CATALYST
DIGEST
A review
of recent news and coming events
8
September 2008
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Chaney
to give Common Good lecture
Former federal
parliamentarian Fred Chaney AO who has been in the forefront of the
fight for justice for Indigenous Australians for three decades will
be the second speaker in the Aquinas Academy Common Good lecture
series to be held on Wednesday 17 September.
During his lecture, Chaney will pose the question Remote
Australia
:
Does the Common Good Apply?
He will submit that “geographic and racial limits on our
sense of whom we identify with can be seen within the Australian
state in the abandonment of remote
Australia
which in the words of some
observers is a failed state.”
For all governments it was “the back yard, out of sight and
out of mind”. The
lecture, from
6pm
to
7.30pm
, will be at the Dickson Room
at the State Library of New South Wales.
Fred Chaney, who is Chancellor of Murdoch University, left
politics in 1993 after 19 years in the Australian parliament during
which he held the ministerial portfolios of Aboriginal Affairs,
Social Security and Minister Assisting the Minister for National
Development. In 1994, he
began a long association with the National Native Title Tribunal,
first as a part time member and later as deputy president.
More information about the lecture: www.aquinas-academy.com
Anglican
success but a warning
The Archbishop of
Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams emerged last month from the
once-every-decade Lambeth Conference with the Church of England that
he leads in rather better shape than most of his flock could have
hoped for. The troubling
issues concerning the ordination as bishops of men because they are
gay and women because they are women and the blessing of gay
marriages that threatened to split the Anglican communion
irrevocably were dampened down—at least in the short term—by the
conference agreeing to the concept of a covenant that bound the
autonomous provinces to common commitments and beliefs, and the
establishment of a pastoral forum, which Williams would chair, to
deal with crises in the church, including conflicts between parishes
and dioceses with their bishops.
Anglicans who are looking for closer ties with the
Catholic church, however, would have been disappointed, as was the
senior Catholic at the conference, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president
of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In
an address to the conference, Kasper had warned that the position of
the Catholic church regarding sexuality, particularly homosexuality,
and the ordination of women was immutable. The
cardinal said that Catholic teaching on the ordination of
women—that ordination had always been reserved to men alone—had
been “clearly set forward” since the beginning of dialogue on
unity between the Catholic and Anglican churches. “In our
ecumenical relations, while our dialogue has led to significant
agreement on the understanding of ministry, the ordination of women
to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible
recognition of Anglican Orders by the Catholic church,” Cardinal
Kasper said. The
Catholic church hoped, nevertheless, that theological dialogue
between the two churches would continue, “but this development
affects directly the goal and alters the level of what we pursue in
dialogue.”
A prophet in his own land
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson would understand better than most that the lot
of a prophet was rarely comfortable, fellow bishop Pat Power of
Canberra-Goulburn observed to Catholica
Australia after reading Robinson’s controversial book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit
of Jesus. Bishop
Power said that in many ways Robinson had had no option but to write
such a book. “Since
the late 1980s when revelations of sexual abuse within the Catholic
Church had begun to surface, Bishop Robinson was in the forefront in
addressing the issue,” he said.
“He began by listening to victims, hearing firsthand the
stories and witnessing the pain and damage of those most affected.
He saw too the effects on families, parish and school
communities and other people involved.
He began to understand something of the complexity of factors
which led to abuse…he urged his brother bishops to listen to
victims and to deal decisively with complaints of abuse. But
he saw the need to go deeper…to look not just at the causes of
individual instances of abuse but to try to understand the systemic
weaknesses and failures which underlie such a betrayal of trust and
power.” Bishop Power
said that when he read Robinson’s book he had recognised anew the
author’s great love for God and his people, his deepest desires
for the church to be true to its mission in bringing Christ to the
world and his great courage in naming the challenges facing the
church today. “There was a faithful son of the church wanting it
to be its best self, while knowing it was ecclesia
semper reformanda, a church continually in need of reform,” he
said.
For
the full text of Bishop Power’s statement, see the website of Catholica:
www.catholica.com.au
As a refugee sees us
People say of Spirituality in the Pub that it is rare, if
ever, that one attends one of its meetings without learning
something that encourages self-analysis of entrenched attitudes,
maybe even self-criticism. The
August Paddington SIP was a case in point.
One of the speakers was Ali Ali, a refugee from
Afghanistan
, whose experience as a migrant clearly was
better than some that are reported. Responding
to the theme The search to
become--Belonging--new identity, Ali said that as a Muslim and
ethnic Hazara his identity had been forged by experience of persecution
and characterised by a sense of need to survive through escape.
