Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The latest Australian initiative to reward debauchery

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/money/windfall-for-de-factos-and-love-children/story-e6frezc0-1225777204539

In my first-ever post at this blog I wrote that

I fail to see how any of these principles [of secularism] is compatible with the Social Reign of Christ; in fact, they constitute what one might call the Social Reign of Pontius Pilate, with the State purporting to be neutral at the same time as it promotes grave injustice, permitting all manner of sociopaths and degenerates to prosper.
[http://cardinalpole.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html]
Here’s the latest evidence for that observation (interestingly, there’s a gay angle to the story as well):

MISTRESSES and love-children of philandering spouses will soon be entitled to a share of the family fortune unless there is a will in place specifically ruling them out.

Controversial new intestacy laws, to take effect in NSW early next year, introduce the concept of "multiple spouses" to increase provision for de facto relationships.

This will have most impact where a married couple has separated but not divorced and the dead spouse was having a relationship with a new partner. The new laws will also benefit same-sex partnerships, where the deceased may have been involved with more than one person, and cultural or religious groups that allow multiple wives.

The laws complement legislation enacted earlier this year that gave more rights to de facto couples and same-sex partners in the event of a relationship breakdown.

"The term 'domestic partner' has been created to accommodate the new laws and includes a person in a de facto relationship with the deceased for two years or more, or, if less than two years, one that has resulted in the birth of a child," NSW Trustee and Guardian principal legal officer Ruth Pollard said.

Whether or not a person is a de facto spouse depends on such factors as the length of the relationship and public acceptance in the community - in the eyes of friends, for instance. […]

[bold type in the original]
The article fails to state precisely when and after what public and Parliamentary discussion these laws came to be enacted; it mentions that the laws “complement legislation enacted earlier this year that gave more rights to de facto couples and same-sex partners in the event of a relationship breakdown”, but I can’t remember hearing about them or any surrounding controversy at the time (whenever that was). Perhaps they went unreported because the media’s attention was consumed by the more sensational pro-same-sex-couple aspect of the story. Whatever the case, the whole situation there is abhorrent.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Thomas of Villanova, Bishop, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Ms Joseph on gaymarriage

http://www.lifemarriagefamily.org.au/MarriageAndFamilyOffice/articles/0909/Marriage%20A%20Man%20and%20A%20Woman.pdf

A very good article by Ms Mary Joseph, who works for The Archdiocese of Sydney’s Life, Marriage and Family Centre, answering some Frequently Asked Questions about gaymarriage (sic) appeared in the Sydney Catholic Weekly some time in August, if I recall correctly, and I have found an on-line copy (follow the link at the top of this post). The article’s very good indeed (I only had some minor objections to it, and more to do with style than substance) but it hasn’t appeared on CathNews or even in last month’s or this month’s Life, Marriage and Family Centre e-mail bulletin, so I thought that I’d take the opportunity to bring it to a wider audience.

(I was going to quote and comment on some of the highlights of the article in this post, but as I read through the article again it was clear that that would be too difficult, since the whole thing is very much worth reading, and the article isn’t all that long anyway—only two P.D.F. document pages—so just follow the link and read it.)

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Cornelius, Pope, Martyr, and of St. Cyprian, Bishop, Martyr, A.D. 2009

On the Social Kingship of Christ and a recent statement from the Swiss Bishops

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=16391
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news_digest/Catholic_bishops_oppose_minaret_ban.html?siteSect=104&sid=11194555&ty=nd

I was dismayed (but unsurprised) to find, via CathNews last Friday, the following quotation from a statement by the Conference of Swiss Bishops (Conférence des Evêques Suisses):

"As bishops and Swiss citizens, we are pleased that there are no longer any special articles relating to religion in the constitution. No new ones should be introduced," the bishops' statement added.
[http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news_digest/Catholic_bishops_oppose_minaret_ban.html?siteSect=104&sid=11194555&ty=nd
See also the full statement, available at
http://www.sbk-ces-cvs.ch/ressourcen/download/20090910091559.pdf
(This one-page document is in French but you can do a Google translation tools translation of it.)]
It called to mind the following error, condemned ex Cathedra by Bl. Pius IX:

the best plan for public society, and civil progress absolutely requires that human society be established and governed with no regard to religion, as if it did not exist, or at least, without making distinction between the true and the false religions.
[Encyclical Quanta cura,
http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma17.php]
So the Swiss Bishops say that they “are pleased that there are no longer any special articles relating to religion in the constitution”. Now some of the predominantly Catholic-populated cantons of Switzerland—among them the Ticino and the Valais, if I recall correctly—were, at least nominally, confessional Catholic but abandoned this status after Vatican II, so it seems that the Swiss Bishops are saying that they are “pleased” at what is virtually State apostasy. Is there any way in which such ‘pleasure’, coupled with an at least implicitly-stated desire for the Social Reign of Christ not to be recognised (‘no new special articles relating to religion should be introduced’) could be defended?

Now far be it from me to jump to the defence of those who ignore, are silent about, or distort the dogma of the Social Kingship of Christ. But it seems that, at least according to the letter of the quotation, the Swiss Bishops can be excused from such charges. Let us begin by stating the Swiss Bishops’ opinions as the following two propositions:
1. It is pleasing that there are no longer any special articles relating to religion in the Swiss constitution.
2. No new special articles relating to religion should be introduced into the Swiss constitution.
Now for one thing, the Swiss Bishops do not say that a lack of “special articles relating to religion in the [Swiss, or in any State] constitution” is the best plan for the State. Implicit in proposition 1. are the words ‘in these circumstances’—‘in these circumstances, it is pleasing …’. Make no mistake, State agnosticism towards—or worse, State apostasy from—Christ is an evil, but one may licitly permit an evil if one expects thereby to avert a greater evil, and so it is possible to be pleased indirectly at the occurrence of a certain evil in a certain set of circumstances because one is pleased directly at the greater evil being averted in those circumstances thereby. (Unfortunately, there is the problem that, as I understand it, at the time the Swiss Bishops went willingly along with the elimination of religion-related articles from the respective constitutions of the Swiss cantons after Vatican II rather than merely permitting it, so I don’t see how they could be excused on that count.)

The same reasoning apples to proposition 2.: this proposition implicitly says that

In the present circumstances, prudence dictates that no new special articles relating to religion should be introduced into the Swiss constitution.
So if the statement from the Swiss Bishops is motivated by a reluctant prudential judgment that re-introducing religion-related articles into the Swiss constitution would do more harm than good in the present circumstances, then it is justifiable. (I say “justifiable” rather than necessarily justified because of course one must verify whether the justifying circumstances are indeed present). Of course, if it is motivated by the error condemned infallibly in Quanta cura, then it too is to be condemned.

So as I’ve explained, the Swiss Bishops’ statement is a legitimate prudential judgment in some circumstances, but given that it is not, universally speaking (universal with regard to all times, places and circumstances), the best plan for society, and given that it is the duty of all Catholics to work towards the implementation of the best plan for society, it follows that it is our duty to work to change such circumstances as prevail, presumably, in Switzerland to a set of circumstances in which the best plan for society—profession of the Catholic religion by the State—is also the best plan for the prevailing circumstances. So for completeness, I humbly suggest that the Swiss Bishops would have put it best by saying something like

As bishops and Swiss citizens, given the present circumstances we are pleased that there are no longer any special articles relating to religion in the constitution. In the present circumstances, prudence dictates that no new ones should be introduced. But since the Social Reign of Christ requires not just that people in a society acknowledge Christ’s Kingship, but that people as a society acknowledge Christ’s Kingship too, we must work to bring about the circumstances in which it is prudent for the Swiss cantons to profess the Catholic religion, to unite themselves to the Catholic Church and to restrain, with enacted penalties, offenders of the Catholic religion.
Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Cornelius, Pope, Martyr, and of St. Cyprian, Bishop, Martyr, A.D. 2009

Friday, September 11, 2009

A Holy-See-dependent charity sponsoring the Russian schism

Last Sunday’s edition of the Sydney Catholic Weekly featured the annual Catholic charities guide. That issue’s back page (p. 48, September 6, 2009) was a full-page advertisement for Aid to the Church in Need (A.C.N.), which (the advertisement, that is) described A.C.N. as “A Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy Father”, and which contained the following startling passage:

In 1992, Fr Werenfried [van Straaten, A.C.N.’s founder] extended Aid to the Church in Need’s work to supporting the Orthodox Church in Russia: for as Pope John Paul II said in Ut Unum Sint, it is “an imperative of charity” to help our Orthodox brethren.
Now A.C.N. is not a charity like the St. Vincent de Paul Society or Caritas; it does things like funding the formation of seminarians and distributing Bibles and catechisms rather than providing social services like those which secular government or non-government organisations provide, so naturally I reacted with consternation to the thought of donations for the support of the Catholic religion going to fund the religious activities of formal schismatics. But could it be that I had misconstrued the advertisement, and that A.C.N funds are just going towards innocent social-services-type activities rather than fomenting schism and disseminating error? (Mind you, even if that were the case, it would still seem to be a misuse of donations, since A.C.N. is supposed to focus on assistance for the support of the Faith as such rather than for non-religious humanitarian activity.) Alas, no:

Before the end of the Gorbachev years, many bishops began to make plans for the daunting task of rebuilding seminary life. The strides they have made over the past ten years have been impressive. A useful benchmark is the remarkable ecumenical venture by the Roman Catholic agency, Aid to the Church in Need. In 1992 its founder, the Dutch Norbertine monk Werenfried van Straaten, already 79 years old, had a vision which challenged him to support the Russian Orthodox Church. His advisers settled on helping Russian Orthodox theological education as the most effective focus for this new outreach. Of the 46 theological academies, seminaries and schools in Russia, Aid to the Church in Need is now
[as at April 4, 2001] helping 26 financially.
[my square-bracketed interpolation,
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2099]
And at A.C.N.’s own official Australian website we find the following things:

He [A.C.N. international president Father Joaquín Alliende] also underlined the charity’s commitment to continue supporting the Russian Orthodox – as well as the Catholic Church in Russia – and developing east-west relations.
and

Last year, ACN gave over $4 million to support Church communities in Russia, prioritising help for the Catholic Church but also some giving help to the Russian Orthodox Church as well as ecumenical projects.
[my square-bracketed interpolation,
both quotations from
http://members4.boardhost.com/acnaus/msg/1227482615.html]

Furthermore, a Google search using the keywords “Aid to the Church in Need”, “Orthodox Church” and “Russia” led me to an article by the respected Traditional Catholic lawyer and journalist Mr. Christopher A. Ferrara, who had the following things, among others, to say:

Meanwhile, as Aid to the Church in Russia seeks funds to build a headquarters for the Archbishop at Moscow, another Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, is giving millions of dollars to the Orthodox Church for its continued functioning in Russia - a fact recited by the Vatican itself as justification for its creation of the Catholic pseudo-dioceses: "Navarro-Valls also reminded reporters that in the past decade Catholic groups such as Aid to the Church in Need have provided more than $17 million in direct aid to the Russian Orthodox Church." (CWNews.com, Feb. 11, 2002) The website for Aid to the Church in Need proclaims: "Following a 1984 decree of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, Aid to the Church in Need was recognized by the Catholic Church as a universal public association of faithful." [http://www.kirche-in-not.org/e_home.htm]

So, one Catholic charity combats the agenda of another in Russia! The faithful are asked, on the one hand, to help build up the Catholic Church in Russia, and, on the other hand, to give money to an organization that helps build up its hateful opponent, the Russian Orthodox church, already fattened by the spoils that Stalin robbed from the Catholic Church at gunpoint in the 1940s.

[bracketed content in the original,
http://www.fatimaperspectives.com/cr/perspective208.asp]
(I encourage you to read the whole article.) Now I seem to recall a recent controversy over funds from a Canadian Catholic charity going towards a Latin American organisation which supported abortion, which would and should have generated outrage. But how much more outraged should we be at Church sponsorship (by an “international Catholic charity dependent on the Holy See”, no less) of schism—abortion kills the body, but schism kills the soul. Of course, God only permits an evil in order to avert a greater evil or procure a greater good, and perhaps the indifferentists behind this scandalous funding—ecumenism at its worst—are contributing unwittingly towards, if not what one Angelqueen reader called the ‘material preparation for the conversion of Russia’, then at least, in some inscrutable way, the material preparation for the Consecration of Russia to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Protus and Hyacinth, Martyrs, A.D. 2009

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

H.H. The Pope cites the writings of Fr. Ratzinger

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090805_en.html

As I read last Sunday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly’s text of H.H. The Pope’s General Audience of August 5, 2009, I was surprised to see that one of the references included with the text was to one of the works of Joseph Ratzinger before his accession to the Throne of St. Peter:

[St. John Mary Vianney’s] testimony reminds us, dear brothers and sisters, that for every baptized person and especially for every priest the Eucharist is not merely an event with two protagonists, a dialogue between God and me. Eucharistic Communion aspires to a total transformation of one's life and forcefully flings open the whole human "I" of man and creates a new "we" (cf. Joseph Ratzinger, La Comunione nella Chiesa, p. 80).
I am unaware of any previous Popes citing their own pre-Papal works in an Act of their Papal Magisterium, which is what an allocution such as the one of August 5 is. I suspect that in fact this is unprecedented. I googled part of my quotation and the search produced about forty hits, but none of the authors seemed to have taken note of this highly unusual reference; as far as I could tell the websites which came up pretty much just provided copies of the text, whether in whole or in part, of the allocution. So I have a few questions about this odd citation:

1. Does anyone know what is involved in the process by which a Papal allocution comes to be published for the consumption of those not present at the audience? So for instance, is the text which is provided by the Vatican after the audience a transcript of what the Holy Father said, or is it just a copy of the notes from which he read? Would His Holiness actually have said during his talk “confer Joseph Ratzinger, La Comunione nella Chiesa, page eighty”?

2. Is there any precedent for a reigning Pope citing his works from before he became Pope?

3. Has anyone read the book which the Holy Father cited? I find the quotation provided quite impenetrable and would appreciate anyone explaining it for me.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Ms Dunlevy on disparities in earnings by gender

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/suedunlevy/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/time_for_women_to_be_treated_as_equals/

About this time last year Ms Sue Dunlevy, a columnist for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, was raging against disparities between men’s and women’s earnings (I use the more precise term “earnings” rather than Ms Dunlevy’s preferred term “wages” since, as far as I know, there is not a single industry in Australia in which men and women doing equal work don’t receive an equal wage), and it seems that Ms Dunlevy has maintained the rage, or at least the rage has returned in time for the annual “Equal Pay Day” which happens about this time each year, marking the end of the extra period of time women need to work in order to earn as much as men do, on average, during the financial year, which ends on June 30. Ms Dunlevy begins her article thus:

IF you needed another reason to hate bankers and insurers, this is it. The pay gap between men and women in those professions is 28 per cent - the highest in the nation and it’s still growing.
But unlike Ms Dunlevy I wish to be clear from the outset: women in this industry, as in most industries, earn less on average than their male counterparts because they work fewer hours on average than men do. A news report in The Sydney Morning Herald acknowledged this on Saturday (albeit tucked away two-thirds of the way into the article):

David Bell, chief executive of the Australian Bankers Association, said 61 per cent of staff in the finance industry were women, and the gender difference in earnings was ''a product of hours worked and skills''.

"The data shows that 26 per cent of females in the finance industry work part time compared with 4 per cent for males," he said.
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/women-pay-dearly-as-earnings-gap-widens-20090828-f2iy.html]
Nowhere in her opinion piece does Ms Dunlevy acknowledge this.

Shortly after her opening barrage on the banking and insurance industries, Ms Dunlevy moves onto another target:

The Fair Pay Commissioner Professor Ian Harper deserves to be at least a joint recipient of the 2009 pay inequality shame award.

His decision to deny workers on the minimum wage a pay rise this year is a huge setback for women workers.

That’s because more women than men rely on the minimum wage. The ACTU says almost a third of women earn less than the federal minimum wage and more than a quarter of women working in the private sector have their pay determined by awards, which are dependent on minimum wage decisions.

That compares to 16 per cent of men.
But what does Ms Dunlevy expect from Prof. Harper? Does she expect him to take into account the preponderance of woman in the ranks of the lowest paid when he sets the minimum wage? Because that would be outright sexism, wouldn’t it?

Ms Dunlevy goes on to examine the causes of the rise in earnings inequality. She gives one of them as follows:

Then there is the problem that female employment is concentrated in the services sector in childcare, nursing, teaching, jobs which are undervalued by our society and paid less.

Explain to me why a female hairdressing apprentice earns $80 a week less than a builder’s apprentice, even though they have similar skill sets.
Well, let’s see: because the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is, as they say, two weeks, whereas the difference between a well-constructed building and a badly-constructed building can be the difference between life and death? Because one can survive without a haircut, but one can’t survive without adequate shelter? Because the exertion and risk involved in trimming people’s hair in air-conditioned salons is considerably less than that which is involved in lugging heavy equipment around a hazardous building site? I liked some of the responses at Ms Dunlevy’s blog:

… I know a couple of apprentices in the building industry. I’m sure they will be happy to have a go at your hair. Frankly I don’t want the girl down at thelocal salon building my house for me either. […]
Sahara of Sydney (Reply)
Fri 21 Aug 09 (06:41am)

… Try this one: The Annual Compendium of Workers’ Compensation Statistics 2006-2007 report tells us that of 236 workplace fatalities, 50, or just over 21% of workplace fatalities occurred in the construction industry.

Secondly, construction workers do a great deal of their work exposed to the heat, cold and wind of the elements in an environment that is dirty and unpleasant. A stark contrast to the conditions enjoyed in the majority of the service sector.

I find it fascinating that feminists consider the danger and discomfort associated with working in the construction industry to have no value whatsoever. …
scott gilbert of Petersham (Reply)
Sat 22 Aug 09 (12:08am)

And as one of my commenters pointed out in the combox at a post of mine on this topic this time last year, Ms Dunlevy’s choice of a comparison between hairdressing apprentices and builders’ apprentices is arbitrary: mechanics’ apprentices, for instance, do earn about the same wage as an hairdressing apprentice.

Ms Dunlevy concludes with the following attempt at humour:

Meanwhile, there could be a way to turn this situation around. While we’re waiting for the end of pay inequality, women should use it to their advantage.

Think of things this way. If women are worth 28 per cent less than men, I’m off to the bank to demand a 28 per cent gender discount on my mortgage and insurance rates because of my sex. It seems only fair, doesn’t it?
But the failure of one market (which I’ll grant for the sake of letting Ms Dunlevy try out her intended punchline) doesn’t necessarily imply the failure of another market, so it’s a pretty lame joke.

Stay tuned for next year’s installment in Ms Dunlevy’s gender pay war, I suppose.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2009

A letter to the Herald on abortion

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/letters/the-family-home-as-a-socially-useful-investment-20090820-erz9.html?skin=text-only

A remarkable letter appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald of a couple of Fridays ago; I reproduce it in full here:

Torturous road to abortion

I agree with Steph Croft (Letters, August 20) that abortion carries physical and mental risks. Earlier this year my wife and I aborted one of the twins we were expecting at 35 weeks, due to a late discovery of a terrible genetic defect (the surviving twin is a wonderfully happy child). The decision was correct for everyone involved, including the child (and, yes, others may disagree), though the mental effects remain. Not many people choose, in essence, to kill their son.

