Monday 30 April 2018

'GAY' IS NOT 'THE WAY GOD MADE THEM'


By believing 'homosexuality' is sinful, says a friend on Facebook, I'm condemning gays to live in conflict with the way God made them.

First, I didn't say homosexuality was sinful. I quoted the Bible as condemning homosexual acts as sinful (Romans 1, 26-32).

Second, a top researcher with the American Psychologists’ Association, a lesbian, has acknowledged that gays are not ‘born that way’ and is telling LGBT activists to stop promoting the myth.

I suggest also that my friend could read ‘Sexuality and Gender’ by Dr Lawrence Mayer and Dr Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University. Mayer and McHugh state that scientific evidence does not support the theory that 'gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex, that a person might be 'a man trapped in a woman's body' or 'a woman trapped in a man's body'. 

So evidently, 'gay' is not 'the way God made them'.


Saturday 28 April 2018

MARRIAGE CELEBRANTS AND HOSPICES (Letter to Dom Post, April 28)

Hospices will not euthanise (April 27) is like headlining that the Pope is a Catholic. Care of their patients, not killing, is the raison d’etre of hospices, the same as for all the medical profession.

Of course hospices oppose the End of Life Choice Bill. They point out that it’s people they never get to see, people with heart problems, respiratory disease and dementia, who’d be most vulnerable to family pressure to assent to euthanasia.

David Seymour states the obvious too, saying “there certainly will be doctors who are conscientious objectors”. Does Seymour know what’s happened to some would-be marriage celebrants since the same-sex marriage bill, when Labour MP Louisa Wall vowed and declared no one would be required to perform marriage ceremonies if they didn’t fit with their personal beliefs?

Since then 50 people who applied for licences as marriage celebrants have been turned down, simply because they didn’t want to officiate at same-sex weddings.

If this odious Bill is passed, how long before palliative care specialists are required, against all their belief and practice, to euthanise their patients?

Friday 27 April 2018

HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT



Someone on Facebook says, in connection with Romans 25-32 proscribing homosexual acts, that we shouldn't take Scripture literally. She too quotes St Paul:
“Who also hath made us fit ministers of the new testament, not in the letter, but in the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth”.
Absolutely. As the Douay Rheims Bible - the only one used in the Church for hundreds of years - says: “ ‘the letter’ means not rightly understood, and taken without the spirit.”
The basic reason why Scripture (I’m referring to the New Testament) isn’t taken literally is, people find it too hard, too difficult. And Jesus Christ knew they would. That's why he said, “strait is the way and narrow is the door which leads to eternal life, and few there are who find it.
People often think genuinely they’re being led by the Spirit when in fact they’re led by their own ego. You have to put in the hard yards of prayer and practice of the virtues before you can reasonably rely on what you think is ‘the Spirit’.

Fortunately Catholics have not only Scripture and the Eucharist but also the teaching authority of the Church down through the ages (the Magisterium and the Deposit of Faith) to guide them. And they have that by virtue of the fact that Jesus Christ said to his apostles, “Who hears you, hears Me”.
And fortunately also, people who sincerely try to pray and try to practise the virtues are guaranteed the Spirit who will 'quickeneth' them along the way.


Thursday 26 April 2018

GETTING A WORD IN EDGEWAYS (Letter published in the Dom Post, April 30)


Could I get a word in edgeways please, in the Folau furore?
Rosemary McLeod (April 26) asserts that "members of his church still take as fact that homosexuality is sinful". If that's the case, they are mistaken. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that homosexuality is sinful. What it does say (for instance in Romans 1, 32) is that homosexual acts are sinful.
It’s not as if the Bible singles out homosexual acts. It also condemns fornication and adultery, in fact any sexual act outside marriage.
And I need hardly add that the Bible takes it for granted that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Wednesday 25 April 2018

A FRIEND DISAGREES


Someone commented on this on Facebook. She said she was brought up to believe God is love and sexuality is a gift, so she has to disagree with me on this.

I replied:

The God who is Love wants only the best for us, and that’s eternal life and joy. We achieve that by living this life in accord with God’s word, which is very clear on homosexuality (Rom 1:24-32, for example).

Our sexuality like everything else is a gift from God. How does God feel when people abuse his gift?
“Having known the justice of God (they) did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them"(Rom 1:32).

Tuesday 24 April 2018

WHY WE'RE SHOCKING THE UN (Letter to Dom Post, April 25)



The UN Human Rights Committee would not have been so shocked, perhaps, at our human rights record (April 24) if it knew our church attendance record. New Zealand rates as the most pagan country in the world and boy, does it show!
But maybe, like our Justice Minister Andrew Little, who was “surprised by their language” they simply don’t see the correlation between human rights and religion.

Christianity teaches us to put the rights of others before our own, but our so-called Justice Minister for example, puts the ‘rights’ of mothers before the rights of their own children, and the ‘rights’ of people who are afraid to die before the rights of people who want to live.
Little reflects the values of the people he governs, who by and large have forgotten God.

New Zealand will not meet “its obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural RIghts” until we remember God and the commandments he gave, and commit to living by those commandments.

HEROIC HOMOSEXUALS


Christians like Keri Byrne (Letters, April 24) seem not to understand the context of the biblical quote about casting stones, let alone the nature of true Christian love, let alone judging the deed but not the doer of the deed.

It was people who'd condemned an individual for a particular sin who were made by Jesus Christ to realize that being sinful themselves they were in no position to “cast the first stone”.

Israel Folau wasn’t condemning a particular person; it’s the suddenly much-quoted and misunderstood Bible which condemns a whole class of people - not for their sexual orientation, but for their sexual acts.

It was most unfortunate, but Folau’s mistake was to condemn homosexuals for their sexual orientation. Many homosexuals are Christian and chaste, living heroically in obedience to Christ and his Church.

Sunday 22 April 2018

SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT



It’s good to have a fireman in the family.

Our son Conon came to lunch today. He's a volunteer fireman. Around here we call them Garys because except for Conon they're all called Gary. He’d just about got away scot-free afterwards when I remembered the cracked pot on the balcony which he’d said he'd deal with.

My husband (popularly known as 'im indoors) fetched a rope, I fetched a fadge and at 'im indoors' instructions, a sharp knife. I suggested a ladder but the fireman declined it.

Upstairs and through daughter Rose’s room we went, onto her balcony, and surveyed the pot, D-ended, about 3ft long or more and a foot deep, and its inhabitant, a very overgrown Agave attenuata. Well of course I’d seen it all before, but Conon surveyed the pot and the agave while his father surveyed 'big' daughter Catriona’s chair, salvaged from Erskine College, which has stood on the balcony since we moved into Clairvaux.

“It’s had it,” he said, in tones of deep gloom. I was worried he’d notice the table.

“Do you want to save the pot or the agave,” he asked, “because you won’t save both. You could just cut the agave out of the pot and plant its pups.” That agave has a two-foot stem and is probably three foot in diameter. I have plans for that agave. And its pups.

You won’t save the pot,” he said.“It won’t be any use. Not with that crack in it.” I also have plans for the pot. It’s going upside down somewhere, with other pots on top of it. A pot stand.

He and Conon manoeuvred the fadge under the pot while I generally got in the way and specifically, stood on 'im indoors' toe. He complained. “You stood on my toe,” he said. Then apologising for complaining he said, “It’s my knee”.

There wasn’t much room on the balcony. Well there is, but it’s occupied by the aforementioned chair and table, two cacti and a bougainvillea. Bougainvilleas have thorns. Everything was down my end. I noticed the bougainvillea needed watering.

Conon cut holes in the fadge with the knife, and threaded the rope through the holes. He told his father how to tie the rope around the railing; his father suggested an alternative method.

The railing is quite high. “The paint’s coming off it already,” his father said.

“We could rest the pot on the pergola then,” said Conon. (There's a pergola over the terrace beneath the balcony. A pergola, not a pagoda, and not - heaven forfend - an 'archgola'.)

“No, it’s not galvanised,” said his father.

Slowly they hoisted the pot onto the railing. The railing wobbled. “It’s not very strong,” said 'im indoors. We all laid hands on the rope. “Take your hand off the rope,” said 'im indoors to me. Such was the suspense, I can’t say whether I obeyed or not. Slowly the rope was paid out and the pot, the agave and the ornamental grass (did I mention the pot also features an ornamental grass which stopped being ornamental a while ago) down through the wisteria and the grape vine, down on to terra firma.

Down we all followed, onto the terrace where the agave, the ornamental grass and the pot rested safely, all intact (except the pot still had its crack).

We wondered about getting the agave and the grass out of the pot. “We’ll leave it for another day,” I said.

I felt quite tired.

Saturday 21 April 2018

BISHOP RANDERSON'S MODERNIST CHURCH (Letter to Dom Post, April 21)




Bishop Richard Randerson (Letters, April 20) clearly shepherds a Modernist church, with a modernised version of Scripture and a modernised view of its injunction, “Male and female he created them”.  

I don’t know what Bible his Modernist church uses. I do know that Luther snipped big bits out of the Book, but surely not Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which unequivocally condemns homosexual acts and lists their devastating consequences to society.  

“The clear teaching of the Bible on the nature of love” is that the love taught by Christ wants always and only the best for the beloved, and that’s eternal life - not a relationship, however committed and caring, which Scripture clearly states results in eternal death.

I’m very much afraid that Israel Folau is right.


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Friday 20 April 2018

ISRAEL FOLAU, HOMOSEXUALS AND HELL (Letter to DomPost, April 21)



What Weber, Perenara, Owens and others making a racket about Israel Folau (Dominion Post, April 20) don't realize is, people like Israel who believe hell exists have a duty, simply because they believe it, to warn others, the same as a swimmer has a duty to warn other swimmers if there’s a killer shark in the water. 
 
People like Israel are usually very sane. They don’t do drugs or get drunk or hit their wife or smoke. They’re really successful human beings. In fact the stats show that on the whole, in Western society the millions who believe in hell lead much happier lives than those who don’t.
 
Neither should the Dominion Post assume that Folau didn’t intend to “do public discourse a favour”, just like you shouldn’t assume hell doesn’t exist. Can you prove that it doesn’t?
 
It might. You better believe it.

Tuesday 17 April 2018

REMARKS ON CARDINAL DEW'S REMARKS ON A ''REMARKABLE PAPACY'



Oops! In posting this as coming from the pen of Bishop Drennan, I made a mistake. Although it was included in +Drennan's April Diocesan Newsletter, this reflection was in fact written by Cardinal John Dew.

I apologise to readers for the mistake, as I have apologized to +Charles.

Nevertheless, the fact that these comments originated with the Cardinal gives them, of course, even more weight and renders them more serious. And presumably +Charles would not have given them prominence in his newsletter if he didn't concur.

"POPE FRANCIS’ FIRST FIVE YEARS OF REMARKABLE PAPACY"
– a reflection from Cardinal John Dew 

This Papacy is remarkable all right, and I want to remark on it, right now.

We have no obligation to make the theme of Pope Francis’ first five years "front and centre of our personal lives and in the life of the Church’" as Cardinal John Dew recently stated.

Instead of going "to the peripheries … of sin, of injustice, of pain, of ignorance and religious indifference";  Catholics imitating Christ live the Gospel right where they are, where God has placed them, rejoicing and giving  glory to God by faithfulness to Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis may have "moved towards a more collegial, synodal Church" but there’s no obligation for the rest of the Church to follow him. In fact, when the Pope contradicts Church teaching, the faithful have a duty to resist and repudiate.

The Church was founded by Jesus Christ specifically on Peter, not generally, on the apostles. The Pope always has the responsibility of shepherding not just priests, lay and religious, but also the bishops of the Church. That’s the way the Church normally operates. It’s only in the ecumenical councils that the bishops share responsibility with the Pope for the Church.

Yes, "we need to know ourselves as sinners and not to judge others". But often, when they impinge on our lives, we are called upon to judge not other people, but other people's actions. We need for example, to judge Pope Francis’ action in opening the possibility of Penance and Eucharist in "certain cases" to people living in an objective state of sin, in other words the divorced and 'remarried'.

