Sentire cum Ecclesia

Resurrecting Sentire Cum Ecclesia

2010-11-14T01:49:00.000+11:00

Readers who come here looking for my usual blog, www.scecclesia.wordpress.com, will be glad to hear that I have been able to resurrect (most of) my content in a similar Wordpress platform on my own domain, scecclesia.com.

Thanks for the suggestion from several readers that I spend a little bit of money for the sake of security. I had started to transfer all my stuff back to this blogger site, but it was very tedious, and I gave up in the end.

Don't leave any comments on this blog, but go to the new domain. Also also, as the Germans say, because it is entirely new, you will have to re-register as a commentator, which will require me to approve your first comment.

Please be patient and we will be back up and running. You will notice I have lost all my links, so if you are a blogger, please be kind enough to email your link suggestions to me.

Welcome news on Catholic School funding

2010-11-12T22:47:00.000+11:00

As a parent about to embark upon the costly business of sending my children to a Catholic secondary college, this news is most welcome: Bi-partisan support for Catholic school funding:

Catholic education in Victoria received an early Christmas present on 9 November when the Labor Government announced that funding for Catholic schools would be increased to 25% of the cost of education in a government school if it wins the state election...

The Coalition pledged in 2008 to increase funding to Catholic schools to 25% of the cost of education in a government school if it is elected to government on 27 November.

The almost $200 million funding boost, also includes an additional $5m for teacher professional development

In welcoming the decision, Mr Elder said Labor’s commitment would particularly benefit Catholic families in disadvantaged areas.

...[CEO chief executive officer Mr Stephen Elder said:] “Catholic schools continue to serve families in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the state. I have no doubt the decision will be widely welcomed by Catholic school communities.”

...“The personal story of Australia’s first saint – St Mary of the Cross – is a powerful illustration of Catholic education’s mission to serve the most disadvantaged in our community. The announcement will provide funding to Catholic education to continue this legacy,” said Mr Elder.

School fees have been rising steadily, mostly due to a lack of Government funding. My own daughter's fees for next year have risen about %10 from what we were told when we first enrolled her last year. Sending both my daughters to Catholic secondary college will cost me about 20% of my annual income.

If you do the sums you realise that parents who send their children to Catholic Schools are in fact (even under this new funding) saving the government 75% of what it would cost to educate their children in State Schools. I think we need some recognition of that.

All that being said, we are a long way from the days of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop. One reason why Catholic schools are costly for parents today (although no where near the cost of other independant schools) is that we no longer have the "cheap labour" force that once supplied teachers for our systems, ie. religious sisters and brothers. What a boost it would be for the Catholic School system if St Mary's vision were to become truly alive again today!

An interesting but all too short interview with a Catholic Luther scholar

2010-11-12T10:33:00.000+11:00

HT to Pastor Fraser Pearce for the link to this interview with Fr Jared Wicks. As I say in the title, it is interesting, but I want to know more. I should follow up on Wick's writing on Luther to see what he has to say.

Hypatia in the Athenian Agora

2010-11-11T10:13:00.000+11:00

I have just finished watching At The Movies with Margaret and David, and of course they review "Agora" the new film about the legendary Alexandrian female philosopher Hypatia. Her murder by a Christian mob is one of those scandals, like the Galileo affair and the Spanish Inquisition, which the heirs of the Englightenment like to cite against the Church's record.

Anyway, Margaret really liked it and gave it 4 stars, and David gave it 4.5. Both said that it had real substance and an important message. When I hear these two say that kind of thing, I usually find myself wondering if the message they are applauding is truth or ideology.

Ideology, it turns out in this case. I could write a fair bit here, but others have done the job already. Check out: Fr Barron's piece
The Dangerous Silliness of the new movie Agora at the National Catholic Register; Mark Shea's blog at the same place; "History of Violence: Agora, Hypatia and Enlightenment Mythology" at the Decent Films Guide; Sherry's piece at the Catherine of Siena Institute; and Tim O'Neill's "wry, dry, rather sarcastic, eccentric, silly, rather arrogant Irish-Australian atheist bastard" opinion at his blog "Amarium Magnum".

Peter Kreeft on What Christians can learn from Islam

2010-11-11T03:50:00.000+11:00

I have written a review of Peter Kreeft's book "Between Allah & Jesus: What Christians Can Learn From Muslims" for the issue of our Kairos magazine coming out this weekend. It is a book I highly recommend. You can read my review to find out what it is about.

Unfortunately, I think that Peter Kreeft will probably lose a few admirers because of this book. But that's Kreeft for you. Just like Socrates, he isn't interested in people liking what he writes. He is interested in the search for truth. This book emulates Socrates in another way too: it is in the form of a dialogue, which doesn't give you the answer. You have work it out. Of course, it is pretty obvious which way Kreeft is leaning.

The important thing is in the title: this isn't a book of what "Christianity can learn from Islam", but what Christians can learn from a serious dialogue with Muslims, ie. the actual practitioners of the Islamic faith. It is a book all about dialogue. All through the book, Kreeft speaks about the importance listening as much as talking. I can't quote the exact way he puts that, as I have given my copy to a Muslim friend to read and give his opinion on whether Kreeft's Muslim character in the dialogue is a true reflection of what a Muslim would actually say. I thought it was, from my experience, but nothing like asking someone who actually knows. (By the by, I would like to see a similar book of dialogues between a Lutheran, a liberal Catholic and a magisterial Catholic...).

In any case, several reviews have misunderstood this point and seem to think that what Kreeft has done in "Between Allah & Jesus" is a part of the Karen-Armstrong-style "industry" that "tries to find common ground with Islam". But that would be entirely out of character for Professor Kreeft, whose only object has ever been to seek for truth, and yes, Truth with a capital T too. I will take as an example of a misreader of Kreeft one reviewer, William Kilpatrick, whose review is called "Christian Misunderstanders of Islam" (note already in the title his mistake in thinking Kreeft's book is about Christianity and Islam, rather than the necessary engagement between Christians and their Muslim neighbours).

Here are some selections from Kilpatrick's review with my comments in [bold italics] writes:

Unfortunately, considering his wide appeal, Kreeft’s latest book is basically an apology for Islam. [No. It is an apology for the dialogue between Christians and Muslims.] Between Allah and Jesus: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims is devoted to the proposition that the things that we (Muslims and Christians) have in common are more important than the things that separate us. [No again. Kreeft never says this. At the very beginning of the book, he lists the major and essential differences. What he says is that NEVERTHELESS we have to have the dialogue and what we can learn from Muslims is not all negative, in fact there is much that is positive and challenging for Christians.] In fact, writes Kreeft in his Introduction, we have a lot to learn from Islam: “…I also say that Islam has great and deep resources of morality and sanctity that should inspire us and shame us and prod us to admiration and imitation.” [That's just plain Nostra Aetate, ie. the Catholic magisterial position.] Instead of fearing Islam, Kreeft says that Christians should join together with Muslims in an “ecumenical jihad” against our common enemies, sin and secularism.

...In Between Allah and Jesus, the strongest arguments for traditional morality are made by the Muslim student, Isa (the Arabic name for Jesus.) In fact, throughout the entire dialogue Isa has all the best lines. [The fact that Kilpatrick can say this means that he is in fact acknowledging that a lot of authentic Muslim standpoints have appeal for him too.] Isa is not only a defender of the sanctity of all human life, he is also a strong defender of the Jews (the six million who lost their lives to Hitler were “martyrs”), and a great respecter of women (“…all I’m doing is defending womanhood and motherhood and families”). In his appreciation of feminine virtues Isa sometimes sounds more like a Victorian seminary student than a twenty first-century Muslim male. [That's true and not true. The character of 'Isa may not be your average Muslim in the streets of Mecca, but I know plenty of Muslim men who would speak just as 'Isa does in the story. I think what this shows it that this reviewer is working from a characterisation and a generalisation of Muslim males, and has probably not actually met a lot of Muslim men, or engaged in dialogue with them.] Isa even makes the case that women in Muslim societies are happier and more contented than women in Western societies because “we let women be women,” whereas Western women are the victims of a sexual revolution which mainly benefits men. [Kilpatrick and other readers are free to disagree with what 'Isa says - it isn't Kreeft who says this, but his character- but this is also a commonly expressed opinion among the Muslim men I know.] One of Isa’s dialogue sparring partners, Libby (a liberated feminist), objects to all this with vehemence, but she is plainly no match for Isa. She spouts feminist slogans; Isa is a master of logical argumentation.

Kreeft advises his readers that he “does not necessarily agree with everything said by Isa as a Muslim,” but his sympathies clearly lie with Isa. [he has sympathies for his character 'Isa, but if you want to know where Kreeft himself stands, you have to listen to Fr Hereema, the priest character in the story] For example, Fr. Heerema, who represents the orthodox Catholic position in the dialogues, usually finds himself in agreement with Isa. [So? I'm an orthodox Catholic too, and I often find myself in agreement with my Muslim friends - more so than with my rather secular friends, anyway.] Moreover the sentiments expressed by Isa are quite similar to those expressed by Kreeft in his Introduction: for example, says Kreeft, one of the most important things Christians “should learn from Muslims or be reminded of by Muslims” is “the sacredness of the family and children.”

“Sacredness of the family?” In this and in other parts of his book, Kreeft seems to be inadvertently transposing Christian notions into Islam. [As far as I know, 'Isa doesn't call the family "sacred". What Kreeft is saying is that the Muslim emphasis on the importance of marriage and family life can be a reminder to Western Christians that Christianity actually teaches the "sacredness of the family" over against "the sacredness of the individual".] While there may be some highly spiritualized Sufi sect somewhere that looks at marriage and family in this light, this is not the picture of family life that emerges in the accounts of ex-Muslims such as Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Wafa Sultan. [From here on Kilpatrick spends a number of paragraphs demonstrating that there are plenty of Muslims that show characteristics which contradict 'Isa's standpoint. That's true. But Kreeft isn't talking about Islam or Islamic society. He is allowing the Muslim character to express his point of view.]

...But, as any objective scholar of Islam can attest, this is sheer nonsense. Islam didn’t sell itself through tenderness but through terror. Once, when a Jewish tribe surrendered to Muhammad’s forces, he ordered the beheading of over 700 of the captives. On another occasion he ordered that some captured thieves have their eyes gouged out, and their arms and legs cut off on opposite sides. Inquiring students at places such as Boston College, Calvin College and Wheaton might want to supplement their Kreeft with some samplings from the Hadith and The Life of Muhammad. [In this book, Kreeft is not dealing with what Kilpatrick seems to think is "objective" scholarship about Islam. He is dealing with one particular Muslim dialogue partner. Kreeft is also very aware that there is an "Islam of the sword" and that in many cases this kind of Islam has had the upper hand. But he is honestly trying to dialogue with the many Muslims that we in the West have as neighbours: honourable, gentle, virtous people who do not deserve to be labelled as violent or hateful or dangerous.]

Kreeft’s tendency to confuse Islamic concepts with Christian beliefs continues in his treatment of jihad. The secular media, says Kreeft, has created the false impression that jihad is a duty to wage war against unbelievers. But, according to Isa, jihad, is, in reality, “the inner struggle against evil.” The trouble is, the evidence for this interpretation is minimal. In one Hadith—the one which Isa quotes—Muhammad is reported to have said, “the most excellent jihad is for the conquest of self.” But this is from a Hadith of doubtful provenance and, in any event, the Koran makes it quite clear in several places which is the more excellent jihad. For example: “Do you pretend that he who gives a drink to the pilgrims and pays a visit to the Sacred Mosque is as worthy as the man who believes in God and the Last Day, and fights for God’s cause? These are not held equal by God.” (9. 19-20) [Again, none of this is relevant to Kreeft's book of dialogues. The only relevant fact is that this is what many Muslims tell us Jihad is. Every Muslim I have ever spoken to tells me this. Perhaps Kilpatrick speaks to different Muslims. Or does he only read about them?]

...Isa’s attitudes may be unrepresentative of Muslims but, unluckily, Kreeft’s favorable disposition toward Islam is representative of many influential Christians. [Kreeft's "favourable disposition" is ultimately not towards Islam, but towards the many honourable adherants to Islam. And 'Isa's attitudes are not all that dissimilar to those of the many Muslims I know.] He is not alone in his attempt to “reach across the aisle” and find common ground with Islam. Despite the increasingly bloody persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, many Christian leaders still cling to the pious hope that there is some slight misunderstanding between Islam and Christianity that can be cleared up by more dialogue. [Religions don't dialogue, people do. Islam and Christainity may be ultimately incompatible - but human beings can always dialogue, and where there is dialogue there will always be a better outcome than where there is war.] Dialogue with Islam has, in fact, become something of a growth industry. It’s no longer confined to high-level theologians: it’s become the in-thing for parishes and congregations. In the last few years, numerous Christian churches across America have invited Islamic speakers to come in and explain Islam to them. The rationale is that “people fear what they don’t understand,” and once we understand Islam we will see that there is nothing to fear. [So what is Kilpatrick's point? Does he want to make sure that we stay afraid? Whatever happened to "perfect love casts out fear"?]

Kreeft shares that hope. As he puts it, “I think this high and honorable dialogue between two high and honorable faiths will continue…and that something great will come of it.” But what if he’s wrong? ...We are in a high stakes struggle with Islam. It’s one that doesn’t allow for much margin of error. [ie. don't dare to come to agreement on anything!] You can misinterpret or completely ignore the beliefs of Jains or Buddhists, and still rest secure that your life will go on as before. But misinterpreting Islam could turn out to be fatal mistake. If it turns out that jihad is not, after all, an interior spiritual struggle, but rather a serious obligation to subdue non-Muslims, a lot of Western Christians are going to be woefully unprepared for the kind of things that are already happening to Christians in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Nigeria. [Note that fear is the overriding theme here.]

Peter Kreeft has written some of the finest works of Christian apologetics of the last four decades. But he’s off base with this one. Seeing that Kreeft has been highly influenced by C.S. Lewis, and is considered by many to be a worthy successor to Lewis, he might want to take a second look at Lewis’ views on finding common ground with an alien faith. In The Last Battle, Lewis’ fictional account of the conflict between the Christian-like Narnians and the Muslim-like Calormenes, the Narnian have been deceived into believing that their God, Aslan, and Tash, the demonic God of the Calormenes actually have much in common. “Tash” and “Aslan” they are told are only two different names for the same God. In reality, “Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash.” After a while, the hybrid God is simply referred to as “Tashlan.” As time passes, however, the worship of Tashlan becomes simply the worship of Tash, and the Narnians find themselves enslaved by the followers of Tash. [Ironically, it is exactly here that Kilpatrick seems to have failed to understand Lewis. In the final moments, one honourable Calormene (yes, there is one! Maybe his name was 'Isa?) discovers all along that the "Tash" he thought he was worshipping was in fact truly Aslan. Kilpatrick takes hold of one side of Lewis's picture and loses the other. As Kreeft says, our common enemies are demons, not eachother. Tash is a demon. Those who seek to worship the true God will always find him.]

I am currently reading Hans Urs von Balthasar's "Theology of Karl Barth". That might seem a million miles away from Kreeft's book on Muslim and Christian dialogue, but perhaps not. Here is what he says about the importance of dialogue:

Most polemical confrontations never become real encounters, not because they are polemical and fail because people disagree, but because they really want to meet: because everyone wants to encounter the other rather than be willing to be met. Certainly in many cases we feel that Barth has not really met us, because he doesn not really see where we stand. But still, I hardly know any Catholic writing where Barth would have to admit he has been met, although he has certainly tried to hear what we have to say. But, in a dialogue a willingness to hear out the other is more important than talking. Such eagnerness to listen is in fact a dimension of our very faith and thus our obedience and our prayer, all of which form an indissoluble unity.

I think Kreeft has tried, in "Between Allah & Jesus", to bring his readers to a point where they really meet the Muslim, and to give us a chance to listen to them. He has tried to help his reader see where the Muslim dialogue partner stands, and to realise that it is not impossible for us to stand together.

If you have the time to sit and watch it, this may be of interest.

Summer Retreat for Chant

2010-11-10T11:55:00.000+11:00

Okay, this needs highlighing. Thanks to Br. Paul for letting me know about it. Huge grudge against the organisers for limiting it to 18-35 year olds, but hey, let's face it, it is the new generation that really "digs" this stuff, not the old fogies.

Summer Retreat for Chant
27-30 January 2011 - St Dominic's Priory, Camberwell (Victoria)

The Dominican friars in Camberwell Victoria are inviting young people aged 18-35 to an extended weekend retreat to learn a little of the riches of sacred chant. The retreat is being held at St Dominic's Priory Camberwell from 27-30 January 2011. We hope you will come

For full details, see here.

Bishop Silk to Enter Catholic Communion

2010-11-10T11:31:00.000+11:00

Well, this is a bit of a surprise. In the latest news that five Church of England Bishops have announced that they will enter the Anglican Ordinariates in full communion with the Catholic Church, there is one surprise: Bishop David Silk is among them. I know Bishop Silk personally from the days when he was Bishop of Ballarat. At that time, he was also the President of the Victorian Council of Churches, when I was the Lutheran member of the executive. We attended a lot of meetings together, and always found we had much in common. I well remember the day when he ordained my friend Tony (who sits at this table sharing the port bottle on occasion) as an Anglican Deacon. I attended the event vested as a Lutheran Pastor. Well, we have all moved on since then, and now it seems that +David is moving on too. (Tony, it's not too late for you, you know!).

Just one observation from the statement from the five resigning bishops: they see Anglicanorum Coetibus as an "ecumenical instrument". Bishop Silk was always ecumenically motivated - that is why he was president of the VCC. The thing is that now they confess that the unity of Christians is only possible "in eucharistic communion with the successor of St Peter":

This is both a generous response to various approaches to the Holy See for help and a bold, new ecumenical instrument in the search for the unity of Christians, the unity for which Christ himself prayed before his Passion and Death. It is a unity, we believe, which is possible only in eucharistic communion with the successor of St Peter.

A Clip of Papa Benny consecrating La Sagrada Familia

2010-11-10T08:01:00.000+11:00

Our Archdiocesan website has this clip on it. You may enjoy it. It gives a good view of the interior of the "Minor Basilica" (which is what it is now classed as) of La Sagrada Familia. I thought the Pope's homily had some interesting points too. Especially the bit about Gaudi's confidence that "St Joseph" would complete this church!

The "Second Coming"??

2010-11-10T00:38:00.000+11:00

Well, not quite. I will be "coming again" to St Benedict's in Burwood this Saturday to continue the Anima Education course on Eschatology ("The Last Things"). All are welcome. It doesn't matter if you didn't come to the first half, in which we dealt with teachings of the Kingdom of God, body and soul, death, Heaven and Hell. This Saturday, we will be continuing with Purgatory, Resurrection, the Second Coming, the Judgement and the New Creation. So there is still plenty to get out of this one day seminar. We start at 10am (after the 9am mass in the chapel at St Benedict's) in St Benedict House, a few doors down from the Church (at 301 Warrigal Rd. Burwood), and go through to 3:30pm. There is a small fee ($10 I think) to cover expenses. It should be a great day. Full details here.

Can't see this "open letter" having much effect

2010-11-07T22:23:00.000+11:00

There is, apparently, an "open letter" to Anglican "dissidents" considering entering the Church through Anglican Ordinariates in the Tablet. The irony is that it is not on-line, so not very "open", eh? Still, thanks to Catholica for posting it. I don't think it will have much effect on those considering entering the Ordinariates, since "the deeply anti-modernist thinking (and pessimism towards modern culture) which has obsessed Pope Benedict XVI" is exactly what is attracting these folk away from the Anglican communion towards communion with the Catholic Church.

What (Who?) they are preaching at "St Mary's in Exile"

2010-11-07T22:11:00.001+11:00

It is always a bit of an education to take a squiz at the Catholica Australia website. A link from their discussion board took me here, to the St Mary's Community in Exile South Brisbane website, and a post entitled "Greg Latemore – Homilist October 30- 31 2010". What was Mr Latemore preaching at St Mary's on "Reformation Day"? Or rather "Who" were they preaching? Not Christ, it appears, but Hans Küng. And to make his point, Mr Latemore drew up the following table contrasting Prof. Küng to his archnemesis, Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI. To assist us in the grasping of his point of view, Mr Latemore provides us with the following table (I have reproduced it as it appears on the Catholica website)

Not a completely helpful comparison, because it isn't completely accurate, is it? I won't argue about Mr Latemore's description of the positions of Prof. Küng, but I would argue about his characterisation of the Holy Father on a couple of points, viz.:

1) "Apparent vision": Mr Latemore describes Hans Küng's vision as a vision for "an ethical world" and Pope Benedict's vision for the world as "A Catholic World". His description of Küng's vision as an "ethical" vision is true enough, but does beg the question of what "ethical" means in this context. Whose ethics? What standard of ethics? Be that as it may, I think it would be more accurate to say that Pope Benedict has "a Catholic vision for the world", rather than "a vision for a Catholic world". I am sure you understand the difference.

2) "Apparent time scale of interest as a Christian": Mr Latemore says that while Prof. Küng's interest ranges from "biblical origins and the early church to today", Pope Benedict's interest is limited to "from Augustine & Nicea to today". That seems rather bizarre. Has Mr Latemore not read any of Pope Benedict's works, many particular studies of particular biblical themes and passages, and especially his most recent and continuing study of the Gospels? Has he not been paying attention to the Holy Father's long running series on the saints of the Church, from the apostles right up to the current series of the great women saints? To say that Ratzinger has not always been deeply engaged in biblical and early church studies seems to show a total ignorance of any standard bibliography of Joseph Ratzinger. AND I would say that in fact Prof. Küng's focus actually extends beyond "today" to the next generation and perhaps the generation after that. In just the same way the Holy Father's interest in ecclesial eras goes beyond "today" - even further beyond "today" than Prof. Küng's. The Holy Father's teaching and preaching is always focused upon the Eschaton, the end of days, the coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the dead and eternal life. When you take that into account, I think that you will see how limited is Mr Latemore's appreciation of Pope Benedict's "time scale of interest".

3) "Apparent Focus": Mr Latemore's "homily" declared that Prof. Küng's focus is "Christianity" while the Holy Father's focus is "Christendom". Again, he get's Ratzinger entirely wrong. Ratzinger's real focus is Christ. One need only read the first paragraphs of his first Encyclical to get that. "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." The teaching and preaching of Pope Benedict is entirely focused on the encounter with the person of Christ. It is true that he is also concerned about what might be called "Christian culture", but only because he believes that the encounter with Christ is not just for individuals, nor even for the Church, but God's intention for the whole of society. In this way, society itself undergoes much the same transformation that takes place when the individual encounters Christ.

4) "Apparent idea of the Church’s vocation": According to Mr Latemore, Küng's idea is "To be partners with the world" and Ratzinger's is "To convert the world". I can't really argue with that. I think he is quite right. I just ask you which you think is closer to New Testament Christianity.

5) "Apparent attitude to other religions": Again, I can't really argue with Mr Latemore's characterisation of Küng's attitude to other religion as "valid paths to salvation", whereas the Pope believes that the Church is the "path to salvation". But I will argue that he is wrong in saying Pope Benedict "recognises but does not value" other religious traditions. He does value them, precisely as the Church does, namely as containing something of the true human yearning for God, and something of God's revelation. He is simply being true to the witness of the apostles in saying that they are not complete or perfect sources of revelation.

6) "Apparent idea of the role of theologians": Again, Mr Latemore is more or less correct when he says that Küng's idea is that theologians are "answerable to scholarly research & conscience". I don't think Ratzinger would argue with that as an important and indispensible element of the work of a theologian. But, as Mr Latemore says, the Pope does believe that (in the final analysis) Catholic theologians are "answerable to the Church’s magisterium". I think that says more about the difference between these two men in their understanding of the purpose of theology. Küng believes that theologians should BE the "magisterium". The Ratzinger recognises a higher authority beyond the theologian's own scholarship and conscience. Küng does not.

7) "Apparent attitude to celibacy": I think the Holy Father is just as aware as Küng and Mr Latemore that celibacy is "Church law" rather than "Divine law" - otherwise how could the Pope recognise the tradition of the Eastern Churches as valid? What the Holy Father understands, and Küng does not is that there is a benefit to the Church in the discipline of celibacy, that it is a "Divine vocation" rather than a "law", which befits the calling to the priesthood. Basically, Küng sees it as a negative and Ratzinger as a positive.

8 ) "Apparently opposes": There are lots of things both Küng and Ratzinger would agree on opposing, but if you want to single out a couple of items, it is true that Küng opposes what he (and Mr Latemore) calls "clericalism & dogmatism" whereas Ratzinger has opposed "secularism & relativism" all his life. I guess the question is: which is the greatest danger to the world today?

This little exercise is indeed, as Brian Coyne says on Catholica, a pleasant "distraction [from] the Melbourne Cup" and other things going on in the world, but I ask you whether it is the stuff that homilies should be made of? In the end, who are we supposed to be preaching: the ideas of this or that theologian, or the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Wanted: A Priest/Parish to "Sing the Mass"

2010-11-06T22:26:00.001+11:00

I recently attended a Hindu-Catholic conversation on chanting. Hindus, of course, have maintained a very ancient form of chant that forms an integral part of their prayer and spirituality. The Catholic who presented on our behalf, a priest, brought along the Liber Usualis (you can download a complete copy here) and beautifully and expertly led us in some of the great variety of chants from this resource. And yet, when I asked him afterwards, he said that he does not believe that the chant can or should be revived. "It's time is past", he said.

Is it?

Fr Nick Pearce writes about a new book called "Gut Check" by Tarek Saab. He quotes from Saab's book as follows:

I attended mass at my local parish like I had every Sunday, but I failed to connect with the promise of mystery in my Catholic belief. Absorbing the mind numbing sappy, guitar hymns, or the fiftieth iteration of the “God loves you” sermon from a happy-go-lucky preacher, was a gut-wrenching experience for any man with an ounce of testosterone.” (p124)

...In my local church, like many other, the treasured master pieces of Catholic art were replaced in favour of sandal clad caricatures with all the realism of a Hanna-Babera cartoon. It could have been tolerable if I had sensed any level of reverence from the community, but apathy had found a new home in the cargo shorts and unkempt appearance of communicants, while others claimed to be “on fire” with a form of trendy, secular Christianity.”(p125)

This is such an accurate description of the experience many have of modern Catholic liturgy. Some time ago, Jeffrey Tucker wrote a book called "Sing like a Catholic". I disagreed with Tucker about his attitude to hymnody (which I think can have a positive place alongside the use of the chant in mass) but entirely agreed with him that we need to reclaim our treasured heritage of chant if we wish to reclaim the authentic spirit of the Roman Rite. (Just try to imagine for the moment a liturgy in the Byzantine or Syriac Rite spoken, if you want to understand what I mean.)

I have my own theory about why chant has been completely lost from the Roman rite, and partly it is because when it was done it was only ever done by the Schola rather than the congregation, and partly because the dominant form of liturgy in parishes before the Council was Low Mass, in which no chant (no music!) was used at all. Others argue that the chant has to be in Latin and cannot be in English. But from my experience of the traditional Lutheran liturgy I KNOW that the chant can be in English and that the ordo of the mass can be sung by a congregation (with the propers done by a Schola).

The fact that the new English missal will have the chants for both the celebrant AND the congregation seems a clear enough indication that the Church actually WANTS us to sing the mass (the whole issue of the singing of the propers in English is another thing altogether - see this interesting project by Adam Bartlett and Jeffrey Tucker here). The question is, what are we going to do about it? Where is the Parish or the Priest that will take the bull by the horns and actually schedule a regular weekly mass that puts this vision into action?

There are two papers that I can point to that should encourage this attempt. The first is "Towards the Future – Singing the Mass", a keynote-address to the Southeastern Liturgical Music Symposium by Msgr Andrew R Wadsworth, Executive Director of The ICEL Secretariat given in Atlanta, Georgia on August 21 this year. The second is a comment on this by Adam Bartlett called "An Experiment in Sacred Music Resource Production: Let’s Lay an Egg!". Again, my question is: is there anyone who can put this into practice? It would take either a parish or at least a priest with the vision to give this a go. Let me say at once that if any such parish or priest is willing to take up the challenge, I would be more than happy to be a part of the team helping to bring it to reality.

It's not just the chant, of course, but the whole shebang: ad orientam celebration, kneeling for reception of communion, good challenging Catholic preaching, good solid (musically, lyrically and doctrinally etc.) hymnody, faithfulness to GIRM and the rubrics etc. But if we are going to start somewhere we need at least a priest to be the celebrant, and a parish willing to host such an oddity which can be a model for the whole archdiocese.

Reading the Junkmail

2010-11-05T22:29:00.000+11:00

...can sometimes be like reading Tarot cards or tea leaves. Here are the only two articles to arrive in my post box at home yesterday:

Is that spooky, or what?

I have written to Jo Tenner, and to James Merlino (Labor) and to Matt Mills (Liberal) with my questionnaire based on Your Vote, Your Values. Apparently, James (the currently sitting member, a Catholic in good standing and definitely pro-life), would need a swing against him of 6.8% if he were to lose the seat. That doesn't sound likely, but who knows what havoc the Greens vote might cause in Victoria this year. (BTW, self-disclosure: I am usually a Liberal voter - decision will be more difficult this year).

I do think I need to say one thing about the Greens, though, just in case you might take me for a melon-smasher. I thoroughly get the fact that Greens candidates and supporters are sincere in their beliefs and are committed to doing what they believe to be the "right thing". I was saying to DLP Senator Elect John Madigan on the phone yesterday morning (he rang me) that I believe we do the Greens a discourtesy if we treat them as if they were dishonest in their motives, or as if ethics and morality did not count for them. In fact, I believe they are almost as fanatical and zealous in their moral beliefs as we Catholics are.

Where we differ is not in our moral sincerity and honesty, but in what we believe to be "the right thing". Our argument against the Greens should therefore not be an ad hominum attack, but an argument about issues.

Nor are we opposed on all issues. On the back of Jo's flyer is the statement:

"The Greens stand for funding preventative Healthcare and early intervention in Mental Health services as well as making sure Ambulances, GPs and Hospital Beds are available where and when you need them.

That could be taken as a positive answer to the question in "Your Vote, Your Values" which says:

Will you commit to:
•strengthening preventative and early intervention measures [for mental illness], and committing sufficient resources to enable effective treatment?

So some of their policies are good, and some of their policies are ones that Catholics can support. The problem is with with those other policies, the ones on matters of human life and dignity from conception to natural death, on marriage and family, and on the freedom of religion and Church/State relations.

I have a lot of respect for Greens candidates. They stand for what they believe in. I like that. I also like watermelons. I just don't like the pips.

Fr Lombardi's "Reformation Day" message

2010-11-04T03:51:00.001+11:00

Lutheran readers of this blog will be aware that we have not only celebrated All Saints Day this week, but also "Reformation Day", the anniversary of the nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. Somewhat ironically then (although the irony would have been missed on most Catholics) a small group gathered in Rome on Sunday observed a new "Reformation Day" to draw attention to the scandal of child abuse in the Church (as if we needed reminding!). Gathered at Castel Sant’Angelo, a short walk from the Vatican, a victims group called “Survivors Voice” (led by two Boston-area abuse victims from the United States, Gary Bergeron and Bernie McDaid) held a vigil last Sunday to call the Church to greater action in this area.

Fr Fredrico Lombardi, the Vatican Press spokesman, met the group and read to them a personal message (not an official statement from the Pope) urging the group to see the Church as an ally in the fight against child abuse, rather than an opponent. Here is his letter (courtesy of John L. Allen Jnr):

VATICAN LETTER TO SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS

On the occasion of “Reformation Day”, organised by “Survivor’s Voice”
By Fr. Lombardi

The windows of my office at Vatican Radio are just a few metres away, and therefore it seems fitting to me to listen, and to make a tangible sign of our attention, to your meeting.

This intervention of mine is not an official one, but because of my deep insertion and identification with the Catholic Church and the Holy See, I believe I can express the feelings shared by many regarding the object of your manifestation.

In this, I feel encouraged by the attitude of the Pope, made manifest many times, that is, to listen to the victims, and show the will to do everything necessary, so that the horrible crimes of sexual abuse may never happen again.

I must say that, even though I do not share all of your declarations and positions, I find in many of these the elements on which one can develop a pledge, that will bring solidarity and consensus between us.

It is true that the Church must be very attentive so that the children and the young, who are entrusted to her educational activities, may grow in a completely secure environment.

Yesterday morning, a hundred thousand young people were present in these places for a great celebration of their faith and of their youthfulness, and they are but a small part of the youths who take part with trust and enthusiasm in the life of the Church community. We must absolutely ensure that their growth be healthy and serene, finding all the protection which is rightfully theirs. We all have a great responsibility with regards to the future of the youth of the world.

It is true that the procedures of investigation and of intervention must be ever swifter and more effective, whether from the Church or from the civil authorities, and that there must be a good collaboration between these two, in conformity to the laws and situations of the countries concerned.

I know, you think that the Church should do more, and in a quicker way. From my point of view – even though one may and should always do more – I am convinced that the Church has done, and is doing a lot. Not only the Pope, with his words and example, but many Church communities in various parts of the world have done and are doing a lot, by way of listening to the victims as well as in the matter of prevention and formation.

Personally, I am in contact with many persons who work in this field in many countries, and I am convinced that they are doing a lot. Of course, we must continue to do more. And your cry today is an encouragement to do more. But a large part of the Church is already on the good path. The major part of the crimes belongs to times bygone. Today’s reality and that of tomorrow are more beckoning. Let us help one another to journey together in the right direction.

But the more important thing that I wanted to say to you is the following, and I feel encouraged to say it, because it seems to me that you also are aware of it.

The scourge of sexual abuses, especially against minors, but also in a general way, is one of the great scourges of today’s world. It involves and touches the Catholic Church, but we know very well that what has happened in the Church is but a small part of what has happened, and continues to happen in the world at large. The Church must first free herself of this evil, and give a good example in the fight against the abuses within her midst, but afterwards, we must all fight against this scourge, knowing that it is an immense one in today’s world, a scourge which increases the more easily when it remains hidden; and many are indeed very happy that all the attention is focussed on the Church, and not on them, for this allows them to carry on undisturbed.

This fight must be fought by us together, uniting our forces against the spread of this scourge, which uses new means and ways to reach out today, helped in this by internet and the new forms of communication, by the crisis hitting families, by sexual tourism and traffic which exploit the poverty of the people in various continents.

What the Church has learnt in these years – prompted also by you and by other groups – and the initiatives that she can take to purify herself and be a model of security for the young, must be of use to all. For this, I invite you to look at the Church ever more as a possible ally, or – according to me – as an ally already active today in the pursuit of the most noble goals of your endeavours.

"The Priesthood of All Believers"

2010-11-04T03:43:00.000+11:00

In the "On the Square" column of the First Things website, Peter Leithard has an article on the Lutheran doctrine of "the Priesthood of All Believers". It is quite a good read, and I think that even Catholic readers will be edified by it, especially the reflections on the Aaronic priesthood, and how that reflects in the priestly character of the Church today.

The Second Vatican Council embraced its own version of this classic Reformation doctrine. Essentially, it reclaimed the scriptural teaching that the whole assembly of the faithful are a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9).

"Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is to say, in His Blood, calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God, not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people . . . who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God"...

Christ the Lord, High Priest taken from among men, made the new people "a kingdom and priests to God the Father". The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, in order that through all those works which are those of the Christian man they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the power of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. Therefore all the disciples of Christ, persevering in prayer and praising God,(103) should present themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Everywhere on earth they must bear witness to Christ and give an answer to those who seek an account of that hope of eternal life which is in them." Lumen Gentium 9,10

However, the Council continued to uphold the distinction between the "ministerial priesthood" and the "common priesthood of the faithful" in the following way:

Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.

The distinction between the "priesthood of all believers" and the "office of the ministry" can also be found in Lutheran doctrine, with a corresponding teaching that the difference is one of "essence" and not only "degree", yet Lutherans are usually a little less inclined to actually ascribing the categories of "priesthood" to the "office of the ministry". They see the latter purely in ministerial terms, and not (generally) in priestly terms. This is because (again, generally speaking), they see the Aaronic priesthood to have been replaced soley with "the preisthood of all believers", leaving no place for a order of priesthood within the priestly people of God.

Catholic doctrine is a little different, as it sees a continuation of the Aaronic priesthood in the "ministerial" (ordained) priesthood. Although many people have things to say against him, I have Raymond Brown to thank for the fact that I realised early on - long before I became Catholic, while I was still a seminarian - that the inauguration of the new covenant in the Highpriesthood of Christ does not exclude the existence of a continuing order of priests within and serving the Priestly People of the Church. His little book "Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections" was most helpful in this regard. The Old Covenant People of God was a true priesthood embracing the whole nation of Israel, and yet Israel herself required a priesthood to serve her, to offer sacrifice and intercession for her, and to do all the things for her that Leithard outlines so well in his article. The New Covenant People of God are no different, and there is no more contradiction in having an order of ministerial priests within the priestly community in the New Covenant than there was in the Old Covenant. We, as with the Lutherans, see the Priesthood of Christ as the final fulfillment of both the Aaronic priesthood and the priesthood of Israel, but we say that both the continuing New Testament office of the ministry AND the continuing New Testament priestly community of all the faithful derive from this one Priesthood of Christ.

Where Leithard has it exactly correct is his criticism of the way in which the rise of Individualism has skewed the teaching of the baptismal ministry, to lead to the notion that the idea of the priesthood of the baptised somehow leads to the detachment of the individual from the liturgical assembly. Perhaps he could have taken this a little further and noted that the true New Testament doctrine about "the priesthood of all believers"/"common baptismal priesthood" teaches a priesthood that each of the baptised possesses only in union with the whole community of the Church. It is only AS "the People of God" that we exercise this priesthood.

This is then not unrelated to the doctrine that we often hear from Protestants in criticism of our Catholic practice of canonising particular individual believers as "saints". They object that "we are all saints". Yes, but not individually. Whenever the New Testament refers to "the saints" they are speaking of the whole Church as one body of the sanctified, not of a property that each believer already in this life possesses in and of ourselves in some individual manner.

Catholics can affirm with Lutherans that all the baptised are together "priests" and all the baptised are together "saints", but we pay especial attention to the danger of individualism of which Leithard's short article warns us.

"That's sooooo 20th Century."

2010-11-02T10:16:00.001+11:00

Have you heard that one yet? It's becoming the latest put down. It's "like, get with it, man" for the 21st Century. CD's are 20th Century. Blackberrys are 20th Century. Being opposed to physician assisted suicide is 20th Century...

Well, at least according to Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens. In an article in today's edition of The Age ("Brown attacks Catholic Church election stance"), Mr Brown says:

''I welcome the Catholic Church or the Presbyterian Church or the Buddhists or anyone having a say in that [euthanasia] - we are a free and open democracy - but it really opens up to public attention the fact that the Greens are a 21st-century party trying to drag the other parties out of their last-century thinking on so many issues.''

Ah. "Last-century thinking". There's nothing like pumping up the relentless tide of "progress" to make a political party look as if it has a future. Actually, Mr Brown's rhetoric sounds rather 20th Century itself. Anyone who knows any social history will recall that in the first decade of the 20th Century, "Victorian values" were condemned as "so last century", and the newly minted 20th Century was proclaimed to be the "Century of Progress" and "the Brotherhood of Man"…

The Great War broke out in 1914, and the idea of "the progress of man" got a bit of a reality check. We're only 10 years into this new century, Mr Brown. Let's wait and see how the 21st Century turns out before we start using it as a positive adjective for our political ideals.

In any case, it is rather telling that Mr Brown has pulled off his gloves and openly attacked Archbishop Hart and the Catholic Church for its opposition to policies which the Greens espouse. By contrast, in Your Vote, Your Values, the Catholic bishops were very careful to make it quite clear that "as bishops we are not advocating any political party. That is not our role." But according to Mr Brown, the Church is trying to "dictate to people" and "trying to tell parishioners how to vote". Good try, Mr Brown. In fact, what the Church is doing is what she has always done: guiding and shepherding the flock, speaking the truth of faith and morals, suggesting a "better way", a path of life and of hope. This is, in fact, what Catholics belong to a Church for. They expect their bishops to educate them in what is right and wrong, and to encourage them to live a morally upright life in society.

Mr Brown retorts that "the Greens embraced Christian ethics and Catholic voters could think for themselves." Another nice try. For a start it would be interesting to see how Mr Brown defines "Christian ethics". Are the Greens now claiming a more infallible charism to teach Christian ethics than the Church herself? And yes, Catholics who can think for themselves are precisely what we want, with an emphasis on the word "think". The Greens are far too complacent in their ability to pass off ideas as "progressive" and therefore "good" for our society. We want a Catholic laity who can think beyond the slogans of Greens policies.

One is not, however, optimistic. In the Letters section of today's Age, there were nine (9) letters on the subject of the Bishops' statement. ALL NINE WERE ANTI-CATHOLIC. That's balance for you. Perhaps – just maybe perhaps – The Age received no positive letters about the bishops' initiative at all. Perhaps.

A quick review of the letters gives us:

"WHILE Catholic bishops are perfectly entitled to advise their flocks on moral issues such as abortion and euthanasia, they are not entitled to impose those views on the broader society…[I]f every Catholic followed the advice, all members of our society would be affected." (Dr Peter Evans, Hawthorn)

Thanks, Doc. That's how democratic politics works. Everyone gets a say in how their society is run. One could turn the tables and say that while the Greens are "perfectly entitled" to their silly ideas about what makes a "progressive" society, "they are not entitled to impose those views on the broader society" – which is exactly what will happen if they gain any real political power. Doc Evans goes on to say "Catholics make up only one in four of our community" – and at last count Greens made up less than one in six. So what's your point, Doc?

Jean Jordan of Eltham asks why "The Catholic Church's election guide urges parishioners to ''quiz'' candidates on their attitudes to voluntary euthanasia and abortion" but doesn't mention the war in Afghanistan. Easy one, Jean. This is a State election, and the State government has no powers to commit our armed forces to any engagement.

Then there are two letters, one from Peter O'Keefe and another from John Mosig, which take the predictable line that since the sexual abuse scandal, the "Catholic Church is hardly in a position to lecture us on morality." As I say, the argument is predictable. And it too could be turned on its head: Does a society that murders its unborn children at a rate of 80,000 a year and a political party that wants us to help sick people kill themselves have a right to lecture us on morality?

Then there is Jason Ball of South Yarra who reckons that "someone should inform Archbishop Denis Hart that three in four Catholics actually support euthanasia." Is it that high? If so, it is my guess that those "Catholics" that "actually support euthanasia" would be those with whom Steve Clark of Bukoba in Tanzania (they read The Age in Tanzania???) self identifies when he cites those who are only counted as Catholics "because they were baptised as infants but are in no sense now part of the church (like me)".

To cap it all off, Bob Greaves gives us just the sort of non-sequitur which makes brings us back to the "soooo last century" jibe. In his opinion, "the reactionary opinions of the Catholic Church hierarchy have no place in secular Australian politics". So, let me get that right, Bob. Are you saying that people who have opinions different to yours shouldn't get to vote? Or just that religious people shouldn't be allowed to vote? Or that religious people should forget about their most deeply held convictions and vote like hypocrites?

Indulgence Season

2010-11-01T23:23:00.001+11:00

...is now open. For the Indulgences for the Faithful Departed, available from 1 to 8 November, see here.

Of course, this is a contentious issue ecumenically. Yesterday was celebrated as the Festival of the Reformation in the Lutheran Church, because it was on the eve of All Saints that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses in 1517. Ever since then, indulgences has been a flashpoint issue in the dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics.

My children were treated yesterday to a "fun" children's address in which (according to their report) the one giving the address came into the church crying something along the lines of "Pay your money and get your sins forgiven". They were then taught that sins are only forgiven through confession and repentance. Of course. That is what the Catholic Church teaches too. Indulgences has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins, and perpetuating this myth is not helpful.

But when I tried to explain what an indulgence is to my children, I found myself floundering. That is because there are at least four ideas behind the doctrine of indulgences that need to be comprehended before the doctrine makes any sense - it is like a picture which is dependant upon the frame for its full understanding. That framework consists of the following doctrines:

1) Purgatory
2) "Merit"
3) Communion of Saints
4) the Authority of the Church to bind or loose

Each of these issues in turn is hotly contended between our two communions, and just complicates the misunderstandings.

I also find that trying to explain the doctrine of indulgences to a non-Catholic comes up against a problem that is a little like trying to describe to someone what a stained glass window looks like, when you are viewing the window from inside the church, with the light streaming in and making it look beautiful and attractive and gracious, and the person you are trying to explain it to is standing on the outside of the church, seeing only the grey dark blobs of glass with darkness behind it. It is a doctrine that looks completely different to someone standing inside the Catholic Church to someone standing outside it.

A related problem is that to the person outside the Church, it looks as if we are doing legalistic "works" to win God's favour, his love, his acceptance, his approval, his forgiveness. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. It really has to do with one's relationship to God in terms of one's attachment to sin and purification from that attachment. I find one of the most helpful analogies being that which my friend Peter once pointed out: there are some things which the Church recommends that you can do for "the good of your soul". Even the protestant churches have this, of course. They recommend bible reading, prayer, acts of charity, fasting etc. They know that, as our Lord taught us, these things are "for the good of your soul". They do not "earn" anything, rather they strengthen one's relationship with the Lord and they purify one from attachment to self and sin.

The Authority of the Church to bind or loose on earth and the promise that this will be granted by God in heaven is also central to our practice of indulgences. The Church has the authority to "recommend" this or that act of devotion or charity which the individual believer may engage in and to attach to it the promises of God. That is a very contentious issue in itself, but Catholics believe that the Church actually has the authority to act in the way in which Jesus said it does. It can determine the guidelines by which this "binding or loosing" may be obtained. Of course, here we are not talking about the "binding or loosing" of absolution - which "binds or looses" from the eternal consequences of sin, but the "binding or loosing" of the temporal consequences of sin. It is about purification from the attachment to sin, not forgiveness or acceptance from God.

They are therefore not a "requirement", not a "law" that you "have to" fulfill for acceptance by God, but a gracious invitation to those disciplines that are for "the good of your soul". The doctrine of the communion on saints, of the treasury of "merit" and of purgatory relate to the fact that these acts of devotion can also be shared with others in the communion of saints, namely the Holy Souls in purgatory. They are like the invitation of our Lord to the wedding banquet in the parable. It is all grace. Are there "requirements"? Only in so far as an invitation will often have a "dress code" attached (even in the parable of the wedding banquet, there is a "wedding garment" to be worn - which is itself, of course, a gift from the host). It would be silly to see such a requirement as a "law", when it is all included in the gracious invitation itself. It is, as they say, "all grace".

"It's not my building, its God's".

2010-10-31T23:23:00.001+11:00

Well, that isn't quite the quote, I admit, but it could have been said. I am referring to an excellent article in Saturday's edition of The Age called "Mad, bad or masterful?" by Ray Edgar on La Sagrada Familia, the Barcelonian Church and dream of Antonio Gaudi, nearing completion and to be consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI this coming Sunday. It is a very good article, which brings to light a Melbourne connection with the Church. Melbourne architect and professor at RMIT, Mark Burry, has been working on the Church as a consultant for thirty years, and the article focuses on his attitude toward La Sagrada Familia and its original architect.

The quotation is actually from Burry himself, who said "It's not my building, it's Gaudi's", but the whole article points to a controversy in the direction of the heading of this post. At the end of the article, Burry says, in answer to the question "But is it in service to God or Gaudi?":

"It's a church," says Burry. "Its purpose is to afford the congregation of people from all walks of life with a place for one purpose. If they are thinking of architects, they will be thinking of Gaudi and an architect who died in 1926, who had the capacity to inspire people to make money sufficient to get the church started and built, and inspired people to continue that work 80 years after his death."

And it is precisely this point - that La Sagrada Familia is a CHURCH - that gets up the nose of secularist opponents to this amazing and miraculous project. As Edgar summarises:

While zealots have, over the years, nominated Gaudi himself for sainthood, not everyone is rejoicing in the building's completion. This landmark of the city, which attracts 2.6 million tourists a year, is also a symbol of the divisions within it. The issues involve heritage, the role of the church and state, and, indeed, the reputation of the architect himself - one whose architecture teacher described him to his students as "a genius and probably mad". [my emphasis]

He goes on:

Indeed, the cultural tremors surrounding the Sagrada Familia date back decades... After the war, Europe's cultural elite felt the same way about continuing construction on the site. Architectural luminaries such as Le Corbusier and Gropius signed local petitions against it. More recently, FAD, the key artistic and architectural union in Barcelona, produced the "Gaudi: Red Alert" manifesto signed by the Spanish intelligentsia, including the head of the Reina Sofia museum. Former FAD president Beth Gali herself appears in Robert Hughes' 2003 Gaudi documentary offering facetious proposals for the new sections of the church - a Christo wrapping, a train station, which Hughes, another opponent, happily endorses. In his 1992 book on the city, Hughes laments, "Nothing can be done about the Sagrada Familia".

"There's lots of reasons to think of why you wouldn't want to continue that building," Mark Burry says. "That it's better off as a ruin, testament to a tragic genius, or that it's better to rethink religious observance for the 21st century in a different form. I asked them myself when I came here in 1979. Why didn't they adapt it to a secular plan? It seemed like that would be a more ecumenical approach. I was told it's not my building, it's Gaudi's building."

......Barcelona-based architect David Mackay, a partner in the prestigious architectural firm MBM Architects, who signed the petition against the project along with Le Corbusier, says the church is the product of Gaudi's deluded obsession, rather than the great man's best work. Gaudi was in thrall to God and "his mind was stolen by fundamentalism". What has been created in his wake is "Gaudi at his worst", says Mackay. [my emphasis]

You get the drift. Gaudi's creation is an afront to the intelligentsia of Spain because it is a religious testament, and that seems out of step with today's modern Spanish ideals. As if to prove the point:

A high-speed train tunnel connecting Paris, Barcelona and Madrid passes within 0.4 metres of the World Heritage-listed building's foundations. Despite the four-year campaign by the Sagrada Familia's chief architect, Jordi Bonet, and pressure from UNESCO, Spain's Socialist government commissioned tests and allowed the 12-metre-diameter drill to bore past. To not do so, advocates of the tunnel argued, would be to allow the church to "hold back the progress of Spain".

Philistines.

As a side note, another thing mentioned in the article that strikes me is the "holism" of the vision for the Church:

"For me the fascination of Gaudi is his holism," [Burry] says. "Whether it's structure or construction or decoration or form or repertoire of materials or economics, he seems to be the master." ...The argument follows that like the cathedrals of old, one architect could not possibly finish it in their lifetime. "Gaudi knew this," says Burry, "and used the models to explain it well enough for others to continue the job."

The same holistic vision is what appeals to me about our own Cathedral of St Patrick in Melbourne. It is an entire whole, a complete vision inside and out of Wardell's single architectural plan.

I thank God for La Sagrada Familia and the dedication of men like Mark Burry in seeing it to its completion. Edgar reports that "thanks to Gaudi, the Pope's visit to Spain will probably receive more attention than his recent visit to London". In a sense it will be a continuation of the Holy Father's message in Britain. Gaudi's Church is a statement that, even in our modern society, there can be no true human "progress" in a society that loses sight of God.

Your Vote, Your Values

2010-10-29T22:29:00.000+11:00

Coming out this weekend in all parishes in Victoria is a joint statement from the Catholic diocesan bishops of Victoria, Archbishop Denis Hart (Archbishop of Melbourne), and Bishops Peter Connors (Ballarat), Joseph Grech (Sandhurst), and Christopher Prowse (Sale) called "Your Vote, Your Values: Issues and Questions for Parliamentary Candidates for the Victorian Election".

I have been eagerly awaiting this document, as I have been wanting to write to my local member and to the other candidates to ascertain where they stand on a number of crucial issues. This is because things are not simple in the State of Victoria at the moment. The political values of the parties and leaders are not clearly demarcated, and the policies of all parties seem more designed to get themselves elected than to do what is right for the state. There are good and honest and virtuous candidates in all the parties, but their own values do not always translate into the value of the party as a whole or that of their leaders.

But we don't get to elect a party or a leader, we only get to elect a candidate. So it is vital to know what your candidate stands for. "Your Vote, Your Values" provides a series of issues and related questions on a number of values, including Life, Families, Education, Health and Aged Care, Community, and Religious Freedom. Taking this statement, I have written it up as a questionnaire in table form for my local member and the other candidates (I have turned all the questions into "Yes/No" questions for quick answering, and also added a question about funding palliative care - I don't know why that was left off the list). I am going to send it to each of them, and request a response. I will inform them also that I am a blogger, and will report on their responses (or lack of response) to my readers on my blog (the questionnaire is rather extensive, and it is not likely that they would go to the bother of answering it unless they knew that it was going to be reported).

I wonder what the response will be?

In the mean time, if you want to do the same, you can download the questionnaire from here from Media Fire (sorry, free Wordpress doesn't support document hosting). You can find out information about the Election and Candidates from this website. Note that official nominations for the 2010 Victorian State election only open next Wednesday, 3 November, so start writing your letters now ready to post next week.

Please share any responses you get with us in the combox to this post, or email them to me and I will post them.

Our St Mary: More likely to pray for vocations than to challenge for women "priests"

2010-10-28T01:33:00.001+11:00

Dr Laura Beth Bugg (a lecturer in sociology of religion at the University of Sydney) writes in the Sydney Morning Herald:

This past week a woman was ordained a Catholic priest in Canada. The church did not sanction her ordination, and she will shortly be excommunicated. Roman Catholic Womenpriests, a movement for women's ordination that began in 2002, supervised the ordination. Since that time nearly 100 women worldwide have been ordained, although none have been recognised by the church.

These are not women who wish to break off from the church; they want to reimagine it. There are yet other Catholic feminists who understand the very concept of priesthood and the hierarchical structure of the church as fatally flawed. They do not wish to see women as priests, but to see the entire Catholic community as one that is radically democratic and committed to peace-making, justice and community building.

...Perhaps the legacy of St Mary and others like her who have spoken out boldly and faithfully will be to inspire new generations to speak to the structures of hierarchy and patriarchy that choke the church and countless other religious institutions.

Dr Bugg attempts in this article to use (abuse?) St Mary of the Cross MacKillop for her cause. As she herself points out, St Mary wisely advised: "Never see a need without doing something about it". But I am confident that, rather than trying to "reimagine the Church", St Mary was and is more likely to follow Jesus' own directions, as he said: "The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest."

Taking your (Greek) bible to Church

2010-10-28T00:11:00.001+11:00

It is a regular practice for protestants to take not only their hymnal but also their bibles to church with them on Sunday - although these days there are usually "pew bibles" (ie. copies of the bible in the pews already) provided. They are likely to look up the readings for the day and to read along as the lector is reading the lessons. Catholics on the other hand get everything in their missals (except the hymns, but I'm not going there just now), or at least on their bulletin sheets, so, even if they do read along with the reading instead of just listening to it (that is another question too, which we will deal with another time), they don't really ever get the readings in context. Often too, they are not even aware of where it comes in the bible.

All that being as it is, my issue here today is that I have decided that in the future I will take my Greek New Testament along to mass, because I have become very suspicious of the tranlstion in our missal. We are stuck with the current translation - which I understand are a modified version of the Jerusalem Bible - for at least the next twelve months, when - again as I understand it - we will get a modified version of the New Revised Standard Version instead. That should be an approvement, depending on the level of modification. But it will surely be a relief to leave the JB well and truly behind.

