I just found today the following quotations taken from Bishop Christopher Prowse’s Installation homily in Sale on July 15 (from the “Stones will Shout” newsletter). He certainly struck the right note. Please pray for +Christopher and the Catholic people of the Sale Diocese.
? We gather on this day of fresh beginnings in Christ for the Diocese of Sale …
? Our gathering too generates hope for the future as a new chapter in the history of the Diocese of Sale begins today.
? To all, pray that I be the kind of Bishop Jesus, the Good Shepherd, wants me to be.
? Dear people of the Sale Diocese, I have noticed over these past months your hunger and desire for a bishop to be appointed …. It was an unspoken belief that surfaced declaring that a Catholic diocese needs a bishop to be her visible principle of unity and communion.
? …let us pray that Jesus, fully alive in the Catholic Church, will lead us all together with great confidence and hope into the future in unbreakable communion with the Church throughout the world, led by our teaching Pope, Benedict XVI.
? We are faced with many challenges from within the Church as well. For example, in Australia, and no doubt linked with secularism, we find too many Catholics absenting themselves from the practise of their faith or even becoming nonbelievers. Vocational commitment thus becomes an issue. We find Catholics in public life or the scientific world confused or ignorant about Catholic teachings on ethics or conscience. We can encounter Catholic communities who are locked in various types of ideological battles that sap missionary energies. Also, the bad example of some can have a poisonous effect on the faith of so many others. …This new situation demands that Catholics today are to be well formed in their Catholic faith and well informed of the world around us. It is not the time to e “dumbing down” Catholic identity. …
? Let us take very seriously Pope John Paul II’s invitation to the Catholic world at the start of this third Christian millennium when he called us to start afresh from Christ (cf. Novo Millennio Ineunte, 29).
Perhaps those who are publicly brawling in the Right to Life and DLP internal politics can take what the Bishop has said about bad examples,repent and then get on with facing the evils that confront us.
Yes, I read that story in the The Age with some dismay. I don’t know the people involved, or the politics of it, but it does seem to me that the issues have arisen because of a bunch of people going about being “politically Catholic” in a very un-Catholic way.
I’m sure The Age was having a good laugh at the whole thing. No doubt they were happy to help fan the flames!
We can criticise The Age for a lot of things. But, in this instance, criticism of The Age could look like denial of, or at attempt to distract from, the real issue.
There’s a problem here and, for once, it’s not The Age.
That’s only partly true. There may be a problem here, which in any case I did not deny. I merely pointed out that The Age is going to be pretty gleeful over all this muck. I think that’s a fair statement, given their recent incoherent ranting articles.
Besides which, I am spending t-i-m-e cogitating over this particular state of affairs, rather than just jumping in with a poorly thought out opinion.
Actually, from my view-point as a bystander, The Age report seemed quite objective for a change.
It didn’t seem very objective to me, David. All this rot about far right wing Catholics? What?
And the people calling their fellow Catholics “religious zealots” were pretty stupid – talk about playing into the hands of the MSM! Given that anyone who goes to Sunday Mass is considered to be a “religious zealot,” I thought this was pretty poor form.
This is what I said in the combox at Australia Incognita:
After giving this some proper thought, I’m inclined to think that the organisations appealing to the natural law, should continue to do so. Thus, the DLP and the RTL should continue in much the same vein, because that is what they were set up to do.
There would be nothing wrong with RTL educating people regarding the evils of contraception, because it too is a natural law issue and not a strictly religious one.
The reason these are so difficult to fight is because of the selfishness of fallen human beings.
Nothing less than The Gospel itself (and people’s conversion to it) can possibly enable the majority of the populace to forego the alleged benefits of contraception.
Hence, we must preach The Gospel in season and out of season.
The DLP and RTL have their place, as they are, in the great scheme of things.
…
The reality is that any two Catholics of identical theology and liuturgical practice and even spirituality (in the properly Catholic sense of the word) will still often disagree about which methods should be employed to achieve any given goal.
Airing dirty washing in The Age is not likely to yield much good, IMO. Let’s not forget who The Age works for.