That action is in direct contradiction of  the Congregation of the Faith’s statement in 1994, that for such people "reception of the sacraments is intrinsically impossible. The conscience of the individual is bound to this norm without exception." 

The Church’s approved theologians all agree that not all decrees and statements by Popes and Councils are infallible. Mostly they engage only the Authentic Magisterium. If statements are made which are contrary to truths in the Deposit of Faith, Catholics are bound to disregard them. As the eminent  15th century theologian Juan de Torquemada has said, " Should (the Pope) go against the universal customs of the Church, he need not be followed".

So I suggest that instead of moving towards another kind of Church we should all stay put in the one founded by Jesus Christ, trying to love God with "all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt 22, 37), "giving the assent of faith to all the doctrinal and moral truths defined by the Church’s Magisterium" (Fr Nicholas Jung).

That’s the only way we’ll ever achieve the "themes" of Pope Francis as summed up by Cardinal John. In other words, the Church should stick to its knitting.

- And really, is being called “a global leader” of a world that has gone, and continues to go on its broad and merry way, a compliment to Pope Francis?

Especially uncomplimentary to the Pope is the admiration of a woman like Helen Clark, whose pro-abortion sympathies are widely known and who once nominated an abortion certifying consultant (earning money for doing abortions) to the Abortion Supervisory Committee, in a glaringly obvious conflict of interest. 

Was that action sane? Clark sees Pope Francis as "a voice of sanity in a troubled world" – but is she qualified to judge?

Still, let us rejoice in the fact that she and probably millions of others see in Pope Francis a man of "tremendous goodness"  and give thanks to God for our Pope, and for our Cardinal John Dew. 

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Monday 16 April 2018

THE WORST CODE OF SILENCE (Letter to Dom Post, April 16)



Let’s talk about “the so-called code of silence at play to try to cover up the crime”, not of killing Chozyn (A homegrown epidemic, April 16), but the crime of abortion.

Could we please get honest about domestic violence? Could we please recognise that it’s the violence of women towards their own children in utero which causes violence against women – usually by their partners, note, not husbands. It can’t be proven, but it’s true that those who live by the sword die by the sword.

Futile words are expended by people who have power to stop the violence but are paralysed by their own experience of abortion/s, or their best friend’s or their daughter’s or granddaughter’s.

Women are both “victims and users of violence” and the help they need isn’t blah blah blah, it’s encouragement to adopt and if when the baby’s in her mother’s arms she can’t surrender it, she needs employment for her child’s father, to learn baby care and be supplied with baby gear.

There is “a quick fix”; it’s an end to abortion. But given our prevalent attitude of wilful blindness, I’m not going to bate my breath.


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Sunday 15 April 2018

WHAT DID VAT II DO TO OUR ABBEYS?




People like me who try to live the contemplative life - and probably all prayerful Catholics when/if they think about it - are saddened by the emptying-out of the monasteries which for hundreds of years have given glory to God, to the exclusion of all else.
That's what we're all called to do - but only so far as lifestyles as mothers, fathers, single people and secular priests allow. And so we look to the abbeys, the monasteries, to their nuns and monks as exemplars of the "strait way" Jesus taught us in the Gospels, for inspiration and incentive.
Of course we know that increased wealth and materialism in the 'developed' (actually in real terms, stunted but don't get me started) world is the obvious reason for the fall-off in numbers of men and women choosing this most elevated and graced vocation to the monastic life.
But what else lies behind it?
Vatican II  - or rather, the way it was implemented.
Lay people know all about the relegation of tabernacles to the sanctuary sidelines or glorified cupboards where no one goes to pray; the banishment of kneelers and fade-out of the Rosary, Exposition and Benediction, the introduction of Toms Dicks Harrys and Harriets to the sanctuary and their unconsecrated hands (once upon a time, mine included) handing out Holy Communion to people perhaps unwashed and careless, queued up as if in a café getting coffee and an oversized muffin.
So what happened in the monasteries? What was the effect, unintended but perhaps just as devastating, of Vatican II within those hallowed walls?
We're told the Council made provision for 'the renewal' of all forms of religious life and that 'monasticism also was called upon to meet the challenge'.

