Known as a workaholic, a moderating force and a conservative, without being reactionary, that didn't stop Cardinal Clancy having his share of disagreements with Rome.

In fact, he once told a young priest heading for Rome to study to "trust nobody".

This didn't stop that young priest being an Australian archbishop today.

An obituary article written by a former editor of Sydney's Catholic Weekly, Kerry Myers, described some of Clancy's battles with Rome.

The Vatican once intervened in a project Clancy had authorised - the setting up of a heroin injecting room run by the Sisters of Charity from a Catholic hospital.

Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ordered the sisters to drop the scheme after strident protests from a number of conservative Catholics.

While the cardinal took Rome's decision "on the chin", one priest close to him said he took the rebuke personally, but that did not stop him publicly siding with Rome.

But after a 1999 bishops' Oceania Synod in Rome, a Statement of Conclusions reprimanded Australia's bishops over a perceived crisis of faith and religious practice in their nation.

Speaking to ABC radio on his retirement in 2001, Clancy expressed frustration at the reception the bishops got from Rome.

"I came away feeling that our brethren in Rome didn't fully understand the situation in real life as we have it here," he said.

" . . . there's a certain Australian egalitarianism that other people often misread and misunderstand, and also an openness."

During his tenure, Cardinal Clancy also decided to divide Sydney archdiocese into three dioceses for pastoral reasons.

And it was his support, especially in Rome, that resulted in the eventual canonisation of Australia's first saint, Mary MacKillop.

He was Archbishop of Sydney from 1983 to 2001, when he retired.

Previously he had been Archbishop of Canberra Goulburn and was also an auxiliary bishop in Sydney.

President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference from 1986 to 2000, he received the cardinal's red hat in 1988.

In 1992 he was made a Companion in the Order of Australia for service to religion, learning and the disadvantaged in the community.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Australian Associated Press
• Image: Sydney Morning Herald

The Rural Financial Counselling Service reported recently that the number of rural people within Western Australia succumbing to internet pornography addiction, drug use and depression, is growing. Research shows internet pornography addiction to be a rapidly growing problem across Australia and overseas.

In the United States, internet pornography addiction is a factor cited in 50% of divorces. Increasingly too, young people are needing psychological therapy to help with relating and sexuality problems.

This is an important issue for parishes and for individual Catholics, for we exist as a Church to continue the mission of Jesus. Those in need were Jesus' priority, and internet pornography addicts certainly are people in need. We need to help them if we can - especially by inviting them to seek Christ's help.

I have written elsewhere about pornography actors as victims. The focus of this Pastoral Letter is on:

 How Christ can help
 The effects of pornography on an addicted person's brain
 Deepening in personal relationship with Christ
 How Christ seeks to help through his Church
 How Christ seeks to help through the Christian.

1. How can Christ help?
Many today would think that Catholic faith has nothing to offer the internet pornography addict. Yet, as for other Christians, Jesus Christ for Catholics is the Son of God and Saviour (the word ‘salvation' deriving from the Latin word for ‘healing').

He offers salvation from all in us that is not of God. This includes internet pornography addiction.

The human need for salvation

The general human need for salvation becomes clear when we remember that God originally created human beings in relationship with their Creator. Empowered by this relationship, our first parents experienced harmony within, harmony with each other and harmony with the rest of creation. 1
This situation changed when our first parents succumbed to Satan's temptation to reject their relationship with God. Instead of accepting their dependence on the Creator who created them to love, they desired to be equal - wanting to be ‘like gods'.

They rejected the God who gave them even life itself.
Now their original relationship with God was destroyed. Their original experiences of harmony were replaced by inner division, social division and division between themselves and the rest of creation.

These are the experiences of ‘original sin'.
The root of the divided human nature with which we are born. As a result, the ‘control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered'.

Ever since, people have experienced inner conflicts.
For example, our experience today is of selfishness conflicting with love; judgementalness with compassion; and confusion with truth. At times emotions weaken the will and cause intellectual confusion. Relationships between men and women can be damaged by lust.

Internet pornography addiction is one of the symptoms of this inner division.
The will is weakened by lust, desires and increasing neurological dysfunction (as we will see). This addiction is a consequence of efforts to escape life problems through fantasy.

There is no other way of restoring genuine and long term inner harmony than by the healing of the human relationship with God. People need Christ's salvation.

Christ as Saviour

The whole Christian message is about Christ as Saviour. In the context of this Letter, we can only recall key points relevant to the topic of internet pornography addiction.

First, Jesus began revealing himself as saviour by miracles. For example, he cured the sick, freed cripples to walk, restored sight to the blind. These examples were visible signs to show his power to the healing, liberating and giving new sight. His power showed Jesus to be establishing the kingdom of God in the world. By his miracles, Jesus was showing his power to be greater than the kingdom of Satan. Everything in creation not of God was a symptom of Satan's influence.
This included all forms of sin, human suffering, disharmony and death. In revealing that his power could conquer Satan, Jesus described Satan as the great deceiver, the ‘father of lies'. Satan's greatest successes today are those people who have been deceived into imagining that Satan does not exist - as is common in modern Australian society.
Jesus taught that he had come to redeem all people from the power of Satan. All who commit sin are ‘slaves' to the sin. Jesus would redeem them by dying on a cross, giving his life ‘as a ransom for many'.

Second, Jesus revealed that he had come to share ‘eternal life' - the life of God - with all who believed in him. He, with God the Father and the Spirit, would ‘make a home' in them.

Jesus fulfilled these promises by his resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

By his resurrection, Jesus empowers believers today to live as he taught. Through Baptism, we ‘share the divine nature'.

We share the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
Third, Jesus left a number of means for members of the community of his followers, whom he referred to as his ‘church', to draw on his power for their lives.

These means include the seven sacraments, the Eucharist being the most important. As we do so today, the influence of the divine grows within us. The influence of Satan, including the power of internet pornography addiction, weakens.

We accept Christian salvation by entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He taught us how to pray, to worship and to live to do this. As we relate personally with Jesus as Saviour, our relationship with God is healed. Jesus' power also strengthens our souls' spiritual faculties so that inner harmony and harmony with others is restored. Continue reading

Sources

• Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference Media Blog
• Image: Novus

The report noted that the Truth, Justice and Healing Council was established last January by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Catholic Religious Australia to prepare documents and legal submissions for the royal commission and review the church's existing abuse protocols.

It is chaired by retired NSW supreme court judge Barry O'Keefe, with former general secretary of the Australian Medical Association Francis Sullivan as its chief executive and media face.

The Guardian report said that although two of its 13 members are bishops - Mark Coleridge, the archbishop of Brisbane; and William Wright, the bishop of Maitland-Newcastle - the TJH Council has been promoted from the outset as a lay-dominated organisation operating at arm's length from the hierarchy, and its own press releases describe it as an "independent advisory group".

But the report added that the council is "tightly controlled" by a separate 11-member "supervisory group" made up of bishops and heads of religious orders. The existence of this second body is referred to in the TJH Council's terms of reference, but its size and membership have never been made public.

The report said documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal that supervisory group is chaired by the archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, who is also chairman of the bishops' conference.

Other members include the archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell; Coleridge; the archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson; the archbishop of Perth, Timothy Costelloe; bishop Eugene Hurley of Darwin; bishop Peter Ingham of Wollongong; and bishop Christopher Prowse of Sale. Sister Anne Derwin RSJ, Sister Annette Cunliffe RSC, and Father Tony Banks OSA represent the religious orders.

Source

The Guardian

Image: AAP Image/The Guardian

This is a record that has already prompted other inquiries here and overseas.

It would indeed be wrong to ignore the failings of other churches and secular institutions as recent events in Britain have revealed, most notably, the lax performance of the BBC in the scandalous behaviour of their pin-up star, Jimmy Savile over decades of impunity in abusing children.

