JOBLESS FAILING DRUG TESTS (Letter to Dom Post, March 1)

It’s nice for Bill English to have someone to blame for immigrants supplying for skills shortages (Jobless failing drug tests, February 28). But if I were Prime Minister I’d be asking myself why so many of my young constituents can’t pass a drug test.

 

I’d be thinking it’s more important for our youth to have “some confidence and direction” than an impersonal construct such as “a growing economy”. I’d be wondering if the tail is wagging the dog. I’d be imagining the growth that would occur if the 50 per cent of applicants in the horticultural sector who now refuse even to take a test could pass it with flying colours.

 

I’d be wondering why our drug addiction, alcoholism, violence, homelessness and poverty is growing faster than the economy, and in inverse proportion to the decline in practice or even knowledge of the sublime proposal of Jesus Christ: “love one another as I have loved you”.

ABORTION AIDS MEN (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 18)

Anyone who refutes Monica Devine’s assertion (Letters, February 27), that promoting abortion encourages men to abuse should consider the case of the Asburton farming contractor convicted last week of a frenzied attack on his pregnant ex. He bashed her with a baseball bat so hard it snapped in two. 

 

He was seeing someone else. So he wanted her to get an abortion. And why not? You can get them so easily. Lots of women have abortions. But she wanted to keep her baby.

She suffered a fractured skull and terrible facial injuries, including a broken eye socket. She pretended to be dead, and survived. We don’t know if her baby did.

 

Could the supporters of women’s ‘rights’ please explain how the availability of abortion ' liberated' this woman?

LET'S BLAME IT ON DONALD J TRUMP (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 27)

Surely it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood and the media decide that the person to blame for the Oscar debacle is Donald J Trump.

"NO FORGETTING" FOR MUMS AFTER ABORTION

Jane Roe, aka Norma McCorvey, actually hadn’t “had enough of history and her part in it”(My rules: no forgetting, especially for vanishing dads, February 23). She spent the rest of her life campaigning against abortion. 

Before Roe vs Wade, the rights of the unborn (to life) were actually not given precedence over their mothers’. Abortion places mothers at far greater risk, physically and mentally, than childbirth. 

“Opponents of women’s rights” are in fact supporters of everyone's rights. Especially their right to life, as enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

If “white men” revisit Roe v Wade, they will actually help prevent what black US activists are calling genocide - a hugely disproportionate number of deaths there by abortion are black.

Women are actually never “forced” to listen to a foetal heartbeat. But when they do, they realise that heart is beating in a body which is its own, not its mother's.

Jane Roe, aka Norma McCorvey, stated that “the entire abortion industry is based on a lie.” 

Actually, a whole lot of lies.

MUMS COULD SUE DHBs FOR DEPRIVING THEIR UNBORN OF THE RIGHT TO LIFE

Lyn Copland is suing Capital and Coast District Health Board for breaching her mentally ill son’s right not to be deprived of life. Sounds like she’s got a very good case.

 

She cites her son Samuel Fischer’s right to life as being enshrined in the Bill of Rights Act, and it is. If the court agrees and rules his right to life is inalienable – and it is – what will that say about the right to life of humans yet to be born?

Thousands of women could sue their partners, or mothers, for forcing them into having an abortion. They could even sue abortion providers like Planned Parenthood for breaching their unborn child’s right not to be deprived of life, by failing to inform them of the mental and physical consequences of abortion.

 

The ramifications of this case could be huge. Thank God we have an unimpeachable judiciary.

WHY WE SHOULD READ THE DOUAY-RHEIMS BIBLE

I bought the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible years ago through a friend who imports it.

I sometimes take the D-R to meetings with a group of dear Protestant friends, to choose scripture verses for weekly publication in the local rag. They listen politely to its ‘transliteration’ (as opposed to translation) but I think we’ve never chosen the Douay version for the paper. The ‘Good News’ is the bible that most often seems to be the one to resonate with Central Hawke’s Bay readership.

However, I bought the Douay because of its faithfulness to the Vulgate translation by St Jerome. What I didn’t know then was that the Douay-Rheims Bible was confirmed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent as “authentic” and “no one should dare or presume under any pretext to reject it”.

My good friend Gwen Story (tenstory@xtra.co.nz) has a black, leather-bound gold-embossed D-R available right now, at $85.

Pleroma Christian Supplies has a paperback version, $45.

Or you can read the Douay online. I needed the D-R translation of a particular verse yesterday. I googled “Douay-Rheims Bible” and the verse’s key word, and lo and behold! there it was.

MORGAN TAKES ON TESTING 'OBSESSION' (Letter published in Dom Post, Feb 23)

Gareth Morgan is right to say “we are obsessed with assessing” our children - but he seems obsessed with assessing them even earlier.

I’m surprised he hasn’t assessed the overseas assessments which show 17% of children in early childhood education are aggressive, disobedient and engaged in conflict. Shy children in daycare are assessed as more stressed, showing markedly higher levels of cortisol. A third study assesses daycare children as being no better off academically than homecare. I would assess the children from poorer backgrounds whom he assesses as “two years behind” as far more likely to be affected by the lack of a father than lack of early childhood education.

