SLIP SLOP SLACK - TREES AND HATS SHOULD BE MANDATORY (Letter to the Dom Post, March 31)

 

Speaking as one who’s endured several ‘procedures’ for cancer of the scalp, it seems to me the solution for school kids at risk (Slip, slop, slack, March 31) is two-fold.

 

As St Patrick’s College rector Neal Swindells says, you plant trees - which should be selected with expert advice as the best for shade potential with regard to the micro-climate of each school. But then Swindells says, ‘We won’t force kids to wear a hat’.

 

Why not? Because secondary school age kids think hats aren’t cool. But they’re ‘forced’ to wear uncool uniforms, aren’t they? Shouldn’t the teachers and parents responsible for their health and welfare require the little darlings, as part of that uniform and under pain of punishment, to wear hats?

 

THE DEEP SECRETS IN SOULS

Each one of us has a soul, but since we do not prize souls as is deserved by creatures made in the image of God, we do not understand the deep secrets that lie in them.

- Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle

CHRISTIANS ARE NEVER FINISHED BEING CONVERTED

As Christians we are never finished being converted, reborn and risen again; the condition of our life on earth is the tension of a continual regeneration in Christ, conforming us more and more to his death and resurrection.

- Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy.

THE ISSUE UNDERLYING THE UNDERLYING ISSUE OF FAMILY VIOLENCE

 

Admitting the sad fact that New Zealand has the highest reported rate of intimate partner violence in the developed world, Justice Minister Amy Adams says – wait for it – ‘clearly something isn’t working’.

 

Well, no. And having accompanied a couple deprived of their children by CYF through several mismanaged court hearings to an unjust outcome,  I applaud the idea of a ‘One Judge One Family’ court system (March 21). It may be innovative, but it’s only common sense to have one judge handle all proceedings relating to a family where the underlying issue is family violence.

 

However, the issue underlying the underlying issue of family violence is the issue of abortion, and the truly innovative way of dealing with the issue of family violence is to stop the violence against its most vulnerable and innocent member.

ON GOOD FRIDAY, A STORY OF MISFORTUNES GIVEN TO A GOOD MAN

It seems fitting, as today we commemorate Jesus Christ tried and falsely accused, and suffering the death of a criminal after his betrayal by an intimate friend, to record a recent online conversation of mine.

It started with this question, posed to me apropos mutual acquaintances who are experiencing quite extraordinary suffering, ‘Why can’t misfortunes be shared out more equally?’

 

Some time later I came up with a quote from Teresa of Avila which I thought went a long way towards answering that query: 

 

God gives more ‘misfortune’ to the people he loves most and to the people he wants to draw into divine intimacy, and less to those he loves least, the reason being that ‘misfortune’ has the power to make us turn to God and discover how much he loves us. We are perfected in love precisely by ‘misfortune’. (Quote marks, mine.)

 

My online correspondent was right on to it. He  recalled the case of a good man who shortly after losing his eldest son by drowning many years ago was wrongly tried for manslaughter (he was acquitted).

 

The man actually responsible for the death was his best friend, who subsequently got him wrongfully dismissed from his job (with six children to support), and who went on to live a successful and presumably tranquil life (occasionally he had letters appearing in the Dom Post) and who died finally in his late nineties.

 

My correspondent's comment on my Teresian quote was, 'Ha! Mr X and his 'best friend'.

 

I said, 'Exactly'.

 

DOES CHILD CARE MAKE FOR CHILD CRIMINALS? (Letter to Dom Post, March 23)

 

 

To ‘the perfect storm’ you describe (NZ's child criminals, March 23) of circumstances so stacked against children that ‘a brush with the law is almost predetermined’, we may well add the factor of child care.  

A major new scientific review by the The Brainwave Trust discloses that childcare increases the risk of respiratory illness, obesity, hyperactivity and aggression. They conclude that – guess what? – mothers have been underestimated; that their presence has profound beneficial neurobiological effects on their young children, and that the earlier children are separated from their mothers, the greater the deprivation incurred. 

