Dear friends,

Make that four! I was also inspired by the Compass television episode last night on the growth of the Inter-faith Movement that is going on around the world. Unfortunately I cannot provide an easy link where you might watch that program so I have confined my headline to "Three Good Reasons to be Inspired". The only trouble is that if you take the time out to listen to or read all that is on offer it'll take about three or possibly even four hours out of your day. I've put in that investment over the last few days — a heck of a lot more in fact — and I think the investment is worthwhile.

What ties all this "inspiration" together? I've been pondering that myself. I think it is this: there are a terrible lot of things about at the moment that can cause us to feel depressed — a sense that the world is going to pot, the Church is on its way to ruin or total irrelevance, even this sense that we are making our planet uninhabitable. The three links I'm going to provide to you today are an antidote to all of that.

	Sr Joan Chittister – a prophetic voice

The first link is to the audio recording of Sr Joan Chittister's address on Benedictine Spirituality from last Thursday night. It will be published on the Good Sams website this afternoon. In that lecture Joan Chittister presents a hope-filled and hope-filling message that we Catholics and Christians can make a difference to our world in the same way that St Benedict did all those centuries ago when singly-handedly he "saved Western civilisation". We do have much to offer both ourselves and the world if only we can re-discover the authentic and core insights and truth of Jesus Christ. To do that we have to drop all these games we've been playing for a few centuries.

You'll find Sr Joan's address at: www.goodsams.org.au.

Still with Sr Joan, but this time it's far more personal: don't miss Joan's interview with Rachel Köhn which was first broadcast last night on ABC Radio National's The Spirit of Things. This is an interview in which this remarkable woman tells us much about her personal story and the obstacles she had to walk through in order to become this "woman of hope and inspiration". Life is not some box of chocolates and it is enormous irony that so often our pathway to hope, truth and authenticity comes through struggle and overcoming adversity. Isn't that a central message of the Christ story though? Isn't that the real story of the Cross — not this game of "oh woe is me, look what a little goody-two-shoes I am being suffering with you Jesus?" but understanding how to turn adversity into alchemical gold that lights our faces with hope, strength of character, compassion, wisdom and the ability to inspire our children and our neighbours.

You can listen to Rachel Köhn's inspiring interview with Sr Joan at: www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/.

	David Tacey – an Australian prophetic voice.

The third resource I want to direct your attention to is an address Latrobe University academic, Dr David Tacey gave a few years ago to religious educators in Australia. One of our readers sent me a copy in the last few days as he thought it had much to say that readers of Catholica would be interested in given recent commentaries he'd read and also the questions that keep surfacing in our forum. Fortunately I've found a copy of the address online so you can read it for yourself. It's over 6,000 words though and is basically an hour-long lecture. But, wow, this is simply brilliant stuff to be inspired by.

At heart his lecture examines why there is this increasing split going on in Western society between spirituality and religion. He's examining why people are moving away from institutionalised religion and seeking spiritual answers and fulfilment in new places. In many ways this guy is also a bit of a prophet in much the same way Joan Chittister is. He delivered this lecture originally back in 2003. In it though you'll find he was addressing back then many of the things that the Compass program has been examining over the last two weeks, and which Sr Joan addresses towards the end of her interview with Rachel Köhn — this emerging understanding that God speaks to us through the entire human family not just the self-appointed elects.

What I find particularly compelling about David Tacey's argument though is that he is not merely endeavouring to chart why this disjunction has opened up in Western society between religion and spirituality. At the core of this address is a powerful argument about why the decline of institutionalised religion is a bad thing and why we are called to do something about that and reverse the trend. He believes the institutional Church still has an important role to play in society and we are called to a responsibility to redress this situation. His argument though, is not some argument about power. It's about disconnecting religion from the power and allure of human politics and human egos and reconnecting it back to what it ought be connected to — spirituality … the power and allure that is found in the Divine, the ultimate powerhouse that drives, sustains and animates Creation.

Unfortunately the copy of his address available on the internet has not been laid out with much care — particularly for a long lecture. I have taken the liberty of re-doing the layout so that the paragraphs are better spaced and so that you can print it out from a pidf document. You will find the new copy of David Tacey's lecture at: www.catholica.com.au/misc/ReligionVersusSpirituality.pdf. The original version can be found on the Victorian Association of Religious Educator's website at: www.aare.org.au/victoria/tacey.html.

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum.

Brian Coyne can be contacted at: Brian Coyne <editor@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Brian Coyne

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