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HONDA
Brian Gardner’s
AUGUST General: That the European Union may draw new impulse from the Christian heritage which has always been an essential part of its culture and history.
HONDA NORTH
Missionary: For ever greater unity and cooperation among Institutes working in the missions.
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Men and women, the way ahead together Men and women created equal in the image and likeness of God is the unchangeable basis of all Christian understanding of people and society, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This equality and difference were the heart of the Congregation’s letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church “On the collaboration of men and women in the Church and in the world”, which was released in Rome last Saturday, July 31. The letter was published for the Congregation by its Prefect Cardinal Ratzinger and Secretary Bishop Angelo Amato SDB with the approval of Pope John Paul II. The letter drew deeply on the meaning of the Genesis accounts of creation to show that from the beginning humanity is described as being in a male-female relationship. “This is the humanity, sexually differentiated, which is explicitly declared ‘the image of God’,” the letter said. The accounts of the separate creation of man and woman emphasised that in the loneliness of Adam only the woman, “created from the same ‘flesh’ and cloaked in the same mystery can give a future to the life of man”. God’s creation of woman characterised humanity as a “relational reality”. The living out of the rela-
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Adam and Eve are shown fleeing the Garden of Eden in this detail from a stained glass window. The Vatican’s document on relations between the sexes has received unexpectedly favourable response from many commentators. tionship in which two become ‘one flesh’ emphasised that from the beginning man and woman were called not only to exist side by side but also to exist mutually ‘one for the other’. Both in individual relationships and in humanity itself there was to be an integration of what is masculine and what is feminine.
Holohan issues Pastoral Bishop Gerard Holohan of Bunbury issued a pastoral letter in mid-July reaffirming the importance of the Eucharist in the life and worship of the Church and setting out changes which will be introduced for congregations in his Diocese. He said some other changes would also affect clergy and schools but that his pastoral letter focused only on those affecting congregations. The pastoral is reproduced as a special 4-page liftout in this week’s centre pages of The Record. While change could sometimes be difficult to accept it was important to focus on the reasons for the change, he pointed out. Changes which had, at least partially, crept in had obscured Christ’s intention when He insti-
tuted the Eucharist, he wrote. In the letter Bishop Holohan invites deeper reflection by posing questions to parishioners about how they prepare for and participate in the celebration of the Eucharist. He pointed out that his pastoral letter follows on from Ecclesia de Eucharistica, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical of 2003 on the Eucharist in the life of the Church, and from the document issued earlier this year by the Vatican, The Sacrament of the Redemption. This second document spelled out some practices or abuses that had crept into celebration of the Eucharist in recent decades and which need to be changed to ensure the proper celebration of the Liftout - Pages 7-10 Sacrament.
The peace and love of the original relationship was distorted by original sin. When the man and the woman denied the difference between God and mankind by disobeying him, the way they lived their sexual difference was also upset. This gave rise to a relationship that frequently killed love and
Caritas calls donations for Bangladesh Caritas Australia has launched an appeal to fund relief efforts following floods in Bangladesh. 20 million people have been affected; 40 per cent of the country is submerged in floodwater; diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases are rife in flood-affected areas. Australians wishing to help this relief effort can phone Caritas on 1800 024 413 or go to the aid agency’s website at www.caritas.org.au to make an online donation. ● Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez SDB,
the first cardinal in history from Honduras, will be speaking for Caritas on Wednesday 1st September at 8pm at Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle. See also - Page 13
replaced it with self-seeking and domination of one sex over another, leading to individual and social injustices. Modern attempts to redress these problems had given rise to new problems. One was to emphasise strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in
order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This led to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which had its most immediate and lethal affects in the structure of the family. A second tendency was to deny or minimise the essential differences between male and female, and although intended to promote equality for women had in reality called into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and made homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent. “In the face of these currents of thought, the Church, enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes precisely in recognition of the difference between man and woman. In seeking healing of past and present divisions, the letter reminds the world that sexuality characterises man and woman at the physical, psychological and spiritual levels. It is a fundamental component of personality and of the ways of expressing life and love. Throughout the Old Testament, God repeatedly descrContinued - Page 2 Theology of Body spreads - Page 3
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The representative’s friend What ST THOMAS MORE offers politicians in an Page 16 election year