Deaths of Australian soldiers in Middle East war zones are increasing.

Recently three — Corporal Jared McKinney, Private Grant Kirby, and Private Tomas Dale  — were killed within three days.

We admire these men for their bravery. We feel for their distressed families.

It seems almost rude to ask the unavoidable question — what point was there to them being there anyway?

Will their sacrifice ultimately help anybody?

* * *

We must, of course, respect their sacrifice.

Many of us doubt whether we could find the courage to do what they did.

Every ANZAC Day our whole nation goes into a state of perplexity.

We all want to pay our respects . . . .

We all want to avoid glorifying war . . . especially war against those who aren’t a direct threat to Australia’s sovereignty.

* * *

Inside Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance is a “Stone of Remembrance”, engraved with the words “Greater love hath no man”.

Every year, at 11am on 11 November — the hour and day of the Armistice which ended World War I – a ray of sunlight shines through the roof, lighting up the word “LOVE”.

Those words come from the Bible — words of Jesus Christ predicting his own death — nothing to do with soldiers or war.

John’s gospel, chapter 15:

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.”

* * *

The Christian message is that the Passion of Christ is the one redeeming sacrifice.

Humanity (you and I) are enslaved by sin (disobedience to God) – meriting for us punishment, as demanded by God’s justice.

Christ’s Passion has infinite merit, such that it was a kind of ransom — covering the price of redeeming us from that debt of punishment.

No other sacrifice is in the same league.

Not the death of any soldier, however courageous.

Not the deaths of however many millions of Jews in the German Holocaust.

* * *

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ’s Passion is unique, literally.

Many people find that hard to believe.

Everybody finds it hard to understand.

Even harder to explain in words.

The Greens Party talks non-stop about “sustainability”.

The Greens’ policies would, however, turn Australia into an unsustainable, self-destructing mess in no time at all.

They talk about human rights — but would deny the right even to remain alive to both the oldest and the youngest in our world.

If you are vulnerable, and look like getting in the way of those more powerful, modern or trendy – no matter what your age – the Greens will encourage your extermination.

* * *

For example, last year in the Senate, Bob Brown moved a motion to legalise euthanasia. And similar motions have been introduced by Greens MPs in state parliaments – e.g. in Victoria in 2008, and in both South Australia and Tasmania during 2009

The Greens in NSW now announce that they plan to move for Victorian-style, open-slather, abortion-on-demand laws in their state. There is going to be plenty more of that kind of thing.

The Greens’ official Population policy states that government should  “increase contributions to programs that empower women and increase their access to a wide range of safe family planning options . . . .”  (Policy 14)

In English, that means “safe killing of unborn babies, if inconvenient . . . .”

* * *

While speaking of laws designed to cause more deaths, we might mention the Greens’ Drugs policy.

The Greens recommend — not only the madness of more needle-handout “exchanges” and legal injecting rooms for injecting illegal drugs – but also the providing of heroin on prescription to “registered” addicts. (Policy 13)

That should result in plenty more Greens-style deaths.

* * *

Sir Robert Menzies held a referendum to ban the Communist Party.

It failed.

The time has surely come for a referendum to ban the Greens Party – arguably the most destructive force in Australia today.

Worldwide, numbers of old people are increasinging faster than the general population — yet small families are considered normal. 

Young people are, relatively speaking, getting scarcer.

Who, in the future, will pay the taxes to keep the old alive and clean?

We need bigger families — otherwise governments won’t resist the temptation to liberalise euthanasia laws to cut down numbers of expensive-to-maintain old people.

* * *

The Australian state of Tasmania is again under threat of having legal-euthanasia laws enacted.

Bizarrely, Tasmania’s Attorney-General, Lara Giddings, raised the issue of euthanasia in a Budget Reply speech on 22 June.

A “Dying with Dignity Bill”, introduced by Greens Party leader, Nick Mc­Kim, had been defeated in the Tasmanian Lower House only last November.

But the Greens now have a balance-of-power stranglehold on Tasmania.

They seem to have a stranglehold on Lara Giddings, anyway.

The Archbishop of Hobart is not impressed.

In a masterpiece of under-statement, he said, “As a society, we must be respectful of the sacred nature of human life — and having this mistaken sense of compassion certainly isn’t respectful of human dignity.”

* * *

The Roman Catholic teaching on euthanasia is exactly what any compassionate, thinking person would conclude. Few of us, however, could express it so well:

Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.

