Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Lent
Lent
crept up on us quietly last week, the period when Christians around the world
prepare to celebrate at Easter the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In South America and parts of Europe carnivals are celebrated just before Ash
Wednesday with processions and dancing. To some extent it is the anti-religious
party emphasizing pleasure over penance, but many Catholics join in the innocent
fun before settling down to the serious Lenten business of extra prayer, alms
giving to help the poor and penitential practices to curb our selfishness.
Christians are not only called to faith but also to commit themselves to
spiritual struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil.
In the moral sphere spiritual warfare does not condemn the world itself as evil,
but it requires us to admit that evil is alive and well. So too the Church
blesses the normal sexual appetites and drives while acknowledging the need to
control and purify these instincts. Lust is real and can be damaging.
All of us were shocked by the news of the killing of the 12 year old boy at a
good Catholic school in Brisbane.
It is a terrible tragedy especially for the families involved. If this was not
enough, the web site set up in sympathy for the victim was flooded with filth
and violence.
We must not pretend that criminal violence among young people only happens
overseas. Many of our young people too are under huge pressures from family
breakups, drugs, alcohol, violence and pornography on T.V. and the internet.
Lent should be a period of training as we struggle to improve our skills in
combating the evil stirrings in our hearts and in society. It is especially a
time to improve our self control of tongue and temper.
When I was young I had a bad temper. After one outburst my aunt, an ex-school
teacher and a wise woman, explained to me that while I might settle down quickly
afterwards, losing your temper is like hammering a nail into a piece of wood.
Generally the nail can be extracted easily, she went on, but it usually leaves a
hole in the wood. I never forgot the lesson.
Boys and young men need to learn self control.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: 2009
Does
God flex his muscles once in a while, when we are becoming too big for our
boots?
There was a wonderful irony as early unseasonal snow storms in Europe and North
America covered Copenhagen at the conclusion of the huge jamboree on global
warming. After being rebuffed and outpointed by the Chinese, President Obama had
to leave early so that he could land before the storms closed the U.S. airports.
Everyone was disappointed except the sceptics who are unsure direct links have
been established between human activity and climate change.
On a happier note all Australians received a wonderful Christmas present with
the Vatican news that a second miracle for Mary MacKillop had been approved.
This clears the way for Pope Benedict to canonize St. Mary of the Cross. We hope
it will be later rather than earlier next year so that appropriate celebrations
can be organized.
2009 also saw Australia escape recession, one of only a few Western countries to
achieve this. The huge stimulus package has worked, while the fact that the
economy enjoyed very little growth in the last quarter seemed to justify claims
the package was not too big, as critics were suggesting.
The leaders of the St. Vincent de Paul Society told me of an increase in
requests for help, some from people outside the predictable quarters. More
people are hurting despite our comparative good fortune. I hope their Christmas
celebrations were not too constrained.
Every primary school in Australia, including the Catholic schools, is receiving
new school buildings in the B.E.R. programme. By any standards this is a big
help and one unusual consequence is that in the Sydney archdiocese the bishops
face the prospect of an extra 150 school blessing ceremonies in the next
eighteen months! One archdiocesan school hall is already complete. Was this the
first in Australia?
2009 began with terrible bushfires in Victoria and floods in Queensland, which
is not an unusual pattern in Australian history. The water storages of all
capital cities except Melbourne are now adequate, but drought continues in much
of country N.S.W. and the Murray-Darling river system is a disaster.
The dust storms in September reminded us that the summer could bring, not
surprises, but unpleasant developments.
Nonetheless prospects for 2010 look good as Australia does not have crippling
debts like Britain and the United States.
Happy New Year to all.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Christmas 2009
We
still have a few days before Christmas to do those last minute things - make
telephone calls to old friends, buy a few cards for those who weren't on our
list, but unexpectedly sent us a card. Perhaps to visit the sick or shut-ins.
Perhaps we still need to get around to making a donation to St. Vincent de Paul
to help the battlers as we promised ourselves we would earlier in Advent.
Christmas is a wonderful time and especially when it is blessed with family
peace. One sad story I heard was of a teenager in a juvenile reformatory who was
bullied, accused of "making it up" by his fellow inmates, when he boasted of a
happy Christmas celebration. They reckoned he was lying, because the
celebrations they attended were regularly ruined by strife and alcohol. We
should be conscious to invite those to join us who might be alone on Christmas
Day. People who understand Christianity build and maintain communities, the
heart of every structure.
Every celebration goes better when the preparation is sound. If Christmas is to
be a religious feast, a family gathering, a time for helping the battlers, we
have to prepare on all these fronts.
Part of my religious preparation usually is to attend a number of Christmas
celebrations of carols and readings and Handel's Messiah at the Opera House.
The Maroubra parish service with an orchestra, choir and soloists of university
students had an overflow congregation in the choir loft. The Director even gives
me a sermon draft, most of which I use. Bigger and better than ever.
The St. Mary's Cathedral Choir is the oldest surviving choir in Australia,
founded in 1817. Since we have placed the crib in the square in front of the
Cathedral where thousands of brochures are distributed the Cathedral has been
full each carol service. The programme is less populist than Maroubra's, but
beautiful and worthy of one of the best Church choirs in the country.
The music and singing at "the Messiah" was excellent as always, but the large
projections on the screen above the stage were something else, ranging from
distractions to disaster.
Some were a send-up, with Bob Menzies' face appearing as the Lord spoke, the
occasional priest wrapped in a Union Jack while a Catholic Eucharistic
procession complete with school cadet band made frequent appearances. Handel
cannot be reduced to the 1950s! I wasn't there for Bob Hawke conducting, but
that was a harmless gimmick.
Handel's Messiah is like Christmas. If you explicitly exclude God and the
Transcendent you are off key.
Happy Christmas to everyone.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Vegetarian
When
I was growing up I never met a vegetarian. Even today the idea makes me a bit
uneasy for reasons I don't fully understand. One of my bishop friends is a
vegetarian and he is distressingly normal, a thoroughly good bloke and amazingly
fit and healthy for his age.
Despite this counter example I was still relieved to discover that Hitler was a
vegetarian who predicted that the future of the world would be vegetarian. In
fact this might be a project for a next generation Human Rights Commission which
could sponsor a survey to establish that humans have no right to eat animal
meat!
Hitler took this vegetarianism from a German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche who
believed God was dead and that it was therefore absurd to claim that humans,
unlike animals, are made in God's image, unique in nature and superior to all
other forms of natural life.
If there is no God then humans are just another form of animal life, clever and
luckier than the other animals, but not essentially different. So extremist
Greens suggest that animal welfare is as important as human welfare and even
usually moderate Greens can argue that large projects, with consequences for the
wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of people, can be prohibited because of the
bad effects on some animals, such as turtles who breathe through their bottoms.
Political correctness warps traditional human understandings and damages our
sense of perspective. All of God's creation is good, although the law of the
jungle rules in nature, evidence of the cosmic flaw, of the original sin that
helps explain the food chain where species prey upon one another. Droughts,
bushfires, earthquakes remind us nature can be tough and capricious.
Humans are the centerpiece and crown of imperfect creation and animals can and
should be used for their welfare. The first followers of Christ were fishermen
and he sent them out to try again after they had fished in vain all night.
Christians are prohibited from being cruel to animals and share the universal
human obligation to respect the planet and preserve the environment for future
generations. Francis of Assisi is a Christian saint and genius and he believed
God came among us as a man, not as an angel, not as an animal.
Christians are humanitarians and humanists, because humans are central to
creation under God. Christians can be meat eaters or vegetarians but pretending
nature is like Disneyland is no substitute for God.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Seeing God
Some
years ago a grade six boy asked me what the Book of Exodus (33:23) means when
God said that Moses could only see his back and not his face. No human being can
see God and survive, God explained.
For many years I have fielded questions from students. Most are predictable,
some are babyish, but some senior primary questions are worthy of a
post-graduate theology seminar.
By a coincidence I had not long read the commentary of an ancient Christian
writer which explained that God could only be seen indirectly through the beauty
of his creation, in nature and people. The young man was satisfied with this
explanation of God's back.
I did not tell him about Christ's beatitude or teaching, found only in Matthew's
list and not in Luke's, that the pure in heart will see God. Experience would
contradict this claim, at least in this life. It is universally true that no one
has seen God.
The beatitudes and the curses listed in Luke are quite clear about reward and
punishment, which start in this life but are only completed in heaven. Therefore
God is seen differently in this life and in the next.
Because God is spirit and above ordinary creation (supernatural), he is
invisible and transcendent. There is nothing to see with our eyes. God is
loving, good and reasonable in ways beyond our imagination, because God is
infinite. God is not some up-market, super efficient physical cause, like the
trigger to the Big Bang.
All three monotheist religions Jews, Moslems and Christians believe the one true
God is as described above. But Christians have the great advantage of believing
God's Son took on a human nature and brought God down to our level.
In heaven when we shall see God as He is, (1 John 3:2) not unclearly as in this
life, our restored physical bodies and eyes will enable us to see Christ in the
flesh, and so reveal God's divine nature. Spiritually too we shall then have a
much richer intuition or experience of God.
In the meantime, before heaven, we can only accept God in the obscurity of
faith.
One mystery of our times is why an increasing minority find it hard to believe
in God. Is it because our way of life makes it more difficult than in past ages
to be "pure in heart"?
Are sexual irresponsibility and financial greed poisoning us and blinding the
eyes of our hearts to God?
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Advent
Christmas
decorations have been on display in some shops for weeks, but the Church season
of Advent only starts today.
Is this an example of the Christians being behind the times or another example
of moderation and balance, enough but not too much?
Organizations driven by profit are regularly tempted to excess. Are we
threatened by too much commercial pressure before Christmas?
When reminded, Christians know that Advent is the season of preparation for
Christmas, the most popular religious and holiday season of the year. But after
that, we have a variety of approaches.
Nearly two thirds of Australians are Christians and one third of the remainder
follow the other great faiths. One in five does not identify with any religious
group. This diversity is reflected in the Christmas festivities, but just about
everyone unites to ignore the spiritual tasks of the Advent season.
We admit that gardens need to be weeded, that plants need to be cut back, that
no one wants to become like a garden run to seed. But our daily life sweeps us
along, so that we are too busy or distracted to pause.
When people are seriously unwell, most find it difficult to pray or reflect
religiously, but when the sick are recuperating, we have a different situation.
In the enforced inactivity and silence God often speaks personally through
others or through events.
That is what we are anticipating at Advent: preparing religiously to celebrate
that God has spoken to us, come among us and lived with us. We need to pause and
listen.
Christians don't espouse a vague religiosity, an undemanding reverence for the
universe. The feast of Christmas celebrates the fact that the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, the same God of Moses and Elijah sent his son among us as a
little child 2000 years ago. This is not a fairy tale, not a myth, but a truth
claim.
Much of the commercial advertising for Christmas distracts us away from this
truth, as even Father Christmas is a fairy-tale successor to an ancient bishop.
But gift-giving is deeply Christian, especially when the less fortunate are
included and most of the popular carols have a good message.
Not many attempt to fast through the series of Christmas breakups and parties,
but nothing is preventing serious believers from meditating regularly on the
mystery of the one true God coming down to our level as his Son took on human
nature.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: White Ribbon Day 2009
Some
are born with a quick temper, others with a longer fuse, and yet another group
are regularly placid. Self control induces us to channel our indignation
productively and learn from our mistakes. Forgiveness, especially early on,
prevents the build up of hate.
No one is morally better under the influence of alcohol and drugs and the worst
domestic violence is regularly committed under their influence.
Committing violence against someone we should love and protect is particularly
horrifying and baffling, especially violence against children. Violence
committed by one spouse or partner against the other is also disgraceful,
whatever the excuse offered and whatever the provocation.
Men have no monopoly on violence, and there are men and children who suffer
violence from the women they live with. However most domestic violence is
committed by men against women and about 60 per cent of this is from partners or
ex-partners.
One estimate in 2004 put the annual cost of domestic violence at $8.1 billion,
once the costs to the victims, others affected by the violence, and the
community were totalled up. A VicHealth study from the same year claimed that
domestic violence contributed more to poor health, disability and death for
women under 45 than any other risk factor, including obesity and smoking.
Tuesday is White Ribbon Day, or the United Nations International Day for the
Elimination of Violence against Women. The United Nations is not perfect and
some of its initiatives leave much to be desired, but I have been proud to be a
White Ribbon Ambassador since 2005. Domestic violence is always unacceptable,
whether it is men or women who suffer. Controlling violence in society is hard
work, and if we allow ourselves to get used to violence generally, it becomes
harder to maintain the veto, the taboo against violence towards women in an age
of alleged sexual equality.
This year's White Ribbon campaign is encouraging men to take an oath never to
commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women. It is a bit like
the Pledge which Catholics once made never to drink alcohol. The Pledge
undoubtedly contributed to reducing drunken violence, which was also one reason
for taking it.
Regular forgiveness is needed in every family. But it is surprising the
difference that a strong personal commitment to avoid evil and do good can make,
both to ourselves and to those who see how we live. It is something to ponder.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Seminarian
Outsiders
who do not know the Catholic Church well are sometimes surprised to discover the
number and variety of Catholic subgroups. Hundreds of religious orders and
thousands of lay groups coexist.
New groups are always popping up, while others have run their course.
One such group is the Neo-Catechumenal Way which has 22 young men preparing to
be priests at Pagewood.
One such seminarian, Italian born, has just gone to Alotau in the south east
corner of Papua New Guinea.
He is discovering this world, totally different from Italy and Australia, from
the back of a ute as he travels along bumpy roads with breath taking scenery on
every side. The children were bare foot, busy with their play and nearly
everyone walks.
He sailed to visit the isolated Ferguson Island accompanied by dolphins swimming
next to the boat, where Australian Missionaries of the Sacred Heart planted the
faith.
Many have worked there for thirty or forty years. Luca’s letter explains "Now
they are seventy or eighty years old but they are like pillars, all children of
the Australian Church. They left home when they were young and they have spent
all their lives among the poor living as poor themselves. They have not only
brought the Gospel but also they have lived it. It is beautiful to see them now.
Many of them are almost deaf and with sight problems (due to the treatment
against malaria that they have undergone".
He also described their living conditions "They live in a very simple house made
of logs of wood and panels covered with palm leaves, which is just a little bit
better than the sheds in which the locals live. Inside of the house, there is
neither drinkable water nor hot water. Power is available only between 7 and 9
in the evening. There is no electricity for the rest of the day, no phone and
the only means of communication is the radio. There is no toilet. The only
comfort in the house is the mosquito net on top of the bed. When the power goes
off, the little town gets completely shrouded in darkness and the sound of the
generator disappears. There are neither cars nor streets. The only noise that is
left is that of the animals. The house also is jammed with little – and not so
little – animals."
I share his profound admiration for these fine men and the wonderful nuns who
share their work.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Life After Death?
Recently
I was chatting with a couple of friends, all of us in our late sixties.
No one had too much to complain about except crook backs and knees. All had
played a lot of sport and the others had worked hard physically. The verdict was
that growing old is not easy. "But it's better than the alternative" was one
comment.
As I had heard that remark quite a few times, I had decided that I should say
something in response to encourage a few distinctions.
"We might be surprised" I ventured, "Heaven should be much better".
Everyone laughed while the third member added that heaven would need to be
better, "otherwise we could have lived quite differently!"
It wasn't the time to point out that the wages of sin begin in this life,
because he would have agreed instantly. But the conversation was an interesting
example of how we run together death and dying, which we instinctively dislike
and the hope of heaven, which we tend to ignore in everyday conversation.
November is the month the Catholic Church uses to remind us of the reality of
life after death by urging us to pray for the "also rans" so they may be
purified and so enter God's presence (the feast of All Souls) and by urging us
to honour the model Christians on the feast of All Saints.
If we are too attached to the goods of this life, if our first priority is money
or possessions, then we find it harder to believe in the reality of life after
death.
If God is slipping, if his voice is receding, Christ's promises of reward and
punishment also become more uncertain.
Among the minority who are atheists many object to the idea of a personal God
who would judge our lives after death. They need to be reminded gently that "the
Great Escape" happened only once and that was in the Second World War, when
allied prisoners of war broke out of Colditz castle. Christians do not believe
that anyone escapes judgement - from a just and merciful God.
When I go back to the chapel of my old school, a large 1950's building now
beautifully restored, I always pray for the repose of the souls of the school's
"old boys", especially those who studied with me who might need a prayer now.
We should not forget our family and friends who have gone ahead.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Anglicans
Relationships
between the Christian Churches in Australia have improved enormously during the
last forty years, since the Catholic Church opened up to ecumenism.
The old Catholic versus Protestant bitterness which plagued Australia's history
is almost gone. Just recently a Catholic chaplaincy team at a university told me
they got on very well with all groups and especially the Moslems, but the
Evangelicals were standoffish! Such Evangelical hostility is the exception.
Ecumenism starts by recognizing what is held in common and the overlap between
Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox is enormous despite cultural divergences.
These happy developments are the background for the recent announcement in the
Vatican and by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic Archbishop
of Westminster in London of a new world-wide scheme for Anglicans who want to
join the Catholic Church as groups.
This decision by Pope Benedict was preceded by formal and informal discussions
and came in response to many Anglican expressions of interest. Cardinal Levada
who led the Catholic negotiating team explained that twenty to thirty Anglican
bishops have made initial approaches and we also have the enthusiasm of the
Traditional Anglican Church leadership for the scheme. They claim a membership
of 400,000 worldwide. I am not sure how many Anglicans in Australia might be
interested.
In this scheme Anglican groups or parishes will be full members of the Catholic
Church, but would continue with their own traditions of liturgy, spirituality
and church life. Such groupings could be spread widely and haphazardly, but will
have their own leader or bishop and be substantially independent of the local
Catholic bishop as they co-operate together under the leadership of the Pope. A
common faith and the acceptance of the teachings of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church will be obligatory.
While many details are yet to be finalized married former Anglican clergy will
be eligible for ordination as Catholic priests, but the Catholic and Orthodox
traditions will be followed so that all bishops will be unmarried.
Ecumenical dialogue and co-operation will continue, although the Anglican and
Catholic Churches are further apart because of the decision by Anglicans to
ordain women and practising homosexuals. It is some of these Anglicans who
cannot accept these departures from New Testament teaching who are investigating
joining the Catholic Church.
All this could constitute one of the most significant developments since the
tragic divisions under Henry VIII in the sixteenth century.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: The Gold Standard for Family Life
It's
much easier when there are two parents to look after the children. They get an
enormous head-start when both their parents bring them up together effectively
and affectionately.
About three-quarters of Australian children grow up with both their natural
parents. Another eight per cent grow up in step- or "blended" families, created
when one of their parents re-partners with someone with their own children, or
with whom they have more children.
The remaining eighteen per cent are brought up by one parent only, usually the
mother.
