Category: Writing

There are three things that even God does not know:
1) How many religious nuns there are;
2) What the Franciscans are doing;
3) What the Jesuits are really thinking.

He’s a brilliant debater. He knocked Fr Brennan off his perch (who chaired the Human Rights Consultation and came up with — nothing. Hardly surprising that a Catholic priest would decide we shouldn’t have any human rights charter).

Hitchens is paying a visit during the churches’ $1.5 million campaign promoting “Jesus”, which runs until the end of October.

There were so many highlights — read the transcript here, or watch it.

Hitchens on Mother Teresa: … Mother Teresa was endlessly praised for work that most of the time she actually never did. I went to watch her very closely in Calcutta. You don’t mind that she thinks that what Bengal and Calcutta mainly needs is a campaign … against birth control and family planning. Has anyone here ever been to Bengal and concluded that’s what it really needs? That’s what she was really campaigning for … She gives a wonderful impression of being a charitable person. So what Indians need is more missionaries to cure poverty, when everybody knows there’s only one cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women, which means giving them some control over their reproduction. You name me … a Catholic or Muslim charity that goes into the fields determined to secure the empowerment of women.

Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan on the topic of gays: No, homosexuality is not a sin. It’s a disposition. If you want to argue about whether particular homosexual acts are appropriate for an individual in a moral context, that would require a pastoral discussion with that individual.

I think that’s misleading. The Catechism of the Catholic Church  says:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.  Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,¹⁴⁰ tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”¹⁴¹ They are contrary to the natural law …  Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

At my high school, De Vialar College, we used to have the highest number of religion classes in the state of WA — five periods of religion a week PLUS one period of religious singing. A total of six. We also had the highest proportion of nun teachers to students in the State — only a couple of the teachers weren’t nuns. They were the very dedicated Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition who’d insisted on so many religion classes that all other lessons and phys ed were trimmed to squeeze them in. They’d worked hard to get approval from the Ed Dept to get permission for so many religion classes (I’d heard the boast a couple of times that they’d told the Ed Dept they’d rather close the school if they couldn’t teach that much religion), and it was used as a major selling point. We had non-Catholics attending too. Only 200 in the whole school. Classes had to finish at 3.15pm daily, as the nuns all ran off to watch The Young and the Restless in the attached convent. We’d hear the theme music wafting out as we’d leave and giggle about it.

The religious ed was mostly great — we sat around debating moral questions and could say whatever we wanted. Eg. “Is it bad to want to be popular?” Answer: it was if it meant you abandoned your morals! That question used to come up all the time. And lots about peer group pressure and how we mustn’t cave in. There was stuff on bullying. About the poor. About Catholic persecution during WWII. Missionary work. We were taught about other religions too. We used to have masses and sing in the choir. We had Marriage Encounter couples tell us the ups and downs of being together til death do us part. We learnt about people in other countries. It was all over too quickly. It was a fun time. I remember we all had to write an essay in class about “What God means to me”, then we discussed the answers. And the nuns didn’t just teach the values; if they saw anyone being excluded or bullied, there’d be prompt action. Every 40-minute study period began and ended with a prayer and we stopped work to say the Angelus every midday. We didn’t learn heaps of Catholic dogma or discuss the Vatican’s latest encyclicals. There wasn’t as much anti-church material around then. The anti-church stuff then was contraception, living together, divorce, free love, drugs, having kids out of wedlock.  I didn’t remember much sex abuse stuff being widely aired then. The priests I knew, from three parishes, were never charged with that. Most priests aren’t abusers.

They were like ethics classes. So I think these ethics class ideas are brilliant. Funded by P&Cs. They’ve presented their idea to the NSW State Government — to two previous education ministers and now the current one, Verity Firth. The idea keeps getting knocked back cause of the power of the Catholic Church and other churches — again, despite their 8 per cent church attendance, they have power cause of the public services they provide: schools, hospitals. They’re entitled to discriminate on the basis of sex and sexual orientation when employing teachers and nurses. Their staff aren’t allowed to parade in Mardi Gras or be openly “out”.

The churches also currently claim that they’re the only ones providing any moral fabric and instruction — only because they’re actively stopping ethics classes from being held. They insist that if students don’t attend religious instruction they must do nothing! So the churches keep taking kudos for any type of morality, as though society will fall apart without them and their discriminating guilt-pushing ideas. (The sort of ideas that lead to gay people being bashed and murdered in parks.)

I appreciate the ethics/religious instruction I got at school and I think everyone should be able to get that. Now, it’s only people who are trying to pass the Australian citizenship test that get any teaching on Australian values.

The theme music from The Young and the Restless, 1973.

“Stress, celebrity worship and rising complacency are fuelling a growing political ignorance.” The Fun-Herald on why no one’s interested in politics.

I think it’s because it takes so long to digest. It’s much quicker to get to grips with the finer points of Britney’s ups and downs, though I haven’t read much about her lately. There aren’t enough summaries and short ongoing narratives on politics.

For some news stories, it’s not even clear – if you’re not a newshound – whether they’re talking about state or federal politicians. And TV news just mangles everything. There’s no middle ground for people who just want to read summaries of poltics on-the-run.

Katharine Murphy’s piece “In the belly of the beast” makes it clear why politics is such a huge turn-off.

Dried rations are stashed under the desk. There are no family photographs because there are no families, dogs, lawns or detritus of any kind, apart from some long-suffering girlfriends.

… And the blokes absolutely run this show. They like football, and novellas, and blogs, and popular culture in boxed sets of DVDs they can devour down the back of the Prime Minister’s plane.

I enjoyed reading “In the belly of the beast”, though it confirmed what a pointless waste of time those staffers are with their skewed priorities.