Stephen Hawking, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, retired last year after 30 years in the job.

Professor Hawking has been a larger-than-life figure in some ways – an expert in fields too tricky for most of us — like quantum theory, black holes and dark matter.

And his heroic courage, in battling on despite being crippled by muscular dystrophy, has been admirable.

Hawking has become a bit of a celebrity.

So if he decided to write a book with a catchy title, plus a hint of controversy, it couldn’t fail to sell — even if it was no good.

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Professor Hawking’s new book entitled “The Grand Design” goes on sale next week.

Some controversy has been engineered by leaking a few seemingly bold quotes, like:

“Because there is a law such as Gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing . . . It is not necessary to invoke God . . . .”

* * *

Pretty simplistic stuff – but likely to appeal to TV-watchers and Dawkins-readers.

He’s asking us to choose between God and the Laws of Physics, as if they necessarily contradict each other. But do they?

Hawking’s argument rests on a dogma that there is a basic conflict between Science and Religion. But is there?

Science is handy for answering certain kinds of questions — about electricity and matter and energy and those black holes . . . .

Not very basic questions.

More fundamental questions are beyond science to answer.

Like, for example, why isn’t there nothing?

* * *

Believers in God believe that if there had ever been Nothing, there would still be Nothing.

(Real Nothing can never turn into Something)

Believers believe that there was always an original Something — Something whose existence needs no input from outside itself.

(We exist because of our parents. We didn’t make ourselves. They didn’t make themselves . . . .)

The Bible says, “Ask the beasts, they will teach you.  And the birds of the air, they will tell.  Speak to the earth and it will give answer . . . Who can be ignorant that the Lord made these things . . . ?”  (Job, chapter 12)

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.

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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?

Australian businessman Dick Smith likes to keep a high profile.

On Wednesday he posed for media photographers with a suitcase full of money — to publicise his offer of $1 million to the young Australian with the brightest ideas about curbing population growth.

He says that if something isn’t done soon Australia’s population will grow to one billion.

First up, Mr Smith wants to slash numbers of immigrants to Australia.

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He calls his so-called Wilberforce Award a “global” award.

Perhaps he plans to curb world population as well?

You can’t achieve that by adjusting immigration numbers.

Cutting world population requires either preventing births or increasing deaths.

Is this whole project, then, just another vehicle for promoting same old sub-human cure-alls — sterilisation, contraception, abortion and euthanasia?

* * *

Australia’s troubles and the world’s troubles do NOT derive from there being too many people.

Cut the world’s population by half tomorrow . . . .

Would wars cease? Would casinos go out of business? Would people stop gossiping about each other, exploiting each other, bullying each other . . . ?

Not likely.

Mankind’s problems are spiritual problems. Attitude problems.

Humans are proud and money-hungry and envious and lazy and lustful and gluttonous and angry – that’s right, they’re in the grip of the seven deadly sins.

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The answer to sin is not political programs.

UN Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General, Dr. Jacques Diouf, said last year:

“On the earth there is a sufficient number of financial means, effective technologies, natural and human resources, to eliminate hunger in the world once and for all.”

So why don’t we do it then?

Pope Benedict XVI says:

 “The world has enough food for all its inhabitants, provided selfishness does not lead some to hoard the goods which are intended for all.”

He says the causes of the world’s injustices are “of the moral order”.

He has called for the creating of “a great program of education” to promote a change of thinking and “new lifestyles”.

To do this, he says, the “secularist mentality” — the excluding of religious ideas from efforts to reshape the world — must be eliminated.

In recent years, atheism has become quite trendy.

Likewise agnosticism, and also the pseudo-religion of Catholic Church-hating.

Many books, television debates and space-filler magazine articles have proclaimed these notions.

One atheist group modestly calls itself “the brights”.

Some would suggest it be altered to “the not-verys”.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, seems to think her public atheism will do her electoral prospects no harm. She may be wrong.

* * *

Last week, another celebrity publicly dumped her Catholic Faith.

Anne Rice, one of the world’s most widely-read writers, whose books have sold nearly 100 million copies, said on Facebook:

Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group . . . .

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

* * *

She wants to invent her own Christ: keeping those of his teachings which she likes, ditching the rest.

The Bible forbids such a mentality:

Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One Body and one Spirit; as you are called into one hope when you were called. There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism and one God who is Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. (Ephesians, chapter 4)

“Unity” . . . . “One Body” . . . . that sounds like belonging to the one fellowship of fellow-believers, imperfect though they may be.

Despite its faults, this is the one Church that is good enough for Our Lord to honour with the spreading of his Gospel, and with the custody of his holy Sacraments.

Yet it isn’t good enough for Anne Rice (and her many clones) who feel qualified to condemn it from their perceived higher moral ground.

They are on the wrong track.

Famous tenor Andrea Bocelli has made a video in which he says:

A young pregnant wife had been hospitalised for a simple attack of appendicitis . . . when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child . . . because the baby would be born with some disability. But the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born.

That woman was my mother, and I was the child. Maybe I’m partisan, but I can say that it was the right choice.

I hope this could encourage many mothers who sometimes find themselves in difficult situations in those moments when life is complicated but want to save the life of their baby.

* * *

Andrea Bocelli was born in 1958. At his birth, doctors diagnosed him as having congenital glaucoma, and by age 12 he was completely blind.

Despite this, Bocelli’s passion for music led to international musical fame, including eight operas and 70 million album sales.  

For years Bocelli was an agnostic, but returned to the Catholic Faith in 1994, partly due to reading the works of Leo Tolstoy which convinced him that life is not random chance, but has a purpose.

* * *

Here are a couple of quotes from Tolstoy:

God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God’s manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.  (from: Tolstoy’s Diary)

 Martin’s soul grew glad. He crossed himself, put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened, and at the top of the page he read: “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” And at the bottom of the page he read: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me”.  (Matthew’s gospel, chapter 28). And Martin understood that his dream had come true, and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.  (from: “Where Love Is, God Is“)

Australian Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has gone to Western Australia trying to popularise his proposed $9 billion-a-year  super-tax on mining companies.

His message has been to claim that we need this tax because  Australia’s “working families” have not been benefitting from the large profits earned during the last mining boom.

Wrong. The prosperity of the mining companies is the reason why tens of thousands of families are “working families” and not “on-the-dole” families.

That could all change. A recent Newspoll survey found more Australians expecting to be worse off as a result of the new super-tax than those expecting to be better off.

* * *

This tax will penalise the very industry which saved Australia from the worst effects of the recent global financial crisis.

Penalised mining companies may now consider taking their business elsewhere.

The tax having been introduced retrospectively will make Australia seem to foreign investors a risky, unstable place to invest.

* * *

Mr Rudd has angered mining companies by announcing the new tax without consultations with them.

Mr Rudd has appalled his own MPs by announcing the tax without consulting them either.

Mr Rudd has disgusted many Australians by a decision to use taxpayers’ funds on a $38 million advertising campaign to sell the new tax.

Mr Rudd, who spoke ever so eloquently before last election against taxpayer-funded political advertising, has shocked many Australians by choosing to bend the rules and do that very thing himself.

One commentator on television described Mr Rudd as follows, “This man believes in nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

* * *

All this creates a great opportunity for good independent candidates to poll well and perhaps be elected.

Unfortunately it may also give the anti-family, anti-Church, anti-tradition, Greens Party a chance to get a stranglehold on more and more casting votes.

Whoever comes into power next time, there will be a greater responsibility than ever for the Catholic Church to makes its presence felt, and to argue its moral principles at any and every opportunity.