All this is prompted by last week's gospel, on the Pharisee and the Publican, Luke 18:9-14. Here is how the missal has it:

Gospel Lk 18:9-14
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke
The publican returned to his home justified; the pharisee did not.
Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else, ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.’

I have highlighted a word-stem that occurs three times in that story, and (in the missal) once in the short summary of the Gospel at the beginning (which isn't read aloud). The word-stem is the Greek "dikai-/dikoi-" stem. I am teaching Romans at the moment for Anima Education, and so my ears are very attuned to this word and its translations. The word can basically be translated in two directions, either as "righteous" or as "just", from which we get "justification" and "justify" as well. The confusion abounds in the above translation which translates "dikaioi" in verse 9 as "virtuous" (instead of "righteous"), "adikoi" in verse 11 as "unjust", and "dedikaiomenos" in verse 14 as "at rights with God". For good measure, the initial summary translates "dedikaiomenos" as "justified". Reading (or, even more, listening) to this parable told in the Jerusalem Bible translation obscures the fact that the central question of the story is: Who is "Righteous"?

And that of course, requires the preacher or homilist to explain to the assembly what "righteous" actually means - for the one thing it certainly doesn't mean in the New Testament is "virtuous" (as suggested in this translation). It wasn't a question for the Pharisee whether he was "virtuous" or not. The point was that he kept the Torah. And keeping the Torah demonstrated that he was among God's elect, that is, one of the "Righteous". Not like that other bloke over there who was one like the rest of mankind, like the Gentiles, ie. "a-dikoi", "UN-Righteous". (Cf. for comparison Jesus' directions in Matt 18:17 - "treat him as you would a gentile or a tax collector", ie. not one of the "Righteous", not one of God's "elect"). The surprising thing in Luke's parable is that Jesus says it was this tax-collector, and not the Pharisee who was "shown to be Righteous" ("dedikaiomenos"). It fits amazingly well with the use of the "dikai-" stem in Paul!

But all that is obscured by the Jerusalem Bible translation. The other translations are only marginally better. The NIV uses "righteousness", "evildoers" and "justified" (in that order), the NRSV uses "righteous", "rogues", and "justified". The RSV is probably best with "righteous", "unjust" and "justified", but that is still obscured by the different English stems ("righteous" and "just") to translate the single Greek stem ("dikai-").

Of course, all this I only suspected while at Mass last Sunday. I had to wait to check it up when I got home. In the future, I will be taking my Greek bible to Church!

Sherlock

2010-10-26T20:58:00.001+11:00

I have been very impressed with the new version of Sherlock Holmes that has been showing on Channel Nine (BBC One "Sherlock"). I caught only the last one on the telly on Sunday night, and have watched the first episode on the catchup channel on the internet.

A review in The Sunday Age accurately called Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of the title role as Holmes a mixture of Hornblower, Dr Who and House. He is a thoroughly interesting and engaging character. Martin Freeman does an excellent Dr Watson. The relationship between the two is filled with good humour and warmth - odd given how cold Holmes is supposed to be.

Clearly this series owes something to the recent Sherlock Holmes film - many of the usual cliches such as the deerstalker are abandoned, and the theme music is very similar - but they go one step further in placing Holmes in modern day London rather than in Victorian England. This has been done before, of course. The Basil Rathbone series was in a contemporary (1930's) setting, if I remember correctly.

A striking feature of the modern Sherlock is his use of the modern mobile phone to instantly access data from the internet. He also texts. He doesn't smoke - but clearly he once did as he is using nicotine patches to overcome his addiction and help him think. The drugs are there too (somewhere), and he has a go (unsuccessful) at boxing in the third episode. Mrs Hudson, 221B Baker Street, even the Irregulars are all there in an updated manner.

Really this is very good television.

Cute, and helpful, even if misdirected

2010-10-26T04:57:00.001+11:00

[caption id="attachment_4382" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Cartoon by Bill Leak, The Australian, Monday 25th October 2010"][/caption]

Today's cartoon in The Australian is cute, but a little misdirected. I don't think it is the Lutherans of Woodside that are making all the noise against the proposed assylum seeker processing centre (Woodside was not one of the 19th Century SA German settlements, although of course, there are lots of descendants living there). Although the historical reminder is worth taking note of. I tell my children that some of our ancestors came to Australia as religious "assylum seekers". George Fife Angas, a Baptist who sponsored their settlement in South Australia, saw their plight as not unlike that of the dissenters of Great Britain. The South Australian colony at the time welcomed the newcomers as they were a good source of labour and were productive farmers providing much needed food for the new settlement. In the 19th Century, South Australia was one of the most multi-cultural colonies in Australia. Bill Leak's humour, though misdirected, should at least be a reminder to South Australians that "we've done this before" and benefited from it.

What Ho, Fr Denton! Rector of Domus Australis!

2010-10-25T12:30:00.001+11:00

[caption id="attachment_4379" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Fr Anthony Denton"][/caption]

Oh, I say. Talk about falling on your feet! Fr Anthony Denton, our one time Vocations Director here in the glorious See of Melbourne, has been dubbed the first "Rector of Domus Australis".

"Fr Denton is currently completing a doctorate in Dogmatic Theology in Rome, is a keen historian, speaks fluent Italian and has an insider's knowledge of Rome and the Vatican city," Archbishop Hart said.

Cardinal Pell agreed. "We are very fortunate to have a priest like Fr Denton in this role," he said, adding that Domus Australia would continue the long established Church tradition of providing accommodation for pilgrims in holy places and that it would also be a religious and cultural centre for visitors to Rome.

"A centre such as this requires an outstanding priest with energy and vision and we look forward to Fr Denton working with us in this role," the Cardinal said.

I can't wait to visit Rome again - and hopefully this time I will be able to stay at Domus Australis and experience the hospitality of the Rector. He certainly can't complain, in this new role, that people are "dropping in on him" from home. I hope that he finds time to complete his doctoral studies. Something about Eastern ecclesiology, if I remember correctly...

In the meantime, have a gizz at this video - no mention of the new Rector, unfortunately.

Another significant new Cardinal

2010-10-25T12:17:00.001+11:00

[caption id="attachment_4372" align="aligncenter" width="324" caption="Archbishop - soon to be Cardinal - Malcom Ranjith"][/caption]Sandro Magister correctly predicted one of the Cardinals in the latest announcement:

ROME, October 14, 2010 – In Sri Lanka, the bishops and priests dress all in white, as can be seen in the unusual photograph above: with the entire clergy of the diocese of Colombo, the capital, diligently listening to its archbishop, Malcolm Ranjith, who is likely to be made a cardinal at the next concistory.

He was quite right. Malcolm Ranjith, one time secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, is also one of the Church's foremost proponents of returning to ad orientam celebration of the liturgy along with kneeling to receive Communion and reception of communion on the tongue. Take the time to read Magister's piece and you will understand where Pope Benedict is coming from.

"Progressive, rational, independent"... and wrong

2010-10-22T19:53:00.001+11:00

Tony Smith (who "holds a PhD in political science. He has taught at several universities including the University of Sydney"), in the October 15 edition of Eureka Street writes a piece about the religious beliefs of New South Wales Premier, Kristina Keneally. I wouldn't know Ms Keneally from Eve, so what I say here is no reflection on her. It is a reflection, rather of Dr Smith's praise for a kind of "Catholicism" which has one main fault: it isn't Catholic.

Dr Smith says that "Keneally's faith makes an interesting study". He contrasts her "Catholicism" with Tony Abbott's "great enthusiasm for Catholic orthodoxy" (although, it should be said, for all that "enthusiasm", Mr Abbot is no less of a politician than Ms Keneally). He writes that "by contrast Premier Keneally represents a growingly assertive Catholicism which might be described as progressive, rational and independent".

So, what are these "progressive, rational and independant" beliefs? Let's look at them (please note, I am commenting on Dr Smith's assessment of what comprises "progressive, rational and independant" beliefs - I am not judging Ms Keneally's faith):

1) "Keneally has stated plainly her belief that Catholic women should not be excluded from ordination." Progressive? Depends what you mean by "progress", I guess. Rational? Depends what your premises are. Independant? Independant of the Catholic Magisterium, that's for sure.

2) "In explaining her decision to support a bill to remove anomalies from the Adoption Act so that same sex couples would be eligible to adopt, Keneally noted the importance of allowing all MPs a 'conscience vote'. She described how her conscience was informed by Catholic teaching about the 'primacy' of conscience and the importance of actively developing the conscience." Is the example here her ideas about "same sex adoption" or her ideas about what "primacy of conscience" might mean? If in regard to "same sex-adoption", again it depends on what you call "progress" and what your premises are. In regard to "primacy of conscience" this isn't an accurate application of the doctrine.

Dr Smith says that "Keneally has not compromised her religious faith". Fair enough. But if what Dr Smith says is true, her witness to her faith cannot be held up as a shining example for Catholics to follow. (Not that I am saying that Mr Abbott's example can be). It is possible to be "progressive, rational and independant" AND wrong at the same time.

As if we needed proof...

2010-10-22T19:34:00.001+11:00

...that our Western society cannot handle saints.

According to this report in the Herald Sun, Zoo Magazine (called a "men's magazine" - which is even more insulting to men than calling "New Idea" a "women's magazine") has dealt with the canonisation of Mary MacKillop in the only way it can: by sexualisation and ridicule.

This tacky incident speaks volumes about how uncomfortable our society is with holiness. In Australian society, a common way to handle an uncomfortable situation is to make a joke of it. And a well known tactic of the devil (both inside and outside of the Church) to undermine both the holiness of the saints and the holiness of sex within the sacrament of marriage is to pervert both together at the same time.

As I see it, Zoo Magazine has just provided Exhibit A in the case against Western society. Whatever may be said for Islamic societies, you wouldn't find anything like this there.

Historian Cardinal

2010-10-22T19:13:00.001+11:00

[caption id="attachment_4364" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Monsignor (soon to be Cardinal) Walter Brandmueller"][/caption]

Among the new cardinals announced by Pope Benedict XVI for the November 24 consistory is a priest who is over 80 (and therefore not entitled to vote in a papal election), Monsignor Walter Brandmüller, former president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. This cannot be seen as anything other than a papal approval for Mons. Brandmuller's historical work. I have read his book "Lights and Shadows: Church History among faith, facts and legend", and can highly recommend it.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me

2010-10-22T18:31:00.000+11:00

I have been a little dismayed in the last 24 hours listening to the angry words of Woodside residents in South Australia reacting to the Federal Government's announcement that disused military accomodation in the Adelaide Hills will be used as an on-shore assylum seeker detention and processing centre. I have been listening to the radio news, and haven't found a lot of it in the print media, but you could see here, here and here for more information.

I can understand the Woodsiders' frustration at lack of consultation. Apparently Julia Gillard was in Woodside recently, and entirely failed to mention any plans for the establishment of the centre. I can understand parents concerns that the children of the assylum seekers will be sent to the local schools. This isn't an issue of racism, but an issue about a school system already overstretched. The local community is entitled to ask about extra funding and expansion of the schools to take an additional 200 students with very special needs. And I can also understand members of the community being angry about the fact that 10 million dollars will be spent on the centre, including 24/7 medical and dental services - when similar services for the locals exist only in their dreams.

All this I can understand, and all this reflects badly on the Federal government. But I have been deeply saddened to hear, in much of the rhetoric eminating from the public meeting at Woodside, such ugly words directed against the assylum seekers themselves. I had not thought that the "stop the boats" slogans had been quite so effective. I hope that the Christian community of Woodside and their pastors will be able to lead the community in general into a more welcoming embrace of the stranger.

Listen to the Chants of the New Missal!

2010-10-21T00:35:00.001+11:00

My friend Paul Taylor drew my attention to this page from the US National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

Here you can listen to the singing of the chants for the new English missal (unfortunately, no Credo). A great learning resource!

Truth is dispensible if it makes you feel guilty

2010-10-20T00:47:00.000+11:00

There is a breathtaking article in the Herald Sun today. Here it is with [my comments]:

No shame in aborting unborn life
Susie O'Brien
From: Herald Sun October 19, 2010

CHOOSING to terminate a pregnancy is better than ending up as a bad mother who hurts or neglects her kids. It's time we realise that having an abortion doesn't mean you don't care about the unborn life you are carrying. [That's the thesis. Now for the rationale, such as it is.]

Women abort potential babies because they would prefer not to be a mother at all, rather than be an inadequate parent. It's not that they don't care about the unborn child, it's because they care so much. That is the startling finding that emerges from groundbreaking new Victorian research. [They learnt this from "research"?]

In the aftermath of the Queensland case that saw two young people put on trial for taking legally available medication to terminate a pregnancy, it's time to reassert the rights of women who choose to have an abortion. [Is it? Remember the thing about rights: if someone has an authentic right, we have an absolute duty to provide it.]

Although Tegan Leach, 21, and her boyfriend, Sergie Brennan, 22, were acquitted, thousands of women are still made to feel like criminals because they choose to terminate a pregnancy. [Note the importance of feelings, note too the equation in this article between legal and moral/ethical.]

However, a startling new Melbourne study lifts the veil of secrecy on this issue, uncovering both the complex decision-making women go through, and the guilt and judgments they have to endure from doctors and others. ["guilt and judgements" - the true crime]

There is still a feeling in society that a woman who has an abortion is blithely ending the life of another potential human being. [Again, "there is a FEELING". I don't know whether the person who performs an abortion is doing it "blithely" or not, but the reality that a real (not only "potential") human life is being ended has nothing to do with "feelings".]

It's said she's selfishly putting herself before the needs of her unborn baby, or just using abortion as a form of contraception. [That may or may not be the case. The motives may be many.]

Let's face it, lots of people have had abortions, but would never talk about it, and can find it hard even using the A word. Some hide their experience as a shameful secret from their loved ones for years. [Let's face it, lot's of people do it, so it must be okay, yeah?]

There are even still lines of people placarding abortion clinics, willing to call her a baby killer to her face. ["Even still"? In this day and age...]

And let's not forget that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in the past has condemned the abortion rate, saying that he was concerned about an "abortion epidemic" and doesn't "much like abortion, full stop". [No, don't forget him. How dare he!]

Now I don't think anyone should be celebrating their abortion, or shouting it from the rooftops, but women shouldn't feel bad about pursuing a courageous, legal course of action. [If it is "courageous", it should be "celebrated", no? But just because it is "legal" doesn't make it moral.]

Yes, it is a big, important, life-changing event that should be taken seriously - but let's get off the guilt-trip. [Because after all, guilt is the real bad here, not the killing of an unborn human being.]

In the only study of its kind in recent years, researchers spoke to a group of 60 Victorian women aged 16 to 38 who rang a Royal Women's Hospital pregnancy advice service for help about their reasons for considering an abortion. The research team was led by Dr Maggie Kirkman from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Women's Health and Society.

The group was hand-picked [so not random, huh?]to include women who were 16-18 years old, rural wome, and women who had rung the advice service in their second trimester (12 to 18 weeks). All but five went on to have an abortion.

Women in this position - and, yes, this includes me ( I have written previously about the fact that I had an abortion 20 years ago) [Right. So may we be excused for thinking that this article is some attempt to come off your own guilt-trip? A sort of "Oprah" confession? You want we should cheer you?]- were thoughtful and painstaking in their deliberations.

In making their decision, they assessed their capacity to be a good mother and provide for their child. They also took into account their relationships and the role of the father and the impact on other children. Many of the women had multiple reasons, and went through a complex process of making a decision, and weighing up the options. As one teen, Prue, said, she thought it was better to have an abortion than be a bad mother. [Because, like, you know, its better to just put an end to thier lives here and now, rather than have us all suffer later, you know?]

It might sound counter-intuitive, but it actually makes perfect sense. [???!!!!????]

We also shouldn't harshly judge those seeking abortions in their second trimester. [No, you are right, we shouldn't judge anyone (not the least because that might make the guilty actually FEEL guilty). Judge not and you will not be judged and all that. But we can point out faulty thinking and bad rationalisations and wrong reasons and evil actions. Love the sinner, hate the sin.]

One woman interviewed, Abigail, didn't realise she was pregnant until this time, and decided to have an abortion because she had been drinking heavily and feared for the foetus's health. [How curious. A kind of prenatal euthanasia...]

"You know, you don't just have a child because you can," she told researchers. [Um...?]

But it's still not easy, and I think it's important to acknowledge this. Out of the 60 women, only three made the decision quickly or with any ease. [You're right. You actually have to work very, very hard to convince yourself that a really, really bad idea is a good one. And you won't feel good about it, because you like me and everyone else actually have a conscience which tells you not to do what is wrong, but to do what is right. And you are trying to make these young girls feel better by simply telling them "It's not wrong" in the first place.]

In her paper, published in the November edition of the international Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Journal, Dr Kirkman reports that women still feel stigmatised by doctors and others "both for being inappropriately pregnant and for terminating the pregnancy". [So, how can we help people to be "appropriately" pregnant and KEEP the child?]

Now, around 80,000 women claim Medicare rebates for abortions in Australia each year, with about one in five women terminating a pregnancy at some point in their lives.

As I say, it's not really a cause for celebration, but neither is it a cause for great shame or sadness. [You are right, it isn't a case for celebration, because it is a tragedy. But unless you acknoweldge what a tragedy it is, if you want to cover it up and call it "courageous" and "smart", then why not celebrate it? I will tell you why. Because you have a conscience which can't quite get over the fact that there is indeed something wrong with abortion.]

There are so many parents out there making bad decisions or hurting their kids - ranging from the woman who drove kids home in the boot, to Robert Farquarson, to the South Australian parents who starved their kids then made them beg for dog food. [All of these are horrific, but than God, rare occurences. The occurence of child abuse in the community is high, but no where near as high as the abortion rate. The parenting instinct kicks in for most parents. In the mean time, this argument amounts to "We'll hurt them now so we don't hurt them later".]

So it doesn't make sense to harshly judge those who make a positive decision that they are not ready to be parents. [They should have thought about this before they had the sexual intercourse that resulted in them being parents. Once the conception takes place, bingo: you're parent. If you fail to care for the child in the womb, you are no morally better than one who doesn't care for the child after birth.]

Isn't it better to end the pregnancy than be a parent when you know you are not ready for it? [You want it short and sweet sister? The answer is NO.]

More on Mary...

2010-10-19T11:04:00.001+11:00

[caption id="attachment_4351" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Cartoon by Bruce Petty, The Age, 18/10/2010"][/caption]

The above cartoon did cause a little chuckle, I must admit... (Note the nuns in brown habits frolicking outside the window).

Saints really are "good news stories", and Saint Mary has been one for the Church in Australia. But I must admit that if I hear one more person say that she is "a saint for all Australias" or that she "belongs to Australia", I will... well, I don't don't know what I will do. Probably just groan and put up with it. The fact is that Saint Mary is who she is, and belongs to Who she belongs to. When she chose her new name in religious life, she didn't choose "Sister Mary of All Australia" or "Sister Mary of the Battler" or anything like that. She chose "Sister Mary of the Cross".

The Cross. That "emblem of suff'ring and shame" as the old song has it. Why has there been so little focus on this in recent days? Have we been ashamed of the Cross? The very least that could have been said is about how she bore her own "crosses" in her life - but for Saint Mary "the Cross" was the Cross on which the Sacred Heart was pierced (remember the full name of her order, and the fact that Fr Woods was a Passionist and you will get a good clue to all this). The Cross which proclaims the salvation which is in Jesus Christ and in no other. So very little commentary surrounding the canonisation has mentioned Jesus Christ. That isn't the fault of Catholic doctrine, nor is it the fault of Mary, but it might just be the fault of those who are hungry for a good news story and an "Australian hero", rather than for an opportunity for evangelisation.

All sorts of people are wanting to co-opt her at the moment. There is the suggestion in today's Age (from a Jesuit at America Magazine no less) that she become the patron saint of those who have been abused. Well, maybe. But I'm not particularly sure what makes Saint Mary of the Cross any more suitable for that job than any other saint. I would have thought that Saint Maria Goretti would have been the most likely candidate for that portfolio.

Then there is all this business of miracles and prayers. Someone asked me at my class tonight: how do the saints know we are asking them to pray for us? Do they watch over us? Are they omnipresent and omniscient like God? As far as I know, the answer to the last question is "no". The saints "hear" our "prayers" (technically our "requests for their intercession" - Catholics may "pray" to the saints, but they never offer "intercessions" to anyone but God) spiritually, as an outcome of their complete communion with God in Jesus Christ. They, like us, are in the one communion in Jesus Christ - a communion which not even death can sever (Romans 8). Christ is not simply the mediator between the saints and God, it is his Spirit that joins all the saints, living and departed, into a single communion of love, such that he is the connecting point between the saints themselves. It is in this communion of charity in Christ that the saints "hear" our requests for their intercession. This is an area of theological reflection that deserves a great deal more reflection.

Which brings us back to Mother Mary. Mary was once an Australian. Whatever else we may retain of our personality in heaven, the one thing I am pretty sure we will not retain is "ethnicity" in the sense of nationalistic or racial distinction from one another. The Virgin Mary and the Apostles were once all Jews, Newman was an Englishman, Padre Pio was an Italian. Now they are all fully and simply "human". Mary too is a saint for the universal Church. She belongs to the Cross of Christ, not to Australia. Surely that is what St Paul was on about in Galatians 3 when he said that there is now "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female"? It is what Mary is now, more than what she was then, which is important.

Saint Mary MacKillop: A "rebel"?

2010-10-19T01:09:00.000+11:00

On the Compass coverage of the canonisation last night, Geraldine Doogue interviewed the Secretary of the Bishops Conference, Fr Brian Lucas. He insisted that Mary was "a woman of the Church" and could not in anyway be painted as "a rebel". Needless to say, Geraldine just about choked on this assertion and begged to differ. Fr Lucas, however, wasn't having any of it.

My friend, Andrew Rabel, filed a report for "Inside the Vatican Newsflash" (my link for this isn't working - sorry). Here's some of what he wrote:

With the news that Australia was to have its first saint canonized on October 17, the normally secular country has erupted with joy. But it seems that many are more interested in a false conception of Mary, and perhaps this is a reflection of attitudes that have prevailed following the Second Vatican Council.

For instance, looking on the website romancatholicwomenpriests.org, a blog by Bridget Mary says, “Pope Benedict will canonize Mother Mary MacKillop, an excommunicated nun. Perhaps, this Pope is offering hope to the many thousands of Catholics who have been excommunicated, including women priests. Excommunication is not a barrier to canonization.”
Yes, but Mary Mackillop’s excommunication was lifted a few months later by the very bishop who performed the sentence, realizing he had been badly advised.

Following the tensions that came in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, there has been the tendency for different factions in the Church to use a person like Mary MacKillop to bolster their own cause.

...Mary MacKillop was far from being a rebel. She was a woman of deep fidelity and loyalty to the Catholic Church. ...In 1873 when MacKillop met Blessed Pius IX at the Vatican, in an attempt to gain approval of her order by the Holy See, she recognized her lowliness in having been excommunicated (albeit falsely) and said that meeting the Holy Father was a day that was worth years of suffering.

...Unfortunately, people today who resist Church authority in matters like women's ordination or contraception etc ...use Mary MacKillop as an example to justify these actions. They say "She was disobedient and payed the price for that. Now the Church has made her a saint because of this".

For starters, Mary MacKillop founded her order of nuns to teach the Catholic faith to the poor children of Australia. She knew that in this emerging waspish country the faith was under attack by people of influence who wanted secular education only. Her resistance to Bishop Sheil's edict had nothing to with disobedience, as such. She had made religious vows to live her life in a certain manner, with the principle of self-government that he had agreed to. Suddenly when things had not gone to his liking, he had no authority to tell Mary to conduct her community differently, and this was the advice she had been given by her Jesuit confessors who had been trained in canon law. Bishop Sheil had limited knowledge of these areas.

The Holy See approved the rule, with a few modifications, but most importantly they gave approval to her principle of self-government, and they were to be supervised directly by the Holy See. Later on the successive bishop of Adelaide, Christopher Reynolds still tried to get the Sisters to follow him and when they wouldn't, banished Mary to Sydney. Fr Paul Gardiner SJ, a postulator of the Cause, always regarded this episode as worse than her excommunication, as it involved outright calumny. (A nun who falsely accused Mary to the bishop of being a drunkard, because of the brandy she was taking to deal with painful periods!) Bishop Reynolds had no right to do this, as the Rule now approved by Rome, stated they were not under the authority of the local bishop.

...But when all is said and done, the key to understanding Mary MacKillop is that she was a person of holiness. ...Yes the canonization of Mary MacKillop is very sorely needed, because we don’t need another sports star or celebrity. We need a saint.

Saint Mary was a "rebel" only in the sense that she was determined to be faithful to her vocation and to live faithfully according to the call of Christ despite the obstacles of many sinful people both inside and outside the Church. At no time was she ever a "rebel" against Christ's holy Church. Those who try to coopt her to any movement of dissent in the Church are horribly abusing the memory and example of this holy woman.

No Knowledge without Education

2010-10-16T10:24:00.001+11:00

Here's a bit of fun with a serious point to it, which I picked up on my iGoogle media alerts. Danielle Bean, a Catholic author and mother of eight, is editorial director of Faith & Family magazine and Faith & Family Live, and she has written a blog post at the Washington Post entitled "Catholicism's scandal of ignorance". She refers to an online quiz by Pew Forum in the US. The quiz is described as follows:

How much do you know about religion?
And how do you compare with the average American? Here's your chance to find out. Take our short, 15-question quiz, and see how you do in comparison with 3,412 randomly sampled adults who were asked these and other questions in the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. This national poll was conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life from May 19 through June 6, 2010, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. When you finish the quiz, you will be able to compare your knowledge of religion with participants in the national telephone poll. You can see how you compare with the overall population as well as with people of various religious traditions, people who attend worship services frequently or less often, men and women, and college graduates as well as those who did not attend college.
For a full analysis of the findings of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, read the full report.

Okay, I thought, I'm game. there are 15 questions, including two US legal questions that are not hard to guess the answer to - IF you know something about the State as well as "religion"! I actually scored 100% - 15 out of 15 - putting me in the top 99% of the population (remember that the public in this case is the American public...)

There is a full analysis here of the results of the Pew Forum survey (not the online play one, but the real one). But as Danielle Bean points out, the really terrifying thing is the way practicing Catholics have answered the question regarding the doctrine of the Eucharist. This page gives a complete breakdown of the way the real survey respondents answered the 15 questions in the online survey. In regard to the question 6 ("6. Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion? •The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. •The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.") we are told that only 40% of the American population answered correctly. Only actual Catholics answered the question correctly at a level significantly higher than this average, but even that was only 59% for "white Catholics" and 47% for "hispanic Catholics". The doctrine of transubstantiation is a defining doctrine of Catholicism. With Mrs Bean, I agree that the fact that less than two thirds of American Catholics are aware of this is a little troubling at least. Mrs Bean writes:

For me, the saddest part of the Pew Forum survey results is the abysmal ignorance of many Catholics with regard to the tenets of their own faith. Specifically, the fact that "45% of Catholics do not know that their church teaches that the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ" is a scandal.

This is especially pathetic because the Eucharist -- Christ's real presence under the appearance of bread and wine -- is one of the primary ways in which the Catholic Church differs from Protestant churches. Many converts to Catholicism, especially well studied ones, will tell you that it was the sacraments, and specifically the Eucharist, that drew them to the Catholic Church in the first place. God built us for union with him. We long for Christ, and it is in the sacraments that we find that union.

One of the enduring effects of the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is that it is now definitively "not cool" to be Catholic. I don't know who the people were that responded to the Pew Forum survey, but every week I grow in confidence that those who fill the pews around me at Sunday Mass are there because they true believers.

Week after week, we come because we believe that Church is more than a social institution and a product of our times. Even if it has become a social scarlet letter, we need Jesus Christ, and we know where we will find him: In the Catholic Church. In the flesh.

Well said. There is an interesting reflection on the Pew Forum's pages:

Factors in Religious Knowledge

What factors seem to contribute to religious knowledge? Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less. Having taken a religion course in college is also strongly associated with higher religious knowledge.

Other factors linked with religious knowledge include reading Scripture at least once a week and talking about religion with friends and family. People who say they frequently talk about religion with friends and family get an average of roughly two more questions right than those who say they rarely or never discuss religion. People with the highest levels of religious commitment – those who say that they attend worship services at least once a week and that religion is very important in their lives – generally demonstrate higher levels of religious knowledge than those with medium or low religious commitment. Having regularly attended religious education classes or participated in a youth group as a child adds more than two questions to the average number answered correctly, compared with those who seldom or never participated in such activities. And those who attended private school score more than two questions better on average than those who attended public school when they were growing up. Interestingly, however, those who attended a private religious school score no better than those who attended a private nonreligious school.

In other words, education, education, education. If there is one thing that the canonisation of Saint Mary of the Cross should remind us, it is of the importance of education in the faith.

Weedon reports on a Seminar on Death and Resurrection

2010-10-16T09:42:00.001+11:00

Pastor Weedon sent me this link to a post on his blog about a pastors conference he attended with a couple of very good speakers, Rev. William Cwirla ("The Art of Dying") and Prof. Jeff Gibbs ("Resurrection"). The topic certainly gets to the heart of the matter.

In his email to me, Pastor William rightly noted my fondness for N.T. Wright (mind you, I don't think Wright fully grasps what Ratzinger was saying in his book "Eschatology" on a number of points). He writes:

I remember in a Wrightish way you objected to the line "mount triumphant to the skies." [In the German funeral hymn "This body in the grave we lay"] After this presentation, checked out the German and it is not there. Rather, simply raised again in incorruption! Wright would likely be happy with that, no?

Indeed! Schütz too!

There are a number of issues that Pastor Weedon reports on that some may find suprising, for instance, prayer for the dead in Lutheranism.

The substitution of the meta-narrative that has prevailed through so much of Christianity - where "heaven" is the goal and death is just the gateway to heaven, and can stop the story without reckoning with the Appearing of our Lord and the joy of resurrection on that day - is perhaps the main culprit in the loss of prayer for the dead among us. We forget that the dead await the Resurrection - and the martyrs under the altar impatiently! "How long, O Lord?"

One of the strengths of Lutheran theology (and Anglican also, as in the case of Tom Wright), is that its best practicioners are strongly aware of the necessity of constantly callibrating their theology with the New Testament. Catholic theologians also, at their best, are aware of this necessity. As Tom Wright so brilliantly demonstrates, there are always new possibilities, fresh insights, thrown up by this process. Catholic theologians have the additional task of calibrating their theology to the ongoing tradition as well. This is a challenge all of its own, but no less capable of fruitful outcomes. Hence my comment earlier about Wright not being as successful as Ratzinger in grasping some of the authentic New Testament perspectives that actually were preserved in the on-going tradition.

Thanks, in any case, for this report, Pastor Weedon.

"Sisters" of St Joseph?

2010-10-16T00:11:00.001+11:00

Well, it is raining buckets here in Melbourne, the birthplace of (very soon to be) Saint Mary of the Cross (aka Mary MacKillop). God must be very confused at the moment: for years we have been praying for rain, but not a few are now praying for fine weather for Sunday's festivities (see here for full details).

The Catholic Weekly (Sydney) has this picture in their 17 October edition:

At first I thought "Isn't that nice? Some Sisters of St Joseph have decided to celebrate the canonisation of their founder by donning the habit that she gave them to identify them and their mission."

Silly me. The youthfulness of the "sisters" should have been a dead give-away. (In the early years of the order, most of the members were under 30, and in fact many of them under 21. Not anymore.) In fact these "sisters" are the cast of the Mary MacKillop musical stage production, on an outing on the "Mary MacKillop" ferry in Sydney Harbour. You must agree though, that their happy smiling faces and the instant "brand" recognisability of the habit are a good advertisment for more than just the musical. (BTW, did you pick up in the Compass program on Sunday the business about the "Black-" and "Brown-Joeys" working to bury the hatchet on their ancient division - with the consideration that perhaps they might now call themselves the "Green Joeys"? Thankfully that idea went in the waste paper basket.)

Still, wouldn't it be a nice thing if on Sunday all Josephite sisters were to dust off the old habits and don them in honour of the canonisation of their founder?

Fr Fleming's new book

2010-10-14T00:43:00.001+11:00

Fr John has written in to make us aware of his new book, Dignitas Personae Explained:

Dear Friends

My new book is now available for pre-order at http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=149

The book deals with the Church's teaching on reproductive technology and related issues. It is aimed at the intelligent layperson. [ie. all readers of Sentire Cum Ecclesia! - David]

I would be grateful if you would spread the news. It will be particularly useful to priests, doctors, nurses, students, and teachers both at High School and University/College.

Fr John

Eccentricity vs Tyranny

2010-10-13T23:18:00.001+11:00

I am reading the excellent literary biography of C.S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs, "The Narnian: the life and imagination of C.S. Lewis". Much to recommend about this book, but I was particularly attracted to this comment:

The society that encourages its eccentrics safeguards itself against the worst excesses of tyranny.

Amen to that. May there always be a place for eccentrics (no one particular in mind...) in our society AND in the Church!

Playing with Google's Latin Translator

2010-10-08T05:45:00.000+11:00

I have just been playing around with Google Translator's Latin translator, trying to come up with a couple of mottos for the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission. I can't say I like it's style very much. If you don't know any latin the chances are you will get very bad vocabulary choices trying to do English into Latin.

Any way, here are two I have come up with so far. Let me know how you would phrase these better:

Discrimen nullum; colloquimur cuiquam
("We're not fussy; we'll talk to anyone")

Cenare et bibere propter pacem et concordiam
("Eating and drinking our way to peace and harmony")

If you have a suggestion for "We're happy to dance with you so long as you don't mind us stepping on your toes", I reckon that could be a good motto too...

Catholic Voices

2010-10-08T03:27:00.001+11:00

John Allen Jnr has covered (with a full interview with Austen Invereigh) a UK endeavour called "Catholic Voices", which led on the front foot with media spots during the recent Papal Visit.

Read the interview here for background, and take a look at the media segments on the Catholic Voices website. You might start with this segment where Daniel Coughlan is the "Catholic Voice" on Al Jazeera News on 16th September. This is really impressive stuff.

PR Wooden-Spoon of the Year

2010-10-08T02:35:00.001+11:00

In case you might have been thinking about awarding the Annual Wooden Spoon for PR to the Vatican, you might take a look at this: the "No Pressure" video by Richard Curtis for the 10:10 Climate Emissions Campaign. Just Google "No Pressure" and "10:10" and you will get hundreds of internet entries on this topic, but the easiest entry point to the discussion is James Delingpole's blog at The Telegraph. I won't embed the video here - I warn you: it is NOT for the faint of heart. It's just unbelievable that anyone thought this would help their campaign.

Archbishop of Melbourne issues “Statement on Euthanasia”

2010-10-07T21:15:00.001+11:00

Statement on Euthanasia

Thursday 7 October 2010

To the people of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne

There is a renewed push in Victoria and many other parts of Australia for euthanasia and assisted suicide to be legalised. Misplaced compassion leads some to call for euthanasia. While it is never easy facing the end of life of a loved one, we cannot support the legalisation of euthanasia however it is described.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are the opposite of care and represent the abandonment of older and dying persons. Instead, we encourage all people of goodwill, to respond to this new challenge with truth and compassion. I join the Anglican Church of Australia in affirming that our task is to protect, nurture and sustain life to the best of our ability.

Advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide are mounting a new campaign for far-reaching change to Victoria’s laws on euthanasia and assisted suicide. If the State government were to ask the Law Reform Commission to review the Medical Treatment Act, there is a serious danger that the Commission would follow previous practice in relation to laws such as abortion and after a brief period of public consultation recommend radical change to the legislation without consultation on the proposed changes. With these laws there was little time or opportunity for public consultation, debate or reflection and the laws were introduced to the Parliament by the Government on the basis that it would not allow amendments.

Since the Northern Territory’s brief experiment with euthanasia in 1996, euthanasia advocates have introduced numerous bills into state parliaments around Australia all of which have been rejected. Why? Because when parliamentarians take the time to debate the issue fully and to consider all the consequences properly they realise that to decriminalise euthanasia and assisted suicide would threaten the lives of other vulnerable people.

The proposals if enacted would allow some people to be treated differently under the law such that their lives could be taken at their request. The impact of a law of that kind on those people who fit the description is to make them vulnerable particularly if they feel that they are a burden to others.

The experience of the Netherlands confirms just how far such a mentality can spread with pressure to increase the scope of the law so that it includes not just those with terminal illness and unrelievable suffering, but also people who suffer from depression, those who cannot make their own decisions, and even children.

As Pope Benedict reminded us recently, “the Church has always had great respect for the elderly” and the dying and this has been expressed practically in Catholic health and aged care, especially in hospice services.

As medical advances increasingly lead to a longer life for many people, we should view older people as a blessing for society rather than a problem. Each generation has much to teach the generation that follows it. We should therefore see care of the elderly as repayment of a debt of gratitude, as a part of a culture of love and care.

The Catholic community already does much to care through our network of hospices, hospitals and other services. I call on the Catholic community and people of good will to continue to care for the frail elderly, the sick and the dying, at every stage of life. I ask you to continue to journey with those who are sick and in pain, to visit them, and ensure they have appropriate care and support and pain management and most of all someone to remain close to them.

I thank those healthcare professionals and palliative care specialists, nurses, doctors and specialist, psychologists, pain management teams, pastoral carers, religious, volunteers and others who work every day to reduce psychological pain, social and spiritual suffering, in positive and life affirming ways.

It is an uplifting and inspiring experience to observe the love and care of those who work with and support the ill and the dying in their final days of life. I encourage the community to do more to support those often unseen heroes who stand in solidarity and love those who are suffering.

I ask the Parliament to put its energy and creative talents, into positive supports, rather than taking the negative path towards euthanasia or assisted suicide. I call on our parliaments to increase their support for aged care and palliative care programs.

I ask the community to continue to love and care for those who are sick and suffering rather than abandoning them to euthanasia or supporting them to suicide. Our ability to care says much about the strength of our society.

If there is a vote on euthanasia in the next term of the state Parliament, as predicted, each member will most likely be given a conscience vote. As you consider which candidate to vote for, ask them what their position is on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Yours sincerely in Christ

ARCHBISHOP OF MELBOURNE

[Click here to download a PDF version of the statement]

Music for the Mass

2010-10-07T07:53:00.001+11:00

Many of you will have already heard that ICEL has published the chants for the new missal on their website for all to download. This is really good stuff. They have included two chants for the Creed, and a chant (a very ancient and simple one) for the Gloria. The latter is especially significant. Our present missal has chants for everything BUT the Gloria and the Creed. That is, we have standard chants for the Kyrie, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei in the missal already. But without a chant for the Gloria, there has not been a full standard chant mass setting easily accessible for all Catholic parishes. And so they went looking for other settings that included a Gloria, non-standard settings. NOW there will at last be a common universal standardised chant setting available to all English speaking parishes throughout the world.

Another bit of news: the stuff you download from the ICEL website is just the chant melody. Great for unaccompanied chant. But most parishes will require organ accompaniment at least. AND it's on its way! The draft accompaniment is already being prepared and hopefully will be available soon.

The next step is to make sure that our parishes use these settings so that they become widely known. It seems to me that the easiest thing to do is to introduce the new texts WITH the new chant settings. It is always easier to memorise a text when you sing it anyway.

Just imagine being able to go anywhere in the English speaking world and join in singing the liturgy! Just imagine being able to break into song at any mass, Sunday or weekday, with or without musical accompaniment!

You do not have a "right" to "chose your time of death"

2010-10-07T03:54:00.001+11:00

The pro-Euthanasia lobby is inventing human rights, just as the pro-homosexual lobby is. The latter is inventing the "human right" for same-sex attracted persons to "marry", and the former is inventing a "human right" to "choose one's time of death".

If the language of "human rights" is not to become a devalued currency, we must agree that you can't just mint brand-new shiny "human rights" according to whim. The Catholic Church teaches that true "human rights" are those that arise from the dignity of what it means to be human. Of course, the question there is "what does it mean to be human?" and that is where the argument starts. It is an argument for a different time. But one thing we can say for now is that part of the definition of "human dignity" has to do with the human being as a social being, and with human community. An out-of-control libertine individualism is not good for human society and thus "my business and no-one else's" cannot be cited as a basis for a "human right".

In relation to this, I wish to draw your attention to this article in The Australian today: "Choosing one's time of death is a basic human right", by Nigel Gray (former director of the Cancer Council of Victoria). He writes:

I AM distressed by the confusion and disgruntlement surrounding the discussion of euthanasia. Even the admirable Paul Kelly gets it wrong (The Australian, September 29). He refers to euthanasia as "legalised killing", implying that those who support euthanasia want someone to do something to someone else. The word kill occurs seven times. If we take away the labels such as euthanasia, kill, murder, suicide, we can look at the issues.

I disagree very strongly. If you take out these words - which are NOT "loaded" words, or fuzzy words, but words that are clear and have a deliberate and objective meaning - THEN you in fact obscure the issues rather than clarify them.

The people who join the Dying with Dignity movement simply want to die with dignity. This ought to be possible under Victorian law, but it is not surprising that people want to be sure of getting their wishes.

To die with dignity is, I would agree, a "human right" - but in a secondary sense: ie. everyone is entitled to that "dignity" which is due to them because they are a human being in BOTH life and death. The question is: what do you mean by "dignity" in this context? Japanese warriors and Jihadist Terrorists both had/have ideas about what a "dignified" death is. We disagree with both their accounts. We disagree with Nigel Gray's too.

My wishes are also simple. I want the right to choose the place and time of my own death. I do not want to transfer the responsibility to someone else. The place will be in my own bed, with Louis Armstrong playing in the background. The time: not yet imminent.

The "someone else" who has the choice of the place and time of one's death is not a human being. Whether you believe in God or not, no human being - including oneself - has a "right" to chose when and where they will die. The very unpredictability of death is one of its greatest mysteries, but we do not have a "right" to solve that mystery by taking our own life or the life of others.

The whole thing could be much simpler and less disturbing if, for example, the law allowed the following two options. All that follows necessarily requires everyone involved to be willing participants. No one could or should be forced to participate, and the service should be free.

Ah yes. If only that difficult and disturbing thing we call "death" could be made "simpler and less disturbing"... Note that "could" and "should" are, of course, two different things.

Option one: The person (I have not said patient) presents to the nearest (willing) pharmacist a form signed and witnessed (as is any will or power of medical attorney) that requests the pharmacist to provide a lethal dose of Nembutal with instructions for use. The person goes home and takes it. At the moment, the family then has to waste the time of a practitioner to certify death and the coroner has to inquire to see that someone was not murdered.

"Waste the time of a practicioner"? "not said patient"? Is he in fact arguing for the right of any and all human beings to commit suicide whenever and for whatever reason they choose? If this it is indeed a "human right" for all human beings to decide the place and time of their death and to carry it out by their own action, does this not mean that it is immoral to try to prevent suicide?

Option two: A charitable organisation, called the Earthly Angel Service, accommodates the person's wishes. The person provides a form, signed and witnessed as above. The EAS then provides an authorised (registered and licensed) staff member who has some simple skills, and an independent witness. The EAS visitor: Slips a needle into a vein and sets up an intravenous drip. Draws up a lethal dose of morphia and slips the needle into the drip. Hands the syringe to the person. The person, not anyone else, presses the plunger of the syringe. The morphia flows and permanent sleep follows. The EAS visitor then determines that death has occurred and provides a death certificate. With such a law, no one else is required to do something to someone else.

"Earthly Angel Service"? Note that the article is headed with the by-line "EMOTIONAL terms obscure the facts of euthanasia". If this isn't "emotional", I don't know what is. Anyway, such an "angel" would be nothing other than an "Angel of Death". And what kind of "charity" would this be? Not the kind that Church understands. Not the kind of "charity" that the good Samaritan showed.

All the labels are pejorative and obscure the real issues: individual choice, no transfer of responsibility to another person (which is, after all, a tough responsibility to transfer), no bureaucracy, and no need for a terminal disease, so no need for a doctor.

As I said: Suicide as a "human right". Gray is certainly in a "gray" area here. The result would be a moral obligation on everyone to do everything we can to assist the suicidal to achieve their aims. Also note the emphasis on "choice" and "individual". We have seen this before in the abortion debate, we see it again here. Remember: since a human being is a social and communal being, "individualism" cannot provide a basis for determining true human dignity.

The reason for wanting choice is that this is one's own business, no one else's. We should not have to give reasons. It may indeed be a terminal disease and one may have consulted a doctor, or one may have gone bankrupt, or the wrong team may have won the grand final, but these are not relevant to anyone else. A personal decision, which is made as a human right, is all that is required. The necessary legislation should be simple enough.

Sorry mate. It isn't your own business. "No man is an island", and all that stuff. This is individualism taken to an extreme. It is the death of human society. Gray and his ilk are inventing a new "human right" and yes, I want him to give REASONS why he thinks suicide is a "human right".

Pilgrimage to SA: Diary entry Thursday 30th September

2010-10-06T09:17:00.001+11:00

The morning dawned bright and sunny on Wednesday and, although it clouded over later, it remained fine. We had another slow start. I had several other points on the pilgrimage yet to make, and so Cathy decided it would be good for me to take the children out while she did the bulk of the packing up. Before leaving Tanunda, we visited the bakery and bought some bienenstich (bee-sting) cake and a apfel-streusel küchen for morning tea.

First stop on the list was the Neukirch Cemetery. This cemetery is not attached to the church building, but is about another 300 metres down the road from the Neukirch Church (is that a tautology?) out in a paddock all on its own, a kilometre or so north west of the Ebenezer Lutheran Church, north of Nuriootpa and west of Stockwell. This is where my mother's father's grandparents (my great, great grandparents, and the children's great, great, great grandparents) are buried. They had the wonderful names of Johann Heinrich Theodor Heintze and Johanna Maria Magdelena (nee Schultz). We located their grave easily enough, and picked some wild flowers to place on their grave, before a moment of prayer thanking God for their lives and praying for their eternal rest.

[caption id="attachment_4167" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Neukirch Church near Ebenezer, the church my Great, Great Grandparents attended"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4168" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The girls at the entrance to the Neukirch Cemetery where their Great, Great, Great Grandparents Heintze are buried."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4169" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Maddy and Mia at the grave of Johann Heinrich Theodor Heintze and his wife Johanna Maria Magdelena nee Schultz (my grandfather\'s grandparents) in the Neukirch Cemetery"][/caption]

Next stop was a little further to the south and west at Nain, a church just down the road west of Greenock. Here the parents of both Johann Heinrich Theodor and Johanna Maria Magdelena are buried: great, great, great (+ an extra great for the kids), grandparents Schultz (yes, with an 'L' – different family from the Schütz's) and Heinze (yes, without the 't' – that was added by their children). These were the original immigrants to South Australia on the fourth ship in Pastor Kavel's floatilla, the Skjold, which arrived in January 1839. They had originally settled in Bethany in 1842, before moving up north to this area. The Schultz's still had their original gravestone, indicating that the old man's 200th birthday had been in August this year (so he and my Great, Great, Great Grandfather Schütz were both born in 1810). The Heinze tombstone however looked newer, probably 1950's, although it indicated that Old Man Heinze had been born in 1795. It seems amazing that I can trace my family history back to the 18th Century. Again we said prayers at both gravesides, and placed some wild white irises which we had found growing on the side of the road on their graves.

[caption id="attachment_4170" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Mia and Maddy at the grave of their Great Great Great Great Granparents Schultz in the Nain Cemetery. The Schultz\'s came from the same village in Silesia as the Heinze\'s and travelled out on the same ship in 1839"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4171" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The gravestone of Great Great Great Grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm and Auguste Wilhemine Heintze, who came to South Australia from Silesia in 1839"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4172" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Lutheran Church at Nain, where my Great, Great, Great Grandparents Schultz and Heinze are buried"][/caption]

We headed back into town, and had lunch of bread, cheese, tomato, fritz and metwurst (washed down with a glass of Bethany white wine) before leaving Little Para Cottage. We stopped in Tanunda and visited Langmeil Church and Cemetery, where Pastor Kavel is buried. The church was open during office hours – but not when we were there – office hours finished at 12 noon. So we were not able to enter a single church during our 'pilgrimage'! This church is, however, not only one of the most significant historically in the Valley, but also one of the most beautiful, with the cemetery at the front, lining both sides of a central path leading up to the church door. Very well planned for maximum picturesqueness!

[caption id="attachment_4174" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The entrance to Langmeil Lutheran Church in Tanunda"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4175" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Pastor Kavel\'s grave in Langmeil cemetery in Tanunda"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4176" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Langmeil Lutheran Church in Tanunda"][/caption]

Our next plan was to visit one more winery before finding a lookout from which to see the whole valley. We went to Rockfords, south of Bethany, which has always been a favourite. They do a beautiful "rose-style" wine called Alicante Bouchet, and a very nice aged tawny port. Heading back through Bethany, we decided to follow the unpaved track up Kaiser Stuhl, the high hill at the bottom of the valley, up which (according to a popular story which, to my annoyance, the expert historian Pastor Henry Proeve declared "spurious" in the book "The Barossa Valley: A Vision Realised") Pastor Kavel was said to have marched his congregation to await the return of the Lord and the start of the Millenium. The dispute over millennialism and the proper interpretation of Revelation 20 was at the centre of the famous split at the synod of Bethany in 1842 which resulted in Pastor Kavel and Pastor Fritsche leading their flocks in separate directions, and eventually to the "Two Churches", the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA – Pastor Kavel) and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia (UELCA – Pastor Fritsche). This split, in which my family ended up with the UELCA, was only healed with the formation of the united Lutheran Church of Australia in the year of my birth, 1966. It could be said that I was the first person to have been both baptised and ordained in the LCA, although strictly speaking, I was baptised a month or two before the union was officially declared and celebrated.

[caption id="attachment_4177" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Rockford\'s Winery"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4178" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The view of Tanunda and the Barossa Valley from Kaiser Stuhl"][/caption]

Anyway, we went up the hill, which afforded the most magnificent views of the valley, much better than the better known view from Mengler's Hill slightly to the north. However the latter has a paved road and viewing area at the top, which means it is much more accessible. From here you can see why the Barossa Valley IS a true valley, as you can see the circle of hills all around the flat in which Tanunda and Nuriootpa are central. We went next to Mengler's Hill, where there is a memorial to the German Settlers and to their faith, before leaving the Valley and heading over the hills to Flaxman's Valley, where Great, Great, Great Grandpa Schütz settled and lived out his life to 1900.

[caption id="attachment_4179" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Mia and Maddy on Mengler\'s Hill with the Barossa Valley in the background"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4180" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Memorial to the Barossa Pioneers on Mengler\'s Hill. Note the text and its thankfulness to God."][/caption]

We were able to locate the farmhouse where Great, Great, Great Grandpa Johann Gottfried built his home and from which his sons set out to make a new life for themselves much further north at Point Pass. The owner of the farm was in the yard, and he confirmed that this was indeed the original Schütz holding. He was happy for us to take pictures of the farm, but didn't invite us in, so we turned around and headed for Eden Valley, home of the best Barossa Reislings (although not strictly Barossa) and where my ancestor is buried with his wife in the cemetery of St Petri Church. Again we laid fresh wild irises on his grave and sang "Happy Birthday dear Johann Gottlieb" for his 200th Birthday coming up.

[caption id="attachment_4181" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The property in Flaxmans Valley where Great Great Great Grandpa Schütz settled in 1855"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4182" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="St Petri Lutheran Church Eden Valley - which wasn't J.G.'s parish, even though it is closest to his homestead. He was in fact a life member of Bethany Lutheran Church, and his wife is buried in the Bethany Pioneers Cemetery. Unfortunately I didn't know that when we were in Bethany, and so we drove right past the cemetery where Great Great Great Grandma is buried. Next time..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4183" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="David, Maddy and Mia at Great Great Great Grandpa Schütz\'s grave in the St Petri Cemetery in Eden Valley"][/caption]

Matthias asked what was on the bronze plaque set in front of his tombstone, and it is a literal translation of the German poem on his tombstone.

Here rests in God
J.G. Schütz [note the umlauts!]
born 13 Oct. 1810
in Grünberg Silesia
died 10 Nov. 1900
At the age of 90 years

Rich in days you left us
Weary of life, slipped into its ending,
Life on earth brought little joy,
Heavenwards your thoughts were tending.
In Heaven forever in the Lord made whole
In life ever trusted to console.

[caption id="attachment_4184" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The view of St Petri Church at Eden Valley from GGG Grandpa Schütz\'s grave"][/caption]

From there we headed down to Springton, where there is the famous "Herbig Tree". The Herbigs, a family of 16 surviving children, converted this ancient hollow gumtree into their home for five years between 1855 and 1860. Old Vater Herbig had been the tailor in the same town that my ancestor came from, Grünberg in Silesia, and they had come out in 1855 on the same boat as he did, the Wilhemine. Yes, we all have boat people and refugees in our ancestory!

[caption id="attachment_4185" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The Herbig Family lived in this tree from 1855-1860"][/caption]

That was the end of our 'pilgrimage' properly speaking, as we headed back into Adelaide through Williamstown and Gawler. It has been a remarkable trip, and we hope to top it off tomorrow with a brief visit to Hahndorf, where my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather on my father's side brought his family in his old age and where he died in 1839. Unfortunately we have no idea where he was buried, so no more graveside visits, although I do know where he lived, as records show the land that he purchased.

[Post Script: We spent the next two nights in Adelaide with a friend of Cathy's. I took the children to the Adventure Playground at St Kilda (nb. St Kilda in Adelaide has only one similarity with St Kilda in Melbourne - it is near the water).

On Friday we drove to Pinnaroo (my home town) via Hahndorf. We saw the property which was originally owned by my Great Great Great GREAT Grandfather Pfeiffer, who came out on Captain Hahn's ship, The Zebra, in 1839, with his wife, son and young grandchildren. Unfortunately he and his wife both died in the cold winter of 1839 when the vegetable crop failed - basically of malnourishment and pneumonia. We don't know where they are buried. His son - my Great, Great, Great Grandpa Pfeiffer - is, in fact, buried in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Point Pass - something I didn't know when we were actually there visiting the other Great, Greats. Damn. Next time.

Finally we spent two nights in Pinnaroo at my parents' home for the the wedding of my oldest neice. My girls both said they want "a wedding like that, Dad". Very reluctantly we headed home on Sunday because we all had either work and school on Monday.]

Pilgrimage to SA: Diary entry Wednesday 29th September (St Michael's Day)

2010-10-06T08:35:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, Tuesday, was a slow start. Our accommodation is really very pleasant. Anyone travelling to the Barossa would do well to try to book "Little Para Cottage" on 5 Para Road, Tanunda. Wendy, the proprietor, works at the Faith Lutheran College – and there was a bottle of Mengler View Shiraz waiting for us when we arrived (it's produced by the kids at the college, would you believe!). The price is right, although it will not suit larger families, as there are only a double bed and a single bed in the bedroom (one of), so we added a fold out bed for Mia. The kitchen lounge room is very comfortable. There's no open fire, but the faux-log fire electric heater gives the right impression without the mess (or, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the smell). It is quiet and private and we enjoyed the morning just pottering around. While Cathy and the kids had bacon and eggs for breakfast (cook your own, not provided), I had fried blud/ricewurst on toast. I couldn't convince any other member of my family to taste it. It was not exactly like we used to make it on the farm in Pinnaroo, but close enough to evoke childhood memories.

