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Western Australia’s award-winning Catholic newspaper since 1874 - Wednesday 20 January 2009
Perth, Western Australia $2
Men need post-abortion help too A Perth pro-life organisation has initiated a new approach to those often forgotten in the abortion debate: men
Cardinals at odds as Julie Cook
BY ROBERT HIINI ParishReporter ABORTION Grief Australia (AGA) has announced that is making moves to provide postabortion grief counselling to men for the first time. Partnering with BaptistCare’s Pathways Counselling, AGA will provide training in the nature and treatment of post-abortion trauma in men with a view to eventually establishing a men’s crisis line, in conjunction with local men’s organisations. The training is expected to take place in February; something, the organisation hopes to make a regular part of its training services. AGA’s founder and director, Julie Cook says that there are currently no effective therapy programmes for men experiencing abortion trauma and that, as is the case for post-abortive women, it is extremely difficult for men to get the help they need. The causes lie in the dearth of recognition and training amongst health professionals, Ms Cook says; a situation AGA has spent the past 25 years, since its inception, trying to rectify. Despite growing international research linking abortion to increased risk of suicide, depression, post traumatic stress disorder and relationship problems and the existence of 24 published studies linking abortion to substance abuse the prevailing politics of abortion, on both sides of the spectrum, mean that many health professionals who recognise the symptoms do not get the training and support they need to help clients. Despite the absence of dedicated services for men, one fifth of all calls to AGA’s abortion grief help line come from men. Ms Cook recounted one incidence when a man rang the help line claiming to be suicidal and holding a gun to his head. He had been party to three abortions but said he was unsure as to why, in desperation, he had rang an abortion grief helpline. “It was when the next pregnancy he was involved in was brought to Please turn to Page 5
DEBATE ON MEDJUGORJE HEATS UP
The debate over the legitimacy of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje has been revived after an Austrian Cardinal said that private Medjugorje visits bring good results; while the local Mostar Bishop said the Cardinal broke Church etiquette with his own personal visit to his diocese. VATICAN CITY (CNS) - After visiting Medjugorje, the site of alleged Marian apparitions in BosniaHerzegovina, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said the Church must recognise that private pilgrimages to the village result in prayer and reconciliation. But Bishop Ratko Peric of MostarDuvno, the diocese that includes Medjugorje, said the Cardinal’s very public pilgrimage “has added new sufferings” to those already present in his diocese and did “not contribute to its much needed peace and unity.” Cardinal Schönborn visited Medjugorje from 29 December-1 January in what his office described as a “private pilgrimage”. He visited one of the young adults who claimed they began receiving messages from Mary in 1981 and he celebrated Mass in local parishes. He told Vatican Radio’s German programme on 4 January that it was up to the universal Church to determine whether or not the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje are supernatural, but he also said it was clear that Medjugorje is a place of prayer, reconciliation and faith-based acts of charity. “The pilgrims do one thing above all: they pray,” he said during the broadcast. Each day thousands of people recite the Psalms together, spend time adoring the Eucharist, meditate on the Stations of the Cross and pray the Rosary, he said. Medjugorje also is “a place where people have rediscovered confession,” he said. However, another senior Cardinal has weighed into the revived debate over the alleged Marian apparitions, with the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints expressing skepticism about their authenticity. Speaking in careful language, Cardinal José Saraiva Martins told the Italian website Petrus that he would await the official verdict of the Church regarding the apparitions. However, he said that it was a mistake to assume that displays of piety at Medjugorje are a sign of authenticity. “Just because people convert in this place, it is not given that the Madonna is appearing,” he said, observing that conversions take place regularly in ordinary parish churches. The Cardinal also voiced misgivings about the alleged messages from the Virgin Mary instructing the Medjugorje “seers” to disregard orders from their Bishop. Please turn to Page 2