Mahony finds out the charges...

Dear Friends,

In today's excerpt from Robert Blair Kaiser's novel "Cardinal Mahony" we learn of what charges the Cardinal is accused of — and we begin to find out a little more about his accusers and prosecutors.

You'll also see from the banner at the top of this email we are now close to launching the next element of Catholica — an online shop and marketplace where you can procure virtually any book on spirituality or religion currently in print. All the things that currently exist in Catholica will stay — this addition to the Catholica initiative is part of our endeavour to try and keep Catholica subscription free and so that we can eventually pay our writers — who are the one's who ultimately help us build a sizeable readership that can make a difference. At the heart of the Catholica initiative we are not endeavouring to make money, nor to simply play with ourselves and our ideas. Our endeavour is seeking to explore new directions in Catholic spirituality that have not been fulfilled by those leading the institution in recent memory. We are endeavouring to reach out to the educated sectors of that now vast sector of the baptised who no longer practice or listen much to what the institutional leaders have to say. Jointly with them we are seeking to discern the new directions in which the Author of Life seems to be calling God's people away from the power games and the mindless appeasement that seems to be going on towards those who seek certitude in rules and ritual in preference to discerning truth in our personal moral behaviours and the dilemmas of life. (When Jesus invited us to adopt the minds of children, that was not an invitation to adopt the arrested mental, emotional and spiritual development of fourteen year olds still stuck in short pants or bobby sox!) We do seek to reclaim the spirit in the meaning of our faith that was discerned by the collective wisdom of that large group of ordinary men, the bishops, who assembled in Rome for the Second Vatican Council and whose decisions, at virtually every step since, have been countermanded by a small minority of zealots who have stopped at nothing to try and undo the discernment of that collective wisdom discerned by the vast majority of those spiritual leaders.

As well as providing access to new books, we hope the marketplace will develop into a place where our community can sell unwanted books and collector's items and also swap, lend and borrow if your budget does not stretch to an endless supply of new books. As its name implies, we're endeavouring to create a market and community atmosphere with this new dimension to Catholica — not some commercial enterprise where we'll be at you, or anyone, to buy, buy, buy. What we're trying to encourage is for people to think, think, think rather than buy, buy, buy — and to share our stories of how we have made sense of the meaning of our lives and where we are called in our ultimate destination. To achieve our objectives though we do need to pay our writers. Good writing that can build a readership takes much skill and practice. It takes time on the part of those who do it well and they need to earn a living and be reimbursed for the energy and time they put into developing their talents as communicators. We need therefore to raise money to pay them somehow. What we are ultimately hoping is that with a large enough readership the purchase of around one book, cd, dvd, or other item each year by each reader will be enough to make this endeavour sustainable in the economic sense. To make that happen though we need a huge readership — not merely some small group of people patting ourselves on the back, or rutted in that phase of human personal development of endeavouring to please the mummy and daddy planted stereotype ideals before we graduated into long pants or stockings and brassieres. The quest of life is to "please God" — discern what the "will of the Father (the Author of Life) is in each of our lives". The behaviours we exhibit as the core community though are as equally important in building our readership as the work of our lead commentators.

For our weekly readers, you'll see that it has been another great week on Catholica both in terms of the quality of the lead commentaries and in the vigour of the many discussions going on in our forum.
<Link to today's excerpt from Kaiser's novel, "Cardinal Mahony">
<www.catholica.com.au/003_rbk_050909.php

Catholic Schools and the Poor In August last year we published a commentary by Dr Michael Furtado commenting on the legacy of Dr Peter Tannock to Catholic Education in Australia. (See "The Legacy of Dr Tannock" Catholica commentary 14Aug2008 LINK.) Today's commentary by Dr Graham English is partly a response to that and other comments Dr Furtado has made about Catholic Education in this country. Dr English's commentary is an attempt to provide an honest view of the good and bad in what Catholic Education has achieved and is achieving. <more>

How Does God Speak to Us? Today's reflection from Dr Ian Elmer is less about a particular "puzzling passage" and more to do with what is perhaps the most puzzling thing about faith and belief — how does the Author of Life speak to us? What's the Biblical record have to say? What do theologians and popes have to say? Ian ends with a series of questions that provide great fodder for reflection — and discussion. <more>

The Psychology of Priesthood #9 Today's commentary from Tom McMahon is still very much centred around the funeral and good-byes to his seminary classmate, John Monagle. Tom wrote this the day after the funeral and one can almost see him fighting his demons through the words on the page. But what is the cause of his angst? Self-evidently this man is still in love with Jesus — or what Jesus offers to the world. He, and many of his colleagues 'signed on', in quite special ways as 'priests', to spread the good news. Somewhere along the way the scales fell from his eyes, as they have for many, and he started asking where the vision of Jesus parts company with the institutional vision? The death of his friend and colleague leads to some questioning of the ultimate objective: Where is paradise? What does resurrection really mean? <more>

An adult exploration of the meaning of Christian humility… This short series of commentaries from Sr Mary Cresp rsj is taken from her 2005 book "In the Spirit of Joseph" a lengthy journey of self-discovery of the charism that drives the women's orders of religious who look to St Joseph as their patron. The heart of this chapter is an exploration of humility. Mary entitled the Chapter "The spirit of Joseph ... walks humbly". It's far from some insipid pietistic treatise asking for us to be good girls and boys for Jesus. One can tell by reading these words that a lifetime of reflection has gone into their composition and Mary writes in a style that sits very comfortably with the style of adult spirituality readers of Catholica find attractive. <more>

21.2: St Basil the Great A fascinating excerpt today from Tom Lee's study of the Origins of Christianity. The personalities he introduces are all substantial figures in the Christian landscape, beginning with St Basil the Great. Intriguing though is the story of how old seems to be the obsession with things sexual in episcopal thought. Sex is without doubt one of the primal drives in human behaviour — and one that leads many into tangled paths, including some of our priests as the court records today so regularly illustrate. When is the Church — when is society at large — going to finally get the sexual dimension into proper balance with all the other dimensions of being human? <more>

A lifetime spiritual journey #10… A change of pace from Francis today. He shares with us just four poems written between 1997 and 2002 which he sees as expressing a contrast between his experience of hell and resurrection. <more>

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

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher