The Southern Cross - 100616

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Get ready for Pope World Youth Benedict Day 2011 in Cyprus

Priest on hijacking ordeal

No 4680

Saints: models or ‘little gods’?

www.scross.co.za

June 16 to June 22, 2010 Reg No. 1920/002058/06

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R5,00 (incl VAT RSA)

SOUTHERN AFRICA’S NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY SINCE 1920

Left: England star Wayne Rooney wears a rosary during a training session at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Campus near Rustenburg. The Manchester United striker was raised a Catholic and once said he would have liked to be priest.

Centre: With South Africa gripped in World Cup fever, Catholic schools and parishes got in on the act. Grades R-2 learners at De La Salle Holy Cross Primary in Victory Park, Johannesburg, celebrated the weekly Soccer Friday by wearing hats comprising recycle material that they had made in preparation for the World Cup. These hats were to be made using a hard hat if they wanted and then to try and use recycled material as decorations. The school also organised tours to Soccer City stadium for learners, teachers, parents and support staff.

Right: Eldorado Park parish in Johannesburg enjoyed a colourful Soccer Sunday Mass, celebrated by parish priest Fr Paul Beukes, which had the young lad blowing his vuvuzela in approval.

PHOTOS FROM CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, KELSAY CORREA & YUSUF BOWES

TV’s Lost climaxed at Catholic school

BY ANNA WEAVER

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HE resolution to the six-seasons of mystery in the TV show Lost was filmed at a Catholic school’s chapel.

The finale’s penultimate scene, broadcast in the United States in late May, showed the major characters from the TV show reuniting.

It was filmed at Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu, Hawaii, a Catholic girls’ school.

The scenes shot at the school provide the key resolution to the popular series’ convoluted story- Lost character Christian Sheplines.

Lost filmed at the hard walks out school over three days in the door of a March and April. Main- church in a scene tenance supervisor filmed at a Misha Roytman was the Catholic school. only school employee at PHOTO: ABC/CNS the academy during filming. He said the Lost crew had tight security and kept any extra people from coming into the chapel during shooting.

“They were very polite but very strict with their own rules,” Mr Roytman said. He got to peek around a corner to see a little filming but for the most part didn’t see any cast members.

The chapel had also been used for scenes in the shows’s fifth season.

Sacred Hearts Academy’s head of school, Betty White, said she had just received a pricey estimate on repair costs to one of the chapel’s large stained-glass windows when Lost approached the school for permission to film there.

In exchange for filming, Lost donated the needed amount for repairs. “It was as if God was helping us,” Ms White said.—CNS

A mirror back at us: World Cup not all good

BY GOTTFRIED BOHL

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HE German Catholic news agency KNA visited South Africa to talk to people about their expectations for the World Cup. Although World Cup fever is sweeping South Africa, some Catholics are sceptical about its long-term effects, the news agency found At St Philomena’s Catholic child protection centre in Durban, children—largely Aids orphans or abused and traumatised children—are kicking a ball around every free minute and looking forward to the big soccer tournament.

“The World Cup is a present to South Africa, because the world believes in us," says the centre’s director, Patrick Vorster.

The existence of poverty, Aids and violence are going to cause problems, the psychologist and theologian said, but added: “We’ll patch things together and show the world that we can do it.”

Less optimistic is Mr Vorster’s former foster child, Zanele Mambo. The 24-yearold has been HIV-positive since she was raped at age 9. In her book They Call Me Smiley, and through her work on the streets of Durban, she aims to give courage to those who are struggling.

Ms Mambo complains about the “brutal and ruthless” behaviour of the police against the city’s many street children.

“They’re herded into buses and taken far, far away, just so that World Cup tourists won’t have to see the suffering that’s on the streets,” she says.

But the children do not have any other way to survive, so they always come back.

For Ms Mambo, the World Cup makes everything “just even worse”.

Children play football on a field in Cape Town.

PHOTO: HARALD OPPITZ, KNA

Fooball and belief, it all fits together, according to churchontheball.com, the website of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) that promotes its own World Cup prayers and Church offerings for tourists. It explores the land beyond the stadium and church work in places such as an Aids hospice.

South Africa is a football country, SACBC information officer Fr Chris Townsend says, and the enthusiasm for playing football has taken on almost religious qualities. The Church, he says, needs to make it clear that “there are more important struggles than a soccer competition”.

In Pretoria, the optimism surrounding the World Cup is particularly strong. Official estimates speak of almost 130 000 new workplaces created by the tournament, as well as other huge gains for the economy.

That is not to mention an image boost for the country, and the entire continent, if everything runs smoothly.

But what will be left after the blow of the last referee’s whistle? Not much, worries human rights expert Holy Family Sister Shelagh Mary Waspe.

“How quickly will the new World Cup jobs disappear? Will only the rich profit once again? Will the poor remain once more on the outside? I see huge risks,” she says.

In Khayelitsha, Cape Town, children engage in a football tournament on an uneven patch of lawn. The highlight of an otherwise lacklustre day, the tournament was organised by the relief project Youth Unlimited.

“Soccer can be a healing experience,” says Club of Good Hope organiser Wayne Golding. “The children enjoy themselves for a change. They celebrate successes that are usually missing in their lives, and they get used to following rules.” Moreover, they get to experience a few of the joys of a normal childhood, which they’ve never been able to have.

A few kilometres away, in Green Point, the Salesians’ Don Bosco youth centre provides free education and job training to former gang members, street kids and delinquents. The small football field in the courtyard represents a fundamental place of instruction: Learn to live—in the most literal sense.

Nelly Borroughs, a case manager at Don Bosco, expresses mixed feelings when asked about the World Cup. “It seems like members of the elite will benefit the most,” she says. “Most people care mostly about what's going to happen during the Cup, whereas I am more concerned with the aftermath.”

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LOCAL

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

Italian theologian praises shack dwellers’ body

BY JOHN COWAN

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N Italian theologian has praised a controversial South African group, which combats the demolition of informal settlements.

Br Filippo Mondini worked with the umbrella group Abahlali baseMjondolo (Zulu for “people living in shacks”) for four years.

“It was a wonderful and deep experience. I had the occasion of meeting wonderful people, courageous and committed comrades,” said Br Mondini, who is now back in Italy and based at Castelvolturno.

Abahlali, which represents tens of thousands of people from more than 40 informal settlements in KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town, has organised protests against forced evictions and demands improved social services. It has its roots in the road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban after land reportedly promised to residents was sold for commercial interests.

Members of the movement have repeatedly reported intimidation and harassment by organs of the state, including assault, arrests and torture.

The ANC has alleged that Abahlali is a criminal organisation and is being used by ene-

mies of the state.

“I have never met criminals during our democratic meetings,” Br Mondini said in a testimonial published on the organisation’s website.

“On the contrary, I met and listened to men and women who had the courage to say: enough! These men and women showed to me the meaning of dignity. They are poor, they live in shacks, they have nothing, but they are rich in dignity,” he said.

“During my time in South Africa I have witnessed police repression, political violence and intimidation towards the movement. I spent most of my time working in a particular settlement where local ANC members threatened and oppressed people. In that context it was a very courageous act to participate in Abahlali meetings,” he said.

“Yes I witnessed violence, but it was always state violence. The attacks these days are evidence that the state cannot hear the truth especially because now poor people are screaming this truth. Today, again and again, we understand that the state and its police are afraid of Abahlali.

They are trying to destroy it but they only obtain the opposite effect,” Br Mondini said.

Archbishop hails ‘spirit’ of Catholic programme

BY MICHAIL RASSOOL

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T KIZITO Children’s Programme for orphans and vulnerable children is an example of how a small project that began in the right spirit can eventually bear fruit for God’s people, Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, said that the organisation’s annual thanksgiving Mass at Our Lady Help of Christians church in Lansdowne.

He said the right spirit bears fruit especially for people who suffer, despite the fact that the task of those who serve can be daunting.

The archbishop said that those who suffer do not allow the uncertainties ahead to blind them to the needs of children left orphaned and vulnerable by circumstances, including HIV/Aids, poverty and warfare.

Many South African children are victims of one of the biggest scandals of modern times—poverty—if only because we become accustomed to them living on the streets and in shacks, he said.

“It should fill us with anger, because it is not what God wants.

One should never accept these things. What’s more, millions of children are abused throughout the world, and especially on our doorsteps. What is happening in the Church is symptomatic of society, which is scandalous,” Archbishop Brislin said.

The archbishop said human trafficking, especially of women and children taken to another place or country for forced labour or sexual slavery, is another worrying factor. Moreover, he said, parents sell their own children to

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to various services.

Much of its work involves a nine-module training of caregivers, introducing them to the fundamentals of care, home-based care, how to refer to other services, to apply for grants and counselling.

Master of ceremonies Zukile Tom said the purpose of the Lansdowne celebration was to give thanks for and acknowledge the good work done, to highlight awareness for future outreach and strengthen partnerships that have ensured the programme’s success.

Family Health Institute (FHI) oordinator Jacky Mbete told the congregation that St Kizito has benefited from one of its programmes, FABRIC (Faith-based Regional Initiatives for OVCs).

Through FABRIC, FHI has promoted reproductive health, HIV/Aids awareness and research to strengthen, guide and improve access to integrated essential health-care services. These include food parcels, psycho-social support, education, birth registration, economic support and access to health care.

St Kizito volunteer Iris Mandindi of St Raphael’s said her involvement comes from knowing what it is like not to have much as a child, and feeling the need to uplift children in dire need and to enable them.

Fellow parishioner and volunteer Nokuzola Nkalashe said as a teacher she sees the diminished levels of concentration among undernourished children. She assists with organising food parcels and accessing social grants.

Nation’s patroness honoured

Correction E incorrectly reported in the last issue (June 9-15) that Bishop-elect Frank de Gouveia of Oudtshoorn’s ordination will take place on July 27, when it in fact takes place on Saturday, July 17, at the De Jager Sport Centre in Oudtshoorn. The Southern Cross apologises for the error.

ward off the effects of poverty.