I smoked my pipe on the veranda (reading an hilariously funny book "The Va Dinci Cod", which I bought for $3 at a Lion's Club second hand book store in Adelaide with Fraser), but it was dreadfully cold (God knows how cold it must have been in Melbourne) and drizzly. The showers would be on and off all day, interspersed with sunshine, and that gave the Barossa an extra special "feel" and gleen. We then set off to walk up and down the main street of Tanunda – the kids wanted to shop. Whenever we saw a church coming up I said to the kids "Guess what kind!" and they answered in chorus "Lutheran!". There are no less than FOUR Lutheran churches in this little town, which shows not just that there were a lot of Lutherans in the area, but also their history of bickering. One of the churches, "Tabor" in the main street, was originally a "Free Evangelical Lutheran Church". As the sign says on the outside, it was frequented by Germans who were not part of the original "Old Lutheran" sect that my fore-fathers were and who had no truck with some of the more strict ways of the majority sect.

[Tabor Lutheran Church in Tanunda, one of the four Lutheran Churches in this town. This one was a "Free" Lutheran Church, that is, they did not subscribe to the funny ideas of Kavel and Fritsche's "Old Lutherans". Not "our mob"!"]

We went into the Museum in the main street that has a very good display on the history of the early settlers, including a couple of rooms done up as Lutheran Churches (given that most Lutheran Churches in the area are shut, this gave a good view of how it would have looked).

[caption id="attachment_4250" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The excellent little Museum in Tanunda - don\'t miss it if you are travelling through the Barossa!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4155" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="A fairly good reproduction of a traditional Lutheran Church in a small room in the Museum in Tanunda"][/caption]

We had lunch at the Tanunda Bakery and Wursthaus, where I bought a slice of Jagerbraten, a kind of metwurst made by stuffing a porkbelly with sausage and then roasting it. Yummy! After lunch, we hopped in the car and drove north to Eudunda and then to Point Pass, where all the sons of Great, Great, Great Grandpa Johann Gottlieb moved from their original settlement in Flaxman's Valley. It is a good distance, about 50km, and we did most of the journey along the gravel road that leads north from Stockwell to St Kitts and then to Eudunda. As this road travels along a central ridge of hills it afforded us a splendid view of the surrounding countryside. We drove through Eudunda and up on to Point Pass, arriving at the splendidly crowned Immanuel Lutheran Church with its copper steeple (which shines bright in the sunshine). Behind this church, in which my Grandfather played one of only three surviving Klempke pipe organs (another was in my old parish at Frankston) while my dad would work the hand operated bellows, is the cemetery. If my children had any lingering doubts concerning the size of their family, the names on a great number of tombstones put that firmly to rest. We first located the grave where I buried my Grandfather about 16 years ago. He is buried with his first wife, my grandmother who died in 1953 and whom I never knew, and with his second wife, who was my "grandma". She died just as I was leaving for Constantinople in 2007 and so I had never been able to visit her grave before. We said an "Our Father" together and prayed for their repose. The children had known step-Great Grandma, and so this had some meaning for them also. Directly behind their grave is the grave of Grandpa's parents, and further back in the cemetery is the grave of his grandparents – my Great, Great grandfather was born in Silesia in 1845 and came out with his father, Johann Gottfried Schütz in 1855.

[caption id="attachment_4160" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Immanuel Lutheran Church at Point Pass, with its copper steeple. My Grandfather played the organ in this church."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4268" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="My Grandfather\'s grave at Point Pass. I officiated at his burial in 1995. He is buried with my Grandmother Clara who died when my father was 12 years old, and his second wife, Grandma Lorna, whom my children were privileged to know before she died in 2007."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4158" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Mia and Maddy at the grave of their Great Great Grandparents Gustav Herman and Ernestine Emilie Schutz (note the umlauts have been dropped!) at Immanuel Cemetery in Point Pass"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4159" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The grave of my Great Great Grandparents Carl Heinrich and Maria Elisabeth Schütz at the Immanuel Cemetery in Point Pass. Carl moved to Point Pass with his brothers from Eden Valley where his father had settled."][/caption]

Unfortunately, the church was locked and none of the neighbours had a key, so we got back into our car and drove out to find my father's original home (within view of the cemetery itself). We drove past the original Immanuel College building – now a bed and breakfast.

[caption id="attachment_4161" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The original Immanuel College at Point Pass. It is now a bed and breakfast."][/caption]

I had spent some time with my father on the phone and with Google maps to find the exact locations of his house, and the houses of my grandfather's twin brother nearby. First we drove up a rather weatherworn track to get to their old shearing shed, a thatched log arrangement now tumbling down, but still standing. [Actually since writing this, I discovered that I had the information wrong: the thatched building belonged to my grandfather's twin brother; my grandfather's shed was the tin one on the other side of the road. Anyway, the thatched building looked more historic!]

[caption id="attachment_4162" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Mia and I in front of my great uncles old shearing shed at Point Pass."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4257" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="My Grandfather's shed was on the other side of the road, and rather more characteristic of his building style..."][/caption]

Heading back towards the homestead, we took pictures from the hill looking down at the house, and lamented that we couldn't go in and have a look.

[caption id="attachment_4163" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Me with my Great Grandfather\'s farm house at Point Pass in the background. My Grandfather worked this land with his horse teams."][/caption]

But I heard the sound of chainsaw nearby and saw a man and his young son chopping up a tree that had fallen over a fence. Taking a guess, I drove down to them, and pulled up and introduced myself: "Hi! I'm David Schütz and I would guess that you must be Bruce Schütz?" Sure enough, it was my second cousin, who lives in a third house on the property, with his sixth son Gary. He happily gave us permission to go up to my father's old home, which he now owns again and is currently renovating as a home for his son who is getting married in the near future. He told us that the house was open and invited us to let ourselves in to have a look.

[caption id="attachment_4164" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="We met up with my second cousin Bruce Schutz and his sixth son Gary"][/caption]

This was unexpected! I had never even been on the property before, and now I could see where Dad, and his father, and his father before him had once lived. They are treating it for salt-damp before repainting the interior, and have put a new roof on and repainted the exterior. Many of the old farm buildings which my great-grandfather and grandfather built are still standing – although Bruce pointed out that some of the sheds have been badly damaged by storms and will need to come down.

[caption id="attachment_4166" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The rear view of the home my father grew up in at Point Pass"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4165" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The front view of the home built by my great grandfather and in which my father grew up at Point Pass"][/caption]

After spending an hour or so on the property (Bruce and Gary came up to show us around a bit more), we drove home through Eudunda, seeing where my father went to school, and then home via Kapunda and Nuriootpa. A good meal of pasta, and again we were in bed early.

Putting up Barriers to Suicide

2010-10-05T03:06:00.000+11:00

There is a good article in the Herald Sun today: Tread carefully when dealing with dying. One of the first comments at the end says:

Anni of Melbourne Posted at 3:17 PM Today
There is a huge difference between turning off life support for someone unable to make that choice, and assisting someone to end a painful and terminal condition who can choose. As per usual the Herald Sun has some how completely ignored the issue. As some one who has a disability I understand the desire to have some say over how you die. It disgusts me to believe that some people believe it is kinder to watch fellow humans suffer intense agony than allow then a dignified and peaceful death.

Granted that there IS a difference between 1) "turning off life support for someone unable to make that choice" and 2) "assisting someone to end a painful and terminal condition [by killing themselves] who can choose", the difference does not make the latter action good and right.

In the article, Alan Howe writes:

We put up all sorts of barriers to prevent people from killing themselves - quite literally. Soon, there will be expensive high fencing across each side of the West Gate Bridge to try to stop the regular suicides that take place there. Surveys show that many people who believe they want to commit suicide think again if there is just one degree of difficulty.

It is worthwhile asking why a society that sees suicide prevention as a priority (though probably not a high enough one) would want to introduce bill to legalise suicide? What is it about the mental strains of bearing physical illness and suffering that we treat it as a different case to the mental strains of any other kind of suffering? Why does our society regard suicide as wrong and requiring to be prevented at all costs, except in the case of those who are terminally ill (according to diagnosis, not knowledge of the future), in which case there are a disturbing number of people who wish to actively enable such suicides and assist people to achieve them?

Does anyone have an answer?

"Weep with those who weep"

2010-10-02T20:30:00.000+10:00

St Paul instructed us to "weep with those who weep", and so today we share in the sorrow of our good friend Joshua, whose father Keith has passed away. Yet we also remember our Lord's injunction to the house of Jairus: "Do not weep, for she is not dead, only sleeping". We commend Keith to our Lord, and look forward to the time when he will raise us to eternal life on the Last Day.

Pilgrimage to SA: Diary entry Tuesday 28th September

2010-10-02T03:54:00.000+10:00

Monday morning, after a brisk morning walk with Mia and Francesca along the creek and a leisurely start including a breakfast of Fraser's specialty (croissants with hot chocolate), we made our way up through Chain of Ponds (while discussing N.T. Wright's contribution to the Symposium on Harvesting the Fruits and arguing about the reliability of his Tomtom GPS navigator), to the "Whispering Wall" at the Barossa Reservoir (always a great attraction for the kids). We then made our way into Tanunda where we checked in at "Little Para Cottage" (our home for the next few days) and had lunch together.

[caption id="attachment_4173" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The entrance to Little Para Cottage"][/caption]

Then we jumped into the cars again for the first port of call: Linke's Butchers in Nuriootpa. These guys are one of a very few commercial butchers who still make many of the delicacies I remember from childhood, including fritz (both ham and beef varieties) and – what they call – "rice wurst", but which others call "blutwurst", and what we as kids simply called "frying wurst", because that's what you do: fry it and have it on toast for breakfast. Noone – not even Linke's – makes it quite like we used to, but it is still pretty close. So: ricewurst, leberwurst, two kinds of fritz, a bung of garlic metwurst, and a dozen free range eggs later (and a couple of fresh unfilled "bungs" to take home for my own sausage making attempts) and we were off.

This time to a rather more modern and upmarket food establishment: Maggie Beer's Pheasant Farm and Kitchen. The kids are great fans of Mrs Beer (the cook half of "The Cook and the Chef") and Maddy was thrilled to be able to watch a cooking demo in the TV kitchen.

[caption id="attachment_4139" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Maddy in Maggie Beer\'s kitchen"][/caption]

From there we were off down the road to Seppeltsfield. My Great Grandfather Heintze had worked for Seppelts for 18 years back in the beginning of the 20th Century as a carter, taking kegs of wine to the station at Freeling. We stopped briefly at Gnadenfrei Lutheran Church in Marananga, then followed the aisle of palm trees down to the Mausoleum. This is perhaps one of the most bizarre private burial grounds in Australia, built in a very bare geometric classical greek style. But, as Fraser pointed out, not even a suggestion of any symbolism, no imagery, no writing, not even the names of those interred there. Neither Christian nor pagan. Just bare. The Seppelts were not part of the Lutheran community of the Barossa, and so, as far as burial grounds go, you couldn't get further afield in character from the graves of my ancestors just around the corner.

[caption id="attachment_4141" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Cathy, Daniel (our Godson) and Maddy at the Seppelt\'s Mausoleum"][/caption]

Then to the winery itself, where, as we were entering, Cathy noticed a cooper working in his workshop. We went directly there instead of too the cellar door, and we warmly welcomed in by the cooper, Andrew. He was working turning old hogshead kegs into new home kegs, largely, believe it or not, for the Japanese market. He told us that he had been a cooper for Penfolds before Fosters took it over and sacked all their barrel-makers. At that time, Fosters owned Seppeltsfield as well, and were in the process of breaking it up, but recently a new private owner has bought the Winery and its original properties back and is reviving and restoring it. He is even intending to start up the old smoke house on the property again to make small goods. Yummy!

[caption id="attachment_4142" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Fraser and self with Andrew the Cooper at Seppeltsfield"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4143" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The Pearce and Schütz-Beaton children at Seppeltsfield."][/caption]

Fraser didn't want to taste wines there, so we headed back through Tanunda to the other side to Bethany Wines (owned by Shrapel's for five generations), where we tasted and purchased some very nice whites (including their signature wine, the "White Port"). Unfortunately, as it was nearing closing time for the cellar doors, we didn't have time to linger in Bethany – or Bethanien as it was originally known. None of my ancestors are buried there, but the same Heintze clan who worked for Seppelts had originally settled there for a brief period with the rest of the immigrants who came out on the Skjold, the fourth boat in Pastor Kavel's floatilla which arrived in South Australia in January of 1839. From there they moved over to Walton, west of Bethany and nearer Seppeltsfield. There is still a road near Seppeltsfield named "Heinze Rd" (the original spelling did not have the "T" in it).

[caption id="attachment_4144" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Heinze Road, near Seppeltsfield. Note that the name here is spelled without a "t", as it was originally. The Heinze's and the Schultz's lived in this vicinity for many years."][/caption]

From Bethany to Kellermeisters at Lyndoch. When I was younger, Kellermeisters was a rather tacky establishment. They have gone upmarket, and now have some very nice wines indeed, but they still specialise in the sweeter varieties of white wine, so Cathy (for once) really enjoyed the tasting experience. Some of their wines, like the "Pink Mink" (bubbly pink Muscato) and the "Black Fire" (a sweet white version of the same wine) have been on the Kellermeister list since the seventies. Of course, both wines are popular today among the ladies still, but as a rather curious nod to their history, the winery has decided to keep the incredibly cheesy labels of that era. We were served by a young man who had just completed a four years honours degree in Wine Marketing. I kid you not. I have suggested that Madeline might interest herself in this career rather than her plan to go into hairdressing (for which I already have little use).

[caption id="attachment_4194" align="aligncenter" width="196" caption="Kellermeister's "Pink Mink" - with original 70s label"][/caption]

Kellermeister, situated at the very entrance to the Valley, has a beautiful view of the hills. The Barossa, like all the countryside in South Australia at present, is verdant green due to the higher rainfalls (marked out in vivid contrast to the bright yellow canola crops that are everywhere). The vines are not yet in leaf, although they are starting to appear. It may not be a land flowing with milk and honey, but it flows with wine and that is enough for me. It is a "green and pleasant land", this land in which my fore-fathers chose to settle, and I bless them for it, and bless God for leading them here.

Meg and Fraser and their family left us at this point to return to Adelaide, and we returned to Little Para Cottage for dinner and an early night.

[caption id="attachment_4145" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="The only Schütz-Beaton family in the world, in the green and pleasant land of their forefathers."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Fraser and Meg Pearce, with their offspring Francesca, Daniel, Oscar and Emmanuelle"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4150" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Me with the inestimable Pastor Fraser Pearce. "How good and how pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity" Psalm 133."][/caption]

Pilgrimage to SA: Diary entry Sunday 26 September

2010-10-01T10:47:00.000+10:00

Well, we are having fun. We are currently several days into what I can only describe as a "pilgrimage" to the Land of My Fathers, the Good SA of A, the Austral part of Terra Australis, the Great South Land, aka "South Australia". Founded n 1836, my ancestors arrived here at the end of 1838 and got very busy establishing Hahndorf, the Barossa Valley, the Lutheran Church in Australia, and Fritz. None of them were in the wine business, but my great-grandfather did work for 18 years as a carter for Seppelts. Does that count?

First stop on the pilgrimage is Casa Pearce. The inestimable Pastor Fraser is now the Pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Flinders Street in the city. Bethlehem is celebrating its 150 anniversary next weekend and is the premier Lutheran parish in Adelaide (members of St Stephens, Flinders Street, may disagree…). Fraser and his family live in Burnside, a suburb at the feet of the Adelaide Hills. Burnside was settled in 1839, so is one of the oldest areas of town. Despite being a good distance from his ecclesial seat, Adelaide traffic being what it is (or isn't) he really isn't more than ten minutes away from his office in town. It is very beautiful here. Spring has come, and the fragrance of the blossums is everywhere.

Yesterday – the day of the fateful "hung Grand Final" (another story that I won't go into just here – let's just say, when I heard the result I laughed and laughed and laughed!) – I tried to escape from all things football by suggesting to my daughters and Fraser's two eldest, Oscar and Francesca, that we all go into town. The itinerary was a simple one. We start at the Uni SA end of North Terrace (where Dad learned how to be a librarian), wander on down westwards past, around and through the University of Adelaide (Dad learnt Classics in that building, and History in that building, and Latin in the attic of that building), popped into both the Art Gallery and the Museum (both FREE!!! – a blessing when towing along four kids), past the State Library, Government House and Parliament House, then we did a u-ey (we had a discussion in the car the other day about exactly how to spell that word: you-ee, ew-ey, yewee…) and headed back east through Rundle Mall so the kids could look into all the shops.

[caption id="attachment_4118" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The very classical North Terrace in Adelaide"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4117" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The kids outside the building where I learnt Latin at the University of Adelaide"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4121" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="In the halls of the Adelaide Museum"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4116" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Cesca, Maddy and Mia in the \"Egypt Room\" at the Adelaide Museum"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4122" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The traditional Rundle Mall shot!"][/caption]

On our way over here on Friday, we passed a number of vintage and veteran cars heading toward Adelaide, enough to make me wonder whether this might not be the one weekend every two years in which the famed "Bay to Birdwood" rally takes place. My father had taken me and my three brothers to the first "Bay to Birdwood" rally in 1980, and in the years that followed I actually rode in the rally several times with friends who had a 1928 Tudor Model A Ford and a 1913 Australian built Model T. I have always had a great love for these old vehicles – they were built at a time where beauty was an important part of design. Any way, a quick check of the internet on my Palm Treo told me that this weekend was indeed the B2B rally, the cars being due to leave West Beach at 9am on Sunday morning. Here was a chance to introduce my children to the joys of vintage and veteran motoring. They were keen, and Fraser's two eldest were up for another expedition, so we were off from home this morning at 7am. There were about 1500 cars lined up ready to go at Barrett Reserve when we arrived, and we spent a very enjoyable couple of hours wandering around looking at the cars (and motor cycles – those old veteran bikes were made for the days when motorbike riders were REAL motorbike riders!) and talking to their owners before the rally set off at 9am.

[caption id="attachment_4123" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Maddy and Mia at the Bay to Birdwood start with their new car!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4124" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The children with MY new car!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4125" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="My new bike!"][/caption]

We were due at Bethlehem for the 11am service this morning, so we had a few more hours to kill. Next step on the Pilgrimage then: Immanuel College, the old Alma Mater in Novar Gardens. This is where Dad lived for two years during his final years of schooling in 1982-3. It was just as I remembered it, only completely different. The place had sprouted buildings like mushrooms. In the place of the open wide lawns, there were now laboratories, tech rooms, concert halls, etc etc. There was a service going on in the chapel, nevertheless we got to take a look at the good displays of the history of the College.

Basically Immanuel has four phases: First phase was at Point Pass, the town where my Schütz ancestors settled north of the Barossa. My Grandfather was a farmer, and his father had no intention of sending him to the local college. The College then shifted from these back blocks into Adelaide, to the site and building that became (eventually) Luther Seminary, where I lived and trained for nine years. Then it shifted to Walkerville, to an old mansion that doesn't exist any more. My father went to Immanuel at that campus in its last years. Then the campus shifted to Novar Gardens, where my mother was a student in its opening years. So in a way, we have had a connection with the college at all its stages.

Still with a bit of time up our sleeves, I thought we could pop out to Luther Seminary itself, now rather cheaply named "Australian Lutheran College". Here I was able to show the kids the three locations on campus where I lived (both as a single and a married student), the pub where I had my first legal drink, the pine tree in Wellington Square up which I had my 18th birthday party, and the Library where I famously never became Librarian (despite being trained by the Lutheran Church as a librarian for that very purpose).

[caption id="attachment_4127" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The kids under the bell outside the chapel at Immanuel College Novar Gardens. I was a student here in 1982-1983. My mother was a student at the college when it first opened at this address, but my father had attended Immanuel at the Walkerville Campus."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4128" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="104 Jeffcott Street. Built as Whinham College originally, it became Immanuel College after the shift from Point Pass, and then the Seminary of the UELCA. Since 1966 it has been the Seminary of the LCA (now known as Australian Lutheran College). I was a student here from 1984 to 1992."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4129" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Francesca, Mia and Maddy in front of 132 Jeffcott Street, North Adelaide. Now in private hands, my wife and I lived in the bottom righthand half from 1987 to 1989 when it was used as accomodation for married Seminarians. It was also the boarding house for girls when 104 Jeffcott Street was Immanuel College, and served as the Seminary during the war years when 104 Jeffcott Street was taken over by the military."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4130" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The kids in front of 213 Archer Street, North Adelaide, the \"married accomodation\" for Lutheran seminary students. My wife and I were the first to live in this apartment."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4131" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Oscar, Cesca, Maddy and Mia in front of the Löhe Memorial Library. The LCA trained me as a Librarian with a view to future staffing for this library - it never happened."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4132" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The kids do their best \"Colonel Light\" impersonations!"][/caption]

Then it was down to Flinders Street for the 11am service, the "bongos and banjos" service. No, seriously, it was just flute, piano and bass guitar, but if I wanted the organ I had to come back at 7pm that night. Assistant Pastor Matthias preached (they were celebrating St Michael's Day – a few days ahead of time – in the attempt to ensure that the holy days are at least observed Lutherans tend to transfer them from weekdays TO the Sunday, whereas, to preserve the Lord's Day, we do the opposite), and the girls got to go to communion.

[caption id="attachment_4135" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="The spire of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in the Adelaide spring sun-shine"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4136" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The interior of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Flinders Street Adelaide. Note the sanctuary lamp - truly unique among Australian Lutheran churches."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4134" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Pastor Fraser Pearce with parishioners after the service at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide"][/caption]

I knew I would have to fit in Mass sometime today, so Fraser kindly offered to take me to the local Latin Mass parish for their 5pm Low Mass. I will discuss my impressions of this at a later point, but it was a good opportunity, and the first time since becoming Catholic that I had received communion kneeling at an altar rail rather than in a processional queue.

Then we were off to Bethlehem for the 7pm Eucharist. This time we got the organ. In fact, the organ has just been refurbished at a hideous but necessary expense. The organist for the evening was Andrew Ampt, and he did a superb job.

[caption id="attachment_4137" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Andrew Ampt at the organ of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Adelaide"][/caption]

We had "Wachet Auf" (the third verse is all about Angels joining with men in worship), "Jerusalem the Golden", and "Stars of the Morning" as hymns. The service was the traditional chanted communion liturgy. Very nice. Only my voice was running out. The only thing I can put that down too was herding the children this morning, and spending all afternoon talking with Fraser!

All in all, a very very good start to our pilgrimage. Tomorrow we set off for the Barossa Valley, although the kids have already booked me up to walk them up the kilometre or so of bush walk along the local creek. I AM having fun! And Cathy is too. She said that the one thing she wanted to do was sit and relax these holidays, and, given that I have had the kids with me most of the time, she has had the chance to do that.

And here is a special treat: video of Andrew Ampt playing the organ before the evening service:

Let there be sung Non Nobis and Te Deum!

2010-09-23T23:00:00.001+10:00

The Western Australian bill for Euthanasia has been defeated! 24 votes to 11! From the SMH "WA euthanasia bill rejected":

Voluntary euthanasia will remain illegal in Western Australia after the bill was defeated in parliament. MPs were granted a conscience vote on the legislation, which was introduced by Greens MP Robin Chapple. The private members bill would have allowed people over the age of 21 with a terminal illness who were sound of mind to ask a doctor to end their life.

Labor MP Kate Doust, who is opposed to euthanasia, told AAP she had always been "fairly confident" that the legislation would be rejected. "It's a very good outcome. The actual vote should send a clear message that the members of the council do not regard it as good policy," she said. "What Robin Chapple proposed was a simple solution to what is a complex issue. I'm very happy that we've put this matter to rest."

Liberal MP Nick Goiran, who also voted against the bill, told AAP he was "relieved" with the decision but did not think it was the end of the debate. "The Greens have a track record of putting these bills up on a regular basis...I have no doubt that it will come up again," Mr Goiran said.

The same article goes on to provide some background to this:

The decision in the Upper House comes after Health Minister Dr Kim Hames revealed he helped a terminally ill patient die with a lethal dose of morphine. Speaking to ABC radio on Wednesday, Dr Hames, who voted against euthanasia, said he had helped a patient pass away by issuing a strong dose of morphine.

"I warned the family that the dose of painkiller that I was about to administer was a respiratory suppressant, can stop that patient breathing," he said. "Did they want me to do that? Did the patient want me to do that? The patient and the family said yes, so I administered that dose of painkiller."

Dr Hames said his actions were legal and rejected any notion that the incident was euthanasia. "What I did was give pain relief, and the side effect of that pain relief resulted in that patient dying then rather than in half an hour's time," he said. "That's very different to me putting in a drip and administering a concoction of drugs deliberately to take the life of that patient."

And that's the simple matter here - not a complex matter at all, really. The distinction surrounds the intention of the act. If the act is intended to relieve pain, rather than hasten death, it is legal. It was a therapeutic act. The dose of morphine was intended to relieve pain in the living patient, not to end the pain by killing the patient, even though a side effect was to hasten the death itself.

Note too that the article reports that the Green MP who introduced the bill "has told reporters he will re-introduce the bill if he wins another term in parliament." It is clear that they will not take no for an answer. They will keep chipping away at public resistence to their ideas.

(Incidentally, The Age published my short letter on Euthanasia in their "....and another thing" column this morning:

RANJANA Srivastava's story (Comment, 22/9) demonstrates perfectly the difference between shooting dying cows and euthanising dying human beings. We shoot cows to put them out of their misery. We want to euthanase human beings to put them out of our misery.

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it! MAN SENDS EMAIL TO OPPOSITION LEADER!"

2010-09-23T21:11:00.000+10:00

Is this supposed to be a news story? Basically it amounts to the headline "Man sends email to Baillieu", which provides a rather flimsey opportunity for the Fairfax media to beat the gay marriage drum once more.

We have a State election coming up here in Victorian in November. As I have mentioned before on this 'ere blog, I am very impressed by my local member, James Merlino. A Catholic and a man of principle, he is also a minister in the current Labor Government, and this may be the first time in my life that I "cross the floor" and vote Labor. And while I am not particularly impressed by the present government, the paper today did contain two other bits of information. First, the "man sends email" article also contained the closing point that that "Premier John Brumby, like Prime Minister Julia Gillard, is opposed to same-sex marriage", and a separate article, "Euthanasia Debate Back on the Agenda", reports:

Premier John Brumby, who has long opposed euthanasia laws, said there were no plans for the government to re-examine the matter, or refer the issue to the law commission.

That doesn't entirely reassure me, but makes me feel a bit better about my current voting intention.

Keep an eye on Western Australia today too - and a pray for their government. They are voting on Euthanasia legislation there today.

Starting the discussion on Euthanasia: The Difference Between Cows and Humans

2010-09-22T21:14:00.000+10:00

Thre is a story in today's Age by oncologist Ranjana Srivastava: "Family's pain multiplied at pointlessly lingering death". It tells the story of a dying 97 year old woman and the way her family dealt with the process of her dying. She fell into a coma and the family expected her to die soon, but she was still alive, still in a coma thirteen days later, and that's where their patience ran out. Except for one daughter who remained with her (out of a sense of duty, it seems), the others all went home and said "tell us when its over". Srivastava describes the following conversation with one of the woman's sons:

Outside the room, I run into her son. A burly man, he is bleary-eyed from having slept in a chair for the past seven nights. He comes straight to the point. ''Doc, this is inhumane. I can tell you that if it was one of my cattle dying like this, I would have shot it, done anything to end its suffering.''

The analogy is a familiar one to many oncologists; although it makes sense on one level, I find it difficult to base my decisions by equating cattle to human.

''Surely, in this modern era, there is something you can do?'' he pleads.

''I assure you that we are doing everything to keep her comfortable and nothing to prolong her life.'' It sounds odd, an apology that says, ''I am sorry your mother won't die.''

It is then, his voice muffled by wads of tissues, that he drives the point home.

''I started off feeling sad for mum. But we had talked about it and I really felt that she was ready to die. She misses dad and all her friends, there is nothing that she longs to do any more, and she just wants to go in peace.

''But here she is, something in her body just not surrendering when her mind is made up. And you know what this does to us as a family? It replaces images of a wonderful and rich life with those of aimless suffering and a drawn-out death.''

I desperately want to help. But this time, for a change, there is no life support to unplug or chemotherapy to stop. It is simply waiting for nature to takes its course.

''Euthanasia is against the law,'' I say gently.

He chokes on his tears. ''I hate myself so much for being angry that mum won't die. I should be sad, but I am not. This is not my mum any more, I want this to end.''

I find myself telling the truth, ''I, too, wish she would die.''

He looks up at me, as if suddenly he has found an ally. ''Doc, I don't know how you guys deal with this stuff. This is painful. I am going home, call me when it's over.''

Srivastava ends her article by saying: "Some days I muse about the slippery slope argument but today would have been a good day to discuss euthanasia."

Well, yes, discuss it by all means. Let's do that. Let's start with the way that this story demonstrates so perfectly the difference between shooting dying cows and euthanasing dying human beings.

We shoot cows to put them out of their misery. We euthanase human beings to put them out of our misery.

Anglicans to move against Euthanasia

2010-09-21T21:36:00.001+10:00

According to this report in The Age, Bishop Phillip Huggins has proposed a motion to the National Synod of the Anglican Church (currently meeting in Melbourne) to oppose the moves of the Federal Labor Government to move toward allowing Euthanasia laws in the Territories. The motion includes the words: ''Our task is to protect, nurture and sustain life to the best of our ability.''

Bishop Huggins correctly points out the rather underhand way in which the Greens have acted in regard to this matter:

Bishop Huggins said: ''This was not a matter of pre-election debate. Would people have voted the same way if they knew a Labor government with the Greens would, as a near-first action, promote a conscience vote on euthanasia?

''There would be more integrity in foreshadowing this proposal before an election rather than immediately after. It should have been made plain during the election campaign. There should be a broad-based public debate.''

This point was echoed in a short letter to the editor on The Age's opinion page (not currently online), which commented that there were more than twenty Green's policies listed on Andrew Bandt's election pamphlets - not one of them mentioning Euthanasia, and this was their very first move once they got a candidate into the lower house.

Lesson No. 1: If you paint your agenda Green it is easier to hide it in the woods.

Happy 200th Birthday Great, Great, Great Grandpa Schütz

2010-09-21T10:17:00.000+10:00

[caption id="attachment_4089" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Johann Gottfried Schütz (1810-1900)"][/caption]

Well, okay, I am a few days early, but I don't want to miss this occasion. On 13th October 2010, my great, great, great grandfather, Johann Gottfried Schütz, turns 200. With a bit of luck, we hope to make a pilgrimage to his grave in the next week or so.

Here is a picture of his gravestone, which is online at this site:

Australian "German" Churches on a German Website

2010-09-21T10:03:00.001+10:00

The fittingly named "Hochkirche" in Tarrington, Victoria.

Well, how about this? I'm doing a bit of research on the net to find out about the burial places of my ancestors, and (Lo and Behold!) I find this German website with nifty pictures of a lot of Australian Lutheran "country" churches. Josh has just been talking about these wonderful buildings which he encountered on his recent trip to the Barossa Valley. Now you can get an eyeful too.

Newman's Laity

2010-09-21T00:26:00.000+10:00

The Pope quoted Newman in his beatification homily:

“I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.”

Pray for us, Blessed John Henry Newman!

Have no fear! Pope shows the way for Religious Leaders in Britain and elsewhere...

2010-09-21T00:11:00.000+10:00

HT to Adam for this link to a Daily Mail article in Britain:

But who can doubt that the Pope’s central theme deserves a hearing in a society increasingly devoted to instant self-gratification?

Britain is a country riven by family breakdown and moving ever closer towards ‘mercy killing’ for the sick and elderly. It’s a nation in which the destruction of unborn human lives is routine — and anti-abortion protesters have been thrown behind bars for holding a banner depicting an aborted foetus.

In the name of ‘multiculturalism’, Christian nurses have been ordered not to pray for their patients, a BA worker has been disciplined for wearing a small crucifix and public authorities have shied away from celebrating Christmas.

Doesn’t the Pope make a timely point when he warns against the march of ‘aggressive secularism’?

Other church leaders should draw courage from the success of his visit.

There’s a hunger in this country for a spiritual dimension in public life — and they should stop being afraid to feed it.

As they say in the classics, there's something in that for all of us!

Not that every one in Britain was happy with this vocal demonstration of "Affirmative Catholicism" (as John Allen likes to call Benedict's own particular idiom). In this report, Allen describes what he calls "the largest public protest Benedict XVI has ever faced on one of his foreign trips, and one of the largest protests against a pope in modern history".

Maybe that in itself is a guage of his effectiveness. Whoever heard of such protests aimed against any other prelate in today's Church (or Churches)?

Perhaps with an eye to the protesters, Benedict himself said

“In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered,” the pope said, “but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied."

Allen goes on to say that

Benedict argued that Newman’s life and example confirms that “the Church cannot withdraw from the task of proclaiming Christ and his Gospel as saving truth, the source of our ultimate happiness as individuals and as the foundation of a just and humane society."

Euthanasia Lookout!

2010-09-20T10:07:00.000+10:00

Forget Gay Marriage - the Greens, according the ABC TV news tonight - are going for the jugular: Bob Brown has announced that the first thing on their agenda is to get the law changed so that the Territories have the freedom to enact Euthanasia laws. In essence, he is hoping to overturn the decision of the Federal Government 13 years ago that outlawed a piece of Northern Territory legislation allowing Euthanasia. A small window of "opportunity" that allowed Dr Death (aka Philip Nitschke) to bump off four of his patients (something he is very proud of...)

Forget Islam! Forget the Boats! Forget the Feminists even! These guys are the guys that are really - I mean REALLY - out to change the very fabric of our Society. So what are we going to do about it?

Well, begin by raising awareness of the very real dangers that the Green's agenda is posing.

OPPOSING EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE

October 13 Wed 7:30 PM
O'Hanlon Centre, Mitchell Street, Mentone VIC

$5.00 per person

ALex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is speaking on ''Caring Not Killing".
Democratic Labor Party Upper House MP, Peter Kavanagh is chairing the meeting
Bishop Peter Elliott will be in attendance.

Car parking is available in St. Patrick's School grounds, enrtance via Childers St.
For more information, see the Euthanasia Prevention Coallition

There are moves afoot to legalise euthanasia in Victoria [and elsewhere!] so get informed!!!

"The End of the British Empire"?

2010-09-20T09:28:00.000+10:00

The Age today reprinted a part of an article originally published in The Guardian by Andrew Brown on the Pope's visit to England. Fr Z. has a link to another one, in which Brown declares:

This was the end of the British Empire. In all the four centuries from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, England has been defined as a Protestant nation. The Catholics were the Other; sometimes violent terrorists and rebels, sometimes merely dirty immigrants. The sense that this was a nation specially blessed by God arose from a deeply anti-Catholic reading of the Bible. Yet it was central to English self-understanding when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1952, and swore to uphold the Protestant religion by law established.

For all of those 400 or so years it would have been unthinkable that a pope should stand in Westminster Hall and praise Sir Thomas More, who died to defend the pope's sovereignty against the king's. Rebellion against the pope was the foundational act of English power. And now the power is gone, and perhaps the rebellion has gone, too.

Yes, how very different the Britain of today is. It is also the country where more Muslims go to Mosque on Friday than Anglicans go to Church on Sunday... Catholics and Muslims. Both have been portrayed as "violent terrorists and rebels, sometimes merely dirty immigrants". In anycase, both have been defined as "the Other". Here (or rather "There") to stay.

The End of the British Empire? I wonder...

Why can't we all just be nice to each other for a change?

2010-09-20T09:03:00.000+10:00

So asks the PM in reference to parliament, and so asks the Australian Anglican Primate in reference to the General Synod currently underway in Melbourne.

Tough Talking and Tough Love

2010-09-20T08:56:00.000+10:00

Reading Glosses From An Old Manse, I see that the Bearded One of Canterbury is also having ecumenical talks with the Bearded One of Volokolamsk (I wonder what the Holy Father would look like with a beard... Do you think it would help East West relations?). Metropolitan Hilarion was doing some tough talking:

We are concerned about the fate of [the Anglican-Russian Orthodox] dialogue. We appreciate the proposal Archbishop Rowan Williams made this year to exclude from the dialogue those Anglican churches which failed to observe the moratorium on the ordination of open homosexuals. But we regard this proposal as not quite sufficient to save the dialogue from an approaching collapse. The dialogue is doomed to closure if the unrestrained liberalization of Christian values continues in many communities of the Anglican world.

Now, Sentirists will know that I am no supporter of the liberalisation of Christian doctrine, but reading Metropolitan H.'s comments made me realise that there is in fact a difference in the way Catholics do ecumenism compared to the way Orthodox do Ecumenism, and it is basically summed up in my unofficial motto for my day job: "We're not fussy, we'll talk to anyone!"

Pope Benedict has just been meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury and recommitting to another round of ARCIC dialogue. This is despite (on their side) the ordination of women and homosexual bishops and (on our side) Anglicanorum Coetibus. In spite of? No! Because of! It is precisely because of our disagreement over these fundamental issues of Christian praxis that we must continue our dialogue with our brothers and sisters by Christian baptism. The Russians, of course (and the Lutherans for that matter, which is why Pastor Mark was so drawn to Met. Hilarion's comments), utterly reject an ecumenism of compromise, a "kissy-kissy" ecumenism as Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali put it. Well, for the record, so do does the Catholic Church (although I will admit to our shame that there have been plenty of Catholics willing to practice that kind of ecumenism). But we cannot accept proposals such as that which Archbishop Williams has apparently made to the Russians; we cannot dialogue only with those with whom we already agree! What, then, would be the point of the dialogue! Rather, we conduct dialogue as an opportunity to witness to the truth, to attempt to persuade others of the truth as we have received it, and hence to seek the truth together - not on the basis of compromise, but on the basis of the Truth once received by the Church.

You can "talk tough" in ecumenical dialogue, but unless you are also ready to practice "tough love", it ain' worth nuthin.

My Enemy's Enemy is my...Enemy?

2010-09-20T08:38:00.001+10:00

ROTFL with this one. HT to Josh.

I gather that at Twickenham on Friday there were two groups of protestors ; the ultra-gay lobby and the ultra-Protestants. The police were out in force to keep them from really spoiling the occasion and managed to herd them together into one corner where they could keep an eye on them.

What they didn't reckon on was that the two groups spied each other and realized that here was an enemy even more hateful than the Pope; so they then set about having a regular ding-dong at each other and quite missed what they had come to spoil. (Source)

At least Herod and Pilate became friends in their opposition to Jesus...

Communique on the Pope's discussions with the Archbishop of Canterbury

2010-09-20T04:26:00.001+10:00

The Vatican Information Service has released a "communique" (not a "joint statement") about the meeting of Pope Benedict with Archbishop Williams. My emphases and [My Comments]

"Fifty years after the first meeting of a Pope and an Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times - that of Pope John XXIII and Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, in December 1960 - Pope Benedict XVI paid a fraternal visit to Archbishop Rowan Williams. [You have to admit that, even though the two prelates are not in communion with one another, a "fraternal visit" is a nice thing among leaders representing two bodies of Christians whose relations, for more than four centuries, had been anything but "fraternal"!]

"In the first part of their meeting they both addressed the Anglican and Roman Catholic diocesan bishops of England, Scotland and Wales, in the Great Hall of the archbishop's library, before moving to a private meeting.

"In the course of their private conversation, they addressed many of the issues of mutual concern to Anglicans and Roman Catholics. They affirmed the need to proclaim the Gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ, both in a reasoned and convincing way in the contemporary context of profound cultural and social transformation, and in lives of holiness and transparency to God. [That's nice too. At least we are on the same playing ground, even if it might sometimes appear that we are playing different games.] They agreed on the importance of improving ecumenical relations and continuing theological dialogue in the face of new challenges to unity from within the Christian community and beyond it. [IOW, the more we disagree with each other, the more urgent our dialogue becomes. IOOW, we don't give up on dialogue when issues arise that divide us.]

"The Holy Father and the Archbishop reaffirmed the importance of continuing theological dialogue on the notion of the Church as communion, local and universal, and the implications of this concept for the discernment of ethical teaching. [A lot of people have been saying that there is no point anymore to continuing dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion - most recently, Bishop Nazir-Ali. However, even though ecclesiastical union is now only a very remote possibility, dialogue on the two issues specified here (ecclesiology and ethics) will obviously help us to isolate the source and cause of the present disagreements.]

"They reflected together on the serious and difficult situation of Christians in the Middle East, and called upon all Christians to pray for their brothers and sisters and support their continued peaceful witness in the Holy Land. In the light of their recent public interventions, they also discussed the need to promote a courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace, especially the needs of the poor, urging international leadership to fight hunger and disease.

"Following their meeting they travelled together to the Palace of Westminster and to evening prayer at Westminster Abbey".

Pope Benedict's Westminster Speech

2010-09-19T03:13:00.001+10:00

Continuing to follow the Holy Father's teaching ministry in Britain, here is an excerpt from his speech yesterday in Westminster Hall:

And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy...

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation. In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams

2010-09-19T03:02:00.001+10:00

Some bits from the Pope's address to the Ecumenical Meeting and Archbishop Williams address at Evening prayer.

Pope Benedict said:

This year, as we know, marks the hundredth anniversary of the modern ecumenical movement, which began with the Edinburgh Conference’s appeal for Christian unity as the prerequisite for a credible and convincing witness to the Gospel in our time. In commemorating this anniversary, we must give thanks for the remarkable progress made towards this noble goal through the efforts of committed Christians of every denomination. At the same time, however, we remain conscious of how much yet remains to be done. In a world marked by growing interdependence and solidarity, we are challenged to proclaim with renewed conviction the reality of our reconciliation and liberation in Christ, and to propose the truth of the Gospel as the key to an authentic and integral human development. In a society which has become increasingly indifferent or even hostile to the Christian message, we are all the more compelled to give a joyful and convincing account of the hope that is within us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), and to present the Risen Lord as the response to the deepest questions and spiritual aspirations of the men and women of our time...

Our commitment to Christian unity is born of nothing less than our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. It is the reality of Christ’s person, his saving work and above all the historical fact of his resurrection, which is the content of the apostolic kerygma and those credal formulas which, beginning in the New Testament itself, have guaranteed the integrity of its transmission. The Church’s unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic faith, in the faith entrusted to each new member of the Body of Christ during the rite of Baptism. It is this faith which unites us to the Lord, makes us sharers in his Holy Spirit, and thus, even now, sharers in the life of the Blessed Trinity, the model of the Church’s koinonia here below.

Archbishop Williams said:

Christians have very diverse views about the nature of the vocation that belongs to the See of Rome. Yet, as Your Holiness’s great predecessor reminded us all in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, we must learn to reflect together on how the historic ministry of the Roman Church and its chief pastor may speak to the Church catholic—East and West, global north and global south of the authority of Christ and his apostles to build up the Body in love; how it may be realized as a ministry of patience and reverence towards all, a ministry of creative love and self-giving that leads us all into the same path of seeking not our own comfort or profit but the good of the entire human community and the glory of God the creator and redeemer.

Convert Saints

2010-09-19T02:47:00.001+10:00

Venerable (Blessed as of tomorrow) John Henry Newman is a hero of mine, perhaps, you might say, for obvious reasons. But in fact, he has had a special place in my life since I was a Lutheran seminarian, long before I followed his example and converted to Catholicism. So I am rather looking forward to tomorrow. The girls and I have already added JHN to our little bed-time litany of the saints, along with St Joseph and St Michael (my patrons), St Bernadette (their school patroness), and Blessed (soon Saint) Mary of the Cross.

But I was wondering this morning about "Convert Saints", by which I mean converts from other Christian traditions, saints who were baptised already before becoming Catholic. I know that there have been many from other religions, notably St Edith Stein and St Josephine Bakhita (I don't think St Paul or the other apostles count - they were not so much converted from Judaism - which was not a separate religion from Christianity at the time - as to a new sect within Judaism). St Augustine was a convert from Manicheanism, but that that wasn't really a form of Christianity.

A check on the internet gave me St. John Ogilvie (born into a Scottish Calvinist family in 1579), St Henry Morse (an English Protestant born in 1595) and St Elizabeth Ann Seton (born as an Episcopalian in 1774). Have there been any others than anyone knows about?

It isn't the Church's job to make herself "attractive": Pope Benedict

2010-09-18T11:36:00.001+10:00

This guy is just great. Asked on the plane out to the UK "Can anything be done to make the Church as an institution, more credible and attractive to everyone?", he answered:

I would say that a Church that seeks to be particularly attractive is already on the wrong path, because the Church does not work for her own ends, she does not work to increase numbers and thus power. The Church is at the service of another: she serves, not for herself, not to be a strong body, rather she serves to make the proclamation of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths and great forces of love, reconciling love that appeared in this figure and that always comes from the presence of Jesus Christ. In this regard, the Church does not seek to be attractive in and of herself, but must be transparent for Jesus Christ and to the extent that she is not out for herself, as a strong and powerful body in the world, that wants power, but is simply the voice of another, she becomes truly transparent for the great figure of Christ and the great truth that he has brought to humanity. The power of love, in this moment one listens, one accepts. The Church should not consider herself, but help to consider the other and she herself must see and speak of the other. In this sense, I think, both Anglicans and Catholics have the same simple task, the same direction to take. If both Anglicans and Catholics see that the other is not out for themselves but are tools of Christ, children of the Bridegroom, as Saint John says, if both carry out the priorities of Christ and not their own, they will come together, because at that time the priority of Christ unites them and they are no longer competitors seeking the greatest numbers, but are united in our commitment to the truth of Christ who comes into this world and so they find each other in a genuine and fruitful ecumenism.

BXVI rocks!

Pope to Students: What God wants from each one of you...

2010-09-18T11:27:00.001+10:00

From Pope Benedict's speech to the Catholic School students of the UK:

It is not often that a Pope, or indeed anyone else, has the opportunity to speak to the students of all the Catholic schools of England, Wales and Scotland at the same time. And since I have the chance now, there is something I very much want to say to you. I hope that among those of you listening to me today there are some of the future saints of the twenty-first century. What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.

And not just Catholics! (I must read this to my Lutheran daughters who attend a Catholic Primary School):

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints. I know that there are many non-Catholics studying in the Catholic schools in Great Britain, and I wish to include all of you in my words today. I pray that you too will feel encouraged to practise virtue and to grow in knowledge and friendship with God alongside your Catholic classmates. You are a reminder to them of the bigger picture that exists outside the school, and indeed, it is only right that respect and friendship for members of other religious traditions should be among the virtues learned in a Catholic school. I hope too that you will want to share with everyone you meet the values and insights you have learned through the Christian education you have received.

God bless you, Holy Father!

Pope Meets Queen Elizabeth for pleasant fireside chat...

2010-09-18T11:13:00.001+10:00

...about four hundred and forty years too late.

But, as they say in the classics, better late than never!

As Her Madge said:

Your Holiness, in recent times you have said that ‘religions can never become vehicles of hatred, that never by invoking the name of God can evil and violence be justified’. Today, in this country, we stand united in that conviction. We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society. On behalf of the people of the United Kingdom I wish you a most fruitful and memorable visit.

Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain?

2010-09-18T11:10:00.000+10:00

Ho, ho! Here's a laugh! Is this what Dawkins' "Arrest the Pope" campaign has come to?

Pope Benedict's Speech to Representatives of other Religions

2010-09-18T10:41:00.000+10:00

[caption id="attachment_4032" align="alignright" width="500" caption="(Photo: Pope Benedict and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, September 17, 2010/Toby Melville)"][/caption]
My emphases and [comments]

Pope Benedict's Speech to Representatives of other Religions17/09/2010 12:45 pm
Waldegrave Drawing Room, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, Friday, 17 September 2010

Distinguished guests, dear friends,

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to meet you, the representatives of the various religious communities in Great Britain. I greet both the ministers of religion present and those of you who are active in politics, business and industry. I am grateful to Dr Azzam and to Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks for the greetings which they have expressed on your behalf. As I salute you, let me also wish the Jewish community in Britain and throughout the world a happy and holy celebration of Yom Kippur [the Holy Father has made a point this year of sending greetings to the Jewish communities for their Holy Days].

I would like to begin my remarks by expressing the Catholic Church’s appreciation for the important witness that all of you bear as spiritual men and women living at a time when religious convictions are not always understood or appreciated. [Note that he is emphasising a positive contribution that the many faiths of a multi-faith society can make. It can really go either way: conflict between the faith groups in a multi-cultural society produces skepticism about religion; harmony produces credibility. Also, note that in this speech, Pope Benedict is continuing to answer the "agressive atheist" and secularist challenge.] The presence of committed believers in various fields of social and economic life speaks eloquently of the fact that the spiritual dimension of our lives is fundamental to our identity as human beings, that man, in other words, does not live by bread alone (cf. Deut 8:3). As followers of different religious traditions working together for the good of the community at large, we attach great importance to this “side by side” dimension of our cooperation, which complements the “face to face” aspect of our continuing dialogue. [I like that too: "side by side" compliments "face to face".]

On the spiritual level, all of us, in our different ways [he isn't smudging the differences here], are personally engaged in a journey that grants an answer to the most important question of all – the question concerning the ultimate meaning of our human existence. The quest for the sacred is the search for the one thing necessary, which alone satisfies the longings of the human heart. In the fifth century, Saint Augustine described that search in these terms: “Lord, you have created us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions, Book I, 1). As we embark on this adventure we come to realize more and more that the initiative lies not with us, but with the Lord: it is not so much we who are seeking him, but rather he who is seeking us, indeed it was he who placed that longing for him deep within our hearts. [I hope the Lutherans are taking note... Mind you, the Pope here points out a significant difference between Christianity and all other spiritual "paths" - only in our religion does God seek man rather than man seek God.]

Your presence and witness in the world points towards the fundamental importance for human life of this spiritual quest in which we are engaged. Within their own spheres of competence, the human and natural sciences [this comment and what follows is aimed at Prof Dawkins and Co.] provide us with an invaluable understanding of aspects of our existence and they deepen our grasp of the workings of the physical universe, which can then be harnessed in order to bring great benefit to the human family. Yet these disciplines do not and cannot answer the fundamental question, because they operate on another level altogether. They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

The quest for the sacred does not devalue other fields of human enquiry. On the contrary, it places them in a context which magnifies their importance, as ways of responsibly exercising our stewardship over creation. [Just as Benedict prefers to look at the positive benefit of multi-faith society, so he emphasises the positive benefit of a scientific world-view.] In the Bible, we read that, after the work of creation was completed, God blessed our first parents and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). He entrusted us with the task of exploring and harnessing the mysteries of nature in order to serve a higher good. What is that higher good? In the Christian faith, it is expressed as love for God and love for our neighbour. And so we engage with the world wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, but always with a view to serving that higher good, lest we disfigure the beauty of creation by exploiting it for selfish purposes.

So it is that genuine religious belief points us beyond present utility towards the transcendent. It reminds us of the possibility and the imperative of moral conversion, of the duty to live peaceably with our neighbour, of the importance of living a life of integrity. Properly understood, it brings enlightenment [one for the Buddhists there], it purifies our hearts and it inspires noble and generous action, to the benefit of the entire human family. It motivates us to cultivate the practice of virtue and to reach out towards one another in love, with the greatest respect for religious traditions different from our own.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has placed special emphasis on the importance of dialogue and cooperation with the followers of other religions. In order to be fruitful, this requires reciprocity on the part of all partners in dialogue and the followers of other religions. [Tonight I was talking to the Rev. Mark Durie et aliter and they were saying that dialogue was useless because there is no reciprocity. Pope Benedict knows that reciprocity is a major and important issue; but he doesn't make it his prerequisite for dialogue. Jesus said "love your enemies", not "love them if they reciprocate your love".] I am thinking in particular of situations in some parts of the world ["you know who you are"], where cooperation and dialogue between religions calls for mutual respect, the freedom to practise one’s religion and to engage in acts of public worship, and the freedom to follow one’s conscience without suffering ostracism or persecution, even after conversion from one religion to another. Once such a respect and openness has been established, peoples of all religions will work together effectively for peace and mutual understanding, and so give a convincing witness before the world. [reciprocity thus is not the prerequisite for "face to face" dialogue, but it IS a prerequisite for "side by side" dialogue].

This kind of dialogue needs to take place on a number of different levels, and should not be limited to formal discussions [here Pope Benedict expands on his "face to face" and "side by side" analogy using the classic fourfould approach to dialogue embodied in the PCID statements]. The dialogue of life [a form of "side by side" dialogue] involves simply living alongside one another and learning from one another in such a way as to grow in mutual knowledge and respect. The dialogue of action [another form of "side by side" dialogue] brings us together in concrete forms of collaboration, as we apply our religious insights to the task of promoting integral human development, working for peace, justice and the stewardship of creation. Such a dialogue may include exploring together how to defend human life at every stage and how to ensure the non-exclusion of the religious dimension of individuals and communities in the life of society. Then at the level of formal conversations [traditionaly "face to face" dialogue], there is a need not only for theological exchange, but also sharing our spiritual riches [formally known as a "dialogue of religious experience" - the extent to which we can stand "side by side" with one another while we are "face to face" with God, I guess], speaking of our experience of prayer and contemplation, and expressing to one another the joy of our encounter with divine love. In this context I am pleased to note the many positive initiatives undertaken in this country to promote such dialogue at a variety of levels. As the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales noted in their recent document Meeting God in Friend and Stranger, the effort to reach out in friendship to followers of other religions is becoming a familiar part of the mission of the local Church (n. 228), a characteristic feature of the religious landscape in this country.

My dear friends, as I conclude my remarks, let me assure you that the Catholic Church follows the path of engagement and dialogue out of a genuine sense of respect for you and your beliefs [this assurance is necessary because so much has happened that causes some communities to doubt our sincerity]. Catholics, both in Britain and throughout the world, will continue to work to build bridges of friendship to other religions, to heal past wrongs and to foster trust between individuals and communities. Let me reiterate my thanks for your welcome and my gratitude for this opportunity to offer you my encouragement for your dialogue with your Christian sisters and brothers. Upon all of you I invoke abundant divine blessings! Thank you very much.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and Pope Benedict: Salt and Pepper?

2010-09-18T10:10:00.000+10:00

Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali recently stepped down from the Diocese of Rochester (Bishop St John Fisher's diocese). His Wikipedia page is here. He has been described as a "controversial figure" in England. That's "controversial" in the same sense that the Holy Father is controversial. In many ways, the two men - Bishop Michael and Pope Benedict - are chalk and cheese - or perhaps salt and pepper might be a better analogy. But I like both salt and pepper on my food.

Today I spent a number of hours listening to Bishop Nazir-Ali speaking in Melbourne as the guest of Family Voice Australia (the-artist-previously-known-as "Festival of Light"). While his audience was a few kilometres "right of centre", I was pleasantly surprised by the Bishop himself. I had gone along largely because the sessions had been advertised with the titles "Courage in a hostile world: promoting the kingdom of God in an increasingly hostile world / the challenge of radical islam and agressive atheism". I was concerned that this might become just another anti-Muslim session.

