150311

The

S outhern C ross

March 11 to March 17, 2015

Reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 4915

www.scross.co.za

Microlending exploits the poor

Page 9

Page 10

R7,00 (incl VAT RSA)

Five tips on learning to love yourself

Page 7

Vocations crisis: Benedictine abbey’s future uncertain

BY STUART GRAHAM

LoveMatters, a life-skills programme for teenagers run by the Salesians at Bosco Youth Centre, Johannesburg, has marked its 250th programme since inception in October 2001.

This means that more than 20 000 young people have taken part.

“The overall goal of LoveMatters, originally developed by Salesian Father Francois Dufour, is to empower youth to make healthy lifestyle decisions as an antidote to HIV/Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as to equip the participants with skills which help them deal with the many challenges today’s teenager faces,” said progranmme coordinator Nhlanhla. He added: “LoveMatters also builds self-worth and encourages skills for responsible behaviour in all aspects of the participant’s lives.”

For more information see www.boscocentre.co.za or e-mail lovematters@boscocentre.co.za

Priest recovers burglary loot

BY DYLAN APPOLIS

A

FTER his church was burgled, a Cape Town priest trawled pawn shops and antique shops in a bid to recover stolen items.

Scalabrinian Father Gerardo Garcia of Holy Cross parish in District Six, had a fright when he opened the church doors one morning to find two men sleeping in the church.

“They were trapped in the church the whole night because the metal doors are old and hard to open,” Fr Garcia said.

The priest said he rushed to get help, but on his return the thieves had managed to flee, using the bridge over the adjacent Nelson Mandela Boulevard.

One of the main items stolen was the historical crucifix that was displayed in the church. Other items included the collection boxes, bells, the sound systems (including the microphones and speakers), and anything metal the thieves could get their hands on.

Police advised Fr Garcia to check pawn shops and antique shops in the area that might buy those types of things.

“I went to each and every shop, but I have come up empty handed, because the items were not been sold there,” the priest told The Southern Cross.

But when Fr Garcia went to check the backyard of the church he found two bags

Church items recovered after a burglary. filled with items stolen from the parish.

Holy Cross parish was relieved to have recovered everything, but the thieves had broken the crucifix and other items in order to get the metal out of it.

“I did my best to recover all the stolen items. In the end I am glad that we got everything back—even if it’s in pieces,” Fr Garcia said.

“We are still thinking about what type of security system to implement, but I am hoping that we get security on the premises, security cameras or even an alarm system.”

T

HE Benedictines at Inkamana Abbey in Vryheid, northern KwaZulu-Natal, are feeling the effects of the vocations drain, to the point that the future of the order in the region is uncertain.

At the same time, the Benedictines take satisfaction in having turned the once missionary-led local Church into one run by locals.

Recently retired Abbot Godfrey Sieber, who was elected the second abbot of Inkamana in 2003, told The Southern Cross that the Benedictines were extremely proud of their achievements in the area but that a lack of vocations threatens the order’s survival.

“The Benedictines started the mission at Inkamana in 1922 and slowly built up other missions in Zululand,” he said.

“It is very common in our community that we have more brothers than priests. For many years we had builders, farmers and other specialists who were part of the Benedictines. This is how the diocese of Eshowe and mission of Zululand developed,” Fr Sieber said.

“The Benedictines built churches, schools, hospitals and ran farms... We have given that up now. We are only in the monastery. It was a natural development.”

After Eshowe became a diocese in 1951, the Church changed gradually from being a missionary-run church to one run by local priests and a bishop.

“This is something we always wanted,” said Fr Godfrey, who was born in Bavaria in Germany in 1940.

“At the moment out of the 30 parishes in Eshowe, only three are manned by Benedictine priests. This was a natural development and we are happy,” Fr Sieber said.

“It is our greatest achievement. The same applies to our abbey. When I came to Inkamana it wasn’t an independent monastery. It became independent only after I arrived.”

The great challenge for the order now is to recruit and train local vocations, Fr Sieber said.

“We have African vocations, from Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and some elderly gentlemen from Germany—but very few from South Africa,” he noted.

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Inkamana Abbey in northern KwaZulu-Natal Presently about two thirds of the abbey’s monks are from southern Africa.

The first group of Benedictines arrived in Natal on August 3, 1922. They had been working as missionaries in East Africa before, until World War I forced them to leave that region.

They started the new mission at lnkamana, which was then a farm with some small buildings on it. Within 25 years the Benedictines had erected ten major mission stations in Natal as well as four hospitals and a great number of schools.

Inkamana increasingly became the centre of the Benedictines, with the priests serving the growing Christian communities in a vast area.

The brothers intensified their gardening and farming activities and began to train locals in the different workshops.

Together with the Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing the monks built a high school at lnkamana which soon attracted boys and girls from around southern Africa.

Inkamana High School, whose alumni includes former first lady Zanele Mbeki, produces “very good results” each year, Fr Sieber said.

A monastery building was erected in 1949 and soon afterwards the brothers built an architecturally impressive church which was consecrated in 1953.

When Fr Godfrey arrived at Inkamana, the Benedictines had only two local vocations.

The two will celebrate their 50th anniversary on March 21.

The reason for the shortage of vocations, which affects all orders in the Church, is Continued on page 2

Rome, Assisi, Florence, Siena, Padua, Milan, Venice and more 6 - 18 September 2015

2

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

LOCAL

J&P offers counselling to abuse survivors

BY DYLAN APPOLIS

A Eight brothers made their professions or joined the novitiate at the annual meeting of the Dominicans at La Verna, Vanderbijl Park, Johannesburg.

Eight new brothers for the Dominicans STAFF REPORTER

E

IGHT brothers committed themselves to the Dominican Order, either through clothing as friars or through profession, at the Domincan annual meeting at La Verna near Vanderbijlpark.

Br Neil Mitchell made his solemn profession into the hands of the provincial, Fr Sikhosiphi Mgoza.

Br Ernest Mwape made his profession for three years. “Unfortunately his fellow novice, Br Guide Murambanyika of Zimbabwe, had to return to his home country before the end of December to renew his study visa and was unable to return in time,” Dominican Father Emil Blaser said.

Brs Isaac Mutelo and Godfrey Chikaura, both of Zimbabwe, and Kelvin Banda of Zambia, renewed their professions for one year.

Brs Piet Chauke of Soweto, Francis Kawooya of Uganda and Nana

Amponsah of Ghana were clothed as novices. Two other novices from Kenya, Stephen Okoth and Alfred Omondi were delayed in Kenya for passport reasons. They were clothed the following week in the novitiate.

These brothers will return to Kenya upon completion of their novitiate.

The theme of the discussions was The Year of Consecrated Life. Fr Joseph Falkiner presented an illustrated description of religious life itself, Fr Albert Nolan dealt with the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and Fr Martin Badenhorst discussed Vatican II and how the consecrated life has developed among Dominicans since then, Fr Blaser said.

The assembly was addressed by the assistant to the master of the order for Africa, Fr Gabriel Samba.

The Dominican Order worldwide is preparing for its 800th anniversary in 2016.

S the Church continues to respond to the scourge of gender-based violence in the communities, the Justice and Peace Department (J&P) of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) is running a campaign themed “Men as Peacemakers”.

The aim of the campaign is to promote positive masculinity through influencing a change of attitudes and behaviour among men so that they, in turn, become active agents of change in the fight against gender-based violence.

The Men as Peacemakers campaign is inspired by the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God” (Mt 5:9).

J&P is also running a pilot project under the Men as Peacemakers campaign that seeks to provide counselling and paralegal assistance to survivors of gender based violence as from this year.

To kickstart the process, 36 participants—eight priests and 24 lay leaders, from Pretoria, Tzaneen, Klerksdorp, Witbank and Port Elizabeth—attended a training course at Lumko Institute in Johannesburg.

The training, which was offered

by Lifeline Pretoria, equipped participants with skills on how to assist survivors of trauma, rape, domestic violence, drugs and substance abuse. The participants are expected to offer services to fellow parishioners and community members.

Some of the participants have made a commitment to work with their local police stations and courts as lay counsellors/paralegals.

Their role will be to influence changes in the local police stations and courts so that more survivors

Thirty-six participants who took part in a course against gender-based violence organised by the bishops’ Justice & Peace department. of gender-based violence feel encouraged to report cases.

‘A

s Christians, our ministry of bringing hope and God’s love to the survivors of gender-based violence includes being active agents of transformation in the justice system,” said Fr Stan Muyebe OP, J&P coordinator.

“It is estimated that only one in nine survivors of sexual offences reports these incidents, and of the 38 212 reported incidents, there are only 4 493 convictions,” he said.

“The current low rate of reporting of incidents and convictions contributes to the impunity of offenders. To ensure increased reporting, we need to work hard to ensure that the justice system improves the turnaround period for cases, the conviction rates and the way the survivors are treated at the police stations and in the courts,” Fr Muyebe said.

Speaking at the end of the training, Fr Linda Zwane, an ambassador of the Men as Peacemakers Campaign from Witbank diocese

said: “The counselling and paralegal skills we have acquired will help us when we are dealing with survivors of domestic violence in our communities. I have learnt to appreciate the skill of listening. Most of the people I am going to encounter will need someone to listen and empower them to move on.

This is the greatest gift which I will be able to offer to my parishioners and people of Nelspruit at large”.

All the 36 participants will receive ongoing support from Lifeline offices from their respective dioceses. J&P has also set up a team of Catholic psychologists and Catholic lawyers who will assist the lay counsellors/paralegals with debriefing and ongoing referrals.

Based on the lessons learnt from this pilot and funding permitting, it is expected that more dioceses will be involved in this project later in the year. n For more information about the ‘Men as Peacemakers’ campaign contact J&P on 012 323 6458 or Fr Stan Muyebe at smuyebe@sacbc.org.za

Archbishop blesses new Little Eden convent

BY DYLAN APPOLIS

L

ITTLE Eden staff and special guests joined Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg as he blessed the new Little Eden convent, known as Domus Our Lady Mother of All Children.

The Sisters of the Imitation of Christ, who came from India and serve at Little Eden, will be living in the convent.

Little Eden currently has six nuns from India who serve at the home for people with intellectual disabilities.

The building was recently acquired by the Little Eden Foundation. Danny and Domitilla Hyams, the late founders of Little Eden, lived there from 1956 with their family, said Nichollette Muthige, Little Eden’s public relations officer.

“It was at the same house that Domitilla had the apparition of Our Blessed Mother Mary in 1967 which set in motion a series of events that led to Little Eden becoming what it is today,” Ms Muthige said.

Mother-general Sr Benjamin and one of her councillors Sr Thejus, made the trip from India to attend the blessing.

“It was very special having Sr Benjamin and Fr Joseph Leathem OMI, the parish priest of Edenvale, performing the ribbon cutting ceremony,” Ms Muthige said.

Lucy Slaviero, CEO of Little Eden, said of her mother:

Archbishop Buti Tlhagale blesses the Domus Our Lady Mother of All Children convent.

“Domitilla envisioned that one day Little Eden would welcome a religious order of nuns to help continue the important work being carried out there daily. Indeed, in January 2010, three Sisters of the Imitation of Christ of the Bethany Generalate, an order of Catholic nuns from India, arrived to commence their service at Little Eden.

“These women have joined our wonderful, dedicated staff in being the hands of Jesus in caring for our residents, with the values of respect, sanctity of life, love and care being the way we carry out our service,” she said.

“It was only fitting, once the Little Eden Foundation acquired this house for long term volunteers that it is allocated as a convent for the Sisters.”

Mrs Slaviero expressed gratitude to the special donors from Holland, who wished to be known simply as Alexandra and Adeline for their financial donation which financed the purchase of the house. Alexandra and her husband Otto were present at the blessing.

“The foundation celebrates 48 years in 2015 and they give credit to God, their donors, the volunteers and a truly wonderful staff for reaching such a milestone,” Ms Muthige said.

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

LOCAL

3

Bishop: Lesotho First woman to head elections ‘relaxed’ Southern Cross board

BY STUART GRAHAM

T

HIS month’s snap parliamentary elections in Lesotho were “peaceful and relaxed”, despite talk of tension before the vote, according to ballot observer Bishop José Luís Ponce de León of Manzini, Swaziland.

The election was intended to ease tensions after an attempted coup last August, but Bishop Ponce de León, who was part of the Inter-Regional Meeting of the Bishops of Southern Africa (Imbisa) delegation which observed the vote, said he had encountered only a relaxed mood in Lesotho.

The bishop said members of Justice & Peace told the observers that “even after the final rallies” supporters of the different parties mixed in the different buses as they returned home.

“Visiting different polling stations both around Maseru and in rural areas—we travelled 110km outside Maseru—we found people queuing from early in the morning ready to vote as soon as the polling station opened,” Bishop Ponce de León said.

“Delegates from the different political parties witnessed the arrival of each voter and the calling of their names, double checking it was part of the voters’ roll. A local chief was also present to confirm the identity of a person if there were problems with his or her document—all well organised.”

Nowhere did any political party campaigning “put pressure” on people.

Official results from the election show that no party secured enough votes to form a government in the country. This means a coalition must be formed.

Jerusalem guide to speak in SA STAFF REPORTER

H

OLY Land tour guide Rimon Makhlouf is returning to South Africa for a series of talks in Gauteng, Cape Town and Namibia.

Jerusalem-based Mr Makhlouf, who is a Latin-rite Catholic, also visited South Africa last year for a series of lectures.

This year he will speak about the fruits of a pilgrimage in the land of Jesus. He will also give a talk in Cape Town on the present situation of Christians in the Holy Land.

In May Mr Makhlouf will be guiding The Southern Cross pilgrimage to the Holy Land with Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria.

It will be the third Southern Cross pilgrimage Mr Makhlouf is guiding, following those with Archbishop Slattery in 2013 and Archbishop Stephen Brislin in 2014.

Mr Makhlouf will speak about the Holy Land at St Peter Claver parish in Pimville, Soweto, on March 22 at 15:00; Our Lady of Mercy in Springs on March 23 at 19:00; Sacred Heart cathedral in Windhoek on March 27

at 18:00; and at Our Lady of the Assumption in Milnerton, Cape Town, on March 29 at 19:30.

His talk on “The Christians of the Holy Land” will be at Schoenstatt in Constantia, Cape Town, March 25 at 19:00. The talk is hosted by Justice & Peace Constantia. Southern Cross editor Günther Simmermacher will deliver the introduction.

Entrance to all talks is free.

Mr Makhlouf will also be interviewed on Radio Veritas on March 23 at 8:30 by Fr Emil Blaser OP, whom he has guided twice in the Holy Land, and in the afternoon at 14:30 by Khanya Litabe. n For more information contact Gail or Michael at 076 352 3809 or 021 551 3923 or e-mail info@fowler tours.co.za

Inkamana Abbey seeks vocations Continued from page 1 most likely due to young people having “other opportunities” now, Fr Sieber said.

“Missionaries from Germany come and say, ‘Gosh, you have a boarding school with 100 boys...Do you not get vocations?’ Maybe it will change, but now those boys and girls go to school at Inkamana and get very good results, [so] other avenues are open for them,” Fr Sieber said.

“We know that from some of our

STAFF REPORTER

T

HE board of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company, which publishes The Southern Cross, elected its first woman chair at the 2015 annual general meeting.

Rosanne Shields succeeds Chris Moerdyk, who served as chairman since 2006. John O’Leary was elected vice-chairman.

Mr Moerdyk resigned the chairmanship but remains a member of the board.

Mrs Shields has a long family association with The Southern Cross.

Her late grandfather, Jean Pothier, served on the board of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company for many decades, also as chairman, and her late father, Bernard Pothier, also was a long-serving member of the board.

In his final chairman’s report, Mr Moerdyk warned that “tough times are still ahead” for the newspaper, but noted that its activities, especially in its digital efforts and the promotion of pilgrimages and publication of books, place it in a good position for survival.

Chris Moerdyk, outgoing chairman of the board of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company, with his successor, Rosanne Shields, and Archbishop Stephen Brislin, a member of the board.

“The company has come through another very tough year and is battling to keep Catholic news available to all Southern African Catholics,” Mr Moerdyk said. “It will take your continued support of the paper and your gen-

erous contributions to the Associates’ Campaign, plus our continued search to increase revenues and contain printing and distribution costs, to ensure the continuation of this proud papers’s record of 94 years unbroken service.”

Pilgrims walk on ‘holy ground’ STAFF REPORTER

M

ORE than 500 people from around South Africa embarked on a Lenten pilgrimage to the Ngome Marian shrine in Nkamana, Eshowe diocese, KwaZulu-Natal.

Among the leading parishes were Good Shepherd in Phoenix and St Joseph’s in Mount Edgecombe, both in the archdiocese of Durban.

The shrine at Ngome marks the reported apparitions of Our Lady to Sr Reinolda May. The devotion is approved by the diocese of Eshowe.

“Ngome is said to be ‘holy ground’, and all those who took part in the pilgrimage entered fully into the prayerful atmosphere of the shrine,” said Bradley Ramjuttan Singh, one of the pilgrimage leaders.

“It was an amazing experience,

own monasteries in Germany, we haven’t had a vocation for 20 years, which means slowly the community is dying out.”

Fr Godfrey says the order advertises for vocations through the Internet and social media, but so far has had negligible success.

“We get more applications to enter the monastery through the Internet than people visiting. Every monk has a computer. We don’t give up hope of getting a vocation.”

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Pilgrims praise and worship with the choir from Nkamana Abbey at Ngome Marian shrine. from the times I’ve been there, and many people can agree with me, this time was life-changing spiritually. Everyone felt they had reached [the] Godhead,” he said.

“Each time that we go on this pil-

Feast of Divine Mercy Celebrations

Blessed are the merciful - they shall have mercy shown to them.’ (Mt 5:7) The Parish of Fish Hoek, Cape Town, invites you to come and celebrate the Feast of Divine Mercy with us on Sunday 12th April 2015.

• 2:00pm Exposition and Holy Hour with Chaplet of Mercy - Benediction at 3pm • Mass at 3:15pm.

• Refreshments served after Mass in the parish hall - please bring a plate and share.

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grimage, its grows our faith and renews our spirit, and we all feel closer to God than ever before.”

He said that “many miracles took place there, and everybody was so blessed”.

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4

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

INTERNATIONAL

Why Pope Francis ‘has Aid officials: Bombing enemies in the Church’ of Gaza has killed hope

BY GLEN ARGAN

BY JUDITH SUDILOVSKY

P

OPE Francis is a radical reformer who is facing enemies—inside and outside of the Church—opposed to at least some parts of his agenda, according to a prominent Church historian.

Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the Second Vatican Council and the author of several books, said the pope is not a liberal who exalts the individual as the centre of the world and who sees a minimal role for the Church in public life.

Rather, he sees the Church as having a role in society and indeed, “in everything humans go through”, Prof Faggioli said in a lecture in Edmonton, Canada. “That is not a liberal thought; it’s a radical Christian thought.”

Prof Faggioli, who teaches theology at the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, said Pope Francis sees himself as having two mandates for reform.

The first mandate he received from cardinals at the March 2013 conclave: to deal with problems of Vatican finances, corruption, sexual abuse and curial reform. There is consensus on the need to carry out that type of reform, and the pope faces no significant opposition to implementing it, he said.

“From the very beginning, however, he made it clear that he had another mandate that was not coming from the conclave or the institution.” That is his “popular mandate”, Prof Faggioli said, which arose out of his experience as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

The popular mandate, Prof Faggioli said, is defined by his comment, “Who am I to judge?” in reference to a gay person “who is seeking God, who is of goodwill”.

“This is the real challenge he is offering the Church. It’s where he’s making some enemies.”

It also includes dealing with new issues that have arisen since the Second Vatican Council, such as the role of women in the Church, the family and marriage, he said. It further includes his creation of the nine-member Council of Cardinals that meets every two months to help him govern the Church.

The creation of the council, Prof Fag-

S Theologian Massimo Faggioli argues that the pope’s reformns have made him enemies within the Church. (Photo: Glen Argan, Western Catholic Reporter) gioli said, “means basically telling the Roman curia, ‘You are fired’”.

In the past, whenever something new was created in the Church, it was still within the Curia, he said. Instead, six of the nine members of the pope’s council are cardinals who head or have recently retired as head of dioceses.

Some bishops at Vatican II in 1963 wanted to create a council similar to the one Pope Francis launched, but received a secret letter from the Vatican secretary of state telling them they had no right to propose such a thing, Prof Faggioli said.

“Pope Francis has changed some things. It is a kind of change that has produced a remarkable and disturbing series of reactions.”

Some of that opposition has come from within the curia, but Prof Faggioli said the power of the new council is more “a myth than a real thing”.

However, a cardinal saying he would resist the pope if the pope undermines Church unity is “something new; it’s unprecedented,” he said without naming specific cardinals.

The historian said he has never seen such opposition to the pope in any recent pontificate. “This is something that worries me,” he said.

Typically, those opposing Pope Francis are those who “have been saying for decades that the most important thing about being Catholic is to obey the pope. But when they receive a pope they don’t like, they become ‘liberal’ Catholics”, he said.—CNS

ON TAPE

A group of readers is preparing audio tapes of excerpts from The Southern Cross for interested people who are blind, sight-impaired, unable to hold a newspaper or illiterate.

Anyone wanting to receive tapes as part of this service, available for an annual subscription fee of only r50, may contact Mr len Pothier, 8 The Spinney retirement village, Main rd, Hout Bay, 7806 or phone 021-790 1317.

IX months after the end of the most recent war in Gaza, there is still a “grave humanitarian crisis” in the narrow strip wedged between the Egyptian and Israeli borders, where more than 1,8 million Palestinians live closed off to the world because of an international embargo.

Following a visit to the area, Sami El-Yousef, regional director for Palestine and Israel of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association ( CNEWA), noted there is an unemployment rate of 70%, a high level of debt and little meaningful reconstruction of the buildings destroyed by Israeli bombing during the war.

“One of the most difficult parts of our trip was seeing how much people have lost hope,” he said. “They really could not see any bright spot at the end of the tunnel; the tunnel does not even exist for them.”

Mr El-Yousef said Gazans told him they feel the situation today is even worse than it was during the war, because then, at least, they had a bit of hope the war would end and things would get better with aid and reconstruction.

But promised financial aid from some Arab countries has failed to materialise largely due to an internal conflict between the Palestinian Authority’s ruling Fatah party and Hamas, which controls Gaza. Tunnels along the Egyptian border, which were used to smuggle cheap goods and fuel to Gazans, have been destroyed by the Egyptian government, which has labeled Hamas a terrorist organisation.

Now all goods reaching Gaza come from Israel, with high Israeli prices, making many basics unaffordable for the local population. People are even resorting to buying basic food necessities

A baby cries as a Palestinian family warms itself by a fire at the remains of their house that was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war last summer near Gaza City. (Photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa, Reuters/CNS) on credit, but with no prospects of being able to pay off their debt any time soon, said Mr El-Yousef.

“The troubles are so widespread, the general atmosphere is one of anger,” he said. “Anger at everyone: at the Palestinian Authority and Hamas for a lack of reconciliation, at Israel for creating the widespread destruction, at the international community for not doing more to support [Gaza], and at other Arab countries for not following through with their financial commitments.”

The level of tension is very high, he said, with the outlook for the future bleak.

P

sychosocial intervention programmes play an important role in helping people, especially children, overcome the trauma suffered during the war and deal with the current difficult conditions, he said. Though one such CNEWA project is set to finish at the end of the school year, there have been requests for its contin-

New Vatican finance rules will protect whistleblowers

BY CAROL GLATZ

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Ursulines Ursulines of of the theBlessed Blessed Virgin Virgin Mary Mary We VirginMary, Mary, Weare arethe theUrsulines Ursulines of of the the Blessed Blessed Virgin called througheducation educationofofgirls, girls, calledto toserve serveChrist Christ through women and servants, pastoral and social work. women and servants, pastoral and social work.

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uation into the summer or perhaps to continue at the beginning of the coming school year.

He said children’s drawings from such sessions show images of war: guns and missiles, destroyed buildings and dead bodies drawn in dark colours.

The programme has reached between 10 000-20 000 people.

“It is extremely helpful, especially for the children, to get out of the war worries.”

Catholic Near East supports a scholarship programme for Christians, who are not permitted to study at universities in Israel, because Israel does not allow Gazans ages 16-35 to leave Gaza.

Mr El-Yousef said the agency also hopes to begin some job-creation programs.

He said that in overwhelmingly Muslim Gaza, Christian institutions have earned a new level of respect and appreciation because of the intervention and help they provided during the war.—CNS

N

EW rules governing the guidance, oversight and control of Vatican financial and administrative activities include the power to levy sanctions and take “civil or criminal action” in cases of “damage to assets”, as well as providing protection for whistleblowers raising red flags about “anomalous activity”.

The provisions were detailed in separate statutes for the Council for the Economy, the Secretariat for the Economy and a “general auditor’s office”. which will be staffed by three lay experts.

Pope Francis has approved the statutes ad experimentum (on a trial basis) for an unspecified period of time.

The establishment of the council and secretariat were announced in February 2014. Officials said it took a full year to develop the statutes because they had to be reviewed by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

A key issue reportedly was to ensure adequate checks and balances.

The statutes officially define the nature, role, responsibilities and organisational structure of each of the three bodies; outline channels of command and accountability; designate English and Italian as the new offices’ working languages; and emphasise the need to keep data and documents confidential.

Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy. (Photo: Paul Haring/CNS) The statutes codify the mission of the three bodies as part of a major overhaul of the Vatican’s accounting and budgeting procedures, and make clear that both the Secretariat for the Economy and the auditors report to the Council for the Economy, which comprises seven lay experts and eight cardinals, including Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban.

T

he auditing office, made up of a general auditor and two assistant auditors, will have the power to audit any Vatican office or body “in full autonomy and independence, and following the best practices recognised internationally concerning public administration”.

The general auditor also “protects the identity” of those signaling any potential problems unless revealing the whistleblower’s identity becomes necessary in carrying out an

investigation or trial.

Red flags raised “in good faith” concerning suspicious activities “do not produce any kind of culpability for violating professional secrets” or other similar confidentiality agreements, the new rules say.

The Council for the Economy, the statutes say, is dedicated to devising best practices, according to international standards, for more ethical, effective and transparent financial management and administration “in light of the Gospel” and church social doctrine.

The council—which is made up of 15 members—will be charged with inspecting the budget forecasts and final budgets of all dicasteries, offices and organizations of the Holy See and Vatican City State. The council will prepare “recommendations for them and submit them to the Holy Father for approval.”

The council will also examine annual “risk assessments” concerning the Vatican’s holdings and finances.

The Secretariat for the Economy, currently headed by Australian Cardinal George Pell, will act in collaboration with the Secretary of State and is in charge of “supervision and vigilance” over all administrative and financial activities at the Vatican. It is charged with implementing the norms and suggestions made by the Council for the Economy.— CNS

INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

5

Pope’s 18-point prep plan for confession A

BY CAROL GLATZ

S Catholics are encouraged to make going to confession a significant part of their lives during Lent, Pope Francis offered some quick tips to help people prepare for the sacrament of penance.

After a brief explanation of why people should go to confession— “because we are all sinners”—the pope listed 30 key questions to reflect on as part of making an examination of conscience and being able to “confess well”.

The guide is part of a 28-page booklet in Italian released by the Vatican publishing house. Pope Francis had 50 000 free copies distributed to people attending a Sunday Angelus address.

Titled “Safeguard Your Heart”, the booklet contains quick introductions to Catholic basics: it has the text of the Creed, a list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. It explains the seven sacra-

ments and includes Pope Francis’ explanation of lectio divina, a prayerful way of reading Scripture in order to better hear “what the Lord wants to tell us in his word and to let us be transformed by his Spirit”.

The booklet’s title is based on a line from one of the pope’s morning Mass homilies in which he said Christians need to guard and protect their hearts, “just as you protect your home—with a lock”.

“How often do bad thoughts, bad intentions, jealousy, envy enter?” he asked. “Who opened the door? How did those things get in?”

The best way to guard one’s heart is with the daily practice of an “examination of conscience”, in which one quietly reviews what bad things one has done and what good things one has failed to do for God, one’s neighbour and oneself, Pope Francis said.

The questions include: • Do I only turn to God when I’m in need?

• Do I take attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation?

• Do I begin and end the day with prayer?

• Am I embarrassed to show that I am a Christian?

• Do I rebel against God’s plan?

• Am I envious, hot-tempered, biased?

• Am I honest and fair with everyone or do I fuel the “throwaway culture”?

• In my marital and family relations, do I uphold morality as taught in the Gospels?

• Do I honour and respect my parents?

• Have I refused newly conceived life? Have I snuffed out the gift of life? Have I helped do so?

• Do I respect the environment?

• Am I part worldly and part believer?

• Do I overdo it with eating, drinking, smoking and amusements?

• Am I overly concerned about my physical well-being, my posses-

Pope Francis hears confession during a penitential liturgy in St Peter’s basilica last Lent. In a new booklet, the pope offers advice on how to examine one’s conscience before making a confession. (Photo: L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters) sions?

• How do I use my time? Am I lazy?

• Do I want to be served?

• Do I dream of revenge, hold grudges?

• Am I meek, humble and a builder of peace?

Catholics should go to confession, the pope said, because everyone needs forgiveness for their sins,

for the ways “we think and act contrary to the Gospel”.

“Whoever says he is without sin is a liar or is blind,” he wrote.

Confession is meant to be a sincere moment of conversion, an occasion to demonstrate trust in God’s willingness to forgive his children and to help them back on the path of following Jesus, Pope Francis wrote.—CNS

ber 4-25. A Vatican official said the meeting probably would take place in June.

According to the Lisieux shrine’s website, a miracle being studied for the couple’s canonisation involves a little girl named Carmen in the diocese of Valencia, Spain.

Born prematurely and with multiple life-threatening complications, Carmen suffered a major brain haemorrhage, which could have caused irreversible damage.

Her parents prayed for the couple’s intercession. The little girl survived and is healthy.

Pope Francis has a special devotion to St Thérèse. The pope used to keep a photo of the 19th-cen-

tury French Carmelite nun on his library shelf when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. He has said that when he has a problem, he asks St Thérèse “not to solve it, but to take it in her hands and help me accept it”. As a sign that she’s heard his request, he said, “I almost always receive a white rose”.

Before opening the October 2014 meeting of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family, Pope Francis venerated the relics of St Thérèse, her parents and another couple, Bl Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi; the relics were brought to Rome specifically for prayers during the bishops’ discussions about family life.—CNS

St Thérèse’s parents set to be canonised at synod

BY CINDY WOODEN

P

OPE Francis is expected to canonise Bl Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux, during the world Synod of Bishops on the family in October.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, leading a conference on the role of saints in the life of the Church, announced that “thanks be to God, in October two spouses, parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux, will be canonised”.

Bl Louis and Marie Zélie Guérin Martin were married in 1858. The couple had nine children, but four of them died in infancy. The five who survived—including St

Thérèse—all entered religious life.

Bl Zélie died of cancer in 1877, at the age of 45; her husband died when he was 70 in 1894.

The couple was beatified in 2008. They are believed to be the first parents of a saint to be beatified, highlighting the important role parents play in their children’s human and spiritual upbringing.

Following normal Vatican procedures, before their canonisation the pope would have to recognise a miracle that occurred after prayers for the couple’s intercession before God. The decree is expected to be signed before Easter.

The next step would be for the pope to consult with the Church’s cardinals and hold a consistory

Bl Louis and Marie Zélie Guérin Martin, the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux. (Photos courtesy of Sanctuary of Lisieux) with cardinals present in Rome to announce the decision to proceed with the ceremony during the world Synod of Bishops on the family, due to be held from Octo-

Pope: Who are you to judge others?

BY CAROL GLATZ

D

ROP the innocent look and the habit of judging others, Pope Francis said; recognising one’s own faults and failings is the first requirement of being a good Christian.

In fact, paradoxically, one finds peace and relief in judging one’s own sins, being merciful toward others and saying, “Who am I to judge?” he said during a homily at a morning Mass celebrated in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives.

Focused on the gospel reading according to St Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples to stop judging and condemning, but to “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”.

Pope Francis said it is so easy to shift the blame: “We are all ex-

perts, we have PhDs in justifying ourselves: ‘But it wasn’t me, no, it’s not my fault. Well, OK, but it wasn’t that bad, you know. That’s not how it went.’ We all have an alibi to explain away our failings, our sins,” he said.

“So often we are able to make that face that says, ‘Who, me?’ that face that says, ‘Well, I didn’t do it, maybe it was someone else,’ playing innocent,” he said. “But one doesn’t progress in Christian life this way.”

While it is easier to blame others, “when we begin to look at the things we are capable of”, the evil that one is tempted to commit, he said at first “we feel bad, we feel disgust”—but then “something a bit strange happens”, the self-critical approach then “gives us peace and well-being”.

By directly, honestly and quietly confronting the evil within, such as feeling envy and knowing how it can lead to putting people down and “killing them morally”, he said, one discovers “the wisdom of accusing oneself.”

When people can see their own faults, he said, it is easier to ask God for mercy and to be merciful towards others.

“When someone learns to accuse oneself, one is merciful towards others: ‘Yes, but who am I to judge if I am capable of doing worse things?’”

The phrase, “Who am I to judge,” he said, comes from listening to Jesus telling his disciples to “stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”—CNS

Shroud solution for women who aborted

BY CINDY WOODEN

W

ITH the aim of ensuring that the public display of the Shroud of Turin promotes conversion and healing, the archbishop of Turin has given priests throughout the archdiocese special faculties to offer absolution to women who confess to having had an abortion.

The display of the shroud from April 19 to June 24 should be “a time of grace that translates into attitudes of conversion, the fruit of repentance and newness of life,” Archbishop Cesare

Nosiglia wrote in a decree.

According to the Code of Canon Law, “A person who procures a completed abortion” automatically incurs excommunication. Only the bishop or a priest he designates can lift the excommunication. In some dioceses the local bishop formally has granted the faculty to all priests, while in Turin and other places, the bishop grants the faculty on special occasions.

Archbishop Nosiglia wrote that the church’s ministers, meeting the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims expected to visit the

Turin cathedral to see the shroud, want to “concretely demonstrate the Father’s mercy toward those who repent of an evil committed.”

However, he said, the permission granted to priests is limited to the time of the shroud’s public display so as not to “diminish the rigor of the law,” which aims to teach people how seriously wrong it is to kill an innocent life.

Archbishop Nosiglia also asked priests to impose a penance that would help lead to a lasting conversion.—CNS

6

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

LEADER PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

The Council for Laity

T

HE plan by the bishops of Southern Africa to establish a Council for the Laity must be commended.

The bishops have rightly recognised that they need recourse to drawing from the skills, experiences and insights of lay people, and to give them a voice.

At a time when Pope Francis is increasingly calling on the contribution of lay people—for example, as members of the Vatican’s Council for Economy or as auditors of the bishops’ synod— attempts to give the laity greater influence in the activities of the Catholic Church in our region is timely.

It is also encouraging, as Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban has noted, that the 29-member laity council is intended to help the bishops’ conference serve the needs of the dioceses, not the other way around.

This should not mean that the collegiality of bishops at conference level must be diminished, but that the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference will be better placed to facilitate the mission and work of the Church on diocesan levels.

To that end, the SACBC’s departmental structures are already being reconfigured. Diocesan structures may likewise need reform, ideally in such a way as to encourage wider and focused participation by the laity which the council is intended to aid.

The composition of the laity council will require much care.

The Catholic Church in Southern Africa, much as the general population, is racially, socially, culturally, economically and philosophically varied. The great challenge will be to set up a laity council whose 29 members reflect this diversity with some degree of representativity.

For instance, the council will require members from remote rural areas and from urban centres; some dioceses incorporate both rural and urban areas. It will have to draw from the experience of people who live in poverty as well as it must from the expertise of the middle class.

The activities of the Council for the Laity must be driven by functioning diocesan structures, which should give those who are delegated to serve on the council a clear mandate.

The laity council and diocesan laity structures should exclude no faithful Catholic from

representation. Structures for the laity must by necessity represent the middle ground which is occupied by the majority of Catholics. But they must also take on board the views and concerns of conservatives and progressives, even, and especially, if their views are at odds with those of their local bishop.

This is important. A council and diocesan structures for the laity that fail to challenge the hierarchy when necessary and instead only confirm the positions held by bishops would be a waste of resources and opportunity.

Of course, the relationship between bishops and laity structures should not be intrinsically adversarial; indeed, the point of the council is to foster reciprocal cooperation in the service of the Church at all levels. Nevertheless, there are times when bishops need the insights of the laity, even when these are not welcome, to better read the signs of the times.

Bishops would do themselves and the Church a disservice if they were to deliberately load the council with individuals who reflect their particular biases, never mind with their friends.

Ideally, bishops should have no influence, direct or indirect, over the composition of the laity council or the diocesan structures from which the councillors should receive their mandate.

Since the costs of the council’s activities—such as transport to meetings, accommodation and so on—must be carried by the SACBC or the dioceses, there will always be the risk that councillors do not feel free to represent positions which they feel might be at odds with those of the hierarchy or their local bishop. The necessary independence of thought, without which the council would be irrelevant, must be strongly asserted.

The Council for the Laity will invariably fail if it becomes, or is seen to be, dependent on episcopal favour. Therefore it is necessary that the council and its members have the explicit and guaranteed freedom to confront the bishops when they feel it’s necessary, without concern for repercussion.

The bishops, in setting up the council, evidently seek a collegial relationship with the laity.

This must be supported. May the Council for the Laity bear rich fruit.

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Priest’s works monuments to love

T

HE recent death of Fr Charles Kuppelwieser brought to mind an unusual sight for a priest’s home: The lawn was strewn with hundreds of pairs of old shoes with as many women trying them for size.

Nearby a huge container of old clothes, newly arrived from Germany, was being unpacked with hundreds of excited people rummaging through the shirts, dresses, trousers, children’s clothes.

With the passage of time, the dates have blurred, but it must have been 30 or more years ago that Fr Kuppelwieser, then the parish priest at a township near Carolina in what is now Mpumalanga, started receiving the container loads of used clothes from Catholics in Germany.

The arrival of these huge boxes

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was a major event as thousands of poor people turned up to try on the “new” clothes in the priest’s house. What wasn’t given to the local poor, Fr Kuppelwieser sold off to the more affluent and used the money to build a home for orphaned children, a schools and a clinic.

As a journalist, I visited his mission when I heard of this priest who was having such an impact on the local poor. I was there for Sunday Mass the next day.

His church was packed. But, said the priest, “I doubt if we collect 20 cents on any Sunday. My people just don’t have the money.”

This colourful priest was becoming something of a thorn in the flesh of the National Party government. They wanted him to stop

What’s God saying? Commanded to REFER to the continuing correIspondence on boy and girl altar love our neighbour servers, a discussion started from a strange sexist speech by Cardinal Raymond Burke.

Martin Keenan and GB Elisio (letters, February 25) defend the cardinal, the latter reminding us how Cardinal Burke fell out of favour with Pope Francis and was “ostracised by…Church leaders.”

Well, the cardinal’s critics are certainly in good company!

I originally dismissed Cardinal Burke’s strange tirade: how does one take seriously a speech which dismisses the power of the calling by the Holy Spirit, a speech which states that working with girls on the altar would dissuade boys (despite the Holy Spirit) from a vocation of serving Christ?

And then also, he deplores, as Martin Keenan reminds us, “the prioritising in the Church of women’s issues over men’s”. Are we not all aware of past historical imbalances and injustices? Why does the word “misogyny” come to mind?

Mr Keenan uses percentage figures clearly related to the Church’s women’s orders which cannot compare to the percentage figures for priestly vocations.

The key point made by Cardinal Burke, and repeated by Martin Keenan, is that the rate of male altar servers has declined (since the advent and increase of female servers), and that this has affected the intake for priestly vocations.

Sure, if when the harvest is plenty you don’t use all the workers on offer.

So, there is an interesting correlation here; is God trying to tell us something?

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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.

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B

OTH Henry Sylvester’s and Frank Sokolic’s comments concerning those of other Christian denominations (January 28) remind us of the days when Christian tolerance for each other’s beliefs was a lot less than it is today.

Religious intolerance can be graphically seen in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq where town bombings are common leading to innocent people being killed indiscriminately.

A quick look through history shows us that Christians also spilled the blood of their fellow Christians. And all this happened knowing full well the preached Christian message of “loving thy neighbour”.

We know that love comes in many forms, that between mother and child, husband and wife, brotherly and sisterly love, loving one’s pets, and, of course, romantic love. The command to “love thy neighbour” might be understood as simply being civil, decent and charitable towards him or her.

Patrick Dacey, Johannesburg

distributing the contents of those container loads. When he refused, the government imposed import duty on them.

The priest was told he was damaging South Africa’s textile industry. People would stop buying South African made clothes if they got it free from overseas. The tax was there, he was told, to protect jobs.

What the authorities did not mention was that their apartheid policies, not the containers, were hampering job creation. And so the container loads from generous Germans dried up.

Fr Kuppelwieser was ever the fighter. He turned to the Church in Germany and found other ways of raising money.

The facilities he built for the local people in Sizanani in Bronkhorstspruit are monuments to his love.

Winnie Graham, Cape Town this iniquitous law, and this caused many of these activists to cease their efforts completely, due to the mistaken impression that they were all futile.

However, there remains a vast area of abortion, much larger than its surgical counterpart, against which very effective action can still be taken, as it is based on ignorance and not on evil intent. This is the sphere of abortifacient, as opposed to contraceptive, birth control, the most popular method of which is the pill, most users of which intend contraception only, are unaware of its abortive potential, and would cease to use it if informed thereof.

Thus, any publicising of this abortive potential (openly acknowledged by the drug’s manufacturers) would yield very dramatic antiabortion results, and could be done, inter alia, by: 1. Encouraging the Internet reading of the booklet “Does the birth control pill cause abortions?” (which proves that it does) by Randy Alcorn (www.cpm.org/static/ uploads/downloads/bcpill.pdf) 2. Circulating certain cards, based on this booklet, which can be obtained by phoning 011 82 3088.

Damian McLeish, Johannesburg

Wrong placements

REALLY enjoyed Günther SimThe Pill’s abortions Imermacher’s travel articles about

S

EVERAL years ago, Pope John Paul II said to American antiabortion activist Fr Paul Marx: “You are doing the most important work on earth.”

There have been many other such activists, especially in our country. Since 1996 when we legalised abortion on demand, our government has totally disregarded the many national petitions against

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the Catholic faith in Bavaria and its capital, Munich (February 4 and 18 respectively). His words and the beautiful photos took me back to my home region.

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PERSPECTIVES

Five ways of learning to love yourself Judith Turner R ECENTLY I sat down with a young woman who had given up on life.

She had given up on herself. She had lost all confidence in her own abilities and did not believe that her life would ever get back together again.

The young woman could not see herself getting anything right about her life. She hated it. She hated herself. Where did it all begin?

Sometimes we do neglect ourselves. We neglect ourselves to the point where we do not know ourselves, understand ourselves and ultimately love ourselves. This leads to low self-confidence and low self-esteem.

We know that we have to love ourselves first before we can engage in any meaningful relationships with others. But many of us do not know where to start with loving ourselves.

For that reason I have compiled a list on “how to love yourself”, in the hope that it might help people who are facing difficulty knowing what to do in boosting their self-esteem.

In our young days we look for relationships with others. We spend time on looking for the right person. We spend a lot of time on looking for the best spouse or romantic partner and we look forward to having a good relationship with him or her.

And when we do find the right person we can either live happily ever after or we can fail miserably. The latter might be influenced by a deficiency in self-love.

Learning to love yourself starts with making a conscious decision, an intention to become happy and to lead a fulfilled life. When you do not love yourself and suffer from low self-esteem, it is almost im-

possible to ever reach the potential that you suspect you have.

When you make a decision to love yourself, you are really saying that you want to come alive. You want to connect with that deep spirit of love within yourself and you want it to shine radiantly towards others.

S

o if you’ve decided on loving yourself but are stumped on how to do it, there are five ways which will be helpful: Fall in love with yourself. Think about what makes you you. Just like a flower that needs watering to grow, learn to nurture yourself in every way. Love yourself for all the good that you see and accept your flaws and the fact that you are imperfect.

This does not mean that you do not learn to change your shortcomings; instead, you are being gentle and kind to yourself despite all your “flaws”.

Low self-esteem can harm one’s relationships. In her column, Judith Turner gives five tips on how to love one’s self.

(Photo: morguefile)

Happy Mother’s Day! I HOPE the headline didn’t send you into a panic. It was not meant for your mother or to shame you because you had forgotten it was mother’s day.

It is meant for my mother, who lives in England and where mother’s day is being celebrated on Sunday, March 15. In South Africa you have another two months to remember to buy your mother flowers or chocolates or a card.

But since this column is about faith and society let me explain why mother’s day in England falls on this Sunday. It is because it is the middle Sunday in Lent and traditionally, Lenten observances were relaxed on this day as a reward for getting through the first half of Lent and a way of steeling yourself for the second half.

So if your Lenten resolution is to give up cake or alcohol or cigarettes then, theoretically, you can gift yourself a small slice or a little puff or a wee dram this Sunday.

(Note, though, the gospels do not record Jesus having a mid-way time-off during his 40 days in the desert!)

In medieval England, Lent was taken very seriously. For example, you were allowed no butter, no sugar and no eggs: hence the tradition of using up all those ingredients and making pancakes the day before Ash Wednesday. So a slight relaxation on this Sunday was much anticipated.

It is also shown in the Church’s liturgical vestments. If your priest is following the rubric, he will be wearing pink and not purple this Sunday. It has nothing to do with breast cancer or pink pride. Instead, it is in tune with the laetare (happiness) theme of the opening prayer in the Mass this week.

So what is the connection with mothers? Back to medieval England where a lot of poor children were sent away from home to work as domestic servants in big houses. They were never allowed back to their parents for Christmas or Easter be-

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A mother and her daughter. In his column, Raymond Perrier suggests that mothers (and fathers) be honoured all year around, not only on one day. (Photo: Anita Peppers/morguefile) cause they would be needed on duty.

So instead, the one weekend a year they were allowed home was this middle Sunday in Lent. The tradition then grew that as children in service were reunited with their mothers, this was a day to celebrate all mothers.

The children also often took home a cake made from ingredients that were allowed during Lent, hence the simnel cake and Simnel Sunday.

All of this history is lost on the majority of English people and their mothers, but it just goes to show how many of our customs have a Christian foundation.

I

n a similar way, mother’s day in some Catholic countries is celebrated on first Sunday in May—a month dedicated to Mary, Mother of God and our mother too—and in Panama on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

But the date which is used in South Africa, the second Sunday in May, comes from an American practice. It seems to have no deeper roots than the desire of greetings card companies to promote a

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Faith and Life

Look in the mirror and fall in love with the reflection that is you.

Eliminate undue self-criticism. Do you often berate yourself over the tiniest thing? Is there a little voice inside your head that often tells you that you are no good or not as good as others? If you find that you criticise yourself often, make an effort to stop the self-criticism.

Be kind and positive. When you start to think kindly and positively about yourself, the love you have for yourself just grows.

Make it a habit to praise yourself everyday, while in the front of the mirror. Because of such thoughts, you naturally undertake empowering actions that support your development.

Acknowledge your effort. It’s not always about winning or having success in everything that you do. Many times, it is the effort that counts! Acknowledge that you’ve done your best, even if you have failed to produce tangible results.

Let go of worry. Loving yourself requires you to let go of your worry. It is horrible to live a life filled with constant worrying (though people with an anxiety disorder might need therapeutic help).

Worry does not help in any way. It cannot, on its own, make things happen. Trust, prayer and wise actions can.

This is the way in which God loves us.

Raymond Perrier

Faith and Society

card-giving holiday in a month that was otherwise quiet.

In the same way, they created Father’s Day in June—though some Catholic countries mark this more appropriately on the feast of St Joseph—and a range of other “Hallmark holidays”: Grandmother’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Second Cousin’s Day, and so on. And before we get too hot under the collar about the secularisation of Christian holidays, let’s not forget our own appropriation of the winter solstice, to create Christmas, or the attempt to reclaim May 1 from the socialists as the feast of St Joseph the Worker.

What interests me about these days is what they say and what they leave unsaid.

It is wonderful to have a day to celebrate our mothers (alive and deceased), and to make them feel special by making them breakfast in bed or spoiling them in some other way.

But what is not said is that this is poor payback for the rest of the year when we take them for granted, forget about their needs, and expect them to run around us and bring us breakfast in bed!

The joke goes that the reason there is a Women’s Day and no Man’s Day is that men are already the centre of attention for the other 364 days a year. In the same way, we need to be careful when, as a Catholic community, we have a year when we celebrate the priest or religious or families. Let that not be an excuse to forget their importance for all of the other years.

So, whether you are celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend or in a few weeks or in a few months, let it not be a one-off to excuse our careless behaviour for the rest of the year, but instead let it be a chance to make amends and treat our mothers (and fathers) with respect and with love all year round.

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

7

Deacon Greg Garnie

Point of Debate

Let light prevail over darkness

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T the Easter Vigil we chant three times the words “Lumen Christi”—Christ Our Light— in the midst of darkness as the light of the Easter candle illuminates the darkness. This light is a symbol of the True Light, Jesus Christ, who illuminates all darkness.

Darkness has been described as simply being the absence of light. Light and darkness are central to our personal, community and society spirituality.

Since we are not only physical but also spiritual beings, light and darkness play a central role in our spiritual and holistic human formation, or the lack of it.

Through observation, I have come to believe that the Light of Christ we proclaim at Easter is being challenged more and more to the point that darkness is even portrayed as “light”. For Christians there can be only ONE Light, Jesus Christ. For the world there is only ONE Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yet we find ourselves in a situation where Christians and the world are being told, not by God, that things of darkness are indeed acceptable, and conversely that things of light are now unacceptable or “politically incorrect”. Ergo, evil is good and good is evil. This is the message being propagated at all levels of society by a variety of individuals, groups, institutions, organisations and governments.

We only have to look to the laws in our country to realise this truth. Abortion legalised, same sex unions legislated as ‘marriage’, legalised polygamy, changing the natural family structure by allowing same sex couples to raise children and so on. The state determines what is acceptable and what is not.

In this context, both natural and divine law are discarded for secular law.

Even in the area of family planning, Natural Family Planning is excluded from state-run family planning programmes, effectively forcing artificial contraception down our proverbial throats.

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here secularism, driven by the state and others with the same agenda, is actively stripping away the True Light and replacing it with a false light, there is darkness.

Even within our Catholic Church we have those who have spread darkness instead of Light by their words, actions and omissions, clergy and laity alike.

The sexual abuse scourge is a case in point.

We are in the midst of a spiritual war that has been raging since the dawn of creation, between light and darkness. We Christians are often very naive about this warfare and fall into the secular trap of accepting darkness as “light” while at the same time consigning the True Light to the rubbish bin of irrelevance or uselessness.

The True Light is often seen as an inconvenience or a hindrance to the more alluring life that darkness offers with its insatiable thirst of and for money, power, instant gratification, status, irresponsible pleasures of the senses, sense of entitlement, oppression and suppression of others, covetous avarice and all sorts of corruption and injustice, from the very top to the very bottom of socio-political, religious and economic life.

Therefore my challenge to all Christians, including myself and not only Catholics, is to consciously and actively embrace the True Light, Jesus Christ and ALL that he stands for.

Christianity is by nature radical and revolutionary and we, like Christ, are not called to be politically correct for the sake of empowering the darkness of this world and at the expense of Christ's Light within us that forms our faith convictions.

No! We are called to be like Mother Mary who stood bravely for the True Light despite the consequences.

We are called to be like those who have given their lives rather than to deny the True Light. By word and action we stand for divine truth, in season and out of season, even when the truth is painful. Christ’s mission remains radical and revolutionary, this has not changed.

The light of Christ is an invitation to every human being to be freed from the darkness, the evil that stalks the earth like a hungry beast disguised to deceive and lead astray.

Lumen Christi! Deo Gratias! n Deacon Greg Garnie is based in Johannesburg.

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8

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

COMMUNITY

Sacred Heart parish in Mangethe, Mandini, archdiocese of Durban, celebrated Valentine’s Day. The children of the parish are pictured with Dr CR Zondo.

A group of pilgrims, mostly from Rosebank parish in Johannesburg and almost all family, in the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The group was led by Fr Tony Nunes (middle row, second from left), and guided by Rimon Makhlouf (front left), who was assisted by his son Gabriel (front right), who is also a tour guide. The ancient olive trees of Gethsemane, the garden in which Jesus was betrayed and arrested, can be seen in the background.

Knysna Catholics celebrated police day. Fr Brian Williams (centre) who serves all the parishes in the Knysna area, is pictured with community members and police.

Loreto School Queenswood, an Independent Catholic Christian School, wishes to make the following appointments with effect from 1 January 2016.

Head of Department: religious Education and Pastoral Care

The post involves managing a staff complement of 25 educators, who teach religious Education.

We seek to appoint a dynamic and energetic educationalist who will: • Spiritually lead educators, parents and learners.

• Be responsible for the school’s outreach and pastoral care programme.

• Assist in promoting the charism of our foundress Mary Ward.

• Be expected to teach Life Orientation and Religious Education.

• Need to engage with the school’s chaplain and the Queenswood Parish.

The incumbent should: • Be a practising Catholic.

• Have the requisite academic and professional qualifications.

• Have at least 5 years teaching experience.

• Be registered with SACE. • Be proficient in English.

• Have an understanding of the planning of liturgies.

• Be committed to ensure that gospel values are at the core of the school’s identity.

• Be committed to fostering relationships within the Catholic network.

• Be prepared to do extramural activities as required by the school.

Two Sisters of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Lucia Mahlaela and Lorraine Rapolayi, made their final profession at Glen Cowie, diocese of Witbank. They are pictured with Sr Goretti Tau (centre) (Photo: Sr Elizabeth Mathabathe)

HoD Foundation Phase

The post involves managing the Foundation Phase of the school (Gr1-3) which consists of 9 educators. We seek to appoint an energetic educationalist who has at least 5 years experience in teaching in the Foundation Phase.

The incumbent should: • Have the requisite academic and professional qualifications.

• Be familiar with the CAPS documents • Understand and identify with the Catholic Ethos of the school • Be proficient in English • Be prepared to do extramural activities as required by the school • Be registered with SACE

Takuzwa Maumbi (seated left) Rabecca Swarts (seated right) and Lita Filifani (standing second right) received their first Holy Communion from Fr Douglas Sumaili at St Mary’s cathedral in De Aar.

loreto School Queenwood is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare and safety of children and young people and expects all staff to share this commitment. This post is subject to an enhanced Criminal records Bureau check and a full background check.

All applications must be accompanied by a CV and certified copies of all qualifications and SACE Certificate. They should reach the school by no later than 27 March 2015 and be addressed to:

The Principal: Mr M Pallozzi, loreto School Queenswood P.o. Box 11101, Queenswood, 0121 or Fax: (012) 333 2529 or e-mail: tanias@sagateway.com tania.seiderer@loretosa.co.za

The school reserves the right not to proceed with filling these posts. An application will not in itself entitle the applicant to an interview or appointment and failure to meet the minimum requirements of the advertised post will result in applicants automatically disqualifying themselves from consideration.

Successful candidates who are short-listed for the positions will be notified by no later than Friday 10 April 2015

Marist Brothers College Linmeyer in Johannesburg awarded their top 10 matric academic achievers with scholarships. (Back from left) Ricardo Da Silva, Jason Parry and Kamil Rama. (Front) Denisha Govender, Sheridan Pienaar, Shante Da Rocha, Tayla Ison, Katlego Makubetse and Vassiliki Marantos.

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

FOCUS

9

The vicious cycle of unaffordable debt As unemployment and a tight economy continue to grip the country, STUART GRAHAM looks at the practice of microlending and the spiral of despair it can create.

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ARLY in 2011: A young miner from a village outside of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape arrives in the North West province to start a job on a platinum mine.

He has a young school-going son who lives with his wife and he wants to earn enough to give the boy a good education.

The man lives in a hostel at first, but when he finds out that the mining company will give him a monthly subsidy if he moves into his own accommodation, he builds himself a shack in a squatter camp nearby.

Soon the man is living with an unemployed woman with whom he has a child.

Most of his wages are sent home to his wife and son in the Eastern Cape. When he is approached after work one day and asked if he needs a cash loan to buy a few pieces of furniture, it doesn’t take him long to make up his mind. He signs a pile of forms and is given R10 000 on the spot.

But the interest on the loan is enormous and the miner falls behind on his payments.

The microlender immediately approaches the magistrate’s court for a garnishee order. It takes just a quick stamp and signature from a clerk of the court and a garnishee order is issued, instructing the miner’s employer to deduct money from his wages each week.

With his take home pay reduced to virtually nothing, the miner takes another loan. Months later he is issued with a second garnishee order.

The man’s story, says National Union of Mineworkers spokesman Lesiba Seshoka, was a common one on the Platinum Belt in 2012.

Dozens of mine workers were killed in violent fights with the police or

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in battles between rival unions during wage strikes.

Investigations into the Marikana massacre in August 2012, in which 37 miners were gunned down by the police, found that high levels of debt and garnishee orders were one of the catalysts behind the strikes.

Later that year ten of the 13 microlenders operating in Marikana were charged for operating illegally and contravening provisions of the National Credit Act, following an investigation into their business practices by the National Credit Regulator.

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he spectre of microlenders and reckless lending was raised after the Marikana violence but the practice, widespread across South Africa, is now once again in the spotlight as the University of Stellenbosch’s Legal Aid Clinic (LAC) launches a groundbreaking court case.

The LAC is taking the departments of Justice and Trade and Industry, the National Credit Regulator, a law firm and 13 microlenders to court over the legality of garnishee orders.

It argues that scant regard is paid to the impact that salary deductions have on a worker’s personal wellbeing. Leaving the process in the hands of a clerk and allowing the matter to be handled in a court which is not located in the vicinity often ends in inhumane treatment.

Reckless microlenders who fail to perform affordability assessments will also be targeted.

Research by the University of Pretoria Law Clinic academics Frans Haupt and Hermie Coetzee in 2008 found the garnishee system to be riddled with questionable practices.

Problems included forged signatures, difficulty in authenticating the debtor’s signature, and debtors alleging that they signed contracts under duress. Financial illiteracy among debtors was another major problem.

At no point in the garnishee process is a debtor subjected to a financial inquiry. There is also no cap on the amount that can be deducted from the debtor’s salary, leaving many with no income at the end of a month.

In one case quoted by Haupt and

When cash is short, many South Africans obtain short-term credit—and those who are rejected by banks tend to go to short-term lenders. Many of these charge such usurious interest rates that already cash-strapped borrowers descend into a spiral of debt while the financial institutions may have repayments docked from salaries through garnishee orders.

Coetzee, a cleaner from Stellenbosch who was given an initial loan of R1 300 in 2002 saw her debt rise to R4 521 by March 2003 when a garnishee order of R212 a month was implemented.

By January 2004, 11 monthly instalments of R2 338 had been deducted from the worker’s salary.

At this stage, the creditor indicated that the amount still due was R7 953. By July 2004 a further R1 062 had been paid over to the creditor, who informed that the balance was now R8 391!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns this kind of economic exploitation: “Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the Seventh Commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another” (2409).

And should a personal financial crisis brought on by unreasonable interest rates and repayment schedules lead to a debtor committing

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suicide, the Catechism places the responsibility with the lender: “Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them” (2269).

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ebt collection attorneys Flemix & Associates welcome the “clarity” the LAC court case will bring.

“We welcome the legal clarity that the outcome of this application will bring on the use of EAOs,” firm principal Alanza Flemix-Jordaan said in a statement.

Danielle Halfon of the microlender Atlas Finance says garnishee orders are “an absolute last resort”.

In some cases, she says, borrowers take money and make no effort to repay it. This however, is “the exception and not the rule”.

“Unfortunately some debtors avoid payment to the point that there is no alternative but to hand the debt over to a debt collector for collection,” she said.

Some companies, such as Summit Garnishee Solutions, offer a call centre facility where employees can

notify the company when they feel that their garnishee deductions are “excessive or illegitimate”.

The main purpose of the service is to protect employees from abusive garnishee practices and ensure fair and accurate repayment of valid debts.

The collapse of African Bank Investments Limited (Abil) in August last year was a further reminder of the debt that smothers many South Africans.

Abil, the country’s biggest provider of unsecured loans, was placed under curatorship by the Reserve Bank on August 10 after the failure of many of its low income borrowers to repay billions of rands in debt.

The collapse came in the context of an economic climate affected by staggeringly high unemployment and high inflation pushed by food and transport costs.

Some commentators blamed South Africa’s poor savings discipline and a culture of consumerism that has gripped the country.

“South Africa has a culture of saving which has been impacted by a consumerism that has been prevalent in the emerging middle market,” says Michael Daniels, the head of deposits and payments at Standard Bank.

“From 2004 to 2007 onwards, as interest rates declined, we saw a wave of consumerism and a high demand for imported products in the South African market.”

Deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas said last year that savings are “disturbingly low” in South Africa, relative to its peers. According to the World Bank, South Africa’s gross savings rate was 14,2% as a percentage of GDP in 2012, compared to China at 51% and India and Russia at 30%.

By 2013, South Africa’s national gross savings rate was down even further to 13,5%.

“It is interesting, though not surprising, to observe that countries with higher savings rates tend to have higher growth rates as well,” Mr Jonas said. n To lodge a complaint about credit providers contact the National Credit Regulator at 0860 627627 or e-mail complaints@ncr.org.za or visit www.ncr.org.za

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10

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

TRAVEL

From left: The house in which St John Paul II was born in Wadowice • A chapel in the Wieliczka Salt Mine • Wawel castle and the cathedral church in Kraków • the main altar of the basilica in Niepokalanów, in the monastery founded by St Maximilian Kolbe.

Walking in the path of St John Paul II Few popes in history have been as closely tied to the country of their birth as St John Paul II was to Poland.

To honour the pope born Karol Wojtyła and explore his country before the world’s Catholic youth comes to Kraków next year, The Southern Cross will host a pilgrimage to Poland in May 2016, led by an SA-based and Polish-born bishop.

Above: The Black Madonna icon in the Jasna Góra monastery in Czechostowa; the chapel with the tomb of St Faustina.

Below: Kalwaria Zebrzydowska; the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima at Zakopane

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OPE St John Paul II was born as Karol Wojtyła on May 18, 1920 in the small town of Wadowice, near the historic Polish city of Kraków.

He spent most of his life in Kraków—the city which will host World Youth Day in July 2016— first as a student, seminarian and priest, then as archbishop and cardinal before his momentous election to the papacy in October 1978.

Poland’s history, culture and traditions are closely tied to the Catholic faith which most Poles were brought up in. It shows in the devotion to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa and other Marian shrines, and in the devotion Poles have to their saints, such as the martyr St Maximilian Kolbe.

The Southern Cross’ pilgrimage in honour of St John Paul II—from May 13-22, 2016—will visit the places of the pope’s life and of his devotions. It will bring the pilgrims closer to Karol Wojtyła, the saint, and illuminate the power of the Catholic faith whose spirit could not be crushed by four decades of aggressively atheistic and repressive communism.

The pilgrimage will be led by Bishop Stanislaw Dziuba of Umzimkulu, who was born in 1960 near Czestochowa and is very familiar with the sites we will visit.

Bishop Dziuba’s knowledge and spiritual direction will be complemented by the expertise of local guides and a local tour director.

Southern Cross editor Günther Simmermacher is also expected to join the pilgrimage, schedule permitting.

The group will meet on May 13, the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, at Johannesburg’s O R Tambo International to make its way to Warsaw.

The pilgrims will have a tour of Poland’s capital city, but more important sites await.

A highlight will be a visit to Wadowice, the birthplace of St John Paul—on his birthday!

Wadowice

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adowice (pronounced vadoVEE-tse) is a small town of no great import, other than it being the birthplace of one of the giant personalities of the 20th century.

Even today, it has fewer than 20 000 inhabitants.

Had World War I ended differently, its most famous son might have been known as the Austrian pope: For a few centuries Wadowice was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which as a loser in the Great War, was dissolved after 1918.

So less than two years before the birth of Karol Józef Wojtyła, Wadowice became Polish again, reclaiming its historical name from the Austrian-given Frauenstadt.

But even the Austrian name might be prescient: the town might very well have been named in honour of Our Lady, to whom St John Paul had such a profound devotion.

The pilgrims will see the Wojtyła family home, which includes a museum, and have Mass in the basilica of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wadowice, where Karol Wojtyła was baptised.

Kraków

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n mid-1938, Karol and his nowwidowed father left Wadowice and moved to Kraków, where the 18-year-old enrolled at the Jagiellonian University. Soon after, in 1939, the university was closed by the Nazi occupiers.

Unable to study and hoping to escape deportation to Germany for forced labour, Karol worked as a labourer in Kraków until 1942, when he secretly entered the seminary.

Ordained in Kraków in 1946, he became the city’s auxiliary bishop in 1958 and its archbishop in 1964.

Three years later, Pope Paul VI named him a cardinal.

The pilgrims will enjoy an evening guided walk across the Old City of Kraków, seeing famous sights such as the Barbican, Market Square, Collegium Maius, Archbishop’s Palace, the window of John Paul II and so on. They will also visit Wawel Castle and the Cathedral church, where the Polish kings are buried; and explore the Jewish Quarter, a place that is full of life, folklore and tradition.

There will also be a dinner in a restaurant where regional delicacies will be served.

Divine Mercy Sanctuary

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lso in Kraków, in the district of Łagiewniki, is the place directly connected with the life of St Faustina Kowalska, whose locutions are at the basis of the Divine Mercy devotion.

The Divine Mercy Sanctuary holds her tomb as well as the original of the famous Divine Mercy

image by Adolf Hyła.

The new basilica was built between 1999–2002, replacing the church built in 1966.

St John Paul called the sanctuary the “Capital of the Divine Mercy devotion”. In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI unveiled a statue of St John Paul, the seventh in Kraków, at the observation tower at the basilica.

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska

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aint John Paul II visited the sanctuary of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska (pronounced kal-VA-ria zeddju-DOV-ska), the calvary monastery, many times.

The shrine goes back to 1602, when it was founded as a monastery modelled on Calvary in Jerusalem by order of Kraków’s ruler, Mikołaj Zebrzydowski.

The place became one of Poland’s most popular sites of pilgrimage when in 1641 the icon of Our Lady of Calvary was reported to have shed tears. The owner presented it to the shrine to facilitate general devotion.

During the pilgrimage’s visit there will be time to pray in front of the icon.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

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pilgrimage to Poland must also acknowledge the evil that was done in the country during the Nazi occupation, which was nowhere as depraved as it was at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

The pilgrimage’s particular interest will be in Block 13, where

Pope St John Paul II greets the crowds during World Youth Day in Czestochowa in 1992. The Southern Cross pilgrimage to Poland in May 2016 will visit many sites of the late pope’s life and places he loved to visit. (Inset) Polish-born Bishop Stan Dziuba, who will lead the pilgrimage. the martyr St Maximilian Kolbe was murdered by the Nazis, having volunteered to take the place of a family man who had been condemned to death.

Pilgrims with a sensitive disposition will be free to skip this visit.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

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ieliczka (pronounced veeLEECH-ka) is within the Kraków metropolitan area. It is famous for its salt mines, which go back to the 13th century.

The mining operations ceased in 1996, but visitors come to see the dozens of statues and four chapels that have been carved out of the rock salt by the miners, which give it the title “Underground Salt Cathedral”.

The mines also feature an underground lake, 135 metres underground.

The group will have Mass in one of the chapels, surely one of the most unusual places they’ll ever have Mass.

Czestochowa

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part from Kraków, the other centrepoint of the pilgrimage is Czestochowa (pronounced Tshen-stoKHO-va), where the monastery of Jasna Góra (meaning Luminous Mount) is the home of the Black Madonna icon.

The Byzantine image has been in Poland for 600 years and gives the country its national and spiritual identity. Jasna Góra (pronounced Yasna GO-rah) is the most

How to book on the St John Paul II Pilgrimage T he pilgrimage will take place from May 13-22 and is led by Bishop Stan Dziuba.

The estimated price is R33 850, which includes all flights from Johannesburg return, transfers, accommodation in hotels with breakfast and dinner, lunch packs, entrance fees as per itinerary, travel insurance, English-

speaking tour director, local tour guides, travel on air-conditioned bus, and assistance with visa applications. n For a full itinerary or to book a place on this special pilgrimage, please contact Gail or Michael at Fowler Tours at 076 352-3809 or 021 551-3923 or email info@fowlertours.co.za

famous Polish shrine to Our Lady and Poland’s pilgrimage capital.

The pilgrims will have Holy Mass in front of the Black Madonna, and there will also be free time for prayer and contemplation in silence.

Of course the group will explore the Jasna Góra sanctuary. They will see the monastery, founded in 1342 by the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, of whom our spiritual director, Bishop Dziuba, is a member.

The pilgrims will also visit the Treasury, the museum which holds votive gifts presented to Our Lady of Jasna Góra over the centuries, including by popes and kings.

Zakopane

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akopane is where the outdoor enthusiast St John Paul loved to go to hike or ski in the Tatra Mountains. In this town the faithful built a beautiful wooden chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima in thanks for her protection of the Pope during the 1981 assassination attempt.

In the sanctuary grounds there are two monuments of St John Paul and the altar on which he celebrated Mass in Zakopane.

Niepokalanów

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n the other side of Poland, and one of the first sites the pilgrimage will visit, is Niepokalanów (pronounced ni-e-po-KA-la-nov), which is known as the “City of the Immaculate Mother of God”.

There the pilgrims will visit and have Mass in the Franciscan monastery founded in 1927 by St Maximilian Kolbe, patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners, and the pro-life movement. St John Paul declared him the “patron saint of Our Difficult Century”, referring to the 1900s.

The monastery was once the world’s largest, and during World War II many Jews and resistance fighters were hidden there from the Nazis. That is why St John Paul II called it “a heroic place”.

The Southern Cross, March 11 to March 17, 2015

CLASSIFIEDS

Uitenhage knights to host charity day

BY STAFF REPORTER

T

HE Knights of Da Gama Council in Uitenhage will host its first annual Charity Golf Day on March 21 at the Uitenhage Golf Club.

The council says it has been “very active” in the community, focusing on feeding the hungry and sponsoring the Marian Villa home for pregnant young women in an effort to persuade them not to abort their children.

The council was re-established in October 2012 after being dormant for several years.

Fr Max Salsone, together with then-regional grand knight Len Wild, recruited eligible men from the parishes of St Anthony and St Joseph for the order.

The Council was re-established with a membership of 25. By the end of 2014, the membership had grown to 41 members.

Recently the council has focused on feeding the hungry via its Collect-a-Can activity every last Saturday of the month.

The order has collected 9 200 food cans worth R80 000 and distributed it to seven soup kitchens, three of which are in Kwanobuhle

Liturgical Calendar Year B Weekdays Cycle Year 1 Sunday, March 15, Fourth Sunday of Lent 2 Chronicles 36:14-17, 19-23, Psalms 137:1-6, Ephesians 2:4-10, John 3:14-21 Monday, March 16 Isaiah 65:17-21, Psalms 30:2, 4-6, 11-13, John 4:43-54 Tuesday, March 17, St Patrick Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12, Psalms 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9, John 5:1-16 Wednesday, March 18 Isaiah 49:8-15, Psalms 145:8-9, 13-14, 17-18, John 5:17-30 Thursday, March 19, St Joseph 2 Samuel 7:4-5, 12-14, 16, Psalms 89:2-5, 27, 29, Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22 Friday, March 20 Wisdom 2:1, 12-22, Psalms 34:17-21, 23, John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30 Saturday, March 21 Jeremiah 11:18-20, Psalms 7:2-3, 9-12, John 7:4053 Sunday, March 22, Fifth Sunday of Lent Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalms 51:3-4, 12-15, Hebrews 5:7-9, John 12:20-33

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and four in Uitenhage. Some 3 000 cans were distributed in Kirkwood alone and donated to St Paul’s in Kleinskool, a Church initiative for the less fortunate.

A donation of R15 000 was also made to the Marian Villa home.

Fundraising efforts include selling food and Golden Oldies dance evenings. Clothing items are collected for needy parishioners in Bedford. n For further information please contact Chantell Soodkin on 079 898 2631 or Kim Duxbury on 071 157 0348.

Our bishops’ anniversaries

This week we congratulate: March 19: Bishop Abel Gabuza of Kimberley on the 4th anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

Community Calendar To place your event, call Mary Leveson at 021 465 5007 or e-mail m.leveson@scross.co.za (publication subject to space)

CAPE TOWN: Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. Mass on last Saturday of every month at 9:30am at Sacred Heart church in Somerset Road, Cape Town. Followed by vigil at Marie Stopes abortion clinic in Bree Street.

Contact Colette Thomas on 083 412 4836 or 021 593 9875 or Br Daniel SCP on 078 739 2988.

DURBAN: St Anne’s Sodality annual Siyonqamlezweni (“We are going to the cross”) pilgrimage, with Mass, confession, homilies. March 21-22 at St Albini, Ntshongweni. RSVP Mrs Shezi (072 315 8639) or Fr Ngcobo (072 412 9773)

Holy Mass and Novena to St Anthony at St Anthony’s parish every Tuesday at 9am. Holy Mass and Divine Mercy Devotion at 17:30pm on first Friday of every month. Sunday Mass at 9am. 031 309 3496 Overport rosary group.

At Emakhosini Hotel, 73 East Street every Wednesday at 6.30 pm.

Contact Keith at 083 372 9018 or 031 209 2536 NELSPRUIT: Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at St Peter’s parish every Tuesday from 8:00 to 16:45, followed by Rosary, Divine Mercy prayers, then a Mass/Communion service at 17:30pm.

Southern CrossWord solutions

SOLUTIONS TO 645. ACROSS: 4 Witness, 8 Imbued, 9 Ascribe, 10 Yellow, 11 Loosen, 12 Unsettle, 18 Lutheran, 20 Gemini, 21 Arrear, 22 Mediums, 23 Martha, 24 Bethany. DOWN: 1 Didymus, 2 Obelisk, 3 Revolt, 5 Insolent, 6 Narrow, 7 Sobbed, 13 Talisman, 14 Arrests, 15 Entreat, 16 Renege, 17 Finish, 19 Herbal.

CLASSIFIEDS

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.

DEATH

McNALLY—Sr Myriam.

Holy Cross Sister, Sr Myriam McNally, aged 92 years, passed away at Holy Cross Home, Lady Selborne, Pretoria, on February 25, 2015. Lovingly remembered by the Holy Cross Sisters, the McNally family circle in N. Ireland and the people whom she served in South Africa and Zimbabwe. May she rest in peace.

SANTUCCI—Dearest Marie-Louise, gone home to rest on 28/2/2015 after a short illness so bravely borne. Sincere condolences to her dear brother Fr Frank. Rest in peace dear friend, love Maureen.

IN MEMORIAM

CIOLLI—Mary Anne (Dickie) née Dixon. In loving memory, the mother of my children, born June 15, 1941, passed away on January 18, 2015 after a long illness, loyal and faithful. Will be forever missed and remembered in our prayers by Remo, Catherine, Michael, David, Stephen and grandchildren. Rest in peace.

KLAASEN—Milton passed away March 15, 2007. Still loved, still missed, forever you are remembered by your wife Elaine, children and grandchildren. Rest in peace.

PRAYERS

PRAYER FOR CONSECRATED LIFE. Loving Creator, we thank you for the gift that religious life has been within our church and society. Help us to nurture this gift so that the Congregations may continue to be a healing presence in our world.

May we all respond to the realities of our present times, in ways that promote your reign now and in the future. May your kingdom come, may your will be done. Amen LORD, teach me to be generous; to serve you as

fast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies; make your way straight before me. Psalm 51:1-8.

you deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek to rest; to labour and not to ask for no reward save that of knowing I do your will. Amen. St Ignatius.

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O LET your salvation and your righteousness be revealed in the sight of the nations, and let all the ends of the earth see the salvation of our God.

PERSONAL

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In thanksgiving, Leon and Karen O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But I, through the abundance of your stead-

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5th Sunday of Lent: March 22 Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51:3-4, 12-15, Hebrews 5:7-9, John 12:20-33

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HE mood is more sombre now, as we enter Passiontide, and our Lenten readings focus on the terrible death that we shall shortly be commemorating (celebrating?

You must decide).

Because it is God we are dealing with, however, the death does not finally dominate, nor is our sober mood the whole of the story.

In the first reading, Jeremiah, speaking to his compatriots and co-religionists who are now enduring the appalling experience of exile, invites them to listen to “the oracle of the Lord” (he uses the phrase three times), which tells us that God is still paying attention to them, and offers them “a new covenant” (he uses this word no less than four times), which overlooks the fact that they had broken the previous one; the point here is that God is always faithful, even if we are not.

Jeremiah also reminds the people (and we constantly need reminding of this) of what God has done for them “on the day when I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt”. For God does not change: and God will “not remember their sin any more”. God can turn anything round, for God is God. The psalm for next Sunday is from the characteristically Lenten psalm of the Miserere; the

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Know that Jesus is ‘the real thing’ Fr Nicholas King SJ

Sunday Reflections

singer knows that he has sinned, but confidently comes to God asking the Lord, “be gracious to me, O God, in accordance with your steadfast love, in accordance with the quantity of your mercy”; the singer is certain that God can even deal with his sinfulness, and prays “create a new heart for me, God, and establish a new spirit inside me”.

The one thing that the psalmist is afraid of is that God might abandon him; and, remarkably, he is quite certain that this will not happen. God is in charge.

Our second reading on Sunday is from the Letter to the Hebrews, whose author is one of the three great theologians of the New Testament documents. The message throughout the letter is that “Jesus is the real thing”.

At this point, and it is appropriate enough

for this fifth week of Lent, he is meditating on Jesus’ sufferings, and his “prayers to the one who was able to save him from death, with mighty crying and tears…and he was heard because of his piety”.

The writer meditates on Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, and reflects that “although he was Son, he learnt obedience from what he suffered; and when he had been made perfect, he became the cause of eternal salvation to all those who obey him”. So, as always in the New Testament, it is not just about Jesus, but also about us who follow him (if we are prepared to go all the way).

The gospel for next Sunday offers us the one moment in John’s gospel when Jesus gets anywhere near the Gethsemane prayer described in the Synoptic gospels: “Now my soul is disturbed—and what am I to say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No—it was for this that I came to this hour.” Jesus is, as always in this gospel, very much in charge; but the mood is still sombre.

Notice what provokes him: it was simply the arrival of “some Greeks”, who address themselves to the two of Jesus’ disciples who had Greek names, first Philip and then Andrew.

They go to Jesus, and Jesus’ response is imme-

Fear that looks like piety I

T is easy to mistake piety for the genuine response that God wants of us, that is, to enter into a relationship of intimacy with him and then try to help others have that same experience.

We see this everywhere in Scripture. For example, in Luke’s gospel, after witnessing a miraculous catch of fish, Peter responds by falling at Jesus’ knees and saying: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

At first glance that would seem the appropriate response, a wonderfully pious one, an acknowledgement of his littleness and unworthiness in the face of God’s abundance and goodness.

But, as the theologian John Shea points out in his commentary on this text, Jesus names Peter’s response differently and invites him to something else. What?

Peter’s response manifests a sincere piety, but it is, in Shea’s words, “fearfully wrong”.

“The awareness of God makes him [Peter] tremble and crushes him down. If he clings to the knees of Jesus, he must be on his own knees. Peter does not embrace the fullness; he wants to go away. This is hardly the response Jesus wants. So he instructs Peter not to be afraid. Instead, he is to use what he experienced to bring others to the same experience. As Jesus has caught him, he is to catch others.”

Jesus is inviting Peter to move out of fear and into deeper waters of intimacy and God’s abundance.

We see a similar thing in the First Book

Conrad

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final Reflection

of Samuel (21:1-6). King David arrives at the temple one morning, hungry, without food.

He asks the priest for five loaves of bread.

The priest replies that he hasn’t any ordinary bread, only consecrated bread that can be eaten only after the appropriate fasting and rituals.

Nonetheless, knowing that as God’s king on earth he is expected to act resourcefully rather than fearfully, David asks for the loaves and he eats the bread that, in other circumstances, he would have been forbidden to eat.

W

hat makes this story important is that Jesus, when confronted by the fear and piety of the Scribes and Pharisees, highlights it and tells us that David’s response was the right one. He tells those who were scandalised by his disciples’ lack of fear that David’s response was the right one because David recognised that, in our response to God, intimacy and a certain boldness in acting resourcefully, are meant to trump fear.

“The Sabbath,” Jesus asserts, “was made

for man, not man for the Sabbath.” That axiom might be rendered this way: God is not a law to be blindly obeyed. Rather God is a loving, creative presence that invites us into intimacy and then gives us energy to be more-creative in the light of that relationship.

Some years ago, a young mother shared this story with me: Her son, six years old and now in school, had been trained from his earliest years to kneel down by his bed each night and pray aloud a number of ritual prayers (the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, a prayer to his guardian angel, and blessings and protection for his parents and siblings).

One evening, shortly after starting school, when his mother took him to his room, he crawled into bed without first kneeling to say his prayers. His mother asked him: “What’s wrong? Don’t you pray anymore?” “No,” he replied, “I don’t pray anymore. My teacher at school [a nun] told us not to pray but to talk to God…and tonight I’m tired and have nothing to say!”

In essence, this is the response of King David, asking the priest for the consecrated loaves. This young boy had an intuitive grasp that God is not a law to be obeyed but an intimate presence that resources us.

A number of the great Christian mystics have taught that, as we grow more deeply in our relationship with God, we gradually become more bold with God, that is, fear gives way more and more to intimacy, legalism gives way more and more to resourcefulness, judgment gives way more and more to empathy, and the kind of piety that would have us clinging to the knees of Jesus paralysed by our own sinfulness gives way more and more to a joyous energy for mission.

Of course, there’s an important place for piety. Healthy piety and healthy humility are gifts from the Holy Spirit, but they do not paralyse us with an unhealthy fear that blocks a deeper, more joyous, and more intimate relationship with God. David had a healthy piety, but that didn’t stop him from acting boldly and creatively inside the intimacy of his relationship to God. Jesus too had a healthy piety, even as he was constantly scandalising the pious around him.

We too easily mistake unhealthy fear for genuine piety. We do it all the time, naively seeing fear as virtue; however the mark of genuine intimacy is never fearfulness, but bold, joyous energy.

The healthiest religious person you know exhibits this boldness and joy rather than a dead, overly-fearful piety.

diate: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

Then we are offered one of the rare parables of John’s gospel (“unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone”), the point of which is that not only is Jesus going to die, but that we who profess to be his servants must go his way: “Where I am, there shall my servant also be.”

Then he prays, perhaps unexpectedly, “Father—glorify your name”, and is rewarded with a response from Heaven: “I glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Naturally this is misinterpreted by the bystanders as “thunder”; but Jesus explains: “This voice was not on my account, but on your account”, and tells us what is really going on here: “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world is going to be thrown outside”.

And he brings us face to face with the brutal reality of the crucifixion, but with a hint that it is the way that he has to go, and that afterwards, because God is in charge, all will be well: “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw everyone to myself”.

It is sombre, the mood here, but not finally despairing.

Southern Crossword #645

ACROSS 4. He’s under oath (7) 8. Instilled, i e dumb (6) 9. A writer you attribute to (7) 10. Scream “Ow”, like a coward (6) 11. Relax on sole move (6) 12. Lets tune disturb you (8) 18. He owes his beliefs to Martin (8) 20. Stratagem in Indian horoscope (6) 21. In which you are behind in payment (6) 22. Averages of those in seances (7) 23. The busy sister (6) 24. Home of 23 ac (7)

DOWN 1. Thomas the Twin’s name (Jn 11) (7) 2. Bloke is around stone pillar (7) 3. Rebellion concerning electrical unit (6) 5. Being disrespectful, lost nine (8) 6. The gate to enter by (Mt 7) (6) 7. Whimpered (6) 13. Magical item at LA Matins (8) 14. Stops as a Rolls-Royce sets out (7) 15. Implore prayerfully (7) 16. Go back on your promise (6) 17. Complete with polish (6) 19. Basil’s cup of tea (6) Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

A

PRIEST told his congregation, “Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read Mark 17.”

The following Sunday, the priest asked for a show of hands. He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17. Every hand went up. The priest smiled and said: “Mark has only 16 chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying.”

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