The first Saturday Round-up
Saturday, 5th August 2006

The start ot our endeavour has been truly gratifying. The number of registrations and subscriptions has far exceeded our expectations for this first week. Thank you for all the messages of support that have been sent to both Cliff and myself. Our apologies that it is taking us some time to getting around to respond to them. Could I also apologise to people using Mozilla-based browsers (such as Firefox, Netscape and Mozilla itself). The sound file I included yesterday should not have been set to autoplay nor to repeat everytime you opened a new window. I can appreciate how annoying that would have been. I only discovered that fault in my coding early this morning and for regular visitors to the forum it must have been torture yesterday. That problem has been fixed. I continue to be aware that about 10% of users have difficulties in that the multi-media elements on our website simply do not show in their browsers. I have still not been able to track down what is causing this glitch.

The Saturday round-up will be sent to subscribers of the weekly e-digest and for the daily subscribers they will receive this on Saturday instead of a shorter version. At the top of the page it contains the new commentaries from today and below that a summary of the stories from the past week. I will also normally provide some commentary in this place on happenings in the discussion forum itself. As the forum is still "finding it's feet" I'll dispense with that this week.

Can we learn from Paul's descriptions of his "Damascus Road conversion" insights as to how God reveals himself in our lives?

In this article Ian Elmer brings into focus some scriptural-based observations on a number of questions that we've been discussing as a community over recent months. One on-going question a number of people have been addressing is the one of how God speaks to us? Following on from his own essay on Thursday on the present wisdom as to how we understand God revealed himself to the writers of Sacred Scripture, Ian here picks apart Scripture itself with the aid of a number of other scholars to see what we might learn from the ways in which Paul claims the Gospel or Divine insights were revealed to him. Was Paul being "economical with the truth" in suggesting the revelation all came in some flash of light on the road to Damascus or was it a slower, evolutionary process that was also tempered by other events that Paul had to deal with and surmount in his own life?

What to do with the surplus Holy Oils... We publish today the second installment from the memoirs of Cindy the Sacristan — a fiesty dame who found she had much to learn entering the for-so-long male dominated sanctuary of the sacristy. Fr Cunning also began to find out he had much to learn taking on a handful like this dame.

004 :
04 Aug 2006

Struggling with the issues surrounding celibacy... Celibacy continues to be a hot topic. It raises hackles in discussion forums and seems to be cause for division in the Church. In today's commentary our resident "seeker of moderation and balance", Peregrinus, takes his pen to all the arguments seeking that place of intelligent sense. [more]

003 :
03 Aug 2006

Who Is the Author of the Bible? Did God literally reach down and guide the hands of those who transcribed Sacred Scripture? We asked Ian Elmer to give us an overview of what the accepted wisdom is today from both the institutional Church and scholars on what, precisely, we mean when we say that Scripture is "inspired" or "authored" by God. How do you, the reader, understand this expression? What does it mean to you? [more]

004 :
02 Aug 2006

Cold Feet In preparing the readings and homilies for another website for this coming Sunday, Jo discovered that the readings are about "mountain top experiences". Even though her own story here is very domestic, almost mundane, it illustrates that we can have "mountain top experiences" in the most unlikeliest of settings. [more]

014 :
01 Aug 2006

The tragedy of St Vincent's Redfern... There were further major developments at the Catholic parish of Redfern on the weekend. This received significant media coverage on Monday and led to much comment on the CathNews discussion forum which reflects the deep divisions in the institutional Church at the moment on much wider issues as to how the Church is to be re-evangelised. Cliff Baxter lives close to Redfern and has been watching the developments in that parish with growing alarm... [more]

013 :
31 Jul 2006

Should the Aboriginal people embrace capitalism? A week or so ago the head of the Federal Government's Indigenous business advisory group, Joseph Elu, blamed a failure to embrace capitalism for Aboriginal social problems. Cliff Baxter argues that capitalism is not a response. On the contrary, he argues, we can learn from their culture of the common good. In a separate essay, Tom Scott, challenges the arguments advanced by Cliff (See commentary below this one). [more]

021 :
31 Jul 2006

Should the Aboriginal people embrace capitalism? This is Tom Scott's response to Cliff Baxter's arguments in the commentary above this one. [more]

004 :
30 Jul 2006

The struggle between priests and people Survey research constantly shows us that the success of communities – whether they are schools, parishes, businesses, football clubs, universities, political parties or churches – depends heavily on the leadership qualities of those at the top. In this poignant essay KateD examines what goes wrong when those at the top couldn't give a stuff about the aspirations of the community they are meant to be serving. [more]

004a :
30 Jul 2006

Remembering – a prayer for our time A few week's ago we brought you the entry submitted by Jo Shears to the Prayer for Our Time initiative conducted on the CathNews discussion forum in 2002. This Sunday, given the on-going conflict in the Middle East, but also cognizant of the spirit of hope that seems to characterise our own initiative as we prepare for our public launch this coming Thursday, it seems entirely appropriate to bring you the entry submitted by KateD and her bashful husband who masquerades around a lot of the time like Alice in Wonderland. In a post on our discussion forum last week, Kate explained how her multi-media prayer ended up being used in parishes and a diverse variety of other places. [more]

002 :
04 Aug 2006

Ignatius McDrool is not happy, Jan... Ignatius McDrool is editor-in-chief of the recently renamed Catholic Prudence. This week his memo to fellow Catholic Editors via their newsletter, the Cleft Stick (Catholic Loyal Editors for Truth, Inc) fell off the back of a truck and made its way to Catholica Australia. He spares no mercy to us.
[more]

005 :
03 Aug 2006

On the importance of de-fleaing Father's dog... In the the last excerpt from Molly's Manual for Priests' Housekeepers we learned something of the delicate challenge Priest's Housekeepers face in cleaning Father's bathroom. Today Molly is dealing with another of the delicate tasks these stalwart ladies have to deal with in looking after God's front line non-commissioned officers. It's another serious health hazard in most presbyteries not unlike the health challenges soldiers face on the front-line in any battlefield.
[more]

005 :
02 Aug 2006

Multi-media content that cannot be transmitted via email. Please visit the Jokes' Archive on our website.

010 :
01 Aug 2006

Multi-media content that cannot be transmitted via email. Please visit the Ruth's View Archive on our website.

001 :
31 Jul 2006

First days as a parish sacristan... Cindy the Sacristan is a new character entering our pages. The first new character to be written by one of our other readers whose imagination has been fired by Cliff's Menagerie. In reality these are real-life memoirs of one of our members who would prefer to remain anonymous. [more]

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world,

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia