THE DOMPOST'S "DEPLORABLE" READERSHIP AND TOM SCOTT (letter to DomPost, November 25)

Criticising a senior Muslim cleric for hate speech against Jews (Ugly speech the fault of one, November 25), your editorial implies that it might constitute an offence against “a seldom-used ban on certain kinds of insulting speech”. And fair enough.

But with the “declining news media sector” (Calm voices and reliable information, same date) proved wrong by the Trump triumph of “deplorables” (Liberals hold tight to disdain, same date) and still wearing blinkers, it might be useful to reflect on your readership of “deplorables” and their reaction to Tom Scott’s cartoons, which are occasionally insulting to Christians in general and Catholics in particular.

Scott would realize that because they're supposed to turn the other cheek, Christians present a soft target. I’ve been waiting for a non-Christian to speak up but they haven’t so I will.

Only in the interests of shoring up your declining readership, of course.

WHICH CHURCH-RUN CHARITIES COULD WE DO WITHOUT? (Letter to Dom Post, November 22)

Dave Armstrong (Essential broadcaster has own crisis) November 21) has an idea. He asks, why not tax the all money given to churches and the money they make?

I ask, which church-run social services does he think we can do without? The Sallys’ food, clothing, budget advice and addiction counselling? The Wellington City Mission, the Wellington Family Centre? Enliven Central’s retirement villages and dementia care? The Wellington Night Shelter? The Suzanne Aubert Soup Kitchen? St Vinnie’s shops, counselling and advocacy services? I could go on.

Perhaps Armstrong has a Plan B which would ensure these outfits would keep running with a lot less of our money.

CRUX OF THE CRISIS IN THE PRIESTHOOD (First posted on associationof cathic.priests.ie on November 17)

Our country parish newsletter certainly makes for interesting reading. Last Sunday we had the Association of Catholic Priests saying in “Judgment on the horizon” that “Most days, one must be like Martha who was fully occupied with her daily work, busy with many things.”

Here is the crux of the crisis in the priesthood. One must not be like Martha who was fully occupied with work most days; one must be like Mary, partly occupied in time dedicated to contemplative prayer every day.

It was Mary, Jesus said, who chose “the best part” and that best part is contemplative prayer. He chided Martha not because she was busy but because she was “troubled”. If Martha had spent time “at the Lord’s feet” she wouldn’t have been troubled; she would have learned, in contemplating Christ, that perfect love which casts out fear.

Vatican II repeatedly urges contemplative prayer on both priests and lay people but to the best of my knowledge it’s still not taught in seminaries. That’s obvious from our Sunday homilies and parish newsletters. Priests and lay people may perhaps be practising Christian Meditation or Centering Prayer, but those are “strange doctrines” (Heb 13, 9), not contemplative prayer.

No wonder we lack priests. “By their fruits you shall know them” (Mt 7, 16).

BATTLE LINES IN NEW ZEALAND'S CATHOLIC CHURCH

'Cathnews.co.nz' is a website, a creature of the Marist Order, which is often quoted in our small country parish newsletter. It invites comments but there’s a limit of 10 days from initial publication.


I wasn't aware of that until my comments on Joy Cowley’s 'The Flat Earth Society', which said hell exists only on earth and so contradicted the Gospel, were declined.



Then last Sunday in our newsletter we read in 'Cardinal Dew appointed to the Congregation for Divine Worship' something rather more than “news about and of interest to the Catholic Church” as the website editor, John Murphy S M, describes the website’s content. The article appeared on Cathnews on November 1 so I'm too late to post my remarks there. Never mind, there’s always Carmelite Canto Fermo, and here they are:

I was surprised to see the divisive and adversarial tone taken by Cathnews.co.nz in regard to new appointments to the Congregation for Divine Worship.

I knew the NZ clergy generally, who often give the impression of operating independently of the Vatican, would be very hostile to Cardinal Sarah’s suggestion that the Mass be celebrated ad orientem, and the item in our parish newsletter this week seems to show that even the Marists, whose tradition is surely to imitate Mary in humility and obedience, were among the disaffected.

As Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, Cardinal Sarah did not “call for priests to turn their backs on the congregation”; he was encouraging priests and people, wherever possible, to turn together towards God. His very legitimate concern is that man, not Almighty God, is now often the focus of our liturgy.

How can Cathnews construe the Cardinal’s position as striking “a very different tone to the Pope’s merciful approach to families in difficult circumstances”? If they’re saying Pope Francis’ moves toward the deconstruction of three Sacraments – matrimony, confession and communion – in order to accommodate the divorced and ‘remarried’ are “merciful”, they would seem to be drawing up battle lines in the New Zealand Church.

Last week, in Joy Cowley’s piece, I thought Cathnews was not serving truth. This week I believe they are not serving unity.

DEAR WELLY, WAKE UP

“Shaken up” in Wellington (November 17), are Statistics House, BNZ Harbour Quays, Defence House, Queensgate, Justice House and Pipitea House, the PM’s and Cabinet’s Departments.