That's something of an understatement. The centuries-old tradition of Gregorian chant of the Liturgy of the Hours, the very foundation of the monastic life, was abolished and substituted by the every-day, conversational vernacular. That meant printing new books and music. What an upheaval, what expense, what time and effort just in practical terms, not to speak of aesthetics.

In most monasteries the silence which once prevailed, which made monks and nuns available to the murmurings of the Holy Spirit, is now chiefly limited to what's called 'the Great Silence'. That's from Compline to Lauds, in other words while the nuns and monks are asleep anyway. So there's no need for the sign-language which used to facilitate quiet.

Post-Vatican II monks in positions of responsibility are expected to be jet-setters, flying to international congresses of their Orders at all points of the compass. Enduring long-haul flights and hotter climes than they're used to is the norm for our mostly elderly abbots and abbesses.
What's it for, this jetting to far places? It's for 'theological education' which I'd have thought is best learned in silent contemplation in their own abbey churches. Or for 'broadening their experience of monastic life', which is so much more cheaply and perhaps more effectively done with videos and movies in their own abbey common room. Or for 'solidarity' which one would think is best expressed in prayer for common needs; or 'discussion' which one would think is opposed to the abbatial lifestyleare
Monks are now instructed by way of 'psychological expertise' on how to upgrade 'relationship skills' which are surely best taught in silent contemplation by Jesus Christ himself in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and through the writings of the saints - usually women, like Teresa of Avila or Therese of Lisieux, both cloistered nuns - who for their expertise, not in relationship skills but in the virtues which foster contemplative prayer, have been declared Doctors of the Church. 

In Australia and New Zealand some monks once slept in dormitories, learning through close proximity the care and respect for their brothers required to lose the sizable ego which makes it impossible to squeeze through that 'narrow door' to eternal life. Now they have separate rooms, which although they may be called cells, are I'm told are very comfy and warm.
And although abbeys were built in solitary, hard to get at places, the 20th century encroached as nearby towns and cities spread, and intruded as many lay people took advantage of abbey churches for Mass (no roster responsibilities!) and hospitality - sometimes quite flash - for retreats, while the church is in some monasteries severely superannuated. To me, building comfy new cells and guest houses instead of new churches smacks of putting the cart before the horse or the tail wagging the dog.
It seems to me also that people, especially young people, who are called to a vocation so radical, so opposed to the values of the world, are likely to be encouraged by making the monastery not more like the world they feel inclined to leave (and for good reason) but less.
All right, it's infernal cheek for me to make comments on a way of life I've never experienced and being 'married with children' - and grandchildren - am never likely to (although after the death of their husband, many women have entered the cloister).
But above and beyond all these post-Vat II factors which may or may not have contributed to the huge drop-off, world-wide, in the number of monastic religious, I'd rate the practice of giving Holy Communion holus-bolus to all comers as the most effective.
I don't know how widespread it is, but I've observed inter-Communion first-hand in at least two monasteries (not knowing of course, the religious affiliation of communicants in most). It's in direct contravention of the Magisterium of the Church to put the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ into the hands of people who, while they may state their belief in the Real Presence, utterly belie it by the fact that they are not, and show no inclination to become, members of the Catholic Church.
If anyone truly believes that what they receive in Holy Communion is Jesus Christ Himself, they would put aside all other considerations (such as losing status as lay preachers) and become Catholics, for the marvelous privilege of receiving Him not just once a month or even once a week or so, but every day.
"He who hears you, hears Me." I simply cannot understand the mentality which allows  transgression of canon law in monastic orders of the Church which take a vow of obedience.
And then there's the subject of New Wine, New Wineskins of Pope Francis, which is currently read and revered in monasteries. But that's another story.

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Saturday 14 April 2018

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY, AUSSIE-STYLE

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Before I forget it, I want to record my impressions of Divine Mercy Sunday the way it should be done.

