Dear kiwicatholics, On the Catholic bishops' Web site this week ... From the 'NZ Catholic' newspaper at: http://www.catholic.org/newzealand/cathcom/press/nzc/front.html 'Theological college will take over Salvationist citadel' The former Newton citadel in Ponsonby Rd, Auckland will be the new college for theological education of Catholic priests for New Zealand and overseas. 'Bankrupt' social policies deplored' Christians must find a voice to resist the growing inequalities that are a feature of New Zealand society say the Catholic bishops in a joint statement for the Great Jubilee. [I will put the Statement on the bishops' Web site this coming week and at that time there will be a link to it from this story - ML] Generous Scot makes $50,000 gift A $50,000 gift got the restoration fund for Newton's St Benedict's Church off to an upbeat start, even before it had been officially launched. The donor was Catholic Scottish businessman Sir Tom Farmer, in New Zealand early this month representing Ford America. Also up this week is the final issue for 1999 of 'Lightning New fires', the newsletter of our sponsor the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, at: http://www.catholic.org/newzealand/nzceo/pubs/lnf/lnf.html In short paragraphs it records the achievements of New Zealand's integrated schools*, of which the majority are Catholic schools. The newsletter also draws teachers' attention to new teaching resources available through the Ministry of Education and elsewhere. As always, the Web version of the Newsletter contains links to the home pages of all schools mentioned which have a Web site, and to many of the on-line resources described in it. [* schools with a 'special character' - often Christian - which they are permitted to preserve while receiving a measure of state funding] Last week I mentioned a tussle in our parish over the location of the weekday Masses and communion services. We know now that they will return to the parish church at the beginning of December, there to stay until numbers fall off again around the start of next winter. In the meantime my wife and I have started attending the services in the hall so if there were any hard feelings among the regulars about our absence, hopefully that's all cleared up. Certainly nobody's tried to break my fingers at the sign of Peace :-) God bless, Mike Leon 'kiwicatholic' list manager