MARY: 'SPUNKY' OR MEEK? REFLECTING ON SOME JPIC REFLECTIONS

Last week an Australian JPIC (Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation) team sent me – as they kindly do every month – their ‘Sunday Reflections’. This edition commented on the Annunciation and Nativity of Christ, providing, the JPIC people hoped, "food for thought and prayer".

So I prayed and thought, and here's what I thought:

“We have sometimes ended up,” the Reflections state, “with an image of Mary that is “a long way removed from the reality that most mothers experience around conception, pregnancy and childbirth.

That’s just as it should be, isn’t it?

Mary is “a long way removed” from that natural reality. Mary conceived not by man, but by the Holy Spirit. Her pregnancy was nine months of contemplation of the Most High God physically present within her. Childbirth for Mary, according to Venerable Mary of Agreda and described similarly by other mystics of the Catholic Church, “filled her with incomparable joy and delight, causing in her soul and in her virginal body such exalted and divine effects that they exceed all thought of men. Her body became so spiritualized with the beauty of heaven that she seemed no more a human and earthly creature.”

Then in speaking of Mary’s grace, the Reflections say us that grace is “not submissive meekness. Grace is not submission. The power of God is never meek.”

Hold it right there.

It seems to me that these Reflections misinterpret the word, meek. Or maybe they’re suggesting that when God uses his ‘power’ he is ‘never meek’.

God uses his power in everything. He is meek in everything. You can’t extract or excerpt one of his divine attributes from any other - God is indivisible.

Jesus' power to save men subsisted not in force, but precisely in meekness. He says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11, 29). So important did Jesus think meekness, he offered himself - for this one and only time - as an example.

The psalmist says, “The meek shall inherit the land and shall delight in abundance of peace” (Ps 36, 11). St Francis de Sales: “Let us be very meek toward everyone”. St Thomas: “Meekness makes a man master of himself”.

Even that useful Protestant publication, Cruden’s Concordance, says ‘meek’ means “gentle, kind, not easily provoked, ready to yield that than cause trouble; but not used in the Bible in the bad sense of tamely submissive and servile”.

But wait, there’s more - of significance to all contemplatives, especially Carmelites:

 “Meekness has a very special importance in the development of a life of prayer and union with God. ... When we are disturbed even slightly by anger we are unable to … hear the whisper of divine inspirations: the noise of our passions prevents us from listening to our interior Master, and we no longer act according to God’s good pleasure but allow ourselves to be carried away by our own impulsiveness, which will always cause us to commit faults. …

Our Lord teaches his ways to the meek, because only one who has silenced all resentments and feelings of anger is ready to be instructed by God” (Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD).

And more: there’s nothing in Luke’s Gospel to suggest Mary was ‘startled’ by the appearance of an angel. She was “troubled at (the angel’s) saying ... And the angel said to her: “Fear not.” (Douay-Rheims.) The angel saw that Mary, in her profound humility, was astonished that an angel should call her “full of grace”.

There’s nothing to suggest she ‘challenged’ the angel, either. She simply asked, “How shall this be done, because I know not man?”

Neither did Mary ‘decide to bear a holy child’. She submitted, yes, but not in Cruden’s ‘bad sense’ of servility. To ‘submit’ means to ‘place oneself under a certain control or authority’ (Shorter Oxford): that authority, of course, was God.

Instead of trying to reduce the divine to the mundane, let's ask the Holy Spirit to raise us to the divinity. That's what we're designed for.

The kingdom of Heaven, after all, is within us.

'NZ CATHOLIC' OR 'NICE NZ CATHOLIC'?

It's a while now since I emailed the letter below to NZ Catholic. Two issues have turned up since, without its inclusion in the Letters column.

Of course editor Michael Otto is entitled to withhold letters from publication. But when they are published, it's with the caveat that the writers' opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the newspaper or its owner, the Bishop of Auckland (which obviously, my letter does not). 

So one wonders why this one hasn't seen the light of day. Perhaps because it's not nice. Unfortunately, the truth often isn't. 

Here's the letter: 

It wasn’t a “Reformation anniversary marked in Auckland” (NZ Catholic, Nov. 19). According to Cardinal Gerhard Muller, in truth it was the anniversary of “a revolution against the Holy Spirit”. “Luther”, says Cardinal Muller, “abandoned all the principles of the Catholic faith, Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium. The Reformation was disastrous”.

Luther deleted seven books from the Bible and excused his disordered lifestyle as justified by faith alone, a heresy condemned by the Council of Trent. He would hurl his faeces at the devil who he said, visited him in his cell at night. He was excommunicated.

It mystifies me that Palmerston North’s cathedral walls could be papered with bumf about this man, who had no intention of ‘reforming’ the Church, which as instituted by Christ cannot be ‘reformed’ -  although its members did and always will, need reform.

It astonishes me that Bishop Dunn could give thanks for “the gifts of the Reformation”. Unless he meant Luther’s legacy of 105 saints hanged, drawn and quartered defending the faith in England alone.

It appals me that the Vatican can commemorate Luther with a “special postage stamp” installing him in the place of John and the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the foot of the Cross.

Loving our Protestant brethren doesn't mean rewriting history. This is ecumenism gone mad. 

"EUTHANASIA IS A TERRIBLE, DIRTY WORD" (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 26

“Euthanasia is a terrible, dirty word,” says Karyn Hopper (Hutt resident wild over 'feral' felines, December 26). My reaction was to laugh, but actually it’s not that funny.

 

Because as a cat lover, Hopper “was not afraid to take a hard line on the issue”, which was to suggest cats should be rehomed or (shock, horror!) “put down”. 

Once upon a time we all used that expression in regard to animals, but as our sensitivity towards animals increased in inverse proportion to our regard for human life, especially in the womb, we substituted the euphemism ‘euthanasia’. 

 

So why is ‘euthanasia’ a terrible, dirty word when applied to cats, but not to people?

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OF NICE AND ITS STARVING PEOPLE

The true Advent mission of priests which the Association of Catholic Priests talks about today in our parish newsletter is surely to save souls by preaching the gospel to the poor, not to those they call the ‘oppressed’.

Who gave them licence to change the Gospel? The Douay-Rheims, the New Jerusalem and the NRSV all talk about “the poor” – not the ‘oppressed’.

This is important. In the Church of Nice the physically poor - the hungry, the homeless, the persecuted - are rightly championed but those who are poor in the spiritual sense are forgotten.

Who are the spiritually poor? The people who call themselves Catholic, who send their children to a Catholic school, who throng the church for their prize-giving but who aren't there on the following Sunday: not a single altar server, even. It’s the same story throughout New Zealand and the western world (with the exception of France, 'the first daughter of the Church', where churches are reportedly full again). The clergy lament the shortage of priests but fail to nourish their starving people.

No wonder they don't attend Mass; they don't know what they're missing, because they've never been told.

I heard a homily on the feast of St Juan Diego (last Saturday) in Wellington which I thought was leading up to the need and the reason for Catholics to March for Life later in the day. (And/or we could have heard the story of St Juan and Our Lady’s message at Guadalupe, of the love, compassion and mercy that she wants to show her needy - “poor”- people.)

Not a bit of it. No mention. That afternoon, 600 people Marched for Life to Parliament, and only one priest (at least, only one who looked like a priest) and he - tellingly - was SPPX.

