Notes: Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Herald letters regarding informal voting:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/leave-it-blank-if-you-dont-like-either-candidate-20100817-128c2.html?skin=text-only

Coptic Orthodox Pope escalates (or at least continues/renews) hostilities between his Church and the Egyptian government?

In The Australian today:

Pope Shenuda III [sic--though should be II., I understand] warned Egyptian Copts - who often use the telephone to maintain contact with their local parish priest when they are abroad - that the security services were tapping calls, the independent Al Masri Al Yawm newspaper said.

Shenuda III said: "Beware not to admit your sins over the telephone, because all phone conversations are recorded by the state security services.

"Otherwise, you will have to go seek absolution in prison, from the police, rather than from your local priest."

The cleric reportedly issued the warning to hundreds of worshippers during a sermon in Alexandria on Sunday.

Copts are the Middle East's largest Christian community and make up about 10 percent of Egypt's largely Muslim population of 80 million.
[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/egyptian-sinners-who-dial-a-confession-risk-prison-church-leader-warns/story-fn3dxity-1225906568093]

The article fails to make the connection to Egypt's highest court's recent ruling (see this blog's "Coptic Orthodox Church" label) that the Coptic Orthodox Church is required to have divorce and remarriage, a ruling which the C.O. Pope and C.O. Church intend to disregard. I wonder whether the C.O. Pope's warning ties in with this feud (perhaps not the best word, but you get my drift)?

Dr. Hamilton on The Greens as 'the party of moderation' (and apparently of prudence, justice, and fortitude, too)

Amusing to see Dr. Hamilton positioning The Greens as a centrist via media between 'religious extremism' and sexual libertinism (no mention in the article of abortion or euthanasia and The Greens' policies thereon, though):

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/the-party-of-moderation-steps-lightly-in-the-footsteps-of-plato/story-e6frgd0x-1225906537799

Dr. Collins on the religious and social/political views (in a word, "integralism") of Mr. Abbott and the late Mr. Santamaria

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/preview.aspx?aeid=22823

A weak article, one whose weaknesses Mr. Gerard Henderson points out here. No mention in either opinion piece, though, of the Social Kingship of Christ, which is the cornerstone of integralism in the sense in which I regard myself as an integralist.

A telling answer to an 'F.A.Q.' at the website for the re-opened programme for a Sydney Archdiocese Permanent Diaconate

(Last Sunday's Sydney Catholic Weekly had a couple of articles which brought Sydney's Office of the Permanent Diaconate and its website to my attention.)

If a married man is ordained a deacon do he and his wife have to refrain from sexual activity?

Married deacons and their wives do not surrender any rights or responsibilities resulting from their married state of life. Marriage and orders are not incompatible sacraments; rather, there is a great mutuality between them.
[http://www.sydneydiaconate.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=20#sexlife]

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Agapitus, Martyr, and of St. Helen, Empress, Widow, A.D. 2010

Notes: Saturday-Tuesday, July 3-6, 2010

Findings from an on-line survey into Australian attitudes towards abortion

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/strong-support-for-abortion-heartens-law-reform-supporters-20100704-zvxs.html?skin=text-only
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/late-term-abortion-gets-ok/story-e6frg6nf-1225887770288

I was going to quote the figures reported, but

the chief executive of the anti-abortion group Right to Life NSW, Chiang Lim, said the fact that the survey was conducted online meant it had to be taken with ''a bucketful of salt''.

''If you don't do it face to face with proper control groups you are not doing a proper survey.''

Pretender Archbishop of Canterbury approves "openly gay cleric" for Anglican pseudobishopric

http://www.smh.com.au/world/anglican-battle-lines-drawn-over-gay-bishop-20100704-zvxe.html?skin=text-only
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/gay-bishop-to-divide-anglicans/story-e6frg6so-1225888211541

Mr. Carr on Communists in the A.L.P.

The Hon. Bob Carr had an interesting opinion piece in yesterday's edition of The Australian. Here are some excerpts:

The revelation of dual [C.P.A.-A.L.P.] membership is rich in implications. They recast the political history of Australia from the 1950s to the 70s.

First, they vindicate the decision of a large part of Catholic Australia to veto the election of federal Labor governments by voting for the breakaway Democratic Labor Party after the Labor split of 1955.

Still something of a Labor romantic, I find it painful to squeeze this out, but it strikes me the DLP indictment of the ramshackle Labor Party led by H. V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell was mostly right.

A "pro-communist left wing" - you can hear Bob Santamaria enunciating it as one word - secured an elevated role in the ALP once so many Catholics withdrew and this Labor Left was led (or largely led) by figures who kept a dual membership in the Communist Party in their bottom drawers or pasted in the end piece of an unread Das Kapital above the family fireplace.

