Photo by John Casamento

The headquarters of the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga is located at Mary Glowrey House, a spacious Victorian home ideally situated at 132-134 Nicholson St. Fitzroy, opposite the beautiful Carlton Gardens. This facility also provides short-term, low-cost accommodation for people from rural and regional areas undergoing medical treatment or visiting relatives in city hospitals.

Our Lady of the Broom is the patroness of all who care for those visiting Mary Glowrey House. It is an Apostolate of kindness, listening and helping with a smile. The depiction of our Blessed Mother with her broom symbolises humble service, one who delights in the ordinariness of daily work and one who is faithful and reliable.

Bookings can be made by contacting our caretaker, John, on .

Note: Bookings for Mary Glowrey House are not accepted via e-mail.

• Facilities

• A Brief History of Mary Glowrey House

Watch the video clip below of our former long-term caretaker, Leon, talking about his experience with serious illness as a child and how it led him to caring for those who visit Mary Glowrey House.

Please click the cover image above to view the October 1916 edition

The Horizon is our official magazine. It has been in continuous publication since October 1916 when its price was just one penny! Articles written in the first issue by Mary Glowrey, Anna Brennan and Eileen Fitzgerald would not have been out of place in the current edition of The Horizon.

The Horizon contains articles about current social questions, spiritual reflections and keeps our members up to date with the workings of the League at all levels—parish, diocesan, state, national, and international.

While looking forward to the future with confidence in our centenary year, we also continue to remember the past with gratitude and live the present with enthusiasm! Our “cover woman” for 2016 is our founding president, Dr Sr Mary Glowrey JMJ, Servant of God. Her face is a collage of 5000 tiles utilising 542 images of Catholic Women’s League of Victoria members past and present. The image of Mary Glowrey was donated to the League by one of her relatives late last year.

Annual subscription to The Horizon is $20 for 10 copies. Postage is an additional $12 per year. If you would like to subscribe to The Horizon, please contact our editor, Jane Munro, at [email protected].

Wide Horizons

Our magazine was originally called “Women's Social Worker” but in 1924, its name was changed to “The Horizon”. Remarks made in the editorial at that time, about this name change, are still applicable to the work of the League today.

The horizon is the line where heaven and earth meet. The work of the League is at once the work of heaven and of earth:

“It seeks to make the earth fit for all souls and all souls fit for heaven. The League’s function then is that of a horizon. In it, earth touches heaven.”

“The Horizon ever marches onwards. As we progress, the Horizon progresses, and our ages embrace new prospects, wider fields, and newer summits. Is that not what we must do—keep our horizon as wide as our power of vision can encompass, and advance to embrace new plans, new endeavours, new achievements?”

“Out in the wide horizons, we see much, learn much, and do much.”

• Submit a Story

• Advertising in the Horizon

Addressing social justice and ethical questions has been one of the primary tasks of the Catholic Women's League since it was founded. We seek to influence legislative and administrative bodies at all levels of government in order to preserve the dignity of the human person. The League also actively promotes a culture of life.

In 1975, our Social Questions Committee received a mandate from Archbishop Sir Frank Little to promote Catholic social teachings and advise on issues where these teachings are challenged and, to initiate action if necessary. As such, we monitor the tendencies and movements in our society, and evaluate them in light of the social teachings of the Church.

Our members engage in debate and action about issues such as poverty, gambling, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children. We also create awareness about contemporary concerns including violence against women and children, surrogacy, substance abuse, violent computer games, advertising standards, euthanasia, the sexualisation of girls in the media, the recognition of women in the unpaid workforce, same-sex marriage, abortion, Gendercide, post abortion trauma, pornography and reproductive technology.
 
The Social Questions Committee is represented on the Family Council of Victoria and the Life Coalition.

At the 24th Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council of the Laity, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged lay people to actively participate in political life in a manner coherent with the teachings of the Church. The Holy Father said 'there is a need for authentically Christian politicians but, even more so, for lay faithful who bear the witness to Christ and the Gospel in the civil and political community.'

The Social Questions Committee welcomes the participation of any League member.

Today as the Church sets out again on her journey to proclaim Christ to the world, she needs women who contemplate the face of Christ, who keep their gaze fixed on him and recognize him in the weakest members of his Body.  “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).  Keep watch, be an attentive and strong presence, never fail to look to Christ, follow him, keep his words in your hearts.  In this way, your hope will not fail; it will spread throughout the world at this promising and challenging time.

Blessed John Paul II, Message to the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations, 7 March 2001

 

Video: The Miracle of Life

Take a few minutes to watch The Miracle of Life which shows how amazing and wonderful the gift of life is that God has blessed us with. Through incredible ultrasound video and photos, you can actually see this miracle as you watch a baby develop in the womb.

This Committee coordinates the League’s efforts to assist missionaries, in Australia and overseas, in their work.

Over the years we have provided financial aid and material support to missions in the Kimberleys, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste , Kiribati and other Pacific island nations, Kenya and Tanzania.

In addition to our support of missionaries, we also provide other financial aid and support to women and children in the community including:

• Educational scholarships
• School uniforms and books for disadvantaged children
• Clothes for premature babies
• Care packages for refugees in detention centres
• Moira Kelly's Children First Foundation
• The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia
• 'Wrap with Love' blankets, and
• Knitted clothes for children in Africa with HIV/AIDS

We also participate in Traveller's Aid, providing a range of services and assistance for travellers, including those with special needs or in an emergency situation.

Read about some of our Missions and Welfare Projects..

 

“In order to make society more human, more worthy of the human person, love in social life — political, economic and cultural — must be given renewed value, becoming the constant and highest norm for all activity.”  Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church No. 582

Catholic social teaching is sometimes described as the Church’s best kept secret. 

This is because many people in secular society and even those within the Catholic faith do not realise the wide scope and long history of the Church’s reflections upon the dignity of the human person in the light of the Gospel and, what this means for just and life-giving social relationships: between men and women, adults and children, in family groups, workplaces, cultural institutions, in response to technological innovation and economic systems and between ethnic groups and nations.

Catholic social principles centre around the promotion, defence and building up of truth, freedom, justice and love within communities and within her own life and witness.

The Catholic response to social issues has been guided by a reflection upon Biblical revelation about humanity and creation, by her conviction that all people are called to share the truth, by the concrete love of her saints for those oppressed and in need.  Above all, these responses find their source in the liberating love of Jesus Christ.

These practical social responses have found expression and authoritative support in the teaching documents of the Church including Papal documents (such as the great Papal encyclicals) and in Bishops’ pastoral letters and submissions.  

According to Pope Benedict XVI, the Church’s teaching documents “help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just…. [The Church] has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice…cannot prevail and prosper…".

If you would like more information about Catholic social teachings, please go to the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

The Mary Glowrey Prayer Group was formed in 2012 and is our ‘powerhouse of prayer’.  Members pray a decade of the Rosary each day and then pray for the following intentions:

• The members and work of the League, particularly its efforts to build a culture of life and love
• The cause of Dr Sr Mary Glowrey JMJ
• For those seeking the intercession of Dr Sr Mary Glowrey
• For those involved in the cause of Dr Sr Mary Glowrey (which also covers those working on the Diocesan Inquiry and at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints)
• For those who ‘follow’ the League on social media

If you would like to be added to our prayer list, please contact us on [email protected].