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

1. Dr. Feser on a review by Sir Anthony (Kenny) of the former's The Last Superstition

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/kenny-on-tls-in-tls.html

Labels: atheism, philosophy, theology

2. Yet more evidence of the Sodomites' League's success in diverting public discourse on homosexuality away from a focus on behaviour to a focus on 'identity'

From a Herald letter from one David Harris of Manly:

Fred Nile ... entered the NSW Upper House in 1980 with a single issue - to stop members of the gay community from celebrating their own identity.
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/dilemma-solved--abolish-the-upper-houses-20110801-1i8df.html?skin=text-only]

That seems inaccurate in at least two points: Mr. Nile was never a one-issue politician, and in 1980 New South Wales law did not, as far as I know, prohibit anyone "celebrating their own identity" (though it did, of course, prohibit buggery until, if I'm not mistaken, 1984, but that prohibition applied irrespective of whether the sodomite was homosexual or heterosexual and irrespective of whether the catamite was male or female, so clearly it involved discrimination neither on the basis of sex nor of sexual disorientation).

Labels: Fred Nile, G.L.B.T.

3. Fortunately, it seems that the background of one of the main participants in Ireland's planning for an attack on the Sacrament of Penance has not gone completely unnoticed there

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=414425#414425

Labels: Alan Shatter

4. Point-counterpoint in the Herald letters page:

4.1 In discussion on N.S.W. State school "ethics" classes

One Philip Cooney of Wentworth Falls wrote that

Surely it can't threaten our children to ask why there was not open access to the curriculum material prior to its introduction ...
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/little-virtue-in-labors-games-with-education-20110802-1i9si.html?skin=text-only]

I too had the impression that there was a lack of open access to the 'ethics class' material before its introduction, but then the next day a letter was published which said that

[t]he ethics course syllabus was reviewed and approved by the NSW Education Department.
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/dont-play-russian-roulette-with-our-aquifers-20110803-1ibl2.html?skin=text-only]

Did the "ethics" folks give access only to the Department, then? (I don't ask that rhetorically; does anyone know the answer?)

The day after that, Mr. Nile had a column published on the matter, in which he wrote that there are some who

wrongly believe that when Sir Henry Parkes introduced free and ''secular'' state education, he meant ''non-Christian'' or ''non-religious''. That was never his intention. In the 1880s, ''secular'' was used to prohibit denominational teaching in NSW classrooms, not scripture classes, which Parkes decreed should fill one hour per day.

But I thought that 'secular' as in 'secularist' was precisely what the likes of Parkes intended. One Keith Parsons of Newcastle affirmed my point of view in a letter published, with others, under the heading "Reason v dogma: Fred's no Socrates" here:

The only reason Sir Henry Parkes, almost 130 years ago, supported religious instruction in public schools was to get the churches that dominated school education to support the concept of a universal, free, public, secular education system.

Are any readers here knowledgeable on the motives and intentions of Australia's late-nineteenth-century proponents of 'free, compulsory, and secular' schooling (I won't say education)?

Labels: education, Henry Parkes, secularism, St James Ethics Centre

4.2 In discussion on the birth certificates of donor-conceived children

Last week the Herald gave us a reminder of the insanity of some of New South Wales's laws:

Sperm donors have no legal parental status even if they are on a birth certificate and even if they have court-ordered access visits.

But retrospective laws introduced in 2008 gave lesbian partners of women who conceive through artificial insemination legal parenting status.
[http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/keep-me-named-as-father-donor-begs-court-20110802-1i9yf.html?skin=text-only
Or alternatively:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/sperm-donor-could-lose-his-status-20110802-1i9wq.html?skin=text-only]

The coverage elicited a terse little letter, published under the heading "Donor delisting" here, from one Samantha Chung of Newtown, but the next day one Eva Elbourne of Gordon provided quite a good rejoinder (though I'm not sure that I agree with it completely), published under the heading "Donor parents must remain on record" here.

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

5. "Russia is Most Religious Nation In Europe"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38415

Labels: R.O.C., Russia

6. Mr. Verrecchio on homosexuality, narcissism, and their influence on liturgy

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38404

Labels: G.L.B.T., liturgy, narcissism

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

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