A provocative response to Cardinal Pell's comment
on Biblical Scholarship…

Dear friends,

Firstly let me congratulate Ian Elmer on reaching the milestone of his 50th commentary for Catholica. And this one is a beauty. I don't just write that because he's controversially taking on the Cardinal for the view he expressed about scriptural scholars. Elmer is actually doing what I reckon the Cardinal, and all our bishops ought be doing: not "dumbing religion down" but explaining it in the more intelligent and nuanced language that the community in countries like ours seems to be crying out for. This is an important debate that the Cardinal and Ian Elmer are engaged in. On Thursday I conducted a lengthy recorded conversation with Bishop Kevin Manning which, in part, explores this same issue about whether we need to be "dumbing down our faith" or explaining it in more sophisticated ways.

What are your views on these issues? Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever thought about expressing your views so that our ecclesial leaders might get to hear about it and evaluate what the community they are seeking to serve is looking for?

We'd love to hear your views in our forum. Also, for our weekly readers, I'm pleased to report that the Petition to the Australian Bishops has generated plently of publicity and interest. The number of signatories to the online edition is now in excess of 300 and it can be expected many more will be collected this weekend via the hard copy editions that are beginning to circulate around the Church at local level. I suggest that signing this petition is another valuable way of communicating to our ecclesial leaders what sort of faith community you think we ought be building (or should that be, re-building) in Australia.

I think I will need to delay publication of the interview with Bishop Manning until Tuesday as I want to give him the opportunity to listen back to it before we release it. I explained before I conducted the interview that I was not involved in any "headline hunting" exercise but was rather endeavouring to get him to open up in a very frank way about the sort of issues that are of interest to our community here. He has certainly done that in the interview, and there are certainly some newsworthy headlines, but the prime purpose of this interview is to gain a better insight into the broader canvas one of the leaders in the Church in this country is operating out of and to open up our own discussions here in light of that. If I have to delay it until Tuesday I'll run Andrew Kania's commentary on Monday. As I haven't had a break for a couple of weeks I won't publish a commentary tomorrow but I'm sure, in any case, Ian has provided conversation fodder aplenty for at least two days and probably much more. This is a really great commentary from so many points of view and I just know that the Catholica community will appreciate it deeply. <Read Ian's commentary>

P.S. I understand Bishop Manning is being interview by John Cleary on Sunday Night on ABC local radio. It's an interview to recognise his 10th Anniversary as Bishop of Parramatta.

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher