17 3, May, 2020 catholicweekly.com.au E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to:
[email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Idea: let’s keep confession to the confessionals I suspect that we are being naive if we think that someone will not try to say that they went to Confession and confessed and the priest failed to report something regarding abuse to the Police. May I respectfully suggest that all our priests hear confessions in a confessional, the priest separated from the penitent by a wall and that a curtain be placed on the side of the priest thus protecting both our precious priests and the sacramental seal. Helen McLoughlin Sydney NSW Review misses key points on the great Phyllis Schlafly F urther to the review of Mrs Amer- ica by Joseph McAleer ( Catholic Weekly 26 April) I note that Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life in the US, who was mentored by Phyllis Schlafly, recently assessed the series in the National Catholic Register about that miniseries. Here are some of the points she makes: “Cate Blanchett captures Schlafly’s mannerisms and her speech, she doesn’t capture her heart”; Schlafly is painted, falsely, “as cold, jealous, sloppy with details and grasping for the spotlight” when, really, “she had a brilliant grasp of policy and argument which she shared with all who knew her”. She was committed “to training other women to lead across the country, rath- er than trying to keep the attention on herself”. One of Ms Hawkins’ main points was that the battle to ratify the ERA con- tinues and despite Nancy Pelosi saying, earlier this year during debate to extend the deadline for ratification of the ERA, that it has nothing to do with abortion. As she observed: “ Mrs America proves that false. The ERA and abortion are hand in glove throughout”. Chris Rule, Gilmore ACT Parish priest reaches out even beyond the web I n this precarious time, I would like to commend my indefatigable parish priest, Father Andrew James, of St Paul of the Cross Dulwich Hill. Although many of those inspired by the zeitgeist of modern technology can “participate” in the Mass via Livestream, my faith has been equally vivified by the knowledge that he has decided to offer Mass, privately, for those who could not (or can no longer) afford the requisite technology. Fr Andrew’s intuitive con- cern for those on the liturgical periph- eries and his passion for social justice has always impressed me. However his desire to continue to bridge the gap be- tween rich and poor through his reverent offering of the sacred synaxis shows that it is equally alive and well. Larry Von Bureauztradetur Dulwich Hill Another aspect to the feeding of the multitudes T he feeding the 5,000 by Jesus is the only miracle featured in all four gospels. I’ve often wondered if another miracle that day lay in the spirit of sharing, that many among the 5,000 were being true good neighbours and sharing their food with total strangers sitting next to them. Today, the United Nations World Food Programwarns of a looming global cri- sis with 265 million people on the brink of starvation as a result of the pandemic and ongoing natural disasters. There are an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. Will they – will we – remember the feeding of the 5,000 – and follow Christ’s loving action? Help- ing to feed our starving neighbours overseas will not only save lives but also nourish our souls. The miracle of the “loaves and fishes” is a wonder that just keeps on growing. Bob Cameron Malabar NSW Where are the Catholics getting their hands dirty? Y our editorial last week which touched on the importance of the lay apostolate was welcome. Catholics have almost disappeared from the public square. A few good men and women remain but are outnumbered by rogue ‘Catholics’ who embrace every moral outrage the opinion polls justify. In 2013 Pope Francis urged Chris- tians to play their role in politics. “We can’t play the role of Pontius Pilate and wash our hands of it,” he told a question- er. “Politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the com- mon good,” he said, urging Christians to roll up their sleeves and get their hands ‘dirty.’ We only have ourselves to blame if things don’t go as we would prefer. Your editorial is very much what Francis would say. Toby Garcia Lopez Baulkham Hills NSW On the surplus aged – and their fate T he sign of how civilised and humane any society is can be gauged from how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members: the mentally ill, the un- employed, the homeless, the ill, the aged, infants and children among them. Charles Dickens, for example, railed against the mass poverty of industrialised Britain and the treatment of groups such as the mentally ill, kept caged like animals chained up in their own filth and treated as signs of family and social shame. The Victorian England of Dickens’ life and prolific career was at the height of its pow- er and prestige, yet at its heart profound inner social and moral evils prevailed, while the attitudes which created and allowed them to fester were brilliantly lampooned and de- nounced by the great author. When any society begins to divest itself of responsibili- ty or care for any particular group which is disadvantaged economically or by reason of any other factor - such as age, physical health or disability - that society can no longer de- scribe itself either as civilised or humane. What has instead triumphed is the idea that some human beings are burdens to the rest of us. They are to be dispensed with or ignored be- cause some people are more important than others. Where this comes to pass, barbarianismhas triumphed. In such a situation it matters not whether that society is technologically advanced (at least, by its own navel-gazing standards), how sophisticated it may think that it is or even how fantastic, to borrow a line fromWH Auden, the evening gowns grow. What reigns in the absence of human decency, compassion and the Judeo-Christianmoral framework is a new brutalismwhich prospers in (and because of) affluence but masks its complete indifference to human suffering, des- tiny and fate behind excuses such as budget limitations and the bureaucratic setting of appropriate administrative prior- ities. We have dispensed with God and all his troublesome rules. Instead, the technicians are appointed not only judge and jury - but executioner as well. In this regard the coronavirus has exposed the barbari- anismwhich has been spreading and infecting our culture for decades within the heart of economically developed and comparatively affluent societies. Last week’s decision by a court in the Netherlands to effectively legalise euthana- sia of those suffering fromdementia is merely one symp- tom of a malignancy which has become deeply entrenched in societies around the world. The experience of one Perth grandmother reported in last week’s edition of The Catholic Weekly , who collided withmedical and bureaucratic totali- tarianism straight out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave NewWorld or George Orwell’s 1984 simply because of her age, was an- other. Meanwhile, unplanned and unforeseen, this week’s edition of this paper carries a report from the UK revealing the full horror of the treatment of the aged in the midst of the pandemic (see report Page 5) . What has essentially happened in Great Britain is the col- lective judgement of the medical establishment (or large swathes of it at the very least) that the elderly are not worth treating. As revealed by Father Patrick Pullicino, a Catho- lic priest who happens to be a leading surgeon and there- fore better informed about Britain’s National Health Service thanmost, elderly Britons living in aged care and nursing homes who contract Covid-19 are deliberately not being taken to hospitals or, where they are in hospital care, being returned to aged care institutions still suffering from the vi- rus to die. One of the lowest aspects of the news revealed by Fr Pullicino is that there are thousands of waiting empty beds throughout Britain’s hospital systemwhich could ac- cept such patients. The report is disturbing, yet inmany ways now no longer a surprise. As modern societies dumped the Judeo-Christianmoral code erected on the insight that all human beings are creat- ed equally in the image and likeness of God (and therefore that all human life is sacrosanct) it can hardly be surprising that doctors andmedical administrators dump the moral- ly compatible Hippocratic Oath or distort it in newways to better suit the new barbarianismwhich has also become the new orthodoxy. The doing away with human lives is thus en- abled. In the process, those once revered as healers are re- duced to being functionaries, nothing more than highly-paid technicians on a medical factory line. Yet there is an ironic and deadly catch in all of this, de- lightfully set out by GK Chesterton in his 1925 introduction to Dickens’ Christmas Carol and which is still applicable. “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus popula- tion,” he wrote “is to ask himwhether he is the surplus popu- lation; or if he is not, how he knows he is not.” It’s a question that should be put to healthcare policy setters everywhere. LETTERS