FourCorners 1996 program Twice Betrayed can be googled (Main Forum)

No Brian ....I just got back or I would have said earlier.
I deleted the post ....just cleared the silly one liner is all

I just wanted a clear go for others .....I'll dump this in a minute too

I'm sorry if you had a moment with that Brian ....I'm really a softy when you get to know me.

I don't want to see you have to set up shop up the hall from Julian either ....Catholica will always be yours remember ...where ever you are operating from

Dear all,

I want to express my sorrow to you who had hoped for so much better. I felt ill when i read what had happened to the person whose name i can't remember (please forgive me for that).

I am a catholic of a different sort who longs for the time when we will all dance in our charismatic colours in God's wonderful garden seeing each other as G-D sees us - and not as an other to be exploited.

Shalom - Peace be to you, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ - its only source.

Ian and all, I increasingly sense we are at some epoch-changing moment in religion — and not just Catholicism. As I've argued recently the clerical abuse scandal is not the cause of this crisis — it's either a symptom, or it's the trigger that has started to bring the whole house down (or perhaps a combination of the two).

Earlier on Sunday night on SBS television there was a fascinating program that chronicled epoch-changing religious beliefs five thousand years ago in Ancient Britain. Here's the blurb from the SBS website:

A History Of Ancient Britain

Neil Oliver explores a newly-discovered 5,000-year-old temple on the Orkney Islands. Built 500 years before the iconic monument of Stonehenge, the temple is opening new windows onto the beliefs of Neolithic people, turning the map of ancient Britain upside down. Already the site is revealing a series of incredible finds including the first ever discovery of Neolithic painted wall decorations, and even the pigments and paint pots used by Stone Age artists.

Part of the contention in the program, drawn from the archeological evidence, is that a set of religious beliefs that had endured for around a thousand years underwent a dramatic change part way through and the evidence for this is reflected in the new style of temple building that emerged atop of the earlier buildings. These sites in the Orkney Islands predate Stonehenge by about 500 years. The program was a fascinating watch quite apart from any parallels one might draw to what seems to be happening today.

I sense we (society) are in, or at the beginning of, some massive mind-shift about this entire God and religious belief business. The very fact that over the course of around a century the great majority of people in the educated, Western world have simply ceased participating is one sign of it — and a major one. I think our ideas of the role of priesthood are changing and how we worship/engage liturgically. It's all too much for the troglodytes and neanderthals but, in the final analysis, they will not stand against the march of history and time.

What will emerge out of all this who yet knows? I am personally very optimistic though. I continue to believe Jesus Christ was one of the great prophetic figures of human history. More than that though I also continue to believe he was somehow an embodiment of deep, accumulated wisdom about how we navigate the mountains and valleys of this great adventure we call "life". I don't believe he was some kind of magician in our lives though — if we pray to him he'll do favours for us. The importance of Jesus is in understanding his story and seeing how the lessons contained in it translate into the challenges we face today, or that any people have faced at any time in history. Jesus, I continue to believe, is a person/figure who "transcends time". His story — whether it was literally given to him by God, or whether it is something that has been draped on his figure by some of the great seers of history — ultimately doesn't matter. What matters, it seems to me, is the modelling his story provides as to how we can scale any mountain, or travel through any deep valley, and find equilibrium or peace in our spirit.

I feel deeply for all the people who have been abused or ended up with some "short straw" in this ballot we call life. I've been hurt myself by what some of life has thrown up in my path. So has my wife. For many justice is literally impossible to obtain (and I again refer to the case of Ciara and Dennis Glennon who lost their daughter to the Claremont serial killer who has never been found. Their outlook was a massive comfort to me though the worst of my own troubles.) For various reasons it was impossible for me to find justice also – and I recognized that fairly early on, thank God. Amanda too could not find "justice" simply because the person who had raped her died. In some ways I think we are better off when we can't blame anyone for the mishaps we suffer in life. That is not to discount the responsibility we very often carry to ensure the perpetrator of some transgression is caught so that they are not able to do the same to others. The critical thing for all of us though is to simply find both "peace" or "equilibrium" in our lives and a place from which we can "start again" without, as far as possible, continually being dragged back by whatever occurred in our past and having to re-live it like some endless newsreal in our heads. I haven't yet found how to do that fully in my own life but I sense it is "the pathway to eventual peace and fulfillment in our lives".

I thought these were the things Jesus was there to teach us. Today I sense the leaders in our church have moved a long, long way from what Jesus was there to teach us in our lives. Reading Kaiser's book has been the final straw for me watching the petty ecclesial politics played out by "little men" like this Alfredo Ottaviani and the Jesuit John Ford that completely trashed the "movement of the spirit" and "the quest for ultimate truth" that seemed to motivate the actions of the other people who were assembled to find answers to an important question for the future of humanity. That tragedy today is compounded because the present ecclesial leaders are still stuck in this rut of fear about admitting that our popes are not infallible. This is a church not driven by some question to discover the great truths of life but instead is trying to appease and tuck up in bed the insecure by pretending all the great "truths" were discovered centuries ago or are mediated to humankind through the agency exclusively of some poor bugger sitting in Rome who is perceived to be the "official channel" of Divine communication to humankind. The proposition looks increasingly absurd just judged on the behaviours of our two most recent pontiffs — even just over their responses to the single issue of Marcial Maciel Degollado. Benedict sending him off to "prayer and penance" in some monastery was the equivalent of a slap on the wrist given the harm he did both to individuals and to an entire institution.

The SBS documentary can be viewed here for the next 15 days or on SBS at the link below:

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Cathy Taggart

I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused. - James Broughton

Words are just inadequate (impossible at the moment, actually).