catholicweekly.com.au 17 28, June, 2020 E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to:
[email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Catholic Weekly columnist tells it like it really is I ’m so proud of Monica Doumit’s truthful and accurate reflections on the attempted, obvious and large scale take-downs of so many decent things in the world. You don’t have to search far to see examples of ‘lawfare,’ where the legal pursuit of someone causes heartache and financial pain. Glad to see courageous truth tellers are still about and may God protect her in these unusual times. Michael Bernhardt Randwick NSW Letters attacking opinion writer weren’t convincing T hree letters published last week (following on from one in the June 14 edition) were all extremely dis- paraging of Dr. Kevin Donnelly and his opinion piece of the week before. In contrast, I found myself in com- plete agreement with his comments and was somewhat surprised at the degree of outrage expressed by the individuals concerned. To ensure I hadn’t missed anything I re-read Dr Donnelly’s article to ascertain whether the letter writers had success- fully argued their case. I concluded they had not. Regardless of what one thought of Dr Donnelly’s essay I was struck by the calls to ‘‘take the article down”, that it was ‘‘un- worthy of your publication”, ‘‘entirely in- appropriate for The Catholic Weekly to be publishing something like this’’ and that one is ‘‘ashamed that you would allow this to happen’’. A dispiriting aspect of the culture wars now raging throughout Western soci- ety is the absolute determination to shut down and obliterate views that go against the politically correct zeitgeist. Refusing to thoughtfully engage with an opinion different from our own is un- likely to help us strengthen our argu- ments or develop our minds. Joseph O’Sullivan Batemans Bay NSW Remember the plight of Zimbabwe’s widows W idows in Zimbabwe face im- mense challenges. Some are HIV positive and are suspect- ed to have been infected by partners; relatives abandon and desert them. They have no source of income yet must become bread winners in a country with staggering inflation, massive unem- ployment and an economy that is contin- ual rapid collapse with no end in sight. Some of them are forged to engage in illegal activities such as selling drugs or prostitution. The ZANU PF government should take responsibility for supporting widows in Zimbabwe, giving them access to land and scrapping school fees. President Mnangagwa should admit he has failed the country and should change his strat- egies or otherwise resign. Tapiwa Muskwe Stockwell, London UK One can’t sniff at Advisory Group’s report or authors I haven’t read all of the Independent Advisory Group’s Governance report (which is heavy going). But I can’t help praising it for its scope and attempt to make reasonable and feasible recom- mendations. One can’t sniff at the credibility of the authors, who were selected by the Aus- tralian Bishops. Sadly, perhaps, the Church may well continue to decline in numbers (rath- er dramatically, I feel, over the next 20 years) only to be re-born as a smaller, more Jesus-centric rather than a pow- er-based community or ‘elitist organisa- tion.’ Name and address supplied A curious omission in the #BlackLivesMatter view F urther to your editorial “Do Black Lives really Matter to protest- ers?” ( Catholic Weekly 14 June) those who support the Black Lives Matter movement don’t seem to be too concerned about the number of black children killed by abortion in the US. In 2008, according to Susan Cohen of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, black women had nearly five times as many abortions as white women. In a US study titled Abortion Surveil- lance – United States, 2016 by the Cen- tres for Disease Control and Prevention, it was reported that “non-Hispanic black women” had 401 abortions per 1,000 live births while “non Hispanic white women” had 109 abortions per 1,000 live births. Even though there has been a de- crease since 2008, black women were still aborting at 3.7 times that of white wom- en. This has been termed by some “geno- cide, but where is the outrage? Chris Rule Gilmore ACT Watch The Chosen. You won’t regret it W hy – and how – are a group US evangelical Christians doing a better job of the new evan- gelisation than the Catholic Church with all its authority, its material wealth, its adminis- tration and human resources on a global scale? The ques- tion may strike Catholics – and evangelical Christians – as surprising, or as a surprising admission. Yet in one instance it seems to be actually true. Any Catholic who watches the current first season of the television series The Chosen , which is available either via its own app or on YouTube, cannot avoid thinking something along these lines. Every- one, absolutely everyone, Christian, non-Christian, agnos- tics and atheists, should watch this dramatised version of the life of Christ. Catholics need to reflect on the question which begins this column or, to put it another way, it’s a question we cannot avoid. The eight-episode series, the brainchild of American di- rector Dallas Jenkins and colleagues and which was first filmed in 2017, was livestreamed this year globally over the eight days leading up to Easter Sunday. To millions of people in a rapidly-growing global audience which undoubtedly in- cludes huge numbers of Catholics, it has come as a revela- tion. In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic it has also come as an inspiration, something which lifts people everywhere out of the worries created by the pandemic and its associated suffering. It helps people to have faith and to believe in the love of God in extraordinary ways. It inspires. It turns our eyes back to God and to His Son. The series is based on the Gospels but dramatises the known events of Christ’s life. Because it is a mix of drama and Scripture, much is added which is obviously a fiction- al imagining of the background and surrounding events of the personalities and world of Jesus. But the makers are not attempting in any way to imply that the drama they portray (with the obvious exception of what is known from Scrip- ture) is documentary truth. The Chosen is simply an attempt to bring the events of the comparatively sparse language of the Gospels alive and to introduce anyone who watches it to the person of Jesus through the eyes of those who knewHim. It shows the effect He had on all those He encountered. This is drama inspired by the word of God. To think that something like The Chosen would be so suc- cessful in today’s worldmight well seem as highly unlikely to many. There’s not much that’s really impressive in either Catholic or Christian efforts in recent decades to communi- cate the central premise of Christian faith and the person of Jesus in the powerful forum of setting of drama that is actu- ally successful. Despite the anti-culture which has come to predominate almost universally in entertainment andmedia in the last half-century or more, Christian efforts to use the means of communication to propose our faith to the world – with the exception of productions such as The Passion of the Christ - have been undoubtedly well-intentioned but ama- teurish, devotional, cheesy, oftenmediocre and largely un- impressive. For Catholics this is strange. After all, the Second Vatican Council (intuiting, we assume under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) ended up devoting one of its 16 documents – Inter Mirifica - to the means of communications, including not just the pervasive news media but other means such as cinema as well. Inter Mirifica is really telling us that we have a duty to, as far as we can, to use the newmeans of commu- nication in the service of the Gospel. Yet we have not been good at it. American Bishop Robert Barron, however, is one outstanding exception to that rule. His various forays into documentary and the web are remarkable examples of us- ing the new digital agora of the 21st Century to proclaim the truth of Jesus and to witness to Him. This editorial began urging people of faith or no faith at all to watch The Chosen . But there are many more who should make the effort to absorb its beautifully-crafted portrayals - the lonely, the abused, the addicted, the hurting, the sad, the ill and the suffering among them. It has been a long time since something like The Chosen appeared in the midst of a world hurting as much as ours and to encounter it is a joy. So congratulations to a coalition of evangelical Christians who decided, we assume guided by the Holy Spirit, to use the power of imagination and dramatic art to lend a freshness and a sense of rediscovery and urgency to our experience of faith. For too long so many of we Christians - Catholics included - have allowed ourselves to take our lifelong faith for granted. We Catholics can learn a thing or two from our evangelical brothers and sisters who have crafted such a joy- filled way to remind us what we have so often forgotten: that we did not choose God. He chose us. And we belong to Him. LETTERS