So many enriching conversations…

Dear friends,

I've been receiving so many congratulatory messages in recent weeks from all around the world congratulating us for the quality of the conversations on Catholica. It is honestly getting so bad — that should be "good" but you'll get my drift — that I'm getting further and further behind in replying to all the personal emails. Please accept my apologies. I'm going to make a concerted effor to attend to that once I've put this edition to bed.

Following on from his commentary which attracted such a favourable response last Saturday, Ian Elmer has produced another corker today. He's attempting to explore how we begin "the journey within". This is stuff some of the bishops and cardinals who are going to be held accountable for the present parlous state the Church is in ought be reading. Of course they won't be reading it but that's no reason why you mightn't get great benefit out of it. You'll probably get labelled as a dissenter, heretic, liberal and a whole lot of other choice labels for reading it but that's part of the price one pays these days for trying to find out where one finds the key to the door where one can begin "the journey within". Is this stuff Ian Elmer is discussing heretical or is it the sort of language our ecclesial leaders need to be getting their heads around if they are to return to "bringing the 'Good News' to all" and not just to "the self-anointed few"? <Read Ian's commentary>

For our weekly readers could I also urge you to check out the forums. There are some really wonderful conversations going on there across a diverse variety of subjects. Coming up in the next week we probably have some of the most thought-provoking material we have yet published. Amanda and I are honestly feeling enormously humbled by the response Catholica seems to be generating literally from all around the world. Tomorrow we have the second reflection by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson —a mate emailed us during the week to say how he'd made enquires at a Catholic bookshop in Melbourne for BIshop Robinson's book and was greeted with the response "Oh, no, we don't stock 'that' book!" Is it little wonder why 85% have walked out the door when the bookshops don't even stock the insights of one of our most honest and open spiritual leaders? I'm also pleased to announce that tomorrow Father Farzenheim makes a most welcome return to the pages of Catholica. He's been on sabbatical in Rome and is full of ideas for World Youth Day and even has a radical suggestion involving the breeding of Bogong moths. They've been in plaque proportions in Sydney in recent days but that doesn't daunt the good Father Farzenheim. He has a radical plan for harnessing them in the service of orthodoxy. He proposes to dub the new bread, Biblical Bogongs.

On Monday we begin a provocative series by Len Swidler, Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University in Philadephia. On Tuesday I think we'll be publishing and provocative new commentary by Dr Andrew Kania examining the relationship between family breakdown and the decline in religious participation. (There's still a query on that one. If it doesn't appear this week it will be published the following week.) On Wendesday Peregrinus has some provocative material in the second part of his series looking at the connection between religion and art. Somewhere or other I also want to fit in a challenging commentary I've just received from another part of the world altogether which examines the reverse side of the clerical abuse scandal: what has happened in one situation where unfounded accusations were made against a priest who was entirely innocent and the accusers were using the complaint for their own agendas. It's a disturbing story to read but complelling and also raises a series of serious issues we do need to get our heads around.

Petition Update...

In the past week the pace has picked up again and today the total stands at 8111. Nearly 2000 extra signatures have been added in the past seven days. <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