The Discriminator! What a lot of PIFAL

The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has recently sent a letter underlining his irrevocable support for the LGBT agenda. Please note with what cogent reasoning and iron clad arguments the governor outlines his position in supporting their agenda.

There is also a second letter which is not from the governor. But it could well be. It is slightly changed, with a minimal amount of cut and paste.

Can you spot the difference?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

2007

Gay & Lesbian Alliance of the Central Coast

I am delighted to extend my warmest greetings to all who have gathered for this year’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Celebrations.

The last few years have seen a significant shift in society’s views towards the LGBT community. Icy intolerance is slowly melting away to reveal neighborhoods, organizations and individuals united by similar goals instead of divided by misunderstanding. Although much remains to be done to stop discrimination and bigotry, the progress that has been made is certainly a cause for celebration.

My thanks go to each and every one of you who work to promote the respect of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Your efforts help people see that the critical issues we face as a state are common to all Californians. Most importantly, your work helps individuals take pride in who they are and find optimism for the future. I reaffirm my commitment to join you in building a California where everybody matters and every family counts. On behalf of all Californians, please accept my best wishes for a memorable event and every continued success.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

The amended version:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

2007

The Pedophile, Incestuous Families and Animal Love Alliance of the Central Coast

I am delighted to extend my warmest greetings to all who have gathered for this year’s Pedophile, Incestuous Families and Animal Love Pride Celebrations.

The last few years have seen a significant shift in society’s views towards the PIFAL community. Icy intolerance is slowly melting away to reveal neighborhoods, organizations and individuals united by similar goals instead of divided by misunderstanding. Although much remains to be done to stop discrimination and bigotry, the progress that has been made is certainly a cause for celebration.

My thanks go to each and every one of you who work to promote the respect of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. Your efforts help people see that the critical issues we face as a state are common to all Californians. Most importantly, your work helps individuals take pride in who they are and find optimism for the future. I reaffirm my commitment to join you in building a California where everybody matters and every family counts. On behalf of all Californians, please accept my best wishes for a memorable event and every continued success.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Now when the governor sends the first letter he is a hero. If he were to send the second letter he probably would be impeached and thrown in gaol. Can you tell me why? I bet you he can't!

I wonder if I were to send a letter to the governor's office asking him to specify what types of moral practices he considers worthy of celebration, what kind of response would I get? I suppose it would go something like this:

Dear Mr Cherwell

We would be delighted in celbrating your journey of self-discovery. We invite you to share with us your own family story <insert own version>. A letter supporting your right to whatever will be sent at the governor's next convenience.

Thank you for sharing your right to celebrate with us. We look forward to sharing your vote in the next election.

Sincerest Regards

If I were to reply by saying, for example that I am a man married to a woman and we have three children, how long would I have to wait for a reason to celebrate?

Makes me glad I'm not a Californian.

While you were sleeping

The West's great difficulty in understanding why homosexuality is wrong is our failure to understand marriage, or to be precise our failure in marriage- divorce.

Just as much as divorce affects and destroys families so too does it effect or psyche. The first real effect of divorce is that we stopped understanding marriage for what it is, and began to see marriage as what we made it to be. We stopped living by the laws of marriage and started to make-up new ones to fit our purpose. The problem was that we forgot what that purpose was. Marriage is not what you make of it, marriage is what it makes you!

Marriage is based on difference. The natural difference between man and woman that when they become one through marriage, makes them both something that they weren't before- a husband and wife. Nothing revolutionary so far, it's just that we have forgotten what this means. Marriage makes a family because it is the other person who makes me something different. As a husband or wife you stand in a unique relationship to that other person, not simply because I want it, but rather because the difference between us combined with that freely chosen relationship means that I have a particular duty and responsibility to that other person, and that other person has the same level of responsibility towards me. In divorce we loose sight of that- we make up the rules, the game depends on us and that relationship I have with another is what I say it is and thus can end when I say it ends.

If marriage is what we say it is, then marriage can indeed become anything we want. This is how the completely inscrutable unreality of gay marriage gets into the picture.

Put simply, the idea of homosexual marriages gets things round the wrong way- and not just the most obvious things. We don't make up the rules as we see fit, rather the rules make us fit to live the life. We don't make up the responsibilities then make the relationship, rather it is that relationship that makes the rules. The rules of marriage rely on this difference between man and woman- only in union do they make sense.

This something new expressed as union is most easily seen in children. That reality of husband and wife and the making of something new is expressed most perfectly in children. Gay marriage is the exact opposite. It's make up the rules, get into a relationship yet there is no difference. That lack of difference is sterility.

No matter what we say or how we protest, so long as the reality of divorce means that we make a mockery of marriage, then the task of convincing the world that gay marriage is a further mockery is a battle that we are fighting uphill and into the wind.

No amnesty for its memebers

Amnesty International is an organisation fighting violence against humanity- at least against certain members of humanity. Soon to become a major international player in the promotion of abortion, there is controversy surrounding Amnesty's new policy. Some say that the answer is easy, if you object to abortion you just stop donating your time and money. It's a simple case of picking up your marbles and going home. Not so easy.

The response of those who want the change is straightforward- 'if you don't like it, we are terribly sorry, but the door is that clear glass thing to your right.' But what about all those people who believed in Amnesty's work and gave many years of service and contributed much hard earned cash to its coffers? The work and sacrifice of so many people that helped build Amnesty International and made it such a force for good has now, to put it bluntly, been violated. Many of those who supported Amnesty do not support abortion, yet the fruits of their work will now be used to promote it. Where's the justice in that?

You have an organisation that has been taking people's money and time under false pretences. Now while those who object can leave the organisation, they cannot take the fruits of their labour and their already spent donations with them. They leave behind them structures, resources and assets that will now be used for something they never supported.

Is this the justice Amnesty promotes? You see it's simple, you cannot violate one human right- the right to life- and think you won't violate the others. You take away the most fundamental of rights and you undermine and eventually destroy them all. Its a job lot!

Cry freedom, cry conscience

'My conscience, my choice' is the mantra of contemporary moral relativism. Politicians demand it, the press defend it and some theologians even make it a dogma. The recent controversy over the abortion debate and the role of politicians both in the US and the UK ended in the usual mud slinging match of modern journalism. I should imagine that such a tactic is deliberate, it gets your mind off the truth.

The end result, as decided by the press, is that politicians have the right to freedom of conscience and should be allowed to legislate in peace without any external pressure that does not come from the media itself. The only ones allowed to have any say in the matter are journalists. After all, they are the prophets and priests of the 'new faith'.

The New York Times has another article on the freedom of conscience, this time from the other side of the fence. It seems that the politicians now are forcing pharmacists to go against their conscience and making them prescribe the morning after pill, widely known to be a chemical abortion.

How quickly things change, arguments forgotten and the power of coercion used when the shoe is on the other foot. In this case its a boot that is being put into the side of pharmacists. These same politicians who told the bishops to get their grubby crosier bearing hands of their conscience, are now directly forcing pharmacists to act against theirs.

Of course one is comforted by the fact that the Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire 'feels' that an extensive public process was adequate for legislation disallowing the pharmacists to conscientiously object. One is so relieved that the Governor's conscience has not been violated and that her feelings haven't been hurt. It's a pity she wouldn't extend the same courtesy to the pharmacists.

In the world of moral relativism it would seem that even the rights of conscience are relative. Obviously not all consciences are created equal.

As if to prove my point

It doesn't take long before the media gives you some reason to think your suspicion about its approach to the Church is well founded. Just today, hot on the heals of the Vatican's open embrace of carbon neutrality we have another example of 'religious greening' courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Now, I have no problem with anyone legitimately trying to reduce his carbon footprint, my objection is that the Church is inviting the press to ignore her. 'What does he mean by that?', you say. 'I thought your gripe was with the fact that the Church was in the press?' Not so fast!

My point is this. The coverage that the media gives to the Church is appalling. Not only slanted and designed to present the Church surrounded in controversy, but orchestrated so as to focus people's attention away from the heart of the issue onto some peripheral topic of the media's choosing. My disquiet is not simply over the 'bum rap', rather that the media are making the Church play by their rules and we are helping them do it.

The SMH  is notoriously anti-Church. If you want proof- just search its archives. The only  article not critical of the Church will be the one the Church's conversion to 'greendom.' Now if the Church gets precious little coverage, can we afford to have what little it gets turn the attention away from what is important? With critical debates in Australia about stem cell research, abortion out of control and with WYD 2008 just one year away, the only positive articles we find are about hybrid vehicles and solar panels. I repeat, I have no problem with it, I just don't think want it to be the most important item on the agenda. Nor the only one.

We cannot play into the press' hands and help them to take the attention from what counts. The Church is not relevant when it is green, the Church is evergreen, something ancient and something new- relevant in season as well as out of it!

Now you see it, now you don't

One of the difficult things in a busy day is to remember everything that you need to do and everything that has happened. How many times do we lose track of the important things, let alone the marginal ones? Well, it's on that basis that the media does business and dictates to you and I what we should think about certain situations in the world.

