Mission & Justice

Hamish McDonald; 19/7/08

Hilario Madeira was the sort of priest who makes you understand how the balance of the global Catholic congregation is shifting to the developing world, away from a jaded Europe. I met him in August 1999 about two weeks before his martyrdom, in his simple church in the town of Suai on the south coast of East Timor, after he conducted a mass for the hundreds of villagers taking refuge in the church grounds and the half-built shell of a new cathedral.

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19/7/08

Former immigration minister Kevin Andrews instructed his department to lift the intake of Christian refugees from the Middle East in response to what he saw as a pro-Muslim bias created by corrupt local case officers. The Weekend Australian says Mr Andrews was so concerned about the extent of corruption in Middle Eastern posts - despite the allegations being investigated and dismissed by his own department - that he wrote to then prime minister John Howard advocating a $200 million plan to replace local employees with Australian staff in 10 “sensitive” countries, including Jordan, Iran and Egypt. Opposition immigration spokesman Chris Ellison said yesterday this remains Coalition policy. “We do not want discrimination or bias occurring … and that’s why I believe it is appropriate that our sensitive overseas posts, such as those in the Middle East, are staffed by Australians,” Senator Ellison said.

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By Katelyn John; 18/6/08

Sydney bashing victim Lauren Huxley has described being blessed by the Pope as a huge honour and a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. Just metres from the courtroom where Robert Black Farmer was last month sentenced to 24 years’ jail for her attempted murder, Ms Huxley and nine other Sydney youths today met Pope Benedict XVI during a ceremony for disadvantaged youths at Darlinghurst’s Church of the Sacred Heart. Dressed in a grey dress and black coat and supported by her father’s arm around her waist, Ms Huxley exchanged a few words with Pope Benedict and received a blessing. After the ceremony, Ms Huxley told reporters meeting the pontiff had been an “unbelievable” experience.

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Richard Ackland; 18/7/08

In the very day this week that the full Federal Court was ever so gently reading up our rights by doing away with the World Youth Day regulation that clumsily sought to protect “pilgrims” from annoyance, a different bench of the court in Melbourne was reading down our rights, with much more serious and fundamental implications. That court confirmed the right of the Federal Government to interfere in decisions affecting the basic human rights of Australian citizens. We enter the province of the Attorney-General’s magic certificates in so-called security cases. Syed Mustapha Hussain is the man at the eye of this storm. He’s a 24-year-old Australian citizen. He came to this country with his family in 1991, went to school in Melbourne and enrolled in a bachelor of medical science degree course at La Trobe University.

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Peter Hartcher; 18/7/08

This week we have the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, telling us “there is a crisis in the Western world” because “no Western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable”. At the same time we have a visiting US economist, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, telling us that we need to curb population growth globally: “The planet, everyone can feel, is just right at the limits right now in terms of food, in terms of energy supply, in terms of land use.” He urged that we “stabilise through voluntary means the world’s population at around 8 billion, not the over 9 billion [by 2050] which is our current trajectory right now”. So what should we do? Encourage more population growth, or less? Who is right?

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Stephen Lunn; 18/7/08

Pope Benedict XVI should not be praising Kevin Rudd for his “courageous” apology to the indigenous Stolen Generations when he hasn’t been prepared to say sorry to victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests. Victims’ support group Broken Rites yesterday expressed disappointment the Pope had so far failed to make a meaningful public apology to abuse victims during World Youth Day celebrations after earlier suggesting he would. The group’s spokeswoman, Chris MacIsaac, said the pontiff had an ideal opportunity while in Australia to say sorry to hundreds of abuse victims in a similar vein to Mr Rudd’s apology to indigenous Australians taken from their families, but even if he expressed regret, it is likely to be carefully crafted. “The victims need an apology made with emotion, one that convinces them deep down the Catholic Church hierarchy understands how sexual abuse affected their lives,” Ms MacIsaac said. “Mr Rudd did that for the Stolen Generation, there were victims present on the day, and he also made it clear it was a only a starting point to the healing, which is something the Pope could also consider saying.

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Carmel Pilcher; 18/2/08; Josephite Sister Carmel Pilcher is Director of Liturgy in the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. She coordinated liturgies for the previous papal visit, for the Beatification of Mary MacKillop in 1995.

I recently heard a playwright comment that a stage play with a strong, clear structure gives the actors a greater scope for creativity and spontaneity. As a long time student of the Eucharist I made an immediate connection. The structure of the Catholic Mass is well established and easily identifiable. The ritual structure requires creativity to invite the worshipping community to encounter the holy and live the truth of the gospel. We thought long and hard about this when we prepared the papal Mass for the beatification of Mary MacKillop in January 1995. We hoped the ritual would call people to live the way of Mary, but first we had to name the values that Mary embodied. We were careful to ensure that the liturgy reflected inclusivity and favoured the poor and oppressed. The first and last words of the mass were spoken by Aboriginal Australians. Those who received communion from the Pope were the little ones of our society, rather than corporate sponsors. Ministers of the word reflected the multicultural richness of our nation with a diversity of language, gesture and costume.  ut I am left with two major concerns. For the first I will repeat a question posed to us by the then papal master of ceremonies, Archbishop Piero Marini: ‘How does this liturgy reflect your Australian culture?’ He went on to add: ‘If we wanted a Roman Mass we would have held it in Rome.’ The organisers did not attempt to integrate Australian elements into the mass, but rather made these extraneous to the ritual structure. Secondly more attention needed to be given to the key principle of the liturgical reform — the full participation of all at worship: clergy and also the lay faithful.
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18/2/08

Geelong priest Fr Kevin Dillon yesterday called on priests to stop trivialising sexual abuse allegations while Sydney’s Fr Chris Riley says that the Church’s Towards Healing process is a joke and should be scrapped. Fr Chris Riley, who heads Youth Off The Streets, a Sydney welfare service that assists homeless, drug addicted and abused young people, said the Towards Healing program hurt the Church’s credibility and meant victims often did not have their day in court, reports say. He told the Nine Network that any family confronted with sexual abuse should go straight to the police and have the matter dealt with in court.

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Letters: The Sydney Morning Herald: 17/7/08

George Pell’s admonishment to young pilgrims to struggle against their “fat, relentless egos” would perhaps have made more sense coming from someone without a public relations officer, someone who so obviously enjoys the trappings of office, including an insistence on being called “Your Eminence” (”An appeal on struggle to the lone lost sheep”, July 16). Perhaps a rereading of Matthew 7:3 might be in order (”Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”): Sunil Badami; Rozelle

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James Madden; 17/6/08

The issue of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy members flared again yesterday after the co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, was accused of making insensitive remarks about the case of two sisters who were raped by a priest. On Tuesday, ABC TV reported that Anthony and Christine Foster, whose daughters Emma and Katherine were repeatedly raped by Melbourne priest Kevin O’Donnell when they were in primary school in the early 1990s, were seeking a personal audience this week with Pope Benedict XVI and Sydney Archbishop George Pell. Mr Foster said he would not accept a papal apology to sexual abuse victims unless the Pope also changed the way the church and its lawyers dealt with those victims. But the story took another turn yesterday when Bishop Fisher appeared to play down the Foster abuse case, suggesting the matter - and the sexual abuse claims aired publicly last week by former Catholic teacher Anthony Jones - were detracting from this week’s Catholic jamboree.

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