Notes: Wednesday, March 27-Tuesday, April 23, 2013 (part 1 of 2)

1. A couple of items regarding the religious duties of the State

1.1 Pius XI. on the religious duties of society, as society:

… For human society as such is bound to offer to God public and social worship. It is bound to acknowledge in Him its Supreme Lord and first beginning, and to strive toward Him as to its last end, to give Him thanks and offer Him propitiation. …
[Encyclical Letter Ad catholici sacerdotii, December 20, 1935, translation downloaded from the Vatican's website:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19351220_ad-catholici-sacerdotii_en.html
For an alternative translation, see Roy J. Deferrari's translation of Dz. 2274 on p. 608 of The Sources of Catholic Dogma, published by Loreto Publications, Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, U.S.A., 2007:
[society] is obliged in very fact to cherish religion publicly, to acknowledge God as the Supreme Lord and first beginning, to propose Him as its last end, to offer Him immortal thanks, and to offer him propitiation. …
The original Latin of Ad catholici sacerdotii is available in AAS 28 (1936), pp. 5-53 (the quotation in question is on p. 8, in the first paragraph of §I), and is also available in HTML format here.]

Labels: Confessional State, morality, natural law

1.2 St. Melito of Sardis (died c. A.D. 180), Bishop, Confessor, and Father of the Church, is the author of a "discourse recommending that Marcus Aurelius adopt Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire."

The quotation in that headline comes from the installment of the "SAINT FOR TODAY" column which (installment) was headlined "Canonised two years after dying" (the article profiled two saints; the headline refers to the first-profiled of them, namely St. Hugh of Grenoble), no byline, p. 48, the Sydney Catholic Weekly, March 31, 2013, Vol. 72, No. 4666 (presumably the volume and number are as I've given; the issue in question had neither printed on it, but the issue for the following Sunday (April 7, 2013) was Vol. 72, No. 4667), published by The Catholic Press Newspaper Company Pty. Ltd., available on-line but behind a paywall here:

http://catholicweekly.realviewtechnologies.com/?iid=75394&startpage=page0000048

The source for that profile was presumably this Catholic Online webpage. For other sources of information about St. Melito, see his profile in The Catholic Encyclopedia and the one in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

That quotation was especially interesting to me because I read at AQ a couple of years ago a post whose author mentioned that some early Christians—he might have referred to them as martyrs—wrote to the pre-Constantinian Roman Emperors in order to convert them and the Empire to Christianity. I wanted to ask that post's author for his source for what he wrote—not because I doubted it, but in order to learn more about it, and to defend it against those who would doubt it—but never got round to it. The Catholic Encyclopedia's article "Apologetics" says that

To vindicate the Christian cause against … attacks [from] paganism, many apologies were written. Some, notably the "Apology" of Justin Martyr (150), the "Plea for the Christians", by Athenagoras (177), and the "Apologetic" of Tertullian (197), were addressed to emperors for the express purpose of securing for the Christians immunity from persecution. …
[hyperlinks in the original,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01618a.htm]

and its article "Fathers of the Church" contains the following:

The [Greek ]apologists[ of the second century, after the Apostolic Fathers,] are most of them philosophic in their treatment of Christianity. Some of their works were presented to emperors in order to disarm persecutions. …
[hyperlinks in the original, my interpolations,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06001a.htm]

and goes on to mention St. Melito and other Fathers and their respective works.

Labels: Confessional State, Roman Empire, St. Melito of Sardis

2. "Around a quarter of all Australian children aged up to 12 years were now in child care, a record amount, the report[, namely, Child Care Update, June quarter 2012] found."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "A quarter of all Australian children under 12 are using childcare services, the latest Child Care Update report says", no byline (A.A.P. is credited as the source), dated March 31, 2013, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/a-quarter-of-all-australian-children-under-12-are-using-childcare-services-the-latest-child-care-update-report-says/story-e6frg6nf-1226609852452

Child Care Update, June quarter 2012, ISBN: 978-0-642-78735-4, © Commonwealth of Australia, 2013, produced by the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations (D.E.E.W.R.) on behalf of the Australian Government, and published by the D.E.E.W.R., is available online here:

http://mychild.gov.au/pages/ResourcesReports.aspx

Labels: childcare, families, social trends

3. "ACON was founded by the gay community for the gay community in response to the HIV epidemic"; ACON's "very essence is as a gay organisation"

The quotations in that headline were attributed to Mr. Nicolas Parkhill, "the chief executive of ACON, a community-based gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender health organisation", in the article "Gay slurs take AIDS fighter by surprise", by Heath Aston, dated April 2, 2013, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/gay-slurs-take-aids-fighter-by-surprise-20130401-2h33h.html?skin=text-only

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

4. That Atheist straw man again: "Who needs proof when you have belief?"

The quotation in that headline comes from a letter by one David Farrell published under the sub-heading "Pastafarians join Bert's teapot in atheism debate" on the letters webpage of April 4, 2013, headlined "Shortsighted superannuation plan is also extremely naive", at The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/shortsighted-superannuation-plan-is-also-extremely-naive-20130403-2h795.html?skin=text-only

Labels: atheism

5. Dr. Wetherell on priesthood in anthropology and in theology

See the article "Women priests and bishops: Anglicanism's crisis of identity", by Dr. David Wetherell, pp. 10, 11, and 18, AD 2000, March 2013, Vol. 26, No. 2, published by Mr. Peter Westmore for the Thomas More Centre of Balwyn, Victoria, Australia, available under the same headline and with the same byline and date at AD 2000's website:

http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2013/mar2013p10_3973.html

Labels: Priesthood

6. "thanks to collaboration by Google, a project has been launched to make all the issues[ of La Civiltà Cattolica] published from 1850 to 2008 accessible on the web. In fact, Google had digitalized the volumes for their Google Books project, through agreements with several libraries in Europe and the United States. The issues still protected by copyright law will now be made available by our authorization."

The quotation in that headline was attributed to The Rev. Fr. Antonio Spadaro S.J., director of La Civiltà Cattolica, in the Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin item "CIVILTA CATTOLICA: NEW FORMAT, NEW SECTIONS, AND OPENNESS TO INTERNET AND SOCIAL NETWORKING", dated April 5, 2013:

http://www.news.va/en/news/civilta-cattolica-new-format-new-sections-and-open

Labels: Civilta Cattolica

7. Mr. Andrades on some gatherings in Rome in late October 2012 in connection with the seventeenth centenary of the conversion of Constantine the Great

See Mr. Lionel Andrades' blog posts "1700 th ANNIVERSARY FOR THE APPARITION TO KING CONSTANTINE AND HIS VISTORY AT THE MILVIAN BRIDGE CELEBRATED IN ROME" and "It was Christ himself who told Constantine the Great to fight in his name. God is not indifferent but active in our history- Roberto de Mattei", dated respectively Sunday, October 28, 2012 and Tuesday, October 30, 2012, downloaded from his "eucharistandmission" blog. (The gatherings in question are not to be confused with the congress of mid-April 2012 about which I blogged in item 2 of this Notes post.)

(Those blog posts came to my attention via this True Catholic post.)

Labels: Constantine the Great

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

Notes: Tuesday-Wednesday, January 18-19, 2011

1. "British gay couple turned away from B&B win discrimination case"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/british-gay-couple-turned-away-from-bb-win-discrimination-case/story-fn3dxity-1225990668968

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

2. Ms Tankard Reist on surrogacy

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/gestational-carrier-is-an-ugly-term/story-e6frg6zo-1225990595552

Labels: parenthood, surrogacy

3. "Abortion Has Caused 300K Breast Cancer Deaths Since Roe"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35595

Labels: abortion, cancer, health

4. Dr. Peters and others on the obligation on clerics to be celibate and/or continent

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/01/continence-and-married-deaconspriests/

Dr. Peters has posted at his website a full, searchable P.D.F. version of his Studia Canonica article "Canonical considerations on diaconal continence” (previously only the abstract, which I have brought to your attention already in item 2 of this post, was available there):

http://www.canonlaw.info/a_deacons.htm

Unfortunately I do not have time to read it yet, though.

Labels: celibacy, Deacons, Divine positive law, Ecclesiastical law, Edward Peters, Priesthood

5. "Row over HIV health cash"

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/row-over-hiv-health-cash-20110115-19rvu.html?skin=text-only

Excerpts:

A BITTER row has erupted in Sydney's gay community after a group of prominent activists accused the state's leading homosexual health service of squandering millions of dollars in taxpayers' money.

Gay rights campaigner Gary Burns, HIV lobbyist Shayne Chester and journalist Peter Hackney have demanded the state government "demolish" ACON, formerly known as the AIDS Council of NSW.

The trio alleged the service, which specialises in HIV prevention, care and support, received $12.6 million in government funding last year but spent only $800,000 on programs and services. In a scathing attack, the group dubbed the organisation a "gravy train" and called on Premier Kristina Keneally to hand back ACON's work to NSW Health.

[...] Mr Chester said NSW had had high rates of HIV infection for more than a decade, and this was compounded by an increase in unprotected casual sex among gay men.

"Why is this happening?" he asked. "Because ACON, which is chartered with HIV education and prevention, is failing us."

[...] In NSW cases involving HIV infection peaked in the mid-1980s, with 1636 diagnoses reported in 1987. Since then rates have dropped dramatically, with 327 new cases recorded in 2009, although that is a slight increase from 323 in 2008.

Labels: ACON, G.L.B.T., H.I.V./A.I.D.S., health, vice

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Marius, Martha, Audifax, and Abachum, Martyrs, and of St. Canute, King, Martyr, A.D. 2011

Mr. Mullen and the secular sense of humour

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24458834-5001028,00.html

I was pleased to see London Anglican clergymen Mr. Peter Mullen in a little article in the Sydney Daily Telegraph on Wednesday, though not in the most favourable of circumstances. It is reported that he made a light-hearted comment at a blog, saying that

“Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH”

But in a reminder of what a sour bunch the secularists (or in this case, the Anglican crypto-secularists) can be, his ecclesial circumscription said that it found the comment

"highly offensive" and [the comment] did not reflect its views.

It is well-known that the Sodomites’ League cannot stand it being pointed out to them that sodomy is one of the most damaging practices in which one could ever consent to engage, even from a purely medical perspective. Mr. Muehlenberg wrote a perceptive piece some time ago in which he reported on the shift in public discourse on homosexuality from a focus on homosexual behaviour to a focus on homosexual identity/culture/life-style. This shift serves to distract us from the fact that the so-called ‘gay culture’ is founded on one of the most unhealthy activities around. Yet even the publicly-funded, untaxed GAYCON knows how damaging sodomy can be; presumably that is why they find it necessary to provide young homosexual men with “a workshop on sex and sexual techniques” (rather than, say, recommended that the same confused young men undergo counseling first). It is for the deleterious effects on health of sodomy, if for no other reason, that sodomy should be outlawed. And the Sodomites’ League could hardly complain of ‘discrimination’, since it would be imposed regardless of whether sodomite or catamite were homosexual or heterosexual.

I had a recent experience of the selective secular sense of humour at MgS’s blog. She reported on Ms Margaret Atwood writing that Canada was basically sliding towards dictatorship, based on Canadian Prime Minister Mr. Stephen Harper’s treatment of the arts community. I joked that

Wow, so Mr. Harper has despatched squads of goons to shut down all dissenting artists?

Oh, wait, he's just cut funding to overseas-based artists. False alarm.

But MgS responded with icy fury:

You clearly have no clue what you are talking about here.

It’s one thing to get a joke but not find it funny, but quite another not even to get the joke at all. Yet this same woman had spoken on another occasion of Baptism in the most light-hearted terms. Isn’t it interesting how secularists like MgS will freely belittle the Christian Sacraments, the very channels of Grace, but if one tries so much as to view their own pre-occupations in a humourous light their jocularity vanishes altogether? This is all the more lame since Ms Atwood and Mr. Harper differ not in kind, but only in degree—they both stand for basically the same political system, so why let oneself become so worked up about it?

But back to Mr. Mullen. He had an excellent article, carried in AD2000 some time ago, in which he lamented the decay of the Anglicans from a “once refined and educated, lovely and lovable national institution” to a body marked by “a mania for self-destruction”. One might hope that this latest episode will be the final nail in the coffin for his allegiance to the Anglican heresy and schism. Let him abjure his heresy, let him cast off the yoke of his anti-Christic ‘Supreme Governor’, let him abandon the notion that the British Parliament may add or subtract articles of faith, let him sever his connections with those who, with official approval, deny the doctrine of Baptismal regeneration. In a word, let him come home to Rome.

Reginaldvs Cantvar