Gareth Morgan would win more votes by pledging government subsidies for fulltime parental homecare, to the same tune as the subsidies already in place for early childhood ‘education’.

SO WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE THE FIFTIES?

Yesterday at Mass we heard that in the ‘50s it was a mortal sin not to go to Mass on Sunday, and you had to go to confession before you could receive Communion again.

Okay. In the ‘50s the third commandment was the same as it is now: “Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.”

In the ‘50s the Catechism of the Catholic Church said, presumably, something like “on Sundays the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass”, because that’s what the Catechism says now.

The Catechism says further that “those who deliberately fail in this obligation commit a grave sin”.

And it says that “the Eucharist is not ordered to the forgiveness of mortal sins – that is proper to the sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church.”

SO WHAT’S CHANGED?

CHURCH OF CHANGE

Bishop Richard Randerson (Letters, February 16) says opposition in the Anglican Church in New Zealand to blessing same-sex marriages “was partly based on a handful of biblical texts, 2000 and more years old”.

In support of the proposal he quotes “the Gospel call for justice and inclusion” (whatever the latter term may mean).

Have he and his fellow bishops and clergy forgotten the Gospel call of Jesus Christ: “I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it” (Matthew 5, 17)?

THE LOATHSOME PRESIDENT TRUMP (letter to Dom Post, Feb 15)

Joe Bennett reads the bible; that's good.

In light of his latest insults in regard to Donald Trump, wanting to see him “humiliated, ridiculed and laughed out of office” (February 15), Bennett might like to consider this: “The base things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, that he might bring to nought things that are” (1 Cor 1, 28).

So there's not the scriptural contradiction that Bennett suggests. He's missing the point. The race is indeed not to the swift.(1 Cor 1, 28).

THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 14)

We all know domestic violence (Letters, Feb 13) is not okay, but until we realise its root cause we’re stuck with it. 

 

The root of the word ‘domestic’ is ‘domus’ meaning ‘home’. Domestic violence happens in all kinds of homes, but our first home is common to all humankind.

It’s in our mother’s womb that we all lived in comfort, warmth and shelter, with food to meet every dietary requirement, for the first nine months of our lives. For the last forty years however, we’ve said it’s okay to invade that home and kill its rightful occupant. Until we implement the means to protect all parties - mothers, fathers and their unborn children - from the violence of abortion it will continue to infiltrate the workplace and the whole of society.

 

The single biggest factor in the cost to our economy of domestic and family violence of $8 billion a year is the primary violence of abortion.

MORGAN WANTS TO DITCH TVNZ (Feb 8)

The spectacle offered by TVNZ on our national day, of American football larded with Lady Gaga, should give The Opportunities Party (Morgan wants to ditch TVNZ, February 8)a fair bit of momentum.

Go Gareth!

TIME TO THINK BIG ON LAND TRANSPORT (Letter ;ublished in Dom Post, Feb 8)

The same day we read Russell Tregonning’s enlightened piece on the urgency of intelligent planning in rail transport (February 7), we hear the TranzAlpine line is closed by wildfires.

Hardly a week passes without more damage to our environment caused by climate change. How much money will KiwiRail lose while seven bridges await repair? How can tourists enjoy South Island scenery while stuck between lumbering trucks and trailers?

Our ageing population simply cannot continue to foot the bill but KiwiRail carries on desecrating with dirty diesel instead of implementing clean electric. 

The government is elected and expected to govern, and not just for the short term and the short-sighted. The ironically-named Transport Minister Simon Bridges should show KiwiRail some muscle.

Weaklings don’t win elections.

LEAKS, TWEETS AND PLOTS (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 6)

The paroxsyms of rage over President Trump’s election (Leaks, tweets and plots, Feb 6) would be amusing if it weren’t for their terrible origin – 1.72 billion abortions worldwide in the last 40 years.

The feminazi are furious at the threat Trump poses to ‘reproductive rights’, which means their ‘right’ to abortion on demand, in other words the threat to their jobs and careers. “Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned” said Congreve, and he was right. That fury, not Trump or his “regime”, is what actually “unleashed chaos around the world”.

If only women would wake up to their magnificent destiny as caretakers of the future. It’s mothers who have what it takes to nurture their children, not childcare centres.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO INSENSITIVITY (Letter to Dom Post, Feb 2)

Rosemary McLeod (World's on the slippery slope to insensitivity, February 2), cites a drowning in Venice that people filmed but didn’t prevent, and fears we risk forgetting the ties that bind us "into a world fit to live in".

We started losing "kindness, consideration, empathy, tolerance and trust" the day we decided not to prevent loss of life in utero, regardless of the suffering inflicted on the mother, and the pain and loss of life inflicted on the child. Or would the mainstream media claim it was those very same qualities which prevented them publishing film which showed Planned Parenthood callously discussing – over lunch - the profits to be made from the sale of fetal body parts?

Rosemary says Trump is a fantasist, but when it comes to abortion he’s a realist. And to Rosemary prayers may be boring, but the fact is the callousness she rightly deplores has grown in the Western world in inverse proportion to prayer.