I have immense respect for single parents who have to work so much harder with
so little support to bring up their children. I feel for them, especially when
they find themselves in this situation through no fault of their own.
Relationships do break down but this is not what most people are hoping for when
they start a relationship, and particularly when they decide to have children.
No one should be forced to stay in an abusive or violent relationship, which can
also be disastrous for children.
But we need to pay more attention to the costs that marriage and family
breakdown bring to everyone: children first of all, but also parents and the
wider community.
There is now a mountain of evidence proving what most people know from common
sense: marriage is streets ahead of every other relationship or family form in
maximising happiness, well-being and success for adults and children.
Communities where most families are based on marriage are stronger and happier
than other communities.
While 73 per cent of Australian children are being brought by their natural
parents, not all of them are married. The Bureau of Statistics talks of "couple
families" which include not only married couples, but de facto and same-sex
couples as well! Why the ABS has made this strange choice is unclear. It
certainly makes it difficult to find out how many children are being brought up
by their married natural parents.
In 1955 98 per cent of children were born to married parents. Today it is
something like two out of three. This is significant because de facto couples
break up at a much higher rate than married couples, making for more
single-parent families.
Marriage is based on a commitment. Cohabitation is something people drift into
and stay in from inertia. When the pressure is on, commitment beats drift every
time.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Human Rights
Many
years ago I attended a school famous (or infamous) for producing many fine
Aussie Rules footballers and many priests.
A major part of the school's football success was a champion coach, who taught a
then unusual play-on game, but he had one good conservative principle. He was
reluctant to change a winning side.
Australia was recently ranked the second best country in the world after Norway.
Apparently climate was not one of the criteria!
Recently a National Human Rights Committee, made up of like minded members,
released a report recommending that Australia adopt a charter or statutory bill
of rights, whereby parliamentary legislation would be reviewed to ensure its
conformity with the charter.
This would change a winning side. If implemented, it could do to the Rudd
government what Work Choices did to John Howard.
The recommendations are long-winded, and vague ("no one shall be arbitrarily
deprived of life"). Within a week the chairman conceded one key mechanism for
the charter was not going to be workable.
The Charter transfers power from the elected lawmakers the parliamentarians to
unelected judges. When judges are there to implement the law, it makes sense for
them not to be elected, but chosen by governments for their competence and
integrity. If judges were seen to be interfering excessively in law making,
people would want to elect them also.
Why would parliamentarians hand over their power to judges, except perhaps
because some believed judges could impose through their rulings what could not
be achieved by a parliamentary vote?
I fear a charter could be used or abused to limit all sorts of freedom, and
religious freedom. Already in Victoria legislation is attempting to coerce
prolife doctors to co-operate in abortions. However that government will answer
for this in the next and subsequent elections. It will be much harder to oppose
judges, given our respect for the judiciary.
We should always remember that there is no consensus on any list of human
rights; not even on some meanings. What does the right to life mean?
Nor is there agreement on the foundations of human rights; no acceptance of any
common human nature.
If human rights are government grants, people have a right to reward or punish
the government who creates or withdraws any such right.
Governments should not be allowed to slide this responsibility to judges, who
are quite properly shielded from the immediate judgement of the people.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
A
friend asked me recently when I had first heard of a tsunami. I replied that I
had noticed the term after an earthquake off the northern Papua-New Guinea coast
devastated their shorelines in 1998.
He had only noticed the word after the catastrophic tsunami in Indonesia, Sri
Lanka and Burma in 2004 and was surprised that now we have seen another in
Samoa. It seemed a bit much. In fact there were five earthquakes on successive
days recently in Asia and the Pacific on the tectonic fault lines, and three
fierce typhoons in East Asia. Whenever these disasters strike in populated
areas, sudden deaths, injuries and long-term suffering eventuate. All Manila is
flooded.
In the beatitudes Jesus does not say that those who suffer are blessed, but
those who mourn and those who weep. Matthew has him adding immediately that the
mourners will be comforted, while Luke has Jesus explaining that those who weep
will laugh. Matthews version makes more sense.
Christians are not masochists who love suffering. Neither was Jesus, who
disliked pain in himself and others and regularly helped sufferers through his
healing miracles, his kindness and his teaching.
Suffering is like climate change. It will always be with us. But both are
unpredictable as we don't know what is coming next and human causality is often
uncertain and disputed.
We all know that some limited suffering can bring benefits, like the hurt from a
dentist's drill. Even a good hard scrub on a grubby child can work wonders! But
the beatitude means more than this.
I found the commentaries of the early Christian writers on this passage
unexpected and surprising. In their view, the blessed are those who mourn for
their own sins and the sins of others.
Today many of us are more irritated and disappointed by failure or inefficiency
or misfortune such as sickness than by personal sins. And the word “sin” is not
in the vocabulary of some people!
Genuine repentance is always blessed by God's forgiveness and this usually
brings peace of heart in this life. The early commentators are correct here, but
I think there is more to the story.
Leaving to one side those who are sorry only for themselves, Christ is saying
that those who mourn with good reason will have their tears wiped away. Justice
and love will triumph in the next life because God has a special love for the
unfortunate.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Why Are The Poor Blessed?
Most
of us have heard of Christ's saying "Blessed are the poor", words which are
diametrically opposed to the Australian dream.
Australia is a country of immigrants and the children of immigrants, as even the
aborigines came here, probably from India, tens of thousands of years ago.
Migrants travel to strange countries in search of work or land, but especially
for a better future for their children. They want to escape poverty and in our
type of society, free and prosperous, many are able to achieve this for their
children or grandchildren.
The great Australian dream means upward social mobility and over our history we
have experienced a steadily improving standard of living.
For twenty years now I have travelled overseas a good deal and at one stage I
was regularly in Third World countries for development work. But even by First
World standards, most Australians don't realize how well off we are.
The Catholic Church too fights poverty, especially through our network of
schools. Does all this activity fly in the face of Jesus' teaching that the
Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the blessed poor?
When people do not believe in life after death but do believe that God is good,
the scales of justice have to work out in this life. In ancient times many of
the Jewish people thought in this way believing the successful deserved to be
blessed, while those in trouble were there because of their own sins, or the
sins of their ancestors.
Therefore one of the main ambitions of Jesus in outlining the beatitudes was to
tell the battlers, the disadvantaged that they were not cursed, but eligible for
blessings because they too belonged to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In fact in some mysterious way the poor, provided they are not embittered, not
jealous of those more prosperous than themselves are at a considerable advantage
in God's eyes over the proud and arrogant.
For Jesus and his followers this world of daily living is not the be-all and
end-all. Daily life is mightily important and should be beautiful, but it is not
the end of the story.
Critics claim that Christianity is only good for life's losers. Two thousand
years of achievement disprove this, but Christianity does not endorse pagan
common sense, where the powerful take what they can and the weak give what they
must.
Christ offers hope to the poor in spirit.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: The Blessed
Christ
is not a surname or family name like Smith or Nguyen, two of the most common
names now in the Sydney White Pages.
Christ means the anointed one; a title the early Christians gave to Jesus, the
son of Mary and Joseph, to indicate he was the Messiah, the long awaited
religious and political saviour. In other words, it is a name he earned because
of his achievements as teacher, healer and religious leader.
Jesus' teachings on God, love and salvation are remarkable and beautiful. I
often suggest that interested enquirers should start with Jesus' parables,
although they can be baffling. But the beatitudes constitute another rich set of
teachings.
These sayings are collected in two different, but overlapping versions in
Matthew's (ch5) and Luke's (ch6) gospels. For Matthew it was the sermon on the
Mount, while Luke has Jesus speaking on the plain.
In the beatitudes Jesus describes three groups as happy or blessed. I prefer
"Blessed" as a better translation of the Greek of the gospels, because it is
difficult enough to work out how those who mourn or those who are persecuted can
be said to be blessed, but it is not feasible to describe them as happy.
Jesus was a provocative teacher who made people think, delighting some and
infuriating others. While his categories of people overlap somewhat, we might
distinguish three different groups who are described as blessed.
The first group are praised for their personal qualities; the gentle, merciful,
pure in heart and poor in spirit.
The second group are doers, workers for justice and peacemakers, while it is the
third group who throw up the biggest challenges.
Those who mourn, those who are abused and calumniated for doing the right thing,
those who speak up for Christ are all described as blessed.
Luke's version provides another set of difficulties with a list of woes or
curses because it is not murderers or rapists or drug traffickers who are
rejected, but the rich, the well fed, those who are laughing and those who are
praised by all!
The beatitudes do not constitute the whole of Christ's teaching, but they are
one essential element which wrestles with the problem of suffering. They
explicitly endorse the notions of reward or punishment for our activities and
life after death has to be part of the picture for them to be understood.
They encapsulate something of the values of heaven; not this world's common
sense.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Women in Combat
There's
a push at the moment to allow women in the Australian Defence Force to serve in
front-line combat positions. It is one of the silliest ideas of the year so far,
but silly ideas can have serious consequences.
It is not clear how strong this push is. Perhaps someone is just flying a kite
or looking for a research grant. But like the suggestion that polygamy should be
legalised, women in combat is an idea that needs to be refuted strongly and
concisely. Like polygamy, it would change women's lives - and Australia -
immeasurably for the worse.
Women's strength and ingenuity, their courage and capacity for self-sacrifice,
are not in question. Women often display all these in greater quantities than
men. But do we really want to expose those who are the source of life and love
in human communities to the horror of the battlefield, just so the defence
bureaucracy can meet recruitment targets and feminists can tick another item off
their equality agenda?
It's bad enough that men have to take on the burden of combat, often at the cost
of a terrible death or shocking disability. Many who return from battle
physically untouched often suffer from post-traumatic stress for years with
devastating consequences. The effects on children whose mothers have been
crippled by PTS after combat does not bear considering.
Western soldiers taken prisoner or hostage on the battlefield can expect little
mercy in today's wars. Women combat soldiers could expect even less, especially
if they fell into the hands of misogynistic enemies like the Taliban or the
militias in Somalia and Sudan.
What happens if Australia reintroduces conscription in the future? Obviously all
draftees, men and women, could be sent to the front-line. What a great victory
for women's rights that would be.
Men have no monopoly on violence, aggression, and insensitivity, but young men
particularly are streets ahead of women on this score. It's nothing
praiseworthy, but it does mean that men are generally better equipped for
fighting when the need arises than women.
Likewise, women don't have the franchise on peacemaking, negotiating and
nurturing, but they clearly have more than a competitive advantage in these
areas compared to men. Do we really have to spell these things out?
We have spent almost half a century pretending the differences between men and
women don't matter. We would do well to remember that while God always forgives,
and people sometimes forgive, nature never forgives.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Alcohol in Australia
As
someone who grew up in a pub and enjoys a glass of wine, I don't think I could
be called a wowser. But you can always have too much of a good thing – in the
case of alcohol, with devastating consequences.
Since 2000, alcohol-related hospital admissions for 18-24 year olds have
increased 130 per cent – 200 per cent for women. 40,000 people in New South
Wales are admitted to hospital annually with alcohol-related injuries and
illnesses.
Some people argue that alcohol advertising should be banned, as it is for
cigarettes. A drastic suggestion, but the federal government estimates it would
reduce road deaths by 30 per cent and the broader social costs of alcohol abuse
by $3.86 billion each year.
Death, injury and illness, from alcohol cause suffering enough. But there's
more: the assaults and violence inside and outside pubs and clubs, the abuse and
misery for families and loved ones at home.
In their new book, Under the Influence, Ross Fitzgerald and Trevor Jordan focus
on the link between sport and alcohol in Australia, especially in advertising,
but also in the culture of binge-drinking that sometimes leads elite sports
people to public and private shame. Major sporting codes are working with the
federal government to address this.
The effects of alcohol on Indigenous Australians have been disastrous, and
Fitzgerald and Jordan's chapter on this is fascinating. Prior to the 1967
referendum which granted Aborigines full citizenship, supplying alcohol to them
was often prohibited. Citizenship rights became associated with "drinking
rights", with consequences that still bedevil the response to alcohol abuse in
Aboriginal communities.
Interestingly, the Aboriginal population includes high numbers of both
non-drinkers and people who drink at dangerous levels. 37 per cent have either
never drunk or are ex-drinkers, compared to 22 per cent for non-Aborigines.
A further welcome challenge to stereotypes is that only 33 per cent of
Aborigines are regular drinkers, compared to 45 per cent of non-Aborigines. But
in this group, 68 per cent drink at high-risk levels compared to 11 per cent for
non-Aborigines.
Among young and under-age drinkers, ready-to-drink spirits and alcopops are a
major concern. In many of them the alcohol cannot be tasted, so they are
consumed quickly and in quantity, and have been designed exactly for this.
Wrestling with the demon drink has been part of the Australian story from the
beginning. The pendulum has swung too far one way. We are long overdue for a
correction.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: The Kennedys
All
Australians around my age remember the Kennedys.
For those who were young in the 1960s, especially if they were Catholic and of
Irish blood, the triumphs and the tragedies of the Kennedys evoke bitter sweet
memories. They showed what poor immigrant families could achieve in a few
generations in the New World, but they paid a price asked of few families.
Edward, the recently deceased Senator was the youngest of the nine children of
Joe Kennedy, a Boston multimillionaire and of Rose Fitzgerald, a formidable and
deeply Catholic woman. She told another old Catholic lady who complained of
depression to say a few decades of the rosary and have a face lift!
Joe Jr. the oldest boy was killed while serving in WWII, John became president
of the United States and was assassinated in 1963. Bob was Attorney General,
later a presidential candidate and in 1968 was also assassinated.
Nearly everyone claims to remember where they were when they heard President
Kennedy had been shot. I can't, but his death was felt like a personal blow. I
met Bobby Kennedy on Capitol Hill in 1967, and admired him most of all. When he
too was shot I was angry for a long time with the country which would allow this
to happen. An irrational response, but what I felt.
The Kennedy mystique still lingers. Their graves at Arlington regularly draw
large crowds and when I went to brief John Brogden, then Liberal Opposition
leader, on World Youth Day, I was surprised to find all the photos in his office
were of the Kennedys. They dominated our conversation.
Teddy Kennedy's own life had its share of drama, disorder and tragedy, but he
died at peace with the Church, consoled by the Sacraments.
As an effective Senator he espoused many good causes, ranging from peace in
Northern Ireland to the struggle for a universal system of health care. But the
tragedy of his life was abandoning his traditional Catholic social conservatism.
His support for abortion and neglect of the institutions of marriage and family
contradicted his work for the poor. The priests who counselled the leadership of
the Democrats years ago that legislating for abortion is legitimate bear a heavy
responsibility.
Even the push for a U.S.A. medicare programme is bedevilled by the determination
to entrench abortion even further and prepare the ground for euthanasia.
Edward Kennedy left a mixed legacy. May he rest in peace.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Dead Silence or Blind Eye
Most
youngsters have heard of Hitler and his infamous programme of extermination
against the Jews, although many are uncertain whether he started the First or
Second World War!
What is unusual is that almost no Australian youngster knows about Stalin,
unless his background is Polish or East European.
Stalin, the Russian Communist dictator, was responsible for at least as many
deaths as Hitler. Unlike Hitler, he had many of his inner circle executed. But
it is still interesting that he does not rank in the public imagination with
Hitler as a moral monster.
This forms one part of a coherent pattern because for all the seventy plus years
of the Communist empire in Europe (which was sustained by violence, lies,
religious persecution and hundreds of concentration camps), progressive and
elite opinion refused to face the facts and ignored or denied monstrous evils.
Anti-Communists were often abused, ridiculed. Some claimed that our Western
world was as bad as the Communists. The will to disbelieve flourished.
American writer Mary Eberstadt has recently pointed out that today we are in the
midst of another revolution, also driven by bad ideas, which is damaging our
societies and which the same progressive opinion refuses to acknowledge.
Many regard the sexual revolution as unambiguous evidence of progress and
liberation, because non-marital sex has been legitimized so that sexual activity
is one example of hygienic recreation.
Today's intellectuals are denying the costs of the sexual revolution, rejecting
the abundant evidence that the fruits are worst for women and children, whether
they be fetuses destroyed by abortion or adolescent victims.
Rock music and rap take their themes from the chaos; broken families and homes,
their mothers' abusive boyfriends, sexual predators.
Who today makes any connection between the liberation sexual promiscuity
promised on the one hand and the steady rise of sexually transmitted diseases
(and consequent infertility) or the difficulties women have in finding a loyal
steady boyfriend or a good husband?
Young men are the champions of sexual freedom, because the virus for them is
slower to act. They often seem short-term winners but divorced men have much
higher rates of depression and alcoholism, while the children of the divorced
generally are not as happy, law-abiding or successful as the children of intact
families. Why are so many young men suiciding?
Disbelief in the evidence is always dysfunctional, always causes damage, whether
a person is irreligious or religious. Young people need truth.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Euthanasia
Christian
Rossiter from Perth has terrible quadriplegia, acquired after a series of falls.
He is unable to clear his throat or wipe the tears from his eyes, and can only
take food and water through a tube in his stomach.
Once active and adventurous, he is now confined to a wheel chair. He says his
life is a living hell. His suffering is enormous.
Mr Rossiter has asked his carers at least 40 times to stop feeding him so he can
die. On 16 August, the Supreme Court of Western Australia said that they can
comply with this request without breaking the law.
Chief Justice Martin made it clear that his ruling was not about euthanasia, or
doctors assisting patients to commit suicide, or "the right to life or even the
right to death". It was strictly based on the right of every mentally competent
person to refuse medical treatment.
There is an immense difference between refusing medical treatment, particularly
when the burden outweighs any possible benefits, and actively putting an end to
someone's life.
God is the master of life. It is not ours to end. But we are not obliged to
prolong suffering with excessive or extraordinary means.
Food and water is a basic right and it is strange to consider it a form of
medical treatment. It is really basic care, like shelter and warmth. Should we
allow people to die by depriving them of shelter, if this is what they ask for?
Often there are better ways of helping. Inadequate pain relief, insufficient
care and attention, loneliness, and depression are some major reasons why
terminally ill people ask to die.
Mr Rossiter is not terminally ill, and he has not yet decided to refuse food and
water. Importantly, the court ruled that if he does any drugs given to ease his
discomfort must not hasten or cause his death.
Since then it has been reported that Mr Rossiter is seeking advice from
euthanasia fanatic Philip Nitschke about travelling to a euthanasia clinic in
Switzerland. I hope he can find better advice and help.
This is a tragic and heart-rending case, but respect for human life is of the
first importance. The Dutch experience shows that once euthanasia starts it is
impossible to prevent involuntary euthanasia.
Asking to end one's life is a cry for help. All of us need to know we are loved,
valued and needed, especially when we are suffering.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Suicide
Recently
a secondary school in Geelong, Victoria has lost four students through suicide
in six months. What can we do to prevent such tragedies and help the families
and friends of the deceased?
The news is bad, but probably somewhat better than it was ten years ago,
although six Australians still die from suicide each day, more than from
fatalities on the road and the suicide rate for males is three or four times
higher than for females. The suicide rate for young Australian men is among the
highest in the world.
The Christian conviction that the one true God loves everyone, especially those
in trouble, should be and often is a help to those tempted to despair, but deep
clinical depression can be overwhelming.
The Christian teaching is clear that God is the master of human life, which is
not ours to dispose of. Suicide also causes immense suffering to the family. The
suicide of a child is one of the worst blows to befall parents.
In the past Catholic Church law forbade funeral services for suicides. Pastoral
practice was often milder and this harsh law was changed for a number of
reasons, especially because we understand mental illness better now and
diminished moral responsibility.
Autopsy studies have revealed that up to ninety per cent of suicides may have
been experiencing a mental disorder at the time of their death. And we have the
new factor of drugs such as cannabis which is a long term depressant.
The tragic nature of teenage suicides means that they are often followed by big
public funerals. This is understandable but regrettable because it
unintentionally "glamorizes" suicide for the young.
A Catholic bishop from the Pacific told me that in his island diocese they were
troubled by an increase in young suicides. Being a local and not a missionary,
he was able to take the radical step of prohibiting Catholic funerals for
suicide victims. He told me the rate then dropped dramatically.
Different remedies work for different communities but suicide is always a
tragedy, never heroic, even for Christians who believe in life after death and
that God is loving and merciful.
Many groups such as Lifeline (13114), Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800),
CatholicCare's Parent Line (1300 1300 52) are able to help while the Salvation
Army in Chatswood also does excellent work through their Bereaved by Suicide
Service (9419 8694).
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Blessed Mary MacKillop
Yesterday
we celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Mother Mary of the
Cross.
We know her better as Blessed Mary MacKillop, because Pope John Paul II declared
her "blessed" in 1995, which is one stage short of being officially proclaimed a
saint. It is almost completely certain that she will become our first publicly
recognized Australian saint and we hope Pope Benedict will make this declaration
soon.
It is not easy to become a saint, not merely because it takes hard work to
follow Christ's teachings heroically across a lifetime, but because the Vatican
conducts a detailed examination of the evidence over many years.
To help him in this task the Pope has a Vatican department, the Congregation for
the Saints, which decides not merely that the person proposed has done wonderful
good works but also that they were persons of exemplary faith and prayer, hope
and love.
Therefore a saint is an outstanding follower of Jesus Christ, a model for
everyone of how to live a full Catholic life.
Often Catholics have a devotion to a particular saint, because they admire the
way that saint lived or because they feel that particular saint in heaven would
understand them, listen to their prayers and intercede for them with Jesus
Christ.
Naturally Catholics do not worship the saints, because only the one true God,
Father, Son and Spirit, is worthy of our deepest reverence and highest love.
Like all Christians, Catholics worship the one true God alone, but they admire
the saints, respect their example and ask for their prayers. Mary the mother of
Jesus is the greatest saint, but there is an infinity of difference between the
majesty of God and even the most wonderful of Christ's followers.
A saint has to live the Christian virtues in an heroic way, but often they live
ordinary lives, doing their small daily tasks extraordinarily well.
Saints need not be persons who come from other countries and from distant ages.
Mary MacKillop already has a significant following outside the Catholic
community, because all Australians recognize her as one of their own
Every community needs its home-grown heroes, local models to encourage us in the
right direction and we can tell what a person is from his friends and from those
he admires.
Even religious commentators can exaggerate the secular nature of Australian
life. How many people realize that Sydney is clearly the most religious capital
city in Australia, despite the spin merchants chanting about "sin city"?
Even fifty years ago Australia had one or two Irish bishops who would not accept
Australian-born men to study for the priesthood, because they were too wild!
Mary is an antidote to those misapprehensions, secular or religious; Australian
born, practical and a saint.
She was born in Melbourne on 15 January 1842 in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, the
eldest of eight children of Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald, who had
emigrated - separately - from the western highlands of Scotland a few years
earlier. By happy choice in the year 2000 the Archdiocese of Melbourne opened
the Mary of the Cross Centre for the support of families suffering from the
effects of drug and alcohol abuse on the site of her birthplace.
Mary was baptized at St. Francis' Church, Lonsdale Street, and grew up in the
then-fledgling settlement of Melbourne where local legend has it, that she and
her brothers and sisters played under the gum tree outside St. Francis' after
Mass on Sundays. That gum was used to construct the bishop's chair in St.
Patrick's Cathedral.
Working as a governess in Penola, South Australia, she came under the influence
of the local priest, an unusual English geologist, Father Julian Tenison Woods
and together they founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart.
She started her first school in 1866 when Australian education was something of
a shambles before the "free, compulsory and secular" reforms of the 1870s. In
eighteen months she gained ten followers and a year later there were thirty nine
sisters.
By the time of her death in 1909, she had established 109 houses, staffed by 650
sisters teaching 12,400 pupils in 117 schools across Australia and New Zealand.
She was often sick, regularly short of money, excommunicated by one bishop and
expelled from Adelaide by another. Some of her nuns opposed her, a division
arose between the "Brown Joeys" under her control and the "Black Joeys"
controlled by the bishops, she was wrongly accused of drinking too much brandy
and Father Woods finished up refusing to speak to her.
But she prayed and persevered, never lapsed into bitterness, regularly spoke
well of her opponents and her work prospered.
God blessed her in her troubles. She will be a worthy saint, an important first
for Australia.
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: A Blessing for Expectant Mothers
Some
young adults today are afraid of having children, uncertain of the benefits or
uncertain of their capacity to cope as parents.
Many reasons are proposed for this, but underneath lies a lack of confidence in
the goodness of life, a lack of hope. The baby boom after the Second World War,
when fifty million people were killed, was an unexpected explosion of hope. I
remember being in Cambodia not long after Pol Pot was defeated and there were
youngsters everywhere.
The widening of educational opportunity for women as well as men is a blessing
and most young women today hope for a career or at least useful employment as
well as marriage and children. But this is always hard work and every woman has
to give priority to one option or the other at different times.
Not much can be said to those (mercifully few) who don't want children for
purely selfish reasons, such as cost or limits to their life style; except to
ask them to think again.
But young adults have often suffered the effects of their parents' divorce, or
seen such damage in their extended family and don't want to inflict this on
their own children.
Sometimes they doubt their own capacity to be good parents, to cope with the
lifelong demands of their children as they grow up. In most cases, the awareness
of such a possible problem is evidence that they would be able to manage, even
if special help and regular prayer were needed.
In August last year at St. Mary's Cathedral we announced a special Sunday Mass
and blessing afterwards for pregnant mothers. We publicized the Mass, but did
not receive much feedback, fearing that only a few mums-to-be would turn up. In
fact I individually blessed about 120 mothers.
A similar Mass and blessing for expectant mothers will be celebrated next Sunday
at 10.30am at St. Mary's.
Every mother will be welcome because every pregnant woman and her baby deserve
to be honoured and loved.
Our society is changing so quickly and we are subjected to so many cranky
influences, that no basic truths or values can be taken for granted. We have to
work to protect them.
All Christians should follow Pope Benedict's advice and work to "build a climate
of joy and confidence in life, a climate in which children are seen not as a
burden, but rather as a gift for all".
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Charity and Truth
"Charity
in Truth" is the title of Pope Benedict's recent encyclical letter on social
justice. It is a good title, but linking both together in practice can be
difficult.
Especially since Pope Leo XIII's famous letter "Rerum Novarum" in 1891 on the
Industrial Revolution, the popes have written regularly on public life.
Pope Benedict's letter has not provoked a storm of publicity or controversy, but
it has been well received.
I found it an unusual encyclical because it broke very little new ground, while
it echoed some of Pope Benedict's principal concerns, such as the necessity of
God and love for society's well being and the importance of continuity and
development in understanding Catholic history and doctrine. In other words the
Catholic Church did not reinvent itself at the Second Vatican Council in the
1960s, and did not reject its earlier history.
Pope Benedict does not look on the New Testament as providing a set of answers
for situations which it did not discuss, perhaps because they did not then
exist. These have to be developed from general principles and specific prudent
actions.
An accurate diagnosis, using our reason to recognize truth, is necessary before
our charity or faith can be effective.
Many of those who work for social justice were sympathetic also to the Pope's
concern for the physical environment. But too many passed over in silence the
Pope's linking of life issues, of marriage and family to social justice, his
rejection of abortion and euthanasia on justice grounds. A proper moral ecology
is not just limited to financial matters (although honest, hard working people
are vital for prosperity), but requires freedom for religious discussion, an
acknowledgement of the sanctity of life and a recognition of our duties as well
as our rights. We have a duty to future generations to use resources prudently
and not damage the environment.
This letter draws on Pope Paul VI's 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio, which
emphasized the redistribution of wealth to the poor. It was something of a
surprise that so little was said of the present world-wide financial crisis of
capitalism, where 40 per cent of the world's wealth evaporated and where debt
levels across the globe are three times what they were in the 1980s.
The Pope insists that good intentions are not enough and that we have to be
using a proper understanding of human nature to make things better. Truth and
reason and needed with good will.
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Life on Other Planets
Is
there intelligent life in the universe beyond planet earth? Is this possible or
probable? A Christian might ask whether God could have created other
intelligences in other worlds.
The belief that the Creator God is good and reasonable was one important
foundation for scientific research into the laws of nature. If God was believed
to be evil or a liar or not interested in reason there would have been less
reason to look for nature's laws or mathematical theories.
Very early on Christianity decided that it was going to argue the truth of its
case. It accepted the ancient Greeks' respect for reason and truth. Christian
claims would not be reduced to mythology, which contains only some uncertain
hidden meaning. Christians assert that it is more reasonable to believe in one
God, who created and sustains the universe than to claim the universe came about
by chance.
Some Christian claims go beyond reason e.g. that Christ was divine as well as
human, but do not contradict reason. We need faith to accept these.
Today with the advance of science and technology, the development of radio
telescopes and space craft with cameras, we know immensely more about the
expanding universe than any of our ancestors.
Apparently more stars exist than all the grains of sand on the earth and
astronomers now claim that the observable universe extends for more than
thirteen billion light years. The earth is not the centre of the universe and
neither is the sun.
Nature is full of patterns, repetitions and regularities; the seasons, night and
day, while the laws of physics are universal. But so far, the only evidence for
intelligent life is found on planet earth. This is a spectacular anomaly.
Today some scientists are systematically scanning the universe for signs of
intelligent life e.g. radio signals, as well as searching for stars which might
have a planet like earth circling them. Some possible planets have been
discovered (or claims made to that effect), but no evidence of extra terrestrial
intelligent life has been uncovered.
Scientists have drawn up equations predicting the likelihood of intelligent life
elsewhere e.g. the Drake equation. But the accuracy of each of the factors in
the equation cannot be known. They are like computer models for future weather,
exercises in exaggeration and hyperbole.
I do not know any Christian teaching which would exclude the possibility of
other intelligent life, but we have no evidence of it whatsoever.
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Growing Old
Recently
a good friend surprised me by asking unexpectedly what I thought heaven would be
like. A practising Catholic, and a bit younger than me (about 60), she explained
that as you get older you wonder about these issues.
Everyone dies and an increasing number have to face the prospect of growing old,
since life expectancy increased by 27 years in the twentieth century.
Life is not equal, because for every 100 women aged 85, we find only 35 men.
Testosterone wears out the males! Children now regularly have more grandparents
than siblings. Nineteen of the oldest countries in the world are in Europe,
although Japanese society is very old too.
Acknowledging that a sense of humour continues to be useful in old age, we might
define the young old (65-74) as frisky, the middle old (75-84) as frail and
those over 85 as fragile.
Bitterness at any stage, but especially in old age, makes us unhealthy as well
as unhappy. As one grumpy old man explained: "At secondary school I was voted
most likely to hold a grudge and I have never forgiven them". What we all need
when we are old is a special hearing aid to filter out criticism and amplify
praise. I concede that such a hearing aid would be dangerous for those in
leadership positions, because leaders have to hear their critics and evaluate
the truth in their claims. But this is another story.
Many seniors have claimed to me that old age is not for wimps, as energy levels
diminish and parts wear out. Often the knees and hips are the first to go and
then sight and hearing decline. Serious illness usually strikes unexpectedly.
Today however many wonderful helps are available cheaply to encourage people to
live at home as long as possible. Company and friendship are always blessings
and family, friends and church groups who regularly visit the "shut-ins" are
performing important works of mercy.
Modern medicine now knows much more about ageing and also can effectively help
many suffering from anxiety or depression. Depression descends upon more women
than men, but often men are slower to seek help or recognize they are depressed.
However, it is only in the last fifteen years that gerontology courses have
acknowledged how important religion and spirituality are.
Belief in a good God and in the happiness of heaven mean that prayer brings
peace and strength.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Bishops
Bishops are an essential part of the Catholic Church and the Australian scene,
although many people would not be entirely sure what a bishop does.
Once in a while Catholic primary school children have asked me what my main job
was! One of the major chess pieces is the bishop, together with the king, queen,
and knights.
Nine days ago I was in Bathurst to consecrate the new Catholic bishop there and
a week ago I was in Brisbane for the 150th anniversary of the creation of that
diocese through the consecration of their first bishop in Dublin. Sydney is the
mother church for all the 28 Catholic dioceses in Australia.
We often forget how different, difficult and sometimes cruel Australian life
then was, especially for the aborigines and the men and women convicts.
1859 was also the year when Queensland separated from the colony of New South
Wales, although Brisbane only had a population of 6000 and was a notoriously
tough community, hosting the more difficult convicts. Queen's Wharf was logs by
the river and when James Quinn, an outspoken and quarrelsome Irishman, arrived
as the first Catholic bishop he famously asked where the town was!
Brisbane archdiocese now has more Catholics than Sydney archdiocese (although
Sydney city is divided into three dioceses).
At Bathurst 2000 people gathered in the giant hall-gymnasium of St. Stanislaus'
College, the second oldest boys' boarding school in Australia after Kings,
Parramatta. Incidentally Stannie's coat of arms incorporates the kangaroo and
the emu and the later Australian coat of arms was carefully designed not to
infringe their copyright.
The bishop was ordained by the ancient laying on of hands ceremony described in
the New Testament epistles. The music was excellent and the clergy and
representatives from the 21 parishes enthusiastic for a new chapter in the
story. The Anglicans rang their new Cathedral bells for the first time to
celebrate.
A bishop leads the Church as a successor of the twelve apostles, who were chosen
by Christ himself. He is the focus of unity locally and with the universal
Church through his obedience to the Pope, who makes the appointment.
He is an important teacher, who protects the integrity of apostolic teaching,
the chief priest through his celebration of the sacraments, especially
confirmation and the ordination of priests, and he is ruler, consoler and
supporter, the chief shepherd of his flock.
Bishops hold an ancient office, one of the very oldest.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Unintended Consequences
The
road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nobody is opposed to good
intentions, but even conscientious decisions can have unexpected and disastrous
consequences.
Nobody planned the world-wide financial collapse which destroyed forty per cent
of the world's wealth in six months. Remember the millennium bug when millions
of dollars was spent to avoid computer collapse as we moved from the second to
the third millennium?
Spreading deserts remain a major ecological challenge in Australia and
aggressive land clearing for crops and pasture was making the situation worse.
The great dust storms of the past are much less frequent now.
Is the Christian teaching on sexuality (and it is traditional Christian
doctrine, not an un-scriptural Catholic invention) that extra marital sexual
activity should be avoided and that husband and wife should be faithful
exclusively to one another a prime example of a well intentioned doctrine with
disastrous unintended consequences? Doesn't the Catholic opposition to the use
of condoms compound the ill effects?
When Pope Benedict warned about the consequences of encouraging condom use in
Africa about 4,000 largely hostile articles appeared world wide.
The accepted wisdom in the scientific community is that condoms lower the HIV
infection rate and they do provide protection in eighty or even ninety per cent
of the times when they are used.
But the statistics in Africa show that condoms do not lower the infection rate
there, because they encourage people to take greater risks (behavioral
disinhibition).
Therefore more and more African governments are endorsing policies which
emphasise the centrality of responsible personal decision making and the health
results are improving. Abstinence and fidelity, fewer sex partners make a
difference.
What do the statistics show in the Western world? Certainly safe sex campaigns
have brought welcome health gains in the battle against AIDS. But what else is
happening and why is it happening?
Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard
Centre for Population and Development Studies has written that "in every country
worldwide in which HIV has declined there have been increases in levels of
faithfulness and usually abstinence as well".
Many people in the Western world resist this message. In New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg has given away tens of millions of free condoms and the city
has an HIV rate three times the U.SA. national average. Is it implausible to
suggest that reckless behaviour might be increased by free condoms?
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Angels and Demons
I
was a bit disappointed that I enjoyed Dan Brown's film Angels and Demons and
found that it wasn't thoroughly anti-Catholic.
Everything happens with a rush in this middle brow ecclesiastical James Bond
without the sex. But it works and many people have seen it. No one I knew found
it boring.
The producers have learned from the mistakes made in the Da Vinci Code film,
which was slow, because the story-line in the Angels and Demons film is
apparently tighter than in the book.
The palaces and churches of the Vatican City and Rome provide a spectacular
setting for this gimmicky thriller. Nothing is straight forward as the action
moves in bizarre directions towards a double somersault of an ending. The fact
that the film was shot on sets constructed in California proves to be no
handicap.
The Illuminati are a secret society of intellectuals, scientific terrorists,
plotting violence and revenge against the Catholic Church, who killed their
predecessors four hundred years ago. In fact they were an unscientific Masonic
group, who wanted power and were closed down by the Bavarian police in the
1780s, but the film does not pretend to realism or historical accuracy.
Once again Robert Langdon, a remarkably athletic and practical professor of
symbology at Harvard University, is called in, this time by the Vatican to
investigate the murder of a scientist. The Pope has died and Langdon discovers
that a secret society plans to kill four cardinals and use anti-matter stolen
from Switzerland to blow up the Vatican. He rushes around Rome from clue to clue
in a convoy of cars and screeching tyres risking the life of every passer-by in
a progress which is implausible even by the standards of Roman traffic. The
worst is avoided, but some of the major players are not at all what they seem
and the hard line religious extremists are committed to violence.
Is the film anti-Catholic? The official Vatican newspaper described it as "a
smart commercial operation" which is accurate, but I am not sure that its
further verdict of "harmless entertainment" is completely true.
Certainly a young Catholic university friend of mine saw it with some of her
non-Catholic friends, who wished they belonged to such an exotic organization!
All of them did not want the cardinals to die and enjoyed the film as a classy
and surreal thriller.
The film moves at many levels and we bring our own presuppositions when we view
it. In real life Catholics are a mixed bunch but the arch terrorists and
murderers in this tale prove to be conservative and fanatical Catholics.
I wonder how many similar popular movies would place a Muslim or Jew in such a
role.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Vinnies' Winter Appeal
The
cold weather snap last week reminded us of the importance of the annual Vinnies
Winter Appeal for the battlers and the homeless. The aim this year in N.S.W. is
to raise $5 million.
More people sleep out in Sydney than in Melbourne, some by choice as they prefer
outdoors to a hostel, because the weather here is generally milder than down
South. But in exceptional times they get caught.
The St. Vincent de Paul groups exist in nearly every Catholic parish and are
composed and led entirely by lay people, although each group has a priest
chaplain. Many members are retired and have the necessary time for this vitally
important, if unspectacular work.
Some years ago a St. Vincent de Paul leader boasted to me that the society had
good relations with the Church. "No you don't", I replied "You are the Church as
much as any cardinal, priest or religious. You do have a good relationship with
the Bishops".
We have all heard a lot about the financial downturn, that it is not as extreme
as we feared it might be and that technically we have not yet fallen into a
recession.
This is only true for the majority of people who thankfully remain untouched.
More families are finding themselves homeless as they are no longer able to
survive in the private rental or housing market. Unfortunately in an area such
as Broken Hill, the number seeking assistance from Vinnies has risen by three
hundred per cent.
Without regular help from generous Australians, especially the Catholic
community, St. Vincent de Paul Society would not be able to continue its many
works. Eighty per cent of those helped have mental health problems, many of them
from drugs, which damage faster than alcohol. Help is welcome from any quarter
and help is always extended to every type of person in need.
The Society runs a number of central services, the best known of which is the
Matt Talbot Hostel in Woolloomooloo recently renovated with 98 beds and offering
short-term crisis accommodation and day care services for homeless men. It was
started in 1938. Qualified and dedicated professionals, assisted by 450
volunteers, attempt to help each resident personally. A medical clinic is open
every day.
Recently the Ozanam Learning Centre was started in Forbes Street near Matt
Talbot to help people develop the confidence and skills to escape poverty.
Programmes in education, music, art and living skills are offered by volunteer
teachers. About 50-60 participate regularly in the classes with computer
learning and music the most popular. I saw many beautiful paintings and I
probably should enroll for the cooking and computer classes!
Women have a special section and entrance and their numbers are increasing
despite the proximity to the men's hostel.
These are good causes. Contact can be made at vinnies.org.au or 13 18 12.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Northern Territory
In
the Northern Territory the lessons of life are writ large and publicly.
Last week I was there to launch the appeal for the renovation of the Darwin
Catholic Cathedral and the centenary history of St. Mary's primary school.
Darwin has now changed to become a fast developing capital city with many
beautiful homes and elegant boulevards. Rents and land prices there rank with
Sydney and the economy is racing ahead.
By southern standards the Northern Territory is larger than life, an immense
area of 1.5 million square kilometres. Kakadu National Park is one third of the
size of Tasmania, where the ancient stones of the Atherton escarpment are 1.8
billion years old and look every minute of their age. In the wet they can
receive 60 to 80 mms. of rain in an hour. On the South Alligator river we saw
about twenty crocodiles in a few kilometres.
I visited Wadeye and Bathurst Island aboriginal settlements. St. John's College
in Darwin (an excellent Catholic secondary school) and the headquarters of the
Catholic Education Office and Catholicare.
The Northern Territory has more than its share of problems, but these are
balanced by the good hearts and resolve of many hard working people. During the
official Cathedral Mass a couple of drunks wandered unsteadily to the front of
the Church, a man and a woman. People quietly found them a place in the pews.
Life went on.
We all know that the previous Federal Government intervened in the indigenous
communities, with military help, in response to the Little Children are Sacred
Report. It hasn't been a complete success, but something needed to be done. The
grog shops remain shut and the children are better fed.
Slow progress has begun in the right direction after the disasters of the past
thirty years. I admire the Catholic teachers and social workers I met for their
efforts. It is not easy.
One elderly woman told me that fifty years ago the young aboriginal men went to
sleep with a hunting spear by their bed. Today they have a bong. A seven course
meal is a six-pack and chips!
When social constraints vanish among adults the youngsters become
uncontrollable. It is not that they are difficult at school, but they either
won't attend or they are immune to teachers' discipline. It is reflected in the
rubbish and untidiness of the community and teenage gangs moving around
unchecked.
Wadeye came close to this grim extreme, but progress is being made there.
Attendance percentages at school are improving and the students receive two good
meals a day. In many other aboriginal centres, especially the small ones, life
is better.
Even the best of teachers and social workers cannot turn these situations around
quickly. Indigenous leaders are vital; more Noel Pearsons, Warren Mundines,
Charlie Kings. It will take years. I wish them well.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: No truth. No freedom
We
usually take truth for granted in everyday life. We are hurt by lies (when we
discover them). It helps when the doctor correctly diagnoses our illness. Truth
matters.
Freedom is something else again. On the one hand truth seems to limit our
options, while on the other hand no adult wants to be relying on illusions.
Who is free? A good man in jail or a rich playboy hooked on alcohol and drugs?
Perhaps each is imprisoned in a different way. Should we be free to break our
solemn commitments? Are we free to break the ten commandments?
No one lives like a complete relativist. People who accept Jesus' teaching on
faith and morals might usefully try to persuade others, especially our young
people, of the truth of three propositions: a) there are truths; b) there are
religious truths; c) there are moral truths.
We know there are truths which are not our inventions. The easiest examples are
visible and material realities, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge or the recent
Victorian bushfires or the financial crisis.
Other truths cannot be seen. They describe our pain, or numbers or possibilities
for the future, but they are nonetheless true, describing different types of
reality, not just the fanciful products of our imagination.
Religious truths are not myths. They describe realities which exist (or not)
independently of our acceptance or rejection, or level of understanding.
God does not cease to exist because someone, or many, do not believe in Him.
Neither would everyone believing in Him bring God into existence.
A final claim is that there are moral truths which we are obliged to recognize.
Arson is a good place to start. Deliberately starting bushfires is wrong;
difficult to understand why it occurs, but wrong by universal agreement.
Lying is wrong. Today especially we condemn businessmen who inflated their
profits, concealed their losses or deceived others into investing in scams,
worthless schemes. Society cannot work if we are surrounded by lies. We all know
this.
Freedom can be understood in a couple of ways. It is not just exemption from
external control or interference, the opposite of slavery; but also the personal
interior capacity to act. The personal freedom of an alcoholic or drug addict is
radically reduced.
Truth brings personal freedom to individuals in a couple of ways. Liars are
forced to lie repeatedly to maintain their fictions and they are rejected by
others when their lying is recognized. Honest people are not so constrained.
In a different way accurate self-understanding enables us to recognize our
strengths and weaknesses, making it more difficult for us to deceive ourselves.
When we acknowledge our needs, we find it easier to realize that freedom is more
than giving ourselves what we want.
Growing up means freeing ourselves from our childish illusions, harmless and
harmful.
Without truth there is no freedom.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Global Warming Pauses
The
tide on climate change is starting to turn. The Australian government is
becoming more cautious.
It is rare to read a new book likely to make a huge difference to public
opinion. Professor Ian Plimer's 500 page book with 2300 footnotes "Heaven and
Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science" is such a book. 30,000 copies were
sold in its first month.
Plimer is not a climate change denier, because history shows the planet is
dynamic and the climate is always changing, sometimes drastically.
Ice Ages have come and gone and we don't know why. History has seen glaciers at
the equator and at one time Scandinavia was under 5 kilometres of ice. Sea
levels have been 130 metres lower than today. Some consolation comes from the
fact that ice sheets predominated for only 20 per cent of the earth's history.
Plimer demonstrates that a considerable amount of scientific evidence has been
produced to counter the still predominant view that human activity, especially
through industry, has polluted the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which will
produce disastrous climate changes including a rise in temperature, a melting of
the ice caps and rising sea levels.
Contrary evidence is already changing the debate. Australia, with its tiny
economy, is no longer aiming to lead the world. The threat of massive job losses
and increasing awareness of new evidence will provoke even greater caution in
the future.
Originally we were warned about the "greenhouse effect"; then it was "global
warming", followed in turn by "climate change". Now we talk about reducing the
"carbon footprint". The light is dawning and 30 per cent of scientists are
sceptics or deniers.
Non-scientists should not blindly follow expert opinion and this includes
Plimer. To the extent we can, we should examine their evidence. While it is
still early days in the debate, Plimer's critics have been heavy with the abuse
and short on counter evidence.
We should also look back at history for more accurate information and ignore
computer models of the long-term future. Climate models making claims for
decades into the future cannot work, because we do not know enough about many
factors which influence weather, such as the level of activity of the sun, the
earth's orbit and wobbles, the level of cloud cover, volcanoes.
One basic claim of Plimer is that an increase of carbon dioxide does not cause
temperature rises, but might follow such rises.
What do we make of these facts? The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues
to rise, but the world's temperature has not risen since 1998.
In Roman times and in the Medieval Warming (900 - 1300 A.D.) temperatures were
higher than today by five and six degrees Celsius. No industries then!
In different Ice Ages the earth's atmosphere contained five and ten times the
amount of carbon dioxide today.
Evidence shows the wheels are falling from the climate catastrophe bandwagon.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: SydneyCatholic
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Good News
Two
recent Catholic celebrations showed off the Church at her best.
One was a farewell Mass in St. Mary's Cathedral to thank Brother Kelvin Canavan, a Marist brother, who had been director of the Sydney Archdiocese Education Office for 22 years. The Cathedral was packed with adults, teachers, parents, senior politicians of both sides, union officials and representative students from each school for a wonderful act of worship and expression of thanks. Twelve bishops and many priests also attended. The Marist brothers are unmarried men, a group founded by St. Marcellin Champagnat in 1817 in France to serve God and educate the poor. Brother Kelvin taught at every level of schooling before becoming an administrator.
Many of the primary and secondary students at the Mass had to sit on the Cathedral's new marble floor because of the crush, but they knew it was good to be saying "thanks", and many, young and older, thanked me afterwards for a "great celebration" or "a lovely Mass".
The other celebration was very different, a concert at the Sydney Entertainment Centre by "The Priests", three country parish priests from near Belfast in Northern Ireland, first-rate singers and entertainers. 9,000 people were present. Their recent CD "The Priests" has sold 1.3 million copies and is a top-seller on the charts in 32 countries.
Mark Vincent, a 15 year old tenor from De La Salle, Caringbah, winner of Australia's Got Talent also sang. Magnificent. We shall hear more of him.
Perhaps the best short-hand way to describe both events is to explain that the atmosphere was like that of World Youth Day; happy and joyful.
Christ did not come among us to make life miserable. While the Scriptures tell us there is a time for weeping, and a time for fighting, joy and good fun are more regular priorities.
Christians are not encouraged to wear false smiles, nor to pretend that following Christ is cost free.
The rewards for Christians are long-term, sometimes out of this world, but begin in the here and now.
Christ came to teach us how to make life better and therefore happier and Christianity has spread during its 2000 year history because this is true.
I don't know how many Australians today know that the four main books which tell us of Christ are called "gospels". But I am sure that a smaller number would know that the word "gospel" originally meant "good news".
Fathers Eugene and Martin O'Hagan are brothers, who were at school with the third member Father David Delargy. At the seminary together, they completed their studies for the priesthood at the Irish College in Rome.
Their £1,000,000 contract with Sony BMG is unusual for a couple of reasons. The music must not interfere with their parish duties and their profits will go to charity.
For a change these are two good stories about the Church, showing her best, not the worst.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: SydneyCatholic
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Mothers Day 2009
Women
were treated abominably most of the time in the ancient pagan world. But even
these societies recognized the bond between mother and child as something
sacred.
This is still largely the case today, despite decades of family breakdown,
sexual license, and legalised abortion making many people much less certain
about what is sacred, or whether anything is sacred at all.
Our mothers give us life and look after us when we are noisy and demanding
infants. This is no small thing. All of us are profoundly indebted to our
mothers for this, even if - tragically - the relationship with them has not been
happy.
Shaping character is a special responsibility of having children. Mothers have a
crucial role in passing on good values and good habits (or virtues). Parental
example is still the best way of teaching children how to accept responsibility
and persevere in difficult times.
The demands of work and family do not seem to be diminishing, and the loving
mother who still finds time to read to a young child or to discuss a worry with
a teenager is doing the most important work there is.
Children are sharp observers, and watching their mother making time for them and
refusing to follow the crowd gives them a great model to follow when their turn
comes to withstand peer pressure and be their own person.
Being a mother is a learning process too, and learning how to step back and
allow children to take a physical or social risk is a challenge for every mum.
Children (like adults) need to learn from their mistakes, and mothers have to
master the knack of letting go while letting them know you're always there. This
too is a part of unconditional love.
Children also learn how to be good friends and gracious to all by watching how
their mother relates to others. If men and women weren't too strong on being
respectful, polite, slow to anger and quick to forgive before they had children,
they have to master them pretty quickly once they become parents. Sometimes it
is not only the kids who grow up in family life.
Fun is a crucial part of the package too. It really is a delight watching a
mother have fun with her children. The loving mother who admits her faults and
says sorry if she has treated her child unjustly teaches children that they too
must learn to forgive.
Much of this could also apply to dads, although with children as in many other
areas, men and women are very different. That is why the best situation is for
every child to be raised by their mum and dad, preferably in a loving marriage.
Mothers' Day is about honouring mum and the precious gift of life and love she
has given us.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: SydneyCatholic
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Anzac Day and Vietnam
In
1970 two RAAF servicemen, Michael Herbert and Robert Carver, were shot down over
Quang Nam province in Vietnam while returning from a bombing run.
For thirty-eight years there was no trace of them, making them the last Australian servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam war. Last week wreckage from their Canberra bomber was found, bringing the possibility of their families and friends finally knowing their fate. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.
The Vietnam war was the most divisive war in Australia's history. While Australia was deeply divided on conscription in World War One, its defeat at a referendum defused this to some extent, and the war never lacked majority support, despite vociferous opposition from some.
Vietnam was quite different. Conscription commenced in 1964, forced on the Coalition government by the scale of the commitment it made. It was immensely unpopular.
Australian military trainers were first sent to South Vietnam in 1962. In 1964 the RAAF began to provide air transport, but it was not until 1965 that Australian combat troops were sent.
At its height, our involvement comprised 8500 soldiers, three RAAF squadrons and a number of navy destroyers. From 1962 until 1973 when the last Australian troops protecting our embassy in Saigon were withdrawn, almost 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam, including a priest cousin of mine who served as a chaplain. 521 were killed and over 3000 were wounded.
The communist threat at the time was real, and the North's victory in 1975 brought all the suffering and human rights violations that come with communist rule; secret police, "re-education" camps, political and religious persecution, and floods of refugees.
While this prospect was actively denied by pro-Hanoi sympathisers, for most Australians it was overshadowed by the mistakes of the Americans in prosecuting the war (the killing of President Diem was a disgrace), and by the incompetence and corruption of elements in the South Vietnamese governments.
The 1968 Tet Offensive was a turning point. A military disaster for the communists, it was turned into a massive propaganda victory for them by the Western media. Anti-war protests and civil disobedience on conscription grew, culminating in Australia in the moratoriums of 1970 which attracted 200,000 people.
Australian soldiers held their own during the Tet Offensive, although one of their finest moments was the 1966 battle of Long Tan, which saw a massively outnumbered Australian force defeat a major communist offensive and free the province.
Our servicemen did us proud in Vietnam but suffered enormously from lack of support at home. This sometimes spilled over into open hostility from more radical elements.
Thankfully those days are behind us, and our Vietnam veterans have the honoured place they deserve in the Anzac tradition.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: SydneyCatholic
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Easter 2009
When
things are going badly, what does it mean to claim Christ saved and redeemed
us? Where is Christ in a personal or community tragedy like an earthquake, or
war, or terrible bushfires and floods (the big Australian double), or a
financial disaster?
Easter works at a deeper and different level from financial problems and natural disasters and no one can understand Easter without at least some basic ideas on the nature of sin. Christ's redemptive work on the cross means our sins are forgiven, if we repent and ask for forgiveness.
No one can buy forgiveness, which is not like a patch placed over a tear in a garment. Reciting a formula cannot guarantee forgiveness. Only those who admit to sinning can be forgiven by God and they have to regret that they sinned.
Everyone has a basic sense of right and wrong, an understanding that some actions are evil, unless the goodness in their hearts is squeezed out by repeated sins when they are old, or by cruelty and lack of love when they were young.
A sinful action is one that lacks proper order, that violates the order of creation which derives from the Maker of heaven and earth. Some call this natural law.
But the divine order of creation is an order of love, universal love which is violated by sin. Sin always involves an action which is heading in the wrong direction away from God, usually against the proper rights of others. Sin is always an improper assertion of self.
The worst sinners are spiritually blind, morally tone deaf so that they rejoice in the pain they inflict on others. They have rejected God's eternal plan. Some resent having to obey laws they themselves have not created, although they still obey. Others refuse to serve.
When Christ was dying on the Cross he said about his persecutors "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34). He was practicing what he had earlier preached when he taught "But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" (Lk 6:27).
Forgiveness is needed in good times and in bad, forgiveness from one to another and forgiveness from God. Success tends to make us arrogant and insensitive, tempts us to ignore Christ's requirement to forgive those who hurt us.
Some crimes cannot be forgiven by any human being, because no one remains with the right to forgive. Murder provides such an example because the victim is no more. But God always forgives the repentant; including repentant murderers.
Many people today still find it hard to forgive themselves; harder to forgive themselves than ask God for forgiveness, God can help them too.
When Christ forgave those who killed him, he showed us that forgiveness is available to everyone who repents.
Only God can make such a promise. This is the main point of Easter.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: SydneyCatholic
Cardinal George Pell's Address: Easter Message For 2009
At
the Christian feast of Easter, we recall the death and resurrection of Christ
nearly 2000 years ago.
Our prayers of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday are being offered and our claims for redemption and salvation are repeated in a time of unusual financial turmoil and uncertainty. Unemployment is rising, more families are running into problems with repayments and governments are piling up enormous debts for the future in the hope of improving our present situation.
Australia is still better off than most other places, even when we leave aside the recent awful earthquake at L'Aquila in Italy and the continuing violence in e.g. central Africa and the Sudan. We thank God for our good fortune in Australia as we pray that our leaders devise adequate programmes for longer-term growth rather than short-term gains which will weaken us in the long run.
Christians do not offer alternative economic solutions, even if we remind our financial planners that market economies too can only function efficiently, when most people accept notions of right and wrong, and understand that enduring orderliness presupposes a substantial measure of justice, the spread of basic wealth across the community.
This much is fundamental, but the Christian expressions of hope at Easter are not just the best of human wisdom and reasonable claims for optimism. Christian faith in the one true God includes that notion that God is interested in the welfare of every human, especially in our troubles.
Christian faith teaches that human history is not blind and cruel, but has a good purpose and is moving to a point, beyond death, when love and goodness will triumph and the scales of justice will balance out, especially for the poor and suffering of this world.
The Christian claims at Easter are extravagant. We believe the Son of God suffered and died so that goodness could win out over evil and that meaning can be found in sufferings.
Hard times should prompt us to re-examine our priorities, so that we come to realize that possessions cannot return our love and that plenty of money cannot guarantee happiness.
Christians do not hide from suffering nor pretend it does not exist. They confront suffering, help each other to cope and draw comfort and strength from the fact that the Son of God suffered also on the way to the resurrection.
Easter peace to everyone and especially to those who are battling with difficulties of any kind.
By + Cardinal George Pell Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Palm Sunday
Today is the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week, when the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ are commemorated.
The official Catholic title is Passion Sunday, although today it is better known
as Palm Sunday, remembering the crowds in Jerusalem who welcomed Jesus to the
city at the beginning of Passover week by waving palms and laying down their
garments.
This feast is celebrated everywhere in the Catholic world and this morning in
St. Peter's Square in Rome about 100 young people from Australia attended the
Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict and handed over the World Youth Day Cross and
Icon of Mary the Mother of God to a large contingent from Madrid in Spain, where
the next World Youth Day will be held in 2011.
The cross was taken around Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor
and the Pacific Islands by teams of young people for the eighteen month period
before the Sydney WYD. The cross travelled about 80,000km and visited every
Australian diocese.
Older Catholics were surprised by the reverence and faith of many of the youth
who gathered to pray. So now the Cross will be carried around Europe and
especially to every part of Spain as an essential part of the spiritual
preparation for WYD in Madrid 2011.
For the first time the Sydney archdiocese commissioned a sociological survey of
pilgrims. Sixty per cent of the respondents came from Australia and New Zealand,
twenty per cent from U.S.A. and Canada and most of the remainder from Asia or
Ireland and Britain.
The pilgrims were interviewed before, during and after the July 2008
celebrations, not merely to discover whether they enjoyed the experience, but
whether they felt their religious convictions has changed in any way.
While much detailed work remains to be done during the next few months to
analyse the thousands of responses, the results are very encouraging.
Seven out of every ten pilgrims considered Sydney WYD as "one of the best
experiences of my life" or even "as a life changing event".
They especially enjoyed making new friends, often from other nations and being
part of the huge, happy crowds singing, laughing and moving through the streets.
Most of them felt that God was present in these gatherings of Catholic
believers, united in one faith and they felt they belonged to a huge and various
community which transcended them in space and time.
Forty per cent claimed that their faith in God had been strengthened and that
they now had a closer relationship with Jesus.
A couple of important consequences followed from this as more than half said
they were determined to treat others better; to be more considerate and more
Christ like. Equally importantly more than a third asserted that now they were
not embarrassed to let others see what they believed. They wanted to live as
Jesus' disciples.
Nearly all pilgrims enjoyed Sydney WYD and many benefited spiritually.
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Iquitos
Iquitos is the largest city in the world which cannot be reached by road. With a
growing population of about 500,000, it is the capital of the Amazon region of
north-east Peru, all rain forest and jungle, 1850 kilometres away and very
different from the modern heart of Lima. We flew in across the Andes.
Three of us came from Sydney to visit Father John Andersen, a Sydney priest who
has worked for 20 years in his parish in Iquitos, a model community of vitality,
faith and friendliness. Even by Catholic standards their warmth to us was
extraordinary.
More than half the Catholics of the world 550 million, live in Latin America,
where the Spanish and Portuguese patterns of culture make daily living (less
ordered and more interesting) and some forms of devotion different from ours.
However Catholic essentials are clearly recognizable and Catholic unity is
regularly asserted and in evidence from the many pictures of Pope Benedict. Peru
is 90% Catholic.
The city of Iquitos is peaceful and thriving, full of clean well fed children,
who seemed unusually lively and happy to our eyes. Life moves slowly but the
main streets are choked with noisy three wheeled motor-bikes, many of them
taxis. Iquitos has a substantial military presence, with air force and naval
contingents as well as a big number of soldiers, who police the distant borders
with Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil and help maintain law and order in the
scattered riverside villages across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres
of jungle, 30% of the area of Peru.
The temperature varies from hot to very hot and the yearly humidity averages
83%. The heavy rain for most months takes its toll on buildings and roads.
Repairs and maintenance are not the highest priority, many streets are unsealed
and potholed, while electricity blackouts are not unknown.
However great strides have been made especially in education and health. Thirty
years ago many babies died of dehydration, one missioner explaining he averaged
almost one baby funeral a day. Today a litre of boiled water, 8 teaspoons of
sugar and one of salt prevent most such deaths. The hospital we visited was
modern and impressive.
Most schools have two intakes a day, morning and afternoon. We visited Rosa
Augustino College (primary and secondary) with three shifts for a total of 3,200
pupils, 300 of them at night because they work during the day.
Father Andersen has the energy of St. Paul and this is reflected in the loyalty
of his parishioners, the vitality of the worship and the activities of his many
parish committees.
He set a cracking pace for us. I baptized fifty young soldiers on Saturday, then
we confirmed them and fifty others. At the open air Sunday Mass we baptized
fifty-five babies and I married four couples, who rejoiced with their children
in the Church�s blessing.
Catholic life in the Amazon is colourful.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Oxford University
Oxford
is the most famous university in the world, if not necessarily the best.
Cambridge is generally thought to be stronger in science, and some of the great U.S.A. universities like Harvard and Stanford are stronger again, especially in research.
I went to study at Oxford more than forty years ago and returned recently. Much had changed (there is a new business school, already highly regarded), but more seemed to have remained the same. The streets were still full of fast talking, clear thinking self confident young men and women. While many came from famous English schools, a much greater percentage were from poorer families. The back doors to entry for the children of the rich and famous have been closed and competition for entry is stiff.
Oxford is different from Australian universities because it is much older, with the first colleges founded in the thirteenth century, often by Catholic bishops. All the students live away from home in smaller college communities, and undergraduates are forbidden to take jobs in term. This is an important difference from Australia, where financial pressures to work bite heavily into study time.
In most Australian universities not much student religious activity is visible, although Sydney University is an exception. Here Evangelical Anglicans have been prominent for years, although the Catholic Chaplaincy has strengthened considerably with their activities often opposed by radical and homosexual groups.
Christianity is visible at Oxford because nearly all the Colleges have Anglican chapels, many of them ancient and beautiful, with decent Sunday congregations. I stayed at Merton College this time and preached in the thirteenth century chapel at Anglican evensong, the first Catholic cardinal to do so since at least the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation. The chapel was full and the music first rate. Now many of the Anglican chaplains are women priests.
Many academic staff at Oxford are indifferent or hostile to religion and many of the world’s best known atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have Oxford connections. Oxford has often been known as a home for lost causes, since they backed King Charles I when the Royalists were defeated in the seventeenth century civil war by Oliver Cromwell!
On the other hand while many undergraduates do not know much about religion, chaplains say they find almost no hostility and a greater student interest than twenty years ago.
Catholic student life at Oxford is thriving. In my time a significant number of converts came into the Church each year and this continues.
The Dominicans (founded in the 13th century) and the Oratorians (16th century) have a vocations crisis in Oxford because they do not have enough accommodation for the young men who want to join. At evening prayer with the Dominicans I noticed that 20 out of the approximately 25 members were under 35 years of age.
Christianity at Oxford is embattled, but alive and well.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Sloth
Like
many Australians I have led a fortunate life. Not the least of my blessings were
good parents, who worked hard for many years.
At school too I was surrounded by hard working school teachers, the Christian Brothers. Those were the days before government money for Church schools and the brothers had extraordinary work loads, large classes, after hours duties.
By example and decree they taught the importance of hard work.
Sloth was not a word they used often, but they were against it! Sloth is the last of the deadly sins and involves more than an inability to break out of a trot. Sloth implies a level of malice so that duties are neglected or rejected. A sluggishness of mind takes over, often exhibiting sourness and hostility.
Slothful people are uneasy with themselves, discomforted by their inactivity and bored too as they strive to kill time. Addiction to internet pornography is one of the most extreme examples of genuine sloth.
We now know much more about physical illness than the ancients. Clinical depression even in milder forms can result in low levels of activity, an inability to get started or to persevere, which would have been condemned as a moral fault in the past. Deep clinical depression is awful to behold. The victims are often beyond reach and the suffering is terrible. Modern medicines regularly help, but treatment often has to proceed by trial and error.
We have every right to be sad and depressed in some situations e.g. the tragic loss of a spouse, or child, or a parent. Then we have to battle against being submerged in our misery, by continuing with our normal routine. We need to eat even when we have no appetite, take daily exercise, especially by walking and go to bed as usual even if we don’t feel like sleeping. A normal routine helps even in abnormal times.
Sloth is also a temptation at every level of religious life, from the person who is too lazy to worship every Sunday through to the priest, nun or cardinal who start to neglect their daily prayers or always have an excuse not to answer the particular needs of their people. Night calls to the hospital to take the sacraments to the dying need an act of the will, while even the unexpected arrival of someone who wants to talk, just as we were starting to relax, can be a small test.
The Old Testament story of Adam and Eve strives to explain in poetic terms God’s creation of the world and the origin of evil. But even before the Fall, the first sin, Adam and Eve had to maintain the Garden of Eden.
Now we all have to work, and most enjoy working, even if they don’t like their job. But the slothful are never happy.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Envy
Christians
are commanded to love their neighbours, not to envy them, not to covet their
neighbour's wife or possessions.
All of us are envious at some time or other. I would love to have possessed a singing voice like Pavarotti's; I envied him for his great gift. As a child I envied those with a lot of cricketing ability. Imagine the thrill of being able to bat like Adam Gilchrist, to slaughter the bowling and change the direction of a match. How we missed him Warne and McGrath in the Test team. Even New Zealand now gives us a run for our money!
These two examples of envy are harmless enough, not sinful in any sense let alone as candidates to be listed as deadly sins.
Envy comes from the heart and is quite different from admiring the capacities and accomplishments of others. Envy starts to go wrong when we resent the success of others and worsens when we develop immoderate ambitions to achieve what we envy and strive to obtain this unjustly.
Envy is not quite the same as jealousy because envy resents what someone else has, while jealousy is more immediately self-centred, fearing that someone else might take what is ours e.g. promotion at work, the affections of a friend. Envy can become so strong that we actually hate the people we envy, even when they have done nothing contrary to our interests.
Even the longest journeys begin with a few short steps and it is always a danger sign when we rejoice in the misfortunes of others, especially the small misfortunes of our friends or relatives. To rejoice in the serious misfortune of a friend is perverse and the Christian commandment to love our enemies should deter us from rejoicing in their personal sufferings. Naturally we are entitled to rejoice when a bad cause is halted or reversed.
Another danger sign that envy is bubbling up in our hearts is a reluctance to praise others or to thank them for their contributions. We are in deeper trouble when we refuse to praise others, seem in fact unable to do so, while we descend even further down the slippery slope of envy when we criticize those who are commended, simply because they are commended. Envy drives us to find some fault and defect in every situation.
As we grow old we can be tempted to envy young people their youth, vitality and optimism and not even realize this. The envy is masked by seizing on the imperfections of the young and criticizing them.
Young people are imperfect, but they are generally what their elders have made of them. As a wise old Irish-Australian mother used to say "what is in the cat comes out in the kitten".
Envious people are not kind, often pitiless. Kind people are pleased when others do well.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Lent
Lent
started on last Wednesday, Ash Wednesday.
During the forty days of Lent, as Christians prepare for Good Friday and Easter Sunday, they should carry out an annual audit of personal faith and morals following the traditional practices of extra prayer, extra penances such as fasting and alms giving, donations to charity.
For the last forty years in Australia the Catholic Church has urged its members to couple the last two practices together so that we give to others what we might save on e.g. alcohol or food.
Caritas Australia, the Catholic agency for overseas relief and development, belongs to Caritas International, a loose federation which is one of the world's biggest aid organizations.
Project Compassion, Caritas' Lenten programme always does a good job. Last year it raised more than $9,000,000 Australia-wide with $2,500,000 coming from Sydney parishes and schools. Despite the economic downturn Caritas hopes to beat these targets this year.
Secular outsiders generally sympathize with Christian efforts to help the disadvantaged here in Australia, although they occasionally query the amount we give overseas. Our reply always is that while charity should begin at home it should not stay there.
Non-believers also recognize that a special once-a-year effort to curb selfishness might be useful, but they are often puzzled by the call for extra prayer and especially by the practice of fasting, dieting for religious purposes.
Many of us try to diet for health reasons (with mixed success), and many more should diet because obesity, even among children, is an increasing problem. The way to lose weight is very simple, but it is as difficult as it is simple: eat less and exercise more.
Fasting usually does bring health benefits except when it is too extreme, provoking e.g. bad headaches, but Christians don't fast for their physical health.
This year Pope Benedict devoted his annual Lenten message to the value and meaning of fasting. He pointed out that Jesus followed Jewish tradition by fasting in the desert for forty days before he began his public ministry, just as Moses had before he received the ten commandments and Elijah fasted and prayed before meeting God on Mount Horeb.
The Pope asked whether in the light of our advanced knowledge today it still made sense to deprive ourselves of food which is good and useful for our bodies. He replied in the affirmative, appealing to the Scriptures and ancient Jewish and Christian traditions.
The Pope observed that while we diet as a therapy for the body, fasting is a therapy for the soul, helping us to thin down our fat relentless egos so that we can better serve God and other people.
The small aches and inconveniences of fasting also serve as a helpful reminder of the millions in the world who are regularly hungry.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Learn From The Past
During
the Victorian bushfires one political leader explained on the radio that both
sides of politics believed in global warming. Earlier he had claimed everyone
did, although he backed off that acknowledging some sceptics.
Fortunately the fact that many people have a particular belief does not guarantee its truth. Remember the millennium bug? Tens of millions of dollars were spent to avoid a shutdown because of the fear that computers would be unable to cope with the year 2000. Trillions of dollars worldwide have been lost around the world recently because bad decisions were taken based on mistaken beliefs.
Some aspects of the future cannot be prophesied with any certainty as humans are notoriously unpredictable. Even the Old Testament prophets, who were generally unpopular and persecuted during their lifetime, were more useful interpreting their own times than they were when writing enigmatically about the future.
We cannot be sure what the weather will be next week, let alone in ten or twenty or one hundred years. But we do know that over the decades and centuries the weather has changed, sometimes spectacularly. My home town of Ballarat in Victoria was in drought in the 1930s, although it never seemed to stop raining in the 1950s and has now been in drought for almost ten years.
In coping with our day to day difficulties we should study the past, especially the recent past, not assuming automatically that our situation is novel and unique. Far better to look at the reports of the Royal Commissions or enquiries after earlier bushfires than rely on computer programmes for the future, which are only as good as the assumptions of their programmers.
Computers regularly perform wonders of computation and analysis, but have one vital flaw. They cannot think for themselves, and therefore are without common sense or "nous". They can only do as they are told!
The largest Victorian bushfire during European settlement in Australia was not this year, but in 1851.
On Black Thursday February 6, 1851 after a fierce summer Melbourne's temperature hit 117 'F (or 47 'C), almost the same as the temperature on Black Saturday. Bushfires then covered the scarcely populated state from Gabo Island on the Eastern extremity of Gippsland to the South Australian border. Ships in Bass Strait had their decks covered with ash and dead leaves. Some fires north of Melbourne had a front of about 90 kilometres.
Especially in Gippsland the smoke changed day into night. One witness said the sun was like "a ball of red hot iron" while the absence of radio and television meant that rumours and terror increased together. The heat alone killed small birds, which dropped from the sky.
Black clouds reached northern Van Dieman's Land and some there feared the end of the world was near!
The 1851 fire caused fewer deaths but burnt out ten times the area destroyed this year.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Bush Fires
As
a youngster growing up in country Victoria sixty years ago I remember the family
talking about the bushfires of Black Friday in 1939. The tone was similar to
that used discussing the Japanese prisoner of war camps. Deaths and suffering
had come to our community.
Victoria has the worst bushfire country in the world with California and
Southern France close behind. Parts of South Australia and our own state of New
South Wales are also bad.
As I write the bush fires had not been extinguished and now is not yet the time
for a systematic evaluation of the lead up to the fires, how they were fought
and how people were helped during the crisis and afterwards.
This will be done by the Royal Commission which the Victorian Government has
promised and it needs to be done thoroughly, with an explicit recognition of the
priority of human needs over both property as well as flora and fauna. One head
line captured this well "People are more important than possums"; and, one might
add, properties. Such a principle has consequences for hazard reduction burning
and for the siting and design of homes.
All things considered the Victorian authorities have done well since the
tragedy, despite some bureaucratic obstruction and victims being prevented for
some days from returning to their homes. The community has rallied, as always,
and the victims did not feel abandoned. Public sympathy was real and generally
effective.
It would be comforting, but an illusion, if we believed that planning will be
able to prevent awful bushfires in the future. Better practice and more
efficient warning systems should be able to reduce and often eliminate human
deaths. But this is as much as we might hope to deliver.
Bush fires have been part of Australian life from time immemorial; long enough
for evolutionary patterns to produce seeds that only germinate after a bushfire.
This is astonishing.
The evidence since European settlement also validates this evolutionary
development. Batman and Fawkner founded Melbourne in 1835 and in 1851, the year
this sparsely populated country south of the Murray River separated from New
South Wales as the colony of Victoria, the Black Thursday bushfires burnt out
several million hectares. I have heard one expert claim that one third of
Victoria was destroyed!
During last weekend probably 300,000 hectares went, much less than the 1.5
million hectares of Black Friday 1939, but more than 1983's 230,000 hectares.
Tragically the number of deaths this year exceeded the total fatalities of both
1939 and 1983 combined.
We must acknowledge the bravery of the firefighters, most of them volunteers.
Coping with the grief and wounds of the survivors, physical and psychological,
will also be a great challenge. The Churches and service agencies will be busy
here and with the funeral rituals: even for those whose bodies cannot be
identified.
By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Social Capital
We
are now in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, which will
certainly get worse before it improves. The trouble started in the U.S.A.
and we are better placed than either Britain or the U.S.A. to battle through.
But Australia is only a middle size fish in a big pond and the giants are in
trouble.
The U.S.A. is living beyond its means. On one estimate, its debt is equivalent to US$17,000 for every citizen. If the situation deteriorates in China we could see huge community stresses where already we know of thousands of crowd protests a year.
