The current crisis facing the Catholic Church arising out of sexual abuse is arguably the most serious challenge the Church has faced since the Reformation in the 16th Century.
The response must in the first instance be clearly focussed on the victims of such abuse, their families and other secondary victims.

You have been told that I am a church historian… I write about dead Catholics. For the past 20 years the writing I’ve most enjoyed doing is short biographical sketches – no more than 750 words – that go into magazines. A dozen years ago I put 70 or 80 of these into a book. The latest government statistics tell me that this book is still in hundreds of school libraries, so teachers must still find it useful. This year I hope to do another collection of those sketches.
What sort of people will be there? Let me tell you about three of them.

Can inclusion of people with disabilities be a hobby? Recently I left a meeting of church people with the impression that those at the meeting saw that inclusion of people with disabilities was a hobby or the domain of one person’s apostolate. That person was me. After all, it could be said, I was appointed by the Archbishop.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, known as Good Shepherd Sunday, is especially apt for focusing on the sacramental priesthood and encouraging vocations to the Priesthood.
However, this year having endured the continuing media focus on sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and the concerted attention given to the Pope following the publication of the inquiry findings into the Archdiocese of Dublin, promoting vocations to the Priesthood was particularly challenging.

Eliot’s famous mystical poems The Four Quartets often commend the journey towards spiritual nourishment as the essential journey of any human being. I do not pretend to understand Eliot’s mysticism. But I do recognize the need to go on trying even if our aim is never here to be realized. It seems to me that while this can be said of any individual, it is also seen within the life of our Church community as The Pilgrim People of God. There is much in our Church community that is life-giving and vibrant and reflects the Kingdom of God. But there is much that falls short of the kind of community that Jesus had in mind and we have seen plenty of evidence of that in recent years especially.

It was really difficult finding photos to include in our new publication, A Short History of the NCP by Damien Williams, which will be launched at the 2010 Convention Dinner. If you have photos that you would be willing to forward to NCP for our archives, we would appreciate your help!

Susan Phillips during her recent Sydney workshop, Issues of Suffering and Theodicy in Patient Care, shared her experience of pain and suffering as she and her husband were sitting with their new born child they were told was close to death. She also noted that some responses by well meaning people were less than helpful.

In Geelong we love our football and this was particularly evident at the first home game for 2010 where a capacity crowd paid tribute to Tom Harley, the retiring Premiership Captain, for his leadership both on and off the field. Ten days later nearly 400 people gathered for a dinner reception to pay tribute to the team captains of the Geelong Catholic community – the priests – 17 of whom were our guests of honour for the evening.

On Thursday 5 June, together with two local Anglican priests and some members of our three parishes, I travelled by bus convoy to Canberra for a Rally in support of Sheikh Mansour Leghaei.

As a migrant priest I came to Australia with some experience of the Polish Movement of Married Couples (Light and Life – Married Couples Teams). Both my parents and my brother and his wife participated in the movement. Usually I was invited as an old school friend or the son of the team members to celebrate Eucharist or to lead retreats for a team.