LETTERS TO THE DOM POST, October 2013

How ironic that President Obama should offer assistance to a pregnant woman who’d begun to faint (Website glitches hold up Obamacare rollout, Oct 23). His ‘Obamacare’ offers assistance of another, sinister kind in requiring all institutions and companies to provide insurance cover for abortions, rejecting any conscientious objections and enforcing draconian financial penalties for civil disobedience.

 

Julia du Fresne  

KEEPING PREGGIES AWAKE AT NIGHT (Printed in Dom Post Points, Oct 25): 

That’s right. Give the poor preggies something else to keep them awake at night (Poor sleep a danger to pregnancy, Oct 23). Nothing keeps you awake better than the worry of not being able to sleep. 

Julia du Fresne

EMULATING THE NETHERLANDS  (Printed in Dom Post, Oct 20)

Let me assure Coroner Ian Smith, MP Maryan Street and End of Life Choice president Don Grant that no matter how many heart-rending accounts are ‘reported’ as sob stories in the Dominion Post about voluntary deaths self-administered or otherwise, euthanasia is abhorred by anyone who thinks as opposed to emoting.

Thinking people predicted the consequences of legalising abortion, and what a Pandora’s box that was. Now that we’ve aborted a number equivalent to the population of Canterbury we have ‘pro-choice’ psychology professor David Fergusson admitting that far from rescuing women from depression and possible suicide, ‘abortions lead to mental health issues’, and Linda Holloway, chair of the fraudulent Abortion Supervisory Committee, admitting that if we change that law now, ‘we might end up with something worse than what we have got’ (my emphasis).

Does New Zealand really want to emulate the Netherlands, where 27% of doctors admit to euthanasing their patients without approval, where you can order up a mobile euthanasing clinic, and where two and a half times more people were euthanased in 2011 than in 2008?

According to Grant, ‘when it comes to dying everybody buries their head in the sand’. Just who is the ostrich here? 
 

             Julia du Fresne

 

CELIBATE CATHOLIC PRIESTS ARE SCAPEGOATS  (Printed in Dom Post, Sep 18)

 

Judging by the media (Church braced for new child abuse complaints, Sept 17), you’d think children were violated almost exclusively by Catholic priests. But given that the media tell us what we want to hear, it seems that in the same way as in the Third Reich wealthy Jews were blamed for Germany’s poverty, celibate Catholic priests now make convenient scapegoats for our sex-crazed, sex-saturated society. Anne Lastman, an Australian expert and international speaker on trauma, grief and loss, states unequivocally that most children are sexually abused in their own home, most often by their fathers and grandfathers. 

Julia du Fresne
 

JOHN KERRY AND CATHOLICS’ PRAYER AND FASTING FOR SYRIA ( A letter to Dom Post, September 13)

Seems like there just might be a connection between that totally unexpected and momentous remark of John Kerry’s and its consequence – the unlikely alliance of the US and Russia – and the millions of Catholics worldwide who complied with Pope Francis’ request for prayer and fasting for Syria. As Tennyson wrote in Idylls of the King, ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’

 

Julia du Fresne

TWO LETTERS TO THE DOMPOST ON  THE SAME DAY (AUGUST 29).

 

FIRST, NURSES KILLING HALF THEIR PATIENTS:

 

How many of the 2500 extra nurses or midwives provided to DHBs who could be on the wards bathing and moving their bedridden patients, or reinserting lines, are actually employed in their abortion clinics, killing half their patients? Maybe the DHBs consider these dead patients to be a savings in ‘care rationing’.   

Julia du Fresne

 

SECOND, COLUMNIST VERNON SMALL’S NAIVETY:

 

I’m afraid that in claiming a more tolerant society is evidenced by the gay marriage law, Vernon Small’s naivety is showing. There was no clear public mandate for it. The bill was rammed through Parliament; the Select Committee treated objectors, particularly one 18 year-old woman who felt ‘humiliated and menaced’, with disrespect; thousands of unique objections were dismissed as form letters; a majority of submissions were opposed to it. One might call the gay marriage law a law of the jungle.

Julia du Fresne

WELLINGTON SHOULD BE ON ITS KNEES

First published in NZ Catholic, August 25, as

SHOULD QUAKE-PROOFING CHURCHES BE A PRIORITY?

Is anyone else feeling queasy about the millions of dollars the Church proposes to spend  ‘earthquake-proofing’ its places of worship?

Of course, no one’s chuffed about it, except maybe engineers and construction companies and chippies, and a certain identity facetiously depicted with horns, a tail and a pitchfork - but this is no laughing matter.