Some of the huge corporations which went bankrupt lied about their profits, recorded daily costs as capital expenditure, gave billions in loans to executives and their families, which were not recorded in the accounts. On the other side of the coin, people were deceived into taking out loans they had no chance of repaying. More so than in the U.S.A, the courts in N.S.W. acted against this effectively.
President Obama pinpointed greed and irresponsibility as major causes of the meltdown. Dishonesty is another cause. All three destroy social capital.
Last Wednesday I spoke to the National Conference of the Australian Workers Union on this topic. The A.W.U. is one of Australia's oldest unions developing from the Shearers Union founded in 1886.
Pope Leo XIII began the tradition of papal social teaching in 1891 and since then the Catholic Church has always recognized the rights of workers to organize in unions. Official church teaching is that unions are an "indispensable element of social life" and Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke of the important role for unions in the present financial troubles and in forging a new synthesis between the market and labour.
Social capital is a comparatively new and mysterious term. It has nothing to do with socialism and does not have to be anti-markets. Indeed one of the lessons from today's mess is that economies, like communities, need solid values as a necessary foundation.
Successful societies need human capital (education, personal skills), experiences as well as financial capital (assets, income). The third element is social capital, or the positive effects which come from good moral judgements and networks of decent hardworking people.
Another lesson is that trust is easily and quickly destroyed, often with disastrous consequences. Social capital builds trust by encouraging us to treat others the way we would like to be treated.
Social capital includes moral capital, living according to right principles, which we learn especially from those we love and live with as children; our parents.
Families make a serious impact on their children for good or ill. We need to stop pretending that family is only one more private lifestyle choice without long term consequences on society. Social capital depends on it.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Facing Death
A
good friend of mine died recently in New York. There was nothing unusual
in that.
Father Richard Neuhaus made a distinguished contribution as a Lutheran pastor and then a Catholic priest, as a learned and prolific writer and as a social and political commentator and activist. An unusual intellectual with charm and the common touch he had an extraordinary network of friends and contacts.
As much as anyone he brought orthodox Catholics in the U.S.A. into political alliance with evangelical Protestants. He was consistent in his support for life and social justice, taking part in the struggle for black civil rights, opposing the Vietnam war, finally concluding that the second Iraq war was just but imprudent, while he was always involved in the struggle for unborn human life, against abortion.
However today I want to say a few words about how he faced up to death.
In my youth Catholics were encouraged to pray that death would not come unexpectedly, so that we would be ready for judgement. A friend of mine brought up as a Methodist claims he still has the whiff of sulphur in his nostrils! Certainly hell was real for most of us.
The Catholic pendulum has now swung wildly on the afterlife, with many now expecting a sentimental, non-judgemental God to give everyone a good time in the hereafter.
Neuhaus avoided these extremes.
In December he learned that the cancer which nearly killed him in 1993 had returned. I spoke to him by phone then and he explained that he hoped to stay, but was ready to go if that was the verdict.
He had founded and edited an influential magazine on religion and public life called "First Things" and in each issue there was a section "The Public Square" where he commented on the developments of the month, courteously praising his allies and smiting his foes.
In his last column he wrote that "when there is an unidentified agent in your body aggressively attacking the good things your body is intended to do, it does concentrate the mind". He thanked his friends for their prayers repeating "that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is much that I hope to do in the interim".
He quoted a reply of Martin Luther who was asked what he would do if he knew he was to die tomorrow: plant a tree and say his prayers. Neuhaus went on "Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees and certainly I am saying my prayers".
He concluded that the entirety of his prayer was "Your will be done – not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression".
Not a bad way to think as you go.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Australia Day
What
do we celebrate on Australia Day? We should take the opportunity to
examine our core values, what we admire.
Australia Day seems to be a bit more successful in Sydney than interstate. This makes sense as the first colony was here. But the holiday (and holidays are always welcome) does not rank with Anzac Day in most people's hearts nor with Christmas or even Easter as a family feast.
Australian patriotism is powerful and widespread, but confused by our remaining constitutional links with Britain. We thank God that we never had to fight for our independence and especially because we have never fought a civil war, as the U.S.A. did.
I am deeply grateful for all that we have received from Britain, our patterns of culture and government, all our great institutions except the Catholic Church. Many regard me as an Anglophile and I am prepared to plead guilty to the charge. But it is time we had an entirely Australian set of constitutional arrangements. I was disappointed when the referendum on the Republic was lost, because our present system of government works well and I doubt whether any future republican proposal will come as close to replicating the present system.
Australia has always looked to some "great and powerful ally". First of all it was Britain with its Empire and now it is the U.S.A. As a middle order power we shall always need friends and allies, but our own story and values should sustain us. Britain has chosen Europe; we too need to move on.
The story of our Australian Victoria Cross for bravery in battle, which replaces the British Victoria Cross, provides a good example of continuity while it explicitly recognizes Australian traditions and independence.
Recently Trooper Mark Donaldson from the SAS was awarded the first Victoria Cross in Australia for forty years for outstanding bravery in Afghanistan.
The Imperial Victoria Cross was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 and has been granted to 96 Australians, the last of whom was Warrant Officer Keith Payne, decorated in Vietnam in 1969. He was present for Donaldson's ceremony, but the only other living Australian VC winner Edward Kenna (1945 in New Guinea) was unable to attend. In 1991 the Australian Victoria Cross became our highest award for bravery, replacing the Imperial award.
On last September 2 an Australian contingent fighting with U.S. and Afghan units was ambushed by the Taliban and nine Australians were wounded.
Donaldson repeatedly drew enemy fire so wounded soldiers could be rescued and dashed 80 metres, still under fire, to rescue their Afghan interpreter and bring him to safety. He helped give first aid to the wounded then rejoined his patrol.
Donaldson denied he is a hero, explaining that he was just doing his duty, following his training and instincts.
All officers, including the Chief of Defence Force Angus Houston have to salute Victoria Cross winners. We too should acknowledge such bravery on Australia Day.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Prosperity Index
Timing
is everything, but sometimes bad timing just can’t be helped. So as the
global financial crisis was starting to take hold late last year, you probably
missed the news that Australia was ranked the most prosperous country in the
world in 2008.
This is the assessment of the Legatum Institute’s annual Prosperity Index, which was released last October.
Legatum is an independent think tank associated with the Legatum Group, a private investment organisation based in Dubai. Legatum’s Prosperity Index ranked 104 countries on economic competitiveness and “comparative liveability”. While economic competitiveness compares economic performance, comparative liveability measures the factors which make for happiness and well-being.
So what put Australia at the top of the Index? On the economic side, Legatum lists high levels of entrepreneurship, capital investment and innovation; deregulated labour and financial markets; and controlled public spending. Importantly in the light of the financial crisis, Australia scored “extremely highly” on the quality of financial and economic regulations.
On liveability, Australia scored high results on incomes, health, life-expectancy, freedom, equality of opportunity, and the environment. High levels of charitable giving, effective and incorrupt government, and one of the highest sports participation rates in the world also boosted the overall quality of life score.
Interestingly, the Index put average leisure time in Australia at over seven hours a day – which may come as a surprise to many busy Australians. One of the few “exceptionally weak” scores Australia received on the 44 indicators used was on religious belief.
In ranking Australia number one the Index acknowledged that all is not rosy. In particular it highlighted significant disparities between Australia’s overall result and the very different situation which faces the Indigenous population.
Austria and Finland tied for second place in this year’s Index, followed by Germany, Singapore, the US, Switzerland and Hong Kong. New Zealand came in at ninth place, the UK at fourteenth, and Ireland completed the top twenty on the list.
Nine of the ten countries at the bottom of the list came from Africa, including Sudan, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, came in last of all.
The ambition of the Prosperity Index is to produce what it calls “a holistic view of prosperity” which goes beyond economic indicators and includes social capital, health, the environment, freedom, and overall quality of life.
The basic idea is made brilliantly clear by a quote from Robert Kennedy at the beginning of the report. As Kennedy observed, indicators like Gross National Product do not measure things like the quality of education, “the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials”. In short, economic indicators measure everything “except that which makes life worthwhile”.
Good words to keep in mind as we focus on recovering and protecting prosperity in the years ahead.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Order in Nature
Each
year before Christmas the Pope meets with his fellow workers in the Roman Curia
to exchange Christmas greetings.
On December 22 he organized his long discourse around the theme of God's Spirit in the world. He mentioned it was 40 years since Pope Paul's controversial letter "Humanae Vitae" which set out the Christian understanding of sexuality, linking it to love and life and rejecting the use of artificial contraception. Today, in our part of the world, this teaching against contraception is rejected and ignored, as much as the Christian teaching against pre-marital sexual activity. That doesn't mean that both teachings are wrong or useless.
The Pope roamed widely in this talk and commended the Sydney World Youth Day as a wonderful example of the Spirit at work.
In every generation the Church has to struggle to make God visible, especially with the young, so that they will recognize early on the value of life and commit themselves to struggle against evil.
The Pope also spoke about the role of the Creator Spirit in creating the universe and maintaining it in existence. It is an essential part of the Christian creed to believe that God created the world, and to acknowledge that our ability to recognize and build on the universe's mathematical structures, those simple beautiful principles, is also the Spirit at work.
For Christians human beings are the crown of creation, the significant thread of meaning through the universe. This does not imply that we can do what we please to the environment, but that we have a duty and responsibility to it. Neither is any generation entitled to exploit the earth's resources to the detriment of future generations.
All this means that we have to search for the language of creation among men and women just as we have to respect the laws of nature, when dealing with the atmosphere, the oceans and our landscapes.
So we search to recognize the moral laws which contribute to human flourishing, just as a better understanding of healthiness has contributed to lowering rates of disease. We now know how infections spread, the importance of sanitation, that cigarettes can cause cancer and have taken appropriate measures.
The Pope insisted that the complementary nature of men and women is essential to this human ecology and that such respect is a precondition for the good life, for the proper exercise of human freedom and the continuity of the human race.
Christians link sexual activity to love and life, which protects love and children from being reduced to a commodity, defends the future against the demands of the moment, and human nature against dangerous manipulations.
Already in Spain government decree has tried to replace the terms "mother" and "father" with progenitor A and progenitor B.
Society strengthens or weakens with the health or frailty of marriage and family.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: A New Year
The
new year of 2009 has not begun too brightly. We are in the midst of a
major financial storm, which started in the U.S.A. and threatens to continue for
months if not years, although so far the job losses have been mainly in middle
management or with the self employed.
It seems strange that although the problems started in the U.S.A., which now has massive debts in many different ways, the American dollar has strengthened enormously.
So too, although the experts insist that the basics of the Australian economy are strong, our dollar’s value has still fallen because the price of the commodities which we sell, such as coal and iron, has also fallen spectacularly.
Every cloud has a silver lining, and the fall in the price of oil has brought some reduction in the cost of petrol. This should also mean less money to finance extremist Islamic terrorism.
On a much less serious note South Africa’s crushing defeat of Australia confirmed the worst fears for our cricket team. We are likely to be overweight for at least a couple of years from eating humble pie. Nor is there much indication that either our men or women tennis players will be mitigating our distress.
However 2008 had some wonderful moments. For Catholics the highlight was the July World Youth Day celebrations with the visit of 110,000 overseas pilgrims (more than the 75,000 overseas visitors for the Beijing Olympics) and especially Pope Benedict XVI.
Sydney took the young pilgrims to its heart and they were the stars of W.Y.D. with their goodness and vitality. Young Catholic Sydney worked hard to prepare spiritually for these days of prayer and teaching and we are now seeing the results of this work in many parts of Australia and overseas too.
The Way of the Cross was the single most influential event as I anticipated it would be since I saw its forerunner at the W.Y.D. in Toronto in 2002. All Christians appreciated its Scriptural basis and the story of Christ’s final hours always teaches powerfully even for people of little explicit faith.
However the election of the Afro-American Barack Obama was probably the most significant event of the year, more important than the terrorist attacks at Mumbai or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Financially, militarily and culturally profound consequences for good or ill will follow from the new President’s decisions.
Already recognized as one of the outstanding orators of this generation, I will certainly be listening to his Inauguration address and comparing him with Reagan and J.F. Kennedy.
But a great speech does not guarantee a great presidency and the new president has been dealt a bad set of cards militarily and financially. It would be worse if he had caused these problems but he will certainly be expected to improve the situation. No easy task. We wish him well.
A happy New Year to everyone.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Address on 24 December 2008
Christmas Message 2008
We
celebrate Christmas this year at a time of economic turbulence throughout the
world unknown since the 1930s. This situation is unlikely to improve
quickly, even here in Australia, so our first thoughts should be with those who
have already lost their jobs.
All people of good will and especially all Christians must be ready to co-operate, even at some personal disadvantage, to support those who are in trouble. Christians know that God has no hands but ours to work for improvements and non-Christians expect us to practice what we preach about solidarity and support.
Bad times give us a jolt and sometimes help us to check our priorities. Are we putting first things first? What are the first things, the most important things for us? Where does the feast of Christmas fit in when times are bad?
As always Christmas takes us further than an unreflective acceptance of appearances, calling us to go beyond the Christmas wrappings to search for the gift inside.
The birth of a child is always mysterious and wonderful, bringing out the best in all of us, even if that good will sometimes fades quickly.
But it requires an honesty, a readiness to set aside our self centredness, our imperial egos, to accept that a new born Jewish child was and is the Son of God.
This claim turns everything upside down. The world's fulcrum is not the financial centres of New York's Wall Street or London's City, but a cave in Bethlehem. The most important currency is not the dollar or the euro, but loving service.
The children of the great are born in grand palaces and generally suffer in hidden places. Jesus Christ was born in a cave in an obscure village in a small foreign-ruled state, but suffered and died a humiliating public death in a capital city.
The world is not as it seems at first glance and Christmas is a time for us to renew our sense of wonder. Not just wondering how the international captains of finance could have got it all so wrong, but wondering about the daily blessings we take for granted; friends, family, a decent society and our way of life.
I wish everyone the peace of Christmas especially those struggling with sickness, sadness or the consequences of our financial woes.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Silent Night
Christmas
means Christmas carols; a marvellous invention. Like many others I am prejudiced
in their favour as I have been singing some of them for as long as I can
remember.
My favourite is still ¡°Silent Night¡± with its wonderful message and melody, accessible to young and old.
The words come from an 1816 German poem by the young Austrian priest Father Joseph Mohr. He was assistant priest in the village of Mariapfarr, high in the Alps near Salzburg and his parish priest used to worry about him, because he was very social and loved to make jokes, drink and even sing dubious songs!
The whole country and his village, which was regularly isolated by snow during the long winters, had been through a bad period of military occupation by French and Bavarian soldiers. The French Emperor Napoleon had only been defeated a year earlier at Waterloo by the English and German troops under the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Blucher and ¡°Silent Night¡± was celebrating the new peace; the heavenly calm of that holy night when the Christ child was born.
Mohr himself had a difficult upbringing because he was born illegitimate in Salzburg, never knowing his soldier father who had moved on before he was born. Blessed with a fine voice Mohr sang in the choir of St. Peter¡¯s Church under the direction of Michael Haydn, brother of the great composer Franz Joseph Haydn. He was ordained a priest after receiving the papal dispensation then required for illegitimates.
By the Christmas season of 1818 Father Mohr was in the neighbouring village of Oberndorf and it was only on Christmas Eve that he asked his close friend the village organist Franz Gruber to compose a tune for his peace poem.
Mohr desperately wanted a new carol for Midnight Mass and some versions about the birth of the music tell of Gruber struggling vainly through the hours of the night until finally inspiration came to him.
By a happy chance the Church organ had been damaged by floods, so the hymn was arranged for two voices and a choir in four part harmony accompanied by guitar. The use of such a folk instrument was highly unusual then.
As Mary was scarcely mentioned Protestants happily sang the hymn.
The Trapp Family singers came to use it to conclude all their Christmas concerts.
Before Victoria was Queen of England, ¡°Silent Night¡± was being sung in North America and at a special birthday recital for the young Princess Victoria.
Gruber died as a well known composer while Father Mohr continued as a country priest, dying without sufficient assets to pay for his funeral.
By World War One ¡°Silent Night¡± was known everywhere and on Christmas Eve 1914 British and German troops, in a short unofficial truce, joined together in no-mans-land to sing ¡°Silent Night¡±, an anthem of universal brotherhood.
May we still heed its message.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Religion
Most
people throughout history have been religious, worshipping God or gods,
acknowledging the reality of a supreme Power. But the world-wide religious
scene contains a number of surprises and hides important differences of belief
and practice.
Most Christians now believe that heaven is open to non-Christians of good will, but this was not always the case. Many Jews still remain uncertain about the nature and even existence of life after death, while Muslims believe that heaven is closed to non-Muslims. The two great Eastern religions often teach a doctrine of reincarnation, whereby we return after death as another being.
Very few Australians are Hindus or Buddhists, but a surprising 25 percent of Australians claim to believe in reincarnation. Most seem uncertain of the meaning of the term, although it demonstrates once again the persistent yearning for life after death.
Some other differences between the great religious traditions are well known; others less so. Most Australians are well aware that the position of women in Islamic society is different from Jewish and Christian understandings and that there is no Christian theory of a holy war, although Catholics in particular have a just war theory and the Christian participation in wars is another question again.
Not so many realize that Buddha did not speak about God at all and many do not know how entrenched belief in the caste system is among Hindus. Recently Christians have been killed in India by religious extremists and many injured. The continuing violence is motivated not merely by religious prejudice but by class antipathy to "untouchables", the lowest caste and tribal people who have converted to different forms of Christianity.
We also find significant differences in religious practice around the world.
In Australia young people are less religious than their grandparents, with only 63 percent belonging to any of the main religious traditions. Nearly 80 percent of their grandparents claim to be religious. A more encouraging aspect of the Australian youth scene is the collapse of hostility among the different Christian denominations.
Leaving aside the resurgence of religious enthusiasm among young Muslims in many countries, often aided by Saudi money, in a survey of 84 countries older people in 76 of these countries attended more frequently than young adults.
Those who know the strength of Catholic life in the Philippines would not be surprised that more young people worship regularly there (88%) than older people, although I was surprised that this was true also in Norway, even if the level of attendance was only 10.5%.
The largest falls have occurred in Spain and Japan where five times as many older people attend.
In post-Communist Russia the percentage of young worshippers has doubled from 1995 to 8%, while young Croatian worshippers have increased from 30% to 50%.
Religion is not alive and well everywhere, but in many places it is healthier than in Australia.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Gluttony
Bus
shelters around Sydney are adorned with posters of pudgy young adults with tape
measures. They are part of a campaign highlighting the link between being
overweight and chronically ill. The goal is to get young people to start paying
attention to their waistlines before the spare tyre gets away from them.
I'm the last person to preach about being overweight. My doctor told me once that I was "not grossly obese". Good news as far as it goes, but hardly a ringing endorsement of my own slimming efforts.