He spoke of his challenging journey to
Australia
as a refugee, the “great positive welcome”
he received when he arrived, his letting go enthusiastically of an
“old” set of values for a richer Australian culture and values
and the encouragement to learn English as a means of absorbing new
values, culture and social mores. His experience here had been very
positive, he said. He
was glad to have left behind the negative attitude in his home
country to women and the exclusive/ fundamentalist religion, and he
commended the non-discriminatory treatment of refugees in Australian
detention centres. He
felt he now belonged to a nation committed to human rights,
tolerance and equal treatment of women.
Worth digesting
There
are no “one size fits all” answers to…difficult pastoral
judgments, and the Church has sometimes made the mistake of imposing
from the centre decisions that could better be made locally…This
is not to dispute the universal jurisdiction of the papacy
[but]…It would be refreshing to hear Pope Benedict utter the words
“Rome does not always know best”, and it would go a long way
towards encouraging the sort of open theological discussion that
does not happen when theologians are preoccupied with looking over
their shoulders.—Editorial in
The Tablet on 16 August.
New English Mass text closer
The first and most
significant part of the much-delayed new English translation of the
Order of the Mass has been officially approved by the Congregation
for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
The revision has been in the melting pot for 10 years since
Rome
’s rejection of the first
attempt to bring the English translation more closely into line with
the standard Latin version. The
recognitio, official
advice of which has been sent to the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops, applies to the section of the missal containing
the eucharistic prayers and prefaces, the Penitential Rite, the
Gloria, the Creed, the acclamations, the Lord’s Prayer and other
prayers and responses used daily. It
is not known when the full translation will be completed.
Details of amendments already approved may be found on the US
bishops’ conference website
www.usccb.org/whoweare.shtml
More
WYD pulpit wisdom
Benedict XVI, in the Mass with the Australian clergy at St Mary’s
Cathedral on July 19 to dedicate a new altar in the cathedral:
In today’s liturgy the Church reminds us that, like this
new altar we too have been consecrated, set apart for the service of
God and the building up of his Kingdom.
All too often, however, we find ourselves immersed in a world
that would set God aside. In
the name of human freedom and autonomy, God’s name is passed over
in silence, religion is reduced to silent devotion and faith is
shunned in the public square. At
times this mentality, so completely at odds with the core of the
Gospel, can even cloud our own understanding of the Church and her
mission. We too can make
the life of faith a matter of mere sentiment, thus blunting the
power to inspire a consistent vision of the world and a rigorous
dialogue with the many other visions competing for the minds and
hearts of our contemporaries. Yet
history, including the history of our own time, shows that the
question of God will never be silenced, and that indifference to the
religious dimension of human existence ultimately diminishes and
betrays man himself…wherever man is diminished, the world around
us is also diminished…what emerges is a culture, not of life but
of death.
Benedict XVI at a Vigil Mass for the young people at Randwick Racecourse
on July 19: Unity
is of the essence of the Church; it
is a gift we must recognize and cherish. Tonight,
let us pray for the resolve to nurture unity: contribute to it;
resist any temptation to walk away. For
it is precisely the comprehensiveness, the vast vision, of our
faith– solid yet open, consistent yet dynamic, true yet constantly
growing in insight–that we can offer our world. Dear
young people, is it not because of your faith that friends in
difficulty or seeking meaning in their lives have turned to you? Be
watchful! Listen! Through
the dissonance and division of our world, can you hear the
concordant voice of humanity? From the forlorn child in a Darfur
camp, or a troubled teenager, or an anxious parent in any suburb, or
perhaps even now from the depth of your own heart, there emerges the
same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity. Who
satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in
communion, to be built up, to be led to truth? The
Holy Spirit! This is the
Spirit’s role: to bring Christ’s work to fulfilment. Enriched
with the Spirit’s gifts, you will have the power to move beyond
the piecemeal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer the
consistency and certainty of Christian witness!
Creed
for new age
Dr Neil
Collins will be the keynote speaker, using the title Towards
a New Creed for a New Age, at a one-day Australian Reforming
Catholics conference and general meeting on Saturday 13 September.
The conference will start at
9am
at the Dougherty Community
Centre,
7 Victor Street
Chatswood.
Cost is $40 which includes lunch and refreshments.
Registration: Jim
Taverne,
4/1035 Pacific Highway
Pymble 2073.
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