Letters

Dissenter's manifesto (letter)

Imelda Aslett

Contents - Aug 2005 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Liturgy: opportunity for bishops to take control - Michael Gilchrsit What the Church can teach the secular world - Archbishp Barry Hickey News: The Church Around the World Campus Life: Cardinal Pell's program for a Catholic culture at Sydney's universities - Stephen Lawrence International poll underlines growing secularist challenge - Michael Gilchrist Media: Our Lord's name: responding to media blasphemy - Andre Van Der Linden Feminist translation: Inclusive language and the Trinity: the latest from Brisbane - Michael Apthorp Benedict XVI's pontificate: the possibilities - Damian Thompson London's Balham parish, 'an icon of liturgical hope' - Joanna Bogle John Paul II: a Jewish appreciation Anglican update: an orthodox fight-back - Fr Christopher Seton Letters: Dissenter's manifesto (letter) - Imelda Aslett Letters: Origins of the Bible (letter) - George Simpson Letters: Lay-led liturgies (letters) - M.T. Kennedy Letters: An Islamic Holland? (letter) - Henk Verhoeven Letters: Sacrifice (letter) - M.A. Ross Letters: Abortion breast cancer link (letter) - Dr Tim Coyle Letters: Real Presence (letter) - John Schmid Letters: Small Catechisms available (letter) - Fr Edward P. Evans Letters: Stem cells (letter) - Brian Harris Letters: Government review of RE in State Schools (letter) - Maureen Federico Letters: Brisbane Archbishop bans weekday Latin Mass (letter) - Tom King Letters: The Mass (letter) Letters: Appreciation from Nepal (letter) Poetry: A Heavenly Surprise Books: More Catholic Than the Pope, by Patrick Madrid and Pete Vere - Fr Glen Tattersal FSSP (reviewer) Books: More Good Reading from AD Books Reflection: How we will overcome the shortage of priests - Fr John O'Neill PP

Your correspondent, P. Gartland (June AD2000) refers to the promotion within our ranks of a recent publication Priests in Love, advertised as a "major Australian study of Catholic priests and their intimate relationships with men and women."

At the risk of giving this sad little monogram a boost in sales and borrowings, please allow me to share my horror at its being launched here in Albany where the University of WA has a small campus, and the author, J. Anderson, is a member of our Holy Family parish.

The parish priest included in our pew-sheet of 20 March 2005 an invitation "to attend a public lecture and book launch with Dr Paul Collins and Dr Jane Anderson. Priests in Love tells the stories of priests who have formed long term friendships", surely a description which ought to have turned away the discerning Catholic!

However, the majority of our permanent deacons accepted the invitation and, along with their wives, rubbed shoulders with our brain-washed lay-leaders-in-training, thus demonstrating how remarkably easy it is for a motivated, experienced and determined operator to play the Pied Piper and get away with it.

I question the propriety of any Catholic who brazenly provides a receptive audience for a dissenter's manifesto, albeit thinly disguised as anthropological research.

IMELDA ASLETT
Lower King, WA

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 18 No 7 (August 2005), p. 15