There are many reasons for being overweight, some of them, like eating disorders, outside our control. Not everyone who is overweight is a glutton. But while there is no sin in being overweight, gluttony has always been regarded as one of the seven deadly sins.
The seven deadly sins are deadly and sinful because they set something else up in place of God. It is possible to make a god out of one's appetite, giving it priority over everyone and everything else. The lavish obsession in parts of the media with fashionable cooks, expensive restaurants and gourmet shopping has been labelled "gastroporn", which in its own way shows that food and eating can become gods for us if we don’t keep things in perspective.
Greediness is another thing that makes gluttony a sin, something it shares with the lust and avarice. Excess is also usually a part of it. Together, greed and excess mean selfishness towards other people and their needs.
Gluttony is not simply a matter of how much we eat. There are other posters around Sydney this week telling young people not to turn "a night out into a nightmare". This campaign is focussed on excessive drinking at end of year celebrations, including end of school celebrations like Schoolies.
42 per cent of people seeking drug treatment services in 2006-07 did so because of alcohol abuse. Binge drinking brings with it a host of medical problems, including an increased risk of seizures. 3000 Australians die each year from alcohol abuse.
It is also a powerful incitement to violence. The problem has become so bad that in October the state government announced a range of restrictions, including a freeze on new 24 hour licences for pubs and clubs, and limits on the drinks that can be purchased after midnight in violence-prone premises.
Then there is the contribution alcohol abuse makes to other serious problems. It plays a part in 50 per cent of domestic physical and sexual abuse cases, one third of road deaths, and 80 per cent of night time assaults.
Christmas is the time to enjoy the blessings of good food, a quiet tipple, and the company of friends and family (and prayer). But like most good things taken to excess, eating and drinking too much have destructive consequences for ourselves and others.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Was Christ A King?
Jesus
the son of Mary was born in a stable and crucified as a young man on a hill in
Jerusalem. He was not nobly born and refused political power. Is the
Catholic Church right to celebrate the feast of Christ the King today?
In fact, the feast is of recent origin, introduced by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to emphasise the importance of Christ in public and private life. It was also designed to counter the pretensions of the Communists and especially Mussolini’s Fascists, who had come to power in Italy a few years previously.
Pius XI intended to contrast the goodness and justice of Christ with the oppression of contemporary dictatorship.
Jesus was not rich or politically powerful. His Jewish and Roman rulers might have heard of him as a miracle worker or trouble maker. He did not deny to Governor Pilate that his followers called him king, but he was not kinglike and his kingdom was not of this world.
The kings in history are a mixed bag of good and evil, wise and foolish. Nearly all of them exercised real power, unlike the constitutional monarchs, symbols and umpires rather than rulers, who reign today like our Queen Elizabeth. Some of them were also cruel and tyrannical, not interested in the welfare of their subjects and the more capable and powerful were often warlike and keen for empire. It is not surprising that the title Christ the King was introduced into the Church only when many of the kings and emperors had disappeared from history.
In what sense then can we say that Jesus should be called king? St. Paul writing to the Corinthians does speak of Christ handing over his Kingdom to God the Father at the end of time. Then there will be no more human sovereignties, authorities or powers. All the evil enemies of the Kingdom of God will be under his feet and even death will be no more.
We find a beautiful passage from the Apocalypse (or Book of Revelations) on Christ the King who is described as “the faithful witness, the First-born from the dead, the Ruler of the Kings of the earth. He loves us and has washed away our sins with his blood, and made us a line of kings.” (Rev.9:4-6) Christ is King because He can and does forgive our sins provided we repent.
Christians believe the one true God is Trinitarian, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Son Jesus designed the cosmos and also placed the natural law into the heart of creation, so that human dignity is respected and moral truths are recognised.
And Christ is King because he is to be everyone’s judge on the Last Day, a loving, merciful and just judge, but a judge nonetheless, the Good Shepherd separating the sheep from the goats.
Christ is our brother, servant, redeemer; but also our King.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Lust
Lust
is still one of the seven deadly sins and not because Christians are
spoil-sports. A disordered sexual appetite causes damage.
Healthy sexual desire is a blessing, but like every desire it needs to be trained, well directed and restrained. We now recognize that sexual addiction is as much a disease as addiction to drugs or alcohol, because habits feed on themselves for good or ill.
Lust is the deadly sin this week because of the recent sad news that N.S.W. is suffering from an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers, where the rate of diagnosed Chlamydia among girls and young women is more than double the rate found among teenage boys and young men.
The 16 to 24 year olds had the largest percentage infected and south-east Sydney and the Hunter regions were the worst affected areas.
Lust is more of a problem among older age groups than it is among teenagers, but it is sad to see some of them making trouble for themselves in the future with the threat of infertility, as they are encouraged to drift into disordered patterns of life while still at school.
Across Australia 50,000 youngsters tested positive for Chlamydia last year, more than 12,000 of them in N.S.W. Disturbingly high rates were found among fifteen year olds. Doctors estimate the real rate of annual infections at a quarter of a million a year, because many are too embarrassed to seek medical help or persist in thinking they are invincible, that such diseases only strike others.
Too many of our young people are sold short on sex, because nobody is telling them the whole truth and many have to learn only from their mistakes.
They are relentlessly encouraged to reject the traditional Christian teachings on sexuality, usually without any sort of examination or comparative assessment.
It is evidence of a very low estimate of young people’s altruism to tell fifteen and sixteen year olds that the best answer to sexually transmitted diseases is a condom.
No one is perfect and our instincts are partially disordered, but human beings are more than a mass of uncontrollable desires.
Sexual activity is lit by a fire, sacred or profane, which in the long term either purifies or corrupts. It is not as morally neutral as other physical activities, not a recreational right, because sexual activity should be linked to love. And love comes from our hearts and changes the core of our being.
Lust is selfish and uses the partner as an object. Love is unselfish, concerned for the loved one.
In the Christian scheme love, openness to children and sexual activity are all linked together as a worthy ideal, a trinity preparing for marriage and family. True love is urged to wait.
Truly human teaching on sexuality recognizes the need for ideals as well as human weakness. Lust is damaging, an easy option, but true love is precious and different.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: History In The Making
Last
week saw an important double when Australia watched the Melbourne Cup and the
U.S.A. held their national elections.
The favourite won in the United States while a long shot won our most famous
horse race. Barack Obama is young, while Bart Cummings and the owner of the Cup
winner are elderly; but all were popular winners.
Horse racing is the sport of kings, but still has a broad constituency here in
Australia. While it is a rough and ready industry, under pressure in many ways,
Bart Cummings is not only a champion trainer with twelve Melbourne Cup winners,
but a good man and a gentleman. It was also pleasing to see an Australian horse
and trainer win in order to hold off the foreign challengers for one more year.
When I was at school, classes used to stop so we could listen to the running of
the Melbourne Cup (no television then) and I find it reassuring that these old
rituals survive.
The Australian media give enormous space to things American, because most of us
are very interested in what happens there. It was a shock for me to discover
that Australia is almost never mentioned in the U.S.A. press; a situation quite
unlike England’s. Our Prime Minister will have to work very hard for President
Obama to notice Australia.
The dynamics of U.S.A. governments are quire different from ours with a powerful
directly elected President and no compulsory voting. Tens of millions of
Americans never vote, although on this occasion we had the largest voter turnout
since women obtained the vote in 1920, with an increase of 7.3% over 2004.
As a young man I remember the excitement and hope when President Kennedy was
elected. We expected great things and were not entirely disappointed. American
democracy is imperfect, too much influenced by money and dynasties, but it has
an energy and vitality unequalled anywhere. The size of their immense crowds
contrast with our small political gatherings.
Obama is a superb orator with a gift for language and a capacity to inspire
loyalty and hope, but he comes to power in difficult times; world wide financial
turmoil, the worst for seventy-five years, two unpopular and difficult wars and
American indebtedness. And we should add Iran and North Korea.
The U.S.A. is also deeply divided by wealth and poverty, with no universal
health insurance, families sometimes bankrupted by hospital bills and Third
World diseases are even found in hospitals because people cannot afford to go to
a doctor.
The importance of a black President for the U.S.A. and the world cannot be
underestimated; especially a black President with a Muslim father. No country in
Europe could produce such a result.
Hopes are high, perhaps impossibly high. As a young man Obama mixed with some of
the wildest from the radical left, urban terrorists, the P.L.O. and his
financial advisers include those who helped provoke the financial meltdown.
He will need to move beyond these worlds if he is to be the President Reagan of
the left, to win over the middle ground in the fight for healing and prosperity.
The most disturbing aspect of his short career is his fanatical support for
abortion as he possesses the most anti-life voting record of any contemporary
senator.
This hostility to life contrasts strongly with his humanitarianism in many other
areas.
The world will be changed by President Obama. We hope it will be changed for the
better.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: All Souls Day
Today
Catholics celebrate All Souls Day when we pray for the dead who have not quite
made it to heaven, but will certainly arrive. They are in a state or
process of purification to prepare them for God’s presence called purgatory.
Yesterday we remembered the saints who made it on All Saints Day.
Luther and King Henry VIII abolished purgatory and Protestants today still do not accept this doctrine. They explain, quite correctly, that the word purgatory is not found in the New Testament and that as we are saved by Christ and not by our good works, believers go straight to heaven.
Is death the end of every personal existence so that the injustices of this life are not balanced out in eternity, while the saints and the criminals and the rest of us are equally as dead as dodos; gone as completely as any dead insect or animal?
All Christians believe in life after death despite the silence of the dead because this is what Jesus taught.
Catholics have always prayed for their dead so that they may be at peace. It is a beautiful and traditional practice taken over from the late pre-Christian Jews. Originally Jewish understandings about life after death were unclear and undeveloped and even in the time of Jesus, Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed over the resurrection of the body.
In the second book of Maccabees, written late in the pre-Christian era, Judas Maccabaeus urged his followers to pray for those who had died in battle "that they might be released from their sins".
Less explicit are two New Testament references in Matthew (c12) and 1 Corinthians (c3), while more explicitly we find frequent references among the theologians of the early Church, such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen and other Eastern writers such as Cyril and John Chrysostom.
Western writers such as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine developed a systematic theory of purification through suffering after death so that souls could cope with God’s radical goodness.
Many theologians believe we shall only be able to enjoy God’s presence in heaven with the capacities that we developed while on earth.
Obviously this raises the possibility that the capacity to love has been so radically damaged during the life-time of some sinners, that they refuse to ask God’s forgiveness and are unable to exist in His presence. Such people are said to be in hell.
Catholics believe in God’s individual judgement at death, followed by grades of reward and punishment. This seems reasonable to me, even when we concede that no one is worthy of Christ's salvation. I hope not to be punished as if I was Hitler and don’t expect to be rewarded like St. Francis of Assisi.
Heaven is a happy mystery of love and justice. Purgatory is like suddenly coming out of darkness, while our eyes slowly learn to cope with the light.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Synod
In
Rome today Pope Benedict concelebrated the concluding Mass of a three week Synod
meeting on the "Word of God".
400 from around the world attended this Synod, more than 240 bishops, delegates from the other Christian churches, experts and Catholic lay people and religious.
The term “Word of God” means more than the Scriptures, because it refers primarily to Jesus Christ as a person and includes all the other ways Jesus is presented to us. Obviously the Scriptures and especially the New Testament are of first importance, but the Word of God comes to us in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and through official teachings, prayers, hymns, books. The Way of the Cross through the streets of Sydney on World Youth Day was a wonderful presentation of God’s word.
Rome lived up to its reputation for beautiful October weather, the “otto-brate”, with fine, clear days and brisk mornings. The atmosphere within the Synod also was unusually calm, with few theological divisions and no tensions; a strong contrast with the markets as they passed through the worst turbulence since the 1930’s Depression.
Was this another example of religion’s irrelevance, of the bishops fiddling while the markets burned? I don’t think so. Apart from the relevance of Christian teaching on greed, prudence, pride and envy, to the present troubles, Christians have to live by the same principles in good times and in bad. In peace or in war, in prosperity or unexpected periods of financial collapse, Christian communities live in faith, hope and love, mostly out of public view.
In the sixteenth century the Reformation appeal to the Scriptures split the Church, separating Anglicans and Protestants from Catholics.
Today in our climate of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, where we strive to begin from what unites us all, important doctrinal differences remain but the Scriptures are acknowledged as joint life-giving treasure.
The Synod saw two important innovations, the visit of Rabbi Cohen from Haifa in Israel speaking on the Jewish scriptures which Christians share and the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, leader of the different Orthodox Churches.
Patriarch Bartholomew, who studied in Rome, was received by the Pope and Synod in the magnificence of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, where the Popes have been elected for five hundred years.
A striking figure with a long squarely cut white beard, the Patriarch’s austere dark vestments were in vivid contrast with the colour and tumult of the Sistine’s decorations, especially Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement” mural. He acknowledged the historic importance of his visit, the first time an Ecumenical Patriarch has addressed a Roman Synod. In a splendid sermon Bartholomew explained that we hear the Word of God spoken through the Scriptures and see the Word of God in nature and in art, especially in icons.
The Synod was an unspectacular and happy gathering, which should quietly produce much good fruit in the long term.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Anger
Many
years ago I came to know an old bishop well. Although weak and sick he
never complained nor spoke ill of others. I felt able to remark to him
that he was very self-controlled.
"That might be so", he replied, "But it was the result of a long struggle after a big fright". When young, he told me, he had a fierce temper. In a fight with his brother he knocked him unconscious by hitting him on the head with a brick. For a while he thought he had killed him. Eighty years afterwards that old man well remembered his lesson.
Anger is on everyone’s list of deadly sins, because it is like a door which opens onto many vices.
A runaway emotion which is easy to turn on and hard to turn off, anger “blinds the eye of the mind”, throws reason aside. Anger can be like madness, demonic in its destruction and self destruction.
Even children are instantly frightened of a truly angry person, an ugly sight, a contorted face red or deathly pale, eyes burning or bulging, sometimes accompanied by streams of abuse.
Anger is dangerous even when it does not result in physical violence. Sarcasm, quarrels and criticism can be deeply wounding, while in cultures which take God seriously ferocious curses are hurled on opponents. Not many Australians are serious cursers, although sacred names are invoked with monotonous vulgarity.
When we are frightened or annoyed the adrenalin starts to run urging us to fight or to flee. Practice makes perfect and both individuals and communities are called to persevere. Instincts can be tamed and muted through small acts of self-control, or they can grow from bad to worse if left unchecked.
We see some children who are hot tempered, quick to flare up, but quick to calm down too as the storm passes. Such people are often generous, well aware of their weakness and nearly all battle successfully to become peaceful and contributing adults, but capable of using their fire and energy for good causes.
I remember a senior school teacher explaining to a teenager who had lost his temper and quickly recovered. She acknowledged that he was over his lapse but, she explained, bad temper is like hammering a nail in to a piece of wood. You can quickly pull out the nail, but the hole in the wood remains.
Vandalism, an unfocused anger on society, is particularly poisonous. I remember working in a hot dry country town, where care and perseverance were needed to grow trees. Some vandal took the tops off a series of two metre high young trees in a median strip.
His actions warranted a righteous anger, controlled by reason, proportionate and focused. We should not allow fear or cowardice to foster cynicism or moral indifference, which encourages anti-social behaviour.
Sometimes we have a duty to be angry.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Pride
Most
parents are proud of their children and after passing through adolescence most
children become proud of their parents. I am proud of the parts the
Catholic Church and Sydney played in the World Youth Day.
Such pride is good not the type which heads the list of the seven deadly sins, which I shall continue to move through, off and on, during the next few months.
All good education today works to build up the self-confidence of young people, so that they are proud of themselves.
Destructive pride is something else altogether from these admirable virtues. We reject pride as offensive, when it transmutes into arrogance, selfishness, vanity, hubris. No one finds these acceptable.
People can become proud and arrogant about their power and wealth, their knowledge and even their virtues, but pride is most cancerous when people want to be equal to God and trample on others' rights.
Genesis, the first book of the Bible, recounts how our first parents Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of life so that they would be like gods. They were expelled from the Garden of Eden into the hardships of daily life for this mistake.
While we are not obliged to understand this ancient story as literally true, the symbolism rings true and helps explain the flaw that runs through our hearts, our inbuilt selfishness, which has led men and women repeatedly throughout history to overreach themselves; usually with disastrous consequences.
Today few people curse and hate God because He forbids sins and will be our final judge to reward and punish every person after death. A few more, still a minority, do not believe in God and the traditional moral commandments, so they construct their own rules while rejecting also the possibility of individual judgement after death.
No outsider can be sure of the motivation behind these points of view, but sometimes they flow from a deadly arrogance, from the sin of pride. One writer even claimed that Hitler hated the Jews, because they gave mankind the idea of the one true God as creator, law maker and judge.
Therefore pride is not only a vice of individuals, but can infect whole groups according to nation, race, class and religion. We have only to think of German Nazism, the class war of the Communists, the wars of religion, religious and secular terrorists to recognize collective pride doing its destructive work. No group stands above the eternal moral law and has an unconditional claim to the blind loyalty of its members.
Christianity rejects self-hatred and encourages self respect, but not at the expense of others’ rights. The truly proud despise others, are regularly ungrateful, exaggerate their own importance, or wealth or virtue. As a consequence they are deeply unhappy.
At its best the Judaeo-Christian tradition has always resisted those individuals or groups who want to make themselves God.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Greed
The
enormous crisis which has battered the U.S.A financial markets will have long
term effects, rippling out around the world. Government budgets will be
affected. Spending on other priorities, including real or imagined global
warming, will be seen in a new light.
The next U.S. president will be faced with the consequences of the crisis and the need to clean up the mess. Both presidential candidates have said little so far that has been helpful, although both have claimed that greed was partly responsible.
They are right on this and it will help their approval ratings, because everyone is opposed to greed, although almost no one admits to being greedy.
The very rich are easy targets and receive little sympathy when they burn their fingers. Indeed it is too easy to blame greed for the melt-down, unless we define greed by separating it from legitimate profit making. After all, isn’t a form of greed the principal motivator of the market economy which has brought new prosperity to billions, including most of the Australian people? For better and worse, most countries, even the ex-Communist rulers of China and Russia, favour a market economy.
The Catholic Church does not believe money making is sinful, does believe in private property, and acknowledges that inequalities are part of the human condition.
But the Church also explicitly claims that the tenth commandment forbids greed, the passion for riches which leads people to commit injustice and harm their neighbours.
Money is a useful servant, especially when we gain it to obtain natural goods like food, clothing, education, a home, transport. But the love of money can become a tyrannical master. St. Paul spoke of the greed that becomes idolatry, the worship of a false god. Amassing money can become all consuming, fueling self-centredness and reckless risk taking.
Jesus himself extolled the poor and the poor in spirit and often spoke of the danger of riches. He even claimed it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven! He was no apologist for greed in any form.