In reality this is all blatantly obvious. Many mothers’ common sense sees them actively resist societal pressure to abandon their little children into the arms of complete strangers. Many more mothers must agonize over their perceived need to give in and go back to work. 

But if, as it seems, we need research to point this out, then we need also to welcome the data and promote it, so that families can re-evaluate their lifestyle and return it by innovative thinking to the relative peace and happiness of homes with mothers in them.

This has happened several times now. I write a letter to The Dominion Post about abortion or on some issue of Christianity.

My letter doesn't appear - another does, usually more long-winded and not to the point.

Yesterday for example, Craig Richardson's letter on Parliament's prayer:

Hugh McMillan (Feb 24) calls the NZ parliamentary prayer meaningless and asks why is there a prayer at all? For a start, it is part of Parliament's tradition which reminds us of our own history, Our British and Maori heritage is not secular.

NZ's governing system is autonomous, it does not impost religion and with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (fourth article) we are guaranteed religious freedom.

However, this does not mean our government cannot call upon divine assistance, and indeed the majority of societies have always done this.

It is true that belief in the supernatural has become unfashionable, probably in part due to our government neglecting to include religious instruction in our national state school curriculum in 1877. As a result, we can tend to be a little ignorant.

If McMillan was (sic) taught the catechism he would know that God benefits nothing from our prayers. It is ourselves who benefit from being prayerful and reverent.

Now, mine on the same subject:

'MISFORTUNE' HAS THE POWER TO PERFECT US IN LOVE

I thought I'd already posted this quote from Teresa of Avila, but it seems not. It goes a long way I think, towards answering a question posed to me recently.

Someone asked, apropos of awful sufferings visited on a mutual acquaintance,  why misfortunes can't be shared out more equally.

Teresa says:

God gives more ‘misfortune’ to the people he loves most and to the people he wants to draw into divine intimacy, and less to those he loves least, the reason being that ‘misfortune’ has the power to make us turn to God and discover how much he loves us. We are perfected in love precisely by ‘misfortune’.

GRANDMERE THE WICKED WITCH

On Friday, for the second time, I took a pack of four frozen choccy treats, along with a roast chicken, to my daughter's place. Cat, as she's universally known, and her husband Tiki have a vineyard at Haumoana in Hawke's Bay, and as harvest time approaches the plot thickens and the nerves thin.

(Actually, when I found she wasn't home and couldn't force entry, I had to deliver them to the wild game salami cottage industry next door.)

Tonight, Cat reports, when the Tiptop trumpets were handed out there was an unusual and prolonged silence. It was broken by six year-old Theo(-dorable).

'Is Grandmere really a wicked witch,' he asked, 'who's fattening us up so she can eat us?'

COMPARED WITH CLINTON, LUCREZIA BORGIA IS A DEWY-EYED INNOCENT (Letter to Dom Post, March 16)

 

Describing the choice which Americans may face come election time, between ‘Mussolini and Lucrezia Borgia’ (Clinton scandals would have sunk anyone else, March 16), is unfortunately no overstatement.

 

I wonder how many realise that another Hillary Clinton scandal, unmentioned perhaps because your paper considers it unmentionable, is her pursuit-to-kill policy around the most vulnerable sector of American society (as of any society), the unborn. Killing them, that is, right up to the due date of birth.

 

Not only that, but she is ‘proud to stand with Planned Parenthood’, the abortion giant revealed to be harvesting fetal organs and turning them over to research firms for a fee. By comparison with Clinton, Lucrezia Borgia is a dewy-eyed innocent.

INTERMITTENT FASTING (Letter to Dom Post, March 15)

‘We still have a long way to go,’ says Nick Fuller (Taking a break helps you lose weight, March15), ‘in proving the true efficacy of intermittent fasting’.

The Catholic Church has been proving its efficacy for a couple of thousand years.

WHY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SHUNS THE 'A' WORD AND WHY IT SHOULDN'T

‘Justice and Peace’. They're hot words in the Church. Pope Francis says we must devote ourselves to these works with patience and perseverance. The funny thing is, these works don’t seem to canvass the most basic issue, named recently by the Holy Father as ‘an absolute evil’: abortion.