St Kizito director Bonus Ndlovu said the inter-parish-based programme has enrolled almost 800 children since its inception. It has made inroads in three more Cape Town parishes, bringing the number to 20, and hopes to establish at least ten more parish-based St Kizito groups over the next financial year. He said the programme hopes to serve at least 500 more children.

St Kizito, a national programme partly supported by the bishops’ Aids Office with funding by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, is moving from strength to strength, particularly in the archdiocese and the diocese of Port Elizabeth.

It was named after a Ugandan martyr who died for his beliefs at age 14, and was initiated in response to the desperate needs of children rendered vulnerable or homeless.

Launched in Cape Town four years ago at St Raphael’s church in Khayelitsha through the Good Hope Development Trust, St Kizito empowers parish-based volunteers, the programme’s vanguard, to respond to the needs of orphans and vulnerable childrens (OVC) in an integrated manner.

Volunteer groups work directly with affected children, caregivers and families in need.

Services to children include nutritional support, educational support and assistance, psychosocial support, health and shelter support, assistance with applications for grants, pensions and related documents, life skills and HIV/Aids education and referrals

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HE Archdiocese of Cape Town will host its 9th liturgical celebration in honour of the nation’s patroness, Mary Assumed into Heaven.

Archbishop Stephen Brislin will preside over

the celebration, which takes place at the Salesians church, Our Lady Help of Christians, Lansdowne, Cape Town, on August 15 at 15:00.

For more information contact 021 712 1771 or 083 244 5173.

Little Little Company Company of of Mary Mary Sisters Sisters …….. called to be there for the suffering, the sick and the dying of our world today…….just like what Mary was for Jesus on Calvary. John 19: 25-28

Want to know more about us? ....

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LCM sisters’ residence St. Annes Hospital P.O Box A640 Avondale, Harare Tel: +263 11 877 893

lcmconvent@utande.co.zw

LOCAL

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

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Priest left for dead after Demonstration shows support to stop human trafficking shooting, hijacking

BY MICHAIL RASSOOL

He said the assaults continued as the hijackers sped off in the direction of Mthatha.

After the priest had become exhausted by his ordeal, the hijackers shot him in the head and dumped him in bush near Ikhwezi, about 70km from Qumbu, and left him for dead.

After losing consciousness a few times, Fr Majingolo made it to the grounds of Glen Avent, the convent of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, who found him in the early hours of the following morning and called Bishop Sithembele Sipuka.

Fr Majingolo was taken to Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital, where they discovered the bullet still lodged in his temple. The bullet severed his left optical nerve, which doctors believe may lead to Fr Majingolo losing his eye.

Speaking to The Southern Cross, the priest said he was discharged from hospital after five days and stayed at the bishop’s house, where he was healing well, although he still experienced some pain.

He said he could not believe he was still alive and that he was still disturbed by the thought of what may have been.

Fr Majingolo said it has simply compounded for him just how vulnerable priests are to attack, especially a planned one such as his. He commended the police for their speedy work.

Meanwhile, police are still looking for two more suspects in connection with the shooting and hijacking.

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WO men have been arrested in connection with the shooting and hijacking of Mthatha priest, Fr Monwabisi Majingolo.

Fr Majingolo survived after being shot through the head during the hijacking ordeal.

Fr Majingolo told The Southern Cross that the police exceeded all his expectations. A day after his ordeal someone spotted his hijacked Isuzu bakkie in Elliotdale and alerted authorities. Once the police arrived at the site, Fr Majingolo said a shootout ensued between them and the suspected hijackers. During the shootout a suspect died and another was hospitalised.

Mariannhill Father Francis Ngadi said Fr Majingolo, parish priest of Qumbu and Tsolo parishes (about 60km and 40km from Mthatha respectively), was hijacked at gunpoint at the gate of his parish house in Qumbu after returning from a funeral in Tsolo at around 17:30.

He said the priest had just arrived after filling up at a petrol station when the men, who had been hiding in a bush at his gate, pounced on him, forcing him into the back of his bakkie.

The hijackers stole R300 and the priest’s cellphone, and assaulted him before driving off with him.

Fr Ngadi said Fr Majingolo did not recognise his attackers because they covered his head with a blanket.

Presbytery gets a face-lift VUSI TUKAKHOMO

However, in 2008, the parish received a donation from Germany to rebuild the presbytery.

“Some 50 Moremogolo College students from Vergenoeg were employed to begin the rebuilding process this year. Although professional builders were also employed, the youth from Moremogolo, are benefiting greatly from the opportunity to put their building theory into practice.

“It is hoped the building will be completed by end of 2010. The school for homeless children of Thutong Ya Bana, also found on the premises, will also make use of rooms,” the nun said.

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BURNT-OUT structure, which has been standing dormant for seven years, is receiving a new lease of life.

On March 21, 2003, the old presbytery on the premises of the St Boniface parish in West End, Kimberley, was burnt down by an arsonist.

Dominican Sister Angela, said that at the time of the fire most of the rooms were not in use, but the pre-school lost its kitchen when the incident took place. She said that because the building was not insured, repairs could not be done.

BY MICHAIL RASSOOL

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RCHBISHOP of Cape Town Stephen Brislin, Cosatu’s Western Cape provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich and Lydia Sindisiwe Chikunga, chairwoman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police, were among the signatories of the document “Memorandum of Understanding against Trafficking in Persons”.

The signings took place at a 100-strong demonstration against human trafficking outside parliament in Cape Town.

The event was organised by the local Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, and was attended by members of religious congregations, chancery staff, parish justice and peace groups, child and women's-rights groups and other stakeholders.

The protest action followed soon after Archbishop Brislin released a letter to parishes raising awareness of human trafficking.

The memorandum, expressing concerns about the issue of trafficking in South Africa, was to be presented to the Office of the President.

Reading its contents, Archbishop Brislin said trafficking includes the recruitment, transport, transfer and sale of vulnerable people, especially women and children, through various forms of deception and/or coercion.

The memorandum said trafficking could occur within national borders and across international boundaries.

Approximately 12,3 million people are trafficked annually worldwide, the memorandum said.

It said more than 110 countries, including 11 in the Southern African Development Community, have signed and ratified the United Nations protocol to Prevent,

Cape Town Archbishop Stephen Brislin addresses the gathering outside parliament.

PHOTO: MICHAIL RASSOOL

Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.

South Africa ratified it in 2004, which places an obligation on the country to put in place a comprehensive, systematic and effective policy, with legislative frameworks for addressing the scourge.

“South Africa is considered a hotspot for human trafficking.

Research suggests that it is a major player in the trafficking industry and is thus used as a destination, transit point and a source of human trafficking. Therefore, effective provision needs to be made for the protection and rehabilitation of victims trafficked within and into South Africa,” the memorandum stated.

The memorandum called on the government to provide effective policing of football World Cup events, as stakeholders believe many women and children are being trafficked for the sex trade. It called for stricter monitoring of South African borders, especially during the World Cup. It also called for parents to be “extra-vigilant” with their children, and for the government to encourage South Africans to report any suspected incidents of trafficking.

PO Box 11095, Mariannhill 3624 JUNE 27-JULY 05 Fr Urs Fischer & Team: 7-Day Guided Retreats, from supper June 27 to breakfast July 05 JULY 16-18

CONGREGATION OF MARIANNHILL MISSIONARIES

Fr Pierre Lavoipierre: “The heart of the Matter” Lord, you know me, see me, and my heart is in your hands. Weekend from supper July 16 to lunch 18 SEPTEMBER 3-5 Fr Emmanuel Ndlovu: “The Power of Prayer” Weekend from supper Sept 3 to lunch 5.

OCTOBER 22-24 Mgr Paul Nadal: “Second Vatican Council, Forty Years After”. Weekend.

NOVEMBER 19-21

Ora et Labora The Congregation of the Missionaries of Mariannhill, CMM, sprung from the Trappist Monastery of Mariannhill founded by Abbot Francis Pfanner in South Africa in 1882. We believe that: “Our missionary field is the Kingdom of God and that has not boundaries!” Faithful to the example of Abbot Francis Pfanner, the Mariannhill Brothers and Priests try to be of service to the local church through pastoral, social and development works. We make our contribution to the call for renewing, uplifting, developing and sustaining the human spirit, as our response to the signs and needs of the time. In our missionary life of Prayer and Work (Ora et Labora), we try to effectively proclaim the Good News to all people, especially to the poor and needy, so that there are “Better Fields, Better Houses, Better Hearts!”

To know more about us contact: Director of Vocations PO Box 11363, Mariannhill, 3601 or PO Box 85, Umtata, 5099

Loreto Sister Monica Shanley, who helped organise the demonstration, told the gathering that the situation of women and children in this situation truly touches the heart.

She called human trafficking “modern-day slavery”, which destroys family life and degrades its victims.

Ms Chikunga, an ANC MP, told the gathering of South Africa's obligations as a signatory to the UN protocol, which have been distilled into the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill, currently before parliament.

She said the Bill addresses trafficking across the country's borders, providing for a range of services to victims and for effective enforcement measures to combat trafficking.

At present there is no one-stop, comprehensive legal measure in fighting it, and a range of Acts governing different aspects of human trafficking have been used, she said. She said the police and the justice and constitutional development committees were expected to cooperate in passing the Bill through parliament.

Advent meditiations by Fr Pierre Lavoipierre: “Arm Ourselves – Appear in the Light”.

DECEMBER 10-18 Fr Michael Gumede OMI Seven-day

retreat “In the Footsteps of the Apostles and the Saints”, from supper Dec 10 to breakfast 18 DECEMBER 10-18 Fr Urs Fischer & Team: 7-Day Guided Retreats, from supper Dec 10 to breakfast 18 DECEMBER 24 - JANUARY 1 “Our Joy in Being Catholic” (written by Bishop Oswald Hirmer), presented by Fr John Driessen, from supper Dec 24 to breakfast Jan 1.

A SPIRITUAL CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY! January 3 - February 2, 2011 SPIRITUAL EXERCISES according to St Ignatius of Loyola. Thirty days of prayer and meditation, led by Fr Urs Fischer JANUARY 3-11 Br Crispin Graham & Team: 7-Day Directed Retreats, from supper Jan 3 to breakfast 11.

Personally guided retreats may be arranged at any time throughout the year to suit individual need.

For Bookings: Reception: Fr Urs Fischer Fax

031 700 2155 031 700 2890 031 700 2738

Cellphones: 083 9633848 083 5441504 082 7307180

Email: monretreat@saol.com

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INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

Martyred priest beatified

BY JONATHAN LUXMOORE

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ARTYRED Polish priest Fr Jerzy Popieluszko was praised at his beatification Mass for standing against the oppressive forces of communism when he defended human rights in his sermons.

More than 140 000 people listened intently during the ceremony in Warsaw’s Pilsudski Square as Archbishop Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, recalled how Fr Popieluszko “did not yield to temptation to survive in this death camp” under communist rule.

“Fr Jerzy…helped only by spiritual means, such as truth, justice and love, demanded freedom of conscience for citizen and priest,” Archbishop Amato said of the 37year-old priest who was linked to the Solidarity trade union and murdered in 1984 by communist secret police agents.

“So this defenceless priest was shadowed, persecuted, arrested, tortured and then brutally bound and, though still living, thrown into water by criminals with no respect for life, who thus left him contemptuously to his death,” Archbishop Amato said.

More than 3 000 priests and 95 bishops were among those who attended the ceremony.

Among those in attendance were Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Church leaders from neighbouring Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Czech Republic, and former Solidarity leaders including Lech Walesa, past president of Poland.

The priest’s widowed mother, Marianna Popieluszko, who turned 100 on June 1, led the congregation in a rosary recital before the Mass.

The bound and gagged body of Fr Popieluszko was dredged from a reservoir on the Vistula River near Wloclawek on October 30, 1984, 11 days after his abduction while returning at night from a Mass in Bydgoszcz.

The Warsaw archdiocese launched a canonisation process in 1997 and sent its 1 157-page dossier to Rome in 2001.

In a message to the beatification Mass, Pope Benedict said the priest’s “sacrificial service and martyrdom” was a “special mark of the victory of good over evil” and offered an example to Catholic clergy and laity everywhere.

Speaking at the start of the ceremony, Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz of Warsaw said Fr Popieluszko had suffered “severe punishment” for his religious devotion during military service in the 1960s but had rapidly attracted a following after

being assigned to the Warsaw parish of St Stanislaus Kostka in May 1980.

He added that the priest had been viewed as a “danger to the communist system” for his defence of human dignity and freedom of conscience, and calls for “reconciliation and peace”. He had been aware of the dangers facing him.

In his homily, Archbishop Amato said he had been reduced to tears during several visits to the crypt museum at the church, where Fr Popieluszko lies buried with a rosary given him by Pope John Paul II, who prayed at his grave in 1987.

He added that pictures of the dead priest’s “monstrously deformed face” had recalled that of the crucified Christ, which had also been stripped of “beauty and dignity”.

Fr Popieluszko’s killing was widely credited with helping discredit four decades of communist rule in Poland, which ended in 1989.

A Polish Radio reporter at the Mass, Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, told Catholic News Service the priest’s beatification would have a “profound meaning” for many Poles who knew him personally or heard his stirring sermons, but would be “less understandable” to young Poles with no experience of communist rule.

The relics of Bl Jerzy Popieluszko are carried through the streets of Warsaw after his beatification. Fr Popieluszko was murdered by communist police agents in 1984.

PHOTO: AGENCJA GAZETA/REUTERS/CNS She added that former regime officials would be “uneasy” about the ceremony, as would fellowpriests and bishops who had “made compromises” with the communist system.

Meanwhile, an American Catholic, Judith Kelly, who travelled specifically to Poland for the Mass, said she was interested in parallels between Fr Popieluszko and the assassinated civil rights leader Rev Martin Luther King Jr. She said

she believed the priest’s story should be “a lot better known” among Western peace and justice campaigners.

A reliquary with fragments of Fr Popieluszko’s remains, which were exhumed in April, was later carried in procession along a 11km route to the unfinished National Temple of Divine Providence in Wilanow in suburban Warsaw for burial in a newly dedicated crypt called the Pantheon of Great Poles.—CNS

Mid East synod to focus on dialogue

BY CINDY WOODEN

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resenting the working document for the special Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, Pope Benedict prayed for “just and lasting solutions” to the region’s conflicts, which cause so much hardship.

“I reiterate my personal appeal for an urgent and concerted international effort to resolve the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, especially in the Holy Land, before such conflicts lead to greater bloodshed,” the pope said at the end of a Mass in a Nicosia, Cyprus, sports arena.

The pope gave the document to representatives from the Latin-rite, Maronite, Melkite, Armenian, Coptic, Chaldean and Assyrian Catholic Churches living in countries from Egypt to Iran.

The synod will be held at the Vatican from October 1024 and focus on “communion and witness” in the region where Christianity was born, but where Christians are a minority.

Pope Benedict told the region’s Catholics that the synod would be an occasion “to highlight the important value of the Christian presence and witness in the biblical lands, not just for the Christian community around the world, but also for your neighbours and fellow citizens”.

Even though they are recognised for their work in education, health care and other charitable activities, many of the region’s Catholics face discrimination and limits on their rights, particularly their right to religious freedom, he said.

The synod working document was prepared by a committee of patriarchs and bishops from the Middle East and representatives of Vatican offices dealing with ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, Eastern Catholic churches and evangelisation.

Pope Benedict began his presentation by remembering one of the committee members, Bishop Luigi Padovese, the president of the Turkish bishops’ conference, who was murdered on June 3.

“His death is a sobering reminder of the vocation that all Christians share, to be courageous witnesses in every circumstance to what is good, noble and just.”

The 45-page working document—released in Arabic, English, French and Italian— noted that life often is difficult for Christians in the Middle East, especially because of “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resulting instability throughout the region”, adding that “the menacing social situation in Iraq and the political instability of Lebanon further intensify the phenomenon”.

The document was prepared on the basis of responses to a questionnaire sent to Church leaders in the region.

The document said responses to the questionnaire clearly rejected anti-Semitism, while “the actual animosity between Arabs and Jews seems to be political in character due to the situation of conflict and the resulting political hostility”.

Given the Israeli-Palestin-

ian conflict, opposition to the existence of a Jewish state is more a political position and, consequently foreign to every ecclesial discourse.

“The Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories is creating difficulties in everyday life, inhibiting freedom of movement, the economy and religious life—access to the holy places is dependent on military permission, which is granted to some and denied to others on security grounds.

“Moreover, certain Christian fundamentalist theologies use sacred Scripture to justify Israel’s occupation of Palestine, making the position of Christian Arabs an even more sensitive issue,” it said.

Some Christian fundamentalists interpret the Book of Revelation as saying that Jesus will not come again unless Jews are governing the Holy Land.

Christianity is native to the Middle East and existed there for centuries before Islam developed, the document said.—CNS

Australian island is drowning in rising sea

BY DAN MCALOON

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For further info, contact: Vocations Director, St Norbert’s Priory PO Box 48106, Kommetjie, 7976 (Cape Town) OR Tel 021 783 1768 Fax 021 783 3742

HILE Australia’s politicians debate the so-called “inconvenient truth” of humaninduced climate change, inhabitants of low-lying islands across the Pacific know climate change is very real if rising sea levels are any indication.

One island within Australia’s territorial waters is among those threatened by the rising sea.

Poruma Island—formerly known as Coconut Island—is one of 274 islands in the Torres Strait archipelago, between Queensland and Papua and New Guinea. Part of the diocese of Cairns, Poruma is home to 205 people who have traditionally lived by fishing. They also manage an award-winning resort on the island that is 1,5km long and 400m wide.

But Poruma is drowning.

Rising sea levels, storm surges and salinity in its freshwater wells are making the island uninhabitable.

When Dolly McGaughey last returned to her island home, the severity of erosion shocked her.

“It has all been eaten up by the sea. The beautiful white beaches of my childhood have gone underwater. Some of the trees I knew then are gone,” said Mrs McGaughey, a Torres Strait Islander representative of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Catholic Council.

“To look for the places where I used to play and see they had vanished was hurtful,” she added. “The island is sand built up on coral and with the sea level rising all the time. It’s just eating the sand. One day it’s going to be just coral reef.”

Where once there was a freshwater well, now the well water is salty.

“The people are trying to plant trees on the beach, but they just get washed away again, or the rough winds just rip them out. There is nothing we can do about it,” said Mrs McGaughey, who was born on Poruma in 1945.

Mrs McGaughey said she feels helpless about the destruction of Poruma and empathises with other Torres Strait islanders people who are experiencing similar devastation, such as those on Masig (Yorke Island) and Saibai. She fears that they, too, might be driven from their islands.

But she is conflicted by strong emotions in even raising the issue. Poruma is her ancestral home.

“We are one spiritual people. We have sacred places, burial grounds.

“Part of the cemetery that is on the sisterly island has been washed away. Although repairs have been carried out,

what about the future as the water level rises? That is bad for our people. These are the bones of your mother or your grandmother, and it hurts the people a lot,” she said.

“My people are very proud. They won’t move. The elders are not going to move.

But it’s necessary for my people to move because the island is disappearing slowly and they must find another place to live. It’s very sensitive.”

Despite her reservations, Mrs McCaughey believes it is vital to continue raising the issue of her dying island home.

“I want to get it out there for someone to know, for the world to know. I think it’s important. I am open to a study group coming to the island. I wish there was some kind of funding to see the erosion so that you know I am not exaggerating,” she said.—CNS

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

5

The pope in Cyprus

BY CINDY WOODEN

T

HE Catholic minority in Cyprus and the Christian minority in the Middle East are called to be witnesses of God's love, of hope in the face of suffering and of a tenacious commitment to dialogue for peace, Pope Benedict said.

Meeting with members of Cyprus’ tiny Catholic communities, celebrating evening Mass with church workers and another with 10 000 in Nicosia’s Eleftheria stadium, the pope said they can be a force for good in the region and in the world by strengthening their bonds of affection for one another, building unity with other Christians and respectfully working with followers of other religions.

The Vatican estimates there are about 25 000 Catholics in Cyprus.

Most belong to the Maronite Church; the Latin-rite Catholic community is composed of a tiny group of Cypriot Catholics and several thousand foreign workers.

The pope’s meeting with Catholics at the St Maron School brought together representatives from all the Catholic communities, including Filipino, Sri Lankan and Indian domestic workers who had the day off.

One of them, Violet Saldanha, 45, was singing in the choir. Coming from Mumbai, India, she has worked as a housekeeper in Cyprus for ten years and said the Church nourishes her faith, gives her support and is a place to socialise.

The Latin-rite choir was just a tiny part of the programme put on for the pope; hundreds of children danced for the pope and a Maronite choir sang traditional hymns as well as folk songs.

The sad songs reflect the fact that many of Cyprus’ Maronite villages were on the northern part of the island, which has been under the control of Turkish Cypriots

since 1974. Thousands of troops from Turkey are stationed in the North.

Elena Solo is from one of the northern villages, Ayia Marina.

While Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots cross over the UNpatrolled buffer zone with relative ease, Ayia Marina and some other villages are off limits.

“We are not allowed to go inside the village, not even to visit the church. There are Turkish troops there,” Ms Solo said.

In his introductory remarks, Pope Benedict greeted the Maronite Catholics, giving special mention to Ayia Marina and three other villages once inhabited by the Maronites who fled south after the 1974 tensions.

A

rchbishop Chrysostomos II, head of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, was at the pope’s side for much of the visit.

The pope praised the Cypriot leader for his role in supporting dialogue and peaceful co-existence.

The pope told the archbishop that he joined him “in praying that all the inhabitants of Cyprus, with God’s help, will find the wisdom and strength needed to work together for a just settlement of issues remaining to be resolved, to strive for peace and reconciliation, and to build for future generations a society distinguished by respect for the rights of all”.

After his arrival on the island, he went directly to the church of Agia Kiriaki Chrysopolitissa, which stands in the midst of an archaeological park with the remains of a 4th-century Christian basilica.

Amid the cream-coloured stones and ancient marble columns, the pope presided over an ecumenical prayer service honouring Ss Paul and Barnabas, who preached the Gospel in Cyprus in about 45 AD. According to the Acts of the

Apostles, the pro-consul of the Roman Empire converted to Christianity as a result of the apostles’ ministry. “Thus it was from this place that the Gospel message began to spread throughout the empire” and take root in Europe, the pope said.

Even though Christians of the East and West split almost 1 000 years ago, there exists a “communion, real yet imperfect, which already unites us, and which impels us to overcome our divisions and to strive for the restoration of that full, visible unity, which is the Lord’s will for all his followers,” the pope said.

In his greetings to the pope, Archbishop Chrysostomos asked for prayers for peace and the unity of Cyprus, and denounced the continuing presence on the island of thousands of Turkish troops and their occupation.

In comments made as he was leaving Cyprus, Pope Benedict said he hoped that “my visit here will be seen as another step along the path” of reconciliation [with the Orthodox Church] begun after the Second Vatican Council”.

Pope Benedict also held an unscheduled meeting with the grand sheik of a Muslim spiritual movement from northern Cyprus.

Sheik Mehmet Nazim Adil, 88, head of a Sufi confraternity—an organisation dedicated to the practice and study of Islamic mysticism—met with the pope outside the Vatican nunciature in Nicosia, located in the buffer zone, where the pope stayed during his visit.

Most of Cyprus’ Muslims live in the North,

Pope Benedict with Sheik Mehmet Nazim Adil during an unscheduled meeting as the pope passed in procession for Mass at the church of the Holy Cross. (Right) Pope Benedict celebrates Mass at the Eleftheria Sports Palace. which is controlled by Turkish Cypriots, supported by troops from Turkey.

Pope Benedict did not visit the northern part of the island during his trip; Yusuf Suicmez, the chief mufti of Cyprus—the religious leader of the Muslim community—had invited the pope to cross the buffer zone for a meeting. In the end, the mufti tried to meet the pope at the nunciature, but was delayed at the buffer zone crossing and missed the pope.

While the mufti has an institutional and social role among Cypriot Muslims, Sheik Nazim’s authority extends only to his disciples.

The sheik asked the pope to pray for him and the pope responded that they should pray for each other, before embracing.

The two embraced at the end of the meeting, which lasted 3-4 minutes, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ said. “It was brief and very beautiful.”—CNS

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Orthodox priests wait for Pope Benedict to arrive at the cathedral of Aghios Ioannis in Nicosia. (Right) People wave from a window in Nicosia.

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The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

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The Catholic Order of the Knights of da Gama Year for Priests At the closing of the Year for Priests, which was called by Pope Benedict XVI to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, better known as the saintly “Curé of Ars”, The Catholic Order of the Knights of da Gama publicly acknowledges its support for all priests.

We take this opportunity to express our enormous respect and profound gratitude to all priests who are devoted to serving the people of God, thereby bearing witness to Christ’s unending love of mankind. We, your brothers in Christ, recognise in you the voice of the Good Shepherd.

We give thanks for all those who have answered the Lord’s call to the Priesthood; to become preachers, not of their personal truth, but of His truth. For feeding us with Sacred Scripture, enabling us to understand the teachings of the Catechism and helping us to live by the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. For giving us renewed vitality to bear witness to Christ in our daily lives, even when it may seem to you that your voice is but a cry in the wilderness.

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YOUTH

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

7

Getting ready for WYD ’11 Every three years the world’s young Catholics gather for the week-long World Youth Day celebrations. In 2011, Madrid will host the event. Pilgrims must start planning now as bookings open on July 1.

MICHAIL RASSOOL reports.

W

ITH just over a year to go to World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, Spain, the Church in Southern Africa is preparing to send groups of youths to the event, which has as its theme “Rooted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith”, based on Col 2:7.

Youth groups and individuals who plan to attend are advised to start planning for their pilgrimage, said Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) national youth chaplain Fr Michael Hagan.

He said worldwide registration for WYD will begin on July 1 this year. Prices will vary, based on three factors: the services included (housing, meals, and so on), the duration of the pilgrims’ stay, and their country of origin (those who come from countries with more financial resources pay more, while those from less pay less).

Fr Hagan said countries are divided into three zones, depending on each country’s purchasing power; South Africa is designated a Zone C country. Six groups of packages are available for purchasing, but he advises South African youth to opt for the A1 category, as it is the most comprehensive, including housing and three meals. It costs 122 euros per person.

WYD organisers say that individuals and groups who register and submit full payment by March 31, 2011 will receive a 5% discount. In addition to the fees, the organisers also encourage pilgrims

to include a donation of 10 euros (just under R100 at current exchange rates) to the WYD Solidarity Fund, which has been set up to facilitate participation of young people from poorer countries.

All registration options include accident insurance, public transport within Madrid for the week of WYD, and priority access to all areas reserved for WYD participants and ceremonies. Participants will also receive a pilgrimage backpack which includes a handbook for all WYD activities, a hat and Tshirt, Madrid guidebook and various other items as well as free entrance to all WYD cultural activities such as concerts, exhibits, museum visits, and so on.

Fr Hagan said that the pilgrims have to pay transport fees from their diocese to Madrid.

He said youth in the SACBC territory should register with their local diocesan youth office, to which all queries concerning registration should also be directed.

WYD souvenirs such as T-shirts and other goods can be acquired from the bishops’ national youth desk; purchasing details will be given at a later date.

The Schoenstatt priest said the WYD event—which takes place on August 16-21, 2011 and takes as its central point the Cuatro Vientros airfield—will comprise the usual three parts. The first stage is the “Days in the Dioceses”, when pilgrims spend their first few days in different dioceses of the host country. The second stage is the youth festival in Madrid, and the final stage is the night vigil and Sunday Mass with the pope.

More than 40 Spanish dioceses will receive WYD participants, and organisers say that each diocese is preparing a programme of activities for pilgrims. These will include

religious and cultural aspect, and an accent on human solidarity. A highpoint will be the “Mass of Sending to WYD”, which will take place on Sunday, August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary—South Africa’s patronal feast. The Mass will be celebrated by the Spanish bishops.

O

rganisers say pilgrims may choose from various accommodation options. Those who purchase a package with housing included will be provided with “no frills accommodation” arranged by WYD in schools, gyms, churches or family households.

Individuals and groups who choose an option without housing will arrange accommodation themselves—in private households, independently booked hotel rooms or through WYD’s official travel agency, Viajes El Corte Inglés.

People can also request accommodation in hotels or elsewhere through the travel agency.

The main events of WYD 2011 will be the opening Mass and welcoming of the pope, Stations of the Cross on August 19, the Saturday night vigil on August 20 and closing Mass the following day.

After the vigil throughout the previous night, participants will remain at the Cuatro Vientros airfield and spend the night outdoors.

Fr Hagan said all youth pilgrims should bring along a sleeping bag and a mat to erect at the site of WYD, where many will need to camp out in order to secure a decent place among the thousands jockeying for a decent spot.

WYD events will include sessions of catechesis in different languages presided over by bishops.

Fr Maximilian Kolbe Jacobs OSB of Eshowe, draped in a South African flag, with pilgrims during World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany. Next year’s youth festival will take place in Madrid, Spain. Bookings will open on July 1.

This also includes an ensemble of artistic and cultural activities called the “Youth Festival”, which aims to marry faith and culture.

The festival usually includes music and dance, theatre, exhibitions of painting, sculpture, photography, decoration and design of urban spaces, displays of the Church’s social work on five continents, biographical itineraries of saints and missionaries, historical reviews, cinema and audiovisual productions and activities that address issues of current importance from a Christian perspective.

The local organising committee in Madrid has called for proposals from across the world for the 2011 festival, which reflect “how the doctrine of Christ can be embodied in all cultures and to vivify persons, families and society”.

The principal framework of the 2011 youth festival, the committee said, is the history and cultures of Spain, a country of apostolic tradition where the faith took root deeply, bearing innumerable fruits of sanctity, and from which many missionaries left to take the faith to five continents.

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The organisers say items are to be lively, contemporary and important expressions for today’s young people, inspired in Christian virtues. These should also promote the dignity and beauty of human love, the commitment to build a more just society, love of real liberty and the responsibility of each person. Language used must reflect a universal beauty and must be accessible to people of different cultures, and items must be of great artistic quality.

South African pilgrims who attended previous World Youth Day celebrations have said that the celebrations were a concrete experience—for some the first—what it means to be a member of the universal Church. Meeting fellow young Catholics from around the world, they formed friendships, shared experiences of their lives, faith and love of the Mass. Some described WYD as an intense, even radical encounter with their faith, invigorating it.  For more information on WYD 2011, visit its website (www. madrid11.com) or contact the diocesan youth chaplains.

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8

LEADER PAGE

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

The Editor reserves the right to shorten or edit published letters. Letters below 300 words receive preference. Pseudonyms are acceptable only under special circumstances and at the Editor’s discretion. Name and address of the writer must be supplied. No anonymous letter will be considered.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Sign me up for communal guilt trip

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

Giving life after death

A

FEW years ago Pope Benedict revealed that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he carried an organ donors’ card on him, seeing the posthumous gift of viable organs to those who need them to live, or live better, as an act of love.

Pope Benedict’s encouragement of organ donation did much to put to rest concerns

by Catholics that were theological, not squeamish, in nature. There has been an abiding concern that one’s corpse should be maintained intact, in as far as natural burial allows, for the promised bodily resurrection on the last day; the reason why for centuries the Church discouraged cremation. The guardian of Catholic doctrine evidently saw organ donation as no obstacle to our final-day resurrection.

It is necessary that leaders in the Church and society promote organ donation to address cultural and religious misconceptions about it.

Priests, for example, can do so from the pulpit. They would be preaching a profoundly Catholic message.

Pope John Paul II called organ donation a “concrete gesture of solidarity and selfgiving love”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes it as “a noble and meritorious act [which] is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity” (para 2296), with the proviso that a patient is not euthanised to save another person’s life.

The Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers set the moment of death at “irreversible cessation of all cerebral activity”, at which point organ removal is licit. This also reflects South African law.

Every year, thousands of people die while they are awaiting life-saving transplants. Meanwhile, tens of thousands are buried or cre-

mated with such life-saving organs intact. More than being a gift of love, which it certainly is, the willingness to be an organ donor could be seen as an ethical act.

To that end, advocates of organ donation have mooted the idea of an opt-out system to replace the current procedure by which potential donors sign up to declare their consent. This would mean that the organ of all deceased bodies might be harvested unless the individual had previously expressly affirmed a wish to the contrary.

Assuming that most people do not sign up to be donors because of apathy rather than ethical, cultural or religious objection, the opt-out system would be a practical solution to the shortage of organs.

Moreover, it would help combat the disturbing illicit trade in organs. It should not be that desperate patients in South Africa pay tens of thousands of rands for a working kidney.

South African law requires the consent of surviving family members before organs may be transplanted. It is therefore necessary that, apart from registering, potential donors discuss the prospect of donating viable organs after death and the implications thereof with their families, and encourage them to investigate this option as well.

It should not need stating that those who have not already registered as donors should procrastinate no longer. Being able to give another person life after one’s death is a substantial pro-life act, made in solidarity with the suffering.

We therefore urge readers to consider finding out more about making their organs available for transplantation after death by contacting the Organ Donor Foundation (www.odf.org.za) on 0800 226611.

I

N his letter, Fr Bonaventure Hinwood (May 26) states that in his opinion there is no need for Catholics to go on a communal guilt trip on the issue of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and religious. I disagree.

To me, Catholics are a family.

Unlike Fr Hinwood, who states that in a family situation the whole family does not wear purple ribbons when something goes wrong, I believe that in a true family the abuse or pain caused or felt by one diminishes all.

Fr Hinwood cites an estimated figure of guilty clerics and religious

of 1,5%, and bishops and Vatican officials involved in cover-ups at less than 3%. The Vatican Yearbook for 2007 gives the total number of priests as 408 000, and in 2008 a figure of 739 000 was given for women religious. This totals 1,148 million priests and religious.

This would set the figure of abusers at 17 220. With roughly 4 800 Catholic episcopal seats worldwide, at Fr Hinwood’s seemingly arbitrary guess of 3% this would set the figure of bishops who covered up at 144. These are staggering figures.

Moreover, it is not impossible

Healing for the Body of Christ

Conscience and politics

F

I

ATHER Bonaventure Hinwood’s cavalier approach to the tragedy and crisis in the Church caused by the sex abuse sandal contrasts sharply with the attitude of Archbishop Buti Tlhagale who said unequivocally that “what is happening in Ireland, Germany or America affects us all” and that as a result of the scandal, the Church’s image is in ruins.

Moreover, Fr Hinwood’s dismissive letter, coming a week after the courageous letter by Bev Coleman, the mother of an abused youth, could not have highlighted more clearly how mistaken his view is.

As the Colemans showed, it was the hurt and shame they sensed in Archbishop Lawrence Henry when he visited them after the trial that made them ask him to come and celebrate a Mass of healing for them and their parish at which “all those who attended experienced the miracle of healing”.

No, Fr Hinwood, the Church is not dealing with a flea bite, as you seem to think, but a boil that needs lancing, as The Southern Cross advised (April 7-13). The evil is within and affects the whole Body of Christ. As Pope Benedict said on his flight to Portugal in May, the scandal is a “terrifying” crisis that requires purification and penance to overcome.

As I read it, the Holy Father means that the Church as a whole Body of Christ. This cannot be dismissed, as you would seem to suggest, as a “communal guilt trip”.

Aideen Gonlag, St Michael’s-on-Sea, KZN

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TAKE issue with Dennis Vermaas’ letter, “Old govt had Catholic backers” (May 26), which seems to suggest that Catholic support justified apartheid and its inhumane policies.

Such Catholics clearly were wrong, as evolving ethical perceptions have amply shown. Robert Mugabe is a baptised Catholic, but his repressive policies are not dictated by his faith, even though he occasionally attends Sunday Mass.

Catholic clergy and lay leaders were found on both sides of the Rwandan genocide. Those who killed with lust and abandon were also terribly wrong, as are the jihadists of al-Qaeda.

Human conscience abhors injustice perpetrated on human (and non-human) beings in the name of an ideology or of its political actualisation. A well-formed conscience should have made all police and politicians involved in the enforcement of apartheid realise that they were acting against established ethical principles, based on mutual respect as in “Don’t do to others what you don’t want to have done to yourself”.

Mr Vermaas lifts the veil on a shameful chapter of Catholic history in South Africa. Yes, too many Christians forgot their human and Christian principles and supported the apartheid regime. Thank God for men like Denis Hurley and Desmond Tutu, and many with them, who through constant fight for human rights saved the face of Christianity, often risking life and limb from security forces and hostility from their own flock.

Mr Vermaas’ statement that many of the security police “were just doing their job, and out of necessity doiing it well” is an affront to the many heroes and heroines who risked everything to uphold human dignity and Christian values, while many Catholics, as Mr Vermaas says, “proudly supported the government of the day”.

As Catholics, our conscience should have told us better, and our Church hierarchy and the clergy should have instilled in us the conscience that Christianity’s role is to be “the salt of the earth”, not bending to the winds of the day.

President Nelson Mandela put this clearly during his first encounter with religious leaders: “Make religion the conscience of the nation.”

Noel Ricky, Hilton, KZN

Keep celibacy

S

TEVE Lincoln (May 12-19) says that because human instincts are denied by insisting on priestly celibacy, we have scandal, advocating better married priests than scandal.

Yet recent studies of priestly paedophilia, reported in The Southern Cross, showed abuse in the home to be the main cause, not celibacy.

It’s the same old problem of

that some priests and bishops carried their secrets to the grave because few victims like to speak out. I cannot speak for the hierarchy, but some of us lay Catholics were aware of some allegations and were acquainted with some alleged perpetrators and their alleged victims.

It is because we buried our heads in the sand rather than make our voices heard that we are now hanging those same heads in shame.

This is why I thank Pope Benedict and the Catholic hierarchy for their healing apologies, and include my own stammered plea for forgiveness.

Luky Whittle, Kroonstad

seeing things of a lower nature being raised up, while the better part of spiritual truth is diminished.

Priestly celibacy is good. It is the priests’ sacrifice so as to increase the glory of God’s Kingdom, to serve him; a fast from human instincts, to grow more like unto his image and likeness, to be like the image of the Spouse in us, one with God. Would Mr Lincoln really like to see celibacy put asunder?

Let us pray for our priests to maintain their purity.

HM de Kock, Cape Town

The upper hand

A

S usual, your editorial “The new missal” (May 26) presents a comprehensive overview of the subject.

I think the most significant point you make (by quoting Cardinal Wilfrid Napier) is that the Church’s approach to translating Latin texts at a particular time depends on which equivalence enjoys the “upper hand” in the Vatican. Thus, when our present English texts were approved by Rome in 1973, dynamic equivalence held sway. Now literal equivalence reigns supreme and is about to spawn a new translation of the missal.

Thank God, this is not a matter of faith or morals requiring the exercise of papal infallibility. As such, those who find the new missal a hindrance to prayerfully celebrating Mass can only look forward to the day when dynamic equivalence regains the upper hand it enjoyed under Pope Paul VI four decades ago.

Fr Kevin Reynolds, Pretoria

The bunny side

I

ALWAYS read Chris Moerdyk’s articles first. I especially enjoyed “St Thorlac foiled Attila the son” (May 19). I once was in the same boat as Attila’s mother.

I also remember the same thing described by Mr Moerdyk in one of his older articles happening to me: the story of the Easter bunny that his children saw.

After reading that story at Easter a year ago, I said to Jesus that I wonder if he would let such a thing happen for me. I thought it was such a trivial thing to pray for so I didn’t pester him any more.

Can you believe it, the first thing I saw in our garden on waking up on Easter Sunday was a rabbit sitting on the grass. It stayed in our garden behind a shrub until my grandchildren came and they saw the Easter bunny too.

Not long after that another one appeared and then babies. Now we don’t see them any more.

Annette Tyropolis, Port Elizabeth Opinions expressed in The Southern Cross, especially in Letters to the Editor, do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or staff of the newspaper, or of the Catholic hierarchy. The letters page in particular is a forum in which readers may exchange opinions on matters of debate.

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

PERSPECTIVES Toni Rowland

Family Friendly

Flying the flags

R

IGHT now South Africa is awash with colour, and the profusion of flags all over the country is enhancing the image of the rainbow nation. With all the teams and visitors here now, we are becoming the rainbow world.

Obviously South African flags are the most common, waving at us from every imaginable place. But, depending on how Bafana Bafana shape up, other flags may begin to predominate.

Why do we fly these flags? I am told that Admiral Lord Nelson is responsible for the patriotic angle, and that is certainly an important one. We know how deeply some of us feel about our very own flag as a symbol of who we are and what we stand for.

For ages and ages before that flags have been used to identify the nationality of ships at sea and therefore identify a friend or foe. Let’s hope that the friend-or-foe angle won’t become a concern here. Surely we won’t reach a situation where a hated nation’s flag gets burnt.

But again, why are we experiencing this surge of patriotism and flying our flags? Is it just because we’ve been hyped up by the media and all the publicity that can hardly be avoided?

Not everyone is interested in football but many of us are nevertheless wearing our Football Friday shirts as some kind of sign of solidarity and involvement, being part of. But, we might ask, of what and who is benefiting from all this?

I accept that there are plenty of negatives and reasons for concern about the dangers, especially to our children, but focusing on the fun and the family angle and bringing God into the picture is also important.

A musical group to which I belong is putting on the musical Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. The technicolour dreamcoat is of course one of the main features of the show.

This time around, to tie in with the World Cup, we had it made up of the flags of the different countries visiting us, and it has been a big hit with the audiences. So there was a way to link God and current affairs.

Although the story of Joseph, the forgiving brother, is taken from the book of Genesis, there isn’t excessive mention of God directly in the script. God is not often explicitly mentioned in the general World Cup hoo-ha either, but one of the Church’s cup initiatives is the little prayer book, Praying & Playing which contains the common prayers, the Mass, the national anthem, a special World Cup prayer, prayers on human trafficking, HIV/Aids, the culture of life and a range of other prayers, for old and young, for this time and beyond (in the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to the booklet).

These prayers are aimed at locals and visitors and seek to bring God into current everyday life situations, which is always the aim in family ministry. We pray for safety and protection for travellers, and for fair play and for good sportsmanship—qualities we want the teams and our families to practise.

In one Letter to God, Pitso asks: “If all the teams practised as hard as we had to do this week, could they all win? What do you think?”

Some children may identify with Lara: “Dear God, my daddy is never home any more, he’s always out practising or playing soccer or getting drunk with his friends. I just want this whole business to get finished so he can come home and be a good daddy again. Please let him know.”

Even the poor kid’s prayer highlights a reality that will most likely continue after the games.

“We love our game of soccer, Lord, we play it in our street.

With boys and girls, all ages too, we play in our bare feet.

No boots or jerseys do we have, we’re short of funds you know.

I pray that you will help us out, we want our team to grow.”

My particular prayer at this time is that the World Cup, busy as the time will be, will be a colourful, uniting and family-friendly affair.

I wave my two flags—one of my country of birth and the other of my country of adoption— in the hope that the World Cup will bring families of nations together, not pull them apart, and that this opportunity to welcome the world will show up our best family qualities of hospitality and warmth.

And speaking of warmth, if it gets cold and wet—as it well might in mid-winter—will waving a flag really energetically generate enough heat to keep one warm? Who knows.

on DStv audio channel 170

also streamed on www.radioveritas.co.za

Are saints models to emulate or little gods?

I

N preparation for my ministry in the priesthood, I spent some months in a parish. Something quickly caught my attention: from early morning to evening there were always people, especially women, who came for a short visit of prayer in the church.

The mornings were the most impressive. Some mothers with their little ones on the way to the preschool dropped in. I could see an innocent child standing reverentially with the mother in prayer. Before leaving the church the mother would lift the child so that the little one could also kiss the icon. Marvellous!

However, before long, such scenes began to nag me. I ended up with questions.

I tried to understand what those regular visits were all about and what people actually did during those prayers. Some came in while the Mass was going on, piously went to the box for candles, dropped in coins with an attention-drawing jingle, and then went to immerse themselves in prayer to their favourite saint before whom they lit the candles.

Others came in the church and went straight to the little room on a side of the sanctuary where there was statue of Padre Pio. They sat there secluded, evidently indifferent to the Mass. The Mass ended and people left, but they remained there. Surely there must have been something serious and urgent to ask from Padre Pio that would justify staying more than an hour. (Here I’m talking about a parish where if the Mass went a little more than 30 minutes, people would curse the priest for having preached for more than five minutes.)

Talking with some people I came to understand all this better. Most of them would talk about this and that problem they had, but after praying to Our Lady of this and that, or having prayed to Saint so and so, the problem is gone.

Yes, saints seemed so powerful that they won the attention of some people in such a way that the Real Presence of our Lord was pushed aside. It was all about holy water upon entering the Church, lighting candles before the statue of a saint, bowing and kissing the statue, and again holy water, and departure.

I cannot judge the hearts of the people, but in those rituals Jesus in the Eucharist simply had no place; not even by way of genuflection towards the tabernacle. In that light, it all seemed so much less marvellous. I was left with questions: Who are the saints? How have they been presented to the people?

Perhaps saints have been presented in a manner that does not help to foster sanctity in the lives of the faithful.

Here is a story that a spiritual theology professor told. He was in Lebanon. He noticed a girl of about 12 years old, very pious and going to Mass every day and taking the sacrament of Reconciliation regularly. The professor, a priest, was preaching during Mass about a saint. Then he turned to the children and asked: “Who among you wants to be saint?”

“No, no, no! Not me!” the pious 12year old girl waved her finger in refusal.

Evans Chama

Echoes of African Synod Why would a girl react in that way?

Is it a bad thing to be saint?

Well, the girl just couldn’t see herself fit into the category of saints as she may have seen on pictures of icons: monks with long beards vested in black soutanes with big pectoral crosses like little bishops; they were beings belonging to another world.

M

ost of the well-known saints are distant; they belong to centuries long past and lived in distant lands that to many of us exist only in our imagination. Seen in this way, they are not quite human like the rest of us.

What about those miracles that are needed to qualify for canonisation; wouldn’t that have negative effects?

For the ordinary Christian, saints may be understood more in terms of the miracles that can happen in their name rather than their witness of life when they were still alive; you can use them only to obtain things for us from God. And isn’t that the reason for having patron saints for almost every situation: for drivers, for lost items, sickness and so on? Unfortunately, the witness that we are supposed to learn from them is simply watered down.

Is it that the African Church doesn’t have enough men and women whom we have met on the streets, whose witness for Christ would be more inspiring, not for obtaining miracles, but for rousing others to grow into holiness?

How does the African Church present saints in the catechesis? Is it just about painting a holy person in a way that dilutes the struggle and the efforts he or she might have put up against weakness in order to follow Christ?

The bishops of Eastern Africa have pointed out in relation to evangelisation: “We know that as our Church in Africa grows in numbers we face the call to move to a more mature catechesis promoting a true Christian identity and a profound conversion of hearts.”

Here is where I see the need for the Africa Church to rise, take up her pallet, and walk. Local bishops should cherish and make use of the exemplary life of men and women, known to the people, who in the struggles of the life familiar to the people stood for Christ.

It’s not so much about initiating the process for canonisation, nor about calling someone Saint whatever.

What do I mean? Personally, I would not need to wait for, say, a Nelson Mandela to be proclaimed a saint in order to let his life’s example question me. He doesn’t have to be perfect in order for me to learn from him how to be a better Christian.

It’s high time that we demystified saints and present them to the African Catholic in such ways as to inspire conversion instead of inviting just chases for miracles. Otherwise, saints will always remain mysterious and distant beings who are what the ordinary ones cannot be.

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The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

9

Michael Shackleton answers your question

Open Door

The pope is more than a soccer captain I am confused about what is called the collegiality of the bishops of the Church. If the bishops, including the bishop of Rome, form one college of teaching authority for the Church, how can the pope claim to be the supreme pontiff? If he is supreme, it seems a contradiction for him to claim to be also a member of those over whom he has supremacy. I need some guidance, please.

SdM ET me give the example of a sports team, such as any of the football teams that are here for the World Cup. The captain of the team is certainly a member of the team but he is more than that. He is the leader, making decisions on the field that will be to his side’s best advantage. He is the one who boosts morale by inspiring and encouraging his mates.

Apart from his leadership qualities, the captain is no more than the first among equals, having no special prerogatives and, if his team mates don’t like the way he handles them or he is otherwise unsuitable, he can be easily replaced.

Compare this with how the bishop of Rome, the pope, relates to his fellow bishops.

He is one of them and their leader. But unlike a football team captain, he is not the first among equals. His authority does not come from his acceptance by his fellow bishops but from Christ himself.

Directly before his ascension, Christ authorised his apostles to go out into the world and teach all nations to observe what he had commanded (Mt 28:19-20). This authorisation continues in history in the episcopal college, which is the heir to the original body of twelve men.

