I WAS very pleased to read on the front page of The Catholic Leader (29/10/06) that the Christian Churches are planning to pray for rain together.
I read further “that Mr Beattie has urged them to ask all Churches to pray for rain”.
We live on a property some 80 km west of Rockhampton and the drought is severely affecting us, and we are desperate for rain, so I agree entirely with the idea of a combined approach of prayers for rain.
However, I am surprised the Church is able to partake in this combined initiative, and they probably would not if the suggestion had not been made by Mr Beattie.
Some years back, we were suffering from a very bad drought, probably not as bad as the drought we are suffering now, and I wrote to the local liturgy committee requesting a concerted effort be made to have all churches in our diocese put aside maybe one weekend to pray for rain.
My letter of request was completely ignored and information was fed back to me via another parishioner, one of the priests had told them, “we can’t pray for rain”.
At the same time I wrote to The Catholic Leader requesting that maybe a weekend could be set aside to pray for rain, right throughout the state, and a reader from Dalby supported me. However somebody else wrote with the same view as the priest mentioned above, that we can’t pray for rain.
All of a sudden Mr Beattie requests the Churches unite to pray for rain and it makes the front page of The Catholic Leader – and it’s a goer for two weekends.
I hope the prayer weekends of November 5 and November 12 will be rewarded with plentiful rain right throughout the whole country.
GLORIA CONNOR
Gogango, Qld
