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Two Australian Catholic mothers have launched a new digital initiative for other Australian Catholic mothers, promoting the dignity and beauty of motherhood.
Called Litany of the Home, Beck Hanrahan and Steph Philippou’s app provides Catholic mothers with relevant, Australian-based content.
It also seeks to support Catholic mothers in building a life of prayer and virtue, and provides resources to enable them to raise children in the life of the Church.
Catholic mothers from across Australia provide the website content. It includes personal reflections, testimonies of faith and liturgical living inspiration.
Prayer led by the Holy Spirit
Prayer and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide their decisions helped Hanrahan and Philippou in their new ministry.
They explain they have consecrated it to Our Lady and it’s led purely by the Holy Spirit.
“All mothers need encouragement and all mothers are called to holiness” Hanrahan says.
“I am blessed to know many wise and holy Catholic mothers I can learn from. You can get quite an echo chamber in social media, there’s a lot of voices and opinions but not necessarily Catholic voices.”
The aesthetics of Litany of the Home’s digital presence on its website, Facebook and Instagram pages are important Philippou says.
So is making their initiative a sustainable, continuous mission.
What Catholic mothers want
After surveying Catholic mothers in Australia about the content they were seeking and the topics they were most interested in, Philippou found many felt isolated and many wanted some kind of practical support.
“That’s really hard to address through a website, but I think there’s a need there that the Church could meet at a parish level.
“It could see parishioners dropping off a meal to a family or providing a creche so mothers can attend church-based events with their children, for instance.”
Motherhood’s diminishing status
Society’s emphasis on prosperity, position and social status has obscured and diminished the value of motherhood, Philippou observes.
Litany of the Home seeks to rectify this by helping mothers reclaim and restore the dignity and beauty of motherhood.
“Speaking more to who we are as women – our ‘feminine genius’ as St John Paul II called it – is better than discourse on whether we’re a hustling mum, got a side business, are a career mum, or getting it all done at home perfectly” she says.
“There is a subconscious emphasis on that and I think that’s why a lot of mothers do struggle today, because they’re wrapping up their worth in what they do and not who they are, created by God as women.”
Litany of the Home tries to showcase a wide range of perspectives. Some women are very new mothers while others have more experience.
Philippou says she has a “heart for evangelisation” and wants to help others know the joy of living in Christ.
But the mission remains ultimately dependent upon God’s plans.
They are asking people to pray for the mission and to support it in whatever way they can.
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News category: World.