 

Statistics House, where I suppose the grim total of aborted babies is totted up every year. The BNZ, which invests in pharmaceuticals possibly implicated in the use of fetal body parts. Defence House, which attempts to defend a morally indefensible nation. Queensgate, the biggest incentive for wasting money in the lower North Island. Justice House, which administers laws allowing babies to be killed in their mothers’ wombs. Pipitea House, where the PM and Cabinet preside over all the foregoing.

 

Yesterday I heard an honest priest say, “Earthquakes are caused by God. We need to pray.” Please, dear Welly, wake up.

SEYMOUR WANTS AUTOMATONS IN PARLIAMENT (letter published in Dom Post, November 16)

David Seymour thinks it’s “enormously disappointing” that Cabinet ministers’ political stance is affected by their personal judgment on moral issues such as euthanasia. He thinks they should not exercise “a personal vote” but vote for what the polls say the majority wants.

The polls having been Trumped however, he must know that polls can get it wrong but even so, it sounds like Seymour wants automatons in Parliament. Men and women who operate not out of beliefs, but who believe in nothing. Nihilists who will vote for anything in order to stay in office, members of Parliament who are relentlessly politically correct.

But in fact what New Zealand desperately needs is political representatives with vision, values and courage.

HILLARY CLINTON AND THE POWER OF PRAYER (Letter to Dom Post, November 10)

Thank you Tracy Watkins, for acknowledging Trump’s speech was gracious, but I believe there’s a factor in WTF which to my knowledge you and the rest of the media have completely overlooked.

 

Namely, the power of prayer. Donald Trump may be everything you say, but Hillary Clinton totally supports partial-birth abortions, Planned Parenthood’s illegal, evil trade in fetal body parts and forcing Christians to fund abortions. If I were a US citizen I’d have returned a blank ballot paper.

Yesterday, the prayers of Christians the world over were answered. And this morning, like many other Catholics I should think, I walked out of Mass with the following line from Psalm 146 ringing in my ears.

The Lord thwarts the path of the wicked.

 

CENTERING PRAYER IS NOT CONTEMPLATION (Letter to NZ Catholic, November 10)

I’m sorry to say I see little resemblance between Father Ronald Rolheiser’s “Centering Prayer” (October 30) and the “Contemplation” of the Desert Fathers, John of the Cross and The Cloud of Unknowing.

For Rolheiser, contemplation is “prayer without the attempt to concentrate ... on God”. But then he contradicts himself, quoting The Cloud, saying “It’s a simple reaching out directly towards God”.  Introducing A Letter of Private Direction by the author of The Cloud, Jesuit James Walsh says, “It is not at all a question of thinking of nothing, but of dynamically accepting the fact that I am .... nothing.”

The Desert Fathers’ first requirement for contemplation is detachment, but Rolheiser doesn’t mention detachment.

As to John of the Cross, he says, “The soul enjoys being ... fixed in a loving knowledge”. Then even when having passed from meditation to contemplation, “as soon as the soul comes before God, it makes an act of knowledge”.

Contemplation is a grace for which we prepare primarily - if I may refer to a woman, a Doctor of the Church and John’s mentor – by Teresa of Avila’s “intense practice of the virtues”. By trying merely to empty the mind, “we shall end by driving ourselves silly.” Exactly.

Meditation is something we do. Contemplation is something God does for us, when we are ready.

WHO'S MORE "WILLFULLY IGNORANT" - CLINTON OR TRUMP? OR SCOTT? (Letter to Dom Post, Nov 9)

Yes, “Hillary tells fibs, is unlikeable and has ovaries” (Tom Scott, November 9).

She also totally approves of partial-birth abortions, where a full-term baby is dragged feet first out of its mother so the neck is exposed and stabbed, a tube inserted and the baby’s brains sucked out, so that the skull collapses and the baby extracted, dead but entire except for the brain.

Hillary also totally supports Planned Parenthood’s illegal, profitable trafficking of these dead babies’ organs, except for the brain which is the most valuable. But then, the products of thousands of earlier abortion ensure that Planned Parenthood has plenty of babies’ brains to sell off.

Who’s more “wilfully ignorant” in regard to such callous butchery and evil profiteeering – Clinton or Trump? Or for that matter, Tom Scott?

INSTEAD OF NEMBUTAL IN THE CUPBOARD, FAITH IN GOD (Letter to Dom Post, November 8)

Say a little old lady has a bottle of Nembutal “locked away in a cupboard at home” (Personal liberty at stake, November 8). Say she’s a rich little old lady. Say she goes senile and tells her children about the Nembutal. Say they’re not very nice children. Say they’re liars who tell her doctor she was suicidal. You get the picture?

 

I only hope I’m not giving my children ideas. But they know I’d never have Nembutal in the cupboard. 

Because I have faith in the God who loves me and sets me free.