People voting for Labor or Coalition mostly had some idea what they were voting for.

Those voting for an Independent normally try to find out what kind of a bloke he is.

What about Greens voters? How many of them could name two Greens Party members apart from Bob Brown?

Such voters were voting for somebody – somebody they knew nothing about . . . . somebody, perhaps, with whom they wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in real life – somebody whose basic moral ideas they would actually detest.

Bob Brown himself isn’t too sure about some of the characters endorsed by his party — some so politically and personally immature that they almost make him look good.

He is probably quite frightened of them.

And rightly so.

* * *

The Greens want to increase taxes on our major export industries, on all electricity users – and on everybody who dies.

Also to financially damage the Private Health Insurance industry and Catholic schools.

Eventually, also, to close all non-government schools and all Zoos and the one Australian laboratory that can supply radio-active isotopes for use in cancer therapy.

* * *

Already we’ve let the Greens get a stranglehold on Tasmania . . . .

Now they’ll be able to blackmail their way into getting whatever they want in Senate votes.

Yes, the Greens — who represent hardly anybody’s beliefs – got their Senate blackmailing licence thanks to Labor preferences. And their first lower house seat (Melbourne) by means of Liberal preferences.

Thanks chaps.

* * *

While almost no sane person in Australia supports Greens policies, 12 percent voted for them.

Cardinal Pell warned voters against this. So did Perth’s Archbishop Hickey.

Did you hear of any others of Australia’s 41 Catholic bishops doing  likewise?

Neither did I.

* * *

Let this disastrous election be a lesson to us.

Victorians will, in less than three months, have a chance to make the same mistake again.

It is hard to be optimistic.

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of ex-President Bill, and Secretary of State, Hilary, married Marc Mezvinsky on July 31, 2010.

A sort of “mixed” marriage — a protestant marrying a Jew.

Otherwise it was a fairly traditional, sensation-free wedding — awful for those media columnists who survive by exposing sensational scandals about “celebrities”.

One commented, “Despite growing up in the White House, Ms. Clinton appears to have emerged ‘relatively normal’. People can’t quite believe it.”

* * *

Another “celebrity”, Julia Gillard, caretaker-Prime Minister of Australia, is famously un-married — living with a de facto male housemate or whatever.

Much more newsworthy.

Much better media.

* * *

Many Australians might shrug, saying mixed marriage isn’t a problem. Living together unmarried isn’t a problem. The only real problem is if somebody stands in front of the TV when I’m trying to watch it.

Yet, deep down, does something tell us that marriage is MORE than a photo-opportunity and/or ego-trip . . . that marriage has something to do with God?

Might God, indeed, have something to say about believers marrying non-believers etc?

* * *

Has confusion about marriage crept even into today’s Church?

The up-dated 1997 “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says:

“A case of marriage . . . between a Catholic and a non-baptised person . . . does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle for marriage, when they succeed in placing in common what they have received from their respective communities . . . But the difficulties of mixed marriages must not be underestimated . . . .”

Two bob each way?

* * *

Before the 1960s, “modernisation” of the Church, the position was clearer:

“From the very beginning of its existence the Church of Christ has been opposed to such unions. As Christ raised wedlock to the dignity of a Sacrament, a marriage between a Catholic and a non-Catholic was rightly looked upon as degrading the holy character of matrimony . . . .”

In practice, however, such marriages happened even then – with the Church trying to insist that the children be brought up Catholic . . . .

Was that already the thin edge of the wedge?

Today’s gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is about money and attitudes to money.

Words of Jesus: “No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will be devoted to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  

“Worry not about your life, what you will eat, or for your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food: and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds, they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns: yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of more value than they? Can any of you, by taking thought, add a single moment to his life-span?

“And why worry about clothing? Consider the lilies in the field, how they grow: they do not labour, nor spin. Yet not even Solomon, in all his glorious robes, was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field, which is here today and thrown in the furnace tomorrow: will he not much more care for you – you who have so little faith?

“Worry not then, saying, ‘What are we to eat: what are we to drink: what will we have to wear?’  These are the things the heathens seek. Your Father knows that you need them all.  

“Seek first, therefore, the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well.”  (Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6)

* * *

Arriving at a crossroads (unless you plan to sit there the rest of your life) you must go one way or the other. You cannot go both ways.

That applies also in the spiritual life — a fact that we spend much of our time pretending isn’t true.

We might convince ourselves that we’re basically good, despite doing a bit of money-worship on the side. We may convince others around us.

But God, we will not convince — and it is he who judges us. He judges justly.

If we don’t put ourselves utterly at God’s disposal, we are, in fact, putting ourselves into the hands of the devil — who hates us and will destroy us painfully and eternally.

* * *

So God tells us, “Make up your mind.”

50 days from today, Australia’s Mary MacKillop will be canonised.

Blessed Mary of the Cross will become Saint Mary of the Cross.

The canonisation, celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, will be in Rome.

Many Australians will travel to Rome — as pilgrims — to witness the rituals in person.

* * *

The official Mary MacKillop Blog (25.8.2010) says:

“The Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Melbourne has prepared a very beautiful ‘Journey Stone’ to commemorate this momentous occasion and Mary’s journey to Rome.

