Letters: Aeroplane nuns

Sydney
10 March 2002

Dates set for saints

Labor MP backs Liberal’s embryo call

Pope urged to ban his photo from club

Patients are patients, not clients: archbishop on St Vincent’s visit

La Perouse ceremony remembers first Mass

Christian Brothers told: look to the laity for the future

Plight of refugees stirs parishioners into action

Novices renew friars’ spirit of vocation

Centacare calms the anger in men

Editorial: Saint-maker Pope

Letters: Aeroplane nuns

Conversation: ... sharing ‘a gift of God’ - Clare Gormley, soprano

Reflections: Lent – community of God’s people

Veneration of ancestors

The day the house caved in

Book Review: An uncluttered look at ecumenism

Putting ‘fresh heart’ into the diocese: Wollongong’s 50th birthday

Prelate retires as Canterbury see reaches 1400th birthday

Inconsistent marking hampers ‘new’ HSC

Inspirations: Jump in numbers as centre starts year

Letters: Aeroplane nuns

In fairly recent copies of The Catholic Weekly in Remember When, the Daughters of Charity, affectionately known as the ‘Aeroplane Nuns’ have appeared in the photos. Some people are asking where are they now?

We are still serving the poor. When we were founded in 1633 we wore the peasant dress of the time and continued to do so. As the Daughters moved to hot countries, starch was added to the headdress to act as a protection from the sun. As we moved into the 20th century we reminded people of a plane in flight.

As a result of changes after Vatican II, we now wear the dress of the day and that is why we are not so visible.

In our Australian Province which includes Fiji, New Zealand, we continue to serve needy families, the aged, aboriginal people, parishes, and pastoral care of the sick.

We are still called to respond to the wishes of St Vincent de Paul and St Louise de Marillac, our founders, to see ‘Christ in the Poor’ and to serve the poorest of the poor.

Sr Marina Morrison
Daughter of Charity
Marsfield, NSW

FAITH AND FASHION

Did the parishioners of Our Lady of Fatima, Caringbah (CW 20/1), who worked so hard collecting the funds and ensuring their church was built, realise how very different it would be, and the implications of this.

Our Lady of Fatima certainly does not look like a church from the outside, and even less from the inside.

Was this intentional? The practice of the Catholic faith within the parish itself must change as a result: lex orandi, lex credendi – the way we pray shapes our very beliefs.

With no proper sanctuary there can be no ‘pre-eminent position’ in which to place the tabernacle, the very heart of a Catholic church.

Without facing the same direction, can the congregation truly look together ‘toward the Lord’ during the Mass, or will they be gazing distractedly at each other?

Without kneelers, kneeling – itself an act of reverence – becomes obsolete. (We Catholics are to kneel at the consecration and genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament, as instructed by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, approved in 2000 by the Pope.)

Faith and fashion are incompatible. One is beyond time and human explanation, the other depends entirely upon both. Our faith has been around for 2000 years; the fashion that shaped Caringbah’s church is fleeting.

Pope John Paul II stated in Dominicae Cenae: “I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this Sacred Mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people.”

E McGovern
Wahroonga, NSW

FR MURRAY

I am writing this to let you know how much I feel the loss of Fr Andrew Murray’s excellent Reflections.

I must say I agree with Raymond Smith of Tempe. May God bless you Andrew wherever you go.

Mrs Lola Bruton

Gayndak, Qld
PS I just love the excellent articles in the Weekly.

THE UNBORN CHILD

Pope John Paul II has spoken again about the rights of the unborn child (Protect the Embryo: Pope, CW 17/2).

In 1994, the Year of the Family, he beatified a young mother who had sacrificed her own life for the life of the baby in her womb – Blessed Gianna Beretta Molla. When two months pregnant with her fourth child in 1961, she was diagnosed as having a uterine tumour.

Surgery that would result in loss of the pregnancy was advised, but she replied, “I shall accept whatever they will do to me, provided they save the life of the child”. Her baby was born safely. Bl Gianna died a week later.

The miraculous cure that led to her beatification occurred in Brazil, in 1977. Documentation concerning a second miracle in 2000 was presented to the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints last September.

Visit the website www.gianna.org for further information, or write to Bl Gianna Society, PO Box 59557, Philadelphia, PA 19102. Any reader who would like a holy card with prayer may contact me on 9771 5539.

Ann Connor
Picnic Point, NSW

LITURGICAL REFORM

Cardinal Ratzinger urges a return to tradition and a reformation of the New Mass imposed by Pope Paul VI. And he counsels “reform of the reform” (CW 20/1).

The Cardinal observed that the desire for creativity in the liturgy has been fostered by a wish for self-expression among communities and many people are complaining “that no two Masses are alike and asking whether a Catholic liturgy any longer exists”.

In a editorial in the Hom iletic and Pastoral Review in February 1979, Fr Kenneth Baker addressed an appeal to the American bishops in which he begged for a halt to the liturgical revolution.

Not only Catholics are disconcerted by incessant liturgical changes. The brilliant Anglican university academic CS Lewis contended: “My whole liturgical position boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever if only it will stay put. But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship” (Letters to Malcolm).

Valentine Gallagher
Arncliffe, NSW