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June 25 to July 1, 2014

Pope Francis: I have nothing to lose

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Learning to do the ‘Jesus-Prayer’

The Catholics of the World Cup

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Slain nun, 82, was a saint to many

By STuarT GraHaM

T

Salesians on the roof of africa. Br John nguma, Fr Michael John Whelton and Br Solomon Mazibuko climbed the uhuru peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. on the way up they had regular Mass. on the peak, they said the Hail Mary for the rector major of the Salesians of John Bosco, Fr Ángel Fernández artime, and his council.

Salesians climb to the roof of africa

By Fr FranCoIS DuFour SDB

T

HREE Salesians conquered the highest summit of Africa, the Uhuru Peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is 5 895m

high.

Fr Michael John Whelton and Brs John Nguma and Solomon Mazibuko went on a physical but also spiritual 7-day experience:

In last week’s caption to this photo of learners at Holy Cross Convent in Brooklyn, Cape Town, we incorrectly stated that the school is a public school on private property.

It is in fact a wholly private school which funds itself. We apologise for the error.

five days to climb up to the peak, and two days to descend.

Despite suffering some altitude sickness, headaches and tiredness, Br Solomon described the experience as a most useful learning experience.

There were moments when he was tempted to give up, he said, but the encouragement of his confreres made all the difference. “Without the mutual support it would be impossible. Praying together each day made the adventure a pilgrimage,” he said.

The three climbers left the Barafu Camp at midnight to make their final assault on the peak. At exactly 7:43am they stood on the highest point of the continent, having reached the summit of the world’s largest free-standing mountain.

They raised the banner of Don Bosco on the highest tip of Africa and prayed a Hail Mary for the fruitfulness of the recent general chapter of their order and for their new superior-general, Fr Ángel Fernández Artime.

Throughout the climb, Fr Whelton and Brs John and Solomon had Mass.

The cost of the expedition was sponsored

by Bishop Patrick Joseph McGrath of San José, California, and Fr Michael Whelton’s brother Dan, who is a priest in the same diocese.

HE nun who was murdered in a hijacking outside Mthatha, Eastern Cape, was a quiet and humble woman who worked tirelessly for the poor.

She had been delivering food parcels when she was hijacked and murdered.

Precious Blood Sister Mary Paule Tacke, 82, had moved to South Africa from the United States in the 1950s and taught at the remote Catholic mission school in Mariazell, which she would reach on horseback.

Among her pupils there was Congress of the People president Mosiuoa Lekota.

“I am devastated,” Mr Lekota, former defence minister and ex-premier of the Free State, told The Southern Cross.

Sr Tacke was his English teacher between 1965 and 1967.

“Although she was not a political activist, it was matter of concern for her to advance African education,” Mr Lekota recalled.

“She was very sensitive to the condition of the black people, given the apartheid policies of our country... She left us to make judgments of our own.”

Mr Lekota recalled how Sr Tacke had taught him never to judge people based on the colour of their skin.

“She taught me we are humans irrespective of our race, colour or background.

Those are lessons I have always carried with me,” he said,.

“Sr Tacke taught a generation of young people who would grow up to be leaders of society and opinion. Her contribution to South Africa has been enormous.”

Mr Lekota met with Sr Tacke again when he was campaigning for his political party in Mthatha.

“We prayed together before she went off to continue her work.”

Fr Guy Cloutier of Sabelani Home in Mthatha said he first heard that Sr Tacke had been hijacked in front of the adjacent Thembelihle home for children shortly after 14:00 on June 15.

The priest said that eyewitnesses had told him that the two hijackers “pushed her on the back seat and one sat down there with her and the other took the wheel”.

Police and local residents pursued the hijackers who overturned Sr Tacke’s car at Qoqholweni near Orange Grove. Some locals assaulted them, but the hijackers managed to escape.

The next morning Sr Tacke’s body was found face-up in a stream near Nyandeni by boys looking after cattle. They alerted the local chief in Libode who then contacted

the police.

Sr Tacke was well known and respected across Mthatha for her work among the poor.

Mariannhill Missionary Father Cas Paulsen recalled how one late night in the 1950s police brought an abandoned infant to Sr Tacke’s home in Mthatha.

“The sisters took Sr Mary Paule Tacke CPS, who was killed in in the infant and soon more children a hijacking. were brought,” Fr Paulsen told The Southern Cross.

It was then that Sr Tacke began the Bethany Place of Safety, an orphanage for children under the age of five.

“She was in charge of the orphanage’s day-to-day operations, procuring donations, and seeing to the wellbeing of up to 60 children,” said Fr Paulsen. “She worked hard to reunite children with families or find homes for others.”

Soon there was a need for a place of safety for children who were not adopted or reunited with family and the Thembelihle Home was born.

Thembelihle became a place of safety for nearly 30 orphaned, abandoned and or abused children.

Fr Paulsen said Sr Tacke was quiet and humble about her work.

She was a formidable fundraiser, but was also known for her sense of humour.

Some years ago she was robbed of her car in a parking lot by a man who responded to her question, “Young man, do you have a gun?” by saying, “Yes, Granny, I do!”

Entering the local police station to report the robbery, she walked up to the desk and said: “Sir, I would like to report that a young man called me Granny!”

The nun lived at the Glen Aven convent in Mthatha’s Ikhwezi township. She reportedly had been delivering food parcels to Thembelihle when she was attacked.

Mthatha police spokesman LieutenantColonel Mzukisi Fatyela said it was unclear what the motive for the attack was because Sr Tacke’s wallet, money, house keys and drivers’ licence were found in her pockets.

At least one arrest has been made in the case.

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The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

LOCAL

Brutalised refugees tell of rape horror

By STuarT GraHaM

R

EFUGEES from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are pouring into Johannesburg with tales of rape and murder, a nun in charge of Pastoral Care of Refugees and Immigrants at the archdiocese of Johannesburg said.

Sr Kadia Prigol told The Southern Cross that she had heard heartbreaking stories from refugees from the DRC every day.

“It gets no worse than listening to a mother tell how she was raped in front of her husband by rebels,” Sr Prigol said, adding, “and then how they killed her husband in front of her children.”

Sr Prigol said most of the refugees arrive at the archdiocese

asking for food and money to pay their rent. Many are looking for lifts to the Home Affairs asylum office in Pretoria so that they can get their papers in order.

The archdiocese provides lifts and financial help through its loan programme. It also provides English classes for women.

But one of the biggest needs is for psychological counselling, said Sr Prigol. “A lot of people have mental health problems which come from the stress and reality they are living.

“Many of them live in very poor conditions. They have no dignified space to live. This creates stress and when you see people, they are out of themselves. It looks as though they have lost their feelings; as though they have lost touch with life.”

The archdiocese works with organisations such as the Sophiatown Community Centre to give counselling to the refugees.

“The refugees come from all over, but the biggest is women and children from the DRC,” Sr Prigol said.

Many of the mothers are looking for schools for their children. The children are often refused access due to schools being full or because they are unable to pay their fees.

“The human rights laws say that no child should be denied the right to go to school,” Sr Prigol said. “But reality is not like that. The schools are extra-full. We have cases of children being sent out of school at least once a week.”

Much of the conflict in the DRC has been in the mountainous, min-

eral-rich South Kivu province.

The area is home to numerous rebel groups and members of tribes who fled neighbouring Burundi after the end of civil war in 2005.

Members of the Congolese Bafuliru tribe have blamed rebels from Burundi’s National Liberation Forces for the attacks, according to news agency Reuters.

Earlier this month at least 37 people, including women and children, were killed in South Kivu in an attack government officials blamed on a dispute over cattle.

Many of the bodies were found inside a village church, according to a Reuters cameraman.

The victims, who included several pregnant women, had been shot, stabbed or burned in their homes.

The Department of Home Affairs

said it was uncertain how many Congolese had entered South Africa and applied for asylum in the past months.

The New York-based Women’s Refugee Commission estimates that Johannesburg is home to more than 450 000 forced migrants, including 51 300 legally recognised refugees, 417 700 asylum seekers and others in refugee-like circumstances.

The department of Pastoral Care of Refugees and Immigrants held its Week of Migrants and Refugees from June 15-22.

The event culminated in a Mass at the cathedral of Christ the King in Johannesburg with the aim of raising awareness about the plight of refugees in South Africa. n Contact 011 402 6400 for details.

Bishop Dowling recalls Hurley’s legacy on UK visit STaFF rEPorTEr

B

residents of Little Eden in Johannesburg for people with intellectual disabilities received their first Holy Communion.

Pictured left are the residents, Sisters of the Imitation of Christ, retired archbishop George Daniel of Pretoria (centre) and altar servers. (right) Jaco in prayer after receiving his first Holy Communion.

ISHOP Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg has returned from a brief speaking tour in Britain as a guest of the Denis Hurley Association, based in London.

One of the main purposes of the tour was to promote the Denis Hurley Centre, currently under construction alongside Emmanuel cathedral in Durban.

Bishop Dowling, who is a “second cousin once removed” of the late Archbishop Denis Hurley, is a patron of the centre.

In Edinburgh Bishop Dowling spoke on “The joy of the Gospel then and now: from Archbishop Hurley to Pope Francis”.

The following day, as the guest of Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, he celebrated Mass and preached in St Chad’s cathedral, followed by the same lecture as in Edinburgh.

Prior to the Mass, Bishop Dowling met major donors at a special reception.

A day later the bishop, a Re-

Bishop Kevin Dowling demptorist, conducted a study day for religious at the Oblates’ De Mazenod Centre at Tower Bridge in London on the theme of “Religious life in the light of Pope Francis: being prophetic and realistic in the world today”.

That evening he delivered the prestigious 2014 Tablet Lecture in Westminster Cathedral Hall on “From south to north: lessons for the Church from the developing world”, the text of which will be published in the British Catholic journal The Tablet.

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The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

LOCAL

3

Family Desk prepares for synod

By STuarT GraHaM

T For Father’s Day, the social outreach initiative of Milnerton/Brooklyn parish in Cape Town, Catholicare, prepared special care parcels for the seven retired priests of the archdiocese who reside at nazareth House: Bishop reginald Cawcutt, Mgr Jock Baird, Frs Douglas Wiseman, ralph De Hahn, Bernard Brown, rodney Hall and Desmond Curran. The package of delicious sweets, such as this one for Fr Curran, included a personalised mug.

Composers call STaFF rEPorTEr

A

DOCUMENT titled “A Guide for Composers” has been compiled by a working group of music consultants and is now available to any composers “who would like to apply their talents to creating the musical element of our liturgy”.

According to Chris Busschau—a member of the liturgical executive committee and the English language pastoral region committee of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference—a group was established to compose new liturgical music for the recent new English language translation of the Mass.

The working group, including Norman Buckle, a well-known Church musician from Johannesburg, Fr Rohan Smuts of Cape Town and Fr Scott Davidson CSsR of Howick—both priests have substantial backgrounds in music at a tertiary level—agreed that a set of processes should be designed to ensure that Church music, and in particular music for Mass, would at least adhere to certain norms.

The most important of these norms is the need for the words used in Masses to be the exact wording of the liturgy of the Mass.

“Music is intrinsically human,” said Mr Busschau. “We have loved rhythm and melody since the earliest glimmerings of human life. It is hardly surprising that music forms such a deep element in the way that we want to express our love for God,

our joy in life, and our times of sadness and grief.”

He said so-called Gregorian chant evolved from the chants of the monks and nuns who held key elements of civilisation together during centuries of turmoil and has a style that resembles the temple and synagogue music used at the time of Jesus.

The new Missal provides a slight reworking of the Missa Simplex, a Gregorian chant Mass that is liturgically accurate in terms of the new English translation, simple to learn and quite beautiful, Mr Busschau said. This has provided an excellent foundation for music for the new English translation.

“The Guide for Composers is also filled with valuable information for any person involved in liturgical music,” Mr Busschau said.

“Choir leaders, organists, other instrumentalists, choir members, parish liturgical committees, school music directors and of course priests, would all benefit from a study of the guide. Copies can be obtained from the liturgy department of the SACBC,” he told The Southern Cross.

In addition, the SACBC would like to encourage Church musicians, including composers, to attend workshops that will be offered wherever required. n Sr Jordana Maher OP and Sr Patricia Finn FMA of the SACBC can be contacted at 012 323 6458 for copies of the Guide for Composers or to express interest in attending a music workshop.

Guild celebrates centenary

T

HE Durban-based Guild of Our Lady of Mercy, a Catholic organisation that has dedicated 100 years to helping the poor, celebrated the centenary of its organisation with a thanksgiving Mass at St Anthony’s church in Greyville.

Since the Guild was launched during World War I, generations of Durban women have been providing impoverished men, women and children with life’s necessities. Today its work extends beyond greater Durban to areas in KwaZulu-Natal where orphanages, day-care centres, crèches, school children, street children, the elderly and refugees benefit.

The thanksgiving Mass—concelebrated by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, Bishop Barry Wood, Fr Sean Mullin CSSp and Fr Giraldo Herman—was intended for past and present members of the Guild, and their benefac-

tors, both big and small, who through the years have enabled them to continue their outreach.

Liz Walker, the president of the Guild, said it was started by a Mrs Hooper during the 1914-18 World War to comfort and clothe the widows and children of soldiers, and the destitute.

“Now, 14 members from different parishes work from the Guild rooms, meeting twice a month, to continue the work of helping the poor. The late Archbishop Hurley had the Guild rooms built in the grounds of St Anthony’s in 1987,” she recalled.

The Guild buys and organises the distribution of 1 000s of blankets for missions and parishes in poor areas on behalf of Cardinal Napier. It distributes bags of soya soup powder and “Amandla Pap” to numerous feeding schemes.

MEC gives thanks with donation

By STuarT GraHaM

C

YRIL Xaba, the Catholic MEC for agriculture and rural development in KwaZulu-Natal, celebrated the African National Congress’ election victory in the province by giving a “sizeable” donation to his parish.

Mr Xaba and his family are members of St Clement’s in Clermont, outside of Durban.

“This donation was a way for the

MEC to say thank you to God,” said parish priest Fr Zithulele Mkhize.

“There is enormous poverty in Clermont and people are suffering.

The money will be put to good use,” the priest said.

Fr Mkhize said there was a need for second-hand clothes and food parcels in the area.

Mr Xaba was the head of various portfolio committees in the provincial legislature before being named MEC.

HE upcoming October synod of bishops on the pastoral challenges that are facing families has prompted the bishops’ Family Desk to couple it with the 20th anniversary of the International Year of the Family, recognising that family life in our region is under strain.

Toni Rowland of the Family Desk pointed out that at the January plenary meeting of the bishops it was decided that the years 2014-16 would be a three-year focus on families.

“In some places it is called the Year of the Family, but in fact it extends over three years,” she said.

“It is not as formally instituted as was the Year of Faith, and Pope Francis has not declared this a Year of the Family. But he has

asked the Church to pray for the success of the synod.”

The Family Desk was commissioned to produce a prayer that could be used in parishes, homes and other groups. Also commissioned was a “suggestion leaflet” that could be helpful for organising a family day in a parish or diocese. These were produced and sent to the bishops.

The prayer was approved and translated into all the national languages. It was produced in various combinations as a small card that can fit into a missal or hymn book.

“Many of the bishops have ordered the cards in bulk, and till now more than 50 000 cards have been distributed. Some parishes are using it to launch a focus on families campaign at a relevant time,” Mrs Rowland said.

Another task given the Family Desk was the organisation of a

family leaders’ conference.

This will most likely happen in 2015, and the conference and a family fun day are already being prepared. The family leaders’ conference will be held in Johannesburg on September 20-21, 2015, and will be a national event.

“We hope to see diocesan family leaders and others involved in family ministry as participants and as presenters,” Mrs Rowland said. “It is time to showcase all the work happening around the region to support family life.”

She added that the vision statement for family ministry decided at the 2011 family leaders’ conference was “Family ministry is strengthening the living of Jesus’ message in the home as a light to all.” n Contact Toni Rowland at trowland@sacbc.org.za or 082 5521 275.

Irene Huysamen, chair of Green Wall of africa Projects, visited Brescia House School to talk to the Gr 1 to 6 girls about the plight of the rhino. rhino Sa is a proud project of the Green Wall of africa projects. It is a youth-based, youth-driven outreach programme aimed at educating the youth of South africa and the globe about the ongoing slaughter of South africa’s rhinos and to encourage them to take a stand in preserving our national heritage. The girls learnt interesting facts about the rhino and how they can become involved in saving these magnificent animals. They also filled a “Save our rhinos” banner with coins and notes, all of which was donated to rhino Sa.

manager youTH inTerFaCing Programme

CaTHoliC WelFare and deVeloPmenT

Catholic Welfare and Development (CWD) is a leading and dynamic social development organisation working with vulnerable and marginalised communities in order to improve their ability to develop and sustain self-reliance.

Our Youth Interfacing Programme (YIP) works within communities in the Western Cape to enable youth to see past their challenges and develop lifeskills through a structured programme of sports, arts and culture and personal development activities.

reporting to the director, you will have overall responsibility for the management and implementation of CWd`s youth strategy.

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Programme management – overall responsibility for the design, delivery and evaluation of all YIP activities Networking and relationship building – development of relationships both internally and externally, including key role players and other community-based initiatives and leaders, actively seeking opportunities for collaboration and joint initiatives.

Funder relationships and fundraising – actively seeking opportunities for new funding from diverse sources (local and overseas), maintaining and developing relationships with existing funders and partners Parish networking – working with the structures within the Archdiocese of Cape Town to ensure that the CWD Youth Programmes reaches as many parish communities and youth as possible.

Financial management – ensuring adherence to all financial/budgetary controls and processes Team management - ensuring adherence to all CWD people management policies. Management of a small team of youth workers and volunteers.

Administration – ensuring compliance with all reporting requirements (both internal and finder related), compliance with M&E protocols

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Minimum of a 3 year qualification in a relevant field Minimum 5 years relevant working experience, at least 2 of which should be at programme coordination / management level within youth leadership and development Excellent networking and relationship building skills within communities and with other role-players Excellent facilitation skills coupled with the ability to design activities, dialogues and youth interactions NGO/NPO working experience advantageous Excellent communication skills in English, both written and verbal Strong programme management skills Ability to communicate in Xhosa and Afrikaans advantageous should you wish to apply for this challenging and exciting role, please submit your CV to: amanda.kirk@cwd.org.za. applications for the position will close on 10 July 2014.

Further correspondence will only be entered into with those under consideration for the role. if you do not hear back from us within 10 working days of the closing date, please consider your application as unsuccessful.

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The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

INTERNATIONAL

Pope: How to be a good parish

By CInDy WooDEn

‘I

LIKE to dream of a church that lives the compassion of Jesus,” Pope Francis told more than 7 000 priests, religious, catechists and parish council members from the diocese of Rome.

If every parish embodies the virtues of compassion, tenderness, patience and welcoming, the Catholic Church will be the mother she claims to be and will continue to generate numerous children, the pope said.

In a 35-minute talk, most of which was off the cuff, Pope Francis responded to the concerns expressed by a pastor and two catechists about the difficulties of keeping families active in parish life and, consequently, in transmitting the faith to children and young people.

Fr Gianpiero Palmieri, pastor of the parish of San Frumenzio, told Pope Francis that in the diocese of Rome programmes for preparing children for first Communion are still popular, but half of the children do not go on to prepare for confirmation, which the diocese usually administers to young people between the ages of 12 and 14.

Pope Francis told convention participants that before joining them for the evening session, he stopped for coffee in the kitchen of the guesthouse where he lives. The cook was

still there and the pope asked him how long it would take him to get home; the man responded that his commute was about an hour and a half.

“An hour and a half to go home to his children, his wife,” the pope repeated.

Pope Francis said he knows that many parents get up early, take their children to school, go to work, and often get home immediately before or even after their children have gone to bed.

With everyone in a family running in different directions, the pope said, young people are left without guidance, without someone to trust, without “ideals that warm their hearts” and without hope.

“This is a society of orphans,” he said.

When people don’t experience unconditional love and acceptance from their parents, from other family members, at school or in their parish, the pope said, “it will be much more difficult to understand God’s grace, that grace that cannot be bought or sold, that is a gift of God”.

Yet, Pope Francis said, Jesus promised his disciples he would not leave them orphans. Even if modern society seems to tell people “you don’t matter, you’re disposable”, God will never say that and neither can the Church.

“The great challenge of the Church today is to become mother,” he said.

The Church does not become a mother by going door to door and offering to sign people up as if it were “an association called the Catholic Church”, he said. Rather, the Church is a mother when she does what mothers do: offer love, tenderness, a caring gaze, almost endless patience, a welcome and compassion.

“Our mother Church seems to be a bit old, not to speak of a ‘grandmother’ Church, but aging. We must rejuvenate her,” he said, and “not by taking her to a plastic surgeon”.

Pope Francis urged all parish workers to be warm and welcoming, to listen to people before asking them to fill out registration forms or pay stipends for different services.

The pope also thanked parish priests, who dedicate every waking moment—and often miss out on a full night’s sleep—to minister to the people in their care.

“It is easier to be a bishop than to be pastor” of a parish, he said. “We bishops always have the possibility of distancing ourselves, of hiding behind [the title] ‘Your Excellency’”, while parish priests are in the thick of things with someone phoning, knocking on the door or cornering him to complain about others in the parish.—CNS

Jesus might well ask Catholics and Anglicans: What are you arguing about?

By CInDy WooDEn

A

LTHOUGH they have not yet reached full unity, Catholics and Anglicans continue their dialogue, come together in prayer and work side by side.

Meeting with Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Pope Francis said Jesus’ question to the disciples in Capernaum, “What were you arguing about on the way?”, could apply to the Catholic and Anglican Churches as well.

“When Jesus put this question to his disciples, they were silent,” the pope said. “They were ashamed, for they had been arguing about who was the greatest among them. We, too, feel ashamed when we ponder the distance between the Lord’s call and our meagre response.”

Under God’s merciful gaze, he said, “we cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world”.

Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby acknowledged the differences that still divide Catholics and Anglicans, but they reaffirmed their support for the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, which is their official theological dialogue body, and for the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, which promotes joint prayer and common activities.

While in Rome, Archbishop Welby officially launched the commission’s website (www.iarccum.org) which includes descriptions of the two bodies and thousands of histor-

ical documents related to the official dialogue.

Archbishop Welby also met with members of the St Peter’s Cricket Club, the team of Catholic priests and seminarians who will face a team from the Anglican Church in England in September.

Archbishop Welby also participated in a meeting of the Global Freedom Network, which faith leaders founded to combat human trafficking and modern slavery.

“The Global Freedom Network can achieve much practically to dismantle what you have so often rightly said is a grave crime against humanity,” Archbishop Welby told the pope. “It is a crime that we all need to overcome as a matter of urgency, as a matter of human dignity, freedom and wholeness of life.”—CNS

a resident holds a placard as he participates in a protest against the recent attack by the al-Shabaab terror group, in the town of Mpeketoni, Kenya. nearly 50 people were killed and others wounded when more than two dozen unidentified gunmen attacked the coastal town as residents were watching the World Cup. Eyewitnesses said that the gunmen targeted specifically Christians. (Photo: Joseph okanga, reuters)

Pope condemns world’s financial markets

By CaroL GLaTz

P

OPE Francis has said it was “increasingly intolerable” that the world’s financial markets have the power to determine people’s fate instead of being at the service of people’s needs.

He also criticised the way “the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences”.

The pope called on governments to create an investment market that has a positive impact on people’s lives and to combat “an economy which excludes and discards” others.

Pope Francis met with experts taking part in a two-day conference in Rome on “impact investing”, which promotes investing in companies, organisations and funds that will have a positive and measureable impact on communities and the environment.

The conference, “Investing in the Poor: How Impact Investing Can Serve the Common Good in Light of Evangelii Gaudium”, was sponsored by Catholic Relief Services, the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

“It is important that ethics once

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again play its due part in the world of finance and that markets serve the interests of peoples and the common good of humanity,” the pope said.

“It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences.”

The pope called the financial speculation on food prices “a scandal which seriously compromises access to food on the part of the poorest members of our human family”.

Governments urgently need to promote “a market of high-impact investments” in order to combat “an economy which excludes and discards”.

The pope said there is a deep connection and “virtuous circle” between profit and solidarity, and Christians are called to rediscover “this precious and primordial unity” of profit and gift.

He also asked that people never forget “the transience of earthly goods and to renew our commitment to serve the common good with love and with preference for the most poor and vulnerable”.— CNS

Six new saints announced

By CaroL GLaTz

P

OPE Francis has formally announced that six men and women will be made saints on November 23, the feast of Christ the King.

Those to be canonised are: l Kuriakose Elias Chavara, the Indian founder of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, a Syro-Malabar Catholic order. l Euphrasia Eluvathingal, an Indian Carmelite sister and member of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. l Nicholas of Longobardi, an Italian friar of the Minim order. l Giovanni Antonio Farina, an Italian bishop of Vicenza and the founder of the Teaching Sisters of St Dorothy. l Ludovico of Casoria, an Italian Franciscan priest who founded the Grey Franciscan Friars of Charity and the Grey Franciscan Sisters of St Elizabeth. l Amato Ronconi, a 13th-century Italian lay Franciscan and founder of a hospice for the poor, which is now a home for the elderly in Rimini, Italy.

The pope signed decrees recognising the miracles needed for the future beatifications of Fr Louis-Edouard Cestac, French founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary; and Italian Consolata Sister Irene Stefani, who assisted the wounded in Kenya and Tanzania during World War I. She died in Kenya in 1930.—CNS

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

5

Pope in interview: I have nothing to lose

By FranCIS X roCCa

P

OPE Francis has said the world economic system inevitably promotes military conflict as a way to enrich the most powerful nations.

He also condemned religious fundamentalism, defended the controversial record of Pope Pius XII and said he does not worry about his personal security because, “at my age I don’t have much to lose”.

Pope Francis’ words appeared in a wide-ranging interview published in the Spanish daily La Vanguardia.

“We are in a world economic system that is not good,” Pope Francis said. “A system that in order to survive must make war, as great empires have always done. But since you cannot have a Third World War, you have regional wars. And what does this mean? That arms are made and sold, and in this way the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously keep their balance sheets in the black.”

Yet the pope reiterated one of his signature themes, that globalisation’s failings are not only material but cultural, since it “cancels differences”. He called for an economic system that preserves each person’s “particularity, richness, identity”.

The pope also addressed the question of religiously inspired violence, noting that Christians had committed such violence in the past, for example during the 17thcentury Thirty Years’ War.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam all “have our fundamentalist groups, small in relation to the rest,” he said. “A fundamentalist group, even if it doesn’t strike anyone, is violent. The mentality of fundamentalism is violence in the name of God.” In the interview with correspondent Henrique Cymerman, Pope Francis discussed the “invocation for peace” at the Vatican with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The pope said that event took place in spite of scepticism from his own subordinates.

“It was not easy,” the pope said.

“Here in the Vatican, 99% said it would not happen and afterwards the 1% grew.”

Pope Francis said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision to attend the invocation was a “risky move” since it left him open to reproaches from other Orthodox Christians, “but he had to extend this gesture of humility”.

T

he pope also said opening Vatican archives relating to the Holocaust “will shed much light” on that subject, particularly the record of Pope Pius, who critics argue did not say or do all he could to oppose the Nazi genocide.

“They have dumped everything on poor Pius XII. But you have to remember that once he was seen as the great defender of the Jews,” he said.

“I am not saying that Pius XII did

People take photos on tablets and phones as Pope Francis arrives in Paul VI hall to open a convention at the Vatican. In an interview with a Spanish newspaper, the pope expressed his frustration with the criticisms of Pope Pius XII, condemned the free market system, and discussed his style of leadership. (Photo: Paul Haring/CnS) not make mistakes—I myself make a lot—but you have to interpret his role in the context of the time. Was it better, for example, that he not speak in order to avoid the killing of more Jews, or that he speak?”

Pope Francis voiced irritation at what he characterised as a double standard for judging the wartime pope: “Sometimes I get a slight case of existential hives when I see that everybody has it out for the Church and Pius XII, and they forget the great powers” who failed to bomb

the train lines leading to the Nazi death camps.

Reflecting on the Jewish origins of Christianity, the pope said “you cannot live your Christianity, you cannot be a true Christian, if you do not recognise its Jewish root.”

P

ope Francis also discussed his priorities and leadership style as pope.

“I don’t have any personal agenda that I carried in under my arm, simply because I never thought

they were going to leave me here, in the Vatican,” he said. “What I am doing is carrying out” the recommendations made by cardinals prior to the March 2013 conclave.

Among those recommendations, the pope said, was greater consultation with outside advisers, which prompted his establishment of an international, eight-member Council of Cardinals.

Asked how he would like history to remember him, the pope said: “’He was a good guy, he did what he could, he was not so bad.’ I would be happy with that.”

Admitting he still acts like a parish priest in some ways, for instance by turning off lights to save money, the famously informal Pope Francis insisted he takes his august role seriously.

“One shouldn’t play at being a papal parish priest. It would be immature,” he said. “When a chief of state comes, I have to receive him with the dignity and protocol he deserves. It’s true that I have my problems with protocol, but one has to respect it.”

The pope acknowledged that his accessibility to crowds, such as during his 2013 visit to Brazil, has left him vulnerable to attacks, but said his safety “is in God’s hands”.

“I cannot greet a nation and tell it that I love it from inside a sardine can, even one made of glass. For me that is a wall,” he said. “It’s true that something can happen to me, but let’s be realistic, at my age I don’t have much to lose.”—CNS

Iraqi Christians most at risk Rape ‘most gross breach of rights’ as new turmoil hits country S

By DaLE GaVLaK

T

HE fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, to Islamist militants in early June sent half a million residents scurrying for safety, but Christians from the city say they were targeted long before Iraqi security forces abandoned the major political and economic hub.

“We Christians have been objects of kidnapping, torture and killing by extremists hoping to extort money from us or to force us to convert to Islam—for several months,” said a young Iraqi Catholic man from Mosul, who identified himself simply as “Danny”.

Danny and about 350 Catholic families escaped the Mosul area to Jordan over the past three months, said Fr Khalil Jaar, who is responsible for much of the Church’s care for Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Jordan currently hosts some 300 000 Iraqi refugees and more than 600 000 Syrians registered with the United Nations, but authorities say there are more than 1 million Syrians sheltering inside the country.

“All the people are suffering. But as we are a minority—minority Christians—it is normal to suffer more than the others. But even the Muslims are suffering from these fanatic people,” Fr Jaar said.

“They don’t have mercy on any-

Iraqi refugees from Mosul in a camp near the northern city of Irbil. Christians from the city say they were targeted long before Iraqi security forces abandoned the city. (Photo: EPa) one, Christian or Muslim. The only answer they have is to kill them.

“That’s why people are afraid when they heard that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, an al-Qaeda offshoot) came and occupied their region. They immediately left their houses and came looking for a secure place,” the priest said.

Suad Saeed, a Catholic, and her family escaped Iraq, arriving about three months ago in Jordan after ISIL militants killed her husband and kidnapped her son, demanding an enormous ransom to have him freed.

“They killed my husband in front of my son. He’s badly traumatised from this horrific ordeal. I desperately asked everybody I knew to help me pay the ransom. I couldn’t suffer another loss. Afterwards, we

had no other choice but to flee for our lives.”

Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh plain are the traditional heartland of Iraq’s Christian communities. Many Christians escaped to this region when they were forced to leave the capital, Baghdad, and other areas in recent years due to violence, kidnappings and bombings of church buildings.

Following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled long-time dictator Saddam Hussein, violence against Christians rose, with reports of kidnappings, torture, church bombings and killings. Some Christians were pressured to convert to Islam under threat of death or expulsion, and women were ordered to wear Islamic dress. Many fled the turbulent country for the West.

Middle East Concern reports that at least one Assyrian church in Mosul was burned down in the recent violence.

Christians feel particularly vulnerable, especially in light of the treatment they received in Raqqa province in northern Syria, where ISIL has also established its authority.

In February, ISIL commanders there forced Christian community leaders to sign a contract agreeing to a set of stringent conditions, including the payment of a special tax, to retain their Christian identity.—CNS

EXUAL violence “is always a crime, an immoral act” and the Catholic Church is committed to prevent such offences being perpetrated “against anyone, anywhere and under any circumstances”, said Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, England.

Speaking at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in London, Cardinal Nichols said the rape and sexual degradation of civilians during conflicts inflicted a “deep wound on the body of humanity”.

The violation of bodily integrity in sexual violence is “a most fundamental denial of human dignity and a most gross breach of a person’s human rights”, the cardinal said at the largest-ever summit held on the subject of sexual violence in war.

“It is a crime which ought to be eradicated with all vigour.”

He said the damage caused by sexual violence “is so radical and so permanent that it defies description”, especially because such acts

were not random but part of a “deliberate and ordered tactic of oppression, domination and destruction”.

“It is to the shame of our world that the systematic use of sexual violation is still today, in some places, considered as a duty of soldiers, an order that they must carry out,” he said.

“The public tolerance of sexual violence leads to the inversion of human decency,” he added. “It reinforces other forms of oppression and undermines the morals which uphold the rights of the human person.”

Cardinal Nichols, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, referred to the June 11 launch of an international protocol to help strengthen prosecutions for rape during conflict, saying it is right that perpetrators should be pursued as war criminals.

“War is no excuse. The demands of justice remain in place. A crime is a crime, whether committed in the context of conflict or not,” the cardinal said.—CNS

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The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

LEADER PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Three cheers for the Southern Cross

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

I

Responding to lies

S

PEAKING to a Spanish newspaper this month, Pope Francis said that he gets “a slight case of existential hives when I see that everybody has it in for the Church and Pius XII”.

He was, of course, referring to the unjust—and untrue—accusation that Pope Pius XII maintained a silence about the Holocaust because of some form of anti-semitism.

The myth of Pius XII’s complicity in the Holocaust is regularly used as a stick with which to beat the Church.

The full truth about Pope Pius’ wartime record will be revealed when the Vatican archives are made public and subjected to due analysis. In the interim there is enough evidence to show that Pius was involved in aiding the Jews of Rome during the city’s occupation

by Nazi Germany and that he did in fact speak up at least once against the Holocaust, in his Christmas broadcast of 1942.

Yet the calumny of Pius as “Hitler’s Pope”, as one slanderous book title proposed, has taken a hold so firm that even evidence to the contrary cannot shake it.

Calumny has a way of doing that. Once a misleading idea is planted, it is difficult to correct false perceptions.

So it was with the recent global media frenzy which alleged that members of the Sisters of Bon Secours had dumped the bodies of almost 800 babies into a septic tank at the St Mary’s home for unwed mothers in Tuam, County Galway, between 1925 and 1961.

The obvious implication in these reports was that the nuns, and the Irish Catholic Church which commissioned them to run the home, were quite monstrous.

Slowly it emerged that the septic tank story was untrue, and that the infants had been given relatively respectful burials (though one may argue about whether the burial grounds were sufficiently dignified).

The researcher into the Tuam home, Catherine Corless, far from being delighted at the wide publicity her work was receiving, stated her dismay at the way the media had distorted the story.

The conversation then turned to the numbers of fatalities of infants under the care of the Bon Secours sisters.

The number of almost 800 dead infants sounded so alarming that the archbishop of Dublin

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.

and the Bon Secours sisters welcomed a public inquiry, though this portion of the Church’s response received little play in the media.

It turned out that the rate of infant mortality at the Tuam home was very much in line with that of other homes of the kind.

So what in its essence was a story about unmarked graves became a grotesque tale of ghoulish, neglectful nuns throwing dead babies into a septic tank.

And it is this false image which will remain in the public’s perception.

The Catholic Church in Ireland—and elsewhere—has a fundamental image problem when even intelligent people accept as plausible reports as bizarre as nuns dumping dead babies into septic tanks. It seems clear that many reasonable people are prepared to believe the worst of the Church.

The Irish Church has itself to blame for much of the antiCatholicism it now faces. The scandal of the cover-up of sexual abuse and other clerical abuses, especially in Ireland, has fed such mindsets. All the wonderful work of priests and religious in Ireland over the centuries notwithstanding, the anger of many people remains.

Obviously distorted stories such as that of the nuns in Tuam feed this anger and anti-Catholic sentiments.

Moreover, secularists and other opponents of the Church will freely use calumny to suppress all attempts by the Church, especially in Ireland, to redefine itself within society and to exclude the Church from public discourse.

Catholics must not be intimidated by this, neither in Ireland nor anywhere else. We must rise above the calumnies and character assassinations, the ridicule and odium. And we must treat with compassion those who have been hurt by the scandals of the Church’s own making.

We must continue to present the Church and its Gospel values in society, and demand a voice in public discourse, always with humility but also with conviction.

And in the same spirit we must answer the Church’s critics, even those who perpetuate untruths, with patience and respect.

We probably will not change their minds, but we might reach those who are listening.

SIMPLY love reading The Southern Cross and always look for some letter or article which inspires or encourages me in some way or other in my life. And some of us feel we are among friends, because we often know the writers or contributors who seem so knowledgeable.

Sometimes we read something quite simple and beautiful and thank the editor for having printed it. And then we read of someone we love who has passed away and we are filled with sadness.

I get upset when I see bickering in the paper. When the boat is

Communion rite

M

ICHAEL Shackleton (May 28) provides the answer of the liturgists, based on Canon 917, emphasising that “the Mass is the supreme act of worship”—and therefore implying that to receive the sacrament at a Communion service is somehow “lesser” or “inferior” worship.

Their argument is similar to the following: until the liturgical reforms, the service on Good Friday was called the “Mass of the PreSanctified”. The priest was not allowed to receive a stipend.

Strangely (because this is Good Friday), Catholics were not obliged to attend, because “It’s not a Mass even if pre-sanctified”.

Let me present some contrary arguments: 1. There is only one sacrifice and one priest, Jesus. It is his eternal act in heaven, presenting his life (not his death) to the Father. On the cross Jesus proclaimed: “It is consummated.” This means it is brought to a climax, nothing to be added; not that it is finished. The Mass is an extension, not a repetition.

2. The priest today, in the name of the Church, simply “calls down” this eternal action of Jesus, making it present here and now.

3. In 1 Corinthians 11:26, St Paul explains: “Every time you eat or drink…you are proclaiming his death until he comes.”

4. In the early Church, the people not only received Communion at the time, but also sometimes reverently brought home the consecrated bread, to distribute it later.

5. When we receive Communion, Christ is fully present: body, blood, soul, divinity.

6. As we proclaim in the Easter prefaces, he is present as altar, victim (paschal lamb) and high priest.

He is present in the sacrament, in the Word proclaimed, and in the people assembled.

7. Receiving Communion is the final part of our worship. Whether we receive from the altar or the tabernacle, it is part of the Mass. When

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rocked and it goes on and on, we wonder when it will end. But, of course, we are entitled to our opinions, so rock the boat if you must!

It would be great if the content of the paper could be increased but the economics must be considered.

Some time ago I read an article by an Irishman who loved eating herring and chips when times were hard in his country when he was growing up. This was quite filling and delicious.

Being one who loves fish and chips, I went hunting for herring but it is not so easily available here

we bring Communion to the sick, even days later, it is still linked to the Mass, deriving its power from the Mass. It is the memorial. It is the covenant. Jesus is priest and victim.

8. Was the Last Supper a Mass (only the table was visible, not the cross)? The Last Supper was a sacrifice. The paschal lamb was offered and eaten, and then the new and eternal covenant and sacrifice introduced. Jesus spoke neither Greek nor Latin, but Aramaic. He presents his blood as “poured out”.

9. In the Eastern Church, they still call it “the Mass of the PreSanctified”.

Mgr Vincent Hill, Johannesburg

Translation issue

R

EADER Lou Corbitt (April 23) expressed discomfort with the translation of the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell.” He speaks for many loyal, faithful Catholics, and pastors too.

Chris Busschau joined the fray with his article “Why Jesus went to hell” (May 28). He explains that this means: “He went down to the dead.” I fail to understand why the translator says one thing, and the commentator explains that it means another thing.

The same applies to the translation of the Nicene Creed: “for us men”. The commentator has to explain that this means “for us all”.

But then why not say it? Only because it is the literal translation from Latin.

Is pastoral concern of less importance than a slavish translation which causes confusion? Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons, retorts: Latin is a venerable language, not a holy language.

It is a great pity that the South African bishops did not speak up in time before the sacramentary was introduced.

In his learned treatise, Mr Busschau does not deal with the real issue, which is linguistic sensitivity, namely that words, besides having literal meanings, also have emotive and evocative qualities. In the words of the poet: “...not what the ear hears, but what the heart hears”.

Fr Henry Ratering CMM, Mariannhill, KZN

No compromise

I

N his letter “Church must teach with compassion” (May 28), Francis Boulle affirms the right of the Church to teach, but would want this done through compassion.

In brotherly love, would he like to tell 28-year-old Kim Jong-il, supreme leader of North Korea, that cruelty, beatings, starvation, execution in labour camps is an evil to be avoided?

John Lee (May 21) writes approvingly of Martin Luther, describing him as a scripture scholar of note.

Firstly, Luther held the authority of the holy Catholic Church and her councils in contempt; he said so himself at Worms. He intentionally inserted the word allein (alone) into Romans 3:28.

So he was a scripture scholar of the wrong note, as he was willing to bend scripture to suite his doctrine.

To say he loved the Church is stretching it.

as overseas and is quite expensive.

A good deacon’s wife got me some but I did not find it as appetising as I had hoped it to be.

We have our hake, or stockfish, as it was known in former years, when it was cheap and plentiful.

I wonder how the fish tasted which the Lord braaied at the shore of Lake Tiberias. The disciples ate it with bread. Peter had a great healing experience here because three times Jesus asked him if he loved him and three times he said he did.

Previously, Peter had denied Jesus three times.

This is a fishy story.

Gilbert MacDonald, Cape Town Having said that, the Lutherans we encounter today are not the originators of what happened before; there is a new understanding and a different attitude. However, for us as Catholics there is no compromise on Catholic teaching or theology. The danger is to compromise those issues or distort historical facts, in order to placate.

Malcolm Bagley, Cape Town

Coming home

M

Y wife Margaret and I recently had a break at Pine Lake Marina in Sedgefield, and on Sunday we attended Mass at St Boniface in Knysna where I had served for eight unforgettable years—before moving to Port Alfred, serving St James parish for the past ten years.

I was so moved by the welcome when I entered the new extension of St Boniface on that Sunday, as so many parishioners welcomed me and Margaret before Mass. I was asked “Are you coming back?” by many.

What made me feel more welcome among so many old parishioner friends was when I was asked to assist in taking the collection, when, of course, everybody saw me.

Before the final blessing, Fr Brian Williams asked me to stand up, and said a few words about my having been involved with so many activities at St Boniface, which information was given to him by Franco and Pola De Grandis, also old friends of ours at St Boniface.

Once again, it proves that what you put into your church, you will gain from it, in blessings and enjoyment.

May I wish St Boniface parish in Knysna all the best for the future.

Joe Stas, Port Alfred

Married priests

I

WISH to support Graham Pearson (“Married priests the solution”, May 21).

I believe that priests should be allowed to marry and live a normal family life. I also believe that women should be allowed to become priests. As far as I know, no ex cathedra dogma prevents either of these changes; male chauvinism is the obstacle. Implementation of these two steps would make the Catholic Church happier, healthier and holier.

God’s masterpiece is a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven. It is out of love for her that I express these opinions.

Brian Michael Commins, Cape Town

For the record: Due to a typographical error, the signature to last week’s letter “We are Church” was omitted. The letter was written by Rosemary Gravenor of Cape Town. We regret the error. 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.

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

The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

PERSPECTIVES Mphuthumi Ntabeni

Liberalism not good for SA

S

INCE the bankruptcy of state socialism, liberalism and social democracy—respectively the products of the bourgeois emancipation movements and the European labour movement—are the remaining serious contenders for political ideology in our contemporary times. Democracy, liberal or social, is their political by-product.

South Africa’s post-1994 government presents itself as a social democratic product whereas the platform of its operations is undoubtedly that of liberal democracy, guided by a very liberal Constitution.

Liberal political culture is supposed to promote tolerance, protect the freedoms of conscience, religion, speech, assembly, and so on. At its best it represents a universal human aspiration for individual freedom and self-expression.

But liberalism itself, as the 20th-century American philosopher John Dewey argued, is the expression of a distinct moral faith and way of life.

Contrary to popular belief, liberalism is not a possible meeting ground for all cultures, but is the political expression of one range of cultures, and quite incompatible with other cultures.

Western liberalism is not so much an expression of the secular, post-religious outlook of a more organic outgrowth of Christianity. It is, rather, a reflection of one hegemonic culture, Anglo-American with Franco republicanism and economic free marketism. Its identity, like the fate of all conquering ideologies, has been put to the

service of exploitation and even oppression.

Hence the outrage when Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng suggested that “we can only become a better people if religion could be allowed to influence the laws that govern our daily lives, starting with the Constitution of any country”.

The loudest protests came from liberals.

This is because the predominant version of South African liberalism is inhospitable to difference. It is suspicious of collective goals, which is why it detests religion and social democracy.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that our liberalism seeks to abolish religious, cultural or ideological differences. What it does is to use its hegemony, liberal in the case of our Constitution, to downgrade the excluded and rob them of a voice in public space.

a statue of nelson Mandela in front of the union Buildings in Pretoria. Mphuthumi ntabeni asks whether liberalism is serving all South africans well.

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Lionel Messi and Gianluigi Buffon at the Vatican last august. They are among the Catholic World Cup stars. (Photo: Stefano rellandini, reuters/CnS) who plays for Real Madrid, is also a devout Catholic who sports a tattoo of the Blessed Virgin on his upper left arm.

In the 2010 final, Spain beat the Netherlands (they met again in the current tournament, with the Dutch winning 5-1). In that Dutch team in 2010 was midfielder Wesley Sneijder, who shortly before the event in South Africa converted to Catholicism, apparently due to the influence of his model wife Yolanthe Cabau and Inter Milan teammate Javier Zanetti. razil has the world’s largest Catholic population, but the Pentecostal and evangelical churches have successfully proselytised in the country. The nation’s football team includes several players from that wing of Christianity, but star player Neymar has declared himself as a Catholic, going as far as making known his dislike of Glasgow Rangers for that club’s long-defunct policy of not signing Catholics.

Teammate Oscar is also a Catholic: “My relationship with God is very important for me. Maybe I don't go to Mass so often these days but I pray every day.”

The most Catholic side in the World Cup must be Argentina’s, which has taken along to Brazil a huge poster depicting the team with Pope Francis. One may presume that the Holy Father, a big football fan, is quietly supporting his compatriots in the World Cup—even if he had promised Brazilians his neutrality, as he told a Span-

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mplicit in the liberal hegemony and assumption is that what is right or civilised or excellent has to take forms familiar to liberalism. It assumes that religion is the major source of conflict and therefore must not be allowed breathing space in public matters— such as espoused in the “We don’t do God” policy of Tony Blair’s spin doctors.

It promotes a misconception that major catastrophic conflicts of the past were solely about religion, disregarding reasons rooted in the tribal, ethnic, social, economic or scientific. They forget that the division of church and state goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, even to Jesus (Jn 18:36), as a form of defying the Roman empire.

The early forms of the separation, as delineated by the likes of St Augustine, were very different from ours, but the basis was laid for modern developments. The very term secular itself was originally part of the Christian vocabulary.

Frantz Fanon, in his seminal psychological analysis of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), argued that the major weapon of the colonisers was the imposition of how they saw the colonised onto the subjugated people. This is also how the liberal hegemony operates: it paints as absurd everything unfamiliar to it.

The South African version of liberalism Continued on page 11

Point of Sports

C

B

I

Günther Simmermacher

The World Cup’s Catholics HANCES are that a team from a traditionally Catholic country will win the 2014 World Cup, currently held in Brazil.

Only two countries from non-Catholic countries have ever won the World Cup— Germany (three times) and England. And the winning German sides of 1954 and 1974 were dominated by players from traditionally Catholic regions of their country: Rhineland, Palatine and Bavaria.

The current German squad includes at least two practising Catholics: Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose; both of whom were born in Poland.

The other winning nations—Uruguay, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, France and Spain— are traditionally Catholic, although not all their players are. The French side that won the cup in 1998, for example, was remarkably multi-cultural.

Still, the two greatest footballers in the world at the moment profess to be Catholics.

Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo frequently forms his hands in prayerful style, looking heavenwards. According to reports, he actually is praying when he does that. He also wears a rosary and collects crucifixes as an expression of his faith.

Lionel Messi of Argentina described meeting Pope Francis last year as one of the biggest highlights in his life. The player often crosses himself, has been seen wearing a rosary and is rumoured to have made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, though that has also been strongly denied.

One player who apparently has made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, incidentally, is Italy’s veteran goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon.

Spain’s Andres Iniesta, Messi’s teammate at Barcelona, scored the winning goal in the final of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Before the tournament the Spanish newspaper Marca asked Spain’s players what they would promise to do if they became world champions. Iniesta answered that he would do the Camino de Santiago, the walking pilgrimage to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, northern Spain.

His Spain teammate Sergio Ramos,

Pushing the Boundaries

ish interviewer this month.

England’s Wayne Rooney is known to be Catholic—it made headline news when he was spotted wearing a rosary in training in 2010—and has aided various Catholic charities. He went to a Catholic school, and asa a teenager thought of becoming a priest.

In 2012 he told Britain’s talkSPORT Radio: “I pray to God, of course. I believe in God […] I don’t pray to help me score goals. I pray for the health of me and everyone on the pitch. It is something I have always done. I pray at night. I pray for my family and friends and for the health of everyone I love.”

He has also a soft spot for evangelical Christianity, but has been told by his management to keep his religious views quiet in line with the British “We don’t do God” disease.

His Manchester United teammate Javier Hernandez of Mexico might be the most obvious Catholic in the World Cup: before each game he kneels in the centre circle in prayerful supplication, ending with the sign of the cross.

Unlike many of his fellow Catholics in football, Hernandez reportedly lives his faith in private as well.

But few football players can claim to have been endorsed by the Vatican itself.

Ivorian legend Didier Drogba was praised

by Fr Kevin Lixey, director of the Vatican’s Office of Church and Sport, for giving glory to God and citing his prayer life after Chelsea’s Champion’s League win in 2012.

There are many more Catholic players participating in the World Cup. Part of the fun for Catholics is to spot them as they make the sign of the cross after scoring or coming on to the pitch, though this year there’s less of that and more of the absurd pointing into the sky.

Still, even the little signs of faith can speak volumes in an age when outward exhibitions of religious faith are often discouraged.

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Chris Chatteris SJ

Pray with the Pope

Better to play than slay General Intention: That sports may always be occasions of human fraternity and growth.

A

N article in The Southern Cross’ recent education supplement had the eye-catching title, “War cries promote separation, not unity”.

The author wondered whether the “war cries” that young children are taught at school to encourage their sports teams are “part of a mindset that does not quite square with what Jesus had in mind when he taught us about the reign of God”.

Furthermore, the article said, we live on a continent with enough conflict without encouraging children to sing “fight, fight, fight”.

Some might reply that since sport is traditionally a substitute for war, such early formation is healthy, and channels youthful competitive and aggressive instincts into sport rather than violence. There is no doubt that it's better to play than to slay. Much of the Olympian tradition was precisely about this.

On the other hand, one strain in this tradition also saw the discipline and training of sport as a remote preparation for war, such as boxing, wrestling, fencing, javelin-throwing, riding, archery or shooting. Champions in sport often became champions in battle. Some Englishmen believed that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”.

Hopefully Catholic education can rise above the idea of sport as a substitute for war or as a preparation for it. And we also have to transcend the contemporary view of professional sport as an industry and sportsmen and women as things on which to stick adverts. War and Mammon are a far cry from the pope's intention.

We need to recover a vision of sport as sheer play which helps children to develop. All adults have a memory of this—the collective ecstasy of boys just having fun kicking a ball around in the street or girls playing their amazing skipping games. Adults sometimes recapture these memories by playing with their kids on a summer beach or a local park— games in which who wins is immaterial, money isn't a concept and strangers can join in.

So my rather heretical school would provide basic games facilities which the students could use during breaks and after class. However, there would be no professional coaching, no outmatches, no war cries and none of the joyless business of crushing the “enemy” at all costs.

The games children organise and even invent themselves are intimations of the innocence of Eden. We catch ourselves wishing that they would go on forever; that there would be no final whistle.

Holy rosary High netball player andrea arnold during a match against St Mary’s DSG Kloof at Johannesburg’s Independent Schools’ Sports Festival.

For lay missionaries Missionary Intention: That the Holy Spirit may support the work of the laity who proclaim the Gospel in the poorest countries.

T would be interesting to do a study comparing the amount of time the average layperson in the developing world puts into proclaiming the Gospel compared to the layperson in the developed world.

My hunch is that the average in the developing world would be significantly higher.

Like many things to do with the Gospel this doesn’t make economic sense. The more affluent, in theory, should have more spare time for mission while the less affluent should have less because of the need to work overtime to make ends meet.

Whether my hunch is right or not, anyone who has worked with poor Christian communities cannot fail to be frequently impressed by how much time people are willing to give to God as catechists, for example, or carers, or just in long church services—everything from funerals to Sunday Mass.

Time is such a precious commodity; the measurement of the span allotted to us on this earth. We guard it jealously—understandably—and hand it over reluctantly, even to the Lord.

That the Holy Spirit prompts so many people— in both the developing and the developed world— to sacrifice so much of their time in the service of the Gospel, especially people who have jobs and families, indicates that this intention is already being answered, even as we articulate it!

I

8

The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

COMMUNITY

Holy rosary School donated seven wheelchairs to Little Eden in Edenvale, Johannesburg. The chairs were donated as part of the school’s parents’ association social responsibility portfolio, after the school’s annual Shanahan Walk “walk because we can, walk because we care”. Holy rosary Primary School leaders (from left) Catherine Buffey, arianna D’alessio, Daniella Mills and Jenna Laubser are pictured with Little Eden representative nicholette Muthige (second from right).

The Holy Cross Sisters of the Southern african province held a celebration in Little Flower church at Holy Cross convent in Pretoria to mark the ceremonial handover of provincial leadership from Sr Francis Grogan (right) to Sr Monica Madyembwa (left).

Together with almost 500 000 students at Marist schools in 80 countries, the community at St Henry’s Marist College in Durban celebrated the feast day of their founder, St Marcellin Champagnat. To mark the special day in the College’s 85th year, Cardinal Wilfrid napier (centre) concelebrated Mass with Bishop Barry Wood (right)and eight priests of the archdiocese, two of them old boys of St Henry’s. Deacon Michael o’neil (left) is head of religion at the College.

Seventeen adults were initiated into the Church at Immaculate Conception parish in East London during the Easter vigil. rCIa candidates and sponsors are pictured with Fr Peter Whitehead (far right).

St Francis Xavier parish in Martindale, Johannesburg, celebrated Fr Victor Kotze’s 80th birthday and the 55th anniversary of his ordination with a thanksgiving Mass. Fr Kotze has served the Martindale parish for 38 years. The community celebrated the occasion with a high tea after Mass and Fr Kotze’s family from australia joined the parish and enjoyed the day with him.

St Boniface parish in Knysna celebrated africa Day. (From left) Jock McConnachie and Lance aiken are pictured with parish priest Fr Brian Williams.

The Knights of Da Gama, Johannesburg South region council, along with their families and friends, had their weekly rosary evening at La rochelle church in rosettenville, where they were given an informative talk on the Eucharist by the vice superior of the Maronite Catholic Church of our Lady of Lebanon, Fr Maurice Chidiac.

Professor Teresa okure SHCJ and Bishop nkosinathi ndwandwe, the two african representatives on the anglican roman Catholic International Commission (arCIC), reported on the recent arCIC meeting held at Koinonia near Durban. The report back was held at the Dominican conference centre in Pietermaritzburg.

Volunteers are pictured at Holy Trinity parish in Midrand, Johannesburg, where they attended a prison ministry workshop.

The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

FAITH

9

A direct line of prayer to God The meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew has created new interest among Catholics in the spiritual treasures of the Orthodox Church. Jesuit Father OSKAR WERMTER explains one such treasure: the Jesus-Prayer.

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HEN Pope Francis met with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in Jerusalem last month, they expressed the deep desire for restoring unity between the Churches of the East (Orthodoxy) and the West (Rome).

The Eastern Church has great spiritual treasures to offer to the Church of Rome. One of these is the Jesus-Prayer, which I seek to explain here.

We are God’s creatures. We did not create ourselves. We were created—or, to be precise, we are being created all the time. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28).

To acknowledge this in thankfulness is the beginning of our relationship which never ends. Thus we live in utter wonder at God’s being and our partaking in it. This is our breathing space.

God calls us into being. Created for God, we need to respond. If we fail to do so there will be much emptiness, a vacuum which we may be too busy to notice, but once our preoccupation is over, it will reemerge painfully.

We are meant to make an “exodus” from ourselves, to go out of ourselves, to leave ourselves behind and reach out to the source of all being.

We become ourselves by giving ourselves away. There is only one who is really worthy to receive us, that we allow ourselves to fall into his hands: the one Creator

and Lord.

We do so in “adoration and service”, in prayer and in doing his will, in thanksgiving and in serving, ora et labora (pray and toil).

“Adoration is always an initiative of God”, Pope Francis said when he addressed women religious superiors in Rome recently. “It is Christ who has called you to follow him […] and this means to continually engage in an ‘exodus’ from yourselves to centre your existence on Christ and on his Gospel, on the will of God, divesting yourselves of your plans, to be able to say with St Paul: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20).

This ‘exodus’ leads us to a path of adoration of the Lord and of service to him in our brothers and sisters.

Adoration is not just an activity, to be switched on and off. It becomes an attitude which is always there. Jesus spoke about our “need to pray always and not to lose heart” (Lk 18:1, see also 1Thess 5:17, Eph 6:18).

There is a long tradition in the Eastern Church, going back to the early monks in the desert, who prayed in the rhythm of their bodies, as regular as breathing. An anonymous Russian pilgrim of the 19th century made these monks’ way of “praying continuously” known even in the West through his autobiographical work The Way of a Pilgrim (Image Books, Doubleday, New York, 1978).

He describes how he learned and practised the “Jesus-Prayer” while walking the length and breadth of Russia as a lifelong pilgrim: “Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (there are also shorter versions of this prayer; indeed some practitioners have been praying it by simply repeating continuously the name of Jesus).

Some people misunderstand this as a mere technique, like a mantra.

That would be an outright self-manipulation. We are not interested in that. “There was no tone of magic […] they cried out his name as Lord.

But they also realised…that they were in need of his healing mercy

In his article, Fr oskar Wermter shows us the value of praying the simple yet profound Jesus-prayer: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Photo: Bob roller, CnS) because of their own sinfulness” (Lk 18:38; Lk 18:13; cf Kyrie eleison of the liturgy).

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ne can concede that this form of prayer has its psychosomatic side to it. Praying by repeating continuously a verse of scripture, or a brief exclamation, is also known in the Western Church. The rosary is such a way of praying.

St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, advises us in his “Spiritual Exercises” that we should pray the Our Father and other common prayers of the Church by reciting them slowly and continuously, letting the words speak to us. One could add words from Scripture, saying them slowly over and over again, listening to them and “tasting” their sweetness.

Prayer forms like this help us overcome distractions and keep us focused on the Lord, while preventing us from slipping into a self-centred mode. Following the rhythm of our breathing may be helpful, but spiritual guides with long experience of this way of praying warn

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against being overly concerned with technique.

The Eastern Christians see no value in the “Jesus-Prayer” unless it is an expression of the Holy Spirit praying in us.

“We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). It is the Spirit of Jesus that prays in us. We join Jesus in his praying to the Father. The Spirit is this relationship of infinite love between Son and Father. Prayer and adoration (but also in a different way service and work, humbly doing the will of God) is partaking in the life of the Triune God. “God is Love”. This love is the Father giving himself to the Son and the Son to the Father. The Spirit is this self-giving love. Receiving the Holy Spirit means joining in this mutual self-giving. We are loved with the love the Father has for the Son, so we respond by joining the Son in giving himself to the Father.

You cannot love God without “losing” yourself, and yet you gain all.

In reciting the “Jesus-Prayer”

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quietly in your heart, without actually pronouncing the words, you make this self-giving and “losing” yourself your permanent attitude, which in turn gets you ready to do the work of the Lord and his will in serving him and his people.

Adoration liberates you for service. “To the degree that we experience the tremendous love of God in Jesus Christ, we can let this love pour out to every man and woman, brother and sister”, wrote Fr George Malone SJ in his book Prayer of the Heart (Ave Maria Press, Indiana, 1981).

But, you may ask, in the meantime do I have to stop work, and preoccupation with service, so as to be able to say the “Jesus-Prayer”?

Should I be Mary rather than Martha (Lk 10:38-42)?

Not at all. You are habitually reaching out to the Lord in your heart, even when you are busy like Martha. The words merely give expression to this, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

There are in fact many empty moments in the course of your waking hours when you can call on Jesus with these words, for example when you wait for the bus, or drive, or walk, do routine work with your hands, cooking, sweeping the floor, resting or doing sports.

This prayer prays itself. The Russian Pilgrim calls it a “self-activating” prayer. Once you are in the habit you need not make a conscious effort. Your heart says the prayer when there is a chance.

“The prayer exists and acts on its own because the Spirit of God prays in him or her”, as Fr Malone put it.

We meet Jesus sacramentally in the Eucharist. The Jesus-Prayer enables us to walk in the presence of the Lord for the rest of the day.

This prayer must not be misunderstood as a way of taking possession of the Lord, of “having” him.

Through this prayer we walk with the Lord as pilgrims who do not know where he will lead us.

REMEMBERING OUR DEAD

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10

The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

PERSONALITY

SA Church a Good Samaritan on HIV/Aids CATHOLIC RESPONSES TO AIDS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA, edited by Stuart C Bate OMI and Alison Munro OP. SACBC/Grace & Truth (2014).330pp.

Reviewed by Stuart Graham NE summer afternoon at the bottom of a muddy road, in the shadow of a rusting mine shaft, I met a nun.

She was standing, smiling, outside a house painted in warm colours. The smell of home-cooking lingered in the air, and in a vegetable patch lined with marigold flowers a man was digging with a garden fork.

The nun was Dominican Sister Sheila Flynn, whom I was there to interview about a project she had started for people with Aids.

Sr Flynn had convinced a bank to donate a vandalised house near the settlements of Langaville and KwaThema so that she and her assistants, locals from the settlements, could turn the property into a community that would not only care for people with aid, but also provide food and jobs.

The project, known as the Kopanang Community, was giving hope to people with Aids at a time

O

when then-President Thabo Mbeki was denying the causes of the disease and the government was stalling on the roll-out of medication and treatment.

Soon after visiting Sr Flynn I heard of other nuns around Gauteng, some in their 80s, who were taking care of more than 150 women and children with Aids with no access to treatment.

I thought about Sr Flynn when I read Catholic Responses to AIDS in South Africa, a compilation of essays, expertly edited by Fr Stuart Bate OMI and Sr Alison Munro OP, which gives a comprehensive overview of the Church’s action on HIV/Aids.

Even though it still causes considerable suffering for so many, Aids has become yesterday’s story.

The topic is a hard sell to newspaper editors. Aids is done, they’ll tell you. The angle has to be unique before it will be considered for publication.

Despite the ongoing suffering, treatment for the disease has largely been rolled out and those in the health sector will tell you there are bigger priorities now, like obesity, diabetes and tuberculosis.

Recently, I interviewed a young

woman in Cape Town who said quite confidently that she’d rather have Aids than cancer. You can treat Aids, she said, but cancer eats you and kills you slowly.

Despite this, I was transfixed by Catholic Responses to AIDS in South Africa, which includes among its contributors Bishop Kevin Dowling, Sr Munro, Ruth Stark and Marissa Wilke, Fr Raymond Mwangala OMI, Sr Susan Rakoczy IHM, Fr Charles Ryan SPS, Fr A E Orobator SJ, Br Philippe Denis OP, and more. It also includes a generous section of various papers issued on the subject.

I

n his chapter, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier recalls how in 1987, under the leadership of his predecessor Archbishop Dennis Hurley, the archdiocese of Durban took action after a warning from Fr Ted Rogers that the epidemic was not going away soon.

Fr Rogers had established an Aids programme in Zimbabwe at the start of the epidemic and he could already see its social impact on communities there and beyond.

While others were focused on the medical aspect, Fr Rogers was concerned about the social consequences of Aids.

Soon after hearing from Fr Rogers, Archbishop Hurley formed a group of experts to discuss what the Church should do. The approach adopted in the beginning was one of education and awareness, Cardinal Napier writes.

Archbishop Hurley’s committee set out the Church’s stance on HIV and Aids: To love and care for those infected and affected by HIV, who were being shunned, rejected and stigmatised, and to get people to take responsibility for their moral and sexual behaviour.

From the beginning, the Archdiocese of Durban preached the message of giving love and care and never judging.

A starting point for the Church was to educate people and parishes about the virus and its social impact and about the Church’s moral and practical teaching.

The book offers various perspectives on how the Catholic Church dealt with the disease, far beyond that shorthand issue of condoms.

Clearly, there was never a single answer to the pandemic.

“HIV kept challenging us all the time,” writes Bishop José Luís Ponce de León.

“We started burying young peo-

ple every week. In 2001 half of the people who died in my parish were younger than I, and I was only 40 years old,” the bishop, now of Manzini in Swaziland, recalls.

Catholic Responses to AIDS in South Africa, writes Bishop Ponce de León, is about a Church that never stops being the Good Samaritan.

It is about the thousands of people who like Sr Flynn, stood at the side of those suffering and generously and silently put their lives at the service of those who needed it most.

Three good books to guide us to saintliness SAINTS ALIVE! THE GOSPEL WITNESSED, by Marie Paul Curley FSP and Mary Lea Hill FSP. Pauline Books & Media (2013). 327 pp.

SAINTS ALIVE! THE FAITH PROCLAIMED, by Marie Paul Curley FSP and Mary Lea Hill FSP. Pauline Books & Media (2013). 327pp.

LETTING GO AND LETTING GOD: 21 Centuries of Catholic Faith, by Kathleen Atkinson OSB. Liguori (2013). 143pp.

Reviewed by Brian Olszewski HE word “saint” might be one of the most misunderstood in Catholicism. As soon as one reads or hears it, there’s a tendency to think canonisation and haloes.

Such thoughts may lead to expressing a lament: “I’m no saint.”

But baptism makes Catholics members of the communion of saints. Thus, what most are trying to say is: “I’m not saintly.”

These three volumes feature the canonised and the potential-to-becanonised, but the emphasis throughout each is on their holiness, their pursuit or embracing of Christcentred lives. In other words, their saintliness.

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In Saints Alive! The Gospel Witnessed, Pauline Sisters Marie Paul Curley and Mary Lea Hill, experienced storytellers and catechists, build the profiles of their subjects around a relevant passage from Scripture.

For example, the story of Matt Talbot—who was declared venerable in 1975 and is considered the patron of alcoholics and others plagued by addictions—is preceded by Luke 17:1: “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come.’”

This method sets the tone for each of those featured, be they well known, such as St Teresa of Avila and St John Vianney, or the lesser known, such as Bl Victoire Rasoamanarivo and Bl Manuel Lozano Garrido.

Each chapter concludes with a prayer, information about the person’s life, and a quote from him or her.

Saints Alive! The Faith Proclaimed is similar in format, but is built upon the beatitudes and the sacraments.

Again, the famous and less famous are offered as examples of how each lived the intent of a beatitude or

sacrament.

As does Saints Alive! The Gospel Witnessed, which includes questions for personal reflection and group discussion, as well as Scripture references that one is invited to read, to reflect upon and respond to.

Those seeking deep insight into the individuals featured won’t find it here, nor should they expect it.

What they will find are simple, inspirational stories about people who sought, and often overcame struggles, to live their Catholic faith.

These are “feel-good” stories to be

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sure, but in accepting the authors’ invitations to pray and reflect on what they have read will enhance the readers’ spiritual experience.

In Letting Go and Letting God: 21 Centuries of Catholic Faith, Benedictine Sister Kathleen Atkinson presents one Catholic from each century of Catholicism who “challenges us today”, as she writes in her introduction.

A biography of each is preceded by a few words about the subject.

Following the biography is a prayer and what is the most nourishing

segment of each chapter, “Connecting with...”

These few paragraphs serve as spiritual direction for the reader who is, in fact, trying to connect with the subject. The chapter concludes with a “reflect and pray” series of questions that can further nourish the reader.

Sr Kathleen’s style and presentation of material, while easy to understand, will probe the souls of readers.

Should they allow it, readers will benefit spiritually.

Word of advice: No sense rushing. Whether it is one of the wellknown people of Catholicism, such as Pope St Gregory the Great, or a lesser known, such as Macrina the Younger, readers should take their time with the material and consider how they will respond to what they have read.

With the canonisations of Ss John XXIII and John Paul II, much attention has been given to sainthood. Certainly, a time to reflect on the communion of saints, but equally important on what it takes to be saintly in one’s everyday life.

These three books will assist in that task.

Catholic and Jewish heroes in anti-Nazi fight RESISTANCE: Jews and Christians Who Defied the Nazi Terror, by Nechama Tec. Oxford University Press (2013). 245pp.

Reviewed by Eugene J Fisher ECHAMA TEC’S work has centred on the Holocaust, analysing not only the tragic events of the Nazi genocide of the Jews but also rescuers and survivors.

In her latest work, Resistance, she brings a lifetime of scholarly study to bear on the stories of those who resisted, some directly by taking up arms, some no less significantly by saving others, or risking their lives to tell a seemingly indifferent world about the horrors even as they were taking place.

The book tells story after vivid story. While there are copious footnotes for scholars, the average reader will be transfixed by the stories of real people, Jews and Christians, caught in a nightmare yet finding goodness, courage and hope in themselves and in others. Many of the narratives are based upon personal interviews, so we hear their stories in their own words.

The goal was not necessarily to defeat the Nazis but more realis-

N

tically to make the Germans pay at least in small part for the carnage they were wreaking. The book tells the story of the ghetto fighters of Warsaw, and of the later, equally unsuccessful Polish uprising.

It describes how many fled into the forests to establish small bands of resisters, striking the Nazis and saving lives where they could. It describes uprisings in concentration camps where the victims strove to take at least some control over their fate.

Tec tells the stories of the many women who served as couriers, bringing arms and news to the fighters and making significant contributions to the resistance that men could not have made.

She narrates the story of Zegota, the Polish Catholic group dedicated to saving lives, especially the lives of their Jewish fellow citizens. Zegota was a light that shone in the darkness and will give readers a sense of the

greatness of which humanity was capable even in the most dire of times. The Nazis in Poland especially went after the educated among Catholic Poles, seeking to destroy anyone who could become a leader of the resistance.

Tec describes as well the situation in eastern Poland and Byelorussia, where the Soviets linked with socialists to fight the German invaders. She notes the high level of anti-Semitism among the Russians, and to a lesser extent in Poland.

Tec concludes with a chapter on Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic who served the Polish underground, was smuggled into a ghetto and a concentration camp and smuggled out to tell the true story of the death camps.

Karski met with Churchill and Roosevelt, among other Western leaders, but was unable to convince them to help the Jews.

I met Karski and worked with him in his later years when he was a professor at the Jesuit Georgetown University in Washington. He was a great man in my opinion, as in Tec’s, and well deserves the praise she gives him and through him the other rescuers who tried to save others and, in a sense, humanity itself.

CLASSIFIEDS Questions on liberalism in South Africa Continued from page 7 says it is committed to the ideals of freedom and equality, but is always caught out when the demands for inclusivity arise.

It shies away from sustaining social environments that respect all peoples in their cultural diversity. It is predominantly exclusive and biased towards the privileged, whether by education or material wealth.

From court judgments on labour issues to how our econ-

omy is structured and continues to resist real transformation, it is becoming clear that our laws and constitution are slightly out of synch with the general feeling of the people on the ground.

If the liberal hegemony is subverting the ideals of universal freedom and inclusive community, then I see nothing wrong in calling for change, or at least reviewing how we do things.

The moral meaning of democracy is found in reconstructing all

institutions so that they become instruments of human freedom, growth, liberation and a sense of belonging.

Currently our ethos is failing to achieve that. So let the wisdom of religions—Islam, Judaism, traditional practices, Hindu, Christian and so on—come in, if they are able to help.

Who knows, we might even come up with something authentic and suited for our circumstances.

Fr Arsène Muhau

F

ATHER Arsène Muhau, parish priest of Maria Regina parish in Lyttleton in Pretoria, passed away at 40 after an extended illness on June 2.

Fr Muhau was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and became a priest of the diocese of Kenge in 1994. He became chancellor of that diocese but in 1999 went to Pretoria to continue his studies.

He was a very popular priest in the parishes of Pretoria West and Lyttleton. His people found him gentle, responsible, decisive, and close to them.

Fr Muhau dedicated much of his pastoral activity to many French-speaking Catholics from all over Africa. It is due to him that this large community of Catholics have become a closely

bonded unit who support each other and remain faithful to their faith.

Fr Victor Phalana, vicar-general of the archdiocese, recalled a priest who was gentle but could also be assertive when necessary.

“We saw a person committed to God and loyal to the Church.

We saw someone who was Jesus the Good Shepherd, who thought about the people first, attended to their needs and then, only then, attended to his own needs,” Fr Phalana said.

“I do not know where he got the stamina to do so much: visiting the sick, counselling the bereaved, teaching, preaching, cooking, administering, and smiling at all times.

Fr Muhau’s funeral service was characterised by sadness inter-

Southern CrossWord solutions

SOLUTIONS TO 608. ACROSS: 1 Bass, 3 Appeased, 7 Summons, 8 Bored, 10 Ornithology, 11 Sienna, 13 Adorns, 15 People of God, 17 Gates, 18 Venture, 19 Anything, 20 News. DOWN: 1 Bishop’s ring, 2 Simon, 4 Pastor, 5 Sprayer, 6 Portentous, 8 Bloodhound, 9 Deep sadness, 12 Empathy, 14 Cloven, 16 Gouge.

Word of the Week

Pectoral cross: A cross worn on a chain about the neck of bishops and abbots as a mark of office.

Community Calendar

To place your event, call Claire Allen at 021 465 5007 or e-mail c.allen@scross.co.za (publication subject to space)

CAPE TOWN: Helpers of God’s Precious Infants meet the last Saturday of the month, starting with Mass at 9:30 at the Sacred Heart church in Somerset road, Cape Town.

Mass is followed by a vigil at Marie Stopes abortion clinic in Bree Street. Contact Colette Thomas on 083 412 4836 or 021 593 9875

or Br Daniel Manuel on 083 544 3375.

NELSPRUIT: Adoration of the blessed sacrament at St Peter’s parish. Every Tuesday from 8am to 4:45pm followed by rosary, Divine Mercy prayers, then a Mass/Communion service at 5:30pm.

Fr arsène Muhau mingled with gratitude for this studious and active priest.

After the funeral service, his remains were flown back to Kinshasa where he was laid to rest alongside the grave of his sister, who also died recently.

Our bishops’ anniversaries This week we congratulate: June 25: Bishop Peter Holiday of Kroonstad, on the third anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

Liturgical Calendar Year A Weekdays Cycle Year 2 Sunday, June 29, Ss Peter and Paul Acts 12:1-11, Psalm 34:2-9, 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 1718, Matthew 16:13-19 Monday, June 30, First Martyrs of Holy Roman Church Amos 2:6-10, 13-16, Psalm 50:16-23, Matthew 8:18-22 Tuesday, July 1, Bl Junipero Serra Amos 3:1-8; 4:11-12, Psalm 5:4-8, Matthew 8:2327 Wednesday, July 2 Amos 5:14-15, 21-24, Psalm 50:7-13, 16-17, Matthew 8:28-34 Thursday, July 03, St Thomas Ephesians 2:19-22, Psalm 117:1-2, John 20:24-29 Friday, July 4 Isaiah 58:6-11, Psalm 107:2-9, Matthew 25:31-46 Saturday, July 5, Saturday Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary Amos 9:11-15, Psalm 85:9-14, Matthew 9:14-17 Sunday, July 6 Zechariah 9:9-10, Psalm 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14, Romans 8:9, 11-13, Matthew 11:25-30

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The Southern Cross, June 25 to July 1, 2014

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Births • First Communion • Confirmation • Engagement/Marriage • Wedding anniversary • ordination jubilee • Congratulations • Deaths • In memoriam • Thanks • Prayers • accommodation • Holiday accommodation • Personal • Services • Employment • Property • others Please include payment (R1,37 a word) with small advertisements for promptest publication.

IN MEMORIAM

GAJJAR—aldridge. you may be gone from this earth physically, but spiritually and emotionally you will always be engraved in our hearts. you’re constantly in our thoughts and embraced in our memory.

In loving memory dearest wonderful husband, father, brother and uncle, who left us on July 3, 2012. Greatly missed by your wife Patricia, sons Bradley, Kenan and family.

LAWRENCE—Beaver. our beloved husband, father and grandfather left us June 29, 2003 (11 years) on his final journey home to receive his eternal rewards. We have missed your physical presence around us, but your spirit continues to live in our thoughts and in our hearts. our memories of you are indelible and cannot and will not be erased. until we meet again, rest in peace.

From Elaine, Gary and Elli, Derek and Janice, Wendy and Wolly, Vivian and andrew, Leslie and Johan and all the grandchildren.

PRETORIUS—Ina. 29/6/1950 (64 years). always remembered with much love, by your daughter Elaine Lawrence. rest in peace.

ROBINSON—Thomas.

Deacon and beloved husband, father and grandfather. Greatly loved by all who knew you.

THANKS

GRATEFUL THANKS to our Lord God, Little Infant of Prague, Mother Mary, Saints Joseph, Jude and Martin for prayers answered. PDy.

PERSONAL

ABORTION WARNING: The pill can abort (chemical abortion) Catholics must be told, for their eternal welfare and the survival of their unborn infants. See www.epm.org/static/up loads/downloads/bcpill.pdf HOUSE-SITTER/PETLOVER: Based at Benoni Parish, will travel/with references. Phone Therèse 076 206 0627.

NOTHING is politically right if it is morally wrong. abortion is evil. Value life! www.abortioninstruments. com is the graphic truth that will set you free.

PRAYERS

ALMIGHTY eternal God, source of all compassion, the promise of your mercy and saving help fills our

hearts with hope. Hear the cries of the people of Syria; bring healing to those suffering from the violence, and comfort to those mourning the dead. Empower and encourage Syria’s neighbours in their care and welcome for refugees. Convert the hearts of those who have taken up arms, and strengthen the resolve of those committed to peace. o God of hope and Father of mercy, your Holy Spirit inspires us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs. Inspire leaders to choose peace over violence and to seek reconciliation with enemies. Inspire the Church around the world with compassion for the people of Syria, and fill us with hope for a future of peace built on justice for all. We ask this through Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Light of the World, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. amen. Prayer courtesy of the USCCB.

willing spirit. Psalm 51 ST MICHAEL the

archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, o Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. amen.

THANKS be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, For all the benefits thou hast won for me, For all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. o most merciful redeemer, Friend, and Brother, May I know thee more clearly, Love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, For ever and ever.

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

HAVE mercy on me, o God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. you desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, o God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a

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MARIANELLA Guest House, Simon’s Town: “Come experience the peace and beauty of God with us.” Fully equipped with amazing sea views.

Secure parking, ideal for rest and relaxation. Special rates for pensioners and clergy. Malcolm Salida 082 784 5675, mjsalida@ gmail.com SEDGEFIELD: Beautiful self-catering garden holiday flat, sleeps four, two bedrooms, open-plan lounge, kitchen, fully equipped. 5min walk to lagoon. out of season specials. Contact Les or Bernadette 044 343 3242, 082 900 6282.

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The Southern Cross is published independently by the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company Ltd. address: Po Box 2372, Cape Town, 8000. Tel: (021) 465 5007 Fax: (021) 465 3850 www.scross.co.za Editor: Günther Simmermacher (editor@scross.co.za), Business Manager: Pamela Davids (admin@scross.co.za), Advisory Editor: Michael Shackleton, News Editor: Stuart Graham (s.graham@scross.co.za), Editorial: Claire allen (c.allen@scross.co.za), Mary Leveson (m.leveson@scross.co.za) Advertising: Elizabeth Hutton (advertising@scross.co.za), Subscriptions: avril Hanslo (subscriptions@scross.co.za), Dispatch: Joan King (dispatch@scross.co.za), Accounts: Desirée Chanquin (accounts@scross.co.za).

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Website: www.scross.co.za 14th Sunday: July 6 Readings: Zechariah 9:9-10, Psalm 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14, Romans 8:9, 11-13, Matthew 11:25-30

O

NE of our constant difficulties is that, no matter how often we read the Scriptures, we find ourselves not really believing them, in particular their emphasis on the vulnerability of God’s emissary, and what that means for us. The readings for next Sunday invite us to go back to this profound truth.

The first reading was the prophecy that rang in the ears of those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem, a few days before he died, and it seems certain that he was thinking of it when he rode into Jerusalem, precisely in accordance with the prediction: “Look! Your king will come to you, a just one, and he is humble, riding on a donkey.”

In both cases we are meant to be astonished at the lowly entry of the one who “will speak peace to the nations, and his dominion shall be from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth”. We find it very hard to believe in a messiah of this sort.

The psalm for next Sunday sounds very upbeat, ready to praise God: “I shall extol you, my God and king, I shall bless your name forever.”

However, the poet is well aware that God’s

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Jesus is our vulnerable emissary Nicholas King SJ

Sunday reflections

majesty, although unstoppable (“Your kingdom is a kingdom for all the ages, and your dominion is for generation after generation”), is also a privileged place for the marginalised, for it asserts: “The Lord is the supporter of those who fall, and who raises up the ones who are oppressed.”

God is on the side of the vulnerable, and (if you understand this carefully) is indeed vulnerable.

That is the message of the second reading also for next Sunday, where Paul is trying to tell us (well, the Romans, really; but we shall not go wrong if we are prepared to eavesdrop in their conversation) that we have grounds for confidence in what God has done for us.

Here he expresses it in these profound terms: “You people are no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God is living among you.”

And, as always, Paul points to God, and to what God has done for us: “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead is living among you, then the One who raised Christ from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies, through his Spirit who lives among you.”

It follows, therefore, that “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you are going to live!”

The point for us, though, is that it does not happen because of our merits, but because of the mystery of God’s vulnerable emissary.

This is the message of the gospel for next Sunday, where we are invited by Matthew to eavesdrop on Jesus’ reflection on his mission, not long after John, now in prison, has indicated that after all, he is not all that convinced by Jesus’ authenticity.

What Jesus does is to emphasise that it is not the clever people, from the best universities and private schools, who really understand what God is doing in Jesus, not the “wise and intelligent”, but it is “infants” to whom God has “revealed them”.

Then he turns to us, to explain: “Everything was handed down to me by my Father; and no one understands the Father except the

Don’t be stingy with mercy ODAY, for a number of reasons, we struggle to be generous and prodigal with God’s mercy.

As the number of people who attend Church services continues to decline in the West, the temptation among many of our Church leaders and ministers is to see this more as a pruning than as a tragedy and to respond by making God’s mercy less, rather than more, accessible.

For example, a seminary professor whom I know shares that, after 40 years of teaching a course designed to prepare seminarians to administer the sacrament of penance, today sometimes the first question that the seminarians ask is: “When can I refuse absolution?”

In effect, they ask: how scrupulous must I be in dispensing God’s mercy?

To their credit, their motivation is mostly sincere, however misguided. They sincerely fear playing fast and loose with God’s grace, fearing that they might end up dispensing cheap grace.

Partly that’s a valid motive. Fear of playing fast and loose with God’s grace, coupled with concerns for truth, orthodoxy, proper public form, and fear of scandal have their own legitimacy.

Mercy needs always to be tempered by truth. But sometimes the motives driving our hesitancy are less noble and our anxiety about handing out cheap grace arises more out of timidity, fear, legalism and our

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Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final reflection

desire, however unconscious, for power.

But even when mercy is withheld for the nobler of those reasons, we’re still misguided, bad shepherds, out of tune with the God whom Jesus proclaimed. God’s mercy, as Jesus revealed it, embraces indiscriminately the bad and the good, the undeserving and the deserving, the uninitiated and the initiated.

One of the truly startling insights that Jesus gave us is that the mercy of God cannot not go out to everyone. Consequently it’s always free, undeserved, unconditional, universal in embrace, and has a reach beyond all religion, custom, rubric, political correctness, mandatory programme, ideology, and even sin itself.

For our part then—especially those of us who are parents, ministers, teachers, catechists and elders—we must risk proclaiming the prodigal character of God’s mercy. We must not spend God’s mercy as if it were ours to spend; dole out God’s forgiveness as if it were a limited commodity; put conditions on God’s love as if God were a petty tyrant or a political ideology; or cut off access to God as if we were the

keeper of the heavenly gates. We aren’t.

If we tie God’s mercy to our own timidity and fear, we limit it to the size of our own minds.

It is interesting to note in the gospels how the apostles, well-meaning of course, often tried to keep certain people away from Jesus, as if they weren’t worthy, as if they were an affront to his holiness or would somehow stain his purity.

So they tried to prevent children, prostitutes, tax collectors, known sinners and the uninitiated of all kinds from coming to Jesus. However, always Jesus overruled their attempts with words to this effect: “Let them come! I want them to come.”

Early on in my ministry, I lived in a rectory with a saintly old priest. He was over 80, nearly blind, but widely sought out and respected, especially as a confessor.

One night, alone with him, I asked him: “If you had your priesthood to live over again, would you do anything differently?”

From a man so full of integrity, I fully expected that there would be no regrets. So his answer surprised me.

Yes, he did have a regret, a major one, he said: “If I had my priesthood to do over again, I would be easier on people the next time. I wouldn’t be so stingy with God’s mercy, with the sacraments, with forgiveness. I fear I’ve been too hard on people.

They have pain enough without me and the Church laying further burdens on them. I should have risked God’s mercy more!”

I was struck by this because, less than a year before, as I took my final exams in the seminary, one of the priests who examined me, gave me this warning: “Be careful,” he said, “don’t be soft. Only the truth sets people free. Risk truth over mercy.”

As I age, I am ever more inclined to the old priest’s advice: We need more to risk God’s mercy. The place of justice and truth should never be ignored, but we must risk letting the infinite, unbounded, unconditional, undeserved mercy of God flow free.

But, like the apostles, we, well-intentioned persons, are forever trying to keep certain individuals and groups away from God’s mercy as it is offered in word, sacrament, and community.

But God doesn’t want our protection.

What God does want is for everyone, regardless of morality, orthodoxy, lack of preparation, age or culture, to come to the unlimited waters of divine mercy.

George Eliot once wrote: “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

Son, and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.”

Then comes a beautiful invitation to which we shall do well to pay attention this week, for it speaks to us of the vulnerability of this emissary of God: “Come to me, all you who are labouring and are burdened; and I shall give you rest.”

Then he takes us deeper into this astonishing mystery, offering an invitation that at first blush we may wish to refuse, but if we understand what is really on offer, we shall perhaps gladly accept it: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and then you will find rest for your souls.”

This is an astonishing offer; you will hunt in vain through the length and breadth of the ancient world for a god, or an emissary of a god, to make such a humble invitation.

So we listen in awe to the next phase: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” And that word translated as “easy” would have sounded in Greek like “Christ”.

So your burden, dear reader, and mine, is none other than Christ himself; and you will do well to accept the “burden” of that vulnerable emissary in the coming week.

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ACROSS 1. Swimmer among the voices in the choir (4) 3. Placated spade ape (8) 7. Order of the court (7) 8. Drilled until you lost interest (5) 10. Scientific study of the flyers (11) 11. Tuscan city of St Catherine (6) 13. A royal diadem ... the mighty victor’s brow (hymn) (6) 15. The Church since Vatican II (6,2,3) 17. King of Glory enters through them (Ps 24) (5) 18. Risky journey (7) 19. No matter what it may be (8) 20. Report from all quarters (4)

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DOWN 1. Head of diocese is at the front door, by the sound of it (7,4) 2. First name of the head of the Twelve (5) 4. Parish priest (6) 5. Prayers about aerosol container (7) 6. Sour, potent and ominous (10) 8. Canine vampire (10) 9. Profound sorrow (4,7) 12. Expression of shared feelings (7) 14. Split like a demon’s foot (6) 16. Pluck out (5)

Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

A

LITTLE girl, in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could for catechism, praying: “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!”

While she was running and praying, she tripped and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again!

As she ran she once again began to pray: “Dear Lord, please dont let me be late...But please don't shove me either!”