The Southern Cross - 100901

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Catholics and media freedom

Prayers at abortion clinic

SA priests on Facebook, Twitter

The Shroud mystery solved?

www.scross.co.za

September 1 to September 7, 2010 Reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 4691

SOUTHERN AFRICA’S NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY SINCE 1920

September 5 is Social Communications Sunday

Parish makes use of new media

Inside

BY CLAIRE MATHIESON

A

SACBC fights human trafficking The SACBC presented a submission to parliament on its new human trafficking Bill.—Page 2

Right to Live celebrates The Right to Live campaign is celebrating the second anniversary of its first home in Cape Town and tenth nationwide —Page 3

Africa’s laity feels left out Lay people and women religious say they feel marginalised by clergy in undertaking pastoral work, despite a call from the bishops of Africa synod to evangelise.—Page 4

Guidelines for new media Catholic Bishops in the US have issued a set of guidelines for using social networking media.—Page 10

What do you think?

In their Letters to the Editor this week, readers discuss homosexuality and the Bible, refreshing change, Christ’s bride, and ignorance and intolerance.—Page 6

This week’s editorial: Using new media

Michelle McManus (left), winner of Britain’s 2003 Pop Idol. The 30-year-old has established herself as a radio and television presenter in Scotland. Susan Boyle (right), 2009 runner-up of Britain’s Got Talent, is an active volunteer at her church in Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland.

TV talents to sing for pope in UK

S

R5,50 (incl VAT RSA)

TARS discovered on popular British television talent contests will perform for pilgrims during Pope Benedict’s visit to Scotland on September 16.

Michelle McManus, the 2003 winner of Pop Idol and television programme host, will sing before the pope’s Mass in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park, according to the press office of the Scottish bishops’ conference.

Susan Boyle, who gained worldwide fame in 2009 after her performances on Britain’s Got Talent, will also sing at a papal event, said Peter Kearney, director of communications for the Scottish bishops.

Mr Kearney said that details of Ms Boyle’s performance would be released at a later date.

Announcing the participation of Ms McManus, Mr Kearney said she would sing “Home”, a song composed by her 22-yearold cousin Michael Brady.

In addition, she will perform “From a Distance”, a song made popular by Bette Midler. The Church in Scotland expects up to 100 000 to attend Mass in the park.

—CNS

Advertisements produced by Sacred Heart parish in Linton Grange, Port Elizabeth, promote a fundraising event for seven young parishioners who plan to attend World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, Spain. The parish has embraced new media and contemporary advertising concepts to promote their cause. The fundraiser is scheduled for September 25 at the parish hall.

Cardinal says no to media laws

BY MUNYARADZI MAKONI

C

ARDINAL Wilfrid Napier of Durban has spoken out strongly against the proposed Protection of Information Bill and the media appeals tribunal that has been proposed by the African National Congress.

The cardinal, who is also the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s liaison bishop for social communications, told Durban daily The Mercury that it was incomprehensible that people who denounced the clampdown on the media during apartheid could support it now.

“It is hard to imagine how any person, group or organisation—which only a few years ago was protesting so vigorously for the exposing of all injustice, all corruption, all favouritism and nepotism—could in such a short time be calling for legislation designed to prevent the reporting of these very ills,” Cardinal Napier said in a message of support to The Mercury’s “Say No” campaign against the proposed law and tribunal.

“It must be either an extremely short memory or a very guilty conscience that could drive one who had suffered under the old regime to change so quickly from opposing to supporting that undemocratic conduct,” he said.

Cardinal Napier, who has criticised government excesses in the past, appealed to President Jacob Zuma to put the people first by reconsidering his party’s views on the Information Bill and state controlled appeals media tribunal.

“Please do not allow our country to be

brought into disrepute so soon after the wonderful picture of unity and solidarity that South Africa presented to the world during the World Cup,” the cardinal said in his appeal to Mr Zuma.

The General Council of the Bar of South Africa has commented that, while the draft bill contained certain useful provisions, it also contained a number of provisions which were plainly inconsistent with the foundational values of the constitution. They included openness and transparency in government and the accountability of government to the electorate.

The media appeals tribunal was first proposed by the ruling ANC during its Polokwane conference in 2009. It is tabled for discussion at the party’s national general council this month.

In its August 11 editorial on the proposed Bill and tribunal, The Southern Cross warned: “The suspicion cannot be dismissed that the ANC seeks to create an environment in which it can intimidate journalists and editors who engage in investigative journalism, as well as prospective sources. The proposed legislation and tribunal would help protect the ANC and government from uncomfortable questions about conflicts of interest, arms deals, generally corrupt relationships, dishonest tender processes and dubious hotel bills.

“There is no reason why the public should trust the ANC’s protestations that this is not the intention. Even if this is not the purpose for intervention now, it may well be the effect tomorrow.”

PORT Elizabeth parish has put a new twist on advertising a church fundraising event by producing a contemporary marketing approach that embraces youth culture.

Avoiding the more common strategy of advertising on bulletin boards and photocopied handouts, the group of parishioners of Sacred Heart church in Linton Grange distributed their eye-catching advertisements through various media in order to draw the attention of a wide range of support.

The group has advertised using print (newsletters and posters), local radio as well as digital advertisements and verbal announcements. The digital elements of the campaign include e-mail, the cellular communication platforms of MMS and Mxit as well as social Internet-based media Twitter and Facebook.

“Facebook is our most aggressive medium for advertising since it is the most ubiquitous among our age group of 18-35,” said parishioner Alexis Pillay. The organisers have posted pictures on various Facebook pages, including groups and personal pages.

Through this, it has reached a far greater number of people than those who would see the advertisements through traditional means.

Facebook currently has more than 500 million active users internationally; the average user has 130 “friends”. For an advertiser, this means that for every one person associated with the campaign, on average 130 people are informed about it.

Leading the marketing campaign for the group, Mr Pillay said: “Most of our advertising intends to reach a broad spectrum of Church and society. I believe that digital media is the new context in which people have found their home and through which relationships are formed and fostered. I believe that these media offer us an opportunity for sharing, communion and solidarity as never seen before.”

Advertising need no longer be limited to those within the immediate vicinity of the event, Mr Pillay said. “These media have certainly decreased the cost of advertising and increased the level of awareness one is able to create around events and campaigns.”

Some 5,5 million people are directly connected to the Internet via computer in South Africa and much of the group’s content is also available through cellular channels, where 41% of the population have potential access to the information.

In addition to communicating with the youth through modern digital media, the campaign has embraced youth culture with its bright colours, youth-lingo and lively images.

The action photo shoot was described as a “challenge” with models needing to be incredibly energetic. Mr Pillay said there was lots of perseverance and skill needed to achieve the right results.

Mr Pillay encouraged other parishes to investigate using the new media to communicate, and decried a reluctance to adopt these new opportunities. “There is a fear among the older generations of embracing these media, in spite of it receiving the highest endorsement from the Pope and Roman curia. I believe that this attitude is detrimental to the Church moving forward in this age—the sense of inertia among digital opponents needs to be overcome by forwardthinking leaders and pastors.”

Mr Pillay praised those representing the Church on the digital front mentioning leaders such as Fr Chris Townsend of the Media and Communications office for the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference. continued on page 3

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LOCAL

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

SACBC adds its voice to Human Trafficking Bill

BY CLAIRE MATHIESON

B

ISHOP Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg presented the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s submission to government's portfolio committee on Justice and Constitutional Development’s on the new human trafficking Bill.

The submission on The Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill was drafted by the bishops’ Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO).

Interviewed after the submission, CPLO director Fr Peter-John Pearson said that issues of human trafficking are of great concern to the Church, which he said has been influential around the world in encouraging discussion and assistance with creating laws.

“Human rights are big in Catholic social teachings so the Church has seen the need to involve itself in the legislation of human trafficking protocol,” he said.

The bishops’ submission defined human trafficking as the movement of an individual either against their will or under false pretenses for exploitative purposes.

“While sexual exploitation in the country is a problem, the main concern is the exploitation of people for labour and work,” Fr Pearson said, adding that, “there is international movement into South Africa through the trafficking of people from other parts of Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia”.

CPLO researcher Samantha Richmond said that the absence of statistics is a problem.

“We do know there is a large trafficking movement of people from rural to urban South Africa.

We know it's happening, but we

Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg.

PHOTO: STEPHEN STEELE, CNS

don’t know exactly how many are affected,” said Ms Richmond.

Education campaigns linked to the football World Cup increased awareness of human trafficking through pamphlets, events and educational movements.

While the Bill has been under construction for nearly two years, pressure from civil society has increased.

Fr Pearson said that there is a consensus that “this Bill is good and it needs to move forward”.

The submission to parliament focussed mainly on technical points with a view to ensuring its enforcement.

Bishop Dowling told The Southern Cross that the wording of the Bill was particularly important.

“There have been problems

with definitions. We want to ensure that the Bill will protect those affected by human trafficking and these definitions have to stand for the victims in court and not leave room for perpetrators to get off on technicalities,” Bishop Dowling said.

Bishop Dowling said the CPLO had been working very closely with legal experts and civil society.

Ms Richmond said once the Bill becomes law there will be a great need for the Church to help with information, monitoring and assistance on human trafficking.

“We need to inform people about what the procedures are if they are involved in or victimised by human trafficking, and there will be a need to ensure things are implemented in the way they are laid out in the Bill,” she said.

The bishops’ submission to parliament aims to provide a strong legal outline so that those accused of human trafficking can be prosecuted but “it also provides a holistic approach to the prevention and monitoring of trafficking”, Bishop Dowling said.

“It is incredibly difficult to get victims to come forward. But this is something the Church can get involved with. We can provide a secure atmosphere where people will be willing to speak. We want to ensure there is no secondary victimisation,” he said.

The CPLO was hopeful that the Bill will become law in 2011.

Fr Pearson said the Church’s submission was well received.

“The Church has a definite theological position, one that is hugely respected. The concerns [with the Bill] are technical, not ideological,” Fr Pearson added.

Superior of the Missionaries of Charity Sister Maria Jose with two young patients from the Shall Cross Hospice near Chatsworth in Durban. PHOTO: MAURICIO LANGA

Charity works undeterred

BY MAURICIO LANGA

T

HE sharp increase in the number of destitute and abandoned children at Shall Cross Hospice, near Chatsworth in Durban, has not dampened the spirit of the Missionaries of Charity to go beyond their call of duty to provide assistance and love to the needy.

The hospice is managed by the Missionaries of Charity, a congregation founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

It is a 72-bed facility for people living with HIV/Aids, the destitute and those needing special care.

The hospice accepts destitute patients regardless of their religious affiliation.

According to the superior of the Missionaries of Charity, Sr Maria Jose, there are times when the hospice runs short of medication, but “through the grace of God and help from donors” they are able to remain afloat and provide efficient assistance to the patients.

Sr Jose said many of their patients have different problems and are rejected by their own families.

Many of the young people and children are physically or mentally

challenged or are HIV-positive and on antiretroviral medication. The elderly tend to be suffering from TB and other diseases, she said.

Sr Jose said that on occasion the hospice receives patients with rare diseases, referred to them by public hospitals in their vicinity.

She said some young people are brought in after having been declared hopeless cases by doctors.

“They come here unable to walk or talk. They are brought to the hospice to receive compassion and last blessing.

“But through love and trust in God some of them recover beyond anyone’s expectations, thus getting a second chance of life,” said Sr Jose.

She said each such recovery fills the Missionaries of Charity with joy, hope and encouragement.

While some young people who recover go back to their families, the elderly are usually rejected by their families.

“They are brought here by social workers as people without families.

It is an unfortunate reality—what is happening in our society,” said Sr Jose.

She added that a medical doctor visits the hospice twice a month to provide services free of charge.

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The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

3

Right to Live Campaign celebrates first home

BY CLAIRE MATHIESON

T

HE Right to Live Campaign is celebrating the second anniversary of its first home in Cape Town and tenth nationwide, and the campaign is now looking to establish an 11th home in the Johannesburg area.

The Campaign aides women with unwanted pregnancies, operates crisis help lines, runs Aids hospices and is involved in the development of women’s skills.

The bishops of KwaZulu-Natal set up the Right to Live Campaign in 1996, as parliament began legalising abortion, with Fr Massimo Biancalani of Musgrave Road parish in Durban as the coordinator. A year later, after the Termination of Pregnancy Act came into effect, the campaign received support from the Southern African

Catholic Bishops’ Conference to continue its work.

“The objective is to assist women and support them where we can,” Fr Biancalani said. The homes are open to all and do not charge for their services.

“We see abortion as a form of abuse, so it made sense to help women who were being abused themselves,” Fr Biancalani said.

“So we [first] opened a home for empowerment called ‘Mater Dei’ in Sydenham, Durban. This home offers computer courses and sewing classes and includes a 24hour crisis helpline.”

Today, there are ten Mater home across the country, each named in honour of Our Lady.

These include four pregnancy crisis centres, four Aids hospices for both men and women of all ages, a skills development centre and a

children’s centre.

“The daycare centre is not an orphanage,” Fr Biancalani said.

“Aids has had a massive impact on communities in KwaZulu-Natal.

We saw that some very young children were being left at home during the day and others were being looked after by their siblingsmeaning these older children were missing out on school.”

The daycare centre allows parents or siblings to leave young children in a safe and healthy environment during the day.

It has been a year since the tenth home was opened and the campaign is currently investigating further expansion in the Johannesburg area, however, the campaign “will grow where it is needed the most,” Fr Biancalani said.

TLC rising after security guard’s death

BY CLAIRE MATHIESON

S

IX months after the brutal murder of its security guard, Mackson Makhado, The Love of Christ Ministries (TLC) centre near Johannesburg said it has experienced immense support from the community, especially a local security company.

TLC cares for and nurtures newborn abandoned babies and infants with HIV/Aids.

The Southern Cross reported in March that Mr Makhado was gunned down on the ministry’s property with fiberglass bullets fired from a paintball gun.

“Mackson’s death left not only the children of TLC traumatised but also many of the young international volunteers that TLC relies on to take care of the babies,” said Pippa Jarvis of TLC. Following news of the killing, JDR Executive Security offered to assist the home, providing a security officer at the gate during the day and two patrolling in the evenings.

“For the last six months the JDR guards have been faithfully attending to the safety of the babies and volunteers, even on the coldest and most miserable of nights,” Ms Jarvis said.

Prior to the company’s involvement, TLC’s property was a regular target of theft and vandalism, which culminated in the death of the security guard. Since JDR got involved, no crime or theft has been reported on the farm.

The Jarvis family established TLC, a family-orientated ministry based in Eikenhof, south of Johan-

Members of Emmanuel Youth Adult Catholics youth group of St Mary Magdalene parish in Lentegeur, Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town, embarked on the annual “One-to-One” social with people with intellectual disabilities at the Good Hope Centre. The event was organised to promote social interaction between mainstream communities and people with intellectual disabilities. The event, attended by patients from Lentegeur Hospital, provided both the volunteers and intellectually disabled the time to engage in various activities. There were stalls for patients to fill their bags with treats, sporting activities, and building friendships in an environment that encouraged participation, support and tolerance. For the youth it provided an opportunity to gain experience and training in socially responsibility.

Empowering through ‘religious sacramentals’

BY CLAIRE MATHIESON

T Members of The Love of Christ Missionary in Eikenhof, Johannesburg has experienced six crime free months thanks to the support of JDR Executive Security. nesburg, in 1993 after its founder Thea Jarvis took in two abandoned babies from Baragwanath hospital in Soweto.

The organisation also facilitates adoptions.

“To date we have seen the successful placement of over 700 babies,” Ms Jarvis said. The home takes in abandoned babies regardless of their HIV status.

The Jarvis family, members of Divine Mercy parish in Walkerville, has developed TLC into a well established home, working closely with the Gauteng Department of Social Services.

TLC is trying to address the needs of abandoned babies and orphans in the Sedibeng region of the province.

“The main focus of TLC is to rescue the abandoned baby, bring them to TLC where we care for

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and nurture them, while at the same time working with selected adoption agencies to find a suitable family for this new parcel of potential,” Ms Jarvis said.

“We are also registered to accept premature babies throughout the province. At this stage we still do not receive any financial assistance from the department despite our registration.”

Ms Jarvis said TLC is “looking for partners to help keep our babies safe”.

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HROUGH the expansion of her company, Hyphila Styling, a Johannesburg resident is combining her life’s passions: religious sacramentals and community involvement.

Diane Shaw of Aston Manor said one of her passions is religious items. Hyphila Styling is a religious item production house. Ms Shaw noticed that most of the majority of sacramental items were imported and not affordable for the average South African.

After completing a course in cold-cast moulding, Ms Shaw said she was able to incorporate another passion into her venture,

“empowering underprivileged women to be financially independent”.

Ms Shaw is now expanding by teaching these women “to mould and make products and then to create a market for them to sell their items at a national level.”

“Manufacturing locally would help bring prices down considerably. My greatest desire is to make religious items available, so that everyone can afford to have Jesus in their homes and in their hearts,” she said.

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Parish makes use of new media continued from Page 1 Mr Pillay said, “I believe that for the Church to remain relevant in our age, she needs to embrace these tools of modern communication and become leaders and facilitators in its use. For this to happen there needs to be openness to youth and young adults who are most comfortable with these media.”

The direction of the campaign is particularly appropriate because it is raising funds to send young parishioners to the World Youth

Day event in Madrid, Spain, in 2011.

The last World Youth Day, held in Sydney, Australia, in 2009, attracted more than 400 000 youth at the closing Mass.

In 1995, Manila in the Philippines, saw the largest ever papal gathering with an estimated 5 million youth attending the World Youth Day closing Mass.

Most of the international marketing for the 2011 event has taken place online.

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4

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

African laity, nuns say they feel marginalised

BY MWANSA PINTU

L

AY people and women religious across Africa are concerned that they are being marginalised by clergy as they undertake pastoral work, despite a call from last October’s Synod of Bishops for Africa to include all people in ministry.

Members of both groups said their evangelisation activities have been underfunded, and some said they have been left out of the synod process since the beginning.

Some lay leaders and women religious who participated in recent synod implementation workshops conducted by the Zambian bishops said priests have threatened to discipline them if they disobeyed clerical directives.

Similar concerns have arisen in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya.

Sr Mary Musonda of the Religious Sisters of Charity said her congregation’s work in parishes was being frustrated by some local priests and that her community is considering focusing its efforts on

health and education duties alone.

“We are seriously thinking of completely pulling out of pastoral work to concentrate on other duties,” she said. “We are always being told it is the responsibility of priests to preach the Gospel because they are ordained for that purpose.”

Church liturgical norms say that non-consecrated people—including nuns—may not preach the homily at Mass, although they can preach in other situations.

The Zambian bishops’ workshops, where many expressed concerns, were held to discuss implementing the synod’s 57 propositions, or recommendations. The recommendations focused on reconciliation, peace and unity among all people regardless of tribal or cultural backgrounds.

Jerome Mumbi, a member of St Andrew parish in Mpika, told one such workshop that marginalisation by some priests also extended to lay people.

“The synod made it very clear that every Christian, man or women, priest or not, should get

involved in the process of evangelisation,” Mr Mumbi told a gathering at the Mpika Pastoral Centre. “However, what is happening here leaves much to be desired.”

He said some priests refused to allocate funds to lay pastoral programs, thus killing the programmes.

“We are all actors in the process of spreading the Good News. The inspiration and courage to do so comes from the Holy Spirit. I find it sad, therefore, that some priests could claim to be sole experts in that area,” said Maria Mulebi, a parishioner of Mpika’s Our Lady of Lourdes parish.

Catholics elsewhere in Africa echoed similar concerns.

Chifundo Harawa, who worships at the cathedral of Our Lady in Limbe, Malawi, said that although the country’s Church has tried to involve lay people and nuns in the synod process, a bias towards a more prominent role for priests exists.

“The whole process is usually championed by priests.The lay faithful, and even sisters, are in

most cases simply part of the audience as passengers.”

In Tanzania, Sr Vera Bosco of the Kilimanjaro Sisters, based in Mwanza, confirmed that priests have stopped non-consecrated people from preaching at Mass, but said evangelisation can take many other forms.

At the same time, Sr Bosco said she believes the Tanzanian Church has involved as many people as possible in the synod process but that priests have taken a lead role.

“Obviously, priests have to lead the process because they understand it better,” she said.

“It’s true, we have heard stories of some priests allocating all funds to their work and hence denying other groups the opportunity to implement their own pastoral programmes. But that’s just a case of people being overzealous because everyone is capable of such work,” said Sr Bosco.

Dominican Sister Petra Nyati of Hwange, Zimbabwe, said that as long as mistrust and antagonism continue in the African Church, implementation of the total evangelisation of the continent as demanded by the synod would not be easy.

Jerome Njoki of Rumuruti Catholic parish in the diocese of Kitui, Kenya, said he has seen the conflict among sisters, lay people and priests decline as clergy gradually understand that other groups

have an equally important role to play in evangelisation and ministry.

Such divisions among Catholics pose serious challenges as the Church strives to implement the synod’s recommendations, said Fr Peter Henriot SJ, director of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Lusaka.

The Church must first deal with internal conflicts, promoting reconciliation and unity among priests, women religious and lay leaders in order to work towards a common goal, he said. “‘A house that is divided cannot stand’ and, equally, unless the Church works as a family, it cannot preach reconciliation, peace and unity,” Fr Henriot said.

In response to the rising concerns, Fr Justin Matepa, national pastoral coordinator at the Zambian bishops’ conference, disputed claims that priests stop anyone other than clergy from preaching.

“Those saying that are lying,” he said. “There are lots of churches where the priest is not always around and people that preach and do pastoral work are either sisters or prayer leaders. I would agree if they complained about unequal sharing of resources for such activities between the priest and the other people involved in pastoral work.”

Fr Matepa added there was nothing that forces any priest to stop someone from preaching “as long as they are trained for it”.—CNS

Polish cross controversy tricky Papal masses in Britain issue for Catholic Church to use new English texts

P

OLAND’S new president said a controversy over a cross outside the presidential palace was risky and especially difficult for the Catholic Church. “I’d like a new discussion on how to resolve problems in a friendly way and a recognition by everyone—faithful, hierarchical church, politicians—that the state’s lay character isn’t just a civilisational norm but also something which serves the Church,” President Bronislaw Komorowski told the Polityka weekly.

After his predecessor, Lech Kaczynski, was killed in a plane crash in April, scouts placed a large cross outside the presidential palace.

Mr Komorowski said that under an agreement with officials of the Warsaw archdiocese, the cross was to be moved to a nearby church.

“This was a solution which lay in the interest of state and Church and would be a very appropriate form of mourning,” said Komorowski, who was inaugurated recently.

“The current situation is risky and politically difficult for everyone—probably most of all for the Church, which is already paying for this conflict and will pay longterm,” he said.

BY DAVID AGREN

P

A large wooden cross stands in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw.

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski says controversy over the Warsaw cross is risky and politically difficult, especially for the Catholic Church.

PHOTO: KACPER PEMPEL, REUTERS/CNS

“I’d like to see the Church distancing itself from the whole political scene—everyone can have his or her own political

view, but they shouldn’t express it through the institutional Church,” the president said.—CNS

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EOPLE attending Pope Benedict’s Masses in Scotland and England in September will get a chance to hear and sing a few of the newly translated Mass texts, according to the pope’s chief liturgist.

Mgr Guido Marini, papal master of liturgical ceremonies, confirmed that the prayers sung in English at the papal Masses in Britain will use the translations from the new order of the Mass approved by the Vatican in 2008.

“The songs from the order of the Mass—for example the Gloria—will be from the new translation, which was approved a while ago,” he said.

The words for the rest of the

Mass prayers “will be from the text currently in use”, he said, because when the papal Masses were being planned, the Vatican had not yet granted final approval to the bishops of Scotland, England and Wales for the complete English translation of the Roman missal.

Although the new translation of the order of the Mass, which contains the main prayers used at Mass, was approved by the Vatican two years ago, bishops’ conferences in Englishspeaking countries decided to wait to introduce the prayers until the entire Roman Missal was translated and approved.

Only the Southern African region has implemented the first phase of the translation, in November 2008.—CNS

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

5

US must leave behind security, peace in Iraq

BY CAROL GLATZ

T

HE United States has a duty to leave behind peace, not chaos, when troops are finally withdrawn from Iraq, said an Iraqi bishop.

“We desire, we ask, and we scream for peace and security,” Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad said in an interview with Vatican Radio. US combat troops are scheduled to leave Iraq at the end of the month, formally ending Operation Iraqi Freedom.

About 50 000 US troops will remain in Iraq until the end of 2011 to continue training and assisting Iraqi security forces.

Bishop Warduni said war does nothing but destroy everything. “There are no jobs, there

are car bombs, kamikaze attacks and other acts of violence. If foreign troops leave, they have a duty to leave peace and security behind them,” he said.

He also expressed concern about the political deadlock between Iraqi leaders who have not been able to form a government since parliamentary elections in March. “It’s very difficult to live somewhere where there is no law and no government,” he said, adding that terrorist elements have been taking advantage of the lack of a stable central authority. “The terrorists come and go as they please.”

Overturning the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein in order to put democracy in its place did not work, said the

Iraqi bishop. “Democracy needs to be taught, it needs to be planted, not imported,” he said. He compared life in Iraq under Saddam as like living “in a huge jail”.

“And what happens when a prison is suddenly thrown open?” he asked. It is like a dam that opens without warning and unleashes huge waves of destruction, he said.

The only way for Iraq to begin anew is for all sides to set aside their partisan interests and focus on what is best for Iraq as a whole, he said.

The country needs to create a strong stable government that enforces the law, he said, and Iraqis need the assistance of the whole world “to help snuff out the wars.”—CNS

Catholic leaders cleared in 1972 IRA bombing

A

N independent inquiry has cleared Church leaders in Northern Ireland of any “criminal intent” in the case of a priest accused of a 1972 Irish Republican Army bombing in Northern Ireland.

However, the report, based on an investigation by Britain’s Police Ombudsman into the handling of a bombing that killed nine people in Claudy, Northern Ireland, found that Church leaders held secret talks with police and British government officials to discuss the case of Fr James Chesney, who police believed was involved in the bombing.

After the talks, Cardinal William Conway of Armagh, Northern Ireland, agreed to move the priest in question across the border to the Irish Republic, apparently with the understanding that this would

avoid police investigation.

After the inquiry report was released, Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh said “the Church was placed in an impossible situation” when approached by the British government, because British officials said they would not pursue Fr Chesney’s potential involvement if he were moved out of Northern Ireland.

At the time, Church leaders questioned Fr Chesney about possible involvement in the atrocity. He strenuously denied any involvement.

The report found that, in 1972, detectives concluded that Fr Chesney was an IRA leader and had been involved in the bombing.

It added that by acquiescing to a government deal to move Fr Chesney outside the jurisdiction, police were guilty of a “collusive act.”—CNS

Tracy Deans, whose great-uncle James McClelland died in the 1972 bombings in Claudy, Northern Ireland, stands for photographers with a copy of the report that has cleared Church leaders in Northern Ireland of any “criminal intent” in the case of a priest accused of a 1972 Irish Republican Army bombing in Northern Ireland.

PHOTO: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON, REUTERS/CNS

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Priests: Anti-Christian bias in relief aid in Pakistan

C

HRISTIANS and other minorities affected by severe flooding in Pakistan are being discriminated against in government-run rescue and aid programmes, said the director of Pontifical Missionary Societies in Pakistan.

Fr Mario Rodrigues, the Lahore-based director of the mission awareness and funding agencies, said: “While Caritas and the Pontifical

Mission Societies are working on providing humanitarian relief to displaced persons without discrimination of origin, race or religion, in other areas, the Christian refugees, even in the midst of this tragedy, are being treated as second-class citizens.”

The priest also told Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples: “They often receive little assistance or are excluded altogether.”

Fides said that the priest specifically identified government aid programmes as those engaged in discriminatory practices.

Muslims make up about 97% of Pakistan’s population.

The severe flooding that began in Pakistan in late July has left at least four million Pakistanis homeless and without food or clean drinking water. Aid is coming “slowly and with difficulty,” Fr Rodrigues said.—CNS

Haitian shelters under strain

BY EZRA FIESER

C

ATHOLIC schools and orphanages in the Haitian countryside that took in thousands of children displaced by the January earthquake are buckling under the increased financial strain, administrators say.

Outside of Les Cayes, a city on Haiti’s southwestern peninsula about 190 km from the capital, one school took in 350 children. Another saw its expenses swell by thousands of dollars. Others are running out of space for the new enrollees. Many say they

are struggling to pay the bills.

The January earthquake that destroyed Port-au-Prince and affected 20% of the country did not physically damage many of the social projects of religious orders outside of the capital.

But the Catholic missions that opened their arms to people who fled the city say they are now struggling, and the Church is not helping.

“The Church?

What Church? There has been no support to help most of the families that left Port-auPrince,” said Fr Marc Boisvert, a member of the

Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Fr Boisvert runs Project Hope South, which has an orphanage, five schools and a carpentry-training centre outside of Les Cayes.

He estimates that the schools took in 350 additional students and 100 orphans displaced by the earthquake. He says his budget went from R720 000 to $1,03 million a month after taking in the new students.

He relies on donations from the United States to fund the project.—CNS

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6

LEADER PAGE

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

Using new media

I

F God had delayed the incarnation for 2 000 years, by what means would Jesus have proclaimed his message of redemption and the Kingdom of God? How would St Paul, that supreme communicator, have spread the Good News?

The Church in Southern Africa observes Social Communications Sunday on September 5—this year, suitably, on the anniversary of the death of another great communicator, Mother Teresa. On this day, the Church turns its mind to the way in which it preaches.

In his annual message for World Communication Sunday (of which Social Communications Sunday is the local variant), Pope Benedict quotes St Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.”

The Gospel is preached in many different ways. The priest’s homily at Sunday Mass is the most obvious example.

We may even proclaim the Gospel without saying a word, by deed and by example.

Our evangelisation efforts require individual contact.

But, as St Paul knew when he wrote his letters to Christian communities and as the evangelists acknowledged when they put down the gospels, the Good News and all that is associated with it (even the disagreeable, as we read in various passages in the New Testament) need a broader audience too.

For this reason, Pope Benedict this year encourages priests in particular to make use of the exciting, and perhaps daunting, opportunities presented by modern methods of communication.

The pope wants a clergy that is at home in the digital world. “Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelisation and catechesis,” he wrote.

In doing so, they should

reach out “to those who do not believe, the disheartened, and those who have a deep, unarticulated desire for enduring truth and the absolute”.

Doing so in creative ways may involve having to take risks, of course. Outside delivering their homilies, many priests are cautious about making statements in public because they fear being misunderstood, misquoted, appearing inarticulate or otherwise being open to rebuke.

Clearly, communicating with the public is not a suitable vocation for every priest.

Some will have talents best employed in other fields.

But for those with a faculty (and, of course, the time) to write a blog or engage with people on Facebook, the new media can be a most fertile mission field. It may even be a way of promoting vocations by increasing the visibility of the clergy and presenting the priesthood as an affirming life choice at a time when many Catholics see their priests only at Mass.

But the public engagement of priests also requires tolerance on the part of the Catholic community. If we do not like the way a priest evangelises on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, or disagree with his blogging approaches, he must not be discouraged by denouncements and ugly criticisms. When priests (or, of course, religious sisters and brothers) reach out by innovative means, they should be commended and encouraged—and, if needed, engaged with constructively.

It is perfectly conceivable that Jesus today might use YouTube videos to teach the multitudes, or engage with modern-day Pharisees on blogs.

And St Paul might well use Facebook to let the Corinthians know how he feels about their squabbles—and at the same time inform the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians and Romans of his concerns and joys.

Homosexuality and the Bible N response to Joseph Williams, “Are gay parishioners welcome?”

(August 18), my experience over many years has been that gay people, who comprise at least 10% of the population, are generally very active and certainly welcome and numerous in our Catholic parishes.

Homeosexuality—a genuine preferential attraction to people of one’s own gender—is like heterosexuality: a natural and normal variant of human sexual make-up. It is not something one chooses, as the uninformed imagine. The attraction forms long before puberty, the earliest experiences of the young child.

No single factor causes a particular orientation. Even in today’s world of changing attitudes, gay men and women often lead lives of quiet desperation and anxious secrecy. Who in their right mind would choose a “lifestyle” fraught with such rejection and discrimination?

In a darker age they would have been burned at the stake by the Catholic inquisition. In more recent times, gay men and women have been gassed in Hitler’s concentration camps.

Most experts agree that the condition is as irreversible as heterosexuality. The condition is not a sickness; therefore the attraction itself cannot be sinful.

I

What does the Bible say? Neither the actual narrative concerning Sodom and Gommorah (Gen 19:129), nor the preceding references, demand that the immediate sin of the Sodomites was sexual, let alone homosexual in nature.

The Hebrew word yadha—to know—also means to observe, so it is more reasonable to think that “the two strangers” were considered spies for neighbouring enemies. On 15 occasions elsewhere, another word, shakah, describes homosexual relations in Scripture.

Today’s biblical scholars see the subject of the Sodom story as one of gross inhospitality. The offer of Lot’s daughters is a possible diversion to avoid the sacred duty of hospitality, which was more important than the honour of Lot’s daughters.

In any event, Lot must have been incredibly stupid to offer his daughters if the intent of the men was homosexual rape!

No references to Sodom is given in any of the Old or New Testament texts prohibiting same-sex vices, whether in Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians or 1 Timothy. Jesus refered to Sodom only in the context of inhospitality. It was only in later centuries that the idea of same-sex rape came into the Sodom episode.

True, homosexual acts are con-

demned by the Bible. In the same chapters of Leviticus, marital relations during the menstrual period are prohibited; celibacy is seen as abnormal. Nudity is judged reprehensible even in the presence of one’s family, yet polygamy and concubinage are regularly allowed among the Hebrews. They could not eat rabbit or ham, nor cut their hair or wear fabrics of blended materials. Men could not clip their beards and women could not don male attire, nor could farmers plant two types of crops in a single field.

All these were described as abominations. Looked at today, we can see that many of these prohibitions were culturally conditioned.

Scripture is full of close, intimate, same-sex relationships. Ruth made an extraordinary commitment with Naomi, even after death to lie inseperably by her side. David asserted that his love for Jonathan was for him “more wonderful that the love of a woman” (2 Sam 1:26).

St Aelred of Rievaulx, who was undoubtedly gay, idealised same-sex attachements.

Why are these examples in scripture? For our edification and to approve, encourage and even praise multiple variants in human relationships.

John Lee, Johannesburg

Christ’s bride

Do they care?

T

M

Ignorance or intolerance?

HE letter “Crime against faith” (August 4) by Ivor Bailey refers.

In the 21st century our understanding of theology is still evolving but God’s revelation remains constant—Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

Can the teaching of the Venerable Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body shed light on why the priesthood is for men only? The late pope proposed that from the begining, marriage has been the primordial sacrament, that the nuptual union and resulting children are a visible sign of an invisible reality— the love of the Trinity.

Being made male and female, a woman’s body is designed for receptivity and man’s for donation; in this complimentary, not sameness, lies the answer to an all male priesthood.

In the fifth chapter of St Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, human marriage is compared to Christ’s marriage with the Church, Christ is the bridegroom—the donor and the Church is the bride—the receiver.

Mystically the priest being in persona Christi marries his bride the Church, he is the bridegroom, you can’t have a female groom. It’s a case of the invisible made visible by the physical.

Jan Kalinowski, Assagay, KZN

Refreshing change

I

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ERVYN Pollitt’s letter (August 18) comes as a breath of fresh air. He calls for an urgent review of the Church’s approach to marrriage and divorce, birth control and priestly celibacy.

The worldwide shame brought upon the Church by the priests’ sex abuse scandal and the Church’s ineffectual and disgraceful response to it, has created a situation which needs immediate action.

We, the laity of the Church, should demand that the Vatican convenes a Vatican III Council in which the laity has full representation. No Church discipline, particularly that relating to the subjects raised by Mr Pollitt, should be regarded as sacrosanct. Nor should the Church’s current teaching be regarded as immutable.

The Church is being forced to act hypocritically because Church teachings are now so out of touch with the realities of modern life.

The future of the Catholic Church is at stake. It is losing credibility at an alarming rate. My concern is: is anybody in authority in the Church listening? And do they care?

Henk Rubidge, Cape Town

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Box 818, Hazyview, 1242.

Tel (013) 737 0088, 076 514 5411

N the article by Chris Moerdyk “So far and no further” (August 10), it is refreshing to read a man’s recognition of the discrimination against women in the Church.

If a woman were to write in a similar vein, some would brand her as a “feminist” in a derogatory sense or a disobedient daughter of the Church, since the Church has stated in the strongest terms “thus far and no further” is the place of women.

We love our Church and to be faithful can sometimes mean to choose between speaking our truth or remaining silent. In the long run it is the truth that will set us free.

Monica Shanley IBVM, Cape Town 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.

I

ATTENDED a Requiem Mass recently which was well attended by Catholics and many Christians from other denominations. Just prior to the distribution of Holy Communion, one of the parish deacons eloquently explained why Communion was reserved for practising Catholics only.

Upon hearing this, a woman sitting in front of me burst out laughing while the deacon was still speaking. Sheer ignorance or just plain embarrassment?

It appears that we still have a long way to go before others will accept the position of the Church so that they may be in full communion with our Catholic faith.

Colin Arendse, Cape Town

Leaderless flock

A

S a faithful and devoted Catholic, I am deeply concerned that St Patrick’s Church in La Rochelle, Johannesburg, has been without a permanent priest for over two months.

The two priests who were there—Frs Lazlo Kapita and Michel Musonda—were moved out for reasons best known to the bishop. St Patrick’s is a vibrant church with over 500 parishioners.

Many of the parishioners are becoming sceptical, frustrated and wondering what is going on.

There is a priest that comes to say Mass on a Friday evening and Sunday morning, but there is no permanent priest who is there to be available to parishioners who need spiritual guidance and nurturing.

In the endless wave of scandals that has been rocking the Catholic Church around the world, it is all the more important for the religious authorities to go the extra mile to make sure that the sheep (parishioners) are kept in the fold and do not go astray.

The failure to assign a permanent priest to St Patrick’s can have long-term repercussions.

I strongly urge the archbishop to assign a permanent priest to the parish so that the sheep can be led by their shepherd and that we continue to profess the “one holy Catholic and apostolic faith”.

Walter Middleton, Johannesburg

MEDIA

Catholics and media freedom Even if the media sometimes lacks in quality, it must be entirely free. This even benefits of those who are being examined and criticised, argues CHRIS CHATTERIS SJ.

T

HE current debate about the proposal by the African National Congress to establish a Media Appeals Tribunal and pass the Protection of Information Act ought to prompt some Catholic introspection on our own attitude to media freedom.

Some of our Church’s more severe critics might find the mention of Catholicism and media freedom in the same phrase laughable. Certainly, we have had to do some serious catching up since the Inquisition and the index of forbidden books.

The 1974 document on the media by Pope Paul VI, Communio et Progressio, was a leap forward into the modern world of media freedom. The central image in this document is a “great round table” to which all sections of society are invited, including the poor and those whose voice is normally drowned out by the voices of the powerful.

By definition a round table does not have a “head” and therefore its shape is intrinsically democratic and inclusive. Paul VI saw the round table of the modern media as an open space where great things could be achieved—the poor could find their voice, education and healthcare could become more widely available and critical voices be raised on political and social questions.

The media, both secular and religious, try to realise these democratic ideals in practice. Most media these days pride themselves as being “interactive”: debate is built in, either through telephone, e-mail or blogging. Responses to media events are often judged by how many “tweets” they produce.

Many debate-based TV and radio programmes have a studio audience who express their opinions by commenting or voting.

It’s our own house I want to look at, and my question is the extent to which we believe and practise what Paul VI preached.

First, let us look at a symbol older than the round table. A local South African Christian-run radio station is called Radio Pulpit. The pulpit itself would not normally be thought of as a powerful medium of communication these days, but I suspect that it continues to exercise a strong and abiding influence on ecclesiastical attitudes towards the media and communication in general.

The fact is that the pulpit (preaching) is still the usual way in which Christian priests and ministers communicate. It is no round table. It has height rather than breadth. The pulpit is normally a medium of one-way communication.

Indeed it is one of the last forms of communication in which there is normally no built-in dialogue. A Zimbabwean priest-friend of mine recently told me how surprised he was during the course of a homily to have a hand raised and a question put to him.

This abiding pulpit-paradigm means that a habitual experience of communication of the Church’s leadership does not normally involve anyone asking questions or writing critical reviews or publishing a reply. Feedback is neither expected nor invited.

Imagine if Father’s homily was not only printed in the parish newsletter but that he also invited comments on it like journalists invite comments on their articles

in the papers or on their Internet blogs! (Come to think of it, why not?)

T

he “great round table” is therefore a wonderful ideal, but powerful organisations frequently have a hard time putting it into practice because of the institutional instinct for the control of the exercise of public discourse. All powerful institutions (not just the ANC and the government) are constantly tempted to control the flow of information to their advantage.

The problem with this very understandable and human reaction is that in the long run, it is self-defeating. The institution’s refusal to listen and its dissemination of carefully controlled information means it will simply cease to be taken seriously.

Who, except for their authors, reads those government-sponsored advertisements in the newspapers glorifying the achievements of this or that government department? Official media organs of large institutions, particularly state broadcasters, are generally mistrusted or under-subscribed. It takes a very mature institution with confidence in its mission and in the value of the search for truth, to take the round table vision seriously.

But take it seriously we should.

John Allen of the American National Catholic Reporter makes the important point that the Church, like all institutions, positively needs a free and competent press to keep her on her toes.

It’s terribly important for media reports on the Church to be as professionally done as, for example, those on the economy or even sport. As we know from experience, this is often not the case.

Journalists who report on Church matters are frequently embarrassingly ignorant of the institution about which they are reporting or on which they are commenting. They know no theology; they get basic concepts and terms wrong; and they frequently take a condescending attitude as though they are peering with curiosity at some weird subculture rather than a world faith which has been around for a couple of millennia.

Allen reasons that if reports on the Church are weak and illinformed, it becomes far too easy to dismiss such journalism as not being professional enough and therefore simply not worth rebuffing. Allen makes a good point. The Church, as a human and therefore sinful institution, needs the press watchdog as much as any other organisation, but if the watchdog is clearly incompetent or driven by sheer ill-will, it can be safely ignored or even mocked as impossible to take seriously.

The logic of the argument here is that large institutions should welcome high-quality media attention because it is ultimately good for them. In the short term a devastating analysis or a penetrating investigative piece can hurt, but in the longer term it can only do the institution good if it is well produced and on the mark. Even if, from time to time, the media go over the top and seem to treat us unfairly, in the context of the wider need to be accountable, these occasions when we get treated unfairly are worth putting up with.

Like governments and powerful political parties, all big institutions—business, trade unions and organised religion—need a free press, a “great round table”. It’s one of the mechanisms of liberty which keeps them honest.  Fr Chatteris is a Southern Cross columnist and journalist associated with the Jesuit Institute South Africa in Johannesburg.

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

7

September 5 is Social Communications Sunday ‘New media at the service of the Word’

BELOVED AND BLESSED: Biblical wisdom for family life Kimberly Hahn The third in a series of biblical studies based on Proverbs 31 offers tools to help you strengthen your marriage and raise your children, creating a civilisation of love in your home. Applying scripture, church teaching and pastoral wisdom, she helps you explore: marital intimacy, responsible parenthood, facing the financial future without fear, strategies for disciplining and instructing children, and trusting God when parenting hurts 2010 pb 249pp R140.00 CARDINAL NEWMAN: The story of a miracle Peter Jennings This CTS booklet contains the story of Jack Sullivan, a Boston lawyer and magistrate, who, on turning sixty, developed a debilitating illness, from which, after praying to John Henry Newman he was miraculously cured 2009 booklet 64pp R37.00 THE COMPLETE CHILDREN’S LITURGY BOOK: A comprehensive programme for every Sunday of the Lectionary of A, B & C Katie Thompson A step by step guide for the liturgist and a photocopiable children’s activity page to take home for every Sunday 1995/2005 pb large format R410.00 HEART OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: Thoughts on Holy Mass Benedict XVI Delivered in addresses and homilies to a wide variety of audiences, these reflections reveal the depth and breadth of Pope Benedict’s profound and life-long love for the Holy Eucharist. He challenges us to believe that by receiving Christ in Holy Communion, we are drawn not only into the community that is Christ’s body, the church, but into the very life of God 2010 hc 117pp R150.00 NAVIGATING THE GOSPELS: LUKE Philip Fogarty SJ Based on the work of contemporary scripture scholars, and using the New Revised Standard Version of the gospels, he offers some overall insights into the gospel. While it is important to understand what the evangelist means, the reader is also invited to let the gospel speak to the heart as well as the head 2009 pb 133pp R145.00 OPENING DOORS OF TRUTH AND LOVE: 20 Teen prayer services S Kevin Regan These stories, prayers, questions, and scripture readings are offered to support youth ministers, catechists, teachers, retreat directors and parish leaders in their efforts to bring Christ’s truth and love into the lives of teenagers. Themes that shape these services include selfidentity, uniqueness, friendship, the lure of alcohol and other drugs, grieving, prayer and vocation 2005 pb large format 90pp R166.00 Order from: * monthly e-mail book list on request

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The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

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MEDIA

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

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Social Media: Meeting people where they are The Church in Southern Africa has been slow to use the opportunities of social networking on digital media platforms for the purpose of evangelisation and ministry ,but this may be changing as CLAIRE MATHIESON reports.

P

OPE Benedict in his message for World Communications Day 2010 encouraged priests— and by extension the whole Church—to use digital media to evangelise.

While most Southern African priests and churches have yet to embrace social media, there are some who believe it is key to modern-day ministry.

Fr Gregory Mitchell of the St Philp Neri Oratory in Port Elizabeth is one of them. He is the creator of the Facebook page “Port Elizabeth Catholics�, which allows for online ministry and information sharing. “We use social media because it is the way that the younger generations communicate. Even newspapers are unfortunately not the source of information for most people anymore,� Fr Mitchell said.

Fr Thembelani Ngcobo, youth vicar for the archdiocese of Durban, said the move to new media was spurred on by Pope John Paul II following the 1994 Synod of Bishops

for Africa when he spoke about inculturation. Fr Ngcobo said it was important to “use the culture of the day to spread the Gospel�.

Traditional communication platforms of newspaper, television and radio primarily allow for information to flow in one direction, whereas social media on the Internet and cellphones allow for greater interaction between the creators of content and consumers. In this way, social media use web-based and telecommunication technologies to provide areas of dialogue.

Fr Mitchell said people in today’s society “expect to be aware of things via these social media, and if they are not aware of, or do not have access to information about the Church and the faith in the same way, they may regrettably remain ignorant. We must explore every avenue to bring the Good News of Jesus to all people�. “On Facebook I can reach over 2000 people in less than a minute through my Catholic Youth SA group,� said Fr Ngcobo.

He said the technology is the new way of evangelising. The Church has supported print, he said, and it should do the same with social media.

Fr Chris Townsend, information officer of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) is a self-confessed “happy Facebooker�. He was part of the team that set up the SACBC’s Church On the Ball website (www.churchontheball.com) to coincide with the football World

An image of Pope Benedict is seen on the Vatican website as displayed on an Apple iPod touch.

PHOTO: ALESSANDRO BIANCHI, REUTERS/CNS

Cup. The site proved to be a success.

Fr Mitchell noted the increased online visibility of the Southern African Church during the 2010 World Cup and other large-scale events, but said visibility has not been maintained. “There are always more opportunities to use [social media]. If this is where the population ‘exists’—even only virtually—then that is where we must meet them to bring them closer to Christ and his Church.�

One of the most active Catholic groups on the Internet is the congregation of the Daughters of St Paul, whose charism is to use the “fastest and most efficacious means� to reach people with the Gospel message. “The Internet is like a a journal of catholic reflection dream come true for us, for southern africa because it allows each sister to have an almost universal reach,� said Sr Anne Flana Private Bag 6004, Hilton 3245, South Africa. gan of Chicago, Illinois, in Tel: 033 343 5932 or 033 5920. Fax: 033 343 1232 an e-mail interview.

E-mail: Managing Editor: wency@sjti.ac.za “My Chicago communiSubs: gracetruth@sjti.ac.za ty has a monthly ‘Theology of the Body’ study group, which we open up to the world via the free video Grace and Truth is a theological journal of St Joseph’s Theological streaming service at Institute (Cedara) published three times a year, in April, August and Ustream.tv. Once we had participants, live, from the November. Increase your knowledge and deepen your faith through Netherlands, United Kingtheological reflections on themes like; Leadership, Spirituality and dom, India, Canada and Justice, Church without Eucharist? and many more. across the United Statesdespite the time difference,� she said.

With so many people being connected in a forum that encourages commentary, two-way communication is possible. Standard websites allow for information displays, whereas social media allow for information sharing.

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Kensington, Johannesburg), manage 29 publishing houses, run radio and television stations and 38 websites.

Sr Flanagan herself runs a “Nun blog�, a personal Facebook page, a YouTube channel, Twitter and Plurk accounts, and she interacts with people on the website lovetobecatholic.com. One of the order’s most popular initiatives is “Ask a Nun� on Facebook, where anyone can do just that (there is a mirror page, “Ask a Priest�).

Sr Flanagan said the Pauline Sisters are now working to develop applications for the iPhone and Android cellphone operating systems.

Sr Flanagan said the platform allows her to address a vast and varied audience on issues relating to Catholic life and faith. “I have never been appointed to vocation ministry, but for ten years, I have been carrying it out.�

Fr Mitchell said if social media was the way forward for communication for the world, then “obviously it has to be the way forward for communication for the Church�. He said the online community is always looking for information. Sometimes the questions were factual and other times spiritual. These answers could be available online.

