes College - Archbishop Hickey
15 Attend School Assembly, Mercedes College - Archbishop Hickey Evangelisation Meeting, James Nestor Hall - Bishop Sproxton
16 & 17 Confirmation, Greenwood - Fr Greg Carroll
your faith. Enrolments are now open for study at ‘Acts2come’ Catholic Bible College. Subjects include Bible Timeline, Theology of the Body, Acts of the Apostles, Spiritual Gifts, Life Skills, Christian Virtues in a Post-modern Society and Catholic Ethics. Day, evening, and part-time courses are available. Enq Jane Borg on 9202 6859
ENTERTAINMENT BOOK
Valid through June 2006 available at ALL SAINTS’ CHAPEL, 77 Allendale Square, St. George’s Terrace, Perth. Featuring the best in dining, hotel accommodation, theatre, sports and much more all with 25% to 50% off or two for one offers. Place your order now. Available from May 30th. Enq 9325 2009, daytime hours 8am – 4pm, Monday through Friday. Thank you for supporting All Saints’ Chapel fund raising efforts.
EPIPHANY CENTRE
The management committee is urgently seeking a live-in Catholic couple (or single) to be responsible for the centre. Some experience in hospitality, catering and ground management. A small allowance will be provided. Enq Denise 9354 0200. Applications to The President, Epiphany Centre,
Dear reader,
65th Avenue, Rossmoyne 6148.
First Sunday of each month
DEVOTIONS IN HONOUR OF THE DIVINE MERCY
Fr Douglas Hoare and the Santa Clara Parish Community welcome anyone from surrounding Parishes and beyond to the Santa Clara Church cnr of Coolgardie and Pollock Streets, Bentley. The afternoon commences with the 3 o’clock prayer, followed by the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Reflection, and concludes with Benediction.
THE DIVINE MERCY APOSTOLATE
St Mary’s Cathedral, Victoria Square, Perth –each first Sunday of the month from 1.30pm to 3.15pm with a different priest each month.
All Saints Chapel, Allendale Square, 77 St George’s Tce, Perth - each Monday and Friday at 1.35pm Main
Celebrant Fr James Shelton.
St Francis Xavier Church, 25 Windsor Street, East Perth - each Saturday from 2.30pm to 3.30pm main celebrant Fr Marcellinus Meilak, OFM.
Saints John and Paul Church, Pinetree Gully Drive, Willeton - each Wednesday from 4pm to 5pm. All Enq John 9457 7771.
Please be advised that all Panorama items now incur a small administration fee, to coincide with this re-structure all items to be included are to state the duration for inclusion and a
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program guide: 2 June - 1 July
Aurora Community Television is available on Foxtel Digital and Austar Digital. Channel
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Thursday 2nd June
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Inner Path Part 2
11.00am “Edmund Rice – The Quiet Revolutionary”
Friday 3rd
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Inner Path Part 2
5.00am “Edmund Rice – The Quiet Revolutionary”
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Inner Path Part 2
11.00am “Edmund Rice – The Quiet Revolutionary”
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Inner Path Part 2
5.00pm “Edmund Rice – The Quiet Revolutionary”
Sunday 5th June
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Tuesday 7th
10.00pm Mass for You At Home
10.30pm The Mind’s Eye
The special atmosphere of the ecumenical monastery of Taize in France and the spirituality of St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, are two stepping stones along the path for meaning that are featured on a television program this week.
The second part of “The Inner Path” airs on Catholic Church Television Australia from today until Friday, along with a second program looking at the life of Edmund Rice, founder of the Christian Brothers.
“Edmund Rice – The Quiet Revolutionary,” made just as Rice was beatified, examines him, his brothers today and the lay people who have picked up the baton passed on to them from him.
The Mind’s Eye looks at the stories of Australians who search for spirituality through meditation. The Catholic Church has had a long and venerable history
in helping people come to their centre, and at this print discover God.
“The Search for Christmas.” Given that the winter solstice occurs here for us this week, and in the spirit of some Australians who are having Australian midwinter Christmas parities, we join Magda Szubanski as she talks with her comic mates about their Christmas stories, and what the birth of Jesus in our lives can mean at any time of year.
“The Business of Making Saints” In this excellent documentary we hear about how saints are created, how this process has its roots in the witness of the early Roman martyrs, and the role now played in this process by the Pope, the successor to St Peter. This film looks especially at how Australia’s own Mary MacKillop made the grade.
Wednesday 8th
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Thursday 9th
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
Friday 10th
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home 10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Sunday 12th June
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Tuesday 14th
10.00pm Mass for You At Home
10.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Wednesday 15th
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Thursday 16th
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
Friday 17th
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Mind’s Eye
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Mind’s Eye
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Mind’s Eye
Sunday 19th June
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Search for Christmas
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Search for Christmas
All times are WA time.
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Search for Christmas
Tuesday 21st June
10.00pm Mass for You At Home
10.30pm The Search for Christmas
Wednesday 22st 4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Search for Christmas
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Search for Christmas
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Search for Christmas
Thursday 23nd 10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Search for Christmas
Friday 24th
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am The Search for Christmas
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am The Search for Christmas
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm The Search for Christmas
Sunday 26th June
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
4.00pm Mass for You At Home 4.30pm “The Business of Making Saints”
Tuesday 28th May
10.00pm Mass for You At Home
10.30pm “The Business of Making Saints”
Wednesday 29th
4.00am Mass for You At Home 4.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
4.00pm Mass for You At Home 4.30pm “The Business of Making Saints”
Thursday 30th
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
Friday 1st July
4.00am Mass for You At Home
4.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
10.00am Mass for You At Home
10.30am “The Business of Making Saints”
4.00pm Mass for You At Home
4.30pm “The Business of Making Saints”
Aloving king and queen present their daughter with a gift from God - her first kiss - to keep or give away. The wise girl waits for the man who is worthy of her precious gift. Where is he and will she ever find him? The surprising answer in this marvellous parable will touch the heart of parent and child alike.
The Princess and the Kiss beautifully portrays the ageless message that “love... comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5)
“I asked God how I could teach my young daughters the value of their purity, how I could begin in their early years to stress the importance and beauty of saving themselves for marriage. This is God’s poignant answer. My prayer is that this simple story will fulfil the same purpose for many other loving parents.” - Jenni Bishop, author
Just $20.00
+ postage and handling
Call Eugene Suares on (08) 9227 7080 or