We are all called to leadership...
Friday, 15th December 2006

Dear friends,

I'm pleased to say that we will be going back to using our original forum. I'm not sure when this will be. To minimise the disruption we might hold off doing it until the breaak in January. In the meantime I should point out that in recent days I've had a significant increase in applications for membership of the forum but some of them have been very obviously dodgy applications, including some from spam sites in the Eastern Bloc. There have also been some that simply provide a nickname and an email address. My suspicions are further raised when these use a hotmail or any of the other "free" email accounts. Many people here will be aware that the CathNews discussion board has been facing a terrible battle in recent days with anonymous individuals seeking to disrupt the cohesion of that place.

In our original application procedure, registrants were required to provide a first and last name (which would be kept confidential) even if they intended to use a pseudonym for posting. If an applicant receives an email from me requesting a first and last name I am not endeavouring to be nosey but just seeking some clarification of their bona fides to be welcomed as part of this community. Any information that is provided will be kept confidential. Applicants who are unable to provide sufficient information to establish their bona fides will find their applicationts are not activated and are deleted from our database. We don't wish this forum to become a place which is governed by censorship, rancour and posts having to be regularly removed. The members' forum is provided as a slightly more private place where members can share more freely than is possible in a public place. It is one of our means of building a sense of community and a place of mutual respect for one another. We are aware that there are Catholics and Christians out there who do sincerely believe that the work we are engaged in is somehow damaging to the institutional church. While we have no objection to people holding to such views they are invited to use other places to further their objectives.

Even behind some veil of anonymity taking up membership of any community does require the giving of some part of self in order to be welcomed into whatever community one is seeking to join. People in the community do need to have some sense of trust in new members who might be seeking to join. That happens in any parish or community group in physical space and the same considerations apply in cyber space. There are many, many ways in which different individuals do give something of themselves in order to gain the trust of a community they wish to join while, at the same time, retaining their privacy. We do not seek to dictate how any person might do that. We do endeavour to respect the privacy of all members of this community at the different levels of disclosure that different individuals operate from.

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

We are all called to leadership... In this wonderful commentary, Andrew Kania, explores the meaning of Christian leadership. He explains how a woman, St Margaret of Scotland, serves as one of the great models of Christian leadership. A further interesting piece of information you'll pick up is that St Margaret is also revered as the the patroness of wives, mothers, and learning. [more]

Australia and the Popes... Did you know Catholic Australia (a division of Church Resources) has recently added a further large resource to their website. It is a 150+ page compilation of information on the Popes who have reigned since Australia, the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit, was discovered by the Europeans 400 years ago in 1606. The compilation was put together by yours truly, Brian Coyne. [more]

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica Australia