POLITICS, BREAD AND THE BIG MATCH (Letter published in the Dom Post, August 31)

Human nature never changes, so neither do politics. Dave Armstrong’s excellent In Rugby State, opening the pubs comes first (August 31), could be summed up by the Roman poet Juvenal.

As he wrote two thousand years ago, ‘Only two things does he (the modern citizen) anxiously wish for – bread and the big match.’

THE SACRED COW THAT NEEDS POKING IS ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, August 31)

Asking for public feedback on proposals to deal with domestic violence (Courts plan for family violence, August 29), Justice Minister Amy Adams says she wants to ‘poke a few sacred cows’.

 

Abortion. Is. Domestic. Violence. As long as violence is allowed in the womb it will continue to permeate the whole family.

 

Adams stands in need of great courage, because the sacred cow she has to poke is abortion.

CYF GIVE MARRIED COUPLE'S CHILDREN TO SINGLE PARENT OF DIFFERENT ETHNICITY (Letter to Dom Post, August 28)

 

Children’s Commissioner Russell Wills might be interested in three small Pakeha/Indian children taken by CYF from married parents because the elderly father had an historical conviction for sex abuse, and following a disastrous triple pregnancy when she lost two children in utero, the mother was very unwell.  

Those children were handed over to a single parent, a Maori. Two years on, the parents are still fighting to get their children back. They struggle to contain their grief over their lost little ones, who present at their pitifully infrequent access visits as hungry, inadequately dressed, and uncared for. 

I wonder if CYF would dare to place Maori children of loving, married parents in the care of a single, Indian mother. The whole saga reeks of prejudice and discrimination based on both age and race.

 

BE AWARE, SERENE AND TRULY JOYFUL (First published in 'NZ Catholic', August 20)

            ‘Be aware.’ A strange remark, wouldn’t you think, to make to a group of women heading to a café for lunch?

But these were not Lady Lunchalots. They’d just attended Mass on the patronal feast of the order of Carmelites whose charism is contemplation, who understand that these two  words go straight to the heart of things, implying another perspective, a gaze directed more or less steadily through rose-tinted lenses at eternal realities. ‘Enjoy yourselves,’ these women were told by another Massgoer as they left the cathedral, ‘but be aware.’

How precious is prophecy, specially on the way to lunch – so good for the digestion! - and specially prophecy not in the accepted sense of foretelling, but forthtelling: speaking God’s truth.

Years ago, suffering quite badly and undiagnosed from post-natal depression, I clung for dear life to a little book by the Jesuit Anthony de Mello. Awareness was given me by my spiritual director and I hiked it around the world, together with ‘im indoors and 4 year-old Rosanagh, on our first OE to Europe.

 Awareness didn’t make me aware. I thought that was my fault but in fact de Mello had already been the subject, in 1998, of a Notification by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger and how I wished, after someone handed me Fire Within one day at the beach some time later, that it had been the Marist Thomas Dubay’s masterpiece I’d toted around the world. But it was probably a case, to quote Christopher Fry, of ‘the lady’s not for burning’. The green wood of the soul needs purifying before it can be kindled by the fire Jesus came to cast upon the earth.

De Mello said things like ‘true happiness is uncaused’. By contrast, Dubay offers St Peter’s ‘joy so glorious that it cannot be described’ (1 Pet 1,8), deriving from God. The joy of the heights of holiness to which we all without exception are called is an ‘advanced joy’ which as Dubay explains, comes only from ‘advanced prayer’.

The woman at Mass that day was warning the lunch party not be diddled out of that joy by enjoyment, getting sidetracked by treats meant only as means to the end of union with God. Bogged in the daily grind, we’re often beguiled by the good life but Jesus offers a better life, a best life where the only concern is loving God and neighbour. If only we could get our snouts out of the trough and go after it!

We need to lift our game. Recently I heard a priest (imported) quote the Third Commandment. He said it’s a sin not to go to Mass on Sunday. I’m told there are holy people in his parish. With such a priest, and access 24/7 to a Blessed Sacrament chapel, that’s entirely predictable and explicable.

To be aware, serene and truly joyful is to live like Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, who knew that ‘everything that happens to me is a message of God’s great love for me.’

NO WONDER PREGGIES GET DEPRESSED (Letter to Dom Post, August 24)

 

Baby blues a widespread problem, you say (August 24). Of course. Quite apart from the fact revealed by research that past abortions incline women to depression in subsequent pregnancies, the media constantly present pregnancy not as the exciting adventure it’s meant to be, but almost as an illness.  

Pregnant women have to stop drinking, or their babies will get addicted. They have to stop eating all their favorite foods or they’ll get listeria. They have to attend ante-natal classes or they won’t be able to give birth. They have to buy an amazing amount of gear including pushchairs that face their unfortunate infants away from mummy into the oncoming traffic. They have to find midwives and hope like hell they’ll turn up and know what they’re doing.  

And now you tell them they might get depressed. Aren’t you stating the obvious? 

NO PRIME MINISTER, THE PEOPLE HAVE NOT SPOKEN (Letter to Dom Post, August 24)

 

No, Prime Minister, the people have not spoken. Thousands of people have never attended a rugby match in their lives and will not be distracted from the real issues by Juvenal’s ‘beer and the big match’.  

Thousands of people go bush and know silver is the fern’s backside, so that’s actually a bit of a cheat. 

Thousands of people go to church on Sunday to revere the Cross, which is represented in the New Zealand flag by the Union Jack. 

At least, Prime Minister, you picked the right colour. Black, to represent all the women consciously or unconsciously in mourning for their babies killed before birth, all the babies battered to death after birth, all the students drinking themselves into stupor, all the men dying in ‘Correction Facilities’ like Mt Eden. 

As for your new flag being ‘worth billions’, Prime Minister, the question is, to whom?

ETHICAL CONSUMERS UNWITTINGLY BUYING FOOD CONTAINING FETAL MATERIAL (Letter to Dom Post, August 20)

‘The internet’, you editorialise (August 20), ‘has brought the markets of the world into New Zealand houses’. How right you are.

 

For example, the market for fetal body parts, recently exposed on our computers by undercover operations in the US, busting Planned Parenthood for trading aborted babies for profit. For example, harvesting a brain intact from a late-term baby boy while his heart was still beating.

 

You warn ‘ethical consumers’ of a dilemma in buying from companies that oppress their workers and don’t pay enough tax. Right again. And then there are ethical consumers who unwittingly are buying beauty products, pharmaceuticals and food containing fetal material.

 

As The Dominion Post editorialises about ethics, and ethics for journalists mean reporting the facts, I assume you know nothing about this grisly trade. So you’ll be pleased I’ve brought it to your attention.

FETAL BRAINS ARE BEING IMPLANTED INTO MICE (Letter to Dom Post, August 14)

‘Doctors (are) obliged to focus,’ says Medical Association chairman Stephen Child, ‘on the best possible health outcome for patients’. But even when requested, for pregnant patients the death of their unborn child has been shown to be the worst possible outcome, and Child is conveniently overlooking the fact that an unborn child is also a patient.

 

Oh, but only when the child is wanted. Then, doctors see that child as a patient and focus on the best possible health outcome. However, preborn children who are not wanted are seen not as patients but objects to be dismembered and dispatched with impunity.

 

Dismembered, despatched, but not discarded, it seems, because in the US Planned Parenthood are selling fetal parts for huge profits: currently, fetal brains are being implanted into mice.

 

This sickening practice, reminiscent of Josef Mengele and the Holocaust, began with doctors who decided some of their patients in utero weren’t human. And it’s coming to an abortion clinic near you.

 

 

 

THE ULTIMATE IN BULLYING (Letter to Dom Post, August 10)

‘Bullying in healthcare’, says NZ Medical Association chairman Dr Stephen Child (Letters, August 10), ‘is not tolerated’. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates otherwise. That’s because the basic principle of the health profession – healing, not hurting – has been lost.

 

Dr Child talks about raising awareness of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in the medical profession but seems blissfully unaware of the inappropriateness of damaging patients’ physical and emotional health by deliberately ending the lives of their preborn infants. There can be no medical procedure more ‘disruptive’ than the forced removal of a fetus from the womb. Killing the defenceless, voiceless preborn infant must be absolutely the ultimate in bullying.

 

What’s appropriate is that the attitude of these health professionals towards their patients, which is condoned by their peers, should also damage their relationships with one another.

 

MY BROTHER KARL'S DELAYED REACTION (Letter to Dompost, August 7)

My brother Karl ‘can’t help but get the uncomfortable feeling that food has been fetished’ (August 7).

A classic case of delayed reaction.

TO SAY HURTING A CAT MIGHT BE A CRIME IS DEVIANT (Letter to Dom Post, August 8)

For Justice Minister Amy Adams to say hurting a cat might be a crime (Harming a pet domestic violence? August 6) while unborn children are legally pulled limb from limb in utero is preposterous and quite frankly, deviant.

 

And so is Rosemary McLeod. A journalist, lamenting the skinning and beheading of a lion while in the US Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal organs and entire cadavers for profit goes unreported!

 

‘To be honest’, as everyone says now that we’re anything but, our society is becoming sick at heart.

 

VIOLENCE IN THE FAMILY BEGINS WITH VIOLENCE IN THE WOMB (Letter to Dom Post, August 3)

Any hope of success in yet ‘another crackdown on domestic violence’ will entail the reclassification of family violence-related offences vowed by Justice Minister Amy Adams (Joint response to tackle family violence, August 3), to include abortion.

 

GPS monitoring, safety alarms, a chief victims’ adviser and review of the Domestic Violence Act are all attempts to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. 

Violence in the family begins with violence in the womb and it will not end until abortion ends.