Saturday, 11 Feb 2012
A great discussion on the meaning of Sacrament today...
Dear Friends,
Now only if we could have far more homilies on Sacramental Theology like the one Peter Dresser brings us in the lead commentary today instead of all the hand-wringing and phrase-squirming we often encounter from hierarchs attempting to evade the hair-splitting and note books of the Pharisees and the Temple Police. Today's excerpt from Fr Peter Dresser's book God is Big. Real BIG! is focussed on a discussion we have been having for a long time here on Catholica: the meaning of Sacrament in today's world. We commend it as an excellent contribution to that wider discussion.
THANKYOU — a good start to our Friends of Catholica 2012 Appeal: Could I also extend thanks for the contributions to our annual Friends of Catholica Appeal which we launched this time last week. In the past week we've received $510 which is a great start along with the starting kitty of $2,224 we held over from last year and received before we formally launched this year's appeal. Our target this year is $40,000 for all the things we'd like to achieve with Catholica this year. That works out around $1.30 per year each for the roughly 30,000 unique vistors our endeavour attracts each month. In other words, if we could get every visitor who reads Catholica each month to donate $1.30 we'd have our budget the year. That is unlikely to happen especially as we want to keep Catholica free to all. However we have what I call a core community of supporters now numbered at around 1,800 people. So if each of you who are members of that core community were able to contribute $22.22 we would also reach our budget almost immediately. We do have a significant proportion of our core supporters though who are on limited incomes in retirement and for other reasons so if anyone can contribute a little extra to make up for those who can't make a financial contribution it is deeply appreciated — by us, and I'm sure by those who would dearly love to contribute but simply can't stretch things further. Since we started Catholica it has been my desire never to hassle anyone for donations and I intend to stick to that policy this year so I'll not make many appeals in the body of our emails but instead just rely on more gentle reminders in the various banners we run at the bottom of emails or on our main website. As always our most heartfelt thanks for any contributions you can make and to those who have started this years appeal. Also thanks for the fabulous discussions on our forum at the moment. As I mentioned a few days ago, in the first eight days of February the visits to our forum were up over 26% compared to the same eight days last year – and they've risen further since then. I think that is a reflection on how stimulating the conversations have been.
<Link to Peter Dresser's commentary on Sacraments...>
www.catholica.com.au/gc0/pd/026_pd_110212.php
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Matthew Fox interviewed by Mark Day… |
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 Mark Day interviews Matthew Fox When Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, few Catholics were aware of the central role he played for decades in reversing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — to restore the Catholic Church to its status as an authoritarian monarchy and a system impervious to change from below. Few authors have told this story as well as Matthew Fox in his new book, The Pope's War. Fox, an outspoken progressive theologian, was forced out of the Dominican Order in 1988 by order of Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith. The author of more than 23 books, Fox continues teaching and exploring the big spiritual questions today. Mark Day interviewed him recently for Catholica <more>
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Fr Daniel Donovan… |
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 A new critique of the new translation... Here's a new three-part critique of the new translation of the Roman Missal — this time looking at the translation in the context of a Funeral Liturgy. In this extensive 3-part analysis, Fr Daniel Donovan, breaks apart the New Text of the Second Eucharistic Prayer. <more>
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Vynette Holliday… |
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 Questioning the understanding of Papal Primacy Part 12... Vynette Holliday returns today to add a few more thoughts to this extended mosaic she's slowly been trying to unravel concerning the origin of our beliefs in the primacies of St Peter and the subsequent popes.. Vynette's analysis is a more detailed academic analysis than many we publish here on Catholica but stick with it and we'll see where this all ends up. <more>
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Tom McMahon – Sunday Mini-series on Mythology… |
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 The mythological aspect of life and belief I Tom McMahon has proposed a new series of mini-commentaries this year, which we propose to run on Sundays. Drawing from the National Geographic book, "Essential Visual History of World Mythology", Tom describes these commentaries as "an experiment that the little boy from 15th Street who happened to become a Catholic priest will offer weekly during the coming months of the year 2012. The issue of religion is humanly complex found in verbal traditions and written texts. Hopefully this series will shed light on the historical human adventure into the realm of the Divine Mystery. All information herein is offered in condensed form, allowing the reader to go into further investigation." <more>
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John Chuchman… |
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 Ponderings of a fellow traveler on Life's Journey 5: Being in Love: There was an article in Zenit yesterday [LINK] asking if it is possible to make the Church's message "brilliant and attractice". Some argued in response that it's no longer possible [LINK]. What John could be thought of as doing in this series is trying to make the Jesus' message "brilliant and attractive". All of us engaged in the process of "pondering" — asking ourselves questions about what it all means; what our own lives mean; how we might better live our lives; or simply "be happy"? These are the sort of questions John Chuchman has been pondering in this series. The connecting central word in last week's ponder, this one today and the two to come in the word "love". <more>
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Wishing you a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life and in our world.
Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher
Catholica
34 Martin Place, LINDEN NSW 2778, Australia
tel: +612 4753 1226
email: editor@catholica.com.au |