The Vatican itself is a prime example using its website for more than just text. Information, news and webcams displaying various Vatican sights, including St Peter’s Square and the tomb of Pope John Paul II, are easily found online. The Vatican also has a presence on YouTube, with more than 745 videos uploaded directly to the Vatican’s channel. This does not include the many thousands from private users.

Typing in the word “Catholic� into the Facebook search reveals 53 000 results, including pages on discussion of the religion, Catholic News Service, priests and nuns who

have extended their services to the internet and parishes who are interacting with their parishioners online.

The Southern Cross also has a Facebook presence (http://tinurl.com/scross-fb), and the comments section on its website (www.scross.co.za) often provokes lively debate.

The biggest group of social media consumers is currently 1634-year-olds, and this range is due to increase in age as younger users grow into the media and older users grow with it.

Fr Mitchell said social media had been particularly effective in communicating with the youth. Despite this, the demographic with the most rapid growth on the website is women aged 55 plus which shows potential for such ministries to grow further.

For Fr Ngcobo, social media enables a connection with people with whom he otherwise might not have contact. “I am in touch with what is happening around me and the people I minister to. Some people don't attend weekday Masses but through social media we are able to give them a Christian thought or verse. Quite a number of personal relationships and friendships have been made and sustained through social media.�

The priest emphasised of the need for the Church, on every level, to embrace social media due to its potential reach.

Sr Flanagan acknowledged that there were many people who were not online. Nonetheless, “we do our best to meet those we can where we can�. The Internet, she said, was a place of limitless interaction.

The most commonly used social media today include video content from YouTube, picture and commentary on Facebook and up to the minute updates from Twitter.

Today on YouTube, content worth 24 hours is uploaded every minute, and 70% of that is from outside the United States. Facebook currently has half a billion users and 150 million users accessing the site through their cellphones. These users combined spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Currently, the number of Twitter users increases by 300 000 people daily.

Not only can Internet users benefit from the presence of the Church online, but with such numbers the Church could grow through the Internet. The Internet was once inundated with pornography, but today the number one use of the Internet is social communication. “Technology has improved and saved many people. It is worth purifying and embracing it,� said Fr Ngcobo

The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Office for Communication and Media The Vatican Pastoral Instruction Aetatis Novae emphasises the Church’s need to engage with the mass media and major events and issues of the times – an engagement that is informative, interpretative and critical. Through the media the Church fulfils its evangelising mission by conveying Gospel values to our society. Through social communications the Church tries to be an influence for good in the way people think and behave, striving to build a world of greater justice, compassion and hope.

Print, television and radio journalists call the Office for Communication and Media for the Church's opinion on specific events or issues, either at national or international level. The office also produces appropriate press releases in response to happenings in society that have moral and social implications.

The office is the interface between the media and the bishops. The Information Officer does research and collects information for drafting statements on specific issues and is a source of contact details of suitable Catholic specialists who could comment on particular topics on television or radio programmes.

The office serves Khanya House departments in media matters, organises press conferences for the bishops and other church personnel, and communicates church news to Catholic media.

www.sacbc.org.za

10

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

Publishers of the popular Catholic Link and many other pastoral booklets and pamphlets.

We are networked with other Redemptorist publishing houses internationally.

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MEDIA

Guidelines on using Facebook, Twitter for evangelisation

BY MARK PATTISON

T

HE US Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a set of guidelines for using social media, especially as social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter continue to gain in popularity.

The guidelines call on Catholics to “engage social media in a manner that is safe, responsible and civil”.

“My hope is that they’ll be a useful resource to people, especially to dioceses and parishes that are interested in using social media,” said Helen Osman, the conference’s secretary for communications.

“The Church can use social media to encourage respect, dialogue, and honest relationships—in other words, ‘true friendship’,” the guidelines say, quoting from Pope Benedict’s 2010 World Communications Day message. “To do so requires us to approach social media as a powerful means of evangelisation and to consider the Church’s role in providing a Christian perspective on digital literacy.”

The guidelines point to visibility, community and accountability as three principal areas where the Church can make a positive mark in social media.

“The key question that faces each Church organisation that decides to engage social media is: How will we engage? Careful consideration should be made to determine the particular strengths of each form of social media,” which include blogs, text messages and social networks, and the needs of a ministry, parish, or organisation. “The strengths should match the needs,” the guidelines say.

“In the case of social media, the axiom ‘build it and they will come’ is not applicable. It is important to set internal expectations regarding how often posts will be made, so that your followers can become accustomed to your schedule,” the guidelines said.

Social media can be powerful tools for strengthening community, according to the guidelines. “Although social media interaction should not be viewed as a substitute for face-to-face gatherings.

Social media can support communities in a myriad of ways,” including connecting people with similar interests, sharing information about in-person events and providing ways for people to engage in dialogue.

“It is important that creators and site

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HE Southern Cross is launching an innovative way of giving Catholic parishes, dioceses, schools, organisations, religious orders, institutes and even businesses easy access to spreading their presence on the Internet.

The Southern Cross Press Offices “provide a cost-effective, professional and measurable way of distributing a parish’s or organisations news to the Catholic Community of Southern Africa”, said Southern Cross webmaster Sean Twomey (pictured).

“Each Press Office includes an online page representing the parish, diocese, school or organisation. On top of that, it may include 12 press release submissions per year,” he said.

The page can contain regular information such as a profile, photos, contact details, Mass times and “branding”.

On top of these standing items, the Press Office will feature a monthly news update.

“Press releases, which are submitted to us, will not only be displayed on the individual Press Office page, but also on the front-page of The Southern Cross’ website as well as in our weekly email newsletter,” Mr Twomey said.

There will be a link to the Press Office section on the front-page of The Southern Cross’ website.

The Press Office idea is a well-tested and successful concept in the business world, Mr Twomey said, adding that the Church’s different institutions can benefit from adopting sound business principles to enhance their own visibility.

“Pope Benedict in his message for World Communication Day 2010 encouraged Catholics, especially priests and religious leaders, to embrace digital communication and get active on the Internet,” Mr Twomey said.

However, Mr Twomey said, he has seen many parish and other Catholic websites that have not been updated in years, “probably because nobody in the parish has the time or technical skill to maintain a website”. The Press Office address that problem. “All that is needed is for somebody in a parish or diocese to send us their latest news. We do the rest. With the Press Office, there is a system already in place.”

He also noted that very few dioceses in Southern Africa have websites. “The Press Office provides bishops and dioceses with a great opportunity to communicate with the faithful and broader public.”

Mr Twomey said the Press Office is a very flexible concept. “It can serve as a website on its own, or it can be used in conjunction with an existing site to which the Press Office might also direct new traffic.”

He said it is easy and affordable to set up a Press Office with The Southern Cross.

 For more information, please contact Sean Twomey at pressoffices@scross.co.za or 021 465 5007.

administrators of social media understand how much social media are different from mass media and the expectations of their consumers,” the guidelines say. “Social media’s emphasis is on the word ‘social’, with a general blurring of the distinction between creators of content and consumers of content.”

The USCCB’s own Facebook page lays out ground rules: “All posts and comments should be marked by Christian charity and respect for the truth. They should be on topic and presume the good will of other posters. Discussion should take place primarily from a faith perspective.”

The guidelines recommend always blocking usage by anyone who does not abide by an established code of conduct.

“Do not allow those unwilling to dialogue to hold your site and its other members hostage,” it said.

“You would think as Catholics you wouldn’t have to remind us to play nice, but it was in every set of guidelines I looked at,” Ms Osman said.  The guidelines can be accessed at www.usccb.org/comm/social-mediaguidelines.shtml

PERSPECTIVES

Dynamite on shoulders

Henry Makori

Reflections of my Life

A crisis of communication

A

FEW years ago, I attended a meeting of senior Church officials where a priest with many years of experience as a journalist suggested an idea which, if adopted at the time, could well have changed the outcome of Kenya’s referendum on a new constitution on August 4.

The “Yes” side grabbed victory, running away with 67% of the vote against the “No” side which, supported by nearly all church leaders, trailed at a distance. The churches were opposed to the draft constitution mainly because of a clause that could be used to legalise abortion-on-demand. The proposed law also retained Muslim courts, which in the view of Church leaders amounted to elevating one religion above the rest in a secular state.

How could the “No” side lose in a country said to be up to 80% Christian? The subject has been discussed endlessly in Kenya. Quite apart from the fact that the new constitution is a far better supreme law than what we inherited from British colonialists and that it was supported by large sections of Kenyan society, it is believed the Church’s opposition failed because Church leaders are no longer heeded by the faithful.

In fact, an opinion poll by the respected Synovate group shortly after the referendum showed that only about 19% of Christians trusted their spiritual leaders on public issues.

The priest-journalist’s idea a few years back could have changed much of that. He had suggested that the Social Communications Department of the Kenya Episcopal Conference should get the e-mail addresses of all the priests working in the country.

Whenever the bishops issued a statement, they should not just read it at a news conference. The document should also be posted immediately to all the priests around the country, with instructions that it be translated into vernacular (where English or Kiswahili is not widely used) and then read out at Mass on Sunday.

In the dioceses, communications coordinators should also have the e-mail addresses of all the priests and send them the bishop’s official documents every time he issued them. That way, the Church leaders’ positions on important issues would be well known to the faithful.

Kenyan bishops speak out often. But their messages hardly reach the faithful. The matter basically ends at the news conference, which could get only a few minutes in prime-time news in the event that editors decide it is important. That was the problem the priest-journalist wanted to solve with his simple e-mail idea. But nobody took it up.

Over 70% of Kenyans rely solely on radio for news and information. Yet the Catholic Church has one small national radio that is heard only within 150km of the studios in Nairobi. The station is at the bottom of the broadcasting pile because it lacks resources, competent personnel and official interest.

The furthest the national Catholic monthly magazine reaches is probably the diocesan offices. There are a few other magazines published by religious congregations or institutions.

Because Church media in Kenya is woefully inadequate, the bishops have to use the vibrant secular media. They buy space or airtime at exorbitant rates. Or they can do news conferences and wait for their detailed pastoral letters to come out as mere sound bites taken out of context or a few column inches in the newspapers.

The result? Organisations and institutions with deep pockets saturate the media with their messages and the Church is obscured.

That is mostly what happened during the referendum campaigns.

In the last week, “Yes” teams ran adverts accusing the Church of spreading lies about the proposed law. An informed source told me Church officials crafted their own adverts in response. But they were told by media houses that it was well past the deadline for campaign adverts set by the elections commission.

My point? Our Church urgently needs to address its communication crisis. That is what the priest-journalist had in mind with his e-mail idea.

We live in the information age. If you are not seen or heard in the media, you simply don’t exist.

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

Last week, in part four of Fr Austin’s series on the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman, we observed the fall-out from his conversion to Catholicism, and his unsuccessful bid to establish a Catholic university in Ireland.

I

T was in Dublin that Newman delivered his lectures on university education which were to be published later as The Idea of a University.

He insisted that theology—an important component of the complete circle of knowledge which is the great interconnected whole of God’s creation—be part of the curriculum of a true university.

“Knowledge is one thing, virtue and religion another,” he wrote. “It would be easier to quarry granite with razor blades or moor a ship with silk, than hope to contend with human pride and passions by means of knowledge and reason alone. The entire living situation or community dimension that surrounds and permeates academic discipline must be directed towards the development and support of Christian faith and morals.

“Only a Catholic university is able to raise up gentlemen of cultivated intellect, moral character and religious faith as the Church breathes life and well-being into the bare bones of a university education. This then is the idea, this is the ideal.”

The Irish experience clearly proved to Newman what he always suspected: namely that the Catholic clergy and bishops, and even the leaders in Rome, were unwilling or incapable of facing the significance of the role of laity in the Church.

As with many of Newman’s convictions, this was to eventuate only after Vatican II. Fr Newman wrote some articles in The Rambler, a Catholic magazine, that provoked great consternation among the hierarchy. Indeed he even described his writings in The Rambler as “walking into a burning house with a box of dynamite on my shoulders”.

Newman requested in these articles that the bishops respect the faith of the laymen and set aside their fears of consulting them. Once again he searched the long history of the Church in support of his views. He reminded the bishops that in the course of history and in certain nations, on more than one occasion, it had been the laity who had preserved the true faith when the bishops had abandoned it.

These articles, naturally, did little to increase his popularity with the English bishops. His own bishop, William Ullathorne of Birmingham—who was usually favourably disposed towards him—carpeted Fr Newman. One of the more memorable questions that the bishop put to him on this occasion was: “And who, dear Dr Newman, are the laity?” To which Newman made a pithy reply: “The Church would look very silly without them.”

