The Catholic Weekly 12 July 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 5 12, July, 2020 Celebrating loved ones for over 90 years Trevor Lee & Son is a family business that has helped families celebrate and remember their loved ones for over 90 years. ♦ Intimate and personal funeral services ♦ Professional, compassionate staff, available 24 hours a day ♦ On site or in the comfort of your own home ♦ Servicing all areas of Metropolitan Sydney and Country NSW ♦ Pre-Paid Funerals available Contact Bernadette (nee O’Hare), Trevor or Darren Lee on 9746 2949 to arrange an appointment. incorporating elements of theology and sharing prayers that mean something to me, just breaking down the stere- otypes of what it means to be Catholic and what we believe and don’t believe – like the fact that we don’t worship Mary and those sorts of things. So many people have reached out to me and said things like, “I’ve been a Southern Baptist all my life but I just got my first set of rosary beads and I love praying the chaplet with you and it’s brought me peace. One guy said he used to have severe anxiety attacks and once he prayed the chap- let with me they went away. I’ve had messages about conversions and joining RCIA and finding faith and really having an appreciation for Catholicism in a way they hav- en’t been exposed to it before. Then I took to Instagram af- ter 40 days, and that tome was more scary as it doesn’t feel as welcoming a place for live prayer. I recently did a nine- day novena to St Joseph and now I think I’m going to take a break for a while and discern what the next step of this me- dia apostolate is. 5 Why is sharing your faith and developing this prayer community on- line so important to you? I had a deeper conversion about three months before I booked The Chosen that led me to approach my life through the lens of my faith. Then with The Chosen, because of the amount of time I had to spend with Christ and the stories about Christ and researching him and his time and all the conversions I’ve had, I be- lieve that has brought out more of what God has put within me. It also clarified or ex- pounded upon the mission that I think I’ve been given, which is to help lead people to Christ through my art. Now, because of this ex- posure through The Chosen , I’ve been receiving requests to speak in conferences and tell my story about how God has manifested in my life. So I think this apostolate is still evolving. 6 What is it like to work with Christians of dif- ferent denominations on the show about Jesus? We all pray to the same God and people seem to for- get that. Working on this show is liv- ing proof that creatives, lead- ers, humans of all denomina- tions can truly work together despite their theological and denominational differences. Many of us agree that we’re living in decidedly divided times but there is so much more reason to unite in Christ. I think The Chosen has been achieving that in terms of how it is representing the story of Christ, not with an agenda or plan for a specific denomina- tion of Christianity but telling the story of the man who was God and changed the world. 7 Why do you think peo- ple have warmed to your portrayal of Jesus? I think because Jesus has felt relatable and human for the first time in any iteration that we can remember. We’ve never got to explore Christ’s humanity [in film] except for The Passion of the Christ [which] was one of the few times when you actually saw a moment and it was also an extra-biblical moment… when Jesus washes his hands and then splashes Mary. People were like “What just happened, did he really do that?” Of course he did, he was a person. 8 What is your favourite moment The three most special mo- ments in my heart are Jesus’s entrance and the healing of Mary Magdalen, the conver- sion of the Samaritan woman and the scene of John 3:16 the conversation with Nicodemus on the rooftop. And episode three with the kids was just a joy to do and I had a lot of fun with that. 9 Has the Pope seen the show? I hope he has. I met the Apostolic Nuncio earlier this year and I got him to down- load the app. So I must follow up and ask him to show it to the Pope if he hasn’t already. I think he would like it. I want tomeet himat one point. 10 Any hints about Sea- son 2? Scripts for the first four ep- isodes are written but there’s not much I know or can say officially. But I’m excited to see what will come of it and how I’ll be affected by the material in terms of going deeper in my personal spiritual journey. 11 Where else do you go for your own forma- tion? Dr Scott Hahn has been generous enough to send me some of his books so I’ve been taking in a bit of apologetics, I guess you could say, but mainly I’m just focussed on prayer at this point. COMING SOON: Watch out for the complete video of Marilyn Rodrigues with Jonathan Roumie online at www.catholicweekly.com.au LA-based actor and devout Catholic Jonathan Roumie plays Jesus of Nazareth in The Chosen series. PHOTO:THECHOSEN.TV , CC BY-SA 4.0 The first four epi- sodes were released in April and the last four in November 2019. Faith-based filtering streaming service VidAn- gel along with The Chosen creators turned to crowd- funding to raise money to produce the first season, under a US law which al- lows companies to use equity crowdfunding to offer a share of ownership and profits from the com- pany to online investors. At the end of the first fundraising round in Jan- uary 2019, the project had raised over A$14 million from over 16,000 inves- The Chosen by the numbers tors around the US and throughout the world. This month, Sea- son 2 fundraising has passed $6 million from over 300,000 investors. Ultimate goal: to reach more than one billion people in every coun- try in the world. In March and April 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first season of The Cho- sen was made available for free through its app, and its popularity surged again. For details see www. thechosen.tv Social work degree costs raise concerns CHRISTIAN SOCIAL work advocates are expressing con- cern over the consequences of the Federal Government’s decision to double the cost of humanities degrees in Aus- tralia affecting the social-work industry – especially A spokesperson for Fed- eral Education Minister Dan Tehan confirmed that new students studying social work would pay $14,500 per year for their degree - double the pre- vious amount. Mr Tehan said his aim was to make degrees cheaper in areas of expected employ- ment growth. The COVID-19 pandemic and recession, however, has demonstrated an increas- ing need for qualified social workers in Australian society. Brotherhood of St Laurence executive director Conny Lenneberg said the planned $14,500 annual tuition fees for a social work degree bore no relationship to future earn- ings for social workers. “We are forever struggling to employ quality social work- ers — there’s a huge demand for them and they are not highly paid,” she said. Elke Schmidt, a Christian social work student at the University of Sydney, told The Catholic Weekly that there is a growing need for social work which plays a vital role in Australia. “Social workers provide essential services – home- lessness services, disability care, aged care, family and child welfare, mental health support, and community well-being services our Gov- ernment relies on to close the gaps in society,” Ms Schmidt said. “The consequence of rais- ing the fees will be costly to the Government and the peo- ple who work and rely on the ¾ ¾ David Ryan social work field. Meanwhile, she said, “social workers are already underpaid and over- worked - as are many human service professionals, yet so- cial work degrees provide job readiness for work in a sector that is in desperate need.” Anglicare South Australia chief executive Peter Sande- man said that doubling the cost of a social work degree would “provide a significant disincentive to young people entering the profession”. “This will have a significant deleterious impact on the capacity of the non-govern- ment sector to support the most vulnerable in our com- munity in the areas of child protection, disability services, homelessness, mental health and suicide prevention— just to mention some of the areas in which we work,” he said. Higher demand for social workers is being driven by several factors, including the COVID-19 recession, growth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, increas- ing aged-care needs, growth in aged care and a greater awareness of mental health and child protection. The conse- quence of rais- ing the fees will be costly to the Government ... Social workers are already underpaid and overworked - as are many human service professionals yet social work degrees provide job readiness for work in a sector that is in desperate need.” Elke Schmidt Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) entertains children at theWedding feast at Cana in episode 5 of Season 1 of The Chosen . PHOTO:THECHOSEN.TV , CC BY-SA 4.0 NEWS