No wonder that later in the week the infamous Euthanasia Bill proceeded to a Select Committee. How many people in the pews of the Church of Nice were warned by their priests of this impending disaster? How many were encouraged to urge their MPs to vote against it?

CHRIST ABANDONED PARLIAMENT (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 16)

Gavan O’Farrell (Letters, December 15) says the religious “argument against euthanasia has no cogency in secular space”. Too true!

But you can oppose euthanasia, as many opposed and still oppose abortion, purely on grounds of common sense.  

And common sense having been proved right by the deaths of 500,000 unborn (not to mention flow-on effects) since that pernicious legislation in 1977, wouldn’t you think it might prevail with our politicians against euthanasia? Absolutely not, going by the grounds given in the Bill they cunningly and cowardly kicked into touch.

I simply couldn’t understand how the majority of the House could promote euthanasia and assisted dying for just about any New Zealander aged 18 or over.

But then I remembered how Speaker Mallard in his wisdom removed Jesus from the Parliamentary Prayer. Secular argument and religious argument may indeed be separate, but in truth it’s impossible to divorce them - Parliament abandoned Jesus Christ, and Christ abandoned Parliament.

If we want to avoid the awful outcomes of euthanasia in other countries like the Netherlands, where it’s normal now for the elderly to opt for the lethal needle, ordinary New Zealanders will resort to the common sense we’re famous for.

God defend New Zealand!

St JOHN'S NOT-SO CHALLENGING MESSAGE (from the Assn of Catholic Priests)

There there, Catholic people of the Church of Nice. Relax. Enjoy Christmas. Reconciliation? No worries. Eat, drink and be merry, because the Association of Catholic Priests tells us the ‘challenging’ message of John the Baptist is that Jesus did not come to judge.

Such is the nonsense quoted in our parish newsletter on the 2^nd Sunday of Advent. The message of the readings is two-fold and we ignore the real challenge of John the Baptist at our peril. We must have confidence and trust in God, yes, but John calls us to repentance for the forgiveness of sins – because Jesus will meet us one day as our judge.   

John 5:26, 27: (among others): The Father … has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.

St Peter (2 Pet 3: 11) reminds us that God is patient. He doesn’t wish that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. In the Church of Nice however, the word ‘repentance’ has become archaic. It seems we have nothing to repent.

So sit back, people. You’re not rapists or murderers. You’re okay! But wait a minute. St Peter adds that we be diligent that you may be found before him unspotted and blameless. Which surely means we need the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Big time. Frequently, and specially in Advent.

I’m so over those soothing sounds from the pulpit and Catholic media. No wonder our churches have emptied – we’re given absolutely no reason to go there (oh sorry, we do hear that it’s nice to say thank you to God sometimes).

Does anyone in the Association of Catholic Priests ever read the saints, all without exception canonised by the Church for their uncompromising response to the challenge of John the Baptist? For example, St Francis Xavier, who says:

Ah, how many souls lose Heaven and are cast into Hell!

And St John Chrysostom, Father and Doctor of the Church:

I do not speak rashly, but as I feel and think. I do not think that many priests are saved, but that those who perish are far more numerous.

GOOD NEWS AGAIN FOR PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL

Something extra for people of good will to celebrate, this Christmas!

Two bioscience companies in the US are forced to close down after reaching a settlement of nearly $8mill over allegations they sold body parts of babies killed by abortion by ‘Planned Parenthood’.

These companies faced a lawsuit for selling parts of aborted babies’ brains for up to $1,100 to pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions across the world, including Australia.

Money makes the world go round indeed.

And no one is immune from the contamination of profiting from evil.

JESUS CHRIST WAS A JEW

I suppose Tom Scott knows (December 9) it’s not only Jews who’ve held Jerusalem sacred since 4,000 BC.

 

Jesus Christ was a Jew and so his Jewish history as related in the Torah is the history of Christianity also, as related in the first five books of the Christian Bible.

The Muslims,  as Scott implies, are Johnny-come-latelies.

A BRAVE MAN (Letter published in Dom Post, December 7)

Ken Orr is a brave man (Speaker's wrong move made on a whim and a prayer, December 5).

His comment on Speaker Mallard's mauling of the parliamentary prayer, “we forget our need of God’s protection at our peril”, will have the politically correct brigade rolling about laughing.

But many others will be deeply touched and grateful for his acknowledgment of the primacy of Jesus Christ - especially at Christmas time, in the heartbreaking rush to eat and drink and spend, and forget him who is the reason for the season.

GONE TO RUBBISH BINS EVERY ONE (Letter to Dom Post, Dec 4)

We baby-boomers absolutely deserve to be left to our own devices in our old age (Aged-care crisis looms, December 4).

 

 In 1977 we voted to legalise abortion and since then 500,000 lives have been lost.  In 2007 alone we killed more than the 18000 the Salvation Army says we need now to care for the elderly.

 

Where are all the workers gone? Gone to rubbish bins, every one.

VATICAN INSTALS LUTHER AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS (Letter to NZ Catholic, Dec 1)

It wasn’t a “Reformation anniversary marked in Auckland” (NZ Catholic, Nov. 19). According to Cardinal Gerhard Muller, in truth it was the anniversary of “a revolution against the Holy Spirit”. “Luther”, says Cardinal Muller, “abandoned all the principles of the Catholic faith, Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium. The Reformation was disastrous”.

Luther deleted seven books from the Bible and excused his disordered lifestyle as justified by faith alone, a heresy condemned by the Council of Trent. He would hurl his faeces at the devil who he said, visited him in his cell at night. He was excommunicated.

It mystifies me that Palmerston North’s cathedral walls could be papered with bumf about this man, who had no intention of ‘reforming’ the Church, which as instituted by Christ cannot be ‘reformed’ -  although its members did and always will, need reform.

It astonishes me that Bishop Dunn could give thanks for “the gifts of the Reformation”. Unless he meant Luther’s legacy of 105 saints hanged, drawn and quartered defending the faith in England alone.

It appals me that the Vatican can commemorate Luther with a “special postage stamp” installing him in the place of John and the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the foot of the Cross.

Loving our Protestant brethren doesn't mean rewriting history. This is ecumenism gone mad. 

THE ABORTION BUSINESS: A GOOSE THAT LAYS A GOLDEN EGG

Elise du Fresne says on Facebook that 'the top hits on google' were to links showing no connection between abortion and breast cancer.

My reply:

The fact that the top hits on google show links to ‘highly reputable organisations’ saying there’s no link between abortion and breast cancer demonstrates, first up, an exercise in wishful thinking.

Women who’ve had an abortion understandably want ‘proof’ they’re not going to get breast cancer. Women who have breast cancer want ‘proof’ their abortion wasn’t its cause. So they google the stuff that ‘proves’ they’re right.

Secondly, ‘highly reputable organisations’ such as Planned Parenthood and its affiliates make billions out of abortions - which are a major driver for breast cancer. IPPF has considerable influence at United Nations, claiming a universal right not just to abortion but for ‘access to’ abortion (i.e. Planned Parenthood services), including for adolescents. The American Cancer Society has in the past funded Planned Parenthood. The Centres for Disease Control employs Dr Deborah Nucatola, infamously caught on camera enjoying salad and a glass of wine while discussing which bits of unborn babies mustn’t be crushed during abortion because Planned Parenthood wants them preserved intact, to sell them. Money talks, and Planned Parenthood's billions, made from women's misery, tell a tale of corruption.

And then there are the huge pharmaceutical conglomerates which fund ‘research’ on ABC, while making billions out of soaring costs of chemotherapy for breast cancer. Not to mention the pill, another established risk factor for breast cancer.

Go figure. Would these outfits want to kill the goose who lays the golden egg?

Thirdly, the first study showing the tobacco/cancer link was published in 1929, but it wasn’t till 1957 that the National Cancer Institute issued the first warning. Turkeys don’t vote for an early Christmas.

They might not be ‘top hits’ on google, but the reports from India, China, Bangladesh, Iran, Sri Lanka and Russia, being disinterested, are also far more credible.

VIOLENT MOTHERS, VIOLENT SONS (letter to Dom Post, Nov 26)

“One of the biggest drivers of the prison population,” posits Kelvin Davis, Minister of Sunshine (November 25) “is violence”. Well yes, Kelvin, we read on that on the previous page: 21 per cent of prisoners are violent.

“What are the drivers of violence?” Kelvin asks. “Is it lack of money, having no hope, or despair?” Well no, Kelvin, it’s more basic than that. Lacking money doesn’t make a man violent, and neither does hopelessness or despair.

Violence is a behaviour which can be learned in ways more subtle than example and demonstration, and more deadly. Abortion, because it’s inflicted on the most helpless of victims, by the victim’s own mother, is the ultimate violence. And violent mothers make for violent sons - and daughters.

Those mothers might well be victims themselves, of course – of poverty perhaps, or bullying by their partner or father, or ignorance - but they're not helpless.

Pregnancy Help, St Vincent de Paul and Family Life International are only three of the agencies which offer women help and hope of an end to violence.

DISAPPOINTED, DISGRUNTLED, DISILLUSIONED CATHOLICS (letter to NZ Catholic, Nov 19)

Dan Stollenwerk’s assertion (NZ Catholic, Nov 5), “the hierarchical Catholic Church has lost some of its moral authority” is something of an understatement. “Contemptible” (Mal 1,7) in the eyes of the world, more like it - basically for failing, since Vatican II, to preach God’s word.

 

“Thou shalt not have strange gods” (Deut 5, 7) Not the god of feminist ideology, nor the god of “new insights” proposed by Bishop Charles Drennan (same issue), for “Jesus Christ is the same for ever” (Heb 13, 8). Changes never mandated by Vatican II, foisted on hapless congregations (the most egregious being Communion in the hand), have severely vitiated reverence for the Blessed Sacrament in lay and clergy alike.

Obviously +Charles has difficulty with compound sentences, but difficulties are a grace. And the core business of the Church - working out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12) – will be served in the Mass, the summit and centre of our faith, not by dumbing it down, but by raising minds and hearts from the mire of quotidian life to gaze upon eternal realities.

“What happens next?” asks Bishop Charles. If the bishops have their way, the answer is many more desertions from the ranks of what used rightly to be called 'the Church militant' by disappointed, disgruntled, disillusioned Catholics.

"SOME THINGS ARE WICKED" (letter to Dom Post, Nov 16)

“We hesitate to admit some things are wicked”, says Rosemary McLeod (We seem loath to call bullying what it is – deliberate cruelty, November16). She's right, except sometimes it's not a case of hesitation so much as refusal.

The Germans during the holocaust didn’t want to admit that was wicked, either, but as McLeod says, “Whatever you can get away with becomes acceptable”. Yes; for as long as they were in power the Nazis got away with it, just as we’ve got away with abortion. In our society now, it’s acceptable.

“Nobody wants to front for a nasty business like this.” No, indeed.

McLeod talks about “cruelty to the defenceless”. The people who are employed by the state to kill defenceless unborn babies should know they feel pain by at least 20 weeks. If they don’t know, it’s surely their business to find out.

But as McLeod says, “there is always the hope of justice”. Yes. Some day. Please God.

4 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GET BREAST CANCER (letter to Dom Post, Nov 7)

When Ellen Soulliere (Letters, Nov 7) says the foetus changes its mother’s body irrevocably, “not always for the better”, she's dead right.

 

Because in pregnancy estrogen increases lobules in the breast, then matures them. If pregnancy is interrupted the partially developed breasts are left with much more unstable tissue, which will subsequently be exposed to estrogen, either naturally during her monthly cycle or artificially if she’s taking the pill.

Meta-analyses show this means an abortion leaves a woman four times more likely to develop breast cancer. 

 

The ABC (Abortion Breast Cancer) link is dismissed by some as some as anti-abortion bias  or propaganda.

However, pro-choice Dr Janet Daling of the US National Cancer Institute, who has three sisters with breast cancer and says she’d have loved to find no such ABC link, states that “our research is rock solid and our data is accurate. It’s not a matter of believing, it’s a matter of what is." 

THE SIMPLE PRAYER OF THE HEART

"What is this 'simple prayer'?"

I've been asked this question by someone I love, and I'm answering it here because as a Christian and a Catholic I hope I love not just that someone but everyone, and I want the blessings this prayer brings for all.

St Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ calls it the 'prayer of the heart'. Fr Caussade, spiritual director of St Jane de Chantal and many others, tells us this prayer causes a person to advance towards God more in one month than any other pious practice in fifteen to twenty years.

It is simple, but it requires discipline and commitment. It's the prayer of meditation which leads to contemplation; it's the contemplative practice taught in the Catholic Church since the time of the Desert Fathers. It is not 'Christian Meditation', a craze that swept the world, a form of centering prayer which leads as Fr Thomas Dubay SM, a modern spiritual director, says, to a dead end. We can discern that by looking for CM's fruits: where are they? Not thronging our seminaries.

How do we practise this 'simple prayer'?  We dedicate at least ten minutes (the bare minimum) of our day to sitting in silence, waiting on God. You will think you haven't got the time, but if you attempt this prayer you'll find God rearranges your life so that you do.

And I'm assuming you're Catholic and free from serious sin. If there's something weighing on your conscience you need to begin by receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Best to set your alarm ten minutes early and do it first thing in the morning. Choose a comfy but upright chair in a quiet place where you'll have no interruptions. Close your eyes and bring Jesus Christ to mind. Picture him in your favorite Gospel episode, perhaps. Say a very short prayer, a mantra you could call it, which you repeat mentally throughout. I use "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner", but just the word "Jesus" is enough. What's important is focusing on our Blessed Lord and his love for you.

If you're like St Teresa of Avila, who claimed to have no imagination, you might need a book to help you get started. The New Testament, or something written by your favorite saint. St Therese of Liseux is very readable and so is St Francis de Sales.

Distractions will happen, and keep on happening. Try to keep your thoughts fixed on Christ, or the Gospel, or some doctrine of the Church, but if you find yourself thinking about what you have to do today, or what you'll eat for breakfast, or what a waste of time this is, gently bring your mind back to the business in hand: the love Christ has for you. You might need to re-open your book for a moment or two, but only for as long as necessary. You're not there to read, you're there to meditate.

That's it - to begin with. If you persevere in doing this prayer, God will eventually take over and do it for you. That's what's called 'infused contemplation' and that's what you're aiming at, because it causes your will to be joined to God's.

I have to set a timer to tell me when my prayer is up, and I finish with a 'Glory Be to the Father' etc.

There it is. It's as simple as that. Nothing, nothing, will do you more good and bring you more quickly to Christ.

PREDICTING A GRUESOME RESULT (letter to Dom Post, Nov 2)

The architects of the 1977 abortion legislation were hardly “conservative” (Editorial, November 1) – they considered themselves brave liberals - but their legacy of 500,000 abortions should certainly horrify them.

 

Jacinda Ardern may not want abortions up to birth, but she should look at Victoria, where decriminalisation of abortion has had exactly that gruesome result, and I confidently predict that to “put the decision where it should be, with the woman herself” will mean an increase in deaths by abortion – not of the woman of course, but of her child.

 

The Dominion Post says “keeping the 20-week time limit is reasonable”. Really? Now that science shows that the 20-week fetus feels pain, is killing him/her at that age “reasonable”?

 

Our current law is “dishonest” because we are dishonest. We deny the proven fact that an unborn child is a human life. And/or we deny that the right to life is inviolable. And we subjectively value the woman’s “right to choose” as greater than her child’s right to life.

 

Yes, "democracy should be robust enough to face the truth". But that means its individual members should be robust enough to face the truth. And obviously, we are not.

THE MAJORITY OF SOULS ARE LOST

The most egregious turd floating by me on the torrid tide of a recent Sunday homily at the Church of Nice was a suggestion of women priests.



But it seemed the dumbing-down of the Mass texts was the main thrust of this discourse, which followed a piece in Welcom by Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North bewailing the "clunky sentence construction and awkward vocabulary which has tested us all".



'All'? +Charles must mean all the bishops: it's to them that Pope Francis has re-assigned responsibility for approving liturgical translations. And reading +Charles' piece in Welcom, I can understand his difficulty with compound sentences, which apparently is shared by the other bishops.



+Charles might also be speaking for ‘all’ our priests, but he should know he's not speaking for all the laity. He should know that not all women are so childish or ignorant or proud as to object to the Catechism's common sense and time-honoured use of the  masculine article to include women - a practice which he calls 'ideology'. Methinks +Charles has perhaps been captured by feminist ideology. Catholic women, one would hope, have more important things to think about than 'inclusive language'.

Such as, for example, working out our salvation “in fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). That's the core business of the Catholic Church, and the language of the Sacrifice of the Mass must serve that principle by raising minds and hearts from the mire of quotidian life to gaze upon eternal realities. Oops, sorry, is ‘quotidian’ an example of ‘awkward vocabulary’? ‘Daily’ life, then.



When NZ’s bishops have dragged the liturgical texts down to the level of the lowest common denominator, will they then turn their attention to the Mass Readings? After all, St Paul wasn’t lavish with his full stops – which in this particular homily we were told are inserted into the Mass at will, and the language changed at will to make it ‘easier’ for the priest to read even now, before the bishops have their way with it. And many are the terms St Paul used which need explaining, as has always been the case, let alone the mysteries they describe. That’s a pastor’s task: to explain them.



But when a pastor can tell his flock that God’s commandments are actually ‘requests’, one sees that to expect competent explanations of readings and liturgical texts is hopelessly unrealistic. To command something, we were told, is not ‘loving’, and so a God who loves us wouldn’t command us.



St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, was in accord with a great number of other saints when he stated that “the majority of souls are lost”. If that were the case in St Thomas’ time, how many are lost now, after hearing homilies denying the Ten Commandments, or suggesting women priests?



We will never have women priests, because our Blessed Lord chose men (viri), because that was God’s will.  God commands because His commandments are imperative. Because He loves us, He commands us to do what is necessary to gain eternal happiness.

If we don’t do it, we’re lost. For ever.

WATCHING COCKROACHES (Letter to Dom Post, October 31)

As the old hymn goes, “And the banners of darkness are boldly unfurled ...”

Since the appointment as Prime Minister of Jacinda Ardern (but not the endorsement of her evil agenda, which most voters rejected) who Jane Bowron would characterise as she does deputy PM Winston Peters, as "living in sin", and the first leaders of our nation to do so (Rocking feel-good factor and Fat Freddy's Drop, October 30), our newspapers have given a lot of space to extolling the long-vilified harms of euthanasia, prostitution and ‘decriminalising’ abortion (which means full-term babies being stabbed in the neck and dismembered). The latest evidence is Bowron’s insulting and ageist attack on Bill and Mary English.

It's rather like watching cockroaches scuttle out of the shelter of a pot plant shifted from its long-held position. It's gutter journalism.

Should we get used to it?

SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH GREEN-TINTED SPECTACLES (Letter to Dom Post, Oct 24)

Professor Alexander Gillespie’s strongest argument in favour of a referendum on legalising cannabis (Referendum better than political pot luck, October 24) – and, one suspects, in favour of legalisation – is to hit the gangs who profit by drug-peddling.

 

But if I may lob the brick of reality through Gillespie’s ivory tower window, since legalising cannabis in 2012 Colorado, to quote a federal law enforcement official, has become “the black market for the rest of the country”. In the words of a representative of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, legalisation of pot has “inadvertently helped fuel the activity of the Mexican drug cartels”.

Organised crime filings have skyrocketed in Colorado.Colorado now leads the country in youth use of marijuana, with Washington which has also made its use legal, not far behind. More minors are using drugs, with more arrested, there are more deaths caused by driving ‘high’ and more pot-related poisonings and hospitalisation.

 

All of which seems a ‘high’ price to pay for giving users permission to feel good and to continue to see the world through green-tinted spectacles.

OUR CATHOLIC BISHOPS FAILED TO GIVE US A HEADS-UP

Deep night has come down on this rough-spoken world
And the banners of darkness are boldly unfurled

The lyrics of a hymn I played at Mass this morning reminded me, unhappily, of our new Government. How many Catholics voted for Labour and Jacinda Ardern? 

When they voted, did they know that:

·         Jacinda Ardern is on record as opposing the principle of marriage defined as between one man and one woman.

·         She supports adoption by homosexuals.

·         She supports decriminalisation of abortion, which would mean partial-birth abortions, as in Victoria. She believes abortion should not be a crime because it’s a ‘health service’. As Ken Orr of Right to Life NZ has said, this would lead to ‘further exploitation, coercion and abandonment of women’.

·         She supports the legalisation of euthanasia – administering lethal injections to the elderly, the terminally or mentally ill, or helping them to kill themselves.

·         She opposes the decriminalisation of non-abusive smacking and worse, she opposes parental notification of teenage pregnancies.

·         She opposes a ban on street prostitution. 

Jacinda Ardern is without doubt well-intentioned, but we know where good intentions lead us: to Hell – that place described so graphically by Jesus Christ but now denied by the ‘Church of Nice’.

With their anodyne election statement the Catholic bishops failed to give us a heads-up on this thoroughly sinister and anti-Christ agenda. They must now face reality and speak out against the consequences which are only too likely to follow.

And the tempest-tossed Church - all her eyes are on thee,
They look to thy shining, sweet star of the sea.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. May God defend New Zealand.

BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF STEPHEN HAWKING (Letter to Dom Post, Oct 18)

Joe Bennett (Are we about to hit self-destruct button?, October 18) would have us all shaking in our shoes at the prospect of being put in a zoo by artificially intelligent machines.

