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The value of story telling…
Dear Friends,
Let me first share with you a couple of World Youth Day stories. First the one from Darwin. Someone in the World Youth Day administration rang Bishop Eugene Hurley* with the hush-hush, top secret news that His Holiness was going to have a fuel stop in Darwin on the way to Sydney. Good Bishop Eugene was sworn to secrecy and he promised not to tell a single soul. Some time later he receives a phone call from a reporter from the Territory News. "Bishop, we've heard His Holiness is going to land in Darwin. What are you planning to do?" Poor Bishop Eugene was taken aback at this serious leak of the top secret news and so he asked the reporter: "Where did you hear that from?". The reporter replied: "It's on the Vatican website!" *He's one of the "good-uns" in this country. Scoring a few votes in the Catholica poll and recognised as a very pastoral bishop attempting to listen to his people and understand the challenges in their lives.
Then there's the story about the police banning inappropriate t-shirts that upset or provoke the poor dears attending the festivities. One priest in Sydney has come up with a creative solution and he's going into production doing a bit of merchandising of his own for his local parish. The big print on the t-shirt reads: PAPA. In small print underneath it reads "People Against Pell's Administration! Last time I looked the Poll the SMH has been running on these draconian police powers the vote was 90% against them. I suppose one thing is for sure now: we ARE going to see plenty of protests and Chaser-type skits taking the Mickey out of us Micks over the coming weeks. You thought they might have learned from the banning of Bishop Robinson in America. If you want to encourage protests just ban than, or make it more difficult for the people who want to protest.
Now to today's Wednesday forum: We've had a heck of a lot of new people joining Catholica recently — both in the forum and more so as passive readers. It might be an appropriate time for us "old-timers" to re-introduce ourselves again and for anybody else who wants to join us to tell us a little about their story. <Read today's introductory commentary by Kate>
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