MR PLOD PLODS INTO A HORNETS' NEST (Letter published in Dompost, November 3)

Interestingly, this letter was published with the sentence in italics deleted.

If the police checkpoint at that Exit meeting in Maungaraki was designed - by persons unknown - to turn up the heat under the euthanasia debate, it succeeded: seemingly we all agree (Letters, October 31) that it was above and beyond the call of duty.

In essence this debate is driven by fear of death, but in the past our Christian heritage meant we coped with it. Kiwis had a can-do attitude to life - and to death. We could do death, because we knew it meant new life. Now that we’ve forgotten that, or reject it, or simply don’t know it, that fear pervades the whole of society: witness drug, food and alcohol addiction, bursting prisons and ever-increasing crime.

Unfortunately, a decision predicated on fear, such as legalising assisted suicide, will never work. And unfortunately there’s nothing like fear of suffering and losing control for making people as angry as hornets.

Forget the outrage over the blitz on after-hours drinking, or delinquent Hutt Valley teens; this time poor old Mr Plod has plodded into a hornets’ nest.

HOW COME WE'RE NOT TOLD ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON? (Letter to Dom Post, October 29)

Tracy Watkins says she can’t stop watching the US race (Why we're captivated by the US race, October 29), and so she knows all about Donald Trump. Then how come she doesn’t tell us about Hillary Clinton?

How Clinton totally supports partial-birth abortions – that is, slicing through a full-term baby’s spine in order to sever the spine from the brain.

How she totally supports Planned Parenthood, revealed in under-cover videos as selling fetal body parts for profit.

How Planned Parenthood has spent more than  $20 million helping to elect her. How she lied in the final presidential debate, saying Planned Parenthood provide mammograms and that partial-birth abortions are sometimes necessary to save mothers' lives.

Trump may be everything Watkins says he is, but at least he’s not evil.

EUTHANASIA IS OPPOSED NOT BY RELIGION BUT BY REALISM (Letter to Dom Post, October 26)

I’d forgotten the fuss about after-hours trading which preceded the demise of the ‘six o’clock swill’ (October 25). But arresting little old ladies in their homes for possession of balloons is so weird, it had to be a put-up job, designed to get the public onside with said little old ladies and their fear of “interminable” pain.

 

However, research shows that in the Netherlands, guidelines established for the practice of assisted suicide are consistently violated and cannot be enforced. Last year, 56 people had themselves euthanised because of “incurable” PTSD. In Belgium a child of any age can ask to be killed.

We need to think of the awful consequences of giving in to fear instead of striving for solutions to pain. What’s driving the demand for euthanasia is individualism cloaked in humanism, and it’s opposed not by religion so much as by realism.

NOW GROWN-UPS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STRANGER DANGER (Letter published in Dom Post, October 22)

We can only hope that the awful, awful Tostee/Wright story (Private night, public view, October 21) will serve as a warning not just to young women but to men also, not to risk this kind of encounter.

Remember the tragic Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire, who “depended on the kindness of strangers”, and her horrible end in a lunatic asylum.

It seems modern mores require that not only little children but adults too, should know about Stranger Danger.

PASSING WOMEN FROM PIMPS TO ABORTIONISTS (Letter to Dom Post, October 18)

Let’s not forget that when We pluck them from the Med to pass them to pimps (October 18), the pimps then pass them on to abortionists.

 

The Senior Adviser on Trafficking for the US State Department says the prevalence of forced abortions is an especially disturbing trend in sex trafficking.

If that’s what it’s like in the States, where women in forced prostitution suffer from hepatitis C, stomach and back injuries and psychological issues, and one quarter of under-age victims of sex traffickers got nothing from Planned Parenthood except contraceptives (no questions asked), the reality for these black women in Europe can only be worse.

WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? AND HOW AND WHERE? (Letter to NZ Catholic, October 18)

Michael Pender (NZ Catholic, October 16) first heard about personal relationship with Jesus from non-Catholics, and only recently from Catholic sources. That’s probably typical and explains why Protestants are so often fired up, and Catholics so limp-wristed.

 

Pender says we should pray earnestly for this gift. But why, when Requiem after Requiem “celebrates the life” of the deceased, who’s presumed to be in heaven? 

Because “we shall be separated from (God) if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor” (Catechism of the Catholic Church).

 

We need teaching, because for priests especially, “serious needs” include the spiritual needs of lay people denied the treasures of Catholic doctrine.

 

We need example. We need to know the saints. But I’ve heard it said, in a Sunday homily, that saints are “”neurotic” - which explains both why we don’t know our saints, and why we don’t want to know them: because our pastors don’t.

 

Saints, in heaven and on earth, are other Christs who inspire us to become Christ-like. Saints become saints primarily by keeping Christ company, in contemplative prayer and in the Mass.

“Implore his grace daily”, says Pope Francis; at the risk of being called non-inclusive I add, “in the Eucharist”.

 

Don’t say you’re too busy. Jesus can re-arrange your life; he who created time will give you all you need.

WHY MAKE THE WORST SUICIDE RATE EVEN WORSE? (Letter published in Dom Post, October 18)

NZ suicide rate the worst in world (October 17).

So it can’t get any worse - or can it? Do we really want to make the worst suicide rate even worse?

Why are we even thinking about making it easier to commit suicide, by legalising euthanasia?

WHAT HAPPENS TO NICE GUYS WHO NEVER GO TO CHURCH, WHEN THEY DIE?

A Catholic I know has just been to a funeral. That's not unusual. What's unusual is, he asked did I know what happens after death to guys like his friend, nice guys who live decent lives without ever seemingly giving a thought to God, let alone going to church. 

I should have known the answer right off, but I didn't. That's not unusual either, because we're not taught Church doctrine now and it's blithely assumed now by most Catholics that God's so kind, we all go to heaven.

 

So I resorted to The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren (Matthew 25, 31-46). To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means being separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell”.

 

But, you may say, God is “a forgiving God”. That’s true. In the story of the prodigal son, when he realised how stupid he’d been, wasting his inheritance etc, and went back home to ask his father’s forgiveness, his father ran to meet him, hugged him and made a huge fuss of him.

Same with us. God forgives us just as soon as we realise our mistake and ask his forgiveness. But to be forgiven we must first ask to be forgiven - in other words, repent, be converted, have a change of heart.

 

And when someone dies, even someone who says they don’t believe in God, or even a convicted serial rapist/murderer, we normally have no way of knowing that right up to the moment of death they didn’t change their mind and ask God for forgiveness. In which case they’d go to Purgatory - but that’s another story.

 

GOD DOESN'T WRESTLE, LLOYD: HE WAITS (Letter to Dompost, October 15

Lloyd Geering may think he’s been “wrestling” with God (October 15) but more likely it was shadow boxing.

Waiting, not wrestling, is what God does. He’s waited 98 years for Lloyd to realise that the God he's made a jolly good living out of is not a symbol, but for real, and give him thanks.

 

Not long now, Lloyd. If I were you, I’d be getting down on my knees.

 

GETTING DOWN AND DIRTY

There's something about hand-weeding that is conducive to thought. Maybe it's the kneeling. Maybe it's getting down into the dirt, where I'm reminded that the word 'humility', describing the fundamental Christian virtue, derives from the Latin for earth.

As I tossed out the 'pingy' weeds and orange escholtzias (I'm so over orange) I found myself thinking about old people in rest homes. Wondering how many would answer, if asked what they'd do if they won Lotto, that they would "fly to one of those countries where they have euthanasia". I suspect the old woman I know who said that is not the only one to feel that way.

She feels she's outgrown her usefulness. That's the natural reaction to the humiliating situation of people who all their lives have served others and now must submit to being served themselves, in every way. It's only natural for them to feel useless. A burden on society, even.

So then how fortunate are the Christian elderly, who can transcend these natural feelings and respond supernaturally. Because people who know what the Church teaches (many don't, because the faith is rarely taught) know that their service to humanity in this situation, if their plight is accepted with love, with Christ and for Christ, far outweighs anything physical they might have done in the active lives they once led.

Death - which the old woman who wants to win Lotto looks forward to - and suffering in the way old people do in rest homes, in spite even of the best of care, and all other kinds of suffering too, are the consequence of sin: the sin of our first parents, and also actual sins.

Suffering in itself is an evil, but God can draw good out of evil. When the elderly sacrifice themselves and their sufferings for Christ, they win other souls to his love and reach 'the apex of the apostolate and hence of apostolic fruitfulness' (Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen O C D).

 Funny what comes to mind when you're on your knees among the weeds!

THE ALL BLACKS AS 'STRANGE GODS' (Letter to Dom Post, October 7)

The reason why ‘once again the great rugby PR machine has exploded in scandal’ (October 7) is to be found in the first of the Ten Commandments: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall not put strange gods before me.’

The All Blacks are very strange gods, for sure. But that’s what this country has made them, and has put before God, and as such they are not tolerated by God. So they repeatedly fall off their pedestals, revealing their big feet to be made of clay.

This letter will be dismissed by the majority as the ravings of a religious maniac. All I can say is, too bad.