Notes: Wednesday, March 27-Tuesday, April 23, 2013 (part 2 of 2)

8. Some points of interest from "A Profile of the Catholic Community in Australia", March 2013, A.C.B.C. Pastoral Research Office, Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia:

In the following bullet points, the smaller-type parts are quotations from that profile:

• In 2011, the total number of people at Mass in Australia on a typical weekend was about 680,000, only about 12.5 per cent, or one-eighth, of the total number of Catholics. Most of those who attend, about 85 per cent, are there every weekend, but the individuals who make up the other 15 per cent vary from week to week.
  p. 2

• Labels: The 2011 Census tells us that 272,542 Catholic children of primary school age attended Catholic schools, and 210,514 Catholic students of secondary school age attended Catholic schools. That means that 52.8 per cent of Catholic students attend Catholic schools – it’s the same percentage for primary and secondary students. But it also means that almost half of all Catholic students do not attend Catholic schools. Most of these go to Government schools, although six per cent of Catholic primary students and ten per cent of Catholic secondary students attend other non-Government schools.
  p. 3

• The Census also tells us that Catholic students account for 72.5 per cent of Catholic school enrolments.
  
  Another 14.9 per cent are from other Christian traditions, 2.6 per cent belong to a non-Christian religion and 7.8 per cent have no religion.
  p. 3

(The profile came to my attention via the blog post "Going to Mass this Sunday? If so, you are one of less than 12.5% Oz Catholics to do so... ", by Miss Kate Edwards, dated Sunday, April 7, 2013, posted at her Australia Incognita blog:

http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/going-to-mass-this-sunday-you-are-one.html)

Regarding the second point: See also the A.C.B.C. Pastoral Research Office's "E-NEWS BULLETIN", Issue No. 3, August 17, 2012, on "Students attending Catholic schools":

http://www.pro.catholic.org.au/pdf/ACBC%20PRO%20E-%20News%20Bulletin%203.pdf

Labels: Catholic schools, demography, social trends

9. "What happens to marriage and families when the law recognises “Same-Sex Marriage”?"

The quotation in that headline is the title of a submission, from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, London, U.K., dated March 1, 2013, to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill Committee of the British House of Commons. The submission is available here:

http://www.spuc.org.uk/campaigns/ssmsub20130301

(That submission came to my attention via the comment of 2.4.13 / 10am by Mr. Gerard Calilhanna in the comments section of Mr. Muehleberg's CultureWatch blog post "Conservatives and Homosexual Marriage", dated March 30, 2013.)

Labels: families, G.L.B.T., marriage

10. Fr. Zuhlsdorf responds to the question of "How should a bishop carry the crosier?"

See the blog post "QUAERITUR: How should a bishop carry the crosier?", by The Rev. Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, dated April 10, 2013, downloaded from Fr. Z's Blog (olim: What Does The Prayer Really Say?):

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/04/quaeritur-how-should-a-bishop-carry-the-crosier/

Labels: Hierarchy

11. "Data from the ABS 2006-07 Family Characteristics Survey reveal that around one in four (23%) young adults aged 18-34 years reported experiencing the divorce or permanent separation of their parents before they were 18 years old. In contrast, the same survey revealed that less than one in ten (8%) young adults who were aged 18-34 years in 1976 had experienced parental divorce or permanent separation before they were 18 years old."

The quotation in that headline comes from the "Young adults: Then and now" webpage of "4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, April 2013", downloaded from the website of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (A.B.S.):

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features40April+2013

The relevant section of that webpage refers to the A.B.S.'s "Parental divorce or death in childhood" webpage of "4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, Sep 2010", which is available here:

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features40Sep+2010

Labels: divorce, families, marriage

12. Some points of interest in connection with Rio+20—The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development

Rio+20 came to my attention via the article "$900,000 spent on failed Brazil talkfest", by Mr. Steve Lewis, under a page headline of "158 DAYS TO GO", p. 08, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, April 9, 2013, Vol. 1, No. 2818, ISSN 1038-8745, published by Nationwide News Pty. Ltd., a version of which article is available online under the headline "Julia Gillard's delegation to Brazil for climate change summit cost taxpayers $900,000", by the same author, on the same date, at The Daily Telegraph's website:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/julia-gillards-delegation-to-brazil-for-climate-change-summit-cost-taxpayers-900000/story-fnho52jp-1226615165919

Here are some points of interest to me (the parts in small type are quotations):

• Rio+20 reaffirmed the world’s commitment to women’s equal rights, including in economic and political decision making, and committed to removing barriers to the equal participation of women in sustainable development. Rio+20 agreed to promote equal access by women and girls to education, health care services, and economic opportunities and to ensure universal access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable modern methods of family planning.
  [p. 6, Rio+20 Outcomes for Australia, Australian Government, downloaded from the website of the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities:
  http://www.environment.gov.au/about/international/rio-plus20/pubs/rio-outcomes-australia.pdf]

• … The National Women's Health Policy aims to improve the health and wellbeing of all women in Australia and the National Family Planning Program aims to coordinate national family planning efforts, which allow individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children through the use of contraceptive methods and the prevention and treatment of involuntary infertility.
  [p. 8, ibid.]

• 145. We call for the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, and the outcomes of their review conferences, including the commitments leading to sexual and reproductive health and the promotion and protection of all human rights in this context. We emphasize the need for the provision of universal access to reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.
  
  146. We commit to reduce maternal and child mortality and to improve the health of women, youth and children. We reaffirm our commitment to gender equality and to protect the rights of women, men and youth to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including access to sexual and reproductive health, free from coercion, discrimination and violence. We will work actively to ensure that health systems provide the necessary information and health services addressing the sexual and reproductive health of women, including by working towards universal access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable modern methods of family planning, as this is essential for women’s health and advancing gender equality.
  [p. 28, The future we want (annexed to the United Nations General Assembly resolution "66/288. The future we want", 123rd plenary meeting, July 27, 2012, downloaded from the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development website:
  http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/476/10/PDF/N1147610.pdf?OpenElement]

• 241. We are committed to promote the equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, economic opportunities and health-care services, including addressing women’s sexual and reproductive health, and ensuring universal access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable modern methods of family planning. In this regard, we reaffirm our commitment to implement the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the key actions for the further implementation of the Programme of Action.
  [p. 46, ibid.]

• … nearly half of Australia´s aid expenditure in 2009-10 was in support of activities promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women.
  [from the "Address to the High Level Summit of the Women Leaders' Forum on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Sustainable Development, Rio de Janeiro" by The Hon. Julia Gillard M.P., dated Thursday, June 21, 2013, downloaded from the "Press Office" section of the Prime Minister's website:
  http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/address-high-level-summit-women-leaders-forum-gender-eqaulity-and-womens-empowerment-su
  According to the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID),
  Nearly half of the overall aid program is invested in activities that have either a primary or secondary objective of promoting gender equality and empowering women. …
  [p. 17, Promoting opportunities for all: Gender equality and women’s empowerment[; ]Thematic Strategy November 2011, published by AusAID, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia, December 2011, © Commonwealth of Australia 2011, downloaded from AusAID's website:
  http://www.ausaid.gov.au/aidissues/Documents/thematic-strategies/gender-equality-strategy.pdf]]

• Today[, Friday, June 22, 2012,] the plenary adopted the Rio+20 outcomes document - with Australia’s priorities well reflected. …
  [p. 1, Australia at Rio+20, downloaded from the website of the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities:
  http://www.environment.gov.au/about/international/rio-plus20/pubs/rio-daily-updates.pdf]

For more on Australian Government foreign-affairs activity regarding Feminism, abortion, and contraception, see item 1 of this Notes post and item 7 of this Notes post.

Labels: abortion, contraception, feminism, U.N.O.

13. According to New Zealand's "Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013", "marriage means the union of 2 people, regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity".