The Aboriginal people of the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry Melbourne have a (project) of giving travellers a journey stone for safe travel.

You are invited and encouraged to take one of these stones . . . with you on Pilgrimage. The stone you hold has been hand painted by an Aboriginal artist (and) comes with this message:

‘As you journey in the footsteps of Mary MacKillop,
may you feel her courageous spirit
as you walk the streets of Rome.
Travel gently with respect
to the places where Blessed Mary once prayed.
Hold the sacredness of the land close to your heart.
Remember the good that she has done in our sunburnt land.
May the spirits of my Ancestors, watch
over and keep you safe.’  © Vicki Clarke 2010”

The blog also says:

“Mary MacKillop’s canonisation is particularly special to the Catholic Aboriginal community. The concern Mary showed for the welfare and education of Aboriginal peoples is well documented and her legacy continues through the work of the Sisters of St Joseph . . . .”

* * *

The real Mary MacKillop had little to do with Aborigines.

Blessed Mary’s official biography by Father Paul Gardiner does mention one occasion when the young Mary MacKillop willingly combed lice out of the hair of an Aboriginal girl, Nancy . . . .

Later, in 1898, Blessed Mary hoped to involve her Sisters in a Northern Territory Aboriginal mission organised by her brother, Father Donald MacKillop.  However, floods destroyed the buildings and the project never eventuated. It was decades after her lifetime before the Josephite Order had a presence in Australia’s north and north-west where most Aborigines lived.

* * *

Invoking “spirits of ancestors” (Aboriginal or any other) as watchers over our lives is sentimental dabbling in paganism.

The Catholic religion encourages us to pray to Saints acknowledged by the Church. Praying at random to others isn’t encouraged in the same way.

Better to pray TO the Church’s recognised saints – FOR our departed ancestors.

The Australian Labor Party used to be more or less anti-poker machines.

John Cain, Labor Premier of Victoria in the 1980s, refused to permit them.

But it was Joan Kirner, a Labor Premier succeeding him, who introduced them.

About that time something very nasty happened to the Labor Party . . . .

Current Victorian Premier, Mr Brumby, is no better.

His moves to modify the gambling industry have all been strictly cosmetic.

Nothing has happened that will reduce losses by gamblers.

* * *

In Tasmania it is exactly the same.

The Tasmanian Labor government enjoys a deep and meaningful friendship with Federal Hotels, and has arranged for them to have a monopoly contract at least until 2018.

How interesting, then, that anti-pokies candidate, Andrew Wilkie — running as an independent in the Tasmanian seat of Denison — has just beaten off the Labor candidate and won the seat.

Mr Wilkie has publicly promised that his aim is to make Tasmania “pokies-free”. 

The latest research in Tasmanian shows that one in every two voters knows personally somebody who is a gambling addict.  No wonder the people of Denison were glad to have Andrew Wilkie there to vote for.

Mr Wilkie said yesterday, “$95 million has been lost just on poker machines, just in Tasmania, just in the last five months . . . There’s something like 100,000 problem gamblers in Australia, problem gamblers on poker machines, costing the community something like $5 billion a year . . . .

“If I can get into the House of Representatives, and with Nick Xenophon in the Senate, I think we have an unprecedented opportunity to energise the public debate about poker machines, and bring about some genuine reform nationally,”

                                                                                                * * *                                                       

Yes, the poker machine problem is the same Australia-wide.

Where are the anti-pokies candidates that so many of us want to support?

Will there be a few in the November 27 election in Victoria?

Let’s hope so – and let’s hope they get elected.

Especially in Mildura, which has been picked out by the gambling fraternity as a good source of suckers to bleed white, while fattening the leeches of the big end of town.

Three independent lower house Federal MPs look like holding balance of power in Australia for a while.

Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter are presenting a list of seven demands to Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

Mr Katter explained his motives: “All I’m interested in are the people back home. I’ll be voting for them . . . .”

* * *

He means rural people, like those inhabiting his king-size electorate of Kennedy . . . mainly bush, plus a few towns like Charters Towers, Cloncurry, Innisfail, Mount Isa and Tully.

The question, of course is, what are his back-home people’s real interests?

Rural districts probably do have a few special needs — including a good, fast, publicly-owned, Internet service, plus decentralisation that is more than just a slogan . . . .

* * *

Otherwise, rural people need pretty much what everybody needs:

* everybody needs to live in a country generous in assistance to underdeveloped and disaster-stricken overseas communities – something rarely mentioned during the election campaign.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unborn babies are not aborted.

* everybody needs an environment free of pornography, which implies Internet filtering at service-provider level.

* everybody needs to live in a country that has no casinos.

* everybody needs to live in a country where traditional marriage is respected — and children, with rare exceptions, live together with both their mother and father.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose culture is based on the Catholic Faith.

* everybody needs to live in a country where childcare is the mother’s role – her husband working to support the family financially.

* everybody needs to live in a country whose soldiers are not fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq – whose defence force exists to defend its shores, but not to impose its brand of democracy on others.

* everybody needs to live in a country where unauthorised, boat-smuggled, asylum-seekers are processed offshore.