EDITOR'S ROUND-UP

Saturday, 18 October 2008

A great week…

Dear Friends,

Well, I warned at the beginning of the week that it looked as though we had a great week coming up on Catholica. That's certainly how it turned out if we can judge these things by the number of new subscriptions, the daily readerships statistics, and the quality and quantity of posts in our forum. It does feel wonderful to be part of something that is lively and growing, isn't it? For our weekly readers you'll find good summaries of what's been triggering all the excitement in the summaries below.

Keeping up the pace we have a fascinating commentary from Dr Ian Elmer today. It contains many references to events two millennia ago that still resonate today as issues we struggle with in trying to understand what Jesus (and Paul) were ultimately driving at. What Ian attempts to do today is "break apart" the social and theological differences between two very different groups that had emerged in the early Church — the Hebrews and the Hellenists. Does this help us better understand the divisions within Christianity today, or the divisions within, say, just the Catholic Church? <Link to Ian's commentary>

FLaunch of new scholarly study on Pope Pius XII by Australian scholar, Dr Paul O'Shea… The general tone of the three principal addresses at the launch of Dr Paul O'Shea's new scholarly study of Pope Pius XII urged a sense of caution in the urgency in some sectors of the Catholic Church to canonize the controversial wartime pope. While acknowledging Eugenio Pacelli's sincerity and "holiness" the speakers urged caution on two principal grounds — one being that not all the evidence is yet available to scholars. The other ground for caution is that despite the man's good intentions and sincerity the evidence mounts that he did make significant errors of political judgment in responding to the Nazi threat against the Jewish people. His lack of action, or lack of courage in speaking up, made the situation worse for the Jewish people. We present the full video of all the addresses at the launch ceremony which was held in Parliament House, Sydney. <more>

Four effective ways to collapse the Church in Australia in one generation… Frank Purcell has been doing a lit of lateral thinking. It's called "negative brainstorming". He's come up with four good ways for the bishops to fast track the collapse of the Church into a remnant within one more generation. That seems to be the preferred policy direction of recent decades so why not finish the job off quickly and cleanly? <more>

A Parable… Take yourself back … back to before you were born … back to imagine yourself as the first child to have heard a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale … or one of the first to have heard Jesus "speak in parables". How would you discern the meaning of a parable hearing it for the first time? Today we have a complete change of pace for a lead commentary on Catholica. Francis Brown presents us with a modern Australian parable. You, Dear Reader, are presented with the challenge of discerning its meaning. Enjoy… <more>

House Churches and their Ministers… The recent commentaries by Francis Brown and Dr Charles Kelliher on the "house churches" of early Christianity have generated significant discussion. Today, another scholar who has an enduring interest in the subject, Dr John N Collins, contributes some further background information. Dr Collins raises, without answering, the interesting question of what sort of formation the ministers to "house churches" might need? He argues that small communities need leaders and the chief responsibility of the leader is "to proclaim in the name of the Body of Christ the central mystery of faith: his death and resurrection". <more>

The River of No Return… Is life a river of no return? In the sense that it flows inexorably from birth to death and not the other way about it can be compared to the river that flows from the highlands to the lowlands and not the other way about. This essay by Andrew Kania explores the meaning of the life journey through the lens writers like Mark Twain and Hermann Hesse sought to investigate it. <more>

8.6: The writings attributed to Luke… This week we have a shorter commentary from Tom Lee. In it he explores the Gospel of Luke, and also the Acts of the Apostles whose authorship is attributed to the authors of Luke. It might be short but one can expect plenty of vigorous discussion from the biblical experts and early Church history scholars in our Catholica community as Tom "brings to focus" some of the more contentious issues raising by the Lukean accounts that have peppered academic biblical studies in the last century. <more>

The funeral of a seminary colleague… TOM'S FOREWORD: The Polar Express, our train of thought on sacraments pauses on side track as we tip our berettas to one of this writer's seminary classmates; the following are two pieces sent to the living members of our ordination class, the Menlo Men of '54. Allow this to be a preface as we move next week into exploring a Priesthood for the Age of Technology. <more>

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher