The media did notice that yesterday was Good Friday.

Cardinal Pell’s Easter message helped me in my attempts to reflect on the meaning of the season.

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-06/archbishops-deliver-easter-message/3936874

* * *

Cardinal Pell’s message compelled listeners/viewers to consider the struggle between good and evil.

Was he saying that the death and resurrection of Christ is best understood as a struggle between good and evil?

Yes and No.

The crucifixion of Christ was not merely one struggle between good and evil.

His crucifixion was THE struggle between good and evil.

That’s what it means to take seriously the claim of the man Jesus to be God.

That’s where the Christian faith parts company with other world views.

Any “social capital” needed to generate fairness, respect etc. depends on relating every motive and endeavour to God who creates and redeems us.

To deny this is to miss the Easter opportunity.

* * *

Less helpful was media coverage of Filipino Christians crucifying themselves, the thoughts of Father Bob Maguire etc.

Such individuals’ efforts may be motivated by real devotion but, for most people, are distractions not inspirations.

Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday: they all celebrate something significant.

Good Friday — so important — a day for thinking about the crucifixion of Jesus.

Easter day — important as a time to rejoice that God (despite appearances) is in control.

Easter Monday? What does it signify? Not much, perhaps, except the great Australian desire to have another day off work.

* * *

Jesus my Saviour,

I tried to use the 40-day pre-Easter season to meditate on who you are.

And on how you died.

Your crucifixion was unjust. You did not deserve it. It was a bad thing.

Yet your death is dear to me.

Meditating on your Cross reduces me to tears.

But when I remember how you accepted that death out of love for God . . . .

And for sinners like me . . . .

Suddenly it fills me with joy, and I cry a different kind of tears.

There is no sacrifice and no humiliation I would not accept for love of you.

Help me not merely to say all this, but to believe it and to do it.

Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, rejects decriminalising drugs: “Drugs kill people, rip families apart, destroy lives . . . I’m not in favour of decriminalisation of any . . . .”

Senator Carr, however, claims that the war on drugs has “failed” and that “new approaches” are needed.

He calls marijuana and ecstasy “lesser drugs”. He wants them decriminalised.

Has he ever tried to have an intelligent conversation with anybody who has used marijuana within the last month?

Or dealt with young people, once promising, studious, enthusiastic, now capable of nothing but hearing psychotic hallucinatory voices and stealing to support their habit?

Senator Carr, newly made Foreign Minister, is interfering in others’ portfolios and contradicting party policy.

The PM should sack him now — first offence.

The Catholic Bishops of Victoria have distributed 80,000 copies of a letter to the state’s Catholics.

It says, among other things:

“Deeply aware of Christ’s mission of compassion and justice — the Church cannot ignore the responsibility to speak the truth in love.

“Sometimes reminding people about the truth of the human person is one such task for all of us.

“Some now seek to alter the very nature of the human person through legislation.

“Our Australian society is now at a critical turning point where truth is at stake.”

* * *

The Church has always taught that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, are contrary to Natural Law and can under no circumstances be approved.

If it were to condone homosexual “marriage” — giving its blessing to persons publicly committing to a lifetime of such disordered activity—it would cease to be Catholic.

The media can find so-called Catholics who dispute the Church’s teaching.

But they are not Catholics.

Ex-NSW premier, Kristina Keneally is one. She needs somebody to respectfully explain this to her.

Would she listen?

She might.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the bishops’ message is successful in defending marriage, families and the children of our families.

Yet another teenage boy killed in a surf carnival at Kurrawa.

The third in recent years.

But organisers plan not to cancel the rest of the championship — body found today, business almost as usual tomorrow.

One barrister wants surf carnival officials to face criminal charges for not enforceing the use of high-visibilty flotation vests as recommended by the Coroner after a previous similar death.

But organisers give the excuse that the measure is “years away” because first “all options had to be tested”.

With vests in use, injured or unconscious competitors will float  —visible and able to be rescued.

With no vest, an injured competitor goes under the water, is invisible, and dies.

To allow participation in such events without vests is like sending workers onto building sites without safety helmets and boots.

We Australians need to re-evaluate the place of competitive sport in our lives.

It is currently a form of idolatry — too often spiritually and/or bodily fatal.

If voters focus on the federal Australian Labor government’s demonstrated ability to govern, the next federal election will do to them what Queenslanders just did to their state’s Labor ex-government.

Their one chance, they suppose, is to teach Australian voters to despise opposition leader, Tony Abbott, so much that they’d vote for anybody to avoid him.

Mr Abbott does have a tendency to speak off the cuff — and sometimes exaggerate his point.

This shows simply that he is human.

* * *

Wikiquotes carries a few such misrepresentable citations, which the ALP will doubtless try to use:

“I won’t be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [against cervical cancer]”.

Comment: Many people would agree. Many more, not necessarily agreeing, can see where he is coming from.

“Abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations”.

Comment: this is true in its way, but the word “easy” was a poor choice.

“While I think men and women are equal, they are also different . . . I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy, and an enormous number of women simply doing housework”.

Comment: this is obviously true.

“There may not be a great job for [Aboriginal people] but whatever there is, they just have to do it . . . And if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done.”

Comment: Obviously true — but so obviously capable of being used against him that it wasn’t smart to say it.

“The poor will always be with us”

Comment: This one was headed “Bible bashing the homeless, Abbott style” in the Brisbane Times, 30 June 2010. It is courageous these days to quote Jesus Christ. The ALP as a whole is afraid of Him, what He is and was, what He stands for and what His influence is doing and will increasingly do, to our society. Don’t worry, He is affecting even China in similar ways. And everywhere else. His day is coming with a vengeance (and with mercy).