PUBLISHING LETTERS AGAINST ABORTION REQUIRES FEARLESSNESS (Letter to Dom Post, November 29)

Tom Scott makes me laugh. That’s his job but when he says ‘Newspapers should still be fearless’, I suspect the joke escapes him.

 

My letters to The Dominion Post about abortion are never published. My opinions on other topics are occasionally, but nothing mentioning the ‘a’ word. Thousands of New Zealanders object to our abortion law and it’s misinterpretation and many write letters, but only rarely do even the most innocuous make it into print.  What reason is there for their suppression, but fear?

 

Publishing letters against abortion requires not just professionalism but courage of editorial staff who’ve had abortions or love someone who has. Readers suffering PTSD following abortions would naturally react negatively. So would medical staff who do abortions. Same with school nurses who take teenagers for abortions and lie to their mothers. Pan the camera wider to include the pharmaceuticals and clinic operators who make billions worldwide from the trade. Add in the overwhelming evidence of links between abortion and breast cancer, for instance, which we never read about in The Dominion Post.

 

 

Tom Scott says ‘people need to know stuff’. Too right. What does it take for a newspaper to publish information or letters opposing abortion? Fearlessness.

KILLING BABIES IS OKAY BUT BODY HUGS ARE A NO-NO (Letter to Dom Post, November 28)

The Roger Sutton debacle, says Women’s Minister Louise Sutton, is ‘a win for women’. Really? Who does she think she’s kidding? Not herself - her face on the front page gives the game away. No woman  can really believe that killing babies in the womb is okay but body hugs are a no-no. Society has not ‘evolved’, it’s terminally bewildered and devolving downhill faster and faster.  

That being the case, there’s probably no point in reminding women in the workplace of the Christian principle that any grievance should first be taken privately to the putative offender. Roger Sutton’s obviously a decent man. If the complainant had followed that advice the whole brouhaha would have been avoided - and certain egos unenhanced.

 

THE COLUMN YOU NEARLY DIDN'T GET TO SEE (First published in 'NZ Catholic, November 27)

NZ Catholic editor Peter Grace was asked to withdraw this column from publication. To his everlasting credit, he declined. It appears in today's edition, with a few minor changes, under the title To love as Jesus loves.

        
          We Catholics must all know about ‘the triumph of evil’, how it requires only ‘the silence of good men’. Reputedly posited by the 18^th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke, this idea has served speechmakers well ever since. The last time I heard it trotted out (very appropriately) was just last month, at the Voice for Life Conference in Wellington.

However, Joy Cowley’s views on ‘gayness’ (NZ Catholic, October 5) suggest that for  a 21^st century audience Burke needs an update. Because it seems evil, in a guise he probably never imagined, triumphs now not only by the silence of good men but also by the speech of well-meaning women.

Here’s another quote, this one from Scripture – which I naively thought Mass-going Catholics take as an unimpeachable source. ‘Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameful things with men and receiving in themselves due reward for their perversion’ (Rom 1, 27).

But Joy Cowley says St Paul could be wrong. Incorrect. Politically speaking yes, he certainly is, and her popularity as a writer helps to explain her stance. But to suggest any perversion of the truth – stated in the word of God, for heaven’s sake - by the greatest of mystics, apostle and martyr, third in the canon of saints, is preposterous.

Joy then pulls out the old thorn in the flesh theory - St Paul might have been gay. That’s possibly fact, but what’s undeniably fact is, he was celibate.

Pope Francis, in his ineffable way, has warned us of ‘buonismo, a destructive tendency … that in the name of a deceptive mercy  binds wounds without first curing and treating them … It is the temptation of the do-gooders.’ And St Paul says ‘Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God’ (2 Cor 7,1).

 But Joy quotes St John: ‘In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love’ (1 Jn 4, 18). Well, for anyone who isn’t yet perfect in love – and that’s the overwhelming majority,  including me - fear of gay marriage is just common sense: evil is frightening because it’s harmful. 

She asserts that ‘a deep commitment of love’ in homosexual relationships equates with marriage. ‘It’s all about love,’ she says. The trouble with that is, St John’s idea of love is  very different from Joy’s. True Christian love isn’t about feeling, it’s about acting. ‘He who does the will of my Father, he shall enter the kingdom of Heaven’ (Mt 7,21).

Loving means doing God’s will, in other words fulfilling his plan for our perfection by caring for others as much as we care for ourselves, and the best we can hope for ourselves and others is to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Clearly, we need to love as Jesus loves. With the heart of Christ.

 

 

 

 

JUDITH'S EXPECTATIONS OF HONOURABLENESS (Letter to Dom Post, November 26

Judging by Judith Collins’ expression (John Key: No dirt has stuck to my office, November 26), her expectations of Honourableness have got her right over feeling ‘incredibly let down’ by her chum Cameron Slater.

But to avoid similar grief in future she should keep in mind the adage, ‘By their friends you shall know them’.

UN POPULATION FUND MAKES A HIGHFALUTIN PROPOSAL (Letter to Dom Post, November 21)

Quite possibly, a ‘weak United Nations flounders as dictators continue to flourish’ (November 21) because its bureaucracy’s preoccupations include such peace-making imperatives as delivering a ‘demographic dividend’ to a world that’s younger now than ever before.  

Such a highfalutin proposal suggests a similarly absurd means to the end, and it’s this: the UN Population Fund recommends making abortions freely available to adolescents, removing all age of consent, prostitution and drug laws, and reducing parents’ involvement in their children’s sex education.  

With such pressing business on the table, it looks like the under-employed members of the UN war crimes tribunals have been given more important work to do.

 

LEAVING PUTIN TO EAT ALONE (Letter to Dompost, November 19)

So Vladimir Putin ‘has isolated himself, as seen in the cold shoulder other leaders gave him at the G20 meeting’ (The West rationalises away Putin’s aggressive actions, November 19). But if the other leaders gave him the cold shoulder, demonstrably it was they who were isolating Putin. Such behaviour – leaving a guest to eat alone - would surely not be tolerated in a kindergarten.  

If the West wants to understand Putin’s actions which ‘are not rational from a Western point of view’ and if as US Secretary of State John Kerry says, ‘we want to work with Russia where we can’, I suggest the best place to start is at the dinner table. 

BABY MAIA SHARED HER MOTHER'S WOMB WITH THE PARTIAL REMAINS OF HER DEAD SIBLING (Letter to Dom Post, November 12)

As a lay person reading Baby survives despite ‘foreign body’ in womb, November 12, I had to get only as far as the line ‘the only other surgery she’d had was an abortion’ to know baby Maia had shared her mother’s womb with the partial remains of her dead sibling.  

Maia’s mother, who in 2008 aged only fifteen and surely in a pitiable state couldn’t possibly have given truly informed consent to an abortion, had subsequently to endure years of infertility and invasive tests. So I’d like to think that during her ‘horrible pregnancy’ the suppression of that probable diagnosis by the medical staff was an exercise in tact.  

However, the statement by the clinical leader of maternal and foetal medicine at Wellington Hospital, Jay Marlow, that such an ‘unlikely complication would not have crossed the minds of those carrying out the fertility tests’ suggests otherwise. Baby Maia’s experience is a horrible illustration of the blinkers worn for years now by both the media and the medical profession in the face of overwhelming evidence against abortion and its pernicious effects.

 

THE LITURGISTS GET ME A TICKING-OFF FOR CALLING COMMUNION IN THE HAND NASTY NAMES

‘Leaders of the Church have too often been narcissists, gratified and sickeningly excited by their courtiers’

 – Pope Francis, in a 2013 interview with La Repubblica magazine.

 

In my  NZ Catholic September column I described the practice of Communion in the hand was ‘antiquarian, abusive, Lutheran and Protestant’. It wasn’t long before certain liturgists taking exception to these remarks reported them to episcopal authority and I was ticked off for being ‘completely wrong.’
 

There’s only so much you can say in the 500 words I’m allotted by NZ Catholic, so I’m posting here the Church’s documentation for my case (see below).

Putting aside the question of whether it’s possible to return to Communion on the tongue (and why not, the same way it was mandated in 650 AD by the Council of Rouen), Communion in the hand is the most egregious example of damage done in the wake of Vatican II by altering the liturgy illegally to suit personal preference and convenience.
 

I’m not implying our NZ bishops are the ‘narcissists’ so unflatteringly described by Pope Francis. More likely, they just don’t have the energy to buck the trend in the Western Church (although not in the greater part of the world) towards Communion in the hand, which must account in large part for the drastic decline in those episcopates in Mass attendance and priestly and religious vocations.

The great danger is that with the illegal practice of Communion in the hand having succeeded so spectacularly, other harmful changes may be insinuated in the same way.
 

St John of the Cross has something to say about this sort of thing. Firstly he observes that ‘Among the many wiles used by the devil to deceive spiritual persons, the most ordinary is that of deceiving them under an appearance of what is good, not under an appearance of what is evil: for he knows that if they recognize evil, they will scarcely touch it’.  

He then remarks that we should never do anything, ‘however good and full of charity it may seem to be’ without the sanction of obedience. (When did you last hear that word spoken in Church circles – or any others? But without obedience how can we become like Christ who was ‘obedient unto death’ (Phil 2, 8)?)   

In New Zealand we all went along with Communion in the hand thinking it had been mandated by Vatican II when actually it was dreamed up by some rogue bishops (‘narcissists?’, egged on by pseudo-liturgists and innovative priests and religious) in the Netherlands. We’ve been taken for a ride. Read the documentation below and see what you think.  

But I humbly and happily admit my comment that the practice is Lutheran was indeed ‘completely wrong’. 

 

A bishop of the Church, a patristic expert quoted in the following documentation, says that historically not even Lutherans would have received in the hand. In the US most still receive kneeling, on the tongue, but some receive in the hand.

It seems I should have called it Calvinist.

 

IN REGARD TO  COMMUNION IN THE HAND BEING ‘ANTIQUARIAN’:

From De modo Sanctam Communionem ministrandi (Memoriale Domini)

 1275 [5] ’It is certainly true that ancient usage once allowed the faithful to take this Divine Food in their hands and to place it in their mouths themselves. … However, the Church's prescriptions and the evidence of the Fathers make it abundantly clear that the greatest reverence was shown the Blessed Sacrament, and that people acted with the greatest prudence.’ This is not now the case.

‘1276 [6] Further, the care and the ministry of the Body and Blood of Christ was specially committed to sacred ministers or to men especially designated for this purpose’. This is not now the case. And speaking of Communion in the hand, Pius XII warned that ’the liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed  more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savour and aroma of antiquity.’ (My emphases.)

AS TO COMMUNION IN THE HAND BEING ‘ABUSIVE’ (MEANING MISAPPLIED, IMPROPER):

From the Secretary of State, June 3, 1968: ‘the bishops must be reminded of their responsibility that they must prevent …  the indiscriminate spread of this practice (Communion in the hand) which is not contrary to the doctrine but in practice is very disputable and dangerous.’ (My emphasis.)

From a letter sent sent by the Concilium to all the Latin bishops of the world, October 1968:

1.‘In diverse locations, at least since two or three years ago, some priests without due authorization[109] place the Eucharist in the hand of the faithful, who then places it in their mouths. This manner of acting is spreading rapidly, especially in the more cultured environments and in small groups, and finds favor among laypersons[110], priests and nuns.[111]

2.       It appears that there is a new practice established here and that it is the work of a small number of priests and laypersons that look to impose their own point of view on others, and force the hand of authority. (My emphasis.) To approve it would be to encourage these persons who are never[113] satisfied with the laws of the Church.

3.       And above all a decrease of respect to the Eucharistic worship should be feared. To receive Communion in the hand would seem to many to be less dignified and less respectful (my emphasis).

4.      One should also ask oneself, with uneasiness, if the fragments of the Consecrated Bread will always be picked up and consumed with all the respect It deserves. What will happen to the Particles in the hands of those who do not have the delicacy and the awareness[114] to quickly pick them up?  Just recently I picked up and consumed a sliver (the Body and Blood of Our Lord, whole and entire) of the Host which had lain unnoticed on the carpet in front of the sanctuary for at least 24 hours. The parish priest seemed unconcerned.

