Must We Convert Everyone to Christianity?

Dear friends,

Thankyou to everyone who's been contributing to the invigorating discussion in our forum in recent days. I feel a little left out at the moment because apart from preparing the lead commentary each day the rest of my waking hours have been consumed with the development of a new commercial website and that helps us sustain the Catholica initiative. We're not going to break any new records this month with our statistics as that does require sustained application and energy but once I've finished this present project I should be able again to apply the energy to Catholica again. It is gratifying now though that our endeavour is now building a sustainable life of its own based on the inputs of a growing community many of whom I increasingly do not even know individually. Can I just express my deep appreciation to all of you for everything that is happening here. Thank you also for the continuing flow of donations. None of us who write for Catholica draw any remuneration from the donations or advertising revenue we are now beginning to generate but all the money we receive at the moment goes back into promoting Catholica and the earliest donations we received were set aside to cover our technical overheads for the next 12 months.

In today's lead commentary Ian Elmer re-visits the contentious question of the role of Jesus in the salvation of humanity. In the wake of 911 and the rise of fundamentalism across all religions he explores the alternative theological perspectives on this question including those rising through the interfaith movement. He argues: we don't have to jump on the "Interfaith" bandwagon by deserting our belief in the uniqueness of the Christian message. <Read Ian's commentary>

Petition to the Australian Catholic Bishops Update...

The online petition is certainly zooming along now and picked up more than a thousand extra signatures in the past week. It stood at 3290 signatures at 12.00 pm today. At this rate it now looks certain to exceed the minimum 5,000 figure that the petition organisers hoped to attract before it is submitted to the Australian Catholic Bishops at the beginning of November. The question is not now one of will the petition be successful but how successful? <Click HERE to access the information page> and <Click HERE to sign the petition online>.

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher