EDITOR'S ROUND-UP

Saturday, 08 November 2008

Making your voice heard…

Dear Friends,

Studying what Dr Ian Elmer serves up to us each week about the activities for St Paul you could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the possibility of the story of Jesus Christ ever reaching us Gentiles was the greatest bit of serendipity that ever happened. Today Ian looks at another fascinating dimension to the story: why Paul changed his name. Dr Elmer describes his name change as "a watershed moment in religious history". <Link to Ian's commentary>

For the benefit of our weekly readers I should also point out the fascinating discussions that have been taking place on the forum. There's a great discussion on "miracles" which seems to be merging into another on the names by which we call God. There's also been extensive discussion of the unfolding situation at St Mary's, South Brisbane, and the controversy that has erupted over the views expressed by Fr Peter Dresser that have got caught up in that matter. And of course there has been much discussion about the American election. I encourage you to join these conversations as the world, and the bishops, need to be hearing what people are honestly thinking about in the privacy of their own minds. We do appreciate that not everyone is comfortable writing and expressing their views in public and for that reason we are more than happy to allow the use of pseudonyms. The reality is that even major secular newspapers only get letters from less than about half a percent of their readership. It takes time to write and not everyone can afford the time that the more prolific contributors to our forum spend writing. Just an occasional comment from each of our readers would greatly increase the spread of feedback that is available to those who take your collective needs seriously.

Where do we find "The Truth"? There are many good individual arguments in this book. Many which do come out of our "shared Catholic insight". In the final analysis though Brian Coyne argues Robert Tilley's analysis is flawed. The harsh reality is that the institutional leadership have been losing contact with their constituency for at least a century. We need to seriously ask why? Robert Tilley's book, through the insights he sheds into the thinking of our recent institutional leaders, provides valuable insights into what has gone wrong - why many thinking people have stopped listening and stopped following their leadership. <more>

Opening up a discussion… Today's email provides an explanation of what we're endeavouring to put on the table for discussion today and tomorrow (and hopefully for a significant time into the future). This book has already been the subject of considerable discussion on Catholica, some of it sparked by the editor and some by others. <more>

The Boyer Lectures - would you prioritise things differently? For our Wednesday Forum today I thought it might be interesting to take a further look at Rupert Murdoch's Boyer Lecture last Sunday. In the forum I have attempted to provide a summary of the priorities he outlined in his opening lecture and I pose the question would you have a different set of priorities? …Editor <more>

The Long Walk to Freedom… The struggle of minorities to obtain dignity, freedom and equality has been long. On the eve of an historic US Presidential election where a black candidate faces the real possibility of being elected leader of the richest and most powerful nation on earth, Dr Andrew Thomas Kania takes a look at the ways in which we are called on to treat one another if we are true followers of Jesus Christ. <more>

9.2: The Gospels as Liturgy II… It's probably a truism that all of us "believers" have tended to read Jesus as some kind of history lesson. The reality is that he wasn't a history lesson. He was a liturgical lesson. Liturgy, in a sense, is also history isn't it? but it is history read in a different way to how we were traditionally taught history at school. Tom Lee today in this short extract from his book looks at how, in recent times and mainly thanks to Biblical scholarship, we have begun to see "the Jesus story" in a new light — the light of liturgy. <more>

Is the priesthood as we've known it obsolete? In his last commentary on the meaning of Sacraments today, Tom McMahon asked us to imagine two railroad trains of thought side-by-side, one on a switch track and the other on what used to be the Trentan mainline. He dared to say the Trent-line's tracks are today somewhat twisted. He continues the analogy today and asks: who's on board which train? Can you find the hidden messages? <more>

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher