JESUS CHRIST WAS SO CONTROVERSIAL HE GOT CRUCIFIED (Letter to Dom Post, May 28

‘What,‘ asks the Dom Post (May28), ‘is the Pope really up to?’ He’s doing God’s will. And if he has a taste for controversy, he’s following the best example. Jesus Christ was so controversial he got crucified.

THERE AIN'T NO SUCH WORD AS 'CORONIAL' (Letter to Dom Post, May 26)

Your reporter’s expression, ‘coronial inquest’ (Honour the heroes, May 26) has a mighty fine ring to it but he’d be better off saying ‘coroner’s inquest’. There ain’t no such word as ‘coronial’.

TO GET BETTER AT LOOKING AFTER YOUNG PEOPLE WE NEED COMMON SENSE (Letter to Dom Post, May 23)

I haven’t got any expertise to offer, as do the health professionals who want to improve teenage mental wellbeing (We need to get better at looking after young people, A9, May 23), but I’ve got some common sense.

 

What needs discussing in reference to safety from abuse, social exclusion and bullying is girls abused by their boyfriends’ casual attitude to sex in getting them pregnant and then taking off, girls denied a normal, carefree teenage lifestyle by pregnancy and childbirth, and girls who are bullied by parents or boyfriends into abortion.

 

Julia du Fresne

ROSEMARY MCLEOD'S HARPIES AND HARRIDANS (Letter to Dom Post, May 22)

If Rosemary McLeod (She-Devils quash myth that women are naturally kind, May 22) dwelt less on harpies and harridans, and more on women like her own grandmother whom she’s mentioned in past columns as an inspiration, she’d be a happier woman herself. She might even realise that for women of faith like her grandmother, nothing is beyond forgiveness.

VAST CONFERENCE CENTRES 'CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER' (Letter printed in Dom Post, May 23)

The Dom Post printed this with the last sentence deleted. Was the letter too long? Did the editor think no one would get the allusion to Lewis Carroll? Or did the editor not get the allusion to Lewis Carroll?

We’re living in Wonderland. Does it strike anyone as strange that now we have all these means of communicating electronically, we need more conference centres, and ‘vast’ ones at that, so we can communicate physically as well?

And that at the same time we’re urged not to waste fossil fuels on unnecessary travel, especially by air? And that when these thousands of people get together to confer physically, they’ll have their heads down conferring electronically, like our MPs during the reading of the Budget? As Alice remarked, ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’

NO COMPO FOR SURVIVORS OF LATE-TERM ABORTIONS; THEY'RE NOT VICTIMS OF A CRIME (Letter to Dom Post, May 19

Let me try to get this straight. An English teenager named Molly is awarded $500,000 compensation for severe brain damage suffered in the womb (May 19). She’s considered the victim of a crime because her mother drank heavily despite warnings about the risks to her unborn child. But then the authorities declare such unborn babies are not victims of a crime. And now 80 such children in Britain say they too were criminally ‘poisoned’ by their mothers, and being denied compensation isn’t fair.  

It would seem survivors of late-term abortions could demand compensation, too. Why not? Oh, I get it. They were left to die on the floor of the operating theatre, suffering only God knows what injuries,  but they won’t be entitled to compensation because they’re not victims of a crime.

 

WITHOUT PRAYER, THE PASTOR IS EXPOSED TO BEING ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL

A 'BYTE' FROM SUPERPOPE'S ADDRESS TODAY TO THE BISHOPS OF ITALY Without constant prayer, the Pastor is exposed to the danger of being ashamed of the Gospel, and ends up defusing the scandal of the Cross in worldly 'wisdom'”. “The temptations, which aim to obscure the primacy of God and His Christ, are legion in the life of the Pastor: lukewarmness, which leads to mediocrity … dodges renunciation and sacrifice;the temptation to haste in pastoral ministry, sloth that leads to intolerance, almost as if everything were a burden. … A temptation to grow accustomed to sadness, cancelling out every expectation and creativity, leaving us unsatisfied and therefore incapable of entering into the lives of our people and understanding them in the light of Easter morning”. In relation to these temptations, ecclesial experience is the most effective antidote.  It emanates from the sole Eucharist, whose cohesive strength generates fraternity, the ability to accept, forgive and walk together”.

SUPERPOPE SAYS TO ASK OUR PASTORS FOR THE MILK OF DOCTRINE

Look what I found this morning, buried in the middle of the Vatican Information Service bulletin. Pope Francis tells us to bother our pastors, trouble them, disturb them.