Here’s another funny thing. Because of my mother, who ‘had to get up on a chair’ to address the NZ United Women’s Convention in the ‘70s (she was the only prolifer there and ‘they were all such big women’) I was in on the ground floor of the prolife movement in New Zealand. (It wasn’t until many years later that I really became qualified to speak against abortion, when I was surprised by motherhood for the fifth time at age 46.)

Back in the ‘70s that great New Zealander Professor (later Sir) William Liley, who pioneered blood transfusions in utero, was an inspiration to those who fought against legalising abortion. But Liley was an oddity in the anti-abortion movement, as it was then called. “He’s not even a Catholic”, we said.

But largely, I believe, as a result of the Catholic Church's failure to preach and teach the Gospel in this regard - See that you despise not one of these little ones (Mt 18,10), for example - the face of the pro-life movement in New Zealand has changed.

Its older visage, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, was almost exclusively Catholic. But at a recent Voice for Life event I counted 30 Protestants and 4 Catholics. I’m the only Catholic left on the VFL committee.

Former Planned Parenthood executive and Protestant prolifer Abby Johnson, who toured New Zealand just over a year ago, says if there’s even one abortion clinic operating and no one praying outside it, that implies Christians think killing unborn children by tearing them agonisingly limb from limb is okay. Thank God, there’s a weekly prayer vigil outside our local abortion clinic - but it’s inspired and led by Protestants.  

Johnson tells about a woman given misoprostol to abort quadruplets who came to Planned Parenthood in great pain.

“The first baby fell into the toilet,” reported another PP worker. “The next two babies fell out of her. Two perfectly formed little boys, who had their arms wrapped around each other. The fourth baby was suctioned out in pieces.” She cradled the intact babies in her arms and cried.

            She left PP (since exposed for selling fetal body parts), the same day. Her story illustrates the need for healing and forgiveness for the 121 US abortion industry workers who’ve quit since Johnson led the way.

And there’s the need for healing and forgiveness for the women who keep the abortion industry in business. Johnson says that one in three US women has killed her own child and the stats in New Zealand and Australia are probably the same.

“The ones who can’t bear to hear the word abortion”, says Dr Theresa Burke, founder of the healing ministry Rachel’s Vineyard, “they’re sitting in our churches.”

But like homosexuals before that law reform, millions of mothers are now afraid to ‘come out’, not for ‘equality’ but for the healing they desperately need and which is available. Duped or forced into choosing the evil of abortion to ‘solve the problem’ of an ‘unwanted child’ (more accurately, an unwanted pregnancy), they suffer the physical, mental and spiritual consequences in silence.

Perhaps that’s because those whom Christ has ordained to heal and forgive say nothing. Presumably, our bishops and priests don’t want to upset women who they think are mourning the child they killed. Many mothers must conclude that what they did is too awful for words.

But on the other hand, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta says “abortion destroys the conscience of the mother”. And we see the truth of her statement that “abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace today”, graphically illustrated in the violence, substance abuse and eating disorders mushrooming all around us.

This is the work of the Father of lies, whom the Church must vigorously oppose.

As Johnson says, “it’s time we stopped worrying about offending people and started worrying about offending the heart of God.”

 

WHEN THE MIND IS UNTRAINED ...

From Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection,  a discalced Carmelite of the 17th century:


When the mind is untrained and has got into bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are most difficult to overcome, and frequently draw us, against our wills, to the things of earth.

I believe that one remedy is to confess our faults, humbling ourselves before God. I advise you to avoid much talking in prayer; long speeches often induce distractions.

THE 'HABIT OF CONVERSE WITH GOD' ISN'T THAT HARD, SAYS BRO LAWRENCE

 

A 'holy thought' from Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (17th century):

 

Perseverance is required at first in making a habit of converse with God and of referring all we do to Him; but after a little His love moves us to it without any difficulty.