Among the reported healings administered by Father John Rae during his recent visit to Perth, The Record has received a number of accounts. Here is one of them from Bernadette: “For the last 27 years, I have suffered one way or other with diseased sinuses and asthma. If not chronic allergies, rhinitis, sinusitis or asthma, it was acute infections and pain. I am sensitive to a lot o...

Duty has become a dirty word in the postmodern lexicon—mocked as the province of uptight religious fundamentalists or thickheaded, macho, military men. Doing one’s duty is depicted as dry, lifeless and unpleasant (even hypocritical), and is often juxtaposed to “following your heart” and being “true to yourself” – which sounds terribly noble (primacy of conscience, and all that), but it u...

It may not be popular to say it and, often in the Church, it seems there are some subjects we are all not supposed to talk about. But sometimes we must face up to our responsibilities. One significant problem in the life of the Church today is what we call liturgical music. The problem is that much of the liturgical music used in the average Australian parish is... awful. It is imposs...

In honour of the relic of St Francis Xavier, St Francis Xavier Primary School in Hilbert celebrated a special children’s Mass to welcome the relic - the right forearm - into their parish and community on Friday, October 26. The relic of St Francis arrived in Australia on September 16 and has been visiting dioceses around the country. The staff and students of St Francis Xavier had been pr...

Dr Gerard O’Shea says he believes in parents; possibly much more than they believe in themselves. On a late September evening, at the parish centre under St Mary’s Cathedral, a small but eager gathering of around 40 parents, religious, teachers and sexuality educators turned out to hear from one the Church’s most eminent sexuality education specialists. Throughout the night, his comments wer...

Thousands of people flocked to churches across Perth as the right arm of St Francis Xavier, founding Jesuit and 16th century missionary extraordinaire, visited parishes across the archdiocese as part of the celebration of the Year of Grace. Accompanying the relic was Father Richard Shortall, a Jesuit priest from New Zealand, who said it was an honour to be travelling with it. He told The ...

I have some friends who are practising Catholics but who say they disagree with some Church teachings. This disturbs me. How can I help them? There are probably quite a few Catholics in the situation you describe, each with his or her own personal areas of disagreement with Church teaching. They are undoubtedly good people but fail to understand a fundamental aspect of what it means t...

So there I was at the train station minding my own business when a young lady walked past wearing a pair of tights. At least I think they were tights. It might have been black body paint for all I know, as it looked like she was wearing nothing at all below the waist. I have since been informed by a reliable source that tights are very much in fashion, which would explain why so many ...

Father, I often find that special years, like the Year of Faith, pass by without people like me doing anything special to live them on a regular basis. Do you have any suggestions? Reading Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, Door of Faith, in which he announced the present Year of Faith, I have identified three principal areas in which the Holy Father would like to see the Chur...

The opportunity to venerate a relic of perhaps the greatest evangelist to have ever lived after St Paul is something of a rarity in Perth but for Christians in Goa, India where St Francis Xavier missioned, it is an ever present reality. The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa is over 400 years old and open to the public every day; the devoted arrive in overwhelming numbers to pray before most o...