He's telling the laity not to accept half-truths or Protestant homilies from the pulpit. He wants us to speak up!

Let's do it!

'In this regard'  (praying for priests, helping them) 'the Pope explained that once he read a text by St. Caesarius of Arles, a priest of the first centuries of the Church, who explained how the people of God can help their pastor, with the following example: “When a calf is hungry he goes to the cow, his mother, for milk. However, the cow does not give it to him immediately; it almost seems as if she keeps it for herself. And so what does the calf do? He nudges the cow's udder with his nose, and in this way the milk comes. It is a beautiful image. And this, says the saint, is what you must do with your pastors: always knock at their door, at their heart, so that they give you the milk of doctrine, the milk of grace and the milk of guidance. I ask you, please, to trouble your pastors, to disturb them, all of us, so that we can give you the milk of grace, doctrine and guidance. Bother us! Think of that beautiful image of the calf who nudges his mother to feed him”.'

ENCOURAGING RELATIONSHIPS BIBLICALLY DEFINED AS DEGRADING AND SHAMEFUL (Letter printed in the Dom Post, May 16)

Anglican Archbishop Winston Halapua (Anglicans edge toward same-sex union, May 15) rightly observes that the biblical mandate of Christ is to love one another at all times. But the Christian definition of loving one another is doing what is best for one another, and Christians can’t logically accept that what’s best for one another is encouraging one another in relationships biblically defined as degrading and shameful. 

Julia du Fresne

THE ELEPHANT IN THE CATHOLIC CLASSROOM (First published in 'NZ Catholic', May 15)

New Zealand’s Catholic bishops are worried about our Catholic schools. They have good reason.

Their March statement, The Catholic Education of School-Age Children, is based on doctoral research by Chris Duthie-Jung in which more than three-quarters of young adult Catholics interviewed demonstrate ‘lack of a sense of conversion’, ‘a growing Protestant theological influence’ and a personal faith which almost never translates into Massgoing. ‘General religious illiteracy,’ says Dr Duthie-Jung, ‘has taken hold.’

The bishops say that for most, the goal of Catholic education - ‘the life-changing encounter with Christ’ - is ‘not achieved’. They cite tolerance as an example of the false coin of values now meted out at school, in place of the solid gold of Gospel virtues.

But wait, there’s more. It seems there’s an elephant in the classroom and if so, it’s a rogue.

Nowhere in the bishops’ statement or Duthie-Jung’s thesis is baptism mentioned as  prerequisite for Catholic school attendance but anecdotally, the number of children aged 7+ who at Communion time at ‘school’ Masses stay put in the pews strongly suggests it’s not. In other words, they’re not Catholic. Not even Christian.

The bishops’ first task is to teach the Gospel and communicate Christ, but how can they, in classrooms where not only students but teachers may effectively be deaf and blind? They speak of ‘the profound faith of the educator’ but many ‘Catholic’ school teachers aren’t. Are they even baptised? If not, then like many children in front of them they can have only theoretical knowledge of the inestimable worth of baptism, or the divine gifts it confers. In our dollarised society teachers need employment, ergo, full classrooms, and where the Spirit of God is lacking the spirit of mammon is bound to supply.

Duthie-Jung asserts his interviewees have ‘a deep-seated sense of the presence of God, that God will not abandon them’, but paradoxically and wrongly believes also that ‘fear for one’s soul cannot be restored as a motivation for faith practice’.

Our schools have succeeded in presenting God as a loving Father, but failed in teaching the pain caused by sin. So young Catholics know God won’t abandon them - do they realise they can abandon God? People who have no sense of sin won’t recognise it unless it’s illegal. And much is now legal which once wasn’t, precisely because of the diminution of sin.

This scenario suggests generally a rejection of the divine Teacher given in baptism, and specifically one of his gifts. Fear of the Lord, which frees us from sin, from inordinate desire for material possessions and ultimately from fear of hell, has long since been verboten in church as well as school.

 

The bishops, Dr Duthie-Jung and young Catholic adults all call for witnesses, the latter for more of the committed Catholic teachers they remember with admiration.

Young adults need heroes, heroic witnesses called forth in contemplative prayer by the Teacher who is given in baptism and who teaches us to contemplate Christ, to become other Christs.   

 

 

 

CHILD POVERTY WON'T BE CORRECTED, NOT WHILE ABORTION'S LEGAL (Letter to Dom Post, May 16)

Child poverty still not being corrected says your headline (May 16). Of course not, and it won’t be, not while abortion’s legal. To get down to tin tacks, a nation and a government that doesn’t care about its children before they’re born doesn’t care about them after they’re born, either. 

