Homily at the midday Mass, Michael Whelan SM

“Remembering well”
Feast days are days for remembering. Today is our feast day. We remember the people, events and things of 175 years. This particular act of remembering by us here today, is grounded in a more general act of remembering by the Church. For the feast of St Patrick evokes a broad landscape of memories that belong to the whole Church and, we could say, the human race at large. As Sister Fidelis McTeigue is wont to remind us, there are two types of people in the world: Those who are Irish and those who want to be!

Remembering is a mysterious process. Among other things, it is crucial to our sense of identity. “If you do not know where you come from you will always be a child.”¹ The words of the ancient Roman poet, Cicero. I would add: “If you don’t remember well your past, your future will be more or less stunted.”

And the Vatican knows it

2018 was the year that many Catholics finally accepted that the church's sex-abuse crisis is truly a global problem. Hence the Vatican's decision to bring the presidents of all the bishops' conferences together in Rome to discuss the issue between February 21 and 24.

The abuse crisis forces us to look at the interconnectedness of the church, and to resist the spirit of our time, which not only closes borders and builds walls, but also blinds us to how what's happening in one part of the world relates to what's happening in another.

Of course, we Catholics have all been taught that the church is the Body of Christ, and that if one member of that body suffers, the entire body suffers. Read more

By Tom Roberts

A group of Catholics calling itself the Better Church Governance Group is gearing up to compile dossiers "in the manner of political opposition research" on cardinal electors ahead of the next conclave, the gathering that elects a new pope.

Although its publicly available literature casts the effort as non-political and one that is interested in gathering and collating information, an early memo associated with the effort drew severe conclusions about one of its targets, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state and a member of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinals. Read more

Catholic Church authorities' response of denial, silence and cover-ups in the past had only exacerbated the problem.

The Vatican's leading investigator of clergy abuse cases has made it clear that if a priest stands accused of sexually abusing a child "whether it's criminal or malicious complicity and a code of silence or whether it is denial," such reactions are no longer tolerable.

Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and a member of the Organizing Committee for the Protection of Minors in the Church Meeting was speaking to reporters Feb. 18 regarding the meeting that will take place in the Vatican Feb. 21-24. Read more

Stan Grant

Hope. On this Australia Day, that's what I'm thinking about: hope.

Odd, maybe — I am an Indigenous person — Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, Dharrawall, to be more specific and respectful — you might expect me to talk about trauma, invasion, colonisation.
Certainly, those things cannot be ignored; those things that the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz once called "the memory of wounds".
These wounds are real; for so many, the legacy of this country's history hangs like a dead weight.
Where is hope? When we are reminded almost daily of the tragedy of Aboriginal youth suicide; children as young as 10 years old who cannot face another day of life in our country.
Yet, without hope, where are we? Read more

By Christopher de Bellaigue

Countries around the world are making it easier to choose the time and manner of your death. But doctors in the world’s euthanasia capital are starting to worry about the consequences.

Last year a Dutch doctor called Bert Keizer was summoned to the house of a man dying of lung cancer, in order to end his life. When Keizer and the nurse who was to assist him arrived, they found around 35 people gathered around the dying man’s bed. “They were drinking and guffawing and crying,” Keizer told me when I met him in Amsterdam recently. “It was boisterous. And I thought: ‘How am I going to cleave the waters?’ But the man knew exactly what to do. Read more

Frank Brennan

Seven months on, the Morrison government has published the Religious Freedom Review — a report of an expert panel chaired by Philip Ruddock. It has also published its response. The review was instituted by Malcolm Turnbull during the plebiscite on same sex marriage. Many 'yes' voters in the plebiscite were convinced that a change to the law of marriage would not make one iota of difference to freedom of religion in Australia. Many 'no' voters were worried that the changes could be frightful. The debate which then erupted about religious freedom when Parliament was legislating to recognise same sex marriage highlighted that Australian legislation at the Commonwealth and state level for the protection of all human rights, including freedom of religion, was at best patchy. Read more

By Frank Brennan
Everyone, including the victims of abuse and church officials like Wilson, is entitled to be governed by laws which are clear, sensible and practical.

Philip Wilson, pictured prior to his resignation as Archbishop of Adelaide.
The show trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson has backfired badly causing hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame.
Wilson was charged under a provision of the New South Wales Crimes Act, section 316, which has hardly ever been used. It's a provision which was introduced in 1990. It was reviewed by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission in 1999 and comprehensively trashed. Read more

Michael Barnes SJ

Thomas Merton, the famed spiritual writer, died on 10 December 1968. His writings are still as relevant as his life story is fascinating, particularly his treatment of ‘difference’, a word that ‘now commands an attention that would never have been possible fifty years ago,’ writes Michael Barnes SJ. The fiftieth anniversary of Merton’s death, particularly as it falls in Advent, is an opportunity to contemplate with him the action of the Spirit. Read more

Second thoughts about the sexual revolution.

By Mary Eberstadt

Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk, meaning that history’s unfolding is most plainly seen in retrospect. With all due respect to Herr Doktor, some moments are so transparently situated at a cultural crossroad that they illuminate history even in real time. Improbably enough, the MeToo movement seems to be one.

