Notes: Friday, August 1-Wednesday, December 31, 2014 (part 1 of 2)

1. "Divorces are more costly for Australian women than for men, and for longer periods, too, new research reveals."

The quotation in that headline is the first line of the article "Divorce more costly for Australian women", no byline, dated August 1, 2014, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/divorce-more-costly-for-australian-women-20140801-zz7zc.html?skin=text-only

Labels: divorce, economics, marriage

2. A couple of recent articles on the importance of the father-child relationship

See the article "The Distinct, Positive Impact of a Good Dad", by W. Bradford Wilcox, dated June 14, 2013, downloaded from The Atlantic's website:

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/the-distinct-positive-impact-of-a-good-dad/276874/

(that article came to my attention via the "Recommended Reading" section of the July-August 2014 issue of The Archdiocese of Sydney's Life, Marriage & Family Centre's Life, Marriage and Family News) and the blog post "Daughters and Their Dads: The Vital Relationship", by Mr. Bill Muehlenberg, dated August 27, 2014, downloaded from his CultureWatch blog:

http://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/08/27/daughters-and-their-dads-the-vital-relationship/

Labels: families

3. Mr. Attard on H.M.A. Government's "wealth transfer from single-income to dual-income families"

See the article "Govt's wealth transfer from single-income to dual-income families", by Mr. Daniel Attard, dated August 30, 2014, downloaded from News Weekly's website:

http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=56696

Labels: childcare, economics, families

4. "Malta legalizes same-sex civil unions as bill passes 37-0"

The quotation in that headline is the headline of an article by Hilary White, dated April 15, 2014, downloaded from LifeSiteNews.com:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/malta-legalizes-same-sex-civil-unions-as-bill-passes-37-0

(That article came to my attention via its posting at AQ.)

Labels: G.L.B.T., civil unions, Malta

5. Mr. Muehlenberg on "Islam, Polygamy and Western Subsidies"

See the blog post "Islam, Polygamy and Western Subsidies", by Mr. Bill Muehlenberg, dated September 23, 2014, downloaded from his CultureWatch blog:

http://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/09/23/islam-polygamy-and-western-subsidies/

Labels: Islam, polyamory

6. Ms Armstrong on the relationship between religion and politics

See the article "The myth of religious violence", by Karen Armstrong, dated Thursday, September 25, 2014, downloaded from The Guardian's website:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/-sp-karen-armstrong-religious-violence-myth-secular

See also the book review (especially its penultimate paragraph) "Karen Armstrong explores historical links between religion and violence", by Gerard Windsor, dated October 4, 2014, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/karen-armstrong-explores-historical-links-between-religion-and-violence/story-fn9n8gph-1227079238329

(That article came to my attention via the version printed under the headline "Faith's place in the battlefield", with the same author, on pp. 18 f. in the "BOOKS" pages of the "review" supplement of The Weekend Australian, October 4-5, 2014, Second Edition, No. 15498, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited.)

Labels: Church and State, Confessional State, liberalism

7. "On Saturday 11 October 2014, Pride Football Australia will host the 3rd annual PFA Football Tournament in Sydney. … For the first time in the tournaments[ sic] history David Gallop and Football Federation Australia have officially endorsed the event."

The quotation, including its bold type but excluding the ellipsis, in that headline comes from the webpage "ACON Is Proud To Be A Main Sponsor of the Pride Football Australia Tournament", no author credited, undated, downloaded from acon's website:

Warning: acon is a Gay lobby group, so beware of obscene text and images at its website:

http://www.acon.org.au/get-involved/events/pride-football-australia-tournament

Labels: G.L.B.T., sport

8. "While anal cancer is relatively rare among the general population, gay men are 20 times more likely to contract it."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Boost to cancer funding", by Mr. Alex McKinnon, dated Match 7, 2013, downloaded from the Star Observer's website:

Warning: The Star Observer is a Gay medium, so beware of obscene text and images at its website:

http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/local-news/new-south-wales-news/boost-to-cancer-funding/99732

(That article came to my attention via the comment of 18.10.14 / 8pm by Trevor Grace in the combox at the blog post by Mr. Muehlenberg.)

Labels: G.L.B.T., health

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Day within the Octave of Christmas, and the feast of St. Sylvester I., Pope, Confessor, A.D. 2014

Notes: Tuesday, July 26-Monday, August 8, 2011 (part 1 of 2)

1. Mrs. Shanahan on, among other things, the nexus between multiculturalism and 'gay rights'

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/cheap-emotionalism-stymies-sensible-christian-debate-on-homosexuality/story-fn562txd-1226099272405

Labels: G.L.B.T., multiculturalism

2. It "is good" that "public opinion endorses the legal recognition of rights which arise from long-term same sex unions"?

This is an excerpt from His Eminence The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney's weekly column in the Sydney Catholic Weekly (presumably it ran in the previous Sunday's edition of the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, too):

While not many ["Australians who declare themselves homosexual"] would choose to marry if the law was changed, public opinion endorses the legal recognition of rights which arise from long-term same sex unions.

This is good.
[http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=7&articleID=8585&class=Features&subclass=Cardinal's Comment]

How so, Your Eminence?

Labels: G.L.B.T., George Pell, marriage

3. Prof. Somerville on euthanasia

Excerpts from an interview in the Sydney Catholic Weekly:

In 1994 the state of Oregon legal­ised “physician-assisted dying” with restrictions and requirements, in­cluding a psychological assessment stating that the patient is competent and is not depressed.

“None of the psychiatrists will do that in Oregon so the ‘Death with Dignity’ people are flying in their own pro-euthanasia psychiatrists.”

[...] Between 500 and 1000 people, some of whom are mentally incompetent, die in the Netherlands each year through euthanasia without consent.

[...] “They’ve just done re­search in Belgium where they found that 32 per cent of doctors who had undertaken euthanasia admitted that they had done it on occasions without the person’s consent.

“That’s a third of the doctors; that’s appalling.”

In 2010 it was revealed that more than 100 Belgian nurses, mostly men, had ended the lives of patients without consent.

“When they were asked why, they said they thought it was in the patients’ best interests … the most frequent victims were people over the age of 80.”

[...] The Oregon Health Auth­ority, which supervises the application of the Death With Dignity legislation, also de­cides whether patients will receive state funding for expensive medication to prolong their lives.

“Some of those drugs can cost up to $30,000 a month,” Margo says.

When the authority de­cides that it’s not going to provide the drug, it won’t pay for it, she said, it distributes a letter which says: “It’s not been approved; however, we would like to remind you that assisted suicide under our system is available at a very reasonable cost.”

Margo is also concerned about the connection be­tween euth­anasia and organ donation, with a recent article in a medical journal ad­dressing the case in Bel­gium.

“In the latest article, four people were euthanased and their lungs were transplanted into another person.

“One of the people was a woman who was mentally ill and not physically ill at all.”

(Belgian legislation now permits euthanasia for the mentally ill.)

[...] “I was asked by a senator in the South Australian Parliament to provide a legal opinion on what they were doing with legislation and to analyse the Second Reading Speech, and I couldn’t be­lieve what was said; it was just wrong – that the Nether­lands shows us there is no slippery slope, that there had been no problem in Oregon and Belgium was completely safe!

“It was just unbelievable. This is what’s being said in Par­liament.”
[http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=9&articleID=8592&class=Features&subclass=A conversation with]

Labels: euthanasia

4. A reminder of some aspects of the content and origin of Victoria's current abortion law

... critics argue that when the abortion bill was introduced in 2008, it did not have to fully adhere to the human rights charter - as is the case with all other bills - due to a clause known as section 48, which states: ''Nothing in this charter affects any law applicable to abortion or child destruction.''
[http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=27356]

Labels: abortion, Victoria

5. Several web-pages on an under-examined aspect of the Norway killings

The Monday after the killings, I was reading the Sydney Daily Telegraph's coverage of them, the first close reading I'd done on the matter, and I was interested to read that the alleged killer's manifesto contained mention of the Knights Templar. This made me wonder whether there might be a Masonic connection involved, and as I was surfing the web that night, visiting the blogs which I usually visit, lo and behold, there at Fr. Roberts's blog was a photo of the alleged killer in the costume of his Lodge (Swedish Rite, I've read). Here's a link to Fr. Roberts's write-up of the matter:

http://kingshipofchrist.blogspot.com/2011/07/freemason-or-crusader.html

And here are some other web-pages on the matter:

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38323

http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2011/07/anders-behring-breivik-judeo-masonic.html

Labels: Anders Breivik, Freemasons

6. "Coo-ees from the Cloister up & running again"

http://coo-eesfromthecloister.blogspot.com

(That was brought to my attention by this Cath Pews post.)

Labels: blogs

7. "Malta’s parliament legalizes divorce"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38305

Labels: divorce, Malta, marriage

8. Two quotations (in their original French) from Pius XII. on Church-State relations

(Any Francophone readers are welcome to submit their translations in this post's combox.)

1. From an Allocution to which this web-page refers as "Ai partecipanti al primo Congresso mondiale dell'Apostolato dei Laici (14 ottobre 1951)":

Il ne faudrait pas non plus laisser passer inaperçue, ni sans en reconnaître la bienfaisante influence, l'étroite union qui, jusqu'à la révolution française, mettait en relations mutuelles, dans le monde catholique, les deux autorités établies par Dieu : l'Eglise et l'Etat. L'intimité de leurs rapports sur le terrain commun de la vie publique, créait — en général — comme une atmosphère d'esprit chrétien, qui dispensait en bonne part du travail délicat, auquel doivent, aujourd'hui, s'atteler les prêtres et les laïques pour procurer la sauvegarde et la valeur pratique de la foi.
[AAS 43 (1951), p. 785,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/index_en.htm]

2. From an Allocution which this web-page calls the "Address Vous avez voulu to participants in the 10th International Congress of Historical Sciences (September 7, 1955)":

L'historien ne devrait pas oublier que, si l'Eglise et l'Etat connurent des heures et des années de lutte, il y eut, de Constantin le Grand jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine et même récente, des périodes tranquilles, souvent prolongées, pendant lesquelles ils collaborèrent dans une pleine compréhension à l'éducation des mêmes personnes. L'Eglise ne dissimule pas qu'elle considère en principe cette collaboration comme normale, et qu'elle regarde comme un idéal l'unité du peuple dans la vraie religion et l'unanimité d'action entre elle et l'Etat. ...
[AAS 47 (1955), p. 679,
http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/index_en.htm]
Also available in Spanish here:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/speeches/1955/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19550907_vous-avez-voulu_sp.html]

Labels: Church and State, Pius XII. Pacelli

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. John Mary Vianney, Confessor, and of Sts. Cyriacus, Largus, and Smaragdus, Martyrs, A.D. 2011