Julia du Fresne

FUTURE WORKERS, FUTURE CITIZENS TAKEN AWAY DEAD IN WHEELIE BINS (Letter to Dom Post, May 13)

Good to see The Dominion Post supporting paid parental leave, even though it’s more of an afterthought than the radical rethink of policy we need. But if you acknowledge that ‘other people’s kids are the future citizens in a place that does not have enough of them’, why not acknowledge the thousands of ‘future workers, future taxpayers’ taken away dead in wheelie bins from this country’s abortion facilities? I suspect the Chief Justice in the movie Belle who declares slavery to be barbarous and the country which promotes it doomed to fall, would say the same of legal abortion. 

Julia du Fresne

DOM POST'S BREATHLESS REPORTAGE OF GREG HOPKINSON'S ISHAYA (Letter to the Dom Post, May 19)

Amusing to note the Dom Post’s breathless reportage of Ishaya, Animates’ Greg Hopkinson’s discovery of meditation and monkhood, peace, contentment and happiness, all of which have been taught and achieved in the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. Hopkinson’s ‘Modern-day’ Ishaya has been around for about twenty-five. And while Ishaya says it’s committed to ‘maintaining the awareness the (sic) we are already FREE and that suffering is our own creation which we can end at any moment’, the Catholic Church is committed to loving others and union with the divine.   

Julia du Fresne

CATHOLIC ISN'T COOL. WHY? (First published in 'NZ Catholic, April 20, as 'We help priests best by praying the Mass')

‘He is not here, but is risen’ (Lk 24, 6).

Easter this year comes hard on the heels of statistics showing an ‘alarming’ decline in the number of New Zealanders calling themselves Catholic, and a drop in Mass attendance. The UN Committee ironically responsible for the Rights of the Child has the cheek to tell the Holy See to change Church doctrine on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. Catholic theologian Fr Ronald Rolheiser reckons priests are in a ‘no-win situation … tired of being cast as eunuchs’ and  unsurprisingly concludes, ‘small wonder hardly anyone wants to join us’.

The Church, it seems, has come to a pretty pass. Despite Superpope, Catholic isn’t cool. Why?

Listen to the angel at the tomb asking, ‘Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?’ Christ crucified lives within everyone newly baptised, but we can’t afford to rest on his laurels, as it were. Unless we take our opportunities to do good, to grow in love, climbing to God by ‘steps of love’ (gressibus amoris, to use St Gregory’s charming phrase) we stay put, stagnating in what Francis calls ‘a mundane spirituality’. Without works our faith is dead and spiritually speaking we invite the risk of death by serious sin, which destroys our status in its constituent elements of charity and grace.

If we’re not dead yet we’re sleep-walking, because life in Christ is restored only by confession and absolution. Many Catholics don’t know that. They’d agree with Fr Rolheiser that ‘Eucharist now cleanses you so you can sit at table’. That’s obvious from the numbers seeking Reconciliation, which homilies based on Scripture give no reason to do.We might as well be sitting in Protestant churches, and where the tabernacle’s hidden and the crucifix minimised it even looks as if we are.

In urging us to help priests to pray, to listen to the Word, celebrate Eucharist every day and confess regularly, because ‘the priest who does not do these things loses … his union with Jesus and becomes mediocre, which is not good for the Church’, Pope Francis is right on the button. We help priests best by praying the Mass, but do Catholics really believe in the Eucharist? If we did, our churches would be thronged every day.

If the Sunday readings’ themes were linked to doctrine and the unsung glories of the Magisterium, we’d know the reasons for attending Mass as often as possible. We’d know the more often we attend Mass, the more possible - indeed essential - it becomes.

 Because supernatural life is communicated only by love and grace, which is communicated best by the Eucharist, and ‘God communicates Himself most to that soul that has progressed farthest in love’ (John of the Cross).

Pope Francis is something of a hero, and in calling for ‘contemplative prayer, a strong friendship with the Lord (from which) is born in us the capacity to live and carry forth the love of God’ he calls us to be heroic priests and people.

 

 

 

TO BE FORGIVEN BY THE POPE, MUGABE HAS TO REPENT (Letter published in Dom Post, May 2)

There’s no need for Stephen Edlin (Points, May 2) to be confused by Pope Francis, ‘a man of the people’ welcoming the despot Mugabe. To be forgiven by the Pope - or any Catholic priest – Mugabe must first ask for forgiveness, in other words repent. It might help Edlin to recall also that Jesus Christ kept the evil Judas by his side until the end. 

Julia du Fresne