Notes: Friday, May 28, 2010

Unrest among the Nationals over Mr. Abbott's paid parental leave policy

http://www.smh.com.au/national/nats-keeping-mum-on-parental-leave-20100527-whuo.html?skin=text-only

Here're some excerpts from the article in today's Herald:

The policy is unpopular throughout the junior Coalition party for a variety of reasons but nobody wants to cause a split so close to an election.

One Nationals MP, Darren Chester, has gone public, telling Parliament yesterday that providing paid parental leave with nothing for stay-at-home mothers was discriminatory.

''It sends a message to the community that the government places more value on the offspring of working mothers than on the offspring of stay-at-home mothers,'' he said.

Mr Chester advocated a scheme in which mothers would be paid to stay at home until the child was ready for school. ''Returning to work and putting children into childcare often creates a giant money-go-round where no one is happy,'' he said.

[...] Several sources told the Herald the Nationals do not like the concept because it breaches the pledge to not increase taxes as well as offering nothing for stay-at-home mothers. There are a lot more stay-at-home mothers in the country where more families get by on single incomes.

''It's not the flavour of the month with us,'' said a senior National yesterday. Another said the party disliked the concept but considered the Rudd government a greater problem. To split publicly over the policy would hinder its goal of defeating the government, he said.

Views on paid parental leave are being vented internally as Parliament debates the Rudd government's $263 million taxpayer funded scheme. It will pay carers the minium wage of $453 a week for 18 weeks.

[...] Two National Party MPs, Kay Hull and Mr Chester, complained about the Coalition policy during Tuesday's party-room meeting, prompting Mr Abbott to declare the party had to move on from the Howard government view that mothers should stay at home with their children.

At the same meeting, Mr Abbott stressed the need for unity. In addition, the Nationals have already threatened a split on amendments to renewable energy target legislation.

In Parliament yesterday, Mr Abbott said women should not be forced to choose between career and family.

Mr Abbott had wanted to announce payments for stay-at-home mothers as part of his budget address-in-reply but was overruled by the shadow cabinet.

Discussion at CathPews on the increased frequency of late-term abortions in Victoria

http://members7.boardhost.com/CathPews/thread/1274929592.html

National Observer: Article on John F. Kennedy

The National Observer ("Australia's leading current affairs quarterly specialising in domestic and international politics, security-related challenges and issues of national cohesion") has been brought to my attention, and I thought I'd bring it to your attention too. It looks like a good publication. The latest issue has a review by Mr. R. J. Stove (an Australian Traditional Catholic and occasional commenter at this blog) of the book The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960. Here's an excerpt:

At least Ku Kluxers avoided the responsibilities of cognitive stature. More subtle and equally obstreperous was the Protestant intellectual establishment of 1960, for which Kennedy’s presidential hopes meant a flagrant attack on the so-called "separation of church and state". Never mind that the US Constitution’s First Amendment, ostensibly guaranteeing this separation, guarantees no such thing. Never mind that outside America, Protestantism usually scorned church-state rifts (as the histories of Edinburgh, Geneva and Pretoria show). Never mind that Jefferson — usually credited with demanding "a wall of [church-state] separation" — was no Christian at all, but a crypto-Jacobin, Bible-doctoring Deist. Jefferson’s views have no more relevance to any Christian nation’s beliefs than do those of the nearest imam, bonze or lama (who, unlike Jefferson, does not claim Christological expertise). These uncomfortable data mattered nought. JFK called himself a Catholic; Catholics owed their first allegiance to a foreign power; ergo, JFK owed his first allegiance to a foreign power. On this syllogistic theme, America’s Protestant press devised seemingly inexhaustible variations, many of which displayed an obsessive terror that Kennedy, if elected, would prohibit contraceptives. (The press either did not know or did not care that every Protestant church in the world prohibited contraceptives until 1930.)
[italics in the original]

See also Mr. Michael Baker's recent website posts "ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT ON THE AMERICAN BISHOPS, JOHN F. KENNEDY & RELIGIOUS LIBERTY" and "MORE ON ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT, JOHN F KENNEDY & THE AMERICAN BISHOPS" for related comment.

"WA Premier against pre-abortion ultrasound"

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=21573

From yesterday's issue of the daily CathNews e-mail bulletin:

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett does not support a Liberal backbencher's call to make women seeking abortions first undergo 3-D colour ultrasound imaging and view the foetus.

Mr Peter Abetz, who made the proposal at an anti-abortion rally at Parliament House in Perth on Tuesday, said a study in the US had shown that 89 percent of women committed to having abortions had not gone ahead with the procedure when shown 3-D colour ultrasounds of the foetuses they were carrying, according to an AAP report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Abetz also would like to see a 48-hour 'cooling off period' after women have applied for an abortion, the report said.

But Mr Barnett told Fairfax Radio on Wednesday that he did not support mandatory ultrasounds.

"I understand what Peter is saying, but I think that would put a huge amount of personal pressure on someone who is already going through somewhat of a personal crisis, so I don't support that." [...]

On the Novus Ordo Missæ and one of the anathematisms of the Council of Trent

The following comment was made at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog:

@MichaelJ: I would certainly say that the translation is defective and expresses a falsehood.

I did not say that the translation was free of defects of accuracy but meant that the resultant text is free of intrinsic defects, meaning defects of faith, and that anyone who says otherwise is anathematized by decree of the 7th Session of the Council of Trent:

CANON XIII.-If any one saith, that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, may be contemned…let him be anathema.

Comment by C. — 27 May 2010 @ 6:06 am
[italics in the original,
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/05/uk-bishop-with-priests-using-new-translation-wordy-but-a-huge-improvement/#comment-206816]

Note the wording, though: Not just "approved", but "received and approved", which was also the teaching of an earlier Council (I can't remember which one). A recent issue of The Fatima Crusader dealt with this in one of its articles. The N.O.M. might have been approved (though even on that point doubts have been raised--see the S.S.P.X.'s American District website and Iota Unum, especially the translator's footnote in the Sarto House English translation), but its staunchest defenders could not say that it is a received rite--as everyone knows, it was cobbled together by a committee. Hence that anathematism does not apply to the N.O.M.

Joshua on the Carthusian Rite

http://psallitesapienter.blogspot.com/2010/05/placeat-sancta-trinitas.html

This post of his contains some interesting information about that Rite. Joshua mentions parenthetically that

It is a little-known fact that the wise Carthusians retain their own proper form of the Roman Rite, having reformed it in 1981, to produce a new edition of the Missale Cartusiense. Amongst many other appealing features, it contains:

•no penitential rite other than the Carthusian Confiteor;
•substantially the traditional one-year lectionary (with Epistle, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, and Gospel);
•no modern Offertory prayers;
•none of those modern Memorial Acclamations;
•a rubric specifying that the Eucharistic Prayer is normally said secretly, others ordering it be said with hands extended in the form of the cross;
•no response "For the kingdom..." after the Embolism;
•and finally the Placeat.

and the whole post is worth reading.

Here's a comment I've left there:

Cardinal Pole said...

Thank you for this information about the Carthusian Rite, about which I have wondered.

"Well may we pray that this fine prayer is re-inserted into the Ordinary Form of the Mass!"

Indeed.

Friday, 28 May, 2010
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Reginaldvs Cantvar

Friday in the Octave of Pentecost, A.D. 2010