[...] From Aarons's book not just Whitlam but the whole ALP Right is elevated, the party members who did not take Santamaria's advice and walk out but who opted to stay in the ALP and fight. Their names should be recorded on some kind of honour roll. They include Laurie Short and John Ducker, and the secretaries of unions of carpenters, electricians and rubber workers now dead and forgotten, united in a view that the party of Curtin and Chifley was not to be packaged up and handed over to Marxist-Leninists and outright Soviet agents.
[my square-bracketed interpolations,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/thankfully-whitlam-and-co-rescued-labor-from-the-reds/story-e6frg6zo-1225887763473]

And here are some interesting comments from that article's comments section:

Keiron J Long Posted at 10:49 AM Today

Bob Carr is a tad selective in his newfound historical narritive (Thankfully, Whitlam and Co, July 5). The Catholics were basically driven out of the Labor Party by Evatt and his Commie mates who Bob Carr only now discovers controlled the ALP. Someone should tell Bob about the number of Catholics that lost ALP endorsement as parliamentarians because of their opposition to communism within the Labor Party. Just for starters, why don't we mention the State seat of Hawthorn in Victoria, held by a Mr Murphy, for Labor. Once Mr Murphy was cut down by the ALP the seat became a Liberal stronghold.
Comment 11 of 25

corso cowboy Posted at 11:15 AM Today

So Bob Santamaria was right about the ALP after all? What comes out of this book is not to praise the "stay in an fighters" (as Carr does) but those who sacrificed their careers for principle and preferneced Menzies so ensuring that from 1954 - 1972 a Popular Front Government did not rule Australia.
Comment 15 of 25

G of Perth Posted at 11:24 AM Today

What is the difference between the policies of the 1960's Labor left described in this report and the policies of the current Greens Party of today?
Comment 16 of 25

See also these letters in today's edition of The Australian.

Blog comment by me:

At Mr. Hawkins's blog:

Cardinal Pole, on July 5, 2010 at 2:37 pm Said:

Clarify things? In those posts you don’t even define what rights, those posts’ very subject matter, are, let alone what marriage is.
[http://forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/gillard-is-against-gay-marriage/#comment-5930]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

6.VII.2010

Forty years of State Aid

Also in yesterday's Catholic Weekly was a feature article marking the fortieth anniversary of a meeting of parents in order to restore State Aid to Catholic schools; after a string of such meetings they were ultimately successful. But success at what price? Here are some of His Eminence Cardinal Pell's thoughts on the matter, in AD2000, April 2007:

"However, for [the late Mr. B.A.] Santamaria the Catholic schools in the Promised Land proved to be a bitter disappointment. In 1983 he foresaw Catholic schools 'becoming a dutiful appendage of the State', exactly what the bishops of 1872 opposed. For him, government money produced ecclesiastical bureaucracies which took power from the bishops so that the faith of two generations was threatened by the unexpected consequences of Vatican II and the disintegration of the family. [...]

The increase in absolute numbers [of pupils] through migration obscured the percentage declines, most never recognised too clearly what was happening until they realised their children were not worshipping regularly (and sometimes their grandchildren were not even baptised), but there was also a feeling that it was an implied criticism of the Council, disloyalty, to point out the disappointing realities.

The new Catholic bureaucracies often exiled and persecuted orthodox dissenters, who were also liable to the devastating critique that they sounded just like Santamaria."

I seem to recall Mr. Santamaria lamenting that the schools were teaching an 'attenuated version of Christianity' (though I cannot provide a citation), and it is hard to argue with this. As a former Catholic (systemic) primary school pupil I can recall instruction on the events of Christ's life, His parables and the importance of devotion to Our Lady being of sound quality, but doctrine was a serious weak point, even in the later years and in preparation for the Sacraments. Catholic high schools leave even more to be desired, emphasising 'living the Christan life' and ecumenical harmony over Catholic doctrine, despite the best efforts of some teachers (while other teachers are more or less open in their dissent). (And of course, years 11 and 12 are, for most N.S.W. pupils, consumed with the syncretistic 'Studies of Religion' course).

The reasons for these weaknesses will be familiar to most readers: the 'spirit of Vatican II' (especially its ecumenical irenicism), the shortage of religious, the secularisation of extra-curricular life, the influx of non-Catholics, careerists among the parents and teachers, the bureaucrats in the C.E.O.s all too keen to emulate their Education Department counterparts, and so on. (Add your own reasons in the combox).

It is interesting to note that the latest avaliable data (2007) show that, in the Sydney Archdiocese, government funding for State schools exceeds government funding for Catholic systemic schools by "just over $2554 per head", while Catholic school fees are $1798. (So should one infer then that, all else equal, a Catholic education is inferior by about $750?). Total government funding per high school pupil is $7947, implying a total cost per pupil of about $9750. It would be intersting to see figures for the funding spent on central administration; one would expect it, a priori, to have increased at a decreasing rate, if at all (given the presumed economies of scale), but given the natural tendencies of bureaucracies it would not surprise me at all if has increased more than proportionately.

Certainly, if parents had to bear all the cost then we would have a smaller, purer (sound familiar?) Catholic education system. If nothing else, this would cast the Lord Bishops out of their complacency and inaction over the current crisis of Catholic culture, since they would have to stop fooling themselves that as long as the Catholic education system is thriving then they have a captive audience for evangelisation. But instead I suppose we'll have to wait for Sunday Mass attendance to drop to 14% of the present 14%, or perhaps some external crisis of Apocalyptic proportions.

Reginaldvs Cantvar