There was no question that that was the expectation from a number of people who attended, but that isn't what Bishop Michael gave them. Instead, he spoke about things like
- uniqueness of Jesus Christ
- Dialogue and evangelisation
- Economic justice
- answering agressive atheism
- the omission of Christianity from the preamble to the European Constitution
- laws on marriage and homosexuality
- formation of conscience
- defence of the dignity of the human person
- opposition to slavery a constant in Christianity
- language of natural rights

etc. etc. Sound familiar? I am very interested to get a hold of some of his books (someone stuffed up at the FAVA office - they had the whole collected works of Rev. Mark Durie for sale, but none of Bishop Michael's own books) to see how much evidence there is of direct influence of the Catholic Church's teaching on these issues on his own thinking. He was, by the way, a member of ARCIC for many years, and in response to a question I asked about cooperation between evangelical and Catholic christians, he said that he was embarrassed and disappointed that the ARCIC dialogues came to an end because of the actions of some members of his Communion. He said this afternoon that he remains an Anglican because that is the form of Christianity in which he came to know Christ (not a sufficient reason for remaining one, in my experience, but there you are). Also answering my question, he commented that he believes it is time for the Catholic and Orthodox Churches to enter into a "differentiated" dialogue, recognising that the dialogue with the mainstream Anglican Communion can no longer have anything other than mutual friendship as its goal ("and that's okay", he said, "nothing wrong with that in itself") but that we should be pursuing serious dialogue with "orthodox bible believing Anglicans" to seek agreement on the Gospel. He said it, not me.

In the end, he said very little about Islam. He did mention that there are difficulties with the Muslim's committment to the Umma rather than to the nation of which he is a citizen (sound familiar? That's what they said about Catholics in the past too - loyalty to the Church meant we were a fifth column in the society), and warning against the evils of Sharia law (of course, the only aspect of Sharia that has any foothold in Australia is Sharia finance, which is basically a system of finance to avoid charging interest - I pointed out to some others there that of course both Jews and Catholics have separate legal systems in operation in this country, but that didn't seem to help much).

In the end, though, Bishop Michael said that Islam wasn't really the problem. The problem was the gaping hole, the huge vacuum, that secularism has created in our society - and people are seeking a simple answer to fill that hole. That means that we have only ourselves to blame if Islam, rather than Christianity, is filling that hole.

Another point he raised - which I have been meaning to raise for some time now - is how so much of the violence that westerners are accustomed to attributing to the religion of those committing this violence can in fact be attributed to the "honour/shame" culture in which they live. We think it is about their religion, but rather it is about the "shame" they feel when their religion (or race or whatever) is felt to be denigrated, and the "honour" they seek to regain for themselves and their faith by means of violence. This isn't therefore a "muslim" thing - it is the same thing you could expect from anyone brought up in a strict honour/shame society. I am expanding a little on what Bishop Michael said, but I think it is an idea worth exploring a little more deeply.

Anyway, I appreciated the opportunity to listen to Bishop Michael. I am still very uncomfortable with the prevailing "anti-Muslim" sentiments among many in our society, but I can't say that Bishop Michael did anything to fan those flames. As for the "anti-muslim" sentiments themselves, I fear that they are largely irrantional. Yes, there are dangerous people in the world, and some of these are Muslims - but that hardly translates into a rational fear of Islam. And the idea that Australia is somehow going to become a Muslim state with Sharia law is, I think, just laughable. Australians are too bloody apathetic to practice Christianity, let alone Islam, which is a far more demanding religion.

Ticking the boxes in Scotland

2010-09-17T19:43:00.000+10:00

I have been enjoying watching the live streaming video of the Holy Father's visit to Scotland, which unfortunately is without commentary, but gives some good viewing. It was something to see the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England together side by side. There are similarities between the two - both are of about the same age, and both have leadership styles that place emphasis upon devotion to their duty coupled with a somewhat old fashioned disdain for the popular press.

The Pope's speech at Holyrood ticked all the right boxes, though. Check out this paragraph:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

In that single paragraph, he defused the fact that he was, of course, on the other side of the conflict between England and Germany, even though, as we know, a reluctant conscript. His Holiness and Her Majesty would both have very vivid memories of that time - although one can be certain that at the time the young German policeman's son could not have possibly dreamed that he would one day pay a state visit to the young woman who was then the crown princess of the greatest enemy of the Nazi state.

But in the same paragraph, Pope Benedict also acknowledges the suffering of the Jewish people, the challenge "atheist extremism", and the need to keep "religion and virtue" in public life. Not bad going...

He goes on to say:

Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms; and may that patrimony, which has always served the nation well, constantly inform the example your Government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world.

There is a very interesting mix of ideas in that paragraph. This afternoon I am heading off to hear the English Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali speak on "Courage in a hostile world: promoting the kingdom of God in an increasingly hostile world." Tonight he is also speaking on "the challenge of radical Islam and aggressive atheism". From what I heard of him on an interview with Alan Jones on 2GB, and given the folks who are hosting him out here, I don't think that his message will be quite as subtle as that of Pope Benedict's. It is very easy for those who have grown up in a "traditionally Christain" society, such as Britain or Australia, to feel threatened by the fact that our modern society is clearly multicultural. As the Pope says, maintaining multiculturalism as a positive aspect of society is a "challenging enterprise", which needs to

1) "maintain its respect" FOR "traditional values and cultural expressions"
2) be on guard against "aggressive forms of secularism" which do not "value or even tolerate" those expressions
3) uphold that "Christian foundation" which is the very foundation that "underpins" those freedoms which a positive multicultural society seeks to uphold

This applies as much to Australia as to England and even to the US (the Pope speaks of "the example your Government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world"). I will be interested to hear how Her Majesty's bishop presents this example this afternoon and tonight.

In the mean time, keep up with the Papal visit in the UK. Fr Nick is doing a good job of providing the links and such. I am sure that there is much more to come along these lines...

Blogs of Note

2010-09-17T04:12:00.000+10:00

Two blogs you might be interested in.

The first is that of our friend and fellow Sentirist Joshua, Psallite Sapientier. Josh has just come back from a short holiday in South Australia catching up with Lutheran pals there such as the inestimable Pastor Fraser Pearce (now Pastor of Bethlehem, Flinders Street). He also went to the Barossa - my ancestoral happy hunting grounds (or at least grape-stomping grounds) - and visited the little church of Gnadenfrei at Marananga. A good friend of mine, Pastor David Spike, now Deputy Headmaster at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Croydon, was ordained there because his father was the resident pastor there at the time. Your correspondent, having been recently ordained himself, assisted at the ordination, as did (if memory serves me correctly) another good friend of mine and now the pastor to my wife and children at St Paul's Box Hill, Pastor Andrew Brook.

Speaking of ordinations, the other blog I wanted to feature is one that Joshua has only just brought to my attention, by the newly ordained Fr Nicholas Pearce at apriestdownunder.com. Fr Nick was ordained on Saturday here at St Pat's Cathedral (unfortunately I could not attend because I was home alone with a sick daughter), but he has some nice pictures of the ordination and his first mass on the blog. He seems to be quite prolific in his blogging - obviously relishing the new found freedom beyond the walls of the Seminary. Soon pastoral life will kick in and I guess the volume of the blogging will decrease a little, but we can be certain that the quality will be maintained. Nick has been blogging since August, and looks set to become our local "Fr Z." at this rate. Congratulations on your ordination, Fr Pearce, and welcome to the SCE blogroll! I hope you will find time among your many priestly duties to drop in for a glass of port at the SCE commentary table!

England a "Third World" Country?

2010-09-17T02:37:00.000+10:00

There is a funny little story going around about comments made by Cardinal Kasper about England and surmising that this is the reason he is not accompanying the Pope on his journey to England. Cathnews picked it up, but the source is here, on the website of the German magazine Focus.

A google translation of the Focus article reads:

Cardinal Walter Kasper is too embarrassed to accompany the Pope to Britain? The British media are in any case after Kaspers interview with FOCUS.
A FOCUS interview makes headlines in the UK: Cardinal Kasper's comparison of the island with a land of "Third World" should have led to Kasper, differently than planned, not the Pope, accompanied on his trip to England and Scotland, British media speculating.

In the interview in the current issue of FOCUS Kasper replied to the question of why so many Britons expressed their displeasure with the pope: "England is now a secular, pluralistic country. If you land at Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you had landed in a third world country. "Kasper also affirmed the question of whether Christians would suffer in the kingdom, and said:" Particularly in New England is an aggressive atheism spread . If you are around at British Airways and carrying a cross, you will be penalized. But we want to show our faith in public. Anyone who knows England knows that there is also a great Christian tradition. Europe would no longer be Europe if it could not maintain this tradition. "

Kasper was referring to a four-year-old case of an employee of British Airways, which had been prohibited, while working a necklace with a cross over her uniform, and thus contribute to visible to customers. The case had been matter of dispute in the UK.

When it was announced on Wednesday that Kasper "health reasons" other than scheduled will not accompany the pope, British media immediately drew the connection to Kasper's statements in the FOCUS interview.

On the other hand stressed Kaspers spokesman, Oliver Lahl, the Cardinal was really ill. And indeed, the cardinal health problems have been known for some time. Moreover, the Vatican has since tried to straighten Kaspers "Third World"-Quote: Kasper had referred to the great international importance of London, with its cosmopolitan population. The observation of the Cardinal over the "aggressive new atheism is true" some well-known authors that appear aggressive and make scientific or cultural arguments, but which are not really of such great value," the Vatican was trying to clarify.

British journalists, however, presented this declaration is not completely satisfied. "To make these remarks on the eve of the journey was a little awkward," said relatively restrained the Rome correspondent for the BBC, David Willey. Much more violent reaction Clifford Langley of the Catholic weekly newspaper The Tablet. " The Cardinal speaks "clearly nonsense," Langley said the BBC. "I do not think he believes Britain were in the grip of a secular atheism, and he had not said that. They claim that his poor health had forced him to cancel the tour. I wonder if he has not called off because his presence would be embarrassing now. "

British Airways defended himself, the Cardinal was "seriously misinformed" about the case of employees, the crucifix she was not allowed: "It is completely untrue that we discriminate against Christians or the followers of any faith." The employee had lost two years ago, a labor court against the airline. Beginning of the year and of appeal judges ruled in favor of British Airways. The "Daily Telegraph" points out that Pope Benedict "contrary to the tradition," will just take the return flight with Alitalia rather than with the former state airline of the host country, British Airways.

The Age reprints Guardian piece on the Church

2010-09-17T02:27:00.000+10:00

The Age has a one page spread on the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict in the lead up to his visit to Britain today. I began reading it and then thought "I've read this before..." In fact, it is an edited reprint of an article I linked to in a previous post from The Guardian. I was wondering if the editors just took out the positive bits and left the negative bits. In comparing the two versions, I concluded that there was some evidence of this, but not much, so I won't make anything of it.

Barney over the Funerals Guidelines

2010-09-15T03:01:00.000+10:00

I was not aware that there was any "backlash" against the Archdiocesan Guidelines on Catholic Funerals, until someone told me that at Mass on Sunday they heard a priest say in the homily "we will do funerals the way we have always done them: following the rite of the funeral mass but with sensitivity to what the family wants." Well, yes, was my reply, that is rather what the Guidelines say, don't they? But, said my informant, who had not read the guidelines, everyone is saying how insensitive and unpastoral the new guidelines are. Have you read them? I asked. No, I'm just going by what I read in the paper.

Ah yes. The papers. The source of all wisdom and knowledge... I had a bit of a laugh at something John L. Allen Jnr wrote the other day on this: he described religion journalists as "pundits who "know how to write better than anyone else, but who seem to have a problem with reading".

Which brings us to Barney Zwartz's piece in todays Age. Barney isn't Catholic, but that has never stopped him having an opinion about how Catholics really should be doing things. Actually, his article isn't too bad for the most part. He points out what a Catholic funeral is understood to be, and therefore concludes:

The Catholic guidelines basically highlight that a church funeral service is still a church service. Its purpose is to commend the deceased to God and proclaim the Christian hope; it is explicitly not a secular celebration of a completed life. Such a celebration is a natural, proper and desirable thing, but the occasion for it, according to the church, is a separate gathering. According to traditional Catholic thinking, the main priority at a church funeral is prayer for the deceased, and nourishing the grieving with the word of God and the Eucharist.

And if he had left it there, that would have been just fine. But he then does a complete 180 degree turn and gives his own two-pennies worth:

But times move on. The alternative view, shared by Father Bob, Melbourne Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier and others, is that it is about the living, and the main priority is pastoral.

Father Bob says he prefers to think of funerals as ‘‘family affairs attended by clergy, not a clergymen’s affair attended by family’’, suggesting only about 10 per cent of Catholics feel comfortable with these ‘‘sanitised’’ rituals. The rest want the ritual to reflect their lives.

There’s also the practical question of whether the deceased was a churchgoer. As Archbishop Freier says, ‘‘Often we first know the family through the death of a loved one, and that a very different ministry from someone who has been a regular congregation member. The funeral is about the grieving and the living."...

For myself, I think funerals are for the living, and that you cannot separate the church from the culture. While I sympathise with the thinking behind the guidelines, I wish they were more flexible.

But with respect, Barney, no one asked you (or Father Bob, or Archbishop Freier) what YOU think "a funeral" is. The point of the Guidelines is that a Catholic Funeral should be what a CATHOLIC Funeral is. Of course protestants, like Archbishop Freier or Barney, who do not believe in those funny Catholic doctrines like Purgatory or offering the mass for the dead, wouldn't get that a Catholic funeral is precisely about those things.

The Archdiocesan guidelines are not trying to restrict people in their practices of farewelling the dead. They are just about what the Catholic funeral rites are. The funeral mass is not a party put on by the Church for the family (as Fr Bob seems to think), it is something the Church does for the deceased person. That doesn't rule out in anyway the grieving family doing what they think is appropriate, but (as Barney acknowledges) the Catholic funeral IS a service of the Catholic Church.

My friend, who told me about the homily mentioned at the beginning of this piece, asked "But can't the funeral be both? Why do you have to be so strict about it?" The answer is fairly straight forward: because the Church has a message - the hope of Resurection to eternal life - which she doesn't want garbled at this crucial moment by the inclusion of other messages which compromise that proclamation. Christian funerals, from the very beginning, were always counter-cultural. It was the witness to the Resurrection hope over against all the other pagan religious rites and beliefs around it, which proved to be a powerful persuasion to to those pagan cultures. We all know how fuzzy people's thinking on the Christain doctrine of the afterlife is - the funeral is the most important point in time to get that message clear: Christ will raise the deceased to life again!

And, I pray, that "time" will never "move on" in regard to this central doctrine of the Catholic faith.

Tim Colbatch on the Housing Crisis

2010-09-14T21:38:00.000+10:00

Tim Colbatch, Economics editor at The Age, has been trying to keep the issue of affordable housing on the boil (see here and here for earlier pieces) - even if our politicians seem treat the issue like playing pass-the-parcel with a time bomb (sorry about the mix of metaphors). Not being an economist, I find it very difficult to understand what causes the decrease in housing affordability, especially (as Colbatch points out) when we are living in a time of economic prosperity. He asks the very question that Perry asked a week or so back in the combox: Why is it that "a million or so young and lower-income Australians who want to buy a home of their own are now unable to afford a home that suits them"?

His article this morning is prompted by a new paper for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. While he acknowledges the paper's suggestion that the solution lies in "a range of targeted solutions", he also has this to say:

The weakness of their paper is that it looks for demographic reasons for the fall in home ownership, when it is clearly the result of competition from housing investors.

In the 1980s, 85 per cent of finance to buy existing homes went to owner-occupiers and 15 per cent to investors. In the '00s, investors' share averaged 41 per cent. In Victoria, in May and June 2010, investors buying existing homes got 51 per cent of bank finance, and owner-occupiers 49 per cent.

You cannot have investors increasing their share of the market without squeezing out the first home buyers. It's a zero-sum game, and politicians such as Wayne Swan who give $5 billion a year in tax breaks to investors are in effect blocking young and low-income buyers from owning a home.

Oh no, they say, you can't take away the negative gearing tax break without creating a shortage of rental housing. Yes, you can.

Aspiring first home buyers are mostly renters. When they buy a home, they cease to rent. There is one less home to rent, but one less household wanting rental housing. Supply falls by one, demand falls by one, and the net balance is unchanged. The market does not tighten. Rents do not rise. Families are not thrown out on the street.

This is an issue ripe for a reform government that is prepared to lose some skin to make Australia work better.

As Colbatch says in one of his earlier pieces on the subject: "Housing exists to provide shelter for families, not shelter from tax, and the law should be changed to reflect this." I generally agree with Colbatch - comparing the massive change in investment to first-homebuyer lending would indicate that this is where the problem lies (in the main, anyway). And I agree with his simple point that in the long run there would be no "rental shortage". Yet I am also aware that any changes to the current tax situation would need to be gradual rather than dramatic, because in the short term a removal of negative gearing and other tax breaks for rental investors would drive our rental prices up very rapidly. This would settle in time, but there would be a period of pain for both landlords and renters. Still, what must be done must be done. And yet one is all too aware that for any government to actually do this would require, in Sir Humphrey's words, "courage"...

Küng "less qualified than most" to comment on Vatican II

2010-09-14T21:22:00.000+10:00

A remarkable article in the Irish Times ("Küng invokes spirit of Second Vatican Council he hardly saw") from one who was there, Bishop Michael Smith (Bishop of Meath). According to the paper, Bishop Meath attended all 168 days of the Second Vatican Council for which he and 11 other young priests prepared the official record. In contrast, by Bishop Smith's account, it seems that Dr Küng actually appears to have declined involvement in the event about which he so freely lectures everyone else. There are all sorts of narratives about the Second Vatican Council, but it is always interesting to hear the story from "someone who was there".

Very nice!

2010-09-13T20:47:00.000+10:00

Me thinks I can see the hand of Fr Portelli in this somewhere... Nevertheless, it is nice to know that we can still restore churches properly. For the full gallery of photos of the restored St Augustine's Church at Yarraville, go to: http://www.cam.org.au/parish-news/st-augustines-yarraville-celebrations.html

The Archbishop's Funeral Guidelines

2010-09-13T03:56:00.000+10:00

Driving to work on Friday, I switched on 774 (our local ABC station) and heard Red Simons declaring: "I'm with the Church on this. I'm with the Pope." What? Had Red got religion all of a sudden? Slowly the facts emerged. He was saying that "The Catholic Church" had declared that certain kinds of "inappropriate" music were not permitted to be used in funeral services (Hullo, I thought, something in this morning's paper), and he was in full agreement. "And I want you to ring in and tell me what songs you think would be inappropriate at a funeral", Red was saying. Actually, the callers came up with some quite funny possibilities for the "banned" list.

Any way, I only got to take a look at the "papal pronouncement" this morning - it is, of course, not from the Pope but from the next best thing locally speaking, our Archbishop. The Archdiocese of Melbourne Guidelines for Catholic funerals are not really anything new, but is a restatement and clarification of principles already long established. Only, with this restatement, no-one can now claim "I didn't know about that". The guidelines are clear and pastoral. Here are a couple of things that stood out for me - not necessarily because of their importance, but because of the "that's-interesting" factor.

But in planning the liturgy, the celebrant should moderate any tendency to turn the funeral into a secular celebration of the life of the deceased. “The Church offers the Eucharistic Sacrifice of Christ’s Passover for the dead so that, since all members of Christ’s body are in communion with each other, the petition of spiritual help on behalf of some may bring comforting hope to others.” (GIRM 379)

Good word that, "moderate". It acknowledges that there are some forces that will be very difficult to overcome entirely, but at least the priest can act so as to "moderate" these forces rather than encourage them.
I thought this point particularly interesting:

Designating a Catholic Funeral
When the Eucharist is celebrated, media announcements and the title page of a printed booklet should bear one of these designations:
•Mass of Christian Burial for Mary Brown,
•The Funeral Mass of Mary Brown,
•Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of Mary Brown

If a Liturgy of the Word is celebrated the designation may be
•Rites of Christian Burial of Mary Brown
•The Funeral Liturgy of Mary Brown
A Catholic funeral is not “A celebration of the life of Mary Brown” or “A Memorial Service for Mary Brown”. These designations should never appear in media announcements or on the booklet.

This is an important point. It concerns branding, and the guidelines show a good grasp of the fact that the goods which the Church offers have to be correctly branded, so that they don't give a false message about their contents. Good theology begins by calling a thing what it really is.

But note the guidelines are not insensitive to the natural human need to celebrate the life of the deceased loved one:

However, celebrating memories of the life of deceased may be carried out:
•the night before the funeral, either at the funeral parlour, or before the vigil or rosary in the church - if permitted by the Parish Priest;
•in a separate moment before the Mass or a Liturgy of the Word begins - if permitted by the Parish Priest;.
•at some social occasion before or after the funeral.

Similar suggestions are made for "Words of Farewell" (including poems and secular readings) and "Military Customs" (no mention is made of Masonic or Lodge customs - I suspect we are supposed to assume that everyone knows they have no place in a Christian burial...). The point is just that such focus on the deceased from a natural point of view (as opposed from a divine point of view) is not appropriate in the Funeral itself. The Funeral is designed to get across a particular message ("it may include appropriate reference to the deceased, [but] it is meant to be a message of Christian hope in the Resurrection" as it says elsewhere in the guidelines), and the Church does not want this message to be lost by getting mixed up with other powerful messages and narratives at work in this context.

There is a significant amount of emphasis on the evangelical opportunity presented by a Funeral. Regarding the homily, the guidelines suggest that it be "given in a positive spirit of evangelization". And then there is this:

Moreover pastors should take into special account those who are present at a liturgical celebration or who hear the Gospel on the occasion of the funeral and who may be non-Catholics or Catholics who never or rarely participate in the Eucharist or who seem even to have lost the faith. For priests are the ministers of Christ’s Gospel for all.” (GIRM 385 and see The Rite of Funerals, Introduction, 18)

This includes again the very practical direction to include the full text of the Rite of the Mass in the booklets (and the note that "This will also be important when the new ICEL translations are introduced"). The guidelines even make the point that the pages of the booklet be numbered (presumably so that the celebrant can direct the people to follow the words of the rite).

I was interested in this:

There are three options for the colour of vestments: white, violet or black. In this matter, pastoral consideration for the circumstances and the wishes of the family should be taken into account and ethnic customs should be respected.

I did not know that black was an option for the Novus Ordo funeral mass - is this an effect of Summorum Pontificum?

Then of course comes the point that drew Red Simon's interest:

Music

The music for a Catholic funeral is liturgical. What is possible will be determined by the circumstances and available musicians. Hymns appropriate to the occasion may be chosen. At the Mass, whenever possible the Lord have mercy, Holy, holy, and Lamb of God should be sung. Recorded music should be avoided.

Where possible it is desirable that the responsorial psalm and alleluia verse be sung.

During a psalm, hymn or music, members of the family and friends should take part in the Procession of the Gifts.

During the Rite of Farewell Saints of God or the alternatives (The Rite of Funerals, 187-191) should be sung if possible while the coffin is sprinkled with Holy Water and incensed.

Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs.

At the funerals of children, pastoral care needs to be taken in the choice of music. Nursery rhymes and sentimental secular songs are inappropriate because these may intensify grief.

The point that interested me is the stipulation that, where possible, the Lord have mercy, Sanctus, Lamb of God, Psalm and Alleluia Verse are all to be sung. I would like to take from this that, if this is the standard set for Funeral Masses, then surely it ought to apply to Sunday Parish masses as well? Is that an illegitimate conclusion?

As regards "Recorded music should be avoided", I would also like to have a small clarification. We suspect that what is meant is recorded tracks of the deceased's favourite songs and such. But I do have a question about what is permissable when musicians are unavailable. Can suitable recorded instrumental music be used for a period of reflection during the offertory or after communion (as indeed often happens at Sunday masses where there is no musicians available)? And can pre-recorded instrumental music (such as a mp3 or midi file) - be used to support the congregrational singing? Given the shortage of musicians these days, it might be something that a priest may have a setting of the mass and the songs to be sung on mp3 (or midi file).

There is also an interesting note on cremation (which we have discussed several times on this blog):

The Church still favors the burial or interment of earthly remains, however since 1963 cremation has been allowed.

Cremation is best understood as processing a body before burial. For Christians cremation is not a religious act and it should not be confused with burial or interment. Therefore the following procedure would seem best.

1.The funeral Mass or a Liturgy of the Word is celebrated at the church as usual. However, at the end of the Rite of Farewell the celebrant does not say “Let us take our sister to her place of rest”. The coffin is taken from the church to the crematorium for private cremation without prayers.
2.At some later time, by arrangement with the family or friends, the ashes are interred in the churchyard, in a cemetery or some other appropriate place. The committal prayers for the burial of a body are used. The place of interment should be marked with the name of the deceased to assist those who wish to visit that place and to encourage prayer for the dead.
Circumstances may require the funeral rite to be celebrated as a Liturgy of the Word at the crematorium. Any suggestion that the remains are being committed to a furnace should be avoided. Therefore the funeral ends with the Rite of Farewell. The celebrant does not say “Let us take our sister to her place of rest”. The procedure of a later interment of ashes should be followed, as indicated above.

...Under some circumstances cremation may have to precede the funeral rites. Only in such rare situations may the ashes be set before the altar during the liturgy, which is followed by immediate interment of ashes, as indicated above.

In accord with Catholic tradition, scattering ashes cannot be regarded as an appropriate way of treating the earthly remains of the dead. Scattering ashes in a favourite place, e.g. on a golf course or at a beach, may even imply that the deceased would want to remain there, in this world, rather than entering eternal life with God. Keeping ashes at home or sharing ashes between relatives is also inappropriate and may imply an unhealthy even superstitious attitude to the remains of the dead.

All in all, thank you for this, Your Grace.

Tracey Rowland on "Sacro-Pop"

2010-09-10T20:50:00.000+10:00

"Our Tracey" is becoming quite prolific these days in the popular media. She has a new essay on Ratzinger's opposition to "Sacro-Pop" on the ABC Religion and Ethics site. Of course, this subject is the source of endless debate. As you know, yours truly has expressed his own opinions on the matter often on this site (most extensively here).

Some snippets from Tracey's article and my comments:

In other words, pragmatism is the attitude of the cleric who says "the music might be a bit low-brow but it's what people like." According to Johansson the pragmatist "emasculates the gospel by using commercialized music to sell it."

The idea of "marketing" the Gospel in a way that makes it "attractive" to the secular culture is always a mistake. Whatever way you wrap the present, inside the box will always be a bloody cross.

In a lecture delivered to the Church Music Department of the State Conservatory of Music at Stuttgart, Ratzinger further spoke of "puritanical functionalism" (the idea that we "have to keep it basic for the people") as a "first millstone around the neck of Church music," and the "functionalism of accommodation" (Church music must follow the norms of contemporary mass culture) as "the second millstone."

When music serves a "function" you end up with a jingle. Music, like poetry and art, can be and often is reduced to serving a pragmatic purpose, but then you end up with something that ultimately is not poetry, is not art, and is not music. That is as true in the liturgy as it is in any other forum.

With reference to the rock music industry and in words that could have been written by Ratzinger, he argues, "This music is not designed for listening. It is the accompanying soundtrack to a drama, in which the singer, strange as it may seem, becomes something like the sacred presence of a cult, the incarnation of a force beyond music, which visits the world in human form, recruiting followers the way religious leaders recruit their sects."

I disagree only with the statement that "This music is not designed for listening". It is, in fact, entirely for listening. It isn't, like Church music, designed for singing. It is orientated toward an "audience" rather than with the view of drawing the gathered assembly into a unified body. I know the force of music as well as anyone. In my car at the moment, I have all three soundtracks to the "Twilight" films. I find them powerful and evocative, and am able to listen to them over and over without boredom. Yet I have to acknowledge the truth of Ratzinger's critique - this is an "incarnation of a force beyond music", and it has the power of grabbing you with both hands.