I

t was on account of these articles on the role of the laity in the Church— whose ideas were to prove seminal for the council fathers of Vatican II—that Newman’s orthodoxy was questioned by the English hierarchy and officials of the Holy Office in Rome. He was considered to be unstable and erratic by many Anglicans, still smarting from his defection from their ranks.

Thus, he found himself mistrusted, scorned and despised by both the Catholics whom he had joined and the Protestants that he had left. His sufferings increased during the debate on

papal infallibility that preceded the first Vatican Council in 1869.

Newman opposed the definition because he felt that the time was not right for such a pronouncement. He was also uncomfortable with the extreme views of the papacy vociferously propounded by the Ultramontane party.

This extremist group was led by the ex-Anglican Charles Manning, now archbishop of Westminster, and the journalist Wilfred Ward, who was editor of the Dublin Review. Threatened by the inroads of modern thought such as Darwinism in science and liberalism in politics, this party tended to overemphasise the dogmatic aspects of Catholicism symbolised by papal authority which resided “beyond the mountain”—the Alps.

A

t the time of Vatican I the Ultramontane viewpoint dominated the English Catholic press and its adherents mounted a frenzied campaign that almost turned the pope into an oracle totally independent of the Church.

They did not hesitate to attack Newman for his more moderate view. It was the extreme view typified by Ward who flamboyantly declared: “I should like to find an infallible papal pronouncement every morning on my breakfast table.”

In his study of the early Church, Newman had noticed that popes had always seemed to act in disputed matters of faith as if they had the right to the last word. It seemed as if they, too, shared in Christ’s guarantee to his Church that the Holy Spirit would protect it from error and guide it into truth. So Newman did accept the idea of the infallibility of the pope: that the bishop of Rome as head of the Church on earth, under very special circumstances, was protected from officially teaching serious error.

But Newman was very careful not to exaggerate the place of this extraordinary charism in the Church: “A pope is not inspired; he has no inherent gift of knowledge, but when he speaks ex cathedra he may say little or much, but he is simply protected from saying what is untrue.”

When the council fathers at Vatican I officially defined papal infallibility in 1870, its understanding of the pope’s role in the Church was remarkably similar to Newman’s own moderate view and very different from the extravagant views of the Ultramontanists. Ever loyal to the Church, he defended the dogma and tried to calm English fears that it did not imply the surrender of one’s reason, conscience or mind to Rome.

Returning to the theme of the primacy of a person’s conscience in a letter to the duke of Norfolk, the premier duke of England who had been educated at Newman’s own Oratory School, he made the bold statement: “It is never lawful to go against conscience…

If I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the pope, if you please—still, to conscience first and to the pope afterward.”  Due to an editing error, last week’s article inaccurately stated that John Henry Newman had been ordained in Rome’s basilica of John Lateran. He was, in fact, ordained in the chapel at Propaganda College. We apologise for the error.

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Michael Shackleton answers your question

Open Door

Michael Austin SJ

The Newman Chronicles

Pray that AFRICA may draw closer to the heart of CHRIST

11

In defence of Mother Teresa Mother Teresa of Calcutta has been accused of having been a hard-line conservative whose clinics were poorly run and who did nothing to alleviate poverty with the money she raised. How can we answer these allegations?

OTHER Teresa’s commitment was to the poorest of the poor who lived and died on the streets. Her motivation was not directly to undertake philanthropic work, if that means finding housing and healthy living conditions for the distressed. Her aim was to do what Jesus told us: “In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 24:40).

Mother Teresa made it clear that she and her Missionaries of Charity were called to do small things with great love, and this love was to find expression here and now in caring for those diseased, weak and dying people that nobody else was prepared to look after.

She worked in the context of Calcutta’s impoverished hordes, not in the circumstances of the ready availability of hospitals and efficient emergency services. She would physically comfort and support the weak, saying that if they had never had love and respect before, she and her Missionaries would give it to them before they died.

The arguments for and against Mother Teresa’s work and methods will not be resolved without an appreciation of the deepest meaning of Christian love, that is, a humble and unconditional love for others.

As a faithful Christian, Mother Teresa saw her work as Christ’s work. She accepted the Church’s condemnation of abortion, but it would be wrong to brand her as a hard-line traditionalist without knowing all the circumstances of the stand she took on the issues of the day in Calcutta.

People in India and beyond admired her for her simple life in the service of others.

When she died in 1997, the streets of Calcutta were brought to a standstill by the enormous crowds that came to pay her tribute.

Aside from her receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979, she was awarded many other international honours, and India regards her as one of its greatest boasts. It seems a bit rash to pick on her now as a failed philanthropist.

M

 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.

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12

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

COMMUNITY Karen Adriaanse celebrated her 50th birthday with a thanksgiving Mass at Catholic Charismatic Renewal Holy Spirit Centre in Maitland, Cape Town. She was blessed by Fr Emmanuel Siljeur.

Members of Holy Redeemer church in Bergvliet, Cape Town, venerate the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux. The relics are currently touring South Africa.

SUBMITTED BY SIBYL MORRIS Members of the Bosco Youth Ministry team ran a retreat for Grade 3 learners with the theme “Friendship with Jesus”. With the learners are Br Clarence Watts (left) and volunteers Kutloano Moekoena (centre) and Mandla Mavuso (front).

CONGREGATION OF MARIANNHILL MISSIONARIES

Members of the Bosco Youth Ministry Team attended an end-of-term Mass at Brescia House School in Bryanston, Johannesburg.

Pictured are members of the youth ministry and learners from Brescia House.

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

Bishop Barry Wood OMI, auxilary in Durban, blesses the control tower at King Shaka International Airport in Durban.

IN FOCUS

Edited by Nadine Christians

Send photographs, with sender’s name and address on the back, and a SASE to: The Southern Cross, Community Pics, Box 2372, Cape Town, 8000 or email them to: pics@scross.co.za

Young parishioners of St Thomas parish in Station Hill, Port Alfred, and Sacred Heart parish in Alexandria, Port Elizabeth, after their First Communion.

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LIFE

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

13

Prayers outside an abortion clinic A group of Catholics meets once a month to pray outside an abortion clinic, but also offer pregnant women in desperate circumstances alternatives.

KATJA HAMILTON reports.

O

NCE a month on a Saturday, a group of Catholics gather in Bree Street in the Cape Town central business district to pray.

The management of the Marie Stopes Clinic is up in arms about the praying group outside its premises. The clinic, among other services, offers abortions; the praying people outside are protesting against it.

Marie Stopes’ management say that having the group outside infringes on their clients’ right to privacy and obstructs access to reproductive healthcare.

“Although we respect the protesters’ right to freedom of speech, we feel that obstructing access to the clinic is an irresponsible stance for any group to take,” says Andrea Ketteringham, media liaison officer of Marie Stopes South Africa.

“Women have told us that the protesters had no right to make them feel guilty and to try to deter them from accessing termination services, when the protesters had no idea of the circumstances surrounding their decision,” she said.

“Women have also told us they felt intimidated by the protesters, even though they were coming in for a pap smear, not a termination of pregnancy.”

People come to Marie Stopes clinics for a wide range of services including HIV testing, pap smears, gynaecological check-ups, and contraception, she said.

But those who gather in front of the clinic feel they have no choice but to raise awareness of what is happening at the clinic.

“We’re not harassing” the women coming to the clinic, said Sally Hall, who heads The Helpers of Precious Infants in Cape Town.

She acknowledged her group’s presence might be perceived as

Members of The Helpers of Precious Infants pray outside Marie Stopes Clinic. Members believe a woman has alternatives to abortion.

PHOTOS: KATJA HAMILTON being intimidating.

“But the reality is they’re killing human beings in that building. If we believe that [the foetus] really is a human being, then we have no choice. We really have no choice but to go there. Someone must love that baby, even if it’s just us,” Ms Hall said.

“We go there to be God’s instruments, to pray for the women and for their unborn baby.

Some people may think we can stop people from having abortions but we can’t. [Pregnant women] have got free will just as much as we’ve got free will. We can't stop them from going there.

“We are there because we want God to have mercy on them, and to offer help to women who are unsure about their decision. This is the only way that we can assail this overwhelming evil that is too much for us.”

The Catholic group was founded in South Africa in 1996 when the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act was passed. It has been conducting its prayer vigils in front of the Marie Stopes Clinic since its operation started at the Fountain Medical Centre in

Cape Town.

The Helpers models its practices on the pro-life group founded by Mgr Phillip Reilly in Brooklyn, New York in 1989.

Its prayer vigil begins with a Mass in the chapel at the Salesians Institute in Green Point. After Mass the priest leads a procession from Somerset Road to the abortion clinic and prays 15 decades of the rosary. The ritual ends with the group kneeling in silence for a minute.

“We talk about choice. They [the pregnant women] go there because they have no other choice, or they feel they have no other choice. [But] in order to make a choice you’ve got to be able to have different options. If your only option is abortion, then you're not making a choice. So we would be able to really offer some type of choice,” Ms Hall said.

M

s Hall runs the Mater Domini Home, a home for women in pregnancy crisis in Pinelands, which opened in September 2007.

She said the home offers pregnant women a choice, particularly those who are financially dependent on

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families and partners who give them ultimatums to have an abortion. “We try to provide a sanctuary to women who are in need.

Here we can concentrate on the unborn child and also on the expectant mother. It all depends on what her needs are. If she needs a place to stay, we’d be able to offer her that.

“If she needs material support in terms of nappies and clothes, we’d be able to offer her that material support. We’d also be able to offer free non-judgmental, nondirective counselling. So certainly there is an array of support that we can give her if she needs it—we’re not just paying lip service,” Ms Hall said.

But those in charge at the clinic say the protesters are obstructing their clients from entering the clinic. “In the past, protesters have stood right outside the clinic door,” said Ms Ketteringham.

Two months ago the group stood on the island of the road running parallel to the entrance of the clinic, and since its membership has grown, the group now complies with the Gatherings Act by applying for a permit each time

it prays in front of the clinic.

But a recent Section 4 meeting was called with the City of Cape Town. The point in question: the distance protesters were standing from the clinic.

“We have no objection to the protests in principle. What we ask is that protesters respect the parameters of the law, and maintain the agreed upon distance between themselves and the Marie Stopes premises so as not to infringe upon any other individual’s right to access the reproductive healthcare services offered at our clinic,” said Ms Ketteringham.

But Ms Hall said her group stands where it is safe from traffic.

The pavement on which they stood before is now reserved for parking.

On the opposite side is a coffee shop, and traffic police have objected to the group standing on a traffic island for safety reasons.

The City of Cape Town has directed the group to stand on the pavement diagonally across the road from the clinic where they are monitored by police.

“The presence of authorities continued on page 15

14

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

BOOK REVIEWS

The Shroud of Turin: Mystery solved?

THE SHROUD: The 2 000-yearold mystery solved, by Ian Wilson. Bantam Press, London.

2010. 370pp.

Reviewed by Günther Simmermacher UDDENLY in the 1350s, a large linen cloth bearing the front and back image of a man’s body appeared in a church at the village of Lirey in northern France. Almost instantly it was accepted by many as the burial shroud mentioned in Matthew (27:59-60), Mark (15:46) and Luke (23:53).

The Lirey church quickly became a site of pilgrimage and the Shroud a revered relic.

The incredulity about the Shroud’s provenance is, for the most part, a fairly modern phenomenon, and those who believe that the image on the cloth is a medieval forgery were led to believe that their view had “won” when Church-commissioned radiocarbon testing in 1988 dated the cloth to about 1260-1390.

Australia-based writer Ian Wilson has been on the pro-Shroud front for many years (indeed, it was the Shroud that occasioned his conversion to Catholicism), writing a best-seller on the subject in 1978, a decade before science intervened. This is an updated and apparently thoroughly reworked version of that book.

In its subtitle, The Shroud excitably proclaims: “The 2 000year-old mystery solved”. We may ascribe such a declaration to hyperbole, for it will not put to rest a bad-tempered debate whose practitioners are not shy to engage in ad hominem attacks (of which Wilson has attracted his share).

S

What Wilson does offer is wellresearched and sober conclusions in support of the Turin Shroud’s authenticity as the probable burial cloth of Christ.

In the book, Wilson presents a persuasive case on why the 1988 test samples might have been compromised, even discounting the common pro-Shroud defence that the samples came from medieval repairs. He does his case no favours, however, by describing the tests in emotive and prejudicial terminology, such as in the prefix “notorious”.