The tentacles of this scandal have reached to a variety of other secular institutions, including children's homes and hospitals. The terms of the Australian inquiry , as announced by the federal government, have reasonably addressed such concerns by including institutions other than the Catholic Church in the Commission's remit. Closed institutional power over the vulnerable, wherever it exists, is a key factor in the perpetuation of abusive conditions.

Even so, the Catholic Church has and continues to have major problems dealing with this issue of clerical sexual abuse, and virtually every day produces new evidence in a variety of countries, not only of abuse by clergy, but of negligence, cover-up, concealment, and deceit that have contributed to dreadful injustice to victims.

Significantly, these problems have combined with other tensions and stresses within the church to expose an even deeper crisis in the church's structures and doctrines, and have contributed to a broad disaffection of laity and significant sections of the clergy with the church's leadership and its exercise of authority. In Ireland, for example, the previous widespread attitudes of respect and deference towards church authorities and institutions have almost entirely disappeared, conspicuously amongst the young, but even dramatically amongst the older generations.

The sex abuse crisis has crystallised for many Catholics an alienation from church structures and authority that began with the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae of 1968 reasserting the standard ban on artificial contraception. Continue reading

Sources

• Tony Coady in The Conversation
• Image: The Australian

Tony Coady is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. He is a Catholic.

At the end of their twice-yearly conference in Sydney, the bishops said they had formed a supervisory group of representatives from the bishops' conference and Catholic Religious Australia.

They said this group would establish and oversee the 10-member Council for the Royal Commission.

The conference president, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, said the new council would help the Church engage closely with the commission and the community.

He said expert lay people, including those with expertise in the care of sex abuse victims, would be on the council but he did not give any names.

"We need broad-based expertise so that the church together can face the truth, can provide a better response to the care of victims and also make Australia a safer place for our children," he said.

The bishops' statement welcomed the establishment of the royal commission.

"It is an opportunity for those who have suffered to obtain a compassionate hearing, justice and further healing," the bishops said.

"It is also an opportunity for the Church's processes to be scrutinised with greater objectivity. This will allow further refinements that seek justice and pastoral care.

"However imperfectly, this work has been going on in the Catholic Church for the last two decades. It will continue.

"Once again, we renew our heartfelt apology to those whose lives have been so grievously harmed by the evil perpetrated upon them by some priests, religious and church personnel . . . .

"Our hope is that, in its search for truth, the royal commission will present recommendations ensuring the best possible standards of child protection in our country," the bishops said.

"Painful and difficult as this might be for the Church, it is nothing compared to the hurt of those who have suffered sexual abuse, particularly by clergy and religious."

Sources:

Catholic Church in Australia

SBS

Sydney Morning Herald

Image: Press TV

"A committee is being formed — I don't know all the details about it — but there is going to be a process where there are a number of people, a larger number of people, who are not religious or bishops, who are involved in taking the process forward," said Sister Annette Cunliffe, RSC.

"They are the experts. The bishops and archbishops and ourselves are not as skillful and perhaps we're too close to the problem,"

Sister Annette is president of Catholic Religious Australia, which represents the leaders of 180 religious orders and congregations. She was speaking in an ABC television interview.

Her organisation earlier joined the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference in welcoming Prime Minister Julia Gillard's establishment of a royal commission to investigate child abuse in Australia.

Sister Annette described recent public statements by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, as too defensive and said a new way in dealing with abuse claims was needed to move forward.

"I think I hope that we are looking at greater openness and less defensiveness, so that we can open this crime to the light of day to what God would want of truth and honesty," she said.

Sister Annette said it was time for a new era in the Catholic Church where families no longer felt betrayed, and those doing good work for the poor and disadvantaged could hold their heads up high again.

"Hopefully [this will be] the beginning of a new era of openness and of collaboration within the whole Church to ensure that as far as possible, this does not happen again."