5.   Should not an increase of desecrations and irreverences on the part of ill-intentioned persons be feared, or of those of little faith? Ill-prepared and poorly instructed people who receive the Eucharistic Bread in their hand, will they not end up equating It to ordinary bread, or to simply blessed bread?[115]

6. By easily giving in to this very important point of Eucharistic worship, the danger exists that the audacity of the renovators will dare so much as to be directed towards other sectors, which would bring about an irreparable damage to the faith and worship of the Eucharist. …(My emphasis.)

[12] A change in a matter of such importance, based on a most ancient and venerable tradition, does not merely affect discipline. It carries with it certain dangers that may arise from the new manner of administering Holy Communion: the danger of a loss of reverence for the August Sacrament of the altar, of profanation, of adulterating the true doctrine.

1281  [15]The Holy Father has decided not to change the existing way of administering Holy Communion to the faithful.

 The disposition:

[16] The Apostolic See therefore emphatically urges bishops, priests and laity to carefully[3] obey the law which is still valid and which has again been confirmed. It urges them to take into account the judgment given by the majority of Catholic bishops, of the rite now in use in the liturgy, and of the common good of the Church.’

From the letter which concedes the indult to the Episcopal Conferences to distribute Holy Communion in the hand to the faithful, when all of the required conditions are met:

‘Each bishop may authorize in his dioceses the introduction of the new rite to distribute Communion (in the hand), with the condition that all occasion of scandal to the faithful be avoided, and all danger of irreverence toward the Eucharist be avoided’ (my emphasis). This condition was not met.

‘There is a twofold purpose here: that none will find in the new rite anything disturbing to personal devotion toward the Eucharist; that this sacrament, the source and cause of unity by its very nature, will not become an occasion of discord between members of the faithful.’(My emphasis.)

‘The rite of Communion in the hand must not be put into practice indiscriminately.’

‘It is necessary to have the introduction of the rite preceded by an effective catechesis.’

‘This catechesis must succeed in excluding any suggestion that there is a lessening of faith in the Eucharistic presence and in excluding as well any danger or hint of danger of profaning the Eucharist.’ (My emphases.)

That there has been a lessening of faith is obvious from the demeanour of people approaching and receiving the Eucharist. As an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion I’ve had to stop people from carrying the Host away after receiving.

THAT COMMUNION IN THE HAND IS ‘LUTHERAN’:

In regard to this comment I humbly and happily acknowledge I was mistaken. According to Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana in Kazakhstan, a Patristic expert, Communion in the hand wasn't practiced even by the Lutherans. "The Lutherans have until quite recently, and till today in Scandinavian lands, preserved communion kneeling and on the tongue."

THAT COMMUNION IN THE HAND IS ‘PROTESTANT’:

From Martin Bucer (1491-1551),counsellor of the Anglican reform:

‘ [49] In fact I have no doubt that the (Roman Catholic) usage of not putting these sacraments in the hands of the faithful has been introduced out of a double superstition, firstly the false honour they wished to show to this sacrament, and secondly the wicked arrogance of priests claiming a greater holiness than that of the people in Christ, by virtue of the oil of consecration.

The Lord undoubtedly gave these, his sacred symbols, into the hands of the apostles, and no one who has read the records of the ancients can be in any doubt that this was the usage observed by the churches until the advent of the tyranny of the Roman Antichrist.

As, therefore, every superstition of the Roman Antichrist is to be detested, and the simplicity of Christ, and the Apostles, and the ancient churches is to be recalled, I should wish that pastors and teachers of the people should be commanded that each is faithfully to teach his people that it is superstitious and wicked to think that the hands of those who truly believe in Christ are less pure than their mouths, or that the hands of ministers are holier than the hands of the laity, so that it would be wicked, or less fitting, as was formerly wrongly believed by the ordinary folk, for the laity to receive these sacraments in the hand: and therefore that the indications of this wicked belief be removed, as that ministers may handle the sacraments, but not allow the laity to do so, and instead put the sacraments into the mouth which is not only foreign to what was instituted by the Lord but offensive to human reason.

In that way good men will be easily brought to the point of all receiving the sacred symbols in the hand.’- Quoted by D. Harrison, The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, London, 1968, p. 392. Cf. E.C. Whitaker, Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer, London, 1974.

 PAPAL STATEMENTS ON THE SUBJECT OF COMMUNION IN THE HAND:

Pius XII: ‘The Holy Father does not consider it opportune that the Sacred Particle be distributed in the hand.’

Pope Paul VI:  (The bishop) should not forget that … the Holy See … vehemently exhorts him to submit to the law in force’ (i.e. Communion on the tongue).

St John Paul II: ‘These offenses not only weigh upon the conscience of those responsible in this manner of acting, but also to the pastors of the church who have not been vigilant enough regarding the attitude of the faithful towards the Eucharist’(Domin. Cenae, 11). (My emphasis.) … To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained, one which indicates an active participation in the ministry of the Eucharist (though it recognizes that in the case of a justified necessity, a layman can be authorized)’ Domin. Cenae, 11.

Note: As the Church states elsewhere, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion are justified only when the Mass would be unduly lengthened by the distribution of the Sacrament only by the ordained. So ‘a justified necessity’ would be rare.

 

 

FROGS DON'T TURN INTO PRINCES BUT GOD DOES DRAW GOOD OUT OF EVIL (Letter to Dompost, November 11)

I respect Peter Bertram (Letters, November 11) no matter what he believes, and I can easily accept that a frog doesn’t turn into a prince. But although I know nothing about evolution,  I do know something about God.

 He does draw good out of evil. I’m surprised that Bertram, who’s obviously a good teacher, hasn’t noticed the evidence for that which is all around us.

'DISAPPEARED' BABIES ARE PATIENTS TOO (Letter to Dompost, November 11)

General surgeon Michael Shields says ‘disappeared’ patient numbers are a scandal. Too right they are.

The true scandal is the thousands of ‘disappeared’ babies who were patients as much as their mothers, and who also ‘cause endless grief’.

They turn up again counted in our annual abortion statistics so we can’t pretend they were never there, and successive Ministers have allowed this scandal to continue for thirty-seven years.

DOMPOST'S SOLUTION TO 'HORDES OF AGING BABY BOOMERS' (Letter to Dom Post, November 10)

Oh, I get it. By enthusiastically championing abortion, The Dominion Post and the rest of the media helped create the problem of ‘hordes of aging baby boomers’ (Editorial, November 6). But having read the entire page devoted to ‘ensuring the right to die’ (November 8), I see you have the solution.

 

You’re keen for the old folks to restore balance (which in your coverage of the issue was conspicuous by its absence) by doing the decent thing and killing themselves off.

WHICH TOPIC MADE IT INTO THE DOMPOST LETTERS COLUMN? EUTHANASIA OR THE 'A' WORD?

I wrote these letters to The Dominion Post on two consecutive days, realising only one if either would make it into print, and realising which it would be.

I sent both to illustrate the way The Dominion Post excludes all but the most innocuous letters on the topic of abortion.

On November 4:

Too right, hospitals are dangerous places (Speak out for hospital safety). Every year countless healthy women go into hospital with unborn babies and come out with post-abortion syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, a perforated uterus, cervical injury, sexual dysfunction, a predisposition to breast cancer, alcohol and drug dependency and/or child abuse.

Is that promoting ‘what’s right for the patient’ as advocated by Dr Brian Robinson, senior lecturer at Victoria University’s Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health? Why doesn’t Dr Robinson count these cases as ‘preventable serious adverse events?

On November 5:

Philip Broderick (Hoping to choose when to call it quits) wants the right to decide when he dies – even if the thought of making that decision fills him with horror. It’s like he’s standing on a very high ledge, getting ready to jump. Your story, with its reference to the tragic suicide of Brittany Maynard, sounds like we’re saying ‘Go ahead, jump!’

But what’s our natural, instinctive reaction? We yell, ‘No no, don’t jump!’ 

No prizes for guessing right. The second letter was printed November 8. The first was relegated with countless others on the same subject, to the Dom Post's shredding machine.
 

JOE BENNETT DESCENDS TO CLICHE (Letter to the Dompost, October 29)l

Interesting how when addressing the topic of life after death (‘Dainty words for death a waste of breath’, October 29), Joe Bennett’s formidable writing skills desert him and he descends via fluffy clouds and harps to what he abhors – cliche.

Maybe he subconsciously realises there are no words to describe the divine.