17 26, July, 2020 catholicweekly.com.au COMMENT 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 Death penalty’s fallibility is obviously its weakness O ne US state conducted a review of the death penalty and came to the inclusion that such a high proportion of the guilty verdicts were unreliable that they cancelled the death penalty in that state. They also found that there was a large incidence of false evidence and the set- ting up of alleged criminals by the police. They discovered a high proportion of those actually put to death had a black or coloured background, low education and economically deprived socio-envi- ronment. There were several instances of uneducated or mentally ill detainees being badgered, isolated and physical- ly and psychologically abused until they finally caved in and confessed to crimes they had never committed. I amwith Pope Francis there is no jus- tification for the use of the death penalty in our modern society. Stephen Early North Richmond NSW Anti-semites take note: God was – and is – a Jew S erious anti-Semitism recently broke out in an Australian high school, culminating in an attack, last week, on a Year Seven boy by fellow students, who called him a “dirty Jew”. These sort of events are becoming commonplace in Australia. To make mat- ters worse, many school principals are reluctant to chastise the miscreants. Scholars have put forward many the- ories which explain the repeated rise of antisemitism. Among them are ear- ly Christian views that Jews are Christ killers, popular disdain of Jews who fi- nanced Kings with supposed ill-gotten wealth and even dubious interpretations of the Shylock character in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice . Whatever the reason, much antisemi- tism has Christian origins. Unfortunately for antisemites, Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, called Himself the Son of Man. We must embrace the Jews as our brothers and sisters. Jesus Is a Jew. Kevin Rowney Towradgi NSW Key distinction between celibacy and chastity I realise that Dr Philippa Martyr is constrained by a word limit and can only pen a short piece. That being said, I found her thoughts on clerical celibacy (‘Better men make better priests’, Catholic Weekly 19 July) to pres- ent some serious problems. She clearly has a great admiration for Fr Dwight Longenecker, and while I rec- ognise that his language is impressive, his assertion that celibacy transforms a man to the depths of his being - body, soul, spirit - into another Christ is an overblown statement and simply wrong. Throughout the article there is deep confusion between celibacy and chasti- ty. She probably had no control over the headline, but I am startled to think that anyone would be advocating an end to chastity to the priesthood. Celibacy may- be, chastity never. They are not the same thing. I have heard it remarked that Satan is celibate, but it does him no good. Like- wise, celibacy unless married to the theological virtue of chastity can be a de- forming state of life. Fr Dwight’s language is impressive, but strangely Manichean if it is suggesting that celibacy transforms a man into another Christ. I think the “graced tool”, if one must use that analo- gy, is chastity . Without chastity, celibacy would be a very barren garden indeed. May I make two suggestions? Al- though it is a book containing many mistakes, Henry Lea’s History of Sacer- dotal Celibacy is worth consulting in or- der to contextualise the gradual impo- sition of clerical celibacy in the Western Church. There is also an article by myself published in The Australasian Catholic Record of April 2010, Volume 87, No 2. I think readers would see that Fr Petra and I go a great deal further on the subject of priesthood, celibate or married, than does Fr Longenecker. Dr Martyr concluded by saying that “marriage isn’t the path to better priests”, but that stands only as an assertion. What if some of the better men Dr Martyr seeks are to be found amongst those liv- ing a chaste sacramental marital life? It also bothers me to hear her say “you can embrace chaste celibacy with bad grace.” No, one can endure celibacy with bad grace, but chaste celibacy excludes any question of bad grace. Finally, chaste conjugal love is known to produce not just better men, but better women too. Archpriest Lawrence Cross Holy Trinity-St Nicholas Church St Kilda East VIC Evil tends to prosper best in a vacuum A ndrew Denton, the popular Australian television interviewer, was only ever the poster boy for eu- thanasia and assisted suicide in Australia. As has often been reported, the experience of his father’s death was, tragically, the key factor that crystallised his posi- tion on euthanasia and legally assisted suicide. However the deeper underlying forces which made these possible in this country were gathering long before Andrew was mugged by the brutal reality of death. Chief among themwere the gradual abandonment of moral consensus in Australia and globally on the sanctity of human life which gathered forced throughout much of the 20th Century. The ongoing tidal ebbing of moral consensus was really an abandonment of moral codes as people, so- cieties and ideologues forgot the underlying principles and reasons that such rules ever existed in the first place. This is somewhat startling, given that the kinds of philosophies which dispensed with human dignity had come close to destroying global culture only a few decades before. Yet al- though conquered by war or economics or just plain history, their resonances still managed to exert a powerful negative social influence in the remaining decades of the 20th Cen- tury and into the 21st Century in relation to issues such as abortion, eugenics and euthanasia - among others. The replacement proffered to fill the social andmoral vacuumwas nothing more than a Hollywood-esque pseu- do-morality which is generally calledmoral relativism, the idea that morality is not an absolute value but something that shifts depending on the unique circumstances of cul- ture and history. The danger of this thinking is obvious to evenminimal reflection but it did not prevent societies rush- ing increasingly in whatever direction opinion polls and pure emotion dictated, as is clearly the case in relation to eu- thanasia and assisted suicide in Australia. Another key factor was a near-complete ignorance, both on the part of politicians andmore generally among Austra- lians who supported the idea that some people’s lives reach a point where we should be able to end them. The motives are clearly positive and compassionate, but still deeply igno- rant about the basic moral principles involved and the stark dangers represented by such a tectonic moral shift. Igno- rance, both on the part of Andrew and those who followed his activist lead, is certainly the operative word. So what does the Culture of Death which Andrew helped usher in so effectively in Australia look like? In June, Ameri- canmanMichael Hickson was starved to death by the Texas medical facility which had been given legal guardianship of his entire existence. As we reported in The Catholic Week- ly’s 5 July edition, Mr Hickson became quadriplegic inMay 2017. His wife Melissa and their five children stayed by his side throughout his recovery. He ended up in hospital again in 2020 after contracting COVID-19 and pneumonia from a staffmember at his nursing home. Michael was conscious and alert but could not commu- nicate verbally. He responded to jokes, shook his head, and puckered his lips on a FaceTime call when Melissa request- ed a kiss, she told Texas Right To Life News . At one point, she asked if she could pray with her husband and their children, to which he nodded “yes.” But the doctor soon told Melissa her husband would be placed in a hospice against her will. While Melissa litigated in court as to who would be Michael’s permanent guardian, a judge named a local organisation known as Family Eldercare as Mr Hickson’s temporary guardian. Family Eldercare granted the doctor’s orders to not treat Michael and instead place him in hospice care. The doctor reiterated that Melissa had no say in whether her husband lived or died. “ ...[T]his is the decision between the medical community and the state,” he told her bluntly. Melissa’s hus- band was left without food or treatment for six days despite her desire to save him. He passed away from the untreated illnesses on 11 June. Michael Hickson’s tragic fate in the US is a direct result of the state of affairs of the kind ushered in here in Australia significantly by a popular television presenter. It is impos- sible to safeguard the sick, the ill, the depressed and the vulnerable from institutional budget lines, individuals with agendas and those who are morally uninformed. Part of the Australian tragedy is that Andrew Denton thought he was leading the case for moral reform of Australian law. In reality, he was paving the way - unwittingly, we assume - for a human and moral tragedy which will devastate other lives and other families and which are now likely to continue long after people have forgotten who he was and what it was that he ever did. LETTERS Got something to say? Throw a brickbat or a bouquet! Write a letter to the Editor. Details above.