The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
7 December 2003

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Sydney bids for World Youth Day

Biggest rally of young people

Principals rang bells of change in schools

Abandoned by her dad, Dina finds a caring home in a village of poverty

A new St Pat’s: the wait is over

A diary that caters for Catholic needs

Help for newcomers

Caritas emergency food aid to E Timor

Survival guide

How to help the refugees

Evening group

Editorial: Boost for youth

Letters: Wonderful memories

Conversation: Ted Collins, Bishop of Darwin - Souls to be saved, not locked up

Making time for Advent

When in Rome do as the ...

Poor Clares’ rich history

Fidelity, respect, chastity

Times were a-changing

Holy Land ‘holiest of all’

Letters: Wonderful memories

Thank you for the news feature (CW 23/11) on Irishtown Revisited (now Bankstown). It brought back wonderful memories.

My grandfather, Cornelius Manahan, arrived from Ireland in the 1860s and settled in Gow St, Bankstown.

He wrote to Ireland for his fiancée to come. When she arrived they were married in St Mary’s Cathedral.

As a four and five-year-old in the early 1920s I remember going in a sulky with grandfather, mum and more of us to St Felix’s to Mass, quite a long way from Gow Street.

There is a small area of Bankstown called Manahan and it is still in the post code book.

My late wife loved singing the songs that Josef Locke sang (God bless him).

Anthony C Forshaw
Heathcote, NSW

WRITE TO PM

The decision to allow abortion pills to be sold over the counter without a prescription should be overturned.

Please write to ask the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, to reverse the decision and stop this evil practice spreading.

Leslie Clarke
Rooty Hill, NSW

WHY CHANGE?

Minor changes (e.g. baptisms during Mass, many readers, moving of church furniture, loud conversation) do not disturb me personally, although I have noticed that other worshippers have been affected by them.

The changes I object to include the removal of our tabernacle from the sanctuary to a small alcove in the rear of the church.

My observations are that the Blessed Sacrament is all but ignored in that “cubbyhole” and that the rear of the church is necessarily the place where work, such as collections, is organised during Mass.

It is an unsuitable location for our tabernacle; certainly not a place of honour.

When I visit a Catholic church, I expect the tabernacle to be on view from most areas of the church. I shouldn’t have to make a search.

I also want to know why Catholics have to go to a funeral or tune into Songs of Praise to hear decent hymns now.

My plea is that only changes which are a genuine improvement be introduced and then only with consideration and patience.

Brian McGee
Balgowlah, NSW

DRUG PROBLEMS

The House of Representatives report Road to recovery concluded that injecting rooms are not an answer to society’s drug user problems, specially in the absence of evidence-based refutation of Drug Free Australia’s statement in August that the “medically supervised injecting room” in Kings Cross could not claim statistically to have saved one life, let alone six.

It was interesting also that Premier Bob Carr, in his address - focused on health - to 800 delegates at the ALP State conference in October, made not even a passing reference to the outcomes at the Kings Cross injecting room. One can reasonably assume that any good news would have been mentioned.

The urgent need to move the focus of our anti-drug strategy away from harm minimisation to prevention, especially primary prevention, as recommended in Road to recovery, appears to have been underlined at a Sydney conference in October which was told that 250,000 Australians are currently living with hepatitis C and that 90 per cent of transmission relates to injecting drug use.

The disease has a conservative mortality rate between four and eight per cent.

Collis Parrett
Drugs policy analyst
Australian Family Association (ACT)
Kingston, ACT

IN THE LORD’S NAME

With the Christmas season approaching, I`d like to make a heartfelt plea for respect (dare I say love) to be shown for the name of Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s name is frequently misused these days in books, films and newspapers and on television.

Blasphemy is not uncommon in shopping centres and on public transport.

I think most people just do it thoughtlessly, not realising they are insulting God.

I’m sure they would not like their name to be used as a swear word.

Also I cannot understand why misuse of the Lord’s name is allowed in films and television classified as “PG’’.

Why aren’t these included in “M’’ rating for language?

So instead of Xmas let’s have a joyful Christmas with peace to all people of goodwill and respect for the name of that special Christmas baby.

God bless you,

Sue Huggins.
Lawson. NSW

MIRACLE MATTERS

Mark Nicholas (Miracle claims, Letters CW 9/11) questions the Bl Mother Teresa’s miracles.

We must keep in mind the Pope’s infallibility in declaring someone a saint: We can’t question the decision.

The requirement of a miracle for canonisation or beatification can be abrogated, as it was for St John Fisher.

The Pope usually chooses not to, because that requirement is one way of “consulting the faithful”. Their faith leads to the miraculous intercession.

Richard Winston, in his biography of St Thomas Becket, canonised in 26 months, says: “Miracles do not engender faith; they spring from it.”

Not having investigated them, I can’t verify most miracles. I accept their miraculousness on the Pope’s word.

A miracle is not something that could never be explained naturally, but an extraordinary event, resulting from extraordinary prayer. Newman, in his second essay on miracles, points out that some of the greatest miracles could be explained away.

Remo Dellagiacoma (Interpretations, Letters CW 9/11) says that the Church validates the Bible, not vice-versa. The situation is more complicated. Biblical documents detail the life of Jesus Christ.

We see that he needed to institute a Church as logical guarantor of his ministry, and he did.

By the Church’s authority, we hold the Bible to be truly inspired of God.

Catholics accept on faith the Church’s infallible authority in matters of faith and morals, and the truths, biblical and not, that it guarantees on faith.

But faith is a necessary condition of approaching higher truth. What it reveals is more, not less, certain thanscientific theories.

Kiran Krishna
Manly, NSW