With the planned consecration of the new church on the 14th February, we are still in need of your generous support in donating money towards the purchase of the remaining stained glass windows, statues, furniture and fixtures and religious items. Please refer to the list below. For further details, please contact the Parish Office.
“In polite conversation, never bring up politics or religion.” That’s the advice I was given as a child. And it’s good advice, too, if your main goal is to make sure everybody likes you. Politics and religion are risky because they involve deeply held convictions, and if you happen to challenge these convictions, you get the same reaction that a dentist gets when his probe hits a nerve.
But politeness at any cost is not God’s style. The reason for this is that God is love, and love is more concerned about the welfare of others than with one’s own image. So if someone is on a seemingly pleasant canoe ride down a lazy river, love cares enough to warn the passengers that Niagara Falls is up ahead. “But everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.” Opinions don’t change the fact that going over the falls in a canoe will kill you.
Religious and moral choices are like this. They set one on a course that leads either to a safe harbor or over the falls. Sex outside of marriage, intoxication with drugs and alcohol, honoring Jesus but rejecting the authority of His Church, all these choices have very unpleasant, even deadly, consequences.
The new church was opened in style on Christmas Eve. Listen to highlights of the Mass with the Christmas Eve Audio links to the right. If you would like to download MP3s of each section, right click on each of these links and choose save (target) as:
Written by Kevin Lee with help from the Dominican Vocations website
Monday, 04 January 2010 23:10
He is Bishop Anthony Fisher O.P. Formerly auxilliary Bishop in the Sydney Archdiocese. He is due to replace Bishop Manning who is retiring to live in Glenbrook in March. I ripped the following off the Dominican Vocations website to help you get a bit of an understanding of the man:
How did I discern which order I should join? That was complicated. I was schooled by the Jesuits and my parish was diocesan. I thought of both of those first and made inquiries of them while still a schoolboy and later as well. But I took nearly ten years to make up my mind. In the meantime I studied, had various romantic and social involvements, practised law, travelled around the world, grew up a lot. While I was at Sydney Uni a girlfriend persuaded me to attend a conference of the Tertiary Catholic Federation in Adelaide. There I met a would-be Dominican whom I told I was thinking of entering the priesthood. Soon after that pamphlets started arriving mysteriously in the post for me with titles like 'So you want to be a Dominican?' I met a few real Dominicans and the more I learnt about what the Order was about, the more I admired its ideals and thought its apostolate and style of life might suit me.
“In polite conversation, never bring up politics or religion.” That’s the advice I was given as a child. And it’s good advice, too, if your main goal is to make sure everybody likes you. Politics and religion are risky because they involve deeply held convictions, and if you happen to challenge these convictions, you get the same reaction that a dentist gets when his probe hits a nerve. 