One among them, Peter, was given a very special role. Christ founded his Church on him as on a rock, and gave him the keys of the kingdom (Mt:16:19). He also told him especially to feed the lambs and sheep of his flock (Jn 21:15-17), and to strengthen his brother apostles (Lk 22:32).

Vatican II therefore asserted firmly that the college of bishops has no authority without its head the Roman pontiff, Peter’s successor, who is the pastor over the universal Church and the visible source of the Church’s unity (Lumen Gentium, 22).

Pope and bishops govern and teach in solidarity but when the need arises, it is the pope who has the last word in declaring the official teaching of the Church.

L

 Send your queries to Open Door, Box 2372, Cape Town, 8000; or e-mail: opendoor@scross.co.za; or fax (021) 465 3850. Anonymity can be preserved by arrangement, but questions must be signed, and may be edited for clarity. Only published questions will be answered.

10

FEATURE

The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

Priest: My teacher was a blessing The eminent theologian and author Fr Gerry O'Collins will tour South Africa for a series of lectures on Christ in July and August. CHRIS CHATTERIS SJ spoke to a South African priest who studied in Rome under Fr O’Collins.

I

T was “a blessing” to have studied under Jesuit Father Gerald “Gerry” O’Collins.

This was the verdict of one of his former students at the Jesuitrun Gregorian University in Rome, which has produced a long list of alumni, including bishops and popes.

Fr Vincent Masoja Mkhabela, a young Comboni Missionary priest from Glencowie in Limpopo, was that fortunate former student. He was delighted to hear that Fr O’Collins is coming to South Africa in a few weeks time to give the Winter Living Theology course, entitled “The Many Faces of Jesus”.

I bumped into Fr Mkhabela after the recent Mass against human trafficking in Pretoria.

When he saw Fr O’Collins’ name and photograph on the flyer I was handing out to the assembled clergy and religious, Fr Mkhabela’s face lit up with pleasure at the happy memory of his former mentor.

I later interviewed Fr Mkhabela by telephone to find out more about his experience as a student of this distinguished scholar, teacher and writer.

Fr Mkhabela’s CV is of considerable interest. After training in Uganda and Rome, he spent four years as a missionary in the Philippines, where he worked as a vocations promoter.

One might imagine that he would prefer to be in a parish—he is presently undertaking the difficult task of promoting South African vocations for the Comboni Missionaries in this country. However, he has clearly been well formed for the task and he would certainly say that much credit for this goes to Fr Gerry O’Collins.

Fr Mkhabela described his Australian Jesuit teacher as “a great scholar” and a man with a truly global outlook. That Fr O’Collins is both an academic and a “populariser” has been demonstrated lately by the way he has entered into a debate with Philip Pullman who has written a new and controversial novel creating two alternative sides to Jesus Christ, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

Fr Mkhabela said that despite his large academic stature, Fr O’Collins exudes simplicity and humility.

He described Fr O’Collins as “a warm and compassionate man” who was always available to his students, whom he would unfailingly receive with a sense of humour and a welcoming smile.

He attended Fr O’Collins’ classes at the Gregorian University in Rome where more than 300 students from about 100 countries would be gathered in the lecture hall to hear the Jesuit talk on Christology. These lectures were delivered in Italian with more than a hint of an Australian twang and a touch of the antipodean “Strine”!

F

ather Mkhabela credits Fr O’Collins with encouraging him and forming him in his priestly and religious vocations. “'He inspired me to be a priest and to share Jesus with other people.” The phrase strongly suggests that there is no ultimate contradiction between academic and pastoral theology.

Like all true teachers, Fr O’Collins is constantly learning himself. Fr Mkhabela recalled how Fr O’Collins would ask his very international student body how Jesus was viewed in their many and varied cultural contexts. He was genuinely interested to hear about these perspectives, Fr Mkhabela said.

He also took a broad theologically ecumenical approach to the study of the nature of Jesus Christ, often challenging the class to take note of the insights of different Christian traditions.

Sometimes he would bring an image or an icon of Jesus into class as a visual aid to illustrate how a particular Christian group pictured Jesus the person, and the theology

Theologian, author and teacher Fr Gerald “Gerry” O’Collins will be in South Africa to conduct a series of lectures entitled “The Many Faces of Jesus”. behind such a depiction.

According to Fr Mkhabela, Fr O’Collins was deeply rooted in scripture and the tradition of the Church, but always maintained that we can never exhaust the depths of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man and Son of God. Fr O’Collins would also point out that Jesus was important for non-Christians as well as Christians. This, Fr O’Collins said, was particularly the case for Muslims since Jesus appears in the Qu’ran as a significant prophet.

In this way, Fr Mkhabela said, the students came to appreciate the universal importance and influence of the person of Jesus they were studying, rather than confining their interest to the Jesus as understood within the Christian or Catholic traditions.

In this context Fr Mkhabela remembers that one of his teacher’s favourite passages was John 21:24-26, in which the evangelist says: “There are also many other things that Jesus said and did. But if these were to be described individually, I do not think that the whole world would contain the books that would be written.” This theological statement affirms Fr O’Collins’ view that Jesus has many faces.

His life’s work has been the revealing of these multiple countenances and he has certainly added to the number of books in the

Fr Vincent Mkhabela with his mother outside his alma mater, Pontificia UGregorian University in Rome, where he was taught by Fr O’Collins. world on the subject—55 at last count.

Fr O’Collins will lecture in South Africa in July and August.

The Jesuit Institute’s Winter Living Theology course is recommended by the SACBC On-going Formation Commission.

 J.M.J

Fr O’Collins will speak in Johannesburg (July 20-22), Bloemfontein (July 27-29), Cape Town (August 3-5) and Durban August 10-12).  For more information contact admin@jesuitinstitute.org.za or call 011 403 3790.

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The Southern Cross, June 16 to June 22, 2010

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Divine Mercy

I

RESPOND to Fr Allan Moss’ letter “Divine Mercy used to be banned” (May 26).

In the early Church, according to Fr Benedict Groeschel, the week after Easter did not go by the banal title of Easter week or Easter Octave, or as Low Sunday or the Second Sunday of Easter. It was known as Mercy Sunday and the week preceding it as “days of mercy and pardon”, by St Augustine. He also referred to the second Sunday as “the summary of the days of mercy”. We can see traces of this early understanding of the Church in the prayers and readings of the Mass and the Divine Office.

Why “mercy and pardon”? Because the second Sunday is the first time that Jesus meets his apostles after their cowardice and treachery in abandoning him at his Passion. Instead of rebuking them for cowardice, Jesus breathes on them the Spirit of mercy (Jn 20:21) and commissions them to be ambassadors—indeed, instruments of his divine mercy.

One is reminded of the Lord’s words to Jeremiah: “Come back to me and there shall be no frown awaiting you for I am merciful.” (Jer 3:12). Finally, Peter—he who was the most cowardly—got the message. So in his first encyclical as pope (the first Letter of Peter), he addresses the pagans in the words addressed by Moses to the Chosen People, the Jews and now addressed to all peoples: “You pagans are a chosen race, a royal priesthood…once you were outside the mercy [of God] and now you have been given mercy”(2:9-10). They now get the same mercy reserved for the Jews.

For the Jewish prophets mercy (or Hesed) was said to belong to the divine nature. One of Israel’s earliest religious experiences is of God as “a gracious and merciful God”. Mercy is seen as an intrinsic part of God’s nature, unlike the pagan gods who are arbitrary and capricious.

The climax of Easter is on the Octave of Easter, now called Divine Mercy Sunday. Easter is an eight-day feast, culminating in a “Grand Finale” on the Octave of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, where we receive the gifts of Easter: a brand new start in life; the total forgiveness of sins and punishment.

Attie Schlebusch, Camperdown, KZN

Mass readings for the week Sundays year C, weekdays cycle 2 Sun June 20, 12th Sunday of the Year: Zec 12:10-11; Ps 62:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Gal 3:26-29; Lk 9:1824 Mon June 21, St Aloysius Gonzaga: 2 Kgs 17, 5-8.13-15.18; Ps 60, 3-5.12-13; Mt 7, 1-5 Tue June 22, St Paulinus of Nola, Ss John Fisher & Thomas More: 2 Kgs 19, 9011. 14-21. 31-36; Ps 48, 2-4.10-11; Mt 7, 6.1214 Wed June 23, feria: 2 Kgs 22, 8-13;23, 1-3; Ps 119, 33-37.40; Mt 7, 15-20 Thur June 24, birth of St John the Baptist: Is 49, 1-6; Ps 139, 1-3.13-15; Acts 13, 22-26; Lk 1, 57-66.80 Fri June 25, feria:: 2 Kgs 25, 1-12; Ps 137, 1-6; Mt 8, 1-4 Sat June 26, feria: Lam 2, 2.10-14.18-19; Ps 74, 1-7.20-21, Mt 8, 5-17 Sun June 27, 13th Sunday of the Year: 1 Kgs 19, 16.19-21; Ps 16, 1-2.5.7-11; Gal 5, 1.13-18; Lk 9, 51-62

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Thoughts for the Week on the Family

FAMILY CALENDAR 2010 FAMILY THEME: “Families Play the Game.”

JUNE THEME: The Beautiful Game INTRODUCTION World Cup matches are being played over the next few weeks. Young people no doubt will be very involved, volunteering, helping, watching and enjoying the excitement and the atmosphere. It is also a time when things could go wrong, if selfish needs and greed are allowed to get out of hand. It is important not to lose touch with one another as families, to provide guidance and support where needed. We must also be aware of the evils of gambling, drinking, drugs, prostitution and trafficking which go along with intertional events like this.

How can you as a family make the most of this exciting time?

June 20, 12th Sunday of the Year; Fathers’ Day: The One whom we have Pierced.

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Communities should do what they can to make fathers a part of their children’s lives.

