A bit of a hodge podge…

Dear friends,

I'm afraid today's offering on Catholica is a bit of a hodge podge. The lead commentary is an article Barry Sinclair sent into me by a Mr Harvey Smith on Evangelisation. It's from an Evangelisation initiative in New Zealand but Mr Smith is from Sydney. Frankly, I'm not sure why I'm publishing it as I honestly do not believe this sort of endeavour is going to "Re-evangelise" our world or turn people back on to Jesus. I shouldn't be so critical as once upon a time I used to write tomes of stuff similar to that.

Perhaps my own frustratons are showing through. For a couple of days now I have been stalled on a computer coding problem. I need just a couple of lines of code to instruct the computers that visit a website I'm working on to act in a particular way. For the life of me I can't find the "golden key" that will unlock my problem. There are guys and gals who spend inordinate amounts of time on the internet discussing these sorts of coding problems. My problem is quite a common one where you have a main timeline playing (say the front page of a website) and at a certain point you want that to stop playing (ie for all the pretty pictures on that page to stop what they're doing) and for a second action to happen. In my case, it is for a short video clip to cut in and play which showcases the band the website is about. When that video stops though it needs to send a small signal back to the main timeline to tell it to resume playing from where it left off. We talk about theology and spirituality on this website but some people spend their lives talking about coding problems like that on other websites — and they are as passionate about it as we are. (There are many discussions about the general problem I've outlined but, wouldn't you know it, my particular situation contains a "little quirk" and none of those usual methods for "sending that message back to the main timeline work". Back to all that after I finish Catholica today.)

I have another frustration though. When I got up this morning I went and looked at the video Mary (Englishwoman) has posted on our forum from Mordechai Vanunu — the guy imprisoned for so many years by the Israeli government for selling nuclear secrets. It's worth looking at, particularly in the light of the deteriorating situation in the so-called "Holy Land" right at this moment. It's not so much that religion has a lot to answer for, is it? Isn't it the way all of us use our different religions to try and bring certitude into our lives by proclaiming "WE HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS (and if you — whoever you are — don't want to listen to our answers, or obey our answers, we'll imprison or shoot you!)"? We do see Catholics and other Christians act like that just as much as we see Islamicists, Jews and the followers of just about every other "faith" in existence act like that.

The other "input" that is relevant here is that Tom Lee posted on our forum links to a new, and very expensive program the American Bishops are putting together via television and media advertising calling lapsed Catholics back home. (See: www.catholicscomehome.org) Those television commercials, which are preseenly being aired in Phoenix, Arizona as a test-marketing exercise are also worth checking out. The question on my own mind this morning reading what Harvey Smith has to write, watching those television commercials from Arizona, and also mulling on the "questions of religion" posed by the case of Mordechai Vanunu and what is happening in the Middle East at this very moment where thousands are literally being butchered every day usually in the name of someone or others interpretation of who God is and what God asks of his or her human children. What are we endeavouring to bring people back to? Is it some soppy, sentimental, let's all be "nice little vegemites and stop fighting one another" vision of the kindergarten? I'm not sure that Harvey Smith has the answers any more than Mordechai Vanunu has the answers, or the Israeli government or the Palestinians. We do need an intelligent conversation though about where "the truth" resides in all these difficult questions that tear our world apart. What do you believe Catholicism has to offer our world? How do you believe Catholicism ought present its message if it is to again make the messages of Jesus resonante in people's hearts again? <Read Harvey Smith's suggestions for Evangelisation>

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher