Overcoming our fear and insecurity…

Dear Friends,

Unfortunately I didn't see all the telecast this morning — I'm still burning the candle at both ends and didn't get to bed until 7.00am and missed the first part — but I did see enough of it to appreciate that 13 February will surely become an important day in the calendar of our nation. For the benefit of our international readers, this morning in Australia the politicians in our National Parliament extended a formal apology to the indigenous people's of this land whose person and culture has been transgressed by national, state and local political policies. The highly symbolic and deeply moving events in the National Parliament have been broadcast by all the major television networks across the nation.

BREAKING NEWS: and in a news story just breaking as I publish this email the PineGap 4, Christian peace activists have been arrested in Darwin at around 12.15 pm today. I'll post more details in our forum.

I'm pleased to bring you today two exceedingly good commentaries. The first we published yesterday evening and I telegraphed it in yesterday's email. It is Fr Dan Donovan's cutting critique of the new Pastoral Plan for the Archdiocese of Sydney. <Read Fr Dan's critique> If you're beyond following the progress of the institutional Church in regurgitating all the failed thinking and policies of the last century that have dis-evangelised the world. And if you've moved beyond worrying about the attempts to undo the insights of the Second Vatican Council, you might take greater comfort from reading Peregrinus' heart-lifting and hope-inducing Lenten reflection on the meaning in The Three Tents in the Transfiguration narrative which we'll listen to at the Gospel this coming Sunday. <Read Pere's Lenten reflection>

Coming up tomorrow we have the next segment of our extended interview with Michael Morwood.

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher