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I wish to draw the attention of your readers to the recent ABC TV program dealing with migrant hostels at Villawood, Port Hedland and Woomera.
I am appalled that those centres lock up people who arrive from
countries where they have received much inhumane treatment.
I recall, during the ’80s when I worked as a volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul Society, being sent to the East Hills hostel to help Vietnamese
and Chinese boat people find accommodation in suburban residences. Many of them became very successful Australian citizens.
I regret that the authorities are not bestowing a more sympathetic and charitable
attitude to today’s migrants since we do accept them into our country.
Helen Hogan
Port Macquarie, NSW
RUFFLING FEATHERS
Archbishop Pell is to be
congratulated on his speech at the recent Quadrant dinner which so predictably has ruffled the collective feathers of the left liberal intelligentsia.
One very encouraging feature of his talk was the
unequivocal statement that the dated experiment in radical secularism is ending and is a failure.
After more than 40 years of experimentation and erratic application, with disastrous social consequences,
that conclusion should be obvious to all but the most intellectually moribund.
It is something that has needed to be said for a long time and now, thankfully, the leading churchman in Australia’s largest
diocese has said it: Left liberal secularism is dead; its ideas and fantasies rooted in the age old cry non serviam, “I will not serve”.
Perhaps, we can proceed with the task of interring the corpse, which,
considering the damage it has wrought over the years, will be a long and difficult job requiring considerable sacrifice?
The archbishop is right when he points out that while pro family policies are
indispensable, on their own they are not enough.
The problem goes far deeper: to the need for religion, for something transcendental; something that lifts us beyond the frequent hardships of this life; and
that something can only be God.
I hope Dr Pell has a lot more encouraging speeches in a similar vein for the future.
Barry Morgan
Samson, WA
THE RAHNER CASE
It is not surprising that people suspect Karl Rahner of Nestorianism when they can read him having Jesus praying to the Logos.
Also, when Rahner complains that
people almost necessarily connect the expression “three persons in one God” to the idea of three distinct centres of consciousness, he leaves us without the means to make sense of the ‘I am’ statements of Jesus the
Christ, the one Incarnate Son, begotten of the Father from all eternity and born of Mary in history. Further, what sense could be made of Philippians 2:5–11?
Rahner’s cause is not helped when Fr Richard
Lennan’s defence of him (CW 26/8) against Fr G H Duggan’s serious charges (CW 12/8) consists of recounting how the Pope sent birthday greetings, and inferring Rahner’s orthodoxy from that fact.
Fr Duggan’s
charges were not addressed. If this is an example of the theological reasoning available at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, then we seem doomed to the uncritical adulation of whichever iconic figure its lecturers
currently happen to endorse.
Nor is Rahner helped by Fr Emmet Costello SJ citing pro-Rahner accolades from Fr Richard McCormick SJ, who himself has admitted that the Pope’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor had
Karl Rahner “in its cross hairs”. (This is due to Rahner’s faulty anthropology being the basis of much dissident theology, for which he and Fr McCormick are well-known.) Frs Costello’s and McCormick’s adulation of
Rahner merely “commend the ingredients of our poison’d chalice to our own lips”.
Fr Peter Connelly PP
Springwood, NSW
EUTHANASIA
My wife and I
were fortunate enough to hear a talk on euthanasia, The New Culture of Death, by Wesley Smith.
His main points were:
•voluntary euthanasia nearly always leads to involuntary euthanasia;
•those
pushing for euthanasia to be legalised never give up. If they fail to get it through a parliament one year they try the following year till they wear down opposition. We must be as committed in opposing it as those
are who promote it;
•There is no pain that cannot be minimised or eliminated through the use of morphine and other pain killers. As Dr Brian Pollard states in Euthanasia (page 89), the “inability to control
pain with morphine is almost always on account of an inability to use it well, and that is the result of defective medical education”. Also morphine used for pain relief is not addictive – it goes to the source of
the pain, even if you increase the dose as the pain increases; and
•The sick should not be made to feel they are a burden. We are all members of God’s family and as such should care for each other in good and
bad times.
To sum up, when pain is minimised and love is shown to the sick and dying, the desire for euthanasia is nearly always eliminated.
Mark Nicholas
Shalvey, NSW
PARENTS’ VIEWS
Is there any truth to this “Word has it that children before the end of Year 3 primary school, will have received the sacraments of Baptism, First Confession, First Holy
Communion and Confirmation”?
Will parents be consulted about their desire for such a change? Respect for parents’ views has, in the past, been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
Joe Lopez
Warrimoo, NSW
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