What a night! But good news too...
Wednesday,6thDecember 2006

Dear friends,

What a night! It seems Catholica Australia is not the only one being attacked. Someone has unleashed some terrible grooble on the internet that is re-writing files on servers. Every single html and php file on our website was rewritten to add two lines of code at the bottom that caused visitor's browsers to go off recording hits on other websites. How they managed to get into these servers is anyone's guess. We are updating our security to try and prevent it in the future.

We were off-air for about 8 hours but that was actually unrelated to the attack on our website. Someone cut the fibre optic cable somewhere near Philadelphia would you believe and that is what brought the server we are using down.

Now to the Good News — we need a bit of that every day. Our colour ad ran today in the local press wrap around. I was originally given to understand that the wrap-around was to be advertising services run by all the Churches in the Blue Mountains region over Christmas. It turns out it was an eight-page wrap around mainly to promote the evangelical Blue Mountains City Church. So you can imagine our ad looks a little incongruous — ney, bloody fantastic — sitting there amongst everything else that is on offer. Here's a copy of the ad — come on the Micks!!!!

I've also put Bishop Max Davis's address to launch the book of stories of about People with Disabilities up on youtube and will follow that shortly with a copy of Bishop Eugene Hurley's homily. Check out the front page of our website for the links.

Have a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life, and in our world.

Some thoughts on the Bishops' Report on Catholics who have stopped going to Mass Peregrinus today applies his incisive mind to the recently released summary report the Australian Bishops put out. He concludes: "If the bishops are concerned to 'stem the flow', there are some important lessons for them here." [more]

A sort of melancholic prayer... Ruth sounds a bit flustered this morning — a bit like her creator — so it's a quick prayer for better and quieter times. [more]

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia