ANIMALS ARE NOT MUSLIMS (Letter to Dom Post, February 1)

 

 

Jeanette Sullivan (Hats off to Kelly, Letters, February 1) overlooks the ‘simple’ fact that animals are not Muslims, Christians or Jews, who believe they have a soul and for whom euthanasia is seriously sinful.

And neither do animals love one another, or try to protect one another from ‘life-terminating treatment’, like that meted out to thousands of men and women in the Netherlands who have been euthanased without their consent and sometimes even their knowledge.

HE WAS CLOSE TO TEARS (a last call for submissions on the assisted suicide Bill)

An elderly man came to sit beside me after Mass today in a church in Palmerston North, asking for help in making a submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry into assisted suicide. He'd heard me pray during the Intercessory Prayers that New Zealand might be preserved from this threat to God's peace and love, to God's order.

HE WAS CLOSE TO TEARS. 'We've had a death in our family,' he said. 'We mustn't allow this. But I'm no good with pen and paper.' 

I told him to Google Family First, who offer help in making submissions on their website www.protect.org.nz.

Let's hope everyone follows his example in making a submission to Parliament opposing this awful pro-euthanasia Bill. It's not too late: deadline is Monday February 1. 

'YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!'

 

 

EUTHANASIA 'DEBATE' IS PREVARICATION AND PRETENCE (Letter to Dom Post, January 27)

  

 

Today’s Dominion Post makes a sham of the euthanasia ‘debate’.  

Two large pix show Helen Kelly - a woman with whom all your readers will sympathise - who on page one talks nicely about dying slowly, but ‘supports giving the dying a choice’. And on the opinion page there she is again, with your headline, ‘Dying slowly does have its advantages’, again slyly cloaking Kelly’s pro-euthanasia position in a cloak of prevarication and pretence.

 

All these column inches are ‘balanced’ by a very small photo on page 5, held by sad parents (looking off-camera, a classic turn-off) of a woman who died naturally of cancer some time ago. The nearest hospice could surely have provided a more up-to-date account of acceptance of natural death, and your story carefully avoids making any explicitly anti-euthanasia statements.

 

Similarly biased reportage was very likely the means used by the media to the end of allowing euthanasia in the Netherlands - where it has meant the end of thousands of lives without their consent.

 

OUR INCREASE IN LOVE

Our increase in love corresponds to our degree of conformity to God’s will -

Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O C D, Divine Intimacy.

ALL DANGER DISAPPEARS (Letter to Dom Post, January 26)

 

 

Isn’t it interesting. A twelve year-old boy who’s scared he’s going to drown (We could feel the water dragging us, January 26) looks up from the water, instinctively ‘hoping God will save me’.

 

That instinct is God-given and if followed to the full will ultimately save us not just from drowning, but all danger. Because when love becomes perfect it casts out fear - so that effectively, all danger disappears.

'MY MOTHER AND MY QUEEN' (A real Kiwi bloke comments on the BVM)

I have a dear friend, a real Kiwi bloke who's an intercessor for one of my family whose girlfriend is dangerously ill. The other day after Mass, I lent him the November 2015 issue of National Geographic with the cover story on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Brendan (not his real name) is built like a brick shit-house and as gentle as a lamb.

‘A lot of people think Mary’s a myth,’ he said. ‘But she’s not to me. To me she’s my Mother and my Queen.’

WHOEVER LISTENS TO THE SACRED WORD IN A SPIRIT OF FAITH

Christ is always present in Scripture: the Old Testament but announces and prepares for his coming; the New simply attests to it and spreads his message abroad.

Whoever listens to the sacred word in a spirit of faith will always encounter Jesus of Nazareth, and each such meeting signals a new stage of his salvation.

- Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen O C D, 'Divine Intimacy'.

NOT JUST UNSAFE, BUT LETHAL (Letter to Dom Post, Jan 23)

‘It’s just diabolical,’ says a midwife at Wellington Hospital, which is described (Midwives fear for mums at hospital, January 22) as ‘an unsafe environment’. She’s quite right, because what’s going on there, as at other abortion facilities throughout New Zealand, is demonic in its intent and effects.

 

It’s not just ‘unsafe’ – for the babies who lose their lives there of course it’s lethal. And it’s pernicious for those infants’ mothers, who place themselves at serious risk to their mental and physical health.

 

So no wonder the NZ Nurses Organisation claims ‘morale is so low’. Morale is low throughout New Zealand, as evident in the violence and distress of all kinds chronicled daily in The Dominion Post. And for as long as we continue to kill our children before birth, we’ll have more of the same.

TWO LETTERS (to The Dominion Post) DISCUSSING GOD

 

I was interested to compare two letters written to The Dominion Post this week, in answer to another from one Chris Lakomy, on the subject of God.

 

Here's one:

 

'Chris Lakomy asks why religious people 'worship a God that has created so much disaster in the world' (Letters, January 19). It's a fair question.

 

When the horrors of the world (from bubonic plague to depression) get a bit much, some believers do stop  believing, but most give God a dose of sorrow, perplexity or anger and hang in there, trusting that this world is part of a larger story that can end well.

 

Believers don't say the world is perfect, and I suggest that it's actually no worse than we humans deserve. When you look around t the horror - so much of it made by us (we are a very dodgy outfit) -  it could be said that we don't deserve any world at all.

 

Yet, here we are - with a chance to make good. Not only that, but this horror-ridden world is also beautiful, often magically so. I would say the world is a mixed bag, like every human heart. God relates to that mixed human heart, and I love Him in return (not because I think everything is hunky-dory).'

 

                                                                              - Gavan O'Farrell, Fairfield

 

Here's the other:

 

'Pardon me if I introduce into the pages of The Dominion Post a derelict three-letter word which completely explains Chris Lakomy’s objections to God (Letters, January 19). 

Sin is now so rarely mentioned - even in Catholic schools - that it’s hardly surprising he should ask ‘why religious folks want to worship a God that has created so much disaster in our world’. The answer of course is, God didn’t create disaster. Man did, by preferring his own will to God’s. In other words, by sinning. 

Let me assure Lakomy that one day he will meet the true God and if he’s the good man he seems to be, far from wanting to kick God’s butt, he will instantly fall in love with him.'

 

                                                                         - Julia du Fresne, Waipukurau

 

Guess which was published. So much for brevity being the soul of wit.

JESUS COMES WITH A GUARANTEE

Sorry people, for my temporary absence, but my dear old Dell having thrown a hissy fit, and been declared by my IT son in Melbourne to be dead, has now been resurrected by Wycom (Waipukurau Computers, get it?).

So herewith, tonight's 'holy thought':

Jesus is the only teacher who can guarantee with miracles the truth of his doctrine. 'Through his words and deeds, his signs and wonders ... he confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed. 

THE WHOLE CHURCH IS MISSIONARY

No one who has received the immense gift of faith may enjoy it selfishly, but is bound ... by Christian love to share it with others.

Since there is a variety of conditions of life, and consequently different ways of giving a response, each member of the Church is reached by this call, which is directed to each and every one.

The whole Church is missionary ... To forget this or to carry it out carelessly would be, on our part, a betrayal of our Master.

- Pope Paul VI.

THE POPE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG (Letter published in Dom Post, Jan 6)

Yesterday, the Dom Post featured a lengthy article explaining demographic decline and its very serious implications.

Today the Dom Post featured Tom Scott depicting Pope Francis urging action on breeding.

Seems like the Pope was right all along.

HOW TO BE HAPPY

"Has anyone ever told you how to be happy?" was the question I put to my fourteen year-old granddaughter this morning.

"No," said Frances.

"Do something for someone else every day,' I said.

Doing something for someone else every day is the way to become a saint, is the way it was put to me a few years ago, but I thought that wouldn't go down so well with a teenager.

It comes to the same thing; it's saints who are truly happy. 

CALL UPON HIS HOLY NAME WITH TRUST

The Father never rejects anyone who prays to him in the name of his Son. It is not the name itself that is of special value, but what it stands for; the name of Jesus is all-powerful because it designates the mystery, the power and the mission of the Son of God who became man precisely to be the Saviour of the world.

To call upon his holy name with trust is to appeal to his incarnation, his passion and death, his resurrection; such a call is always heard because it rises up to God supported by the infinite merits of Jesus the Saviour.

- Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD (as previously).

AN 'A' LETTER DAY

I was fairly amazed to see in today’s Dominion Post a letter I wrote and posted on this blog on December 28 which mentions the ‘A’ word.

I’d asked Grant Bayldon of Amnesty International to explain why his organisation, which defends all sorts of human rights, promotes a ‘right’ to abortion which denies unborn children the right to life.

Does Amnesty believe unborn children are not human, I asked, and if they’re not, what are they? (II eagerly await his reply.)

I’ve very rarely, if ever, had The Dominion Post publish any of my frequent letters on the subject of abortion. I have to wonder if this appearance of the ‘A’ word in the letters column might have something to do with one I wrote (see my post on December 31) asking why the media suppresses information on the health risks of abortion, and ‘in the wrestle over free speech, in which corner sits The Dominion Post?’

Maybe the New Year has brought to this paper at least a change of heart.

MAN PARTICIPATES IN GOD'S IMMUTABILITY

Only the time that is dedicated to God and to fulfilling his will, will endure; being fixed in God makes man participate in his immutability. Then the passage of time will not cast a shadow of sadness on our lives, but rather fill our hearts with joy because it brings our eternal meeting with God the closer.

Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD, as previously.

LITERALLY CONSUMING OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS (Letter to Dompost, Jan 3)

In his encyclical Laudato Si Pope Francis quotes the NZ  Catholic bishops (The Pope’s New Zealand connection, Jan 2), who’d asked what ‘thou shalt not kill’ could mean for the 20 per cent of the world’s population who consume resources in a way that ‘robs poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive’.

Good question. Certainly it’s not as vexed as the question that needed asking first, which concerns direct contravention of this Christian commandment by abortion. We are not only figuratively but literally, by the use of fetal body parts in the food industry, consuming our future generations. There can be no social justice in a world which legally kills its own young.

Surely NZ’s Catholic bishops should be hollering this Gospel truth from the rooftops.

WE HAVE ONLY THIS EARLY LIFE TO GROW IN LOVE

We have only the short day of this early life to grow in love and if we wish to derive from it the greatest possible benefit we must apply ourselves not only to doing good works, but to doing them with our whole heart, and with all the generosity of which we are capable, overcoming the inertia and pettiness which always make us inclined to the least effort.

-Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD (as previously).