THANK you for the beautiful souvenir issue of The Leader featuring Pope Benedict XVI (CL 1/5/05).
I’m sure the Randazzo family will treasure the Centrepoint picture which so movingly captures the Holy Father’s love for his son, Fr Tony Randazzo.
If nothing else, Lois and Pat O’Shea are consistent in their letters to the editor, so their latest offering (CL 8/5/05) holds no surprise.
A learned person once said, “Two men looked out from prison bars. One saw mud the other saw stars.” The statement is self-explanatory.
The O’Sheas asked, where were the poor, where were the outcasts?
The poor are not only represented in the building blocks and treasures of the Vatican, which they paid for by their blood, sweat, tears and ‘widow’s mite’, but they were also represented in the prayers of the faithful and the cross-section of Catholics presented to the Holy Father during his first public Mass as Benedict XVI.
As far as Lois and Pat questioning dress regulations, if it were not for dress regulations women would brazenly parade around the temple of God scantly clad, as I saw many attempt to do on my last visit to the Vatican.
The O’Sheas asked would a ‘scruffy fisherman or carpenter’ be allowed into the Vatican. By scruffy do they mean poor, dirty, immodest?
There is nothing to prevent people from being clean and modest in dress. Even a beggar has access to water in a public toilet.
What the O’Sheas may not have grasped, and it is something the late and great Archbishop Fulton Sheen frequently quoted, is to look at the Old Testament for Almighty God’s design for His Temple/Church.
Yahweh said to David, “Your son, whom I will place on your throne to succeed you, shall be the man to build a temple for my name.”
This Solomon did and if one wants to read about ‘splendour and magnificence’, read 1 Kings.
The Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, containing the Arc of the Covenant was 20 cubits long, 20 cubits wide and 20 cubits high and was lined with cedar planks from floor to rafters and plated with gold.
Solomon made an altar of cedar wood plated with gold.
The two cherubs were made of olive wool and were 10 cubits high. Their wings touched the walls and touched in the middle and were plated with gold.
The priests’ vestments are set out in Exodus 28: “… they are to make sacred vestments … they must use gold, purple stuffs, violet shade and red; crimson stuffs and fine twined linen”.
When Yahweh instructs how his Temple is to be constructed and how his priests vestments are to be made, can we do less for the King of kings and the Lord of lords who is in residence at the Vatican?
To answer the O’Sheas’ question, “Who was impressed?” Kings, queens, presidents and people of every nation, language and colour.
JENNY DAVIES
Coorparoo, Qld