The second quotation, including the bold type, in that headline comes from p. 2 of the PDF document which you can download from this webpage at the New Zealand Legislation website:

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2013/0020/latest/DLM4505003.html

Labels: G.L.B.T., marriage, New Zealand

14. "As well as the changes to succession, the bill would limit those who needed the monarch's consent to marry to only the first six in line to the throne."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Queensland warned for dragging heels on royal succession changes", by Judith Ireland, dated April 18, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/queensland-warned-for-dragging-heels-on-royal-succession-changes-20130417-2i0lb.html?skin=text-only

Labels: monarchy

Reginaldvs Cantvar
St. George's Day, A.D. 2013

Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, October 5-6, 2010

Unintentionally hilarious critique of a pro-Lesbian movie which is not pro-Lesbian enough for the critic!

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/its-not-all-right/story-e6frg8n6-1225930639218

Long, but worth reading if you have five minutes to spare and need a good laugh. (It occured to me that the article might really have been satirical, but, looking at the article overall, I think that it's supposed to be a genuine critique.) A sample:

Despite, or perhaps because of, the present energetic push towards normalising homosexuality (let's all get married, have babies and not rock the Judaeo-Christian boat), gays remain a menace. Heterosexual men and the society over which they have power are threatened every which way by homosexuality. Lesbians, and lesbian couples in particular, limit male sexual access. Men don't like that.

Dr. Gray on euthanasia

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/choosing-ones-time-of-death-is-a-basic-human-right/story-e6frg6zo-1225934570662

Here's another article from The Australian which had me wondering at several points whether it was really a satire. Points like this:

If we take away the labels such as euthanasia, kill, murder, suicide, we can look at the issues.

The people who join the Dying with Dignity movement simply want to die with dignity. ...

So one euphemism (euthanasia) is replaced with another euphemism--'dying with dignity'. But euthanasia isn't just any old kind of dying; it really is killing (a term to which Dr. Gray objects), either of oneself, or assisting someone else to do it.

And also at this point (Dr. Gray's conclusion):

The reason for wanting choice is that this is one's own business, no one else's. We should not have to give reasons. It may indeed be a terminal disease and one may have consulted a doctor, or one may have gone bankrupt, or the wrong team may have won the grand final, but these are not relevant to anyone else. A personal decision, which is made as a human right, is all that is required. The necessary legislation should be simple enough.

What a disconcerting thing it is to live in a world in which one can no longer be quite sure whether a text is serious or satirical.

Remnant opinion piece on monarchy and democracy

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=382178#382178

This article looks interesting (though off-topic for the AQ thread in which it was posted), but unfortunately its author thinks that "the will of the people ... should determine the shape of any political order", which is too much like one of the condemned errors in Quanta cura for my liking. Nevertheless, the article might be interesting to read in full, which I'll do if I have time.

Book(let?) on the evidence that St. Peter was in Rome ...

After posting yesterday's edition of Notes, in which I mentioned the testimony of Caius to the death of St. Peter (and St. Paul) in Rome, it occured to me that the book which that Catholic Encyclopedia article cited (St. Peter in Rome) might be available on-line. So I searched for it using the N.L.A.'s Trove search service, and though it is apparently not available on-line (though the search results show that there are copies of it, or of books very much like it, to be found in several Australian libraries, including The University of Sydney's one), I found the following booklet, published in 1874 by one John Stewart M'Corry:

http://www.archive.org/details/a591190500mcoruoft

It looks very interesting, though I haven't read it all yet (though it's not too long).

... and a very old letter-to-the-editor citing Protestant affirmation of that Tradition

Found while doing that Trove search:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/25656734?searchTerm=St. Peter in Rome&searchLimits=

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bruno, Confessor, A.D. 2010

Why we need (hereditary) Monarchy and (all-male) Hierarchy

The following comment by Mrs. Judith Bond at Mr. Muehlenburg’s blog (in the context of the media reaction to recent remarks by The Hon. Tony Abbott M.P. on pre-marital sexual activity, and Mr. Muehlenberg’s whole post on the topic is worth reading) resonated with me:

Judith Bond
28.1.10 / 6am
Our country needs a father figure who freely gives sound, solid moral advice.

Another word for virginity is abstinence.

Judith Bond
[my emphasis,
http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2010/01/27/tony-abbott-and-the-usual-frenzied-reaction-to-common-sense/#comments]

The part which I put in bold is the part which interests me here. Every country needs such a father-(or, when a woman reigns, mother-)figure, and that’s one reason why an hereditary monarchy is a desirable form of civic rulership. Perhaps paradoxically, no elected ruler, even if his powers are those of a king, can be this kind of father-figure, because the father-figure needs to be, like a biological father, someone with whom one is ‘stuck’, whom the populace cannot simply dismiss from office when it pleases it. And it is fitting that such a temporal father-figure have, and be united officially with, a spiritual counterpart, and one with spiritual jurisdiction at the same level as the temporal jurisdiction of the civil sovereign—that is, at the level of the whole populace. And better yet, another spiritual father at the level of the whole human race too, so that, with a Universal Primate above him, the national primate will not find himself without the moral support of a superior when Church-State frictions arise. Our country needs, and our world needs, a father-figure who freely gives sound, solid moral advice. And if Mrs. Bond, Mr. Muehlenberg and their co-religionists would abjure themselves of their heresies then they would find such a father-figure in the Roman Pontiff.

(Oh, and one of my favourite comments so far on Mr. Abbott’s remarks is this one, in today’s edition of The Australian:

Will the Rudd government set up a ministry of promiscuity to counter Tony Abbott’s pernicious message on virginity ?

F. W. Anning, Ascot, Qld
[bold type in the original,
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/last_post_january_29])

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church, A.D. 2010

Sir David Smith, Mr. Harry Evans and republicanism by stealth

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/correspondents-pack-an-epistle/2008/10/31/1224956327847.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Mr. Alan Ramsey’s Saturday column in The Sydney Morning Herod contained an account of a fascinating exchange of correspondence between Sir David Smith K.C.V.O., a monarchist and former Official Secretary to the Governor-General, and Mr. Harry Evans, a republican and present Clerk of the Senate.

Sir David wrote in protest against Mr. Evans’ interpretation of the following sections of the Constitution:

59. The Queen may disallow any law within one year from the Governor-General's assent, and such disallowance on being made known by the Governor-General by speech or message to each of the Houses of the Parliament, or by Proclamation, shall annul the law from the day when the disallowance is so made known.

60. A proposed law reserved for the Queen's pleasure shall not have any force unless and until within two years from the day on which it was presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent the Governor-General makes known, by speech or message to each of the Houses of the Parliament, or by Proclamation, that it has received the Queen's assent.
(http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/par5cha1.htm)

Mr. Evans asserted in the eleventh editions of Odgers' Australian Senate Practice that “'(Provisions in the Constitution - ss 59 and 60 - for a bill to be reserved for the Queen's assent are now not operative).'” But sections 59 and 60 have not been changed in a referendum and remain fully operative, recent non-use notwithstanding. Mr. Evans said that they were inoperative in

the same sense as a ship is inoperative when tied up at the breaker's yard with her engine dismantled

which is plainly a misrepresentation. Sir David rightly expressed his surprise that Mr. Evans

should take it upon [himself] to make a judgment about what some future government might or might not do in relation to a section of the Constitution that is still alive and well and full of life.

The exchange of letters ended in a compromise: Mr. Evans changed his comment to

Provisions in the Constitution for the interpolation of the monarch into the legislative process do not now operate

in the twelfth edition of Odgers' Australian Senate Practice. ‘Do not now operate’ is an improvement, but now the involvement of the monarch has become an ‘interpolation’, which is hardly the best choice of words.

What we see here is another example of ‘republicanism by stealth’, softening us up for the inevitable second thrust to depose H.M. The Queen.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
All Souls’ Day, 2008 A.D.