Let’s consider the chances of churchgoers being crushed by crucifixes or statues or lacerated by shattered stained glass. In Christchurch, three men died in a church classified as too dangerous to occupy; in the Anglican cathedral one person was injured; in the Catholic cathedral, none. In Napier 256 died, but only one in a church.

Yet St Mary of the Angels in Wellington’s CBD has closed for up to 18 months while $5 million to $8m is spent preventing a putative fourth death. Couples planning weddings, the Guardians of SMOA who committed an hour every week outside Mass to keep the church open, and the people who came there to pray, may feel the heart of the city has stopped beating, and wonder how the cost of resuscitation can be met.

Doomsayers are suggesting SMOA may never reopen; administrators say funds must be found for another 50 buildings in the archdiocese considered ‘earthquake-prone’. Meanwhile, the Presbyterian St John’s in the City, similarly assessed, is ‘in a better position’ to offer services and will take SMOA’s faithful under its roof for one Mass a week, on Sundays; weekday Masses will be held in SMOA’s  gloomy parish hall. At a time when prayer for Wellington, especially the celebration of the Eucharist, is needed more than ever before, I predict there will be many fewer bums on pews - or on seats in the hall.

After the bad press the Church has suffered, it’s only natural for administrators to want to demonstrate attitudes that look good in the media, but even natural logic proves that Massgoers are far less likely to be harmed by an earthquake in church than at work or in the street.

Are we snared in a secular mindset, a fear of physical harm which says ‘safety of parishioners is paramount’? What is Christ’s perspective?

‘Do not fear those who kill the body,’ he says, ‘but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Mt 10,28).

And St Paul says ‘Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect’(Rom 12, 2). We acquire that divine perspective by the power of the Spirit, in contemplative prayer.

 The first Christchurch earthquake happened at dead of night, and the city that didn’t live up to its name carried on as usual until the second struck, at midday. The first jolt in Wellington, where Parliament recently enacted profane legislation, occurred in the quiet of a Sunday evening.

God will not be mocked. Wellington should be on its knees.

 

 

A LETTER TO THE DOMPOST EMAILED A  DAY LATE, AFTER I FOUND IT LURKING IN MY DRAFTS FOLDER: 

If Mrs Bennett’s wondering how she’s going to keep suspected child abusers out of parks and pools, may I suggest the good old-fashioned scarlet A, branded on their foreheads? Otherwise how will this egregiously unjust legislation be policed?  

And in the meantime thousands of real child abusers, men who get their rocks off and then tell their partners to go get an abortion, ‘doctors’ who sign off abortions and ‘doctors’ who perform them, carry on regardless. Too right, Mrs Bennett, there are too many children dying in pain, and most of them in our hospitals, before birth, at the taxpayers’ expense. They’re unborn, they’re unseen, they’re unwanted. Does that make it all right? 

If we think we can start preventing violence and abuse after birth – as now for instance, with pathetic attempts to stop toddlers bullying in pre-school - we’re deceiving ourselves. And ‘O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!’ 

Julia du Fresne

 

What the Catholic Church has been keeping secret

(First published in NZ Catholic, July 28.)

            The Catholic Church has been keeping a secret – not just in our lifetime, but for roughly six hundred years.

            Relax. This is nothing salacious. I refer to the international army of foot soldiers for Christ called the third orders. They’re mostly lay people, as opposed to first orders (priests) and second orders (nuns) but sharing with both the spirituality of the saint/s under whose colours they do battle.

If it weren’t for the devilish connotation you might say ‘their name is Legion, for they are many’ (Mk 5,9). If the somewhat obscure Servites number 400 in the US, we can only guess at the numbers in third orders world-wide.

But as a lay Carmelite, my impression is that Mass-going Catholics’ knowledge of third orders is hazy. If women get wind of my involvement they’re likely to describe it to third parties as ‘training to be a nun’ and ask me, archly, what does my husband think about that, while men regard ‘im indoors with pity, guardedly expressed.

Let me explain. Men in third orders might be deacons, but only rarely priests (diocesan). Women outnumber men (natch) but they’re not the sort who hanker after the priesthood and they’re not ‘some kind of nun’.  Nuns live in monasteries and take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which under canon law are binding, as opposed to the promises made by lay Carmelites, lay Franciscans, lay Dominicans, Cistercians, Benedictines or Marists, married or single. Lay Carmelites of the original order (O Carm) as opposed to the reformed (OCDS) for example, promise to live in the spirit of the rule of St Albert, and both orders share the charism of contemplative prayer.