Actually, I'll never forget it. I'll be reminded of it every year, on what so many priests still call 'Low Sunday'.

I was in Melbourne that day, at the church my son usually attends, which shall be nameless. Seeing no indication of the Feast in the foyer or parish newsletter, I asked the nice welcome person if he knew where in Melbourne it might be celebrated. He didn't know. "Ask Father," he said.

Father didn't know either. But the nice welcome person came to our pew with a three-page handout which told me all I needed to know.

That afternoon at 3 p m, after lunch with friends at Como, a stately Melbourne home, our son dropped me at Holy Cross Church in .Caulfield South. Holy Cross is a large church. Inside it's even larger than the brick exterior would indicate.

It was jam-packed. Up front in the sanctuary on the altar in front of the tabernacle (centrally situated) the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. To the right was the largest Divine Mercy I'd ever seen, framed and decorated with fresh flowers. To the left, images of Pope St John Paul II and the Polish nun he canonized, St Faustina Kowalska, who received the Divine Mercy messages from Jesus Christ (more flowers).

Many people had been there one and a half hours already. This I learned from a woman who together with a male companion seemed to be big-time promoters of the devotion, and pretty professional they were about it too.

They each spoke briefly and we all prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet. That much I expected; that's what I'm used to here in New Zealand. But wait, there's more. I'm not sure whether it was before or after Solemn Benediction (clouds of incense) when the woman MC asked if anyone present had not been to confession.

In all that crowded church, I didn't see a single hand go up.

Then Holy Mass was concelebrated by three priests, with traditional hymns printed on leaflets sung by choir and congregation, with a very competent organist accompanying. I knew every one of those hymns and they all made sense theologically. Thanking the priests, the female MC informed told us that the chief celebrant, a youngish, accented European, had been hearing confessions for five hours.

And then we were all invited to process again to the sanctuary to venerate first-class relics of Ss John Paul II and Faustina Kowalska while the organist played, his eyes not on the music or on his instrument but on the slow procession up the long aisle of men, women and children.

It was about 5 o'clock when I caught a tram back to our son's apartment in St Kilda. A woman on the tram, who'd been in the church, was eating bread rolls out of a plastic bag. "Would you like some bread to eat?" she asked me. I thanked her and said no.

I'd already eaten Bread, of the divine kind. I wished I could share It, Divine Mercy Itself, with all New Zealand. And all the world.

Thank you, Holy Cross Church, Caulfield South, Melbourne Australia.

Thursday 12 April 2018

RAINBOW WGTN, PULL YOUR HEAD IN (Letter published in Dom Post, April 16)


It’s not Reverend David Rowe who needs “to state explicitly that he sanctioned priests blessing same-sex marriages” April 12); it’s Rainbow Wellington chairman Richard Arnold who needs to pull his head in.

The new Dean of Wellington is just as entitled to his Christian position on same-sex marriage, and to state that position, as Arnold is. And as a Christian he’s much less likely than Arnold to object to opposition, or make a fuss about it.

I’m reminded of the Israeli, a practising Jew living in Tel Aviv, whom I met on a flight from there to Paris last year. I asked her what she thought about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She said, “It amazes me that it’s taken only 70 years for Israelis to forget what it’s like to be persecuted”.

Looks like the homosexual lobby could be even quicker off the mark.



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Wednesday 11 April 2018

'SHAMELESS, BARBARIC ATTACK' BY ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, April 12)



“Russia has provided a green light to the Assad regime to kill its own children” (Syrian gas attack, April 11).

The moral righteousness of the Guardian newspaper’s denunciation of Syria and Russia’s wicked chemical attack as “shameless and barbaric” is egregiously hypocritical. Almost all of the so-called civilised world kills its own children every day, in the shameless and barbaric attack on unborn children of abortion.

Because these children are not seen (except by the ‘doctors’ who perform surgical abortions and the hapless staff who dispose of their bodies), they are reckoned in some illogical way to be not human.
It seems TS Eliot got it right when he wrote that Human kind/Cannot bear very much reality.




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