As anyone following events can see, the ongoing sex scandals that gave rise to MeToo are more than just placeholders in the news cycle. They reveal a shift in the cultural plates of the last half-century and ... Read more

By Martin Maier SJ

On 14 October, Pope Francis will declare Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint, along with Pope Paul VI and several other beati. Martin Maier SJ, who has a longstanding connection with El Salvador, traces Romero’s personal transformation up to the moment of his martyr’s death in the middle of a sermon.

It has been a beatification and canonisation process dogged with obstacles and delays. In El Salvador, the vast majority of the population began venerating Archbishop Oscar Romero as a saint a long time ago. The impact of his murder during the celebration of Mass on 24 March 1980 was still fresh when ... Read more

That is clearly the aim of those who oppose the pope. The question is whether they will succeed.

Author: Robert Mickens, Rome Vatican City, September 14, 2018. (La Croix International). 
Photo: Ben Stansall/AFP.

For nearly five years he never made it one of his major priorities, despite the fact that many of his admirers and unofficial spokespersons tried to claim the opposite. But now Pope Francis, who was slow to even pronounce the phrase “clergy sex abuse of minors,” has been forced to face head-on this worldwide phenomenon and its institutional cover-up.

Recorded video presentation on the subject of "Pope Francis and the Australian Plenary Council 2020/2021", delivered by John L Allen Jr, editor of Crux. Sponsored by The Grail in Australia and Catalyst for Renewal and delivered at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on Sunday, 9th September 2018. View here

Austen Ivereigh

Pope Francis refused to answer reporters’ questions about a letter released on Sunday by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, instead urging reporters to draw their own conclusions about the former papal nuncio’s accusations. Austen Ivereigh explains that the roots of Francis’ response might be found in an article that Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote in 1990, in which he claims silence is sometimes the only way to let the spirits reveal themselves.

‘When it’s our turn to live through a difficult situation, sometimes it happens that silence is not a virtuous act but is the only option, one imposed by circumstances.’

‘Read the statement attentively and you make your own judgment. I will not say a single word about this.’ Read more

Nicolas Senèze

Viganò had been instructed by the Congregation for Bishops to apply sanctions against Cardinal McCarrick but appears to have been rather neglectful in doing so.

The former papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, last month accused Pope Francis of covering up for American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been accused of sexual abuse, sparking a media war between the pope's supporters and adversaries. Read more

Information Evenings Cancelled
Join Spice Odyssey on a Yoga and Meditation tour to India, “Yearning for Peace”.
Are you searching for peace? Take the first step and find out more about this quest for peace at Information Evenings to be held in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne and Sydney Information Evenings have been cancelled.
Please see the Spice Odyssey website for further updates.

Marie Fonseca: 02 9344 0523 or 0418 265 117
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Website: www.spiceodyssey.net.au (for more information and to to download a flyer)

Frank Brennan SJ

In November 2016, I was asked about the seal of the confessional and told the Australian: 'If a law is introduced to say that a priest should reveal a confession, I'm one of those priests who will disobey the law.' On 3 December 2016, I had the opportunity to explain myself, writing in the Weekend Australian: 'A priest should never be required to disclose anything heard under the seal of the confessional.
'The state has the same right to regulate matters for a priest outside the confessional as to regulate matters for all other citizens outside the confessional. Not one child will be saved by abolishing the seal of the confessional. With the seal intact, the occasional paedophile might find a listening ear to assist with the decision to turn himself in.' Read more

By Suzanne Smith

I refer to the article by Alan Atkinson published 12 July posing the question 'whether the pursuit of Wilson could in any sense be described as a witch-hunt', and making the suggestion that despite the court's judgment against him Wilson 'believes he has told the truth and is unwilling to give in to what he perceives to be a witch-hunt'.
In May 2018 Archbishop Wilson was convicted of concealing a serious indictable offence relating to the sexual abuse of a teenage boy by a priest in his diocese. Wilson is the highest ranking Catholic cleric to be convicted of such an offence. The Church's response to this episode should be of particular interest. Read more

By Alan Atkinson

Archbishop Philip Wilson has gone from church leader with a reputation for dealing professionally with sex abuse cases to being stoned by all and sundry in the national village square. The calls to resign come not only from victims, anti-church crusaders and commentators of every ilk, but also eminent Catholics who fear he may cause more damage by staying on.

I do not wish to debate the rights or wrongs of resignation but simply reflect on whether the pursuit of Wilson could in any sense be described as a witch-hunt and whether he might be seen as a scapegoat for the sins of many.

First, I do not know Wilson and have interviewed him just once. Read more

Michael Whelan SM

What does the Royal Commission recommend?

“Laws concerning mandatory reporting to child protection authorities should not exempt persons 
in religious ministry from being required to report knowledge or suspicions formed, in whole or in
part, on the basis of information disclosed in or in connection with a religious confession.” ...

Comment: This recommendation is dangerously open-ended. See full article