A sine qua non for members of third orders is a disciplined prayer life. The daily Mass, Divine Office, mental prayer and spiritual reading required of lay Carmelites - although much less than for nuns -  prompted a priest to say I might as well be in the convent.

Well, not really. You can’t have babies and work in your husband’s pharmacy if you’re in the convent. You can’t commute weekly to a caravan in another city to mind your toddler great-nephew, or care for a husband with Parkinson’s and dementia, or work in a university and run a Catholic Workers group, or have eight children, as do the lay Carmelites I know, in a convent.

While I, as everyone knows, just lie on a sofa and eat chocolates and read magazines, these others commit themselves to authentic prayer, sustaining and deepening their love for God and others. According to their different charisms, third orders are  out there in the thick of things, otherwise Pope Francis might be justified in calling them Gnostics. Any suffering, and the sacrifice of time others spend on shopping, eating, telly, the gym or travel must serve the same purpose, otherwise His Holiness could  say they’re Pelagians.

‘Evangelisation’, as Francis notes, ’is done on one’s knees.’ Third orders might be called love at the heart of the Church.

 

ANOTHER CLUTCH OF INFLAMMATORY LETTERS NEVER TO BE EXPOSED TO UNPROTECTED DOMPOST READERS: 

A trowel, to dig a long drop in Wellington soil? (Rush on bottled waters as residents stock up, July 23.) All those Berhampore flatmates would achieve would be a short drop. 

Julia du Fresne

 

Why can’t a male represent (act on behalf of) a female? (Quotas may be needed to boost female MPs, A7, July 8.) Because he’s not her sex? But why stop there? I’m blonde (a dangerous admission) and blue-eyed. So according to Deborah Russell’s reasoning, only a blue-eyed blonde can represent me in Parliament.  

Julia du Fresne

 

Why should a teacher lose his job for mistakenly broadcasting pornography to his classroom (Porn accidentally broadcast to class, A3, July 4), when school librarians will shortly stocking their shelves with  NZ Post Children’s Book Awards winner Into the River? They might as well issue condoms to go with it. I’d love to quote an excerpt, but the Dominion Post would never expose its readers to the soft porn, paedophilia and drug-taking NZ Post sees as good – no, the best! – for teenagers.

Julia du Fresne

 

Let’s hear it for Shawnee Ormsby-Ryder (Baby puts teen back on track, July 1), a girl not to be gulled. And for the University of Canterbury’s Jenny Hindin-Miller, whose research shows that ’none of the women I interviewed had regret about becoming a teen parent’. How do the ‘pro-choice’ brigade think teens tricked into abortion must feel when they read such a story, and see such a photograph?

Julia du Fresne

 

If only women who decide to ‘do this small, unhappy thing’ (Caitlin Moran’s euphemism for abortion in A bouquet on its way to a gutsy politician, June 28) knew they were committing themselves precisely to the ‘endless unhappiness’ they hope to avoid.

Does Moran have any understanding of the horrible, long-lasting and ripple effects of abortion, especially on the mother? Has she not seen the research proving a woman’s mental health suffers far more from abortion than from giving birth? The studies which show that if brought to birth, unwanted pregnancies almost always turn into wanted babies?

In abortion, not only is one life painfully ended, but the life of the mother and to a lesser extent, the lives of surviving siblings and the father – if he knows - are damaged, and if healing isn’t sought and found, damaged forever.

Julia du Fresne

This letter was published in NZ Catholic, June 30, with – quelle horreur! – a split infinitive, introduced by the sub …  

In his book Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way, Blessed John Paul II cites the question asked of bishops at their ordination: ‘Are you resolved to be faithful in your obedience to the successor of the Apostle Peter?’

In regard to Divine Mercy, obedience to Peter’s successor requires bishops at least announce this Solemnity, granted to the Universal Church by the ‘Great Mercy Pope’, and preach on God’s mercy and the forgiveness of sins at every  Mass that day. Obedience to the Law of the Gospel surely requires them also to honour Christ’s demand  that they venerate the image, by means of which the Lord promised ‘many graces to souls’ – one, remarkably, being John Paul’s death on the Vigil of Divine Mercy - and ensure their priests hear the call of the lay priesthood for its veneration, in their churches.

Divine Mercy may have little appeal for sophisticates, but we must ‘live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly’ (Romans 12:15).

Pray for our bishops, that they will be faithful in honouring Divine Mercy as, in Blessed John Paul’s words, ‘the appropriate answer to the questions of our time, marked by terrible tragedies’.

 

Julia du Fresne