Sources:

ABC

Catholic Religious Australia

Image: ABC

The often talked about nexus between marriage, the family, and the Catholic Church makes this seem an extraordinary figure. If marriage and the family are so important in Catholic teaching, are we talking about a 50 per cent failure rate?

No. Family life is often thought to be the norm, but that is not correct. It holds no value in itself but it is an often fruitful means to a morally good life. Many mature age 'devout' Catholics who find themselves single and without families have been conditioned by their upbringing to write themselves off as failures. But their marital status, or how many children they have, is not the measure of success or failure. Read more

Sources

• Michael Mullins in Eureka Street
• See also CathNews NZ Pacific
• Image: Forgiveness Ministries

Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street.

It is in the heart of the family that life comes into being. In the heart of the family the joys, hopes, sorrows and worries of life are shouldered and shared. This intimate community provides our first experience of love, rejoicing when a child is born, educating and guiding little ones as they grow. It is where we learn the importance of sharing, overcoming disagreements and offering forgiveness. In the family we learn compassion and care for those who are ill, in need or in trouble. In the family we draw on the wisdom of generations and pass on the faith. These are some of the aspects of family life that each person longs for and that prepare us to take our place in society and meet life's challenges.

Families can be a beacon for a more compassionate and just society. Through the words and actions of their parents, a child will learn and emulate either an attitude of selfish insularity or an outlook of openness, kindness and inclusion. A child's heart will be richly blessed by a family's spirituality that teaches a genuine reverence for all people as sons and daughters of God. Nurturing a family is a vocation, and not an easy one. It requires commitment, sacrifice, love and generosity of spirit. In this Year of Grace, we celebrate and thank God for the gift of families. The
family is the domestic Church, the basis of our community of faith. In the family we see the expression of God's love and the unique gifts of the Spirit to be fostered in each member so that each can contribute to the common good by serving and sharing with others. Read more

Sources

• The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference Social Justice Statement 2012 — 2013
• Andrew Hamilton in Eureka Street
• Image: Drama Beans

Three-quarters the size of the United States, Australia is mainly uninhabited except along its coastline. While the U.S. shelters close to 313 million people, latest Australian census statistics report only 22 million persons on the continent's nearly 3 million square miles.

Australia's Christians — mainly descendants of 18th-century British settlers and Irish convicts, and of later émigrés from Germany and Italy — comprise 61 percent of the population. Australia's newest immigrants continue arriving from the United Kingdom and Italy, but also from New Zealand, China, India, Vietnam and the Phillippines. Read more

Sources

• Phyllis Zagano in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Panoramio

Phyllis Zagano is a Catholic scholar and lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women's issues in the church.

The Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has released financial estimates that reveal it would cost just under a billion dollars to process asylum seekers on Nauru over the next four years.

He's labelled it an expensive and ineffective option

Australia's Government will try instead to change the law so asylum seekers can again be processed at offshore centres such as Manus Island and Nauru.

The Government insists the decision will fulfill Australia's obligations under the United Nations convention.

After the Australian High Court decision to grant a permanent injunction against the deportation of asylum seekers to Malaysia the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) spokesman Bishop Gerard Hanna on behalf of the Church offered to work with the Australian Government to find a more appropriate way of dealing with asylum seekers.

"The High Court has held that Australia must continue to process claims of any asylum seeker who arrives here," he said.

"But now is not a time for celebration or recrimination".

"Rather, now is the time for all people of good will to work together to find a better way of dealing with asylum seekers."

Leaders of Australia's major charities and social service groups have been joined by many other concerned organisations to sign a statement urging all political parties and Members of Parliament to de-politicise policies about the treatment of asylum seekers by immediately abandoning the policy of off-shore processing and focusing on policies that uphold Australia's human rights obligations domestically and internationally.

Source

• Radio Australia
• The Catholic Leader
• Image: Connect.in.com