He has also written that people who argue that liturgy should be about bringing God down to the level of the people are committing a form of apostasy, analogous to the Hebrew's worship of the golden calf.

That is a damning critique if we take the time to consider it. The story in Exodux 32 makes it clear that the Israelites at Mt Horeb had no intention of worshipping any other God than the one who "brought us out of Egypt", and yet they chose to do so precisely by adopting the religious customs of Egypt, that of embodying their gods in the form of animals. How can the Church remain "counter cultural" when she adopts and baptises the very heart of the prevailing culture in her liturgy?

A typical hallmark of a sacro-pop "hymn" is that one could just as easily be singing it to one's lover, as to God.

Go and re-watch Sister Act and you will see how easily modern love songs can be changed with just a few words into something that looks very much like the modern "hymn". Tracey is giving us a good rule of thumb here: if this song can be sung to my lover as easily as it can be sung to God, is it really suitable for the liturgy?

One does not have to be a theologian to discern the difference. Sacro-pop lacks the pathos of the great hymns of the Christian tradition and it diminishes one's perception of divine glory. There is not the same sense of awe and of self-transcendence and only the most oblique references to the Incarnation, Passion and Redemption.

Ah, pathos. On the one hand, liturgical song must be something other than a "love song", but that doesn't mean that it should be without passion. Tracey cites the passage from "Come Down O Love Divine" which begins "And so the yearning strong...". Another I would add is the closing verse of "When I survey the wondrous Cross" by Isaac Watts: "Were the whole realm of nature mine / That were a present far too small / Love so amazing, so divine / Demands my soul, my life, my all." I always get goose bumps when I sing that verse... Of course, that hymn has "Incarnation, Passion and Redemption" in spades: "Forbid it Lord, that I should boast / Save in the death of Christ my God / All the vain things that charm me most / I sacrifice them to His blood."

I suspect that, if a poll were taken one might find that the banality of sacro-pop is less of a liturgical carrot than a liturgical repellent.

Unfortunately, the polls that exist say otherwise (see for eg. here). But perhaps one of the reasons why these substandard hymns come in at the top of the list on a regular basis is that that is what we are serving up for our people to sing in the first place. Catholics do not regularly spend time with their hymnals at home singing through all the available material and deciding which they like. They only have what they hear at Mass on a regular basis to choose from. It's a bit like taking a poll of people who eat at MacDonalds on their favourite meal: you aren't going to get people voting for "Veal Cordon Bleu".

A Dangerous and Childish Game

2010-09-10T19:11:00.000+10:00

News just in says that Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, has decided to cancel his plan to hold a "Koran-burning day" tomorrow. Thank God for that. But you must agree that he was remarkably successful at getting people's attention just by the mere suggestion of the intention to commit such an act. Everyone from the Whitehouse to the Vatican came out and publically pleaded with the man to reconsider. Mind you, there are places in the world where the pressure to "reconsider" his plans would have been applied rather less publically and rather more persuasively. But in the Good Ol' U. S. of A. Pastor Jones' right to go ahead with his plan of action was protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech.

My one observation to add to the whole mix is that the desecration of the Koran to a Muslim is rather more like the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament to a Catholic than the desecration of a Bible - although the latter would be shocking enough. To give an example, Catholics would have no difficulty with placing a bible on the floor (eg. next to your chair in a study room), but Muslims would never do such a thing to the Koran. We wouldn't do it to the Blessed Sacrament either. That's more the parallel here.

So what have we learned from all this? Probably not a lot. Pastor Jones was upset by the plans to build a Mosque at Ground Zero. He saw it as provocative. So he wanted to retaliate by doing something provocative in return. Despite the fact that the plans to build the Mosque at Ground Zero have become a source of contention, it was never the intention of the Imam who initially suggested it (whom I have met, by the way, on a visit to Melbourne a couple of years ago) that it should be. I can understand people thinking that his suggestion to locate a mosque at Ground Zero was not a wise one - for a raft of reasons - although it is sad that it should have been received by many as a point of provocation. Pastor Jones on the other hand had provocation as his major purpose in his plan to hold a Koran-burning day right from the start. He felt pain and wanted to cause pain in return to those whom he blamed for his pain.

Friends, this is silly. And dangerous. Anyone who has ever been a parent knows how these things escalate.
"Tommy broke my toy".
"It was an accident".
"Was not".
"Was too."
"Well, I going to break one of your toys."
SMASH.
"You *%^@#!!! Now you're really going to get it."
PUNCH, KICK, SCREAM, HOWLING.

As Pope Benedict told the ambassador to the Holy See from Morocco in 2006: "Violence as a response to offences can never be justified, for this type of response is incompatible with the sacred principles of religion."

A "four-way struggle" demonstrates danger of "gay marriage"

2010-09-10T03:20:00.000+10:00

This story in today's Age, "Four-way struggle to care for baby E" eloquantly demonstrates precisely why "gay marriage" is a bad idea. The State supports and encourages and safeguards marriage with all the power of the law BECAUSE it is the environment most suited for the raising of children. Homosexual unions are, by their very nature, unfruitful. Any same-sex couple which desires to become "parents" must in one way or another "import" a child into the relationship. A child cannot be conceived by and born to a same-sex couple without the involvement of at least a third, or possibly even a fourth, party. Nor is it the natural place for a child to be raised.

Now go ahead and argue with me.

Yes!

2010-09-08T10:14:00.000+10:00

Does Australia Have A Government Yet?

I am not disappointed by the choice, although I would have been happy to see Tony Abbott as our PM. In the current context, to be handed government is to be handed something of a poison chalice.

One aspect of the new government actually frightens the willies out of me, and that is the possibility of a private members bill from Adam Bandt (Greens) for same-sex marriage. According to the new agreement it would get a hearing. However, also according to the new agreement, it would have to go to a Parliamentary Committee because it would be regarded as a "controversial" piece of legislation. What are the chances, do you think, of the current parliament voting something like this in? Certainly it would find the support necessary in the Senate after next July, with 10 Greens Senators holding the balance of power. The real question is, would it find 76 (or more) supporters in the lower house?

A Lutheran View of Ad Orientam vs Versus Populum

2010-09-07T23:01:00.000+10:00

Hat tip to William Tighe for this one. Some of you might be interested. See: http://gottesdienstonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/about-face.html.

To help you understand, traditional Lutheran liturgical theology divides the liturgy into "sacramental" parts (ie. God to man) during which the pastor faces the congregation, and "sacrificial" parts (ie. Man to God) during which the pastor faces the altar (ie. East). Given the strident Lutheran rejection of the Sacrifice of the Mass, it always seemed strange to me when I was a Lutheran that the same traditional Lutheran theology preserved the practice of the consecration of the eucharist facing the altar, ie. the "sacrificial" stance.

Attacking the Pope

2010-09-07T04:42:00.000+10:00

What a strange thing it must be to be a Catholic in Great Britain at the moment. It seems like every opinion about the Catholic Church under the sun is coming home to roost in the expectation of the holy father's imminent arrival. The Guardian of course is an infinite source of entertainment in this regard. Three articles came up on my Google reader today:

Pope should resign, says O'Connor
The Catholics who think the Pope is fallible
Keeping the faith: how bleak is the future to Catholicism?

Actually these articles are not uniformly awful; the last one especially contains some stuff of some interest. In the first article, Sinead O'Connor describes herself as "Catholic by birth and culture", but notably not "by faith". It seems incredible therefore that she is happy to stand up and say that "the Pope should stand down" because he and the rest of the church's leaders are "anti-Christian". It reminds one of two sayings, "the pot calls the kettle black" and "is the Pope Catholic?". Apparently O'Connor is to feature in one of seven films that will be shown on Channel 4 coinciding with the papal visit in England. Some of these films will take a positive view of Pope Benedict, including a contributor who is a mother of eight and who believes the papal blessing saved her unborn child from death. The makers of the series explain their intentions as follows:

For us, the whole idea is diversity and seven anti-pope films don't sound very diverse. Some people think he's amazing, others don't. Religion means different things to different people. This isn't intellectuals coming down from on high or someone who has been put forward by a religious institution.

The second article follows the "is the Pope Catholic?" line more strictly. It focuses on a group of "Old Catholics", and actually reveals quite a bit about this "tradition" which split off from the Catholic Church in 1870. Father Jerome Lloyd maintains "that we are the continuation of Roman Catholicism as it was prior to papal infallibility." That seems to be stretching the imagination in another direction as the article reports:

Since the schism from Rome, Old Catholics have been splitting from each other and now worship in a loose communion of separate "jurisdictions": "I would say in the UK there are about 50 [jurisdictions]," says [Bishop Richard] Palmer. He puts the total number of Old Catholics at around 5000. However, Lloyd disagrees with this – suggesting that some who claim to be Old Catholics don't count, on the grounds that they accept homosexuality and women priests, and estimates the membership to be in the low hundreds.

Instructive if nothing else.

The final Guardian article is the most interesting, especially as it looks at the question of numbers of adherents to the Catholic Church throughout the world. In this regard it takes note of the obvious discrepancy between Europe and the rest of the world, especially noting the situation in Kenya and Nigeria. About three quarters of the way through, the article mentions a new book in Italian by Andrea Tornielli, Attacco a Ratzinger. In recent days both John Allen and Sandro Magister have reflected on this book. The Guardian article quotes Tornielli as saying:

the Pope "does not think of the re-Christianisation of Europe in terms of military-style re-conquest. It is not a question of numbers". The key to his thinking, Tornielli believes, is his use of the phrase "creative minority". In a speech Benedict made last year in the Czech Republic, he argued that "it is usually creative minorities that determine the future and, in this regard, the Catholic Church must understand that it is a creative minority which has a heritage of values that are not things of the past, but a very lively and relevant reality".

Some of Benedict supporters believes he wants a smaller, but theologically more homogenous (and reactionary) group of true believers who can hunker down and wait for more propitious times. Tornielli thinks that is a misinterpretation. "The idea of a 'hard core' is essentially military and defensive. I think the Pope simply believes that the only way to get the people of our times to encounter God is by bearing Christian witness, leading Christian values. It is, after all, not so unlike what happened 2000 years ago."

That certainly reminds me of conversations we have had on this blog with Brian Coyne. Brian does tend to think in images that are military, images where a numbers are of course important, and often misinterprets what we are talking about in terms of the formation of a 'hard core' of conservative Catholics. But Tornielli clearly has it right. While not losing sight of the fact that the gospel is for everyone, Pope Benedict knows that those who will have the greatest effect on the whole will be the few who seriously live out the Christian witness of holiness. At no stage in Christian history, especially in times when Catholicism has embraced the majority of the population in any one place, have all Catholics embraced the call to holiness with equal seriousess. It has always been the case that small extraordinarily dedicated groups (eg. the martyrs, the monastics, the Franciscans, the modern movements) have been instrumental in stirring up faith in those around them.

For those who wish to follow up the other two articles, Sandro Magister's piece is here, and John Allen's piece is here.

What a strange attitude

2010-09-07T03:39:00.000+10:00

I just happened to see this on our media roundup email this morning, a letter in The Australian about the Green's policy of seeking reintroduction of Death Duties:

AS the parent of two sons whom I love dearly, I can tell Judith Brown (Letters, 4-5/9) why I voted Green and why I support the reintroduction of death duties. I believe that we all should make our own way in the world and not expect anything for nothing - and that includes an inheritance.

Handouts like this are an insult to those who receive them. It's much better to spend one's money whilst alive supporting worthwhile causes and I hope that the government can utilise anything I have left when I die on the environment and meeting social needs.

Trevor Caldwell, Eagle Point, Vic

I don't know about you, but I find that a very strange attitude. When parents pass on an inheritance to their children, it is not a "handout". It seems to me to be a very individualistic attitude towards one's wealth. What belongs to me belongs to my children; while I am alive I manage it, but when I die (or before if I choose), it passes into their hands. This is more literally a "hand down" than a "handout". Of course I have full freedom while I'm alive to use this wealth in a way that seems best for my family and of course the society as a whole, and if I choose to use it (for instance) to serve "the environment and meeting social needs", then I am free to do that as well – but not at the expense of my children's welfare. To suggest that in any way I should trust some nameless bureaucracy to do "what is best" with the wealth that belongs to my household when I die just seems ludicrous.

I can usually see some rationale in the expression of most points of view, even those with which I violently disagree. It is rare that I come across an expression of ideas which are simply beyond my comprehension, but this is certainly such a case. What do you think?

Addition to the Blog Role: "Catholic Down Under"

2010-09-06T23:01:00.000+10:00

I have mentioned that I had the pleasure of meeting Gil at the "Christian Traditions" course at CAEC. He has a very nice blog called "Catholics Down Under" at www.ozcatholic.blogspot.com, which I have added to the blogroll.

I'm not dead yet...

2010-09-06T07:55:00.000+10:00

Sorry for those SCE readers who might prematurely have drawn the conclusion that the host of this 'ere blog has carked it. The silence of the last few days has been due to the fact that I have been in Sydney teaching the "Christian Traditions" course for the Catholic Adult Education Centre. It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with good friends such as James McDonald (the one-time youth director for the Glorious See of Melbourne and now the Manager of Studies at CAEC) and the local ordinary of the See of Parramatta. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to catch up with ALL my friends North of the Border (apols to those reading this who certainly deserved a visit from me - time did not allow for extensive socialising). I did have the joy of meeting a couple of blog readers - hullo to Gill and especially to Paul G. who is a signed up member of the Commentary Table (someone please pass the port to Paul).

Anyway, please be assured that normal transmission will resume soon.

Still Waiting for Government...

2010-08-29T08:30:00.000+10:00

And for the latest, up-to-the-minute news on this question, try this website:

www.DoesAustraliaHaveAGovernmentYet.com

"Descendant of Mary MacKillop"???

2010-08-25T23:41:00.000+10:00

I don't think so. Just a careless mistake on the part of the person who wrote the Media Release for the Catholic Education Office in the Diocese of Parramatta.

Waiting for Government

2010-08-24T23:11:00.000+10:00

Australian federal politics is in a bit of a "Waiting for Godot" situation at the moment, where we have a very unusual situation of a "hung parliament" (for the first time since 1940). I haven't made any comment yet, because there has seemed to be little to comment about. But a few observations:

1) I know that in many parts of the world the system of election (contrary to our Westminster system) is one of proportional representation. We have a "kind" of proportional system in our Senate (which is why the Senate situation after the election is very different from that in our lower house), but I do prefer the fact that as our system currently stands, we actually get to vote for a particular person, rather than a particular party, to represent us in our local seats. This does help to keep politics local. For instance, I am very impressed with our sitting State MP, James Merlino, and this might very well lead to me voting for the Labor candidate for the first time in my life at the November election, even though I am not personally a supportor of the State Labor Party.

2) I am personally impressed with at least two of the independants who seem set to hold the balance of power, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor. The former was on ABC TV Lateline last night and spoke very well, and the latter on QandA just before that and was also impressive. I had heard Windsor on the radio a couple of times just before the election and he seems a very decent bloke.

3) The success of a Greens candidate for the Seat of Melbourne and now 10 Green seats in the Senate is also a bit of a worry. It seems to me that the Green vote is largely a young vote (I might be wrong) and the general "trendiness" of voting Green without any in depth consideration of their overall policies. The Democrats used to say that they were in the Parliament to "Keep the Barstards Honest", but the Greens were saying on the radio yesterday that their aim is to "Get RID of the Barstards"! Anyway, now that we finally will have a chance to see how the Greens really act in the government of this country, their supporters may get a bit of a reality check on them. We will wait and see.

4) There have been some pleasant surprises in this election, such as our youngest MP ever at the age of 20 being elected (shades of "Pitt the Younger"? Or, as Black Adder would have it: "Pitt the Embryo"?) and the possibility of our first Indigenous lower house MP in Hasluck - and a Liberal candidate at that! It would be a pity if, as looks likely, he in fact loses his very small current majority and fails in his bid for his seat.

5) Finally, I am a bit surprised at how things have panned out in the Senate for Victoria. An article in the paper yesterday listed the way in which the votes went initially before reshuffling the deck:

Labor 323,868
Liberal 181,099
Family First 85,916
DLP 71,544
Sex Party 71,244
Lib Dems 52,700
Shooters 42,160
Others 83,673

The high rating of the "Sex Party" is a real shocker. Was this just some sort of "dummy vote"? According to the article, after the first reshuffle, the votes went:

Labor 329,084
Liberal 228,475
Sex Party 152,028
DLP 102,630
Family First 99,967

On this breakdown, Senator Fielding misses out - but only narrowly - and the bulk of his votes go to the DLP. That makes the score:

Labor 329,084
Liberal 228,475
DLP 197,807
Sex Party 156,818

The Sex Party goes out, and its preferences go to Labor. But those of the Liberal Democrats now go to the DLP, making the score:

Labor 428,412
DLP 253,062
Liberal 230,710

Senator McGauran then goes out, and his preferences too go the DLP, making the final outcome:

DLP 478,556
Labor 433,628

I am happy for the DLP, that their candidate got up, but to see FF disappear from the list when it was the third highest polling party in the primary vote in favour of the Sex Party (which finally, thank God, got dropped in the process) was a real shame and is a real reminder about how unpredictable this whole process is, and how easy it is for a "dummy vote" to get skewed into a real life result.

I hate the current system where you have to fill out either a "1" only above the line or number all 60 sequentially below the line. I always fill out all the boxes below the line, because I want my preferences to go in the direction I want them too, not in the way the parties have predetermined. (I personally voted FF first, then DLP, then Liberal, then the rest in declining order). Why can't we have the option of numbering all the parties in our own choice of preference ABOVE the line?

We are still waiting to see how this all pans out. If the Labor Party manages to hold on to both Hasluck and Denison, they could still - with the cooperation of the Green MP from Melbourne - have a very real chance (and probably just the slimmest "mandate") to form goverment on the basis of having the most seats of any party in the House (but it would still only give them 75 seats, ie. exactly half, unless one of the three rural independants also supports a Gillard Government). In the meantime (with apologies to Samuel Beckett):

ESTRAGON: Let's go.
VLADIMIR: We can't.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We're waiting for Government.

An interesting article in The Guardian

2010-08-23T04:20:00.000+10:00

I don't really have any comment to make about this article in The Guardian other than that it is interesting. I thought you might be interested too.

"What about the Orthodox?"

2010-08-21T04:54:00.000+10:00

I have just been listening to a number of podcasts from John Cleary's Sunday Night program on ABC Radio National on the subject of "The Future of the Church". It all got a little boring after a while (although I enjoyed listening to my Evangelical friend Prof. Brian Edgar trying to explain to the Catholic and the Anglican on one episode that it was "all about Christ" - I don't think they quite got it...).

Then Christine sent through a link to this mob calling itself "The American Catholic Council". They too are on about "the future of the Church":

American Catholic Council is a movement bringing together a network of individuals, organizations, and communities to consider the state and future of our Church. We believe our Church is at a turning point in its history. We recall the promise of the Second Vatican Council for a renaissance of the roles and responsibilities of all the Baptized through a radically inclusive and engaged relationship between the Church and the World. We respond to the Spirit of Vatican II by summoning the Baptized together to demonstrate our re-commitment. We seek personal conversion to renew our Church to conform to the authentic Gospel message, the teachings of our Church, and our lived context in the United States. Our reading of the “signs of the times”, as we experience them in the US, our plan and our agenda are set out in our Declaration. We educate; we listen; we facilitate discussions and encounters; and, we build toward an American Catholic Council at Pentecost 2011. At this Council we hope to proclaim our belief in the Rights and Responsibilities of US Catholics.

The idea that has been going through my head as I listen to all this is: "How Occidental this all is." In other words, I wonder what would happen to all this blather if we just put our hand up and said: "Aren't you forgetting about the Orthodox?"

Aidan Nichols knows what I am talking about and says it in the conclusion to his great "Rome and the Eastern Churches".

Rome...not only desires but needs reunion with the Orthodox East. In the face of her own numerous theological liberals and the innovationist tendencies of churchmen (and churchwomen) in various portions of her far-flung "Western" patriarchate, from Santiago de Chile to Manila, from Melbourne to Detroit, Catholicism's grasp of the historic Christian tradition can only be strengthened by the accession of Orthodoxy to communion with Rome. In such matters as the upholding of the transcendentality of revelation vis-a-vis human understanding; the defence of the Trinitarian and Christological doctrine of the first seven councils; a perception of the nature of salvation as more than temporal alone; the maintenance of a classical liturgical life; the nourishment of group and personal devotion to Mary and the saints; the preservation of the threefold apostolic ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons (in that same gender in which the incarnate Word exercised his own high priesthood); the encouragement of the consecrated life, especially in its most basic form. monasticism; and the preservation of the ascetic dimension in spirituality, in all of these the present struggle of the papacy to uphold Catholic faith and practice in a worldwide communion exposed to a variety of intellectual and cultural influences often baleful, if some times also beneficent, can only benefit from Orthodox aid.

So next time you are in a conversation where someone is going on and on about how this or that should be done for the future of "our Church", just stick your hand up and say: "What about the Orthodox?"

News Just In: Michael Root becomes Catholic!

2010-08-21T04:29:00.000+10:00

HT to Christine for this, who has just sent me the links.

Dr. Michael Root is a very well respected lay theologian who was Professor of Systematic Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, SC, and Dean of that same institution from 2003 to 2009. He has been blogging about the current ELCA woes on "Lutherans Persisting", which had not had an update since March this year (there is a certain irony in the title of that blog, btw). Michael has in fact visited this blog in the past (commenting on this post) and thus is in fact a honourary guest at our little table.

Anyway, to business. As the title of this blog has already proclaimed, now comes the news that Dr Michael is the latest leading American Lutheran theologian to dive into the Tiber and come up on the other side (unlike the Anglicans - who get a bridge to facilitate their and so get to stay "high and dry" - Lutherans still have to swim). Someone who knows him writes about it here. The same writer provides an excerpt from Dr Root's statement to his Seminary faculty:

"On Monday I shared with the faculty the news that in the near future I will be received into the Catholic Church. I now wish to share that news with you. This action is not one that I take lightly. The Lutheran church has been my intellectual and spiritual home for forty years. But we are not masters of our convictions. A risk of ecumenical study is that one will come to find another tradition compelling in a way that leads to a deep change in mind and heart. Over the last year or so, it has become clear to me, not without struggle, that I have become a Catholic in my mind and heart in ways that no longer permit me to present myself as a Lutheran theologian with honesty and integrity.

This move is less a matter of decision than of discernment.

No single issue has been decisive for me, but at the center of my reflection has been the question of how God’s grace engages the justified person and the church in the divine mission of salvation. How are we redeemed as the free and responsible agents God created us to be? Catholic theology speaks of God elevating the justified person and the church to participation in the divine life and mission, so that God grants the Christian and the church participation in God’s actions in a different way than Lutheran theology affirms. Catholic teachings do not follow from that vision with deductive force, but they do hang together with that vision in ways that I have come to find deeply convincing."

I can deeply identify with the passage in this statement that I have highlighted. At the same time I am not quite sure what Dr Root means by the final sentence in the above statement (partly because I am not sure what "that vision" refers to). And I am sure that while Dr Root does not feel himself able to describe himself any longer as a "Lutheran" theologian, yet his very decision shows him to be and to remain a "theologian with honesty and integrity". And, I would suspect, unless his experience is different from mine, he will remain in his own particular way, a Lutheran as well - with important distinction that he is now "a-Lutheran-in-communion-with-the-Bishop-of-Rome" as we say here on SCE!

In any case, welcome Michael to the Catholic Church. I think this calls for the whisky bottle, rather than the port...

[In the meantime, a warning to other Lutherans out there: if you don't want to end up Catholic like Michael and I and others reading this 'ere blog have, then DON'T (whatever you do) actually do any serious study of what the Catholic Church teaches and why she teaches it. That path has only one conclusion for a "theologian with honesty and integrity".]

Book Launch of A NEW WINE & FRESH SKINS

2010-08-20T04:14:00.000+10:00

Dear Friends

You are invited to an important book launch of A NEW WINE & FRESH SKINS: Ecclesial Movements in the Church, writeen by Bishop Julian Porteous

Tuesday,
7 September
4.30pm until 6pm

Australian Catholic University campus,
St. Patrick’s Campus,
115 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy

To be launched by Steve Lawrence, Director, Identity & Mission,
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne,

Rsvp - anthony@connorcourt.com

Information about the book click here.

Mr Collins conjures up Banquo's Ghost at the Voting Table

2010-08-19T08:23:00.000+10:00

Well, here's a novel attempt at negative politics: Public-Commentator-For-Ever Mr Paul Collins, writing in Eureka Street ("Abbott and Santamaria's undemocratic Catholicism"), attempts to conjure up the ancient spectre of B.A. Santamaria to discredit our Opposition Leader (and aspiring PM) Tony Abbott.

As Gerard Henderson's reply to this article ("Defending Abott and Santamaria") shows, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in Collins' argument.

Basically, it goes like this:

1) Mr Abbott is a self-declared disciple of B.A. Santamaria
2) B.A. Santamaria was an "integralist"
3) "Integralism" was an authoritarian political ideology that sought to impose a narrow interpretation of Catholicism upon citizens' freedom of conscience
4) It was therefore just like Italian Fascism
5) SO: VOTING FOR TONY ABBOTT WOULD BE LIKE VOTING FOR CATHOLIC FASCISM!

Umm... As the Bard wrote: "Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!" (The Scottish Play: Act 3, Scene 4)

[Post Script: Actually, the funniest bit in Collins' piece is the very last paragraph, where he writes:

I am not claiming that Abbott consciously follows Santamaria's integralism. But there is always the danger of osmosis, of absorbing attitudes without realising it. If I were a politician — or an archbishop — I'd want to put considerable distance between myself and the most divisive man in the history of Australian Catholicism.

Perhaps Mr Collins thinks that Mr Abbott has been sleeping with a copy of the works of B.A. Santamaria under his pillow!]

Eamon Duffy in The Tablet on the Pope on the Liturgy...

2010-08-19T07:53:00.000+10:00

I highlighted a little while back our Tracey's article on Pope Benedict in The Tablet. Well, this time they have Eamon Duffy (he of "The Stripping of the Altars" fame) writing on Pope Benedict's attitude toward the liturgy.

Much of it is purely descriptive, rather than evaluative, such as this paragraph:

Clearly, these opinions place the Pope as a theologian at right angles to a good deal that is most characteristic of the post-conciliar liturgy. We now have a Pope profoundly unhappy about much of what goes on in our parish churches Sunday by Sunday. In his view, the liturgy is meant to still and calm human activity, to allow God to be God, to quiet our chatter in favour of attention to the Word of God and in adoration and communion with the self-gift of the Word incarnate. The call for active participation and instant accessibility seem to him to have dumbed down the mystery we celebrate, and left us with a banal inadequate language (and music) of prayer. The “active participation” in the liturgy for which Vatican II called, he argues, emphatically does not mean participation in many acts. Rather, it means a deeper entry by everyone present into the one great action of the liturgy, its only real action, which is Christ’s self-giving on the Cross. For Ratzinger we can best enter into the action of the Mass by a recollected silence, and by traditional gestures of self-offering and adoration – the Sign of the Cross, folded hands, reverent kneeling.

In this passage, one gets the feeling (from the way Duffy has worded the passage) that he agrees with Ratzinger on this emphasis.

Only at the very end do we get a slight attempt at an evaluation of Pope Benedict's liturgical path:

It is Pope Benedict’s hope that the free celebration of the old Mass will help reconcile to the wider Church many of those who view Vatican II with deep suspicion. It is possible, however, to sympathise with many of the Pope’s liturgical instincts and preferences, while fearing that his gesture, and the manner of its making, will be read by many as a sign of his own reservations about the work of the Council, and thereby help entrench such reservations at the heart of the Church’s worship.