catholicweekly.com.au 17 10, May, 2020 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 We need to develop better approach to liturgy T he Vatican has called for a review of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. When Benedict XVI gave permission for the celebration of the Liturgy accord- ing to the Roman Missal of 1962 he made it clear unity did not demand uniformi- ty, and that there could be a legitimate diversity of rites in the church as was the case before the council of Trent. I am a strong supporter of the contin- uation of the Extraordinary form of the Roman rite. I attended a Latin Mass at Lewisham sometime ago and was im- pressed at the number of young who were in attendance and how difficult it was to get a carpark. But hand-in-hand with this we need to put more emphasis into developing good liturgy in the use of the ordinary form of the Roman rite. Many masses have degenerated to the level of a parish tea party. However, Mass celebrated in the ordinary rite, ad orientem , with the popular parts of the Mass conducted in English and the presidential parts in Lat- in, can be an uplifting, beautiful, and in- spiring celebration. Stephen Early North Richmond NSW The bureaucratic madness of official drugs policy A recent press report exposed the dangerous way some of our tax- payers’ money is being directed. The online organisation, counsellingon- line.org.au , which receives $1.5 million from taxpayers, instructed addicts saying, “talk to your dealer about what might happen if your regular drug supply may be restricted and stock up on your drugs of choice.” While this statement has since been removed from the website, the Department of Health defended the advice, arguing it was “in line with harm reduction guidelines”. If that’s true, there’s only one thing to do - have the Department dump the guidelines encouraging illegal activity. The foolishness is barely different from advising people to stock up on alcohol because a strike by drivers for the liquor industries is imminent. This same distorted thinking helps drive the ‘drug education’ of our school- children. Finally, the $1.5 million applied to successful rehab programs would have helped approximately 100 users to es- cape addiction. Colliss Parrett Barton ACT Swinging editorials W ith all due respect, your edito- rials swing between rational and eccentric. What’s up? Toby Garcia Lopez Baulkham Hills NSW This newspaper has been a positive influence I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading The Catholic Weekly in recent years despite the fact that you’ve had to digitise the paper for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. I read it from cover to cover. I have often used the material to re- flect and pray. Occasionally I purchase books that are reviewed and enjoy them very much. The editorial has always been spot-on. The opinion and comment pag- es are always topical. So congratulations to the team for a really first class job of keeping Catholic items in the news at this strange and un- usual time we are living through. name and address supplied Catholic Weekly circulates north of the border I just wanted to say I appreciate the quality of the articles in your paper so very much that I have been reading it weekly when I supply at the Cathedral in Brisbane. It is then passed on to others who appreciate it. Fr John Sullivan Nundah QLD Article on death of SA grandmother deficient T he ‘State-ordered death’ article re- garding the grandmother in South Australia was unimpressive for a number of reasons: There was no explanation of the dis- pute within the aged care provider, There was no mention of an Advanced Care Directive or a Living Will having been completed by the resident, No thought was given to the possibility that the resident may have pulled the na- sogastric feeding tube out as an indica- tion of not wishing to continue living in such as dependent state, There was no inclusion of the reasons why two of the resident’s family mem- bers did not support the re-insertion of another feeding tube. Bernie Kingston Maroubra NSW Lessons for Australia in a Belgian tragedy T his week’s action by the Congregation for the Doc- trine of the Faith ordering 15 Catholic psychiatric institutions in Belgium to cease claiming that they are part of a Catholic healthcare system and ethos and identifying themselves as Catholic institutions is wel- come news. At the same time it is tragic. It also has lessons which should be closely observed in Australia where ma- jor Catholic educational, healthcare and nursing institu- tions operate. What can happen in Belgium can happen elsewhere. To assume this is impossible would be an act of naiveté. Some basic background is important. In April 2017 the Board of Management which operated 15 Catholic psychi- atric hospitals in Belgium announced (in the usual ‘Man- agement Speak’) that it had ‘updated’ its views on eutha- nasia. The hospitals had all been originally founded by a Catholic religious congregation, the Brothers of Charity. As vocations to the Brothers dwindled, effective day to day management of the hospitals was handed to an increas- ingly lay-led Board of Management. The Board’s 2017 ‘up- date’ was in fact a total ethical reversal of the position of the Brothers and the Church on euthanasia. In Belgium, where euthanasia has been legal since 2002, ‘Catholic’ hospitals would commence ending the lives of the mentally ill simply because they were depressed, sexually abused, lonely, au- tistic, schizophrenic or suicidal. The Brothers, led by Brother René Stockman (who is staunchly opposed to euthanasia) vehemently protested – but to no avail. The Board remained committed to its new- ly-discovered progressive values, leaving the Brothers with no other option than appealing to the Vatican. Nor was the dispute a minor scuffle. The 5000 psychiatric beds operated under the Brothers of Charity charism constitute the single biggest sector of Belgium’s psychiatric care. As the result of a Board vote, euthanasia open-season came into operation for the most vulnerable individuals in Belgium. The CDF order is tragic because, while it was necessary, the 2017 vote by the Board of Management delivered an en- tire Catholic psychiatric healthcare system to the moral evil of state-sponsored euthanasia. In light of the spread of le- galised euthanasia across Australia over the last two years, it is not, therefore, irrelevant to reflect upon the lessons for Australia. At the heart of the Belgian shambles, in a general sense, is the collapse of Christianity in a post-modern society and culture. Specifically, that collapse is manifested in the tech- nically competent doctors and healthcare bureaucrats who have no understanding of Christianity, much less of the pro- foundmoral code created by the Judeo-Christian tradition. They understand the Catholic moral traditionmuch as they contemplate rainfall in the Sahel - which is not at all. Where they identify as Catholic or Christian, they are only what is now described as baptised unbelievers. They may assume they are Christian but the ultimate authority in their lives is neither the Gospel nor the Church nor God but the State, popular opinion and consensus. In essence they are mod- ern pagans or agnostics. To a certain extent, they are failures of catechesis, expressing in their conventionality, as they do, the dominant barbarian values that prevail in their lives. The Brothers of Charity Board of Management’s decision is, therefore, simply a new form of an ancient problem, one which historians usually describe as Caesaro-papism. This is the idea that the supreme authority in the Church is not God but the political authority and consensus of the day. Under this model the Church is, in the final analysis, ruled not by bishops but by the princes who hold secular power. It is pliable, conformant, blind to inconvenient truth when it is politically or financially expedient and morally grey. The risk in societies like Australia emerges from the mas- sive federal and state funding of Catholic health and edu- cation sectors. Already there are clear signs of forces within the Church who, like their Belgian Catholic bureaucrat- ic counterparts, see no real problemwith a Church that is compliant in all things with directives of the state. It is not hard to conceive of such forces evolving towards what might be described as a Patriotic Church mentality, com- promising on matters in Catholic faith which are uncom- promisable – such as euthanasia. Massive bureaucracies, af- ter all, can find state and federal dollars impossible to resist. At the same time, there are clear forces in the civic and po- litical spheres seeking to impose their own ideologies (see report P14) in issues to do with the sanctity of life, the sexu- alisation of children, gender, healthcare and education. The lessons of a Belgian tragedy should therefore be carefully scrutinised – and absorbed. LETTERS