AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Leesha McKenny
Urban Affairs Reporter
Sydney’s Christian leaders have turned to Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year and Time magazine’s person of the year in their annual Christmas messages.
”What is it about our society that ‘selfie’ is the landmark word for 2013?” said Dr Glenn Davies in his first year as Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop.
”At Christmas time we should remember that there is an ultimate self-image, the image of God, which far outweighs the supercilious picture of a face filling our screen. We are all stamped with the image of God and it is this image that makes us precious in his sight.”
Dr Davies said the Christmas image of Jesus as a ”cute and inoffensive” baby in a stall was only part of the picture.
”Christmas without Easter is not the full story,” he said. ”We fail to appreciate Christmas if we fail to appreciate the reason why he came – to suffer death upon a cross on Good Friday, rise again on Easter Day so that the bonds of death may be broken and new life become a reality for all who put their trust in him.”
In a year marked by inquiries delving into the Australian church’s handling of child sexual abuse, Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, urged Christians to keep the faith. ”We acknowledge the wide scepticism and occasional hostility of those around us, but because we know Christ, we should have the courage of our convictions, we should not lapse into timid silence and we should not be frightened to appear as different,” Cardinal Pell said.
He called on Catholics to recall the messages of the man Time dubbed ”The People’s Pope”.
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