For the 2nd Sunday of Easter, the Gospel was from John regarding 'doubting' Thomas. Fr William's sermon was about how touching others is so important today, and that we should open up our wounds to be touched by others and be healed so that they in turn will be able to open up their wounds to be touched and therefore be healed. Confusing? You can say that again! And a little wierd on the first reading, no? I got the gist of what he was trying to say, but can be upped on the coherence quotient and surely could have been put across more effectively.

I wrote a letter to the Catholic News. I reproduce it here to air some of my views:
Dear Editor,
Viewpoints.

I read with interest the comments put forward by readers regarding the new look for the Catholics News and I join them in congratulating and commending Msgr Vaz and all involved. Thank you.

While I am certain that it is presently practically unfeasible, I would like to put forward a challenge, or a a dream, regarding the Catholic media in Singapore. While I understand that the Catholic News is concerned simply with bringing news to the general Catholic population, I see a great risk of it becoming irrelevant in the future if it remains in its present form.

Why not make Catholic News a weekly publication - this would enable the news to be current and alive. Why not work in collaboration with the diocese of Singapore-Malaysia-Brunei - the Church is not bound by international boundaries and much can be shared across borders. Why not split the Catholic News into at least two sister publications - the youth, young adults and new families require, and would support, a publication aimed specially at them - if you target too general a readership, you risk losing all of the audience. Why not endorse EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network) and canvas to have it brought into Singapore - it would go some way to counteract the God-lessness of secular urban life.

The Catholic media in Singapore needs to innovate and reinvent itself to truly benefit the community and spread the gospel. The Catholic News must take the leading role in this enterprise, put traditional mindsets on the backseat, and not be afraid of making mistakes.

With regards to "Celebrants must set prayerful tone for Mass" by Augustine Chen. I absolutely agree with Augustine's comments. With all due respect for the dedication and effort of our priests, many priests end up contributing to the 'sloppiness' and 'irreverence' of the liturgy. Yet, many other priests and laypeople I know are not like that and are putting in every effort to improve the liturgy. Things must, can, and will change, but we must first admit to the problems and then work closely together to solve them.

Yours Sincerely,

[Comments: This letter was printed in part in the 11th May edition of the Catholic News!]

In tribute to Jenny's Baptism...

Reading From the Jerusalem Catecheses
Baptism is a symbol of Christ's passion
You were led down to the font of holy baptism just as Christ was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb which is before your eyes. Each of you was asked, “Do you believe in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?” You made the profession of faith that brings salvation, you were plunged into the water, and three times you rose again. This symbolised the three days Christ spent in the tomb.
As our Saviour spent three days and three nights in the depths of the earth, so your first rising from the water represented the first day and your first immersion represented the first night. At night a man cannot see, but in the day he walks in the light. So when you were immersed in the water it was like night for you and you could not see, but when you rose again it was like coming into broad daylight. In the same instant you died and were born again; the saving water was both your tomb and your mother.
Solomon’s phrase in another context is very apposite here. He spoke of a time to give birth, and a time to die. For you, however, it was the reverse: a time to die, and a time to be born, although in fact both events took place at the same time and your birth was simultaneous with your death.
This is something amazing and unheard of! It was not we who actually died, were buried and rose again. We only did these things symbolically, but we have been saved in actual fact. It is Christ who was crucified, who was buried and who rose again, and all this has been attributed to us. We share in his sufferings symbolically and gain salvation in reality. What boundless love for men! Christ’s undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet by the share that I have in his sufferings he freely grants me salvation.
Let no one imagine that baptism consists only in the forgiveness of sins and in the grace of adoption. Our baptism is not like the baptism of John, which conferred only the forgiveness of sins. We know perfectly well that baptism, besides washing away our sins and bringing us the gift of the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of the sufferings of Christ. This is why Paul exclaims: Do you not know that when we were baptised into Christ Jesus we were, by that very action, sharing in his death? By baptism we went with him into the tomb.

Screwtape Letters

I chanced upon this book called Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Its a pretty interesting exchange between two devils, Wormwood, and his uncle Screwtape. This is the letter labled I.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I note what you say about guiding our patient's reading and taking care that he
sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïf?
It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the
Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries
earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved
and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still
connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as
the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other
such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever
since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about
together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" of
"false", but as "academic" or "practical", "outworn" or "contemporary",
"conventional" or "ruthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping
him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism
is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous—that it is the
philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's
own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind
I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of
Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason;
and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of
thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have
been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal
issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense
experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to
call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real".
Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that
abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realise how enslaved they are to
the pressure of the ordinary. I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to
read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought
in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his
elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work
beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by
argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck
instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested
that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the
counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear What He says to
them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have
been His line for when I said "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle it
the end of a morning", the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I
had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind",
he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was
won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going
past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an
unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head
when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by
which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that
sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in
later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality
which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic". He is
now safe in Our Father's house.
You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them
centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar
while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the
ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the
real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage
him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases
among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics
and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life". But the
best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea
that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual
talk and reading is "the results of modem investigation". Do remember you are
there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would
suppose it was our job to teach!
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, Fr. Fossion asked if we really listened to the sermons and applied it to out lives. He asked to parishoners and the wife said she was thinking about sars and the husband about golf. Typical.