 

But if consciousness is ‘just the product of a brain’ and includes ‘beliefs’, that means animals – who also have brains - have beliefs and act on them; but they don’t. They do not have beliefs.

 

It follows that humans, because they do have beliefs and act on them, possess a faculty other than the brain, a faculty which endows the human with knowledge of good and evil. That faculty is the soul, and it is utterly beyond ‘programming’.

 

The brain is mortal, whereas the soul is eternal and, thank God, is his concern and care. No matter how many ‘bits’ of the brain we might reproduce electronically, the soul is and always will be beyond the reach and comprehension of Stephen Hawking, however how ‘well-informed’ he may be.

SAINT MARY OF THE ANGELS: What's going on?

At Saint Mary of the Angels, Wellington, at two consecutive weekday Masses recently there were two Priests concelebrating.

At the 'Lamb of God' although the congregation was not large, the usual gaggle of 'Ministers of the Eucharist' assembled beside the altar, and having received Holy Communion proceeded to minister the Sacrament while one of the Priests sat down, presumably to make his thanksgiving.

Point One: the only 'Minister of the Eucharist' is the Priest. Lay ministers are 'Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion'. Why 'Extraordinary'? Because they're required only when a congregation is so large that it's not possible for Communion to administered only by the Priest(s) without unduly delaying the end of Mass. Sadly - but logically - that's rarely the case.

Point One, a): 'Only out of true necessity is there to be recourse to the assistance of extraordinary ministers in the celebration of the Liturgy ... If there is usually present a sufficient number of sacred Ministers' (Priests or Deacons) 'for distribution of Holy Communion, extraordinary ministers may not be appointed. Indeed, in such circumstances those who have already been appointed to this ministry should not exercise it' (Redemptionis Sacramentum). I didn't know Redemptionis Sacramentum said that, but I resigned some time ago from this ministry for that very reason: we're not needed (also to avoid giving Holy Communion to non-Catholics, but that's another story).

Point Two: 'The practice of those Priests is reprobated who, even though present at the celebration,
abstain from distributing Holy Communion and hand this function over to lay persons' (Redemptionis Sacramentum). 'Reprobated' means 'disapproved of, censured, condemned. Of God: reject of condemn (a person); exclude from salvation' (Shorter Oxford).

Point Two, a): I approached the Priest in question after the second Mass I attended, to ask why he allowed lay people to administer Holy Communion in his stead. Either he's deaf (I whispered, "Excuse me, Father", but from close quarters), or he's opposed to people 'talking' after Mass (see above). He didn't acknowledge my presence.

Maybe he doesn't know the mind of the Church on this subject. Or maybe he's one of those who ridicule the Magisterium of the Church as manifested in Redemptionis Sacramentum.

But I've had enough of priests thumbing their noses at this document, approved in 2004 by Pope St John Paul II, and allowing or encouraging these abuses of the Body and Soul of Jesus Christ our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder congregations aren't large enough to justify the assistance of Extraordinary Ministers.


A footnote: Rather than carpark notices saying "Cars may be clamped or towed", how about "Mass and churchgoers welcome; other cars may be clamped or towed"? Friendlier.

BREAST CANCER'S SERIAL KILLER (Letter to Dom Post, October 14)

Breast cancer in New Zealand is “a serial killer”, says survivor Fay Sowerby.  But I wonder whether  anyone at the Breast Cancer Health Summit will have the nerve to unmask and denounce the stalker: abortion.

 

Many, many studies show that a woman’s chances of breast cancer are greatly increased by abortion, especially in a first pregnancy.

Of course, people like Planned Parenthood who make billions from abortion are in denial. Pharmaceutical companies are in denial, and for the same reason.

 

One hesitates to suggest that ‘breast cancer clinicians, scientists, health professionals’ are in denial – but how many of them have had an abortion? How many have wives, partners, sisters or even mothers, who’ve had an abortion?

 

We would all shrink from adding to the suffering of breast cancer patients and survivors by naming a major cause which is self-inflicted, but professionals who know it have a duty to do so.

For as long as we continue to let the stalker of abortion, disguised in so many deaths as breast cancer, go free, women who don't know the risk will continue to walk into his arms and quite likely die.

LOVE MEANS NOT EXCUSING SIN (Letter to Dom Post, Oct 1)

I feel sorry for women who can’t marry each other (Knockback for couple on wedding, September 30), in their church of choice, but Christ made it very clear: Christians must obey Church teaching.

 

Rev Jenny Dawson makes the common mistake of conflating love and charity. “Love” means many things to many people but for Jesus it meant only the love of God (charity), which includes love for everyone. True Christian “inclusiveness” means loving God in all people as Jesus did, but not excusing sin in anyone, as Jesus himself did not.

 

And when I say “God” I mean the God of Moses who proscribed homosexual acts as an abomination, and the God of Sts Paul, Timothy, Jude and Peter who all reiterated this divine teaching. Scripture itself would seem to be very good reason why “the mainstream churches in New Zealand have struggled” with this issue. There’s pain involved, yes; but Christians follow Christ, who died in pain on a cross.

 

As to Pope Francis and his opinions on LGBTQ people, Pope Francis is not the Church. And “accepting and embracing” doesn’t mean condoning.

 

As to the plight of the Paekakariki Protestants, most likely a heterodox church somewhere will be happy to bless them soon.

LIVES AND DEATHS IN THEIR HANDS (Letter to Dom Post, Sept 30)

 

It's only logical that midwives are ”fearful of 24 hour work days” (September 29). It’s a truly awful situation which can only get worse.

 

This Ministry of ‘Health’ (more accurately a Ministry of Sickness) chaos can be sheeted home to abortion. While doctors and nurses in our hospitals continue daily, routinely, to mutilate and murder the unborn babies who are “in their hands”, of course midwives will struggle to care for the babies selected to live who equally “are in their hands”. We can only expect their morale and wellbeing to be zilch.

 

And they wonder why tertiary DHBs are “acutely short of midwives”.

'LIFE-LONG ANGLICAN" A WISHFUL THINKER (letter published in Dom Post, September 29)

The Paekakariki “life-long Anglican”('Gay village' vetoes church nuptials) who’s disappointed with the Anglican ruling against homosexual weddings has to be a wishful thinker.

She must have known that the Anglican Church, like all other Christian churches – including those at Kapiti Uniting Parish - has historically opposed same-sex relationships. Why should she expect the Church to bless hers?

Christianity opposes same-sex relationships because they are opposed to God. “Male and female He made them ... to go out and multiply.” So why does she think she and her partner are “uniting under God”?

The Anglican Church is not being “discriminatory”. It's just acting according to its beliefs. It celebrates and blesses marriages.

But same-sex unions are not, and cannot be, marriage “under God”.

CHURCH OF NICE, STATE OF NASTY

They tell me that the other day at Mass in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Palmerston North, the congregation were virtually instructed to vote Labour tomorrow (or maybe today, given our new voting arrangements).

There's a line in the biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand which haunts me. One of the greatest Catholics of the 20th century, the philosopher von Hildebrand's discernment and courage in denouncing National Socialism meant he was listed as No 1 enemy of the Nazis, while the German bishops kept their heads down.

His bio was written by his wife Alice, also a highly respected Catholic thinker, who in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger has "done a great service in giving us this fascinating portrait", and the line which resonates with me is, "Woe to the religious leader who does not warn his flock that the wolf is at the door!"

The wolf is of course Labour's leader Jacinda Ardern, whose evil agenda of 'decriminalising' abortion and legalizing euthanasia merits her the title of New Zealand's own Hillary Clinton. But during the US election campaign another priest told me he couldn't or wouldn't pray for victory for Donald Trump - which means he must have preferred the alternative option of Clinton, presumably because he had no idea what she was on about. As the priest at the cathedral can have no idea that electing Jacinda would mean death for our most vulnerable citizens, either.

The Catholic Church in New Zealand in this century, like the German bishops in the 1930s, has opted for the quiet life. It qualifies for the title awarded to the modern Church in the US by Michael Voris.

Voris, a fervent Catholic, says what US Catholics have now is "The Church of Nice".

In New Zealand during this election campaign our own Church of Nice has done its best - in a nice way - to usher in the State of Nasty.

LETTING PEOPLE LIVE (Letter to Dom Post, September 21)

I’m with Rosemary McLeod (Kissing goodbye to social justice, September 21) on huge salaries, houses (expensive, leaky, in short supply), on "monster" tenants and landlords, rewritten building codes, student loans, and especially on hospitals and mental health in "permanent crisis".

Then she asks, "What could be more important than helping people live decent lives?" The answer to that is, what’s more important is letting people live.

‘Health services’ which routinely and deliberately kill thousands of patients are a monstrous disservice which serves up only sickness - a psychological sickness characterized by the symptoms McLeod quite rightly deplores.

New Zealand kissed "goodbye to social justice" the day we legalised abortion.

CATHOLICS DITHERING (letter to Dom Post, September 19)

Unfortunately, teenagers aren’t likely to share Dean Burrows’ “annoying rationality" in "fathoming the difference between euthanasia and suicide”. Teenagers are profoundly influenced by their culture and if that culture favours the sick and elderly ending their own lives they’ll naturally assume it’s okay for them to do it too.

Burrows’ shallow thinking is shared however by Jacinda Ardern, and not just on euthanasia but abortion, which she wants ‘decriminalised’.

Anecdotally it seems Catholic voters don’t know that. Catholic bishops have failed to warn their flock of the horrifying prospect of electing New Zealand’s own Hillary Clinton, and those in the know are dithering and squirming.

Left-leaning Catholics are reluctant to abandon their traditional vote for Labour, and nine years of leaving the most vulnerable to their own devices tempts right-wing Christians to desert Bill English.

So it’s not surprising the polls are all over the place. Obviously, one person’s “annoying rationality” is not necessarily another’s.

APOSTASY AT ST PAT'S (letter to DomPost, Sept 11)

St Patrick’s College rector Neal Swindells doesn't “like the word abstinence”(Schooling up on sex ed, September 9) but if “some students are gay” - which considering the brouhaha over LGBT 'rights' they're quite likely to think, but at that age can hardly know - at a Catholic school they like heterosexuals must be taught abstinence.

 

His school teaches “the IUD, the pill and emergency contraceptives”. Swindells knows that’s opposed to Catholic doctrine and in fact, far from sanctioning it, Pope Francis has praised the Church for maintaining that opposition.

 

The students seem to have been taught that “the greatest commandment” is to treat others as you would like to be treated. In fact the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God”.

 

Swindells says guilt is something “the Catholic Church imposed in the 1960s and 70s”. ‘Guilt’ is the pejorative now pinned on that spontaneous, natural feeling of regret for wrongdoing which has been around since Adam and Eve, and for which the Catholic Church alone supplies the remedy, in the confessional.

 

St Patrick’s Board of Proprietors and parents need to be aware that the college staff appear to have abandoned their Catholic beliefs. What they’re teaching is apostasy.

 

ARDERN IS NZ'S HILARY CLINTON (letter to Dom Post, Sept 7)

The Wall Street Journal says Jacinda Ardern is New Zealand’s version of Canada's Justin Trudeau, although more like Trump on immigration, and Ardern’s offended.

I say that her opinions on abortion and euthanasia make Ardern look like New Zealand’s Hilary Clinton.

And the pity of it is, she won’t find that offensive.

BRING BACK THE POMPOUS FAMILY DOCTORS (letter to Dom Post, Sept 7)

If “any parent” whose child does not attend school is liable to a fine (Mother in court over truant kids, September 7) why is only the mother in court? Where’s the father of the 15 year-old who tragically took her own life, whose mother got “no help at all”? Where’s the father of the runaway whose mother’s household was busy and crowded? And the father of the 13 year-old whose mother forced her to drive because she herself was drunk?

 

Rosemary McLeod reckons that “when abortions were impossible to get” (Fathers and their youthful follies, same date), when pregnancy happened “young men could shrug a woman off with no consequences”. As a matter of fact, back then you’d never had read four stories of children abandoned by their fathers in a single issue of the newspaper.

 

If only there were still “pompous family doctors” who refused the pill or an abortion on moral grounds, there would be far fewer children now “of solo mothers who’ll never know their fathers.”

BENNETT'S IN TOUCH WITH REALITY (letter to Dom Post, Sept 5)

I don’t see why there should be a furore over Paula Bennett implying that gang members have fewer rights than other people. She proved herself to be more in touch with reality than The Dominion Post (September 5), or ‘human rights’ lawyer Michael Bott, who are woefully behind the times.

Because the fact is we launched ourselves headlong down the ‘slippery slope to fascism’ in 1977, on the day we legalised abortion. Even though our Bill of Rights enshrines the right not to be deprived of life, we legally deprive around twelve thousand unborn citizens of their right to life every year.

That’s why a Government minister can now make the suggestion Bennett did, and why the media claim that most New Zealanders now think euthanasia is a great idea, and why some want to remove all legislation around abortion, to allow partial birth abortions and the practice of leaving live aborted babies to die, as they do in Victoria.  

I do wish people could be consistent, and acknowledge that unborn babies – who are undeniably human - have the same human rights as gang members and the rest of us do.

A princess and strange gods

Some mourner on telly tonight, during the media frenzy over the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, recalled saying at the time that “no one expected this”.

I beg to differ. ‘I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.’

My intuitive distrust of the Ruataniwha Dam (letter printed and illustrated in Dom Post, September 4)

Having lived in the utterly beautiful Bay all my life, I was relieved to see respected journalist Marty Sharpe (Beast should never have been let out of paddock, September 1) vindicate my intuitive suspicions in regard to the Ruataniwha Dam.

Really you can justify water-intensive cultivation such as dairy only in the rainshadow of the Ruahines. The Takapau Plains have been abused, their signature pine and poplar plantations cut down to accommodate enormous irrigators, laneways cut ruthlessly through pasture with cows mooching disconsolately to and from their unsightly sheds, leaving behind a trail of muck.

The saddest aspect of all this dollar-driven frenzy is the awful waste of money on lawyers, on ‘Eastlight ringbinders’ and a Board of Inquiry, money which could have been spent subsidising sheep and beef cattle farmers’ own water preservation and storage, and on research and promotion of crops which like lots of sun and not much rain.

Hawke’s Bay’s future lies with tourism at least as much as farming. We owe it to the land and our children to restore its beauty, and to the rivers their natural flow.

Just where is Pope Francis coming from?

I've just read my church newsletter which quotes Pope Francis as saying, "Make sure we do not pay attention to disappointed and unhappy people".

WOT? Jesus paid them attention. Lepers aren't likely to be happy people, but Jesus healed them.

"Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened" (Mt 11, 28). Those who labour and are burdened aren't likely to be happy people, but Jesus wanted to refresh them.

What's more, "Seeing the multitudes, HE HAD COMPASSION ON THEM, BECAUSE THEY WERE DISTRESSED" (Mt 9, 36).

Can someone please tell me where Pope Francis, the shepherd of the Church, is coming from?

DISCUSSION AROUND THE 'A' WORD (letter to Dom Post, August 28)

“Part of the conversation needed about suicide in the community” (Number of suicides rises for third year, August 28), is discussion around the abortion factor. Many men who take their own lives may have bitterly regretted the loss of a child or children to abortion, whether or not they were party to the decision to abort.

 

They or their partner were convinced they couldn’t love and care for that child, that its life had no intrinsic value and  so was better ended. It’s only logical that parents of aborted children should decide, if they can no longer love and care for themselves or each other, that their life is better ended also.

 

This “part of the conversation about suicide” just isn’t happening. But if we’re serious about recognising the risks, it should and it must.

IS THE POPE A CATHOLIC? (Letter to Dom Post, August 23)

Theologians doubt Pope is Catholic (August 22) is a pretty fair analysis. Prophecies dating back centuries confirm that “widespread apostasy”, which by now is blatantly visible, will propel the Catholic Church to the brink of a schism some say will be more profound than the Reformation.

 

Thinking Catholics all over the world must be asking themselves, in all seriousness, “Is the Pope a Catholic”?

JESUS WASN'T ANGRY WITH THE MONEY CHANGERS

An ex-priest has been quoted to me as saying, ‘NZ Catholic for me is an occasion of sin. I can get very angry, reading it.’

Surpassing wit. But as the occasion for repeating the remark was a Christian Meditation meeting, it's hardly surpassing charity.

It’s only to be expected that a Catholic newspaper will upset some people. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be doing its job.

What’s unexpected is the anger of a Christian and a Catholic. ‘Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation … be put away from you, with all malice’ (Eph 4.31).

And please don’t tell me that Jesus Christ was angry when he turned the money-changers out of the temple. I’ve yet to read a translation of that passage which states that he was angry.

Being human, we assume He was angry. We forget that He was divine.

EUTHANASIA LAW AN ASS (Letter to Dom Post, August 12)

The “overwhelmingly negative” response to euthanasia (Euthanasia bill given legal stamp, August 11) in the recent parliamentary investigation shows New Zealanders’ common sense.

 

In the Netherlands where it’s legal, MPs are now considering a “Completed Life Bill” which would allow anyone over the age of 75 to be helped to commit suicide. People with diminished mental capacity due to dementia are being euthanised and doctors - many of them assisted suicide providers - are alarmed at the unchecked growth of euthanasia.

And don’t tell me that the “strict controls” proposed in this bill would prevent the same ghastly incremental effects here.

To quote Charles Dickens, “If the law supposes that” legalising euthanasia wouldn’t infringe on basic human rights to life, then “the law is an ass – an idiot”.

BISHOPS SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT (Letter published in NZ Catholic, September 21

A devout Catholic friend of mine says the NZ Catholic Bishops’ Election Statement has left him, as a voter, “more confused than ever”. In the mainstream press the Bishops’ statement has been called “wishy-washy, touchy-feely and handwringing”.

Let’s look at Pope Francis’ introduction: “Nothing else will change the world but people who fight for justice”. Jesus Christ never fought, and never advised fighting, except by proclaiming the truth – that is, by prophesying. Jesus spoke the truth, because he was Truth - and he was crucified for it.

No such fate awaits the NZ Bishops, but in quoting Scripture - “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov 29,18) – they do manage to shoot themselves in the foot.

Because the NRSV and Douay version of  ‘vision’ is ‘prophecy’. Political government has gone madly awry, partly because our moral government has let it. The Bishops state the obvious and avoid unpleasant truths such as the imperative of self-denial to correct imbalances in our society and the planet, and the evil of corporate greed, abortion and euthanasia.

But it’s mainly by understating our urgent need for prayer, as given by Our Lady at Fatima, that the Bishops abrogate their role as prophets, called by God to proclaim the truth to their people.

‘Nothing else will change the world’ but people who pray.

WESTERN SOCIETY HAS A DEATH WISH (Letter to Dom Post, July 28)

Another inference could be drawn from the ‘shocking’ decline in sperm counts in Western countries (July 27).  Blaming chemicals is simplistic, and the experts themselves suggest there must be more to this issue than meets the eye.

 

Decades of contraception and billions of abortions in the ‘developed’ world, while directly affecting only women and children, would suggest Western society has a death wish and falling sperm counts and population replacement indicate that wish is being fulfilled.

 

We’ve abused the planet, so now the planet is abusing us.We’ve abused our bodies and their reproductive capacity, so now our bodies are abusing us too.

 

NO MEA CULPA FOR METIRIA (Letter to DomPost, July 26)

Green’s co-leader Meteria Turei made a confession, yes, but hardly a ‘mea culpa’ as Jane Bowron puts it (Try tax cuts for the childless, July 25).

A mea culpa by definition admits fault, and Turei has done no such thing. On the contrary, she maintains that lying with the intention of defrauding the taxpayer was “the right decision”.

 

And to point that out is not to cast stones as Edith Campbell (Letters, same date) maintains. Voters in a democracy have a duty to protect that privilege by scrutinising candidates for election to Parliament. It would be ridiculous to vote for a law-maker who says breaking the law is okay.

THE BEAUTY ABOUT CHURCHES (Letter published in DomPost with photograph, July 15

“The beauty  is you can come in and just sit your your work clothes”, says Justine Hamill about meditation classes in her Wellington yoga studio.

 

Let’s not forget that there are many other places in Wellington and everywhere else where you can come in and just sit in your work clothes. They’re called churches and they’re purpose-built for meditation.

 

And the beauty about churches is you don’t have to pay.

HOW THE HOLOCAUST BEGAN (letter published in Dom Post, April 25)

National screening unit clinical director Dr Jane O’Hallahan says pregnancy screening, which in Danielle Bolt’s case meant being told to  ‘terminate’ her Down syndrome baby  (April 21), is “optional”.

Actually what happens is, according to the Ministry of Health, that “all pregnant women are advised” of screening. Now why would the Health Department advise of it, if they didn’t think it advisable? Naturally, many women ‘advised’ of such an ‘option’ by the Health Department infer that it’s in their best interests and go ahead. 

The NSU talks tendentiously about ‘risk’. What risk? The risk of a beautiful baby like Noa? Or do they really mean the risk of cost to the government incurred by life-long care for such a beautiful human being?

The NSU admits that women whose screening defines them as at ‘increased risk’ (of a beautiful baby like Noa!), who are recommended to undergo a diagnostic test, run the very real risk of iatrogenic miscarriage. And women who’ve already had a disabled child are ‘offered’ a referral to ‘a specialist obstetrician’. No prizes for guessing what their ‘speciality’ is.

Is eugenics the Next Big Thing? We would do well to remember that the Holocaust began with Hitler killing the disabled.

MODERN BIBLES READ LIKE JANET AND JOHN (Letter to NZ Catholic, April 18)

“Everyone serves .. the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk” (NZ Catholic April 9 –22).

Did Jews habitually get drunk at weddings? That verse has always struck me as an insult to Jewish culture.

However I now have a Douay-Rheims Bible, a scrupulously faithful translation into English of the Latin Vulgate which was translated by St Jerome from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and confirmed at the Council of Trent as “authentic ... no one should dare or presume under any pretext to reject it”. But after more than six centuries of use and canonising God only knows how many saints formed exclusively by the Douay, the Church did reject it.

The Douay reads “ ...when men have well drunk, then that (wine) which is worse”. Drinking well doesn’t mean becoming drunk, it means enjoying good wine.

Every day I find subtleties, nuances and depths of meaning in the Douay lacking in the new translations. Ah, you might say, modern translators know so much more. But they didn’t have the 2nd and 3rd centuries’manuscripts rendered carefully into Latin by St Jerome. And anyway, as Teresa of Avila might say, “it’s not a question of knowing much but of loving much”.

By comparison with the Douay-Rheims, modern bibles read like Janet and John.

GYM BUDDY AT 102 (Letter to Dom Post, April 13

Gym buddy at 102 – no sweat (April 13) gets a wonderful story inside out.

Asked how he's got to be a hundred years old, centenarian Len Darr doesn’t say it was by going to the gym, or even by eating well. He says “keeping my body fit is a duty, because my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, as what we call God”.

Sadly, the wisdom of one hundred years of good living is discounted in favour of the usual hype around promoting gyms. Len isn’t happy because he does “all the exercises”. He’s happy because he is one with God.

But the nub of the story doesn’t make the headline. That’s because even Darr himself doubts he’ll be believed.

I believe you, Len. Absolutely.

SBW AND THE LOGO (Letter printed in Dompost, April 15)

Is it just me, or is it truly extraordinary that none of the raft of letters on the subject of SBW (April 12) seriously considers his grounds for covering up that bank logo on his rugby jersey?

Williams’ action could fairly be described as conscientious objection. He’s walking the talk of his religious beliefs.

Thank you, Sonny Bill, for showing us how.

ABUSE, SEX CRIMES SPUR EXPANDED POLICE FORCE (Letter to Dom Post, April 11)

I wonder how mainstream media journalists feel about stories like Abuse, sex crimes spur expanded police force (April 11) and revelations like “family violence incidents rose 55 per cent in seven years”.

 

Because the media (mostly print) are accessories after the fact. For years they’ve denied the reality that domestic violence really begins in that most intimate home – the root of the word ‘domestic’ is the Latin ‘domus’ meaning ‘home’ – a home which is common to us all, our mother’s womb.

A meta-analysis showing abortion increases mental ill-health in women by 81 per cent has been criticised, as is only to be expected, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against abortion. Common sense is all that’s needed to identify the invasion of the uterus by force, or through the mother’s bloodstream by toxic chemicals, as violence.

 

I’m more sorry than I can say but the grisly truth is, this violence is perpetrated by the mother and accordingly permeates all strata of society.

The Dominion Post, preferring to entertain and distract rather than inform, gives the best part of three pages to John Clarke.

 

Will it give a couple of column inches to the truth? I doubt it.

WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Some outfit called 'Newshub' is busybodying around the issue of euthanasia. I just received an email asking me to state whether I support giving New Zealanders with terminal illness the 'right' to choose when they die.

So okay, this was my reply:

I do NOT support a 'right' to choose when to die which would inevitably morph into a duty to die. Just what is a 'terminal' illness, anyway? Altzheimer's is an illness and its sufferers are going to die sooner or later so aren't Altzheimer's or dementia  'terminal' illnesses?

Who's going to decide whether it is or not? And who would exercise the 'right' to die on behalf of those people?

New Zealanders are people of compassion, commonsense and courage. The Parliamentary select committee enquiring into euthanasia has already discovered that. 78% of New Zealanders do NOT support this absurdity.

We have more important things to think about.

A LIFETIME IN THE PUBLIC EYE (Letter to Dom Post, April 10)

During her lifetime in the public eye (April 10), Dame Margaret Bazley told police and the rugby board they had to hire women to say “we don’t tolerate drunkenness, violence and sexual abuse”.

Go back a bit, to the time when Bazley began her career, when the police and rugby were all-male preserves, and consider how much time and money was spent combatting such behaviour. Not a lot. And don’t tell me it was all swept under the carpet.

Back then, broadly speaking boys and girls alike grew up with both a mother and father present to them. The “valuable perspectives” Bazley now advises were then acquired holistically, built in by absorbing the values and attitudes of the opposing sex from parents who chose in marriage to support each other and their offspring, life-long.

Of course there’s no going back, but let’s reflect on the fact that lack of commitment often brings tragedy in its train.

TO THOSE YOU LOVE MORE, YOU GIVE MORE

Every night I send my five long-suffering adult children a collective email, and every email ends with what for lack of a better expression I call a 'holy thought'.

Tonight's was taken from the works of that stupendous saint, Teresa of Avila. I thought it important enough, and a truth so little known and acknowledged, that I should post it here:

You accomplished your will in him (Christ) through the trials, sorrows, injuries and persecutions he suffered until his death on a cross.

See here what you gave the one you loved most. These are your gifts as long as we are in this world. You give according to the love you bear us: to those you love more, you give more of these gifts; to those you love less, you give less.

And you give according to the courage you see in each of us and the love each has for you; whoever loves you much will be able to suffer much; whoever loves you little will be capable of little.

 

'PRO-CHOICE' IS A SHAM (Letter published in Dom Post, March 31)

Margaret Sparrow  (Letters, March 31), blows her whole ‘pro-choice’ argument out of the water in one half-sentence. She says, “...the rates of mental health problems for women with an unwanted pregnancy were the same whether they had an abortion or gave birth.”

In other words, women’s mental health is not improved by having an abortion. But hang on. 98% of abortions in New Zealand are performed on the grounds that the woman’s mental health will be adversely affected by giving birth.

The whole ‘pro-choice’ argument (for starters, why is having an abortion more of a choice than having a baby?) is a sham, and as an intelligent woman and medical professional Sparrow knows it.

  

ABORTION IS A HEALTH ISSUE, NOT A CRIME (Letter to Dom Post, March 29)

I agree with Terry Bellamak (March 29): Abortion is a health issue, not a crime. That’s because apart from botched ops resulting in infertility, abortion creates mental health problems for women and concomitant health issues for surviving children suffering from the mother’s alcohol and/or drug abuse and suicidal behaviours.

So yes, the grounds are ridiculous. And getting an abortion is not just time-consuming, it’s time-wasting.

I agree that abortion is not a crime for the mother, only for certifying consultants who break the law. Which means because the mother’s mental health is ill served by abortion, morally all certifying consultants are criminals. 

I agree that abortion wastes money. Let’s consider not only the $4m those consultants cost the taxpayer. Let’s think about economic activity lost through abortion. One US study shows more than $6000 of economic activity is generated in the first year of a baby’s life. Which means 100,000 abortions annually (in 2013 there were nearly 700,000) would cost the US economy $6 billion annually and over their lifetimes, $9 trillion.

So in the end I have to disagree with Terry Bellamak. ‘Abortion care’ is an oxymoron. ‘Abortion care’ is not ‘health care’; it’s illhealth and it’s uncaring.