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DEATH FORBES—Ralph. Died 5/6/2010. Will be missed by cousins Shirley and Suzanne, relatives and friends. RIP

IN MEMORIUM CARLISLE—Frederick William. In loving memory of our beloved father, grandfather and greatgrandfather who passed away on June 19, 1998 at the age of 91. You taught us so much about quality of life based on living to please God. Your example, kindness and holiness will always be our inspiration. Much loved, never forgotten, forever in our prayers and thoughts. From your loving children Francis, Phillipps, John and Athalie and all grandchildren.

PRAYERS O MOST beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendour of Heaven, blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in my necessity.

O Star of the Sea, help me and show me where you are, Mother of God. Queen of heaven and earth I humble beseech you from the bottom of my heart to succour me in my necessity.

There is none who can withstand your power, O Mary conceived without sin, pay for us who have recourse to thee. Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands. Say this prayer for 3 consecutive days and then publish .

Thank you for prayers answered. EH. O MOST beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendour of Heaven, blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in my necessity.

O Star of the Sea, help me and show me where you are, Mother of God. Queen of heaven and earth I humble beseech you from the bottom of my heart to succour me in my necessity.

There is none who can withstand your power, O Mary conceived without sin, pay for us who have recourse to thee. Holy Mary, ou for prayers answered. NC. HOLY St Jude, apostle and martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke you, special patron in time of need. To you I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg you to come to my assistance. Help me now in my urgent need and grant my petitions. In return I promise to make your name known and publish this prayer. Amen.

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13th Sunday – Year C (June 27) Readings: 1 Kings 19:16, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-11; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62 HERE is for each one of us a call from God; and we shall never be compelled to accept it, for God always respects our freedom. Nevertheless, if we want our lives to go as they are intended to go, we need to listen out for that call, and answer it.

Which is what Elijah does in the first reading. He is told to anoint Elisha as his successor. He indicates this to the future prophet by flinging his cloak over him, which is not necessarily the clearest form of communication.

Elisha seems to get the message, however, but does not obey the call with sufficient urgency for Elijah’s taste; he leaves his oxen, it is true (and in that society this is a considerable act of generosity), but instead of immediately following, he asks: “May I kiss my father and mother, and come after you?” The older prophet offers what in all charity can only be described as a thoroughly grumpy response: “Go, turn back; for what have I done to you?”

Elisha is not put off, however, but immediately slaughters his unfortunate oxen and cooks them over the remains of his plough “and he went after Elijah and served him”.

T

Reasons to hear God’s call Fr Nicholas King SJ

Scriptural Reflections There is a model for us to imitate.

But why would you do such a thing? The psalmist perhaps gives us a clue, when he sings “You are YHWH, you are my Lord”, and uses a lovely metaphor to express the idea.

“You are my portion and my cup”, and goes on, “I shall bless the Lord who gives me instruction by night” and “You will make me know the path of life...fullness of joy in your presence; in your right hand there are pleasures for ever”. This is the song of one who is simply besotted with love for God. For such a person, it is enough to know that the Lord is calling.

In the second reading for next Sunday, Paul is trying to explain to the Galatians that God calls them into freedom, and they are

trying to go back into slavery. So he says, in a memorable phrase: “It is for freedom that Christ has freed us; so stand firm, and don’t go back and put on the yoke of slavery.”

Instead of that, we should imitate Elisha from our first reading, he says, and “through love be slaves to each other”. Then he quotes Jesus’ gospel teaching, which makes sense of all attempts to follow the vocation: “The whole Law is fulfilled in one sentence, the thing of ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.”

And if we get that right, then we shall be guided by the Spirit, and “if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer under the Law”. It is an ingenious argument, and one to inspire us to follow the Lord.

That is something that Jesus’ interlocutors in the gospel for next Sunday fail to grasp; at this point in Luke’s gospel, which we are following this year, the evangelist starts to portray Jesus as on a pilgrimage; “he had set his face to journey to Jerusalem”. And we already know that this pilgrimage, or journey, will end in death. But just in case we had missed the point, Luke tells us two stories to indicate the difficulties of following Jesus.

How new media is changing us T

HIS “social media” phenomenon we keep hearing about was first considered to be some sort of passing fad, much like the hula-hoop and mini-skirt.

For the uninitiated, the term refers to the way in which mostly young people communicate with and inform each other on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and myriad others.

It is most certainly not a passing fad.

Social media has turned out to be a lot more entrenched and widespread than most of us initially believed.

Pope Benedict might not tweet or have a Facebook page of his own, but he seems to know that the new media are here to stay. He has repeatedly called on Catholic communicators to make use of them to spread the Gospel.

On the subject of the social media, American author Erik Qualman’s book Socialnomics is impressive, to say the least.

Even more impressive are the new statistics he has added to a video he has produced called the “Social Media Revolution”.

Some critics have questioned his statistics, but I believe that if only a small fraction of these are right, they represent an awesome eye-opener for anyone who still refuses to believe that social media is anything but a passing fad.

Just look at a few of the points Qualman makes: 1. More than 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old;

CONRAD

Chris Moerdyk

The Last Word 2. Some 96% of them have joined a social network; 3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the United States, and 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily; 4. Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web; 5. One out of eight couples married in the US last year met via social media 6. Just look how long it took for various media to reach 50 million users. Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…

7. Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year…

8. iPhone applications reached a billion in only 9 months…

9. Companies “don’t have a choice on whether they do social media; the question is how well they do it”.

10. If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s third largest, ahead of the United States and only just behind China and India…

11. Yet, social media sites such as QQ and Renren dominate China;

With Bafana’s secret weapon, the opponent’s walls fell like those of Jericho.

12. A 2009 US education department study revealed that on average, online students out-performed those receiving faceto-face instruction; 13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment.

14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females; 15. Actors Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres combined have more Twitter followers than the populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.

16. Half of the mobile Internet traffic in Britain is for Facebook. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means to companies for bad customer experiences?

17. The young generation considers email passé—some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts…

18. Instead they are distributing eReaders , iPads, Tablets…

19. News captured by ordinary people ends up on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…there is no place to hide; 20. The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube; 21. While you read this, more than 100 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube; 22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles. Studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica, and 78% of these articles are non-English; 23. There are more than 200 million blogs on the Internet today; 24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word-of-mouth now becomes world-ofmouth; 25. If you were paid R1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn R156,23 per hour; 26. A quarter of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content; 27. Just more than a third of bloggers post opinions about products and brands; 28. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, but only 14% trust advertisements; 39. Kindle eBooks outsold paper books last Christmas; 30. Of the 25 largest newspapers, 24 are experiencing record declines in circulation 31. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us, and we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.

What fascinates me about all this is that it’s not just the younger generation but increasingly people of all age groups who are relying on news they receive from their friends rather than the mass media.

And I’m pleased that pornography has been knocked off its top spot on the Internet by something a lot more healthy.

Let s take into our hands our children s destiny lookfb_info@yahoo.com Tel: 011 613 3867

The first story is that of a Samaritan village which refused Jesus hospitality (and hospitality is a very important virtue in the Gospel of Luke) because “his face was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem”. James and John (whom, we learn from Mark, Jesus had nicknamed “Sons of Thunder”) want to dynamite the place, but Jesus diverts them.

Then the second story gives us the reaction of three other would-be disciples. The first is all for following Jesus “wherever you’re going”, but has to be told that, unlike foxes or birds, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”. The second, following Elisha in the first reading, makes the perfectly reasonable request to “go and bury my father”, and is chillingly told to “let the dead bury their dead”; while the third, exactly like Elisha, agrees, “I’ll follow you, Lord”, but first wants to “go and say goodbye to those at home”.

Jesus is clearly thinking of the Elisha story in his response: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks backwards is fit for the Kingdom of God.” So there you have it; the call is there, this week, for each of us, and we shall not be forced to accept it. But if we want our lives to go well, then we shall do well to listen for the call, and go wherever it leads us. The Lord is not going to let us down.

Southern Crossword #396

ACROSS 1. They’re used in gambling (4) 3. Instructs from a cut seed (9) 9. Alchemists once used them remedially (7) 10. Animated fawn partly seen in Bambino (5) 11. The catacombs are (12) 13. Indifference (6) 15. Make an effort to get out of biggest river (6) 17. Due to start, he is courageous (5-7) 20. She let St Peter in (Acts 12) (5) 21. One who prays may also need it (7) 22. On this you are on time (8) 23. Mimicked (4)

DOWN 1. Profound waters (4,4) 2. ... Every Mountain (from Sound of Music) (5) 4. Wilderness of the Temptation (6) 5. St Joseph might have been one, like prime minister (7-5) 6. A pint I'm about to have in the orchestra (7) 7. Branch of Islam has hiatus in it (4) 8. Number who ate the loaves and fishes (Jn 6) (4,8) 12. Lasted up redder way (8) 14. The disciples were called Christians here (Acts 11) (7) 16. Coin in Israel (6) 18. Blossom from the low lands (5) 19. Different rats found in gallery (4)

SOLUTIONS TO #395. ACROSS: 3 Dragonfly, 8 Imam, 9 Abhorrent, 10 Galaxy, 11 Ether, 14 Audio, 15 Sufi, 16 Muses, 18 Idol, 20 Peril, 24 Winces, 25 First-born, 26 Gala, 27 Diversity. DOWN: 1 King David, 2 Called for, 4 Ruby, 5 Ghost, 6 Nerves, 7 Lent, 9 Axiom, 11 Essay, 12 Rubrician, 13 Aisle, 17 Spain, 19 Lessee, 22 Debts, 23 Fiji, 24 Writ.

CHURCH CHUCKLE URING Father’s sermon one Sunday, there came a loud whistle from one of the back D pews. Tommy’s mother was horrified to find that the sound had come from her son.

She pinched him into silence and after Mass, asked: “Tommy, whatever made you do such a thing?”

Tommy answered earnestly: “I asked God to teach me to whistle, and he did!”

Send us your favourite Catholic joke, preferably clean and brief, to The Southern Cross, Church Chuckle, PO Box 2372, Cape Town, 8000.