Wilson spends a lot of time showing why the image on the Shroud cannot be a forgery and why experiments that have sought to replicate the image may be dismissed. He answers several common objections—some patently thumbsucked, such as the absurd proposition that the Shroud was forged by Leonardo Da Vinci himself—with reference to documents, known practices and sometimes just plain logic.

The fact is that as yet no science and no experiment has demonstrated irrefutably just how the image was transferred to the cloth (and, obviously, no science can document the physics involved in Christ’s resurrection).

The author explains in some detail how the image on the Shroud is consistent in anatomical and medical detail with that of a crucified man, right down to the positions of the splattered blood marks on the cloth.

Much of that knowledge, Wilson suggests, is modern and could not possibly have been known to a 14th century forger who would

have been an “accomplished student of archaeology as well as photography and medical science”.

With that in mind, Wilson issues a rather too unequivocal challenge: “The Shroud has either been deliberately faked as the Shroud of Jesus or it is the genuine article. There is no viable option in between.”

Of course, the Shroud could be the burial cloth of a crucified 1stcentury man other than Jesus, but much of the evidence provided by the cloth coincides with the Gospel’s Passion account, right down to the crown of thorns.

T

he heart of the book advances the rather novel theory that the lost Image of Edessa from modernday Turkey and the Turin Shroud are one and the same item. Wil-

son’s body of evidence to support the Shroud’s putative journey from Jerusalem to Edessa to Constantinople to Lirey to Chambéry and finally to Turin is imposing. It surely will require a massive effort of research to puncture Wilson’s account, if not his conclusions.

It is intriguing that Swiss criminologist and botanist Max Frei found 58 different types of pollen on the Shroud, of which 45 were from the Jerusalem area, one specific to Constantinople, and two to Edessa. Alas, Frei died before completing his research.

The Image of Edessa showed only a face which, according to contemporary tradition, was “not made by hands”. Wilson argues that the Edessa cloth showed only a face because of the manner in which it was folded, thereby obscuring the rest of the image’s body (he produces a history of folding practices to support that notion).

The Shroud is valuable alone as a history of the Edessa cloth, which might have influenced the development of the artistic depiction of Christ as a long-haired, bearded man. Tantalisingly, the Edessa tradition makes reference to an exchange of letters between the city’s king in apostolic times and Jesus himself.

Readers will have to decide whether contemporary depictions of the Edessa image, many of which are reproduced in the book, correspond with the face on the Turin Shroud. To my mind, the resemblance is not uncanny.

The Image of Edessa disappeared before what we know as the Turin Shroud turned up in France, cour-

tesy of the crusader knight Geoffrey de Charny. In the interim, Wilson more than just speculates, the Shroud might have been held by the Knight Templars (there’s a titillating suggestion that the Shroud was in fact, the Holy Grail).

Wilson’s history of the Image of Edessa and the Turin Shroud is detailed and dense. He draws well from preserved records, and is fair in acknowledging doubt where it reasonably exists.

At many junctions, however, inference is the only available tool.

Despite the wealth of documented fact, where there is speculation there cannot be an indubitable case. This does not suggest that Wilson’s case is not compelling, but the mystery is not solved, regardless of the cover’s breathless tagline.

Nonetheless, Wilson has made a comprehensive and cogent case for the Shroud’s provenance as an ancient relic whose unique image of a crucified man cannot be scientifically explained. He has damaged many of the positions held

by Shroud sceptics (notably in his demolition of the oft-quoted 14thcentury “D’Arcis Memorandum”).

The onus is now on those who believe the Turin Shroud to be a medieval hoax to challenge Wilson’s case by engaging with it.

Mere reference to a disputed radiocarbon test and vague speculation about how a forger conceivably could have perpetrated his fraud simply will not cut it.

But even for the reader not particularly concerned with the authenticity of the Turin Shroud, Wilson’s book is a thoroughly entertaining sojourn into rarely visited areas of history.

The pope and the Nazis Pope and Devil: The Vatican’s Archives and the Third Reich,

by Hubert Wolf (translated by Kenneth Kronenberg). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2010. 316 pp.

Reviewed by Eugene J Fisher ETWEEN 2003 and 2006, the Vatican released for scholarly study all materials in the Secret Archives relating to the pontificate of Pope Pius XI (1922-39). With Pope and Devil, Hubert Wolf, professor of Church history at the University of Münster in Germany, has gone through these materials to provide a fascinating “insider” view of how the Vatican sought to cope with the great danger that was German National Socialism.

The title of the study is from a 1929 statement by Pope Pius XI explaining the treaty he made with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and subsequent treaties with Francisco Franco in Spain and Adolf Hitler in Germany: “If it were possible to save even a single soul, to shield souls from greater harm, we would find the courage to deal even with the devil himself.”

Pope Pius XI’s secretary of state in 1933 was Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who in 1939 would succeed him as Pope Pius XII and who, Wolf shows, strongly shared this view.

Cardinal Pacelli was the nuncio to Bavaria and then to Germany from 1917-30, so Wolf spends a great deal of time on him and his attitudes toward Germany and the Jews, which give necessary background for the decisions he ultimately makes as pope during World War II. Wolf’s careful and balanced analysis will greatly enhance the reader’s appreciation of the complexities facing both popes.

The author details two key experiences of Cardinal Pacelli’s in Germany that he believes lie behind what Wolf calls his “silence” about the Holocaust as pope. The first is the failure of

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the Holy See’s peace initiative during World War I, from which he learned the necessity of remaining neutral in international conflicts, since there would inevitably be Catholics on both sides of the battle lines and no pope could not hope to facilitate peace or justice if the appearance of taking the side of one over the other is given.

The other issue was historical, one ingrained in his training, which was the attack on the Church in Prussia (1871-91), in which the state closed down thousands of Catholic parishes and schools, leaving countless Catholics without adequate catechesis and forcing them to live and die without the sacraments.

The lesson, again, was the necessity of working above all to preserve the Church’s right to meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of her people.

Both Pope Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli clearly abhorred the paganism and racial anti-Semitism of Nazi ideology and considered them to be against the teaching of the Church—the latter because it denied the fundamental unity of humanity, that we are all descended from the same ultimate parents and that

each human is made in the image and likeness of God. But how to effectively attack racial anti-Semitism and Nazism while at the same time maintaining the diplomatic neutrality necessary to ensure the survival of the Church? This is the major question that embroiled the Vatican internally during two papacies.

One example on which Wolf goes into great detail indicates the passions involved in these internal disputes within the curia. The first involved an association, Friends of Israel, whose membership consisted of about 3 000 priests, among them 19 cardinals and 278 bishops and archbishops. This group fostered love for the Jews, hoping thereby to attract converts. In 1928 it issued a pamphlet, “Pax Super Israel”, denouncing anti-Semitism, and appealed to the Vatican agency for liturgical matters to change the wording of the Good Friday prayer for the “perfidious Jews”, using more positive terminology.

The congregation accepted the group’s new wording, but the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) rejected any reform of the liturgy as setting a dangerous precedent, and throwing into the bargain a demand to dissolve Friends of Israel. Pope Pius XI compromised. He refused to make the changes and in an announcement disbanding the group specifically and clearly condemned anti-Semitism.

Wolf expresses disappointment with this decision, since such a change in the liturgy in 1928, he feels, likely would have had greater impact in combating anti-Semitism than did Pope Pius’ 1937 encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, which denounced anti-Semitism and the ideology of Nazism in clear terms. Cardinal Pacelli, who was secretary of state by that time, played a vital and positive role in the drafting of that encyclical.—CNS

The Southern Cross, September 1 to September 7, 2010

Fr Donal O’Mahoney OFM

F

ATHER Donal O’Mahony OFM Cap died in Cork, Ireland, on August 14. He had worked in South Africa for nine years before his death.

Fr O’Mahony came to South Africa in 2001 having spent many years travelling the world promoting peace, non-violence and care for creation. In those earlier years of his ministry, Fr O’Mahony had been a member of Pax Christi, the international peace movement. He had also been involved in Franciscans International, a group of Franciscans based at the United Nations in New York, which sought to positively influence the policies and decisions of the worldwide body.

He spent six years in Rome at the general curia of the Capuchin order in charge of its Justice, Peace and Ecology Office and lectured in these Franciscan topics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Once in South Africa, he took up residence at the Capuchin Student House in Pretoria. He was almost immediately invited to work with the Justice and Peace department of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference. In 2004, Fr O’Mahony’s dream was realised. With the support of his Capuchin Order, he established the Damietta Peace Initiative (DPI). Damietta is the Egyptian port where St Francis arrived from Italy in the 13th century in his desire to meet the Moslem leaders and enter into brotherly dialogue with them.

The DPI endeavours to bring people of all races, creeds, and religions together at grassroots level, promoting friendship and mutual respect and hopefully, in this way, lead towards a greater spirit of peace and reconciliation.

Fr O’Mahony was diagnosed with cancer early in 2009. He went to Ireland for post-operative treatment, returning to South Africa in April this year. But his health continued to deteriorate and reluctantly he returned to Ireland where he passed away on August 14.

Thoughts for the Week on the Family FAMILY CALENDAR 2010 FAMILY THEME: “Families Play the Game.”

August theme: HOW MEN AND WOMEN PLAY THE GAME Introduction Some families are very involved in sport, some not at all. In some families everyone plays a different sport while in others they all play tennis or have another common interest. Gym is common nowadays too and is very good for one’s health. In today’s society with cell phones, TV and computers, families have to make an extra effort to take an interest in sport and physical wellbeing. It is especially valuable if they can do some outdoor activities together. “Couch rugby” is no substitute for the real thing. What kind of sporting tradition exists in your family? Could you do more?

5th 23rd Sunday. Social Communications Sunday.

Christ who gave up everything for our sake. In the first reading we read, “It is hard to work out what is on earth, laborious to know what lies within our reach.” Our modern means of communication are a source of knowledge and information but not always of wisdom. We need the Holy Spirit as much as ever to discern where our true destiny lies.

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

Prayers outside abortion clinic continued from page 13 …seems to have played a role in keeping the protesters at the agreed upon distance from the clinic,” said Ms Ketteringham.

“By maintaining a reasonable distance, we feel that the protesters were able to exercise their right to freedom of speech, while respecting the public’s right to access safe reproductive healthcare services.”

But some members of The Helpers feel that the council’s direction is a breach of the constitutional rights to public protest, and have since disassociated themselves from the group. They intend to exercise their individual rights to pray in the public space outside the entrance of the abortion clinic, they say.

“I cannot honourably subject myself to the unfair conditions that have been imposed on them,” said Peter Throp of Parow.

“I believe the new intolerable and unacceptable conditions now imposed on the permit issued have come about due to a representative of the Marie Stopes Clinic bearing false witness and thus the group is now allowed only to pray an unacceptable distance from the clinic,” he said.

“I have never witnessed any obstruction or danger to the public caused by the participants of this prayer vigil, and there has been no hindrance to traffic or members of the public.

“It is for this reason that I now have to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit to distance and disassociate myself from participating in the peaceful and responsible prayer vigil to pray in my own time, on any day that the Holy Spirit directs me to,” said Mr Throp.

Ms Hall said she understood Mr Throp’s anger, “but we are not radicals; we are doing this according to the law.

That is why we get the police to go with us down there”.

Mass readings for the week Sundays year C, weekdays cycle 2

Sun September 5, 23rd Sunday of the year: Wis 9, 13-18; Ps 90:3-6,12-14, 17; Phlm 9-10,1217; Lk14:25-33 Mon September 6, feria: 1 Cor 5:1-8; Ps 5:5-7, 12; Lk 6:6-11 Tue September 7, feria: 1 Cor 6:1-11; Ps 149:1-6,9; Lk 6:12-19 Wed September 8, Birthday of Our Lady: Mi 5:1-4 or Rom 8:28-30; Ps 13:6-7; Mt 1:1-16,1823 Thur September 9, St Peter Claver: 1 Cor 8:1-7,11-13; Ps 139:1-3, 1314,23-24; Lk 6:27-38 Fri September 10, feria: 1 Cor 9:16-19,22-27; Ps 84:3-6,12; Lk 6:39-42 Sat September 11, feria: 1 Cor 10:14-22; Ps 116:12-13,17-18; Lk 6:43-49 Sun September 12, 24th Sunday of the year: Ex 32: 7-11,13-14; Ps 51:3-4,12-13, 17,19; 1 Tm 1:12-17; Lk15:1-32

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CAPE TOWN:  Adoration Chapel, Corpus Christi church, Wynberg: Mon-Thurs 6am to 12pm; Fri-Sun 6am to 8pm. Adorers welcome  021-761 3337  Good Shepherd, Bothasig Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in our chapel. All hours. All welcome JOHANNESBURG:  First Friday Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament 10:30.

