BABIES ARE MISSING SOMETHING WHICH IS EVERYTHING (Letter to Dom Post, January 22)

I can’t comment on the unimaginable grief of the mother in Whanganui, but I wonder if designers of baby car seats, prams and pushchairs are missing something.  

Because prioritising physical safety in rear-facing car seats and mental stimulation in forward-facing prams and pushchairs means all those babies are missing something which to them is everything: the sight of their mother’s face.

OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN DEFINITION OF RELIGION (Letter published in Dom Post, January 20)

Peter Rodriguez (to the Point, January 14) conflates behaviour and belief. The ‘mayhem occurring throughout the world’ is a behaviour expressing, at root, psychotic pride which is an abuse of religious belief.

I refer Rodriguez and Christopher Hitchens who think ‘religion poisons everything’, to the official Christian definition: ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world’. Who could quarrel with that?

JOE BENNETT'S SEARCH FOR JOY IN THE PRESENT TENSE (Letter to Dompost, January 7)

Joe Bennett’s far too intelligent to believe real joy can be found in a glass of champagne (At last – permission to live, January 7), but he doesn’t know where else to look.

The art of being ‘as joyous as possible in the present tense’ is explained by 17th-century Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade in his spiritual classic The Sacrament of the Present Moment which will tell Joe, and anyone else who’s interested, just how to achieve ‘this unworried present-tense existence’.

HOW TO POST A COMMENT ON MY BLOG (As suggested by Rose)

When I asked my 22 year-old daughter Rose (my Rosebuddy) who was home for  Christmas why no one comments on my blog posts, she said maybe they don't know how, and suggested I make a post to tell them.

It's easy as pie (but rather counter-intuitive).

Scroll down to the bottom of the post where it says 'No comment'. Left click, and up pops a box saying 'No comments' and then 'Post a comment', 'Enter you comment', etc.

I'd love to have feedback. Go for it!

GRIM NEW EVIDENCE OF REASONS FOR PARENTAL NEGLIGENCE (Letter published, abridged, in Dom Post, January 9)

The one glimmer of hope afforded by your front page story (Way boys treat girls 'takes leap backward', Jan 6), is that it must surely silence the sex-ed in schools cabal. Anyone with common sense always knew where that would take us, but social media have accelerated descent to levels not merely ‘inappropriate’, to quote Former Secondary Principals’ Association president Patrick Walsh, but truly deviant.

 

Studies exist which give grim new evidence of the major reason for parental negligence, the reason why parents of children sharing porn on social media are ‘not even concerned’. In 2002 the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry reported that abortion may negatively affect bonding with subsequent children and disturb mothering skills. The Elliott Institute says abortion is linked with poor maternal bonding with later children.

 

Physiological evidence and clinical experience show the maternal relationships of women who abort seem at high risk of dysfunction and/or dissolution. The situation is grave indeed, but like some parents in responding to their children’s sexual misconduct, it seems we’re too busy to deal with it.

NO GREATER INCENTIVE TO DO THINGS THAN THE PROSPECT OF LIVING FOREVER (Letter to Dom Post, Jan 3)

I chortled at forensic pathologist John Rutherford unlocking ‘the secrets of death’ for us (January 3), and at his idea that the prospect of living forever means ‘there is no incentive to do things’.

 

Over the centuries, belief in eternal life, as opposed to eternal death, has inspired countless numbers to amazing endeavours in improving life on earth. Random examples springing to mind are Mother Teresa of Calcutta - or Mary Potter, whose worldwide legacy of care for the poor, the sick and the dying includes Wellington’s own hospice. I could go on. There’s plenty of evidence to prove there’s no greater incentive to do things than the prospect of living forever.

CHARLOTTE'S DEPRESSION BEGAN AFTER AN ABORTION (Letter to Dom Post, January 2)

Charlotte Dawson’s dead, but The Dominion Post won’t let her lie down. Once more your paper (The dearly departed, January 2) resurrects the NZ-born television personality’s depression and death by suicide, and once more fails to give the real answer to the essential journalistic question, ‘Why?’  as stated by Charlotte herself in a magazine interview in 2011.  

Having milked her for all the column inches she was worth, mostly about the red herring of cyber-bullying, you owe her and all the other women who are coerced into abortion the salient fact of the matter. Her depression began after an abortion.