Sunday, November 21, 1999

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