Notes: Wednesday, March 28-Tuesday, April 3, 2012

1. The Vatican website's English translation of the text of H.H. The Pope's March 24, 2012 Video Message on the occasion of the national meeting at Lourdes on March 24-25, 2012 of the Church of France for the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/pont-messages/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20120324_chiesa-francia_en.html

Labels: Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, Vatican II

2. "HOLY FATHER ASKS CUBAN PRESIDENT TO RE-ESTABLISH GOOD FRIDAY AS A HOLIDAY":

http://www.news.va/en/news/holy-father-asks-cuban-president-to-re-establish-g

And: "CUBA: GOOD FRIDAY WILL BE A HOLIDAY":

http://www.news.va/en/news/cuba-good-friday-will-be-a-holiday

Labels: Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, Cuba

3. Cardinal Pell on religious liberty:

… people of good will, religious or irreligious, should support the rights of everyone, including minorities, to practise a religion or no religion.

Freedom of religion is a fundamental right of each person, not a government grant, and has to be acknowledged even where we find an official national religion.
[http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=7&articleID=9753&class=Features&subclass=Cardinal's Comment]

Labels: Confessional State, George Pell, religious liberty

4. Some points of interest from the March 2012 issue of the Australian Bureau of Statistics's Australian Social Trends:

(http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/701575637CC4BBE3CA2579CE000BB833/$File/41020_astmar2012.pdf)

• … Of the registered marriages in 2010, 31% were religious ceremonies, down from 58% in 1990. In contrast, in 2010, 69% of marriage ceremonies were conducted by civil celebrants, up from 42% in 1990.
  p. 12

• In 2009–10, 11% (1.9 million) of Australians aged 18 years and over were living in a de facto relationship, while 53% were in a registered marriage.
  p. 12

• De facto relationships include those living in a same-sex relationship and in 2009–10 there were around 46,300 people living in a same sex couple. The majority of these couples had no children.
  p. 13

• Cohabitation prior to registered marriage has increased over the last twenty years. In the early 1990s, just over half of all registered marriages were preceded by a period of cohabitation (56% in 1992).[ Endnote 1, p. 16: "Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1994, Focus on Families: Demographics and Family Formation, cat. no. 4420.0, Canberra, [left-pointing circumflex]www.abs.gov.au[right-pointing circumflex]."] By 2010 it was almost eight in ten (79%).
  p. 13

• Australia’s total fertility rate [was] 1.89 babies per woman in 2010
  p. 14

• … The proportion of babies born outside registered marriage also rose [between 1990 and 2010], from just over one fifth (22%) to just over one third (34%) of all births.
  p. 14

• … In 2009–10, of the 5 million children aged 0–17 years, just over 1 million, or one in five (21%), had a natural parent living elsewhere. For four fifths (81%) of these children, the parent living elsewhere was their father.
  
  Of all children who had a natural parent living elsewhere, nearly half (48%) saw this parent at least once per fortnight, while one quarter (24%) saw them less than once per year or never.
  
  Nearly three quarters (73%) of children with a parent living elsewhere were in one parent families, 14% lived in step families, and 11% lived in blended families.
  p. 15

Labels: Australian fertility rate, demography, marriage, social trends, vice

5. Her Excellency The Governor of New South Wales received, while Administrator of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, a call at Government House, Sydney, from H.R.H. The Duke of Gloucester on Friday, March 30, 2012

http://www.gg.gov.au/program.php/view/id/2854/title/royal-australian-air-force-91st-anniversary-royal-botanical-gardens-friends-of-the-sydney-international-piano-competition-australia-ceremonial-welcome-samoa-parliament-of-samoa-state-lunch-samoa-senese-school-for-children-with-disabilities-australian-pacific-technical-college-reception-for-senior-samoan-women-reception-for-australian-volunteers-in-samoa

http://www.governor.nsw.gov.au/news/diary-of-engagements/friday-30-march-2012/

The call must have been an unofficial one, since it does not appear in the Court Circular, which reports engagements of His Royal Highness on March 28, 29, and, vicariously, 31, but none for the thirtieth.

His Royal Highness's late father was, of course, once Australia's Governor-General.

Labels: Richard Gloucester

6. The Dominican Sisters of Wanganui, New Zealand, have a blog:

http://dominicansisterswanganui.blogspot.com.au

(That came to my attention via the March (29, )2012 S.S.P.X. Australia District Newsletter.)

Labels: blogs

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Tuesday in Holy Week, A.D. 2012

Notes: Wednesday, June 15-Tuesday, June 21, 2011 (part 2 of 2)

6.2 A blog comment on sola Scriptura: "[T]he phrase “Sola Scriptura” ... is not found in the Bible"

The comment of 17.6.11 / 1am in the combox here:

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2011/06/15/politics-religion-and-the-dalai-lama/

Labels: Protestantism, Scripture, theology

7. "[A] growing number of parents are having more than two children" ("[d]espite the nation's fertility rate falling slightly")?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/bigger-families-are-growing-on-us/story-fn6e0s1g-1226077320962

I would like to copy and paste that whole short article here, but I think that that would involve a copyright infringement; the one part of that article which I will highlight is this one:

Although the vast majority of Australian parents still have two children, Bureau of Statistics [A.B.S.] figures showed 29.3 per cent of women who gave birth in 2009 were having their third or subsequent child, with most mothers aged between 35 and 44.
[my square-bracketed interpolation]

I looked at the A.B.S. website but did not see anything under the "Media Releases" heading which might have occasioned that article, and I don't have time to conduct a thorough search of that website (though I would appreciate it if anyone could point out where, if at all, the relevant figures can be found there).

Labels: Australian fertility rate, demography

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, Confessor, A.D. 2011

Notes: Thursday, December 16, 2010

1. "Russian Army's [new, Tsarist-era-style] chic designer uniforms make soldiers ill"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/russian-armys-chic-designer-uniforms-make-soldiers-ill/story-fn3dxity-1225971770318

2. "About Catholic Liturgy by an Anglican"

Interesting to me mainly for the reference in it to Msgr. Lefebvre:

http://members7.boardhost.com/CathPews/msg/1292409979.html

3. Mr. Muehlenberg on moves in Switzerland to decriminalise incest

Also interesting for the reference, late in the post, to the Sodomites' League's call, almost forty years ago, for the legalisation of polygamy:

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/12/15/in-praise-of-incest/

4. "Young gay risks"

Full text of a very short article from page seven of last Monday's edition of the Sydney Daily Telegraph (my transcription):

Young gay risks

A STUDY of HIV has revealed younger gay men are more willing to take sexual risks, were more likely to have never been tested for HIV and more likely to report not knowing the HIV status of regular partners, the study for the Centre for Population Health at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne found.

More on those findings is available here:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/study-reveals-worrying-trend-among-young-gay-men-20101212-18tsd.html?skin=text-only

5. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on trends in fertility and household composition

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/7BF46196D121A899CA2576DB00136331?Opendocument
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4102.0

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Eusebius, Bishop, Martyr, A.D. 2010

Notes: Friday, November 5, 2010

1. The latest figures on fertility in Australia

From a short article, entitled "Too poor for kids", on page nine of yesterday's edition of the Sydney Daily Telegraph (the following excerpt is my transcript):

The nation's fertility rate dropped in 2009 to 1.9 babies per reproductive woman.
This figure was down from 1.96 in 2008 as all states and territories except Queensland saw a fall in birth rates.

Here are some extracts from an Australian Bureau of Statistics media release of November 3 entitled "Fertility rates decline in 2009":

After increasing in recent years, fertility rates in Australia declined slightly in 2009, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

In 2009, Australia's total fertility rate was 1.90 babies per woman, a small decrease from 1.96 babies per woman in 2008 and 1.92 babies per woman in 2007.

Fertility rates for all states and territories decreased in 2009, except for Queensland.

Tasmania had the highest fertility rate, with 2.18 babies per woman, while the Australian Capital Territory had the lowest at 1.74.

Women in Tasmania were also having their children at younger ages than women in the rest of Australia; with fertility rates highest for women aged 25-29 years. For the rest of Australia, fertility rates were highest for women aged 30-34 years.

The median age of all mothers for births registered in 2009 was 30.6 years, while the median age of fathers was 33.0 years, both slightly younger than in recent years.

A total of 295,700 births were registered in Australia in 2009. ...

[...] Media notes:

• The total fertility rate represents the average number of babies that a woman could expect to bear during her reproductive lifetime if current fertility rates continue.

[http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/374A7412FAA14CBBCA2574EF007A1DEF?Opendocument]

2. "Eugenics 'rises from Nazi tomb' claims Victorian Bishop Peter Elliott"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/eugenics-rises-from-nazi-tomb-claims-victorian-bishop-peter-elliott/story-e6frg6nf-1225948024158

I would be interested to read more of the transcript of His Lordship's sermon (I presume it was a sermon?), but a Google search of the keywords "Peter Elliott" and "eugenics" and "Nazi tomb" just came up with the same article from The Australian.

3. "Midterm Elections a Big Win for Zionist War-mongers"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34541

Reginaldvs Cantvar

5.XI.2010