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.

Australia can best be considered as being two separate countries.

One, east and south of the Great Dividing Range, has a good rainfall and a dense population.

North and west is another country, drier, hotter and sparsely populated.

Much of the dry area is fertile and — with irrigation — could support profitable primary industries and a growing population.

But big business, and our political parties, want Australia’s people crammed into big cities in the higher rainfall regions.

* * *

So, irrigation is reduced stepwise, until farmers walk off the land and the townships they support become ghost towns (or tourist centres — much the same thing).

If that doesn’t destroy rural Australia quickly enough, another (even more outrageous) strategy could be to pipe water AWAY FROM the dry parts into higher rainfall regions.

If that notion had been suggested to the Monty Python Show scriptwriters, they’d have shaken their heads saying, “Too bizarre by far . . . there are limits to what even crazy people will watch.”

Anyway, water is, this day, being pumped out of the Goulburn River in Victoria’s drier north and into Melbourne’s Sugarloaf Reservoir in the wetter south . . . .

* * *

Once upon a time, there existed an Australian Country Party which would have protested against this — and at least extracted some concessions.

But that party self-destructed. Under its new “Nationals” name-tag, it became just one more party favouring “free trade” and, with it, rural decline.

The Greens are worse.

They must keep city-dwellers happy — only city-dwellers will swallow environment-worship of the sentimental, almost pantheistic variety the Greens peddle . . . .

Greenies will always find a threatened species of bird or frog or something to declare at risk so as to stop any venture that looks like promoting decentralised manufacturing and/or agricultural industry.

* * *

The environment does deserve consideration, of course — but there needs to be some sort of balance.

Have you ever heard a politician say anything balanced about the water issue?

It may have happened, but a lot of us missed it.

Perhaps our now-famous “independents” might offer a rational approach. Perhaps, also, the DLP.

Time will tell.

This blog recently recommended readers to consider voting DLP. * 

Many people did. Throw in a bit of apparent good luck with preferences — and it happened.

Now John Madigan is a Senator-elect.

What is the Democratic Labor Party all about?

* * *

(1) History

Those interested in Labor Party history know that a good case can be made for considering the DLP the genuine continuing Australian Labor Party.

The present so-called ALP being a (big) splinter-group that split off and took over through a series of dirty deeds at, and following, the party’s 1955 National Conference in Hobart.

On that occasion, a number of anti-Communist ALP members, mainly Catholics, were expelled from the party in a manner contrary to the ALP constitution.

The DLP was formed by those excluded — with policies of anti-Communism, more government funding for Catholic schools, increased defence spending, non-recognition of Communist China etc.

At its peak, the DLP got as many as 11 percent of the primary Senate vote.

But by the late 70s, the DLP hardly existed.

Recently there has been a come-back. Last Saturday the DLP obtained between 2 and 3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria.

* * *

(2) Policies

The DLP is a pro-family party. It supports the freedom of families to decide their own pattern of early care of children and of the education they receive. This means freedom from financial punishment against stay-at-home full-time mums – and against those sending children to non-government schools, or home-schooling.

The DLP opposes abortion and euthanasia.

As the name suggests, the DLP advocates actual democracy – as opposed to today’s fake pseudo-democracy. This includes the setting up of a “Citizens Initiated Referendum” system, applying to all levels of government (federal, state and local).

The DLP supports re-establishing a Federal Development Bank, diversifying and resurrecting our export industries, encouraging import-replacing industries, building new dams for secure water supply and flood control etc.

Read more at their website at: www.dlp.org.au/index.php?page=alias

* * *

Don’t these sound like more sensible policies than those of the big two (or big three) parties?

(* See: www.marymackillop.org/a-spectre-is-haunting-australia-the-spectre-of-the-greens-party)

Jesus Christ was a person of compassion.

Today’s gospel reading in Catholic churches, describes this:

Entering a certain town, Jesus met ten men who were lepers, who, raising their voices, said: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He saw them and said: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”

It came to pass that, as they went, they were made clean. One of them, on seeing that he was made clean, went back, glorifying God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, giving thanks. This man was a Samaritan.

Jesus said, “Were not ten made clean?  Where are the other nine?  Has nobody but this foreigner returned to praise God?” And he said to him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you.”

* * *

Everything about God is beyond our understanding — including his compassion.

Why did Jesus heal these ten?

Weren’t there lepers in every town he visited? He could have — if, in fact, he was God.

Why doesn’t God, at this moment, evaporate the water killing people in Pakistan?

We don’t know.

Compassion doesn’t mean giving everybody what they want, that’s for sure.

There is a greater good to which an event must contribute, in order for God to make it, or permit it, to happen.

That’s why Greens Party representative, Adam Bandt, now MP-elect for the seat of Melbourne, should stop using the word “compassion”

* * *

Last night, Mr Bandt claimed that the Greens stand for “a compassionate and helping hand to people who are in trouble . . . more love in this world, not less.”

All rather sickening. His party has no love or compassion whatever for the unborn babies whom the Greens would have aborted for any reason or none.

* * *

Politics brings out the worst in a community. Election time is the season for telling lies and displaying the reverse of compassion — lust for power and perks.

As always, it is up to the Church to witness to God’s love and compassion – also to his commandments and his judgement – if Australia is to be a decent place to live.

Nobody else will be doing it