Catalyst Digest is a venture of
Catalyst for Renewal whose role is to encourage vigorous conversation
among Catholics and members of the wider
community. To this end, Catalyst arranges a number of
forums each year that focus on issues
facing their church and society in general.
The digest is published at irregular
intervals to keep friends of Catalyst in touch with its activities and
with other relevant issues. Our hope is that through the digest
Catalyst will provide a worthwhile service to its current network of
supporters and extend its reach to others.
If you would like to know more about
Catalyst for Renewal please visit other pages on our website
www.catalyst-for-renewal.com.au
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New Missal: Don’t Rush
The word that comes most
readily to mind in trying to gauge from overseas commentary the reaction
of Catholics, especially informed Catholics, to proposed changes to the
Roman Missal is “unease”, although there is growing evidence that this
may be an understatement. The issue appears to have attracted little
attention as yet in Australia but in Britain and the United States it is
fast becoming a burning issue and is now the subject of a petition whose
title is self-explanatory: What If We Just Said Wait? The
petition, initiated in December by Seattle priest Michael Ryan SJ whose
reason was that it should be tested before being introduced, had
attracted nearly 13,000 signatures when this issue of Digest was
put to bed. Among them was that of the internationally-respected
Dominican Timothy Radcliffe, who last year attracted a full house as a
Sydney Catalyst speaker. Radcliffe’s comment: “The Pope himself
has underlined that the liturgy grows gradually over many years. He has
also been critical of the reforms of the liturgy after the (Vatican)
council because they were too rapid. So let’s avoid making the same
mistake.”
Wanted: new culture of
authority
Speaking of Timothy
Radcliffe, recently he gave a talk to Dublin priests to help them cope
with the backlash of the devastating report following investigation of
child sexual abuse of children in the diocese. In it he argued for the
Catholic church to rid itself of “the clericalism that was besetting
it”. The former Master of the Dominican order observed in a subsequent
Tablet article that every institution sought to preserve and
augment its power. This “culture of power” had often infected the
church and was perhaps “one reason for the widespread abuse of children
in our society,” he said, adding “We will not have a church that is safe
for the young until we learn from Christ and become again a humble
church in which we are all equal children of the one Father and
authority is never oppressive.” The church’s “stiff clericalism and
authoritarianism,” he said, did not help the church now to thrive and
“be a sign of God’s friendship for humanity.” The church needed a new
culture of authority, “from the Vatican to the parish council,” which
lifted people up “into the mystery of loving equality which is the life
of the Trinity.”
Bishop wields axe
Toowoomba bishop William
Morris, never backward in tackling the tough issues, has sacked a
primary school principal and two senior Catholic education office
employees because, he said, they had exercised very poor judgment and
had made a number of serious errors in failing adequately to respond to
suspicions that a teacher had sexually abused girls at his school. The
bishop said he had been shocked to learn that the principal had admitted
at an inquiry that he had suspected the abuse. “This caused me
considerable distress and anguish,” he said. Despite complaints, the
teacher, who has been charged with 12 counts of rape and 34 of indecent
treatment, had been allowed to continue to work at the school.
More miracles please
In what may well be
remembered as the high season for canonising new saints, what with
various former popes—Pius IX, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John
Paul II—and Cardinal John Henry Newman and of course our own Mary
MacKillop—all in Benedict XVI’s pending tray, the busiest people on the
block just now would have to be those with the task of digging up
miracles to support their nominations. The good news is that the
miracle-hunters seem to have had success with Mary MacKillop and
Cardinal Newman. The bad news is that there is evidence of growing
scepticism among Catholics about this part of the canonisation process
which many find too much akin to a spin exercise for their taste.
Anti-Christian violence
A local court ruling that
non-Muslins should be permitted to use the word Allah for God has
resulted in a new outbreak of violence against Christians in Malaysia.
Four churches near the capital Kuala Lumpur were fire-bombed in January
and petrol bombs were also thrown at a church and convent school in the
state of Perak and at a church in Sarawak in Borneo. A petrol bomb was
thrown at the guard house of a Catholic convent school in Taiping and
bricks and stones were thrown at windows of the Good Shepherd Catholic
church at Miri. Home minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein
described as unfair claims that the government had been “passive” in
their response to the violence.
Newman altar at Oratory
The London Oratory on
Brompton Road for which many Australians have a particular affection
will dedicate one of its chapels to Cardinal John Henry Newman to
coincide with his beatification, possibly by Benedict XVI, in Birmingham
in September. The convert cardinal founded Britain’s first oratory in
Birmingham in 1849. The new chapel will replace the Calvary chapel on
the left side of the nave facing the altar, behind the statue of St
Peter and next to the Lady Chapel. A copy of Sir John Everett Millais’
portrait of Newman which was painted in 1881 and hangs in the British
Portrait Gallery will be hung in the chapel.
Anglican exodus nearer?
Benedict XVI’s initiative to
facilitate the reception en masse of Church of England clergy
into the Catholic church will move to its next stage at Easter when the
Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) will meet to formulate a response
to the pope’s decree Anglicanorum coetibus which provides for
groups of Anglicans who consider themselves Catholic to enter into full
communion with Rome while maintaining aspects of their heritage and
identity. Archbishop John Hepworth, primate of TAC, whose 2007 petition
to Rome for “corporate reunion with the Holy See” triggered the process,
said his bishops and vicar-generals had all received letters from
Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, saying that the decree constituted “the definitive response
of the Holy See not only to the TAC’s original request but also to the
many others of a similar nature which have been submitted over the last
years”. Levada’s letter would allow the TAC bishops to move towards
making a decision about taking up the pope’s offer of “personal
ordinariates,” Hepworth said. The archbishop said he proposed to meet
with TAC members in Japan, Central America, the United States, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand in the coming weeks. Regional meetings of
bishops, clergy and people were also being arranged to discuss
Anglicanorum coetibus. The TAC’s formal response to Rome would be
made after the Easter meeting of the full college of bishops.
New role for youngest bishop
Australia’s youngest bishop
at 49, Anthony Fisher OP will be installed as the fourth bishop of
Parramatta at St Patrick’s Cathedral on March 4. He succeeds Bishop
Kevin Manning who is retiring after nearly 13 years in charge of the
diocese which was established in 1986 and is now the fifth largest in
Australia. Fisher, a Dominican, was ordained a priest in 1991 and
completed a doctorate in bioethics at Oxford in 1995.
UK Bishops Dig In
According to opinion polls,
the odds against beleaguered British prime minister Gordon Brown
remaining at 10 Downing Street after the May general election are rather
longer than he would wish so one would imagine that his preoccupation
would be to pick up votes wherever he could find them. Even Catholic
and Anglican votes. But not so, it seems. For the better part of a
year bishops from both denominations have been pleading with the
government to amend its Equal Opportunity Bill which, in its present
form, they believe, could force the churches to accept women, sexually
active gays and transsexuals into the priesthood. On the eve of the Bill
going to the House of Lords the government offered to compromise but the
churches refused, saying its proposed amendment did not go far enough.
It was a pity, Catholic spokesman Archbishop Peter Smith said, that
ministers had not been prepared to sit down earlier with religious
groups and work out an amendment “with the right wording.”
Microcredit v. poverty
The remarkable heart-warming
success story of the use of micro credit to help very poor people
throughout the world to escape poverty by establishing small business
enterprises will be the subject of Catalyst for Renewal’s scond dinner
of 2010 on March 26. The speaker will be David Woodbridge, the chief
executive of the Australian offshoot of the Grameen Bank, which is
credited with having originated the concept in the 70s in Bangladesh,
and for which its
founder Muhammad Yunus was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The dinner will be at 7pm for
7.30 at the Villa Maria Parish Hall, cnr Mary Street and Gladesville
Road, Hunters Hill. For information: 9990 7003. Cost : $45.
Climate change : echo God’s
love
“We cannot show the right
kind of love for our fellow human beings unless we also work at keeping
the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people,” the
archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told delegates to the Copenhagen
climate change conference in December. Dr Williams was preaching, at
the invitation of the Danish Council of Churches, at an ecumenical
service in the Copenhagen Cathedral which was also attended by the Queen
of Denmark, ambassadors and .religious leaders. The archbishop said the
deepest religious basis for our commitment to the environment in which
God had placed us was the recognition that we were called to be, and
were enabled to be, the place where God’s love for the world came
through. “We have to flesh out in our lives that fundamental biblical
conviction that when God looks on the world he finds it good,” Dr
Williams said. “We have to show in our lives some echo of the delight
that God finds in creation.”
Ah, if only
Cardinal George Pell,
addressing the Australian Christian Lobby National Conference in
Canberra on November 7: Public policy miscarries unless it is
informed by the principle of subsidiarity. The role of that principle
is to foster key values which are essential to the flourishing of civil
society and the common good. It used to be, and still should be, an
important principle of public policy to support and protect marriage, as
the basis of strong families and strong communities. Some might say
that subsidiarity is essential also to the flourishing of the Catholic
church.
For your Catalyst diary
12 February Dinner
Out West. Guest speaker Geraldine Doogue. St Bernadette’s Parish
Hall, 367 Old Northern Road, Castle Hill. 7.30pm Cost $45 For
information: Pauline 9990 7003
6 March First
Reflection Morning of 2010 Speaker Bishop Geoffrey Robinson. St
Mary’s Parish Hall 3 Mary Street Hunters Hill 9.30am For information:
Carole 9869 1036 or Michelle 9958 5963.
26 March Dinner.
Guest speaker David Woodbridge. Villa Maria Parish Hall, Hunters Hill.
7pm for 7.30pm. Cost $45. For information: Pauline 9990 7003
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