However, the process was horrible and stressful, taking five weeks from decision to foeticide. It was seriously suggested we fly to Melbourne, where abortion is legal, to have the procedure. The bags were packed when approval was granted.

No one aborts for kicks but jumping through bureaucratic loopholes is an added week-in, week-out stress that amplifies the cruelty of the need to make this decision. By all means educate, but it would have been nice to have the kindness and thoughtful support of our family and the staff at the Royal Hospital for Women reflected in the law.

Name and suburb withheld
I had a quick look at the Wikipedia entry on pregnancy, and it said that a normal term of gestation is thirty-seven to forty-two weeks, so the writer of this letter has killed a two week--two week--premature baby. With candour uncharacteristic of the abortion movement, the writer acknowledges that what he and his wife did was "in essence, to kill their son". Candid though this is, we can be yet more precise: since the baby was obviously innocent of any actual sin (i.e. innocent of sin by any free voluntary act, though not innocent of original sin) we can say that the child was murdered. And given that what he and his wife requested was essentially murder, the difference between the murder of a two-week-pre-term baby and a two-week-post-term baby is only one of degree. How then can a consistent thinker uphold the former but not the latter? A hard-line feminist might argue that she upholds the former because women, and men, have absolute sovereignty over their respective bodies, hence women have an absolute power of life and death over any unborn children whom they might be carrying in those bodies, whereas the latter is not to be upheld because this right is extinguished once the baby is no longer in the mother’s body. One might summarise this point of view as follows: the baby depends absolutely on his or her mother, but to hold the expecting mother to an absolute duty of care for her foetus would be to enslave her, since this duty of care cannot be transferred, so she has the right (so feminists argue) to withdraw from this duty of care if she wishes, and this withdrawal entails the power to kill her unborn baby. The problem for feminists is that choosing the event of the baby’s birth as the point at which the mother’s power of life and death over her baby lapses is arbitrary, since a baby’s condition of dependence is still absolute until at least such time as he or she can fend for himself or herself. Why, then, should not the right to the life or death of the child continue until this much later stage, as it did in some ancient civilisations? The feminist will retort: because the duty on the fulfillment of which the child is absolutely dependent is transferable after birth. But it is a basic principle of justice that when a duty is transferred, so too are the corresponding rights, so how can a consistent feminist reject the right of the parents or guardians of newborns to infanticide?

The writer goes on to say that

However, the process was horrible and stressful

Well, you can say that again; the process was one of deciding for and then carrying out the killing of your own baby son.

The writer begins his last paragraph by saying that

No one aborts for kicks

This is the straw man which one often finds abortionites erecting; it's a straw man because no-one in the pro-life movement argues that women do abort “for kicks”. And there are two further respects in which it is disingenuous for abortionites to say raise that point: although most people would indeed be uneasy with the notion of abortion for kicks, abortion liberalisation proposals tend to fail to include explicit restrictions against frivolously-motivated abortions (what, precisely, is meant by the “social circumstances” of which Victoria’s 2008 Abortion Law Reform Bill, Part 2, Section 5 speaks?), and presumably a consistent feminist abortionite would support a woman's 'right' to abort "for kicks" if that's what the foeticidal mother wants, anyway—it's her body, right?

Next the writer speaks of “jumping through bureaucratic loopholes”; this seems to be a mixed metaphor combining ‘jumping through hoops’ with ‘loopholes’, but from the context of this clumsy figure of speech I gather that he is complaining about the ‘red tape’, the time-consuming restrictions, which he had to overcome in order to procure the abortion. But I would have thought that, even if considered only from the perspective of the health of the mother, it would be appropriate to enforce stringent criteria for late-term abortions. But then, for some abortionites I suppose that open slather won’t even be enough—toleration and legalisation will need to mature into celebration.

The writer concluded thus:

it would have been nice to have the kindness and thoughtful support of our family and the staff at the Royal Hospital for Women reflected in the law.
This called to mind remarks, recorded in Hansard (and on which I blogged), by the pro-abortion Victorian M.P. Mr. Shaun Leane M.L.C. during last year’s debate in Victoria on moves to legalise abortion:

I think some people who want to maintain these provisions in the Crimes Act want to say to women who want to have an abortion or are thinking of having an abortion, ‘Thou shalt not’. That is what they want to say. It is not the state’s role to do that. The state’s job is to reflect modern-day conditions and to reflect what real people are actually doing and what is acceptable for the majority.
[Victorian Hansard, p. 56,
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/downloadhansard/pdf/Council/Jul-Dec%202008/Council%20Jul-Dec%202008%20Daily%208%20October%202008.pdf]
So for the writer of the Herald letter, as for Mr. Leane, the role of Parliamentary legislation is not to direct citizens towards justice and the common good, but simply to reflect prevailing mores and satisfy people’s craving for affirmation and for soothing words to assuage consciences which are well aware of their culpability for this most monstrous of crimes, abortion.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Mr. Pearson on Victorian secularist moves to eliminate discrimination by religious bodies against their respective employees

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25929930-5013596,00.html

Mr. Christopher Pearson had some interesting things to say in an opinion piece of his a few Saturdays ago in The Weekend Australian:

Victoria's Interfaith Committee represents various branches of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. Its response to the government's options paper, signed by 53 religious leaders, is a trenchant analysis of the public service brand of secularism.

"The main assumption that the options paper makes is that religious activity can be divided into core activities, which are restricted to matters of worship and private devotion, and peripheral activities, such as the delivery of health, welfare and education services. In fact, no such distinction is made by religious organisations. The distinction is a fabrication and does not correspond to the reality of religious activity. Particularly for religious people, the delivery of services is integral to faith activity."

Shortly before I read that piece I read, at the angelqueen.org/forum discussion board, about a similar development overseas:

The bishops of England, Wales, and Scotland are warning that a proposed EU directive against discrimination and harassment could lead to the erosion of religious freedom. [...] Art. 13 requires Member States to ensure that ‘any …internal rules of undertakings, and rules governing profit or non-profit-making associations contrary to the principle of equal treatment are, or may be, declared null and void or are amended.’ This could have the effect of requiring Catholic organisations to act against their ethos: if a Catholic event takes place at a venue that offers double, twin, and single bedded rooms, the teaching of the Church would require that double bedded rooms were only available to married couples. Under Article 13 the rule (and the practice it governed) could be unlawful for failing to provide equal treatment to unmarried heterosexual couples or to homosexual couples. At this point the EU would effectively be dictating to religious bodies what their faith does or does not require: a wholly unacceptable position.
[my emphasis,
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27236]

But unfortunately, it seems that State arbitration of what are a religion’s ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ doctrines—indeed, whether a given notion is to be regarded by the State as a religious doctrine at all—is already happening here in Australia:

The [N.S.W. Administrative Decisions] Tribunal rejected the argument put by Wesley Mission that the exemption in section 56 of the Anti-Discrimination Act applied to this situation [“the Tribunal found that an organisation run by Wesley Mission had discriminated against a same-sex couple on the grounds of homosexuality when it refused to provide them with services relating to making an application to become foster carers” ]. In making its determination, the Tribunal considered (among other matters) the meaning of the terms ‘religion’ and ‘doctrine’ and concluded that the belief that ‘monogamous heterosexual partnership within marriage is both the norm and ideal’ was not a ‘doctrine’ of Christianity so as to attract the exemption in section 56(d). …
[New South Wales Parliament Legislative Council Standing Committee on Law and Justice, Inquiry into adoption by same-sex couple, Final Report, p. 124
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/C81BE8593A9FEC64CA2575ED000E043F]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2009