If you remember, a few weeks ago there was a huge outcry (and by huge I mean everyone working for an Australian newspaper) about Cardinal Pell's comments to catholic politicians regarding their moral duty to respect and defend human life when deciding public policy. This lead to one of the most violent outbreaks of obvious anti-religious and anti-catholic vitriol in recent times. One member of the New South Wales (Pell's state) legislature vowed to have Card Pell hauled before a commission in order to enquire into his comments "that they may be in contempt of parliament." (FYI for the member of the house- I think his comments were contemptuous of the opinions of some parliamentarians). Anyway,  the whole Church-State argument was dug-up again and paraded around like a golden calf. Now, no problems with the idea of the separation, just with how they like to use it as a weapon against the Church. The basic idea is that 'good churchmen' (as defined by the state) are seen and not heard and would never dream of saying anything against the infallible opinions of politicians as they might hurt their conscience. The Church was clearly told to keep its distance from affairs of state. (The article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald: Pell Investigated for Possible Contempt, 16/06/2007).

Just yesterday the same newspaper ran a story about the bishop that the Chinese state had appointed in the official catholic church in China. And you know what was missing-- not one mention of Church-State separation. Apparently the golden calf was in for some repairs that day and wasn't available for public viewing.

People, that's how the media operate. One day it's a show-down over  the ONLY issue that matters, the next day it's the only issue that is forgotten. Now you see it, now you don't.

A question of due process

Baroness Cumberledge's Report about the Church's policy on child protection and its implementation in the UK has recently been made public. The Baroness' report highlights what has been the principle concern from day one over the Church's reaction to the scandals and which persists today- a lack of respect for due process.

The report highlighted two things in particular, both of which fail to respect those processes established by civil and canon law.

1. Some dioscean bishops have delegated their personal responsibility in the matter to COPCA (the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and vulnerable Adults). COPCA is an office meant to support the bishop in his role as pastor- not substitute him in his office as ordinary. In an era of delegation and outsourcing it must be difficult for the bishops to recall that Christ never gave them the option of backing out of their responsibilities. After all, if I remember my Bible correctly, Christ did not come down from the Cross when they asked him too. Apparently COPCA was not around then to offer an alternative.
2. The second is that there is an ever increasing rift between the bishops and their priests as it would appear that bishops are far too ready to offer up their priests as victims on the secular altar of sacrifice. The report states that there is an apparent lack of respect for the most basic of human rights- the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty (and those rights associated with that most basic one). Again it takes real courage to stand behind a man accused of such crimes, especially when the flashes start going off. What is important to remember as they bay for blood, that the accused man is innocent until proven guilty, despite what the BBC may say. 

Basically it amounts to the bishops doing a better jobs at protecting themselves rather than the innocent. It is little wonder that we have such difficulties in defending the unborn and the weak. The first thing sacrificed in an age of godlessness are always the innocent.

What difference does a quotation make???

One of the most entertaining things to have happened in the last few weeks has been to watch the rearguard action of the free-thinkers society over the issue of the recent motu proprio and the CDF's document regarding the Church. It seems that these recent documents have sent the society and its members into a flap and looking for their copies of Free Thinking for Dummies.

I find it incredible that those children of the 60s and 70s who found the promised land of free-thought are now invoking the teaching authority of the Church to back-up their own "independently held views". After all, the sign of a great idea is that "I" think it. Those who did nothing but criticise the Church in order to bring about 'the change' now appeal to her precisely so things won't. No sooner had both documents been printed then the free-thinkers society was busy taking their case to the secular press. And what did they use to argue their point- reason? philsophy? theology? the Bible? No, of course not! It was Vatican II. It must be a sign of God's super-abundance the number of opinions one can find in the documents of the Council when left in the hands of some theologians.

An article in the Tablet by Nicholas Lash published in this week's edition (July 21) is a fine example of the old theological three-card trick. I believe the thrust of the article was to show how the current document on the Church and those of Vatican II are at odds. I quote from the by-line:

The Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith has issued a document aimed at clarifying the distinction between the concepts of 'Church' and 'ecclesial community'. But it is difficult to see how this latest document harmonises with the key texts of the Second Vatican Council.

With such an introduction, one is prepared for a gloves-off theological show-down that will highlight through a detailed analysis of the relevant documents where such conflict is derived. If that's what you think, then you are like me going to be sadly disappointed. Dr. Lash in his article gives one quotation from Lumen Gentium and none from the CDF's document. And even the one quotation that he uses is rather revealing not for what it says, but rather for where it stops. Here is Dr. Lash's quote:

The account of the ways in which different kinds and conditions of people already live within this "People's" scope runs all the way from those (begin quote LG: Editor) "fully incorporated into the Society of the Church, who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her and through union with her visible structure are joined to Christ" (end quote LG: Editor) through other Christians "consecrated by baptism, through which they are united with Christ," and who "recognise and recieve other sacramnets within their own Chrucg or ecclesial coommunities", and so on to the Jews, the Muslims and those "who have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life, thanks to his grace".

Here is the full quote from Lumen Gentium 14:

They are full incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. (Emphasis added)

My, my, my- what a difference a quote makes!

Now what was Dr. Lash's point in making this half quote? That what counts is that we are all 'one people', that it doesn't really matter what religion you belong to or ecclesial structure you live under? Whatever his point, it doesn't seem so clearly supported by Lumen Gentium.

I long for the days when the free-thinkers will cease trying to further their agenda by relying on people's ignorance- that no one would actually bother to read the Council documents. However, as Dr. Lash puts it, 'any theologically trained nose will twitch suspiciously' at certain ideas- well my nose was turned up when I read the article and I think it had more to do with the brown smelly stuff he was shovelling.

Last thing- Dr Lash's reference to a holy atheist being closer to God's plan than a wicked pope (of course an innocent example) must have been meant to offer a fraternal correction to the Pope in this matter that Dr Lash so piercingly analysied. News for you doctor- I doubt the Pope reads the Tablet. Last I rememeber he was a Catholic. And not stupid.

A toothless tiger

One must ask when deference stops and pandering begins. The recent comments of our Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone regarding the prayers for the conversion of the Jews seems to have crossed that line. The cardinal's response is simple, if the prayer offends, we take it out. Unthinking is often the prelude to persecution. Now no one wants to unjustly offend anyone, but what is the Cardinal thinking?

If we stop praying for the conversion of Jews because they are offended, what are we admitting about our Faith and what precedent are we establishing for religious behaviour? Should we stop praying for sinners so that we won't appear judgemental? Should we stop praying for our politicians and civil leaders so as to not interfere in Church-state separation? Should I stop praying for my neighbour lest I invade his privacy? Should I stop praying for myself lest I be accused of self-indulgence? The list is endless and equally stupid- and above all dangerous.

Maybe I expect too much from Church leaders, but I don't think I am asking too much in expecting them to lead- to at least do the job. In an age of the sacred cow of tolerance we must not say anything that would offend- however if the Gospel is anything to go by, Christianity is ill at ease in a world that tolerates only what the world itself dictates.

Carbon foot in your back-side

While most people in Europe and the Northern hemisphere in general will be taking advantage of the month long August holiday, ironically heading towards warmer climates, there will be many people in August who will be working up a sweat about certain 'global problems.' 

On September 8 there will be a meeting of APEC in Sydney, Australia which is being billed as a potential show-down between the worlds two biggest players in the game of greenhouse emissions- China and the US.

 

If any of you have been following the whole 'greenhouse thing', and I mean follow it as opposed to being lead by the discussion, you would no doubt have seen a certain shift in journalistic emphasis. The greenhouse emissions problem was originally sold to us under the banner of the big mean corporate bad guy who was selling out our future just to make quicker and bigger bucks. The 'sale' of the greenhouse project needed a bad guy, and what better bad guy then the corporate bad guy whom no one ever knows and about whom everyone can be suspicious. It also fed into another typical human emotion- relief- 'thank God it's not my fault!'

What started out as an exercise of corporate criticism slowly mutated into the problem of the carbon footprint. It went from being a problem of big business to the business of the big problem or people- you and I. We went from berrating the bad to being the bad guy. Again this fed another human emotion- panic.

Now this may not be a problem, but it seems that the Holy See has bought into the whole "greenhouse carbon-neutral environmentally responsible" thing with a vengeance. After all , the Vatican is the only carbon neutral state in the world! That's a relief. I was worried the Church was spending resources on families, the homeless and the weak. Cynical you might say- isn't what's best for the world best for the people? Well maybe, but not necessarily. And certainly not when there is more to the story than what they are telling you.

Thanks to the Sierra Club we have all been enlightened as to the real problem of global warming. It's not the problem of greed, consumerism, pollution or questionable multi-billion dollar business practices! It's not that people consume to much rather that there are too many people consuming. It's not the fat West that is the problem, rather its the Africans and their dirty technology. Of course their answer is not to give Africa better technology, the answer is give Africa less Africans! This must come as a great relief to the Sierra club and its members- no need to worry about subscriptions, after all there isn't much of a membership base in Africa. How easy it would be to solve the world's problems if the Africans would only just hold their breath! How long you say- until they no longer emit any CO2!

The dominant version of the environmental cause is unfortunately tied to an ideology that is not compatible with the Gospel. It is risky when some actions of the Church seem to support, even remotely, what is another arm of the culture of death. The Church must act with great prudence, lest the efforts of some of her sons be used against us. I understand that sharing a concern doesn't mean being married to the cause, however we must be careful because the focus of the argument is changing- corporate greed, the greed of peoples, people. 

We all too often give our enemies the means with which they can attack us!