The thirteenth century produced Thomas Aquinas, an Italian and the greatest Christian thinker on things religious in 2000 years. He was also a Dominican priest and has been declared a saint.
He followed tradition in regarding greed as one of the seven deadly sins, bringing with it misery, not happiness, for the greedy. He recognized greed’s evil consequences which he described as the “daughters of avarice”:- hardness of heart, an absence of mercy, constant anxiety and worrying because enough is never enough, violence and deceit.
The fact that someone is rich does not mean that others must be poor, because wealth creation is real and in societies like Australia the situation of the most disadvantaged has improved.
But aggressive over-acquisition makes us mean. Those who are prosperous should be regular donors to prevent greed slowly capturing our hearts.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Porto San Giorgio
Last
Sunday I travelled with a group of Aussies for a unique ceremony to Porto San
Giorgio, a small holiday resort on the Adriatic coast north east of Rome.
250 young men were assigned to 72 seminaries of the Neo-Catechumenal Way around the world to begin their studies for the Catholic priesthood. 56 were from Italy and 35 from Spain, the largest groups.
Australians are used to something of the immense variety across the Catholic community, which we saw in the pilgrims from 150 countries at World Youth Day. Religious orders like the Sisters of Charity at St. Vincent’s Hospital and the Jesuit priests at Riverview have long been part of Australian life. Such orders, or groupings, have been continually coming and going over the centuries.
The Neo-catechumenal Way is new, soon to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of its Roman foundation by two lay people, still alive and well, Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez. Composed mainly of families, they have 40,000 communities in 108 countries with about 1,200,000 members. They are served by their own priests.
40,000 young pilgrims from their community came to World Youth Day and celebrated their own gathering in the Domain on the Monday of the Pope’s departure.
The centrepiece of that Sydney ceremony was when young men who wanted to become priests (and young women nuns) were asked to stand and come forward. About 1,000 young men and 750 young women answered that call.
Only those who have belonged to a community for four years can proceed and everyone must follow a supervised two year programme after publicly offering themselves.
The Porto San Giorgio ceremony represents the end of the preliminary stages before the 7 or 8 years of priestly training.
Kiko Arguello led the ceremony before a congregation of 1,200 people in a spectacular circular hall, a bit like a space ship, in the centre of a beautiful valley, overlooking the Adriatic coast a few kilometers away. The small hills around the valley are covered with irregularly laid out fields, containing lines of vines, olive and fig trees. It was green and lush.
Four successive coloured wheels or circles make up the ceiling of the hall in reds, blue and green, replicating the vision from chapter one of the Jewish prophet Ezekiel, describing the splendour surrounding the glory of God.
All the young volunteers are allocated around the world by having their names drawn from a basket.
I drew out 3 of the 4 names of the new men to join our 18 seminarians at the missionary seminary in Pagewood. Most accept to go where they are asked, anywhere from Angola to Finland, from Brazil to Australia, but a few decline.
I was very moved by their courage and generosity, although they will be well supported by their new communities. I had never seen anything quite like it.
They will do a power of good.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: The Seven Deadly Sins
The
seven deadly sins still provide a good part of our news and entertainment,
although few people could give an accurate list of the top seven! In fact
many would struggle to explain the idea of sin at all.
For Christians sin offends God and turns us away from love. True love never causes us to sin, although disordered love of self lies behind many sins, especially sins of the flesh.
Sin harms the sinner, often harms other people and violates their rights. Murder, violence and stealing are clear examples, but sins are not necessarily a crime or a disease.
The notion of sin comes from the Bible, presupposes that we have real personal freedom to choose good or evil, and is essential for a happy and safe community.
A society which rejected the idea of sin would be a jungle, where the strong oppress the weak and define what is right and wrong. History shows, even our personal histories, that those who believe love is of paramount importance also acknowledge attacks on love. Sins are more than breaking rules, because people are hurt.
The seven deadly sins are sometimes called capital sins because they lead to other sins, into habits or vices.
The most common list comes from St. Gregory the Great, a famous pope at the end of the sixth century. He places pride first, followed by greediness, envy, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth or bitterness.
The Italian writer Dante Alighieri grouped the seven sins according to the way they offended against love. A perverted love produces pride, envy and anger. Insufficient love leads to sloth or laziness, while excessive love of earthly goods results in greed, gluttony and lust. Not only did Dante understand human nature, but he possessed a well formed Catholic conscience.
Habits of sin also damage our judgement so we do not see things clearly and become blind to the rights of others.
Our moral sense can become blunted, even extinguished in some areas. Think of people who worked happily in concentration camps.
But the seven deadly sins not only damage our judgement, but can even come close to capturing our free will entirely. Think of those addicted to drugs, alcohol or pornography. On the other hand no situation is hopeless. God’s forgiveness is real and life giving and many have returned from the brink, small step by small step.
Christianity is about love, the opposite of sin, but it is cowardice to duck this issue. Some Christians dismiss talk on sin as negative, refuse to classify sins and are content to claim that God loves them and is not interested in “bad stuff”. It is always a danger sign if we believe we are not sinners!
To acknowledge the reality of the seven deadly sins helps us to know ourselves. And self knowledge always means knowledge of sin and usually leads to knowledge of God.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Cardinal George Pell's Sunday Telegraph column: Reducing Abortions
Abortion
performed for any reason and at any stage of pregnancy is always the tragic and
unjust taking of innocent human life.
Lovers of life and all main line Christians work towards and pray for the day when greater respect for human life and greater support for pregnant women and their families will see an end to all abortions. Majority opinion in Australia is conflicted because most Australians believe we have too many abortions and are disturbed by this, while also accepting a woman’s right to abortion. The majority want the numbers reduced.
Therefore, we realise that any reduction in the number of abortions would be an improvement.
I welcome Senator Guy Barnett’s motion, which will be debated in the Senate this week, to disallow Medicare funding of second trimester abortions. This is a small but significant step towards reducing the number of fetal deaths by abortion and the emotional harm that many women experience after abortion.
The second trimester covers from 14 to 26 weeks of pregnancy. Recent medical advances have led to an improvement in fetal viability so that infants born as early as 21 weeks have survived. Fetal surgery has also been successfully performed on unborn babies as early as 21 weeks of pregnancy.
Medicare pays for these abortions under the heading of “Management of second trimester labour”. This is interpreted to cover both brutal partial birth abortion, which is banned in the United States, as well as the induction of labour in which many babies are actually delivered alive and simply left to die. This was the terrible fate of forty-seven unborn children who were aborted after 20 weeks in Victoria in 2005.
Senator Barnett’s motion would stop taxpayer Medicare funding of second trimester abortions in private abortion facilities, whilst ensuring that women, whose unborn child dies from natural causes in utero continue to receive appropriate assistance. Nearly 70% of Australians would support these measures.
The motion would also constrain abortionists from loosely interpreting “life threatening maternal diseases” to include psychological and social reasons for abortion, which often means simply abortion on request. More than half of all post-20 week abortions in Victoria in 2005 were performed for such reasons. Interestingly, we were unable to get any information from the Department of Health on the number of abortions and the reasons for them in New South Wales.
Additionally, Senator Barnett’s motion would remove Medicare funding for abortions performed because the foetal child is missing fingers or toes, or has a correctable condition such as a cleft palate or hare lip. This would be another small but significant step towards eliminating discrimination against the unborn on the grounds of disability.
Late term abortion is an especially inhumane response to the very human dilemma of a difficult or unexpected pregnancy. The humanity of these unborn children is beyond doubt. Our inhumane tolerance of such practices is chilling.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Weekly Sunday Telegraph column: Fathers Day 2008
The
difficult family circumstances that many people face were highlighted this week
in the wake of US Senator John McCain naming Sarah Palin as his running mate for
the November presidential election.
Most Australians had never heard of Sarah Palin before this, but we soon learnt plenty about her, including that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. In the unpleasant way of American politics some were tempted to use this sad news as a way of embarrassing Governor Palin and mocking her Christian convictions.
To his credit the Democratic Party candidate, Senator Barack Obama, quickly ruled out making political mileage from Governor Palin’s family situation, and said that anyone on his team found doing so would be fired. Senator Obama’s own father left him and his mother when he was young and he was brought up largely by his maternal grandparents. So he understands the difficulties with which families are often confronted.
In most cases the breakdown of a family leaves kids at a huge disadvantage, and the way Senator Obama overcame this challenging background to contend for the most important political office in the world is a great story by anyone’s standards.
Obama was lucky to have a loving mother, devoted grandparents, and good examples around him to make up for his absent father. He understands the importance of fathers to their children and has not been afraid to challenge men publicly to live up to the expectations of those who depend upon them.
As he put it in a speech made to mark Fathers Day in the US, we need fathers “to realise that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child – it’s the courage to raise one”. This is a message we need to hear in Australia too.
In 2006-07 just over a million (or 1 in 5) Australian children aged 17 or younger lived with only one of their natural parents, most of them in single parent families. For 82 per cent of these children that parent was their mother. While 50 per of kids living with only one parent saw their absent parent at least monthly, 28 per cent never saw them or saw them less than once a year.
In short, there are a lot of children who have reduced contact with their fathers or no contact at all. This is bad for kids because fathers have a powerful and positive impact on the health and development of their children.
This effect on children is strengthened when fathers have a good relationship with their mother, which teaches boys how to treat women and girls what they should expect from men. Mothers stress nurturing while fathers stress achievement, and both are important for healthy development.
Good fathers, like good mothers, make an irreplaceable contribution to the happiness and well-being of children. We need more of them.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Weekly Sunday Telegraph column: Journalists
Last
year when I was visiting a Catholic boys secondary college I asked the school
captain what he hoped to do in the following year. "Study journalism" he
replied, then adding "You are a journalist too, aren't you?"
I was rather pleased that he knew of my weekly column, which I have been writing for more than seven years now. Obviously I pleaded guilty to him, admitting to being a journalist, explaining that it wasn’t my main job!
I have been an assiduous reader of newspapers since before I was a teenager and my breakfast routine regularly avoids much conversation as I plough through the day’s three papers. It is a daily ritual, which I thoroughly enjoy, especially on holidays when I have more time.
Therefore the news that the Fairfax organization, which produces the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, was about to sack 550 people across Australia including 180 journalists, was deeply disturbing.
It would be a pretence for me to pose as an enthusiastic supporter of Fairfax publications, although I have written occasionally for their major dailies. For a long time I wondered whether the Age wanted Catholic readers and more recently I began to wonder whether this was true also in Sydney. But that is another story.
Decent and thriving societies need a decent and thriving free press with different points of view. Only newspapers can provide the regular flow of sufficient information, quickly followed by analysis of the news and quality opinion pieces to enable readers to keep up with situations that are changing, come to their own conclusions and move beyond the sophisticated "spin" put out by our political masters.
We all understand that newspapers have to run at a profit, especially when there is an economic downturn and when market conditions are changing, either through developments in the on-line world or in the public’s reading habits. But when money has to be saved, the overriding priority must be to maintain the quality of the product. With newspapers this should usually mean that sacking journalists is the last resort.
Australian papers compare well with English language papers overseas, with much more international news than you find in most U.S.A. newspapers, large sections devoted to general news, high quality sports coverage and extensive financial sections.
Short television "grabs" cannot inform us as comprehensively or with the same depth of quality news and views as a newspaper.
In our universities, faculties teaching the humanities such as history, philosophy, languages and literature have been reduced. Even maths and science courses are under pressure.
This in itself is likely to result in a "dumbing down" of our public life and would be worsened if the financial restraints imposed on newspapers were misapplied, reducing their capacity to break the news, to shape and provoke public opinion.
We need more and better journalists, not fewer.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Weekly Sunday Telegraph column: A Centenary
Last
Sunday I celebrated a Centenary Mass in St. Mary’s Cathedral for Loreto College,
Kirribilli. There was nothing very unusual about this as we have 35 older
schools in the Sydney Archdiocese.
But it was a very happy and prayerful occasion, the Cathedral was packed with
people even in the choir loft, the senior girls served the Mass and the music
was excellent.
Outsiders often regard the Catholic community as a large monotone group. In fact
the Catholic Church is made up of a bewildering variety of sub-groups.
Every school centenary reminds us of the good work done by our schools
generally. As a Catholic Archbishop I am glad to acknowledge the contribution of
our Catholic schools to the peace, prosperity and decency of Australian society.
One in every five young Australians is prepared for adult life in Catholic
schools and prepared well.
Mary Ward (1585-1645) who founded the Loreto sisters was born in Yorkshire, when
the practice of the Catholic faith was severely restricted in England.
Originally a member of the Poor Clares in Europe, she wanted to found a new
group for women, like the Jesuit priests, dedicated to education and under the
Pope, not the local bishop.
These innovations were resisted by the Roman Cardinals, so her group was
suppressed in 1631 and she was briefly imprisoned by the Church! After release
at the direction of Pope Urban VIII, the order was able to resume its work on a
less formal basis.
For a couple of hundred years her role as founder was disputed and this
continued even in Australia when an Irish sister Mother Gonzaga Barry set up the
first Loreto school in Ballarat in 1875.
From the 1870s until 1964 all Church schools in Australia received no government
funding, so Catholic schools had to struggle to survive.
They were only able to continue because nearly all the teaching was done by
people who did not take a salary: nuns from different religious “orders” like
the Loretos, such as Josephites or Mercy sisters, or religious brothers (unlike
priests, brothers do not celebrate Mass and the other sacraments). Parents paid
school fees and local families made gifts or bequests. Such was the case at
Kirribilli where the Heaton family provided an early loan to secure “Elamang”
house.
Loreto schools have a long established reputation as centres of culture, music,
art and beauty. Originally, even at Kirribilli, the nuns did not emphasise the
importance of external examinations or the sciences, but these days are now well
gone and Kirribilli’s academic results are regularly among the best in the
Catholic schools.
Times have changed. Financial pressures have lessened, facilities and staff
qualifications are better, but new challenges to faith and family life have
emerged as career options expanded and the penalties for failure have become
more drastic.
Every centenary is an opportunity to say "well done", "thank you" and to look to
the future.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Weekly Sunday Telegraph column: Two Changes
During
our brief history Australia has always been supported by a friendly
English-speaking “super-power”, first of all Great Britain and now the United
States of America.
But two recent events highlighted how the world is changing, the Beijing
Olympics and the Russian invasion of Georgia. As China is much more important to
Australia we should begin there.
Both China and Russia are authoritarian where many of the liberties we take for
granted are non-existent.
That being said we have to give sympathy to the rulers of China with their
immense problems The country is huge with 1300 million people, as though the
Roman Empire has remained intact there.
Long a successful trading nation, perhaps only a third of the population shares
in the spectacular economic progress. Discontent bubbles up in many local
protests and a one child policy is enforced roughly. The Beijing smog is
symptomatic of the general challenges, ecologically and even spiritually.
This smog will clear as the Chinese become more prosperous and as internal press
freedom increases.
Christianity is spreading, more of it Protestant than Catholic, despite
differing levels of government opposition, just as it did in a hostile Roman
Empire. The “underground” Catholic Church loyal to the Pope have been further
restricted as the Olympic Games approached, with some bishops and priests under
house arrest. Many Beijing priests have fled to the country areas for the period
of the Games.
The opening ceremony was a mighty exhibition of Chinese technology and power. I
was not surprised to learn that the fireworks display was enhanced by computer
images for television viewers. This ceremony, like the Chinese embassy in
Canberra, was making a statement about China’s role in the world today and her
confidence about tomorrow. The power centres of the world are shifting from
Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific.
Last week I wrote about Solzhenitsyn and his providential role in dismantling
Russian Communism. It might come as a surprise to learn that Russian Prime
Minister Putin, formerly of the K.G.B., and the centre of power, believes that
the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geo-political tragedy of the
twentieth century”. Post-Communist economic rationalism in Russia was a disaster
for ordinary people and helps explain the pockets of bitter hatred towards
Solzhenitsyn on some blog sites. They see him as a traitor and destroyer.
Putin wants to use Russia’s resources boom to reassert great power status, is
contemptuous of democracy and enjoys popular support at home for his invasion of
Georgia. Their imprudence played into his hands.
The big question is whether Russia’s Georgian adventure is an end or a
beginning.
On the other hand China’s opening ceremony praise for the teachings of Confucius
was positive and hopeful, because one big question in China is how the spiritual
void there will be filled, now that Mao and Marxism are discredited.
Today’s Australian children will be adults in interesting times.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.
Weekly Sunday Telegraph column: Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Two of the greatest achievements of the last century were the defeat of Nazism
in the Second World War at the cost of 50 million deaths and the collapse of the
Communist Empire in Eastern Europe and Russia from 1989 onwards. By a miracle
this transition was basically peaceful. More than any other person Solzhenitsyn
white-anted Communism, the Evil Empire, by revealing how it was; founded on
violence, lies and oppression.
The memory of Communism is vanishing quickly in Australia. Youngsters today have
not heard of Stalin, the Russian dictator who died in 1953 and caused more
deaths than Hitler.
Lenin came to power in the 1917 Russian revolution and the Communist Empire only
started to collapse in 1989, due to the efforts of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope
John Paul II. For most of its history, criticizing Communism was as unpopular in
many circles even in Australia as criticizing man-made global warming is today!
Born under the Communists in 1918, Solzhenitsyn became a maths teacher, and
eventually an artillery captain in the Second World War. A loyal Communist he
criticized Stalin in a private letter as “the man with the moustache” and was
sentenced to seven years in a labour camp followed by three more years in
internal exile. He began to write of his experiences in the slave camps, the
“gulag”.
His novel “Cancer Ward” told of his treatment for cancer while in exile in
Tashkent and he saw cancer as a metaphor for what was wrong with the Soviet
system.
Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s atrocities and allowed
the publication of “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, a short masterpiece
of Solzhenitsyn, recounting the experience in prison camp of an ex-Soviet
soldier.
The novel caused a sensation inside and outside Russia. He followed up with the
3 volume “Gulag Archipelago” revealing how the system which caused 20 million
deaths really worked. The pretence of Communist moral legitimacy was destroyed.
Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, Solzhenitsyn was expelled from
Russia and lived for 20 years in the U.S.A. before being allowed to return home
in 1994.
Solzhenitsyn became a Christian believer, claiming that the evils of the century
came about because men had forgotten God. He was no admirer of the Western world
which he saw as weak and decadent and equally critical of post-Communist
Russia’s corruption.
Like the prophets he was often unpopular, unsparing in his denunciations,
courageous, outspoken, often appearing wrong-headed to nearly everyone.
But he and the other dissident writers in the then Communist world unmasked the
lies. The truth got out and about and their words triumphed over the censorship
and oppression; over the violence and killing.
It was a famous victory which should not be forgotten.
By + Cardinal George Pell.
Archbishop of Sydney.
Source: Sydney Catholic.