First Saturday: Devotions: Our Lady’s Cenacle, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Rosary, 15:00–16:00. Special devotion to Our Blessed Lady for her priests. Our Lady of the Angels, Little Eden, Edenvale,  011 609 7246  Rivonia parish social evening ‘Night Fever’ September 18, 18:30, Barnyard Broadacres. For tickets contact Elvira 011 803 1229 or elvira@rivoniacatholic.co.za.

KIMBERLEY:  St Boniface High School celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2011. The St Boniface Past students Union is currently preparing to celebrate this event. Past students are requested to contact Union’s PRO & chairman of the board of govenors, Mr Mosalashuping Morundi  073 768 3653 or at sbonifa@iafrica.com for further information PRETORIA:  First Saturday: Devotion to Divine Mercy. St Martin de Porres, Sunnyside, 16:30.  Shirley-Anne 012 361 4545 To place your event, call Claire Allen on 021 465 5007, or e-mail c.allen@scross.co.za

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DEATHS SULLIVAN—(née Bishop, born McCarthy). Edith Frances passed away peacefully a week before her 98th birthday on August 20, 2010. Beloved mother of Peter and John Bishop and the late Brian, Pat and Maureen, and widow of Willie Sullivan. Lovingly remembered for her fortitude, trust in God, warmth and humour, by her children, children-in-law, 16 grandchildren, 26 greatgrandchildren and 3 greatgreat-grandchildren. Fortified by Rites of Holy Church. Donations to Nazareth House, Cape Town.

Joseph, Anthony, Jude and Martin de Porres for prayers answered. RCP. IN THANKSGIVING to St Therese, of the Child Jesus, Infant of Prague, Holy Spirit, St Joseph, Our Lady and Our Lord Jesus for prayers answered, and for what is still to come. TL.

IN MEMORIAM ELLIS—Howard died on September 1, 1991. We treasure all the memories and all the happy times we shared together. Rest in peace. Toots, Frans, Tracy, Roedi and all the family.

PERSONAL ABORTION WARNING: ‘The Pill’ can abort, undetected, soon after conception (a medical fact).

See website: www.human life.org/abortion_does_ the_pill.php

LAROS—Ceesje. Who went to his eternal reward on September 6, 2000. Will always be lovingly remembered by all of the family.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord. R I P.

ACCOMMODATION OFFERED CAPE TOWN, Cape Peninsula: Beautiful homes to buy or rent.

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PRAYERS JOIN us this month @16.00 every day in our prayer for South Africa: Holy Spirit, fill young people with wisdom to choose Good Leaders.

Trinity Group, CLC Gauteng.

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. K. 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. Thanks for prayers answered. RCP. THANKS GRATEFUL thanks to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Our Mother Mary and SS

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Short walks to shops, transport etc. Contact Jock 021 685 7370, fax 021 686 2342 or 082 308 0080 or kolbe.house@telkomsa.net KNYSNA: Self-catering garden apartment for two in Old Belvidere with wonderful lagoon views. Tel: 044 387 1052.

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SCHOENSTATT MOVEMENT ARCHDIOCESE OF CAPE TOWN

Editor: Günther Simmermacher (editor@scross.co.za)

Advisory Editor: Michael Shackleton Editorial staff: Claire Mathieson (c.mathieson@scross.co.za)

Nadine Christians (pics@scross.co.za)

Claire Allen

Invites you to come and celebrate the life of the founder of the Schoenstatt Movement, Fr Joseph Kentenich (1885 – 1968).

Mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Stephen Brislin on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010 at Constantia, the Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary’s house chapel at 7.30 pm.

Eucharist Adoration will take place in the Shrine from 6.30pm.

(c.allen@scross.co.za)

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Published by the proprietors, The Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co Ltd, at the company’s registered office, 10 Tuin Plein, Cape Town, 8001.

September 1 to September 7, 2010

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24th Sunday – Year C (September 12th) Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14 Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 17, 19, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-32

T

HE mystery of sin is underplayed these days (or so we are often told); but it is simply the other side of the mystery of God. That mystery is the focus of our readings for next Sunday.

The first reading speaks of God’s reaction to Israel’s most spectacular sin, the occasion when, after being delivered by God from slavery in Egypt, they got bored and forgetful in Moses’ absence up the mountain with God, and created the Golden Calf, bellowing “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

We are eavesdroppers on a conversation between God and Moses, as each talks to the other of “your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt”. God demands: “Now leave me alone, and my anger shall blaze against them, and I’ll destroy them. And I’ll make a great nation of you.” But Moses diplomatically refuses this inducement and insists that they are “your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, with mighty power and a strong arm”; then he invites God to consider the public relations effect on the morale of the Egyptians. And as we listen with astonishment, God “repented of the evil that he was going to do to his people”.

It is not, you see, that human beings do

The mystery of sin overcome Fr Nicholas King SJ

Scriptural Reflections not sin; nor is it the case that sin “doesn’t really matter”. It is a serious business, the mystery of sin, but the mystery of God’s love trumps it. That is the point of the psalm for next Sunday, the well-known song put on David’s lips that we hear so often during Lent: “Have mercy on me God, in your steadfast love, in the multitude of your mercy blot out my offence.”

It is not that sin does not matter; it is that God has power over even our sinfulness, so we hear the psalmist confidently pray, “Create a clean heart for me, O God, do not drive me from your presence”. There is no human evil that God cannot contend with.

In the second reading, we begin seven weeks of galloping through the two letters to Timothy. We hear Paul (or possibly someone writing in his name) meditating on precisely this ability of God to overcome the mystery of sin. Paul was “once upon a time a blasphe-

mer, and a persecutor and a man of arrogance —but I was given the Mercy”. The way he describes it is striking: “The grace of Our Lord super-overflowed with the faith and love that is in Christ Jesus.”

It is precisely that faith and love that annoyed Jesus’ enemies. Now these enemies were, we need constantly to recognise, all respectable religious people (and no doubt readers of The Southern Cross). It really upset them to see the kind of no-goods with whom Jesus hung around: “Tax-collectors and sinners” is the way they are described, and the religiously-minded were genuinely shocked that, “this fellow gives hospitality to sinners, and eats with them”.

You might ask yourself what the equivalent of “tax-collectors and sinners” would be in your society. Then settle down and listen to Jesus’ electrifying response. For he tells these good religious people three stories about God throwing a party when those who were lost are rediscovered.

The first story is that of a not very smart shepherd, who abandons ninety-nine sheep to find the one idiot sheep that got itself lost.

The second is that of a housewife, whose husband only allows her ten drachmae of housekeeping money, and she loses it and throws a

Aspiration knows no colour T

HERE are, believe it or not, still alarming numbers of businessmen in South Africa who not only believe that skin colour makes a difference in the way in which one communicates with a market, but also that all black people think and act differently to white people.

They also believe that the aspirations of black people are different to those of whites. Which is, of course, complete and utter rubbish.

This little group of people, mostly marketers, is still so influential that in spite of the SA Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) dropping race from its research database 13 years ago, it has forced them to retain it.

In the bad old days of apartheid, marketers used to talk about selling to the “black” market and the “white” market.

This little group still insists on doing that today.

You can see it in far too many TV commercials—token representatives of certain race groups put into the ads on the understanding that this might impress viewers. In fact, if there was a World Cup for assumptions and stereotyping, South Africa would win it hands down.

There have been some classic examples of just how dangerous a game this is to play.

About 12 years ago, when a television

CONRAD

Chris Moerdyk

The Last Word showcase of the world’s best advertising was being planned, SABC’s TV1 management was adamant that the bulk of commercials chosen for the series should appeal to young black South African viewers between the ages of 18 and 25.

Ads with black people in them and carrying social messages to which they could relate.

Undaunted by the fact that the black SABC chief executive at the time publicly admitted that his favourite television programme was Vetkoekpaleis—and not Generations, as the assumptions and stereotype brigade would have expected—TV1 insisted that the ads had “to appeal to young blacks”.

The producers begged to be able to test a few assumptions. About 300 black viewers between 18 and 25 were polled on two of the ads featured in the first programme.

A chocolate bar commercial featured a middle-aged, overweight and clearly very rich white fellow about to go jogging along a mountain road and doing

stretching exercises against the side of his shiny new Porsche. Down the hill in an old delivery truck and eating a chocolate bar came a young black guy, singing his heart out, his dreadlocks blowing in the wind.

He misinterpreted what the white guy was doing, stopped his truck and helped him push the Porsche over the cliff.

The SABC decided the young black viewers would love that one. They’d find it amusing and would delight at the sight of their role model hitting back at a symbol of an oppressive white society.

The next ad featured a fat, crew-cut white guy, tattooed to the hilt and eating a pizza liberally sprinkled with pepper sauce. He gets bitten by a mosquito that flies away only to explode from all the hot sauce in its bloodstream.

Oh dear, the young black viewers wouldn’t like that. There were no blacks in it and the white guy looked far too much like a stereotype racist anyway.

When they were polled, however, every single one of the young black viewers loved the mosquito ad. It was just plain funny. The chocolate bar ad they felt was stupid. Who on earth would want to waste a beautiful Porsche like that?

When questioned about the racist looking character in one ad and the getting-back-at-white-oppression angle in the other, they explained that they didn’t watch TV ads for subtle messages or to see other blacks—they watched them for the entertainment value and for what they were selling.

As long as 20 years ago, enlightened South African advertisers such as BMW realised that when it came to that most powerful of marketing tools—aspiration—there was absolutely no difference between the desires of black people and those of whites. Aspiration applied equally to male and female as well as rich and poor.

Admittedly it was quite easy for BMW, because it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that all sorts of people aspired to owning a BMW—rich, poor, male, female, black and white. So they simply kept race out of their marketing completely.

Today no-one at BMW is able to tell you how many black people own their cars or how many women. They realised decades ago that it simply did not matter.

I believe that businessmen who insist on breaking their markets down into race groups are simply insecure. They’ve had racially segregated market data for years, and they’re simply terrified to let go of it.

party (very possibly costing more than one drachma) to celebrate its return. The third story is that loveliest of all Luke’s parables, about the Lost Son, who demands to have, now, what the Old Man is going to leave him in his will. In the story, we are told that the Father “divided his life between them”, to give us a sense of the awfulness of sin. We watch with foreboding as the young man goes off “to have a good time”, and reflect that he is really not a very attractive personality (but is he any different from any of us?), and perhaps mutter “Serves him right” as we see him starving and looking after pigs.

Then we watch as he prepares a speech, not asking for reinstatement as a son, but to be taken on as a servant. The father’s reaction is electrifying, “He saw him while he was still a long way off” (so he had been looking out for him), and behaves with mind-boggling generosity. But the mystery of sin is not exhausted, for there is another sinner, namely the small-minded elder brother, who is standing outside with his arms folded, refusing to go in to the party.

Will you, this week, embrace the mystery of God’s love for you, sinner as you undoubtedly are; or will you accept the unlimited forgiveness of God’s love?

Southern Crossword #408

ACROSS 3. Roman arena of bloodletting (9) 8. Periods of history (40 9. Make a vile tale less severe (9) 10. Sums whole amounts (6) 11. The oneness of community (5) 14. Hindu class (5) 15. Indian women wear it (4) 16. Takes a horse (5) 18. Val’s an eastern European (4) 20. Destructive kind of wave (5) 21. I will not…you orphans (John 14) (5) 24. Royal order to keep your socks up? (6) 25. Twenty-four hours ago (9) 26. Land area (4) 27. Christmas Eve? (4,5)

DOWN 1. Day of the Spirit’s coming (9) 2. Vows you can renew (9) 4. Lubricants for confirmation day (4) 5.Upset canoe on water (5) 6. When the…go marching in (6) 7. For…us a child is born (Handel’s Messiah) (4) 9. Sound change in the sanctuary (5) 11. Inappropriate (5) 12. Measuring rod (9) 13. Kind really around in Ireland (9) 17. Lose your way (5) 19. Change vestments in here (5) 22. Clever Dick hides composer (5) 23. Brave man (4) 24. Goliath’s home town (1 Sam 17) (4)

SOLUTIONS TO #406. ACROSS: 2 Image of God, 8 Garden of Eden, 10 Dalai, 11 Trestle, 12 Effigy, 13 A piece, 16 Lord God, 18 Rival, 19 Steam engines, 20 Redressing. DOWN: 1 Sigh deeply, 3 Meeting, 4 Ghosts, 5 Of Eve, 6 Great heavens, 7 Proliferated, 9 Reveal a sin, 14 Paragon, 15 Adders, 17 Grape.

CHURCH CHUCKLE

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SIX-year-old was overhead saying the Lord’s prayer at Mass: “And forgive us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us.”

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