Thus an act or omission which, of itself, or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.  

The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted . . . .(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2277-2278)

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Today I read these words, “Oh, I have long been sick of the world and its cares, of its false pleasures and dangers . . . .”

What kind of a person would speak like that?

Somebody contemplating suicide?

Somebody suffering clinical depression?

Somebody looking for sympathy?

* * *

No, none of those.

It was somebody who had found something better than the things of the world to live for – something “out of this world”.

Somebody wanting to put her life completely at God’s service — which made the worldly ambitions that mostly people live for seem tedious by comparison.

It was, in fact, the young Mary MacKillop, sharing with her mother her reasons for entering the religious life of a Sister of Saint Joseph.

Her browned-offness with this world’s godless attitudes echo the words of Saint Paul in the Bible:

“God forbid that I should boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” 

* * *

Does this blog overdo the emphasis on the Bible and God and the Catholic religion etc?

Well, there is a desperate need out there for Australians to find something — something better to believe in than what they believe in at present.

2,500-plus Australians commit suicide every year.

That is about seven suicides per day.

For every completed suicide there are over 30 attempts – which means there are over 200 people a day attempting suicide.

There are 50 percent more deaths by suicide in Australia than by road accidents.

* * *

What can we do?

We must copy Saint Paul and Blessed Mary MacKillop and direct our ambitions and desires – not towards worldly delusions and mirages – but towards the reality of God.

To make Australia a happier place, let’s not forget willingness to listen to those who are unhappy, and to offer them simple kindness.

We might dwell on some other words of Mary MacKillop in that same letter to her mother:

“How many are lost through the coldness and indifference of those who might and should think more of their eternal welfare and less of this miserable world . . . .”

The bodies of two dead Australian soldiers, Sapper Darren Smith and Sapper Jacob Moerland, are expected to arrive in Brisbane tomorrow.

The pair had been returning from a foot patrol looking for weapons in the Mirabad Valley when a roadside bomb exploded, killing them and their bomb-sniffer dog, Herbie,

Predictably, Australia’s Greens Party have taken this opportunity to push for withdrawal of all Australian troops from Afghanistan. Senator Brown says he believes the majority of Australians agree.

So are there votes in this sorry event for the Greens?

What do Australians really think?

* * *

Before getting on to that, we might ask, what do the people of Afghanistan think?

For a start, a lot of Afghani people are converting to Christianity.

Abdul Sattar Khawasi, Deputy Secretary for the lower house in the Afghan Parliament, the other day called for the execution of Afghanis who convert from Islam to Christianity.

This followed a video broadcast by an Afghan television network, Noorin TV, showing Christian men being baptised and praying in the Farsi language.

The broadcast also prompted protests by students at Kabul University, who, in the hundreds, shouted threats of death to Christians.

Many national Christians are now in hiding, fearful of execution. Under government pressure, some Afghans have reportedly revealed names and locations of Christian converts.

This is the same government for which soldiers like Sappers Smith and Moerland are losing their lives.

* * *

Here in Australia, a group calling itself “Set My People Free” has been set up — a network of individuals, churches and organisations trying to work for the freedom of religious converts to live and practice their faith in their home countries.

It has organised what it calls a “worldwide protest march” on August 28, 2010 in Sydney.

It also has an online petition campaign.

Its coordinator is a Dr. Ramsis Gayed, who quotes Martin Luther King Junior, who apparently said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

* * *

So should readers of this blog sign such a petition?  Should they march on August 28?

It’s up to you.

The petition can be accessed at  : www.petitiononline.com/2010smpf/petition.html

In countries like Australia, where politicians and others advocate legalising euthanasia, the campaigners always talk about the “safeguards” built into such laws to “protect” vulnerable patients.

Should we believe them?

* * *

In Belgium, the law has allowed euthanasia — with safeguards — since 2002.

The latest edition of Canadian Medical Association Journal contains a survey of one region of Belgium. Over 30 percent of reported euthanasia cases had been done without the consent of the patient!

These people mostly had diseases other than cancer, with “unpredictable end-of-life trajectories”, i.e. death not being an inevitable result.

Belgian law theoretically requires that for a person to be subjected to euthanasia, the patient’s written consent is required — plus the opinion of a third physician in cases where an illness is not terminal –plus a one-month waiting period for patients suffering depression.

This is not happening.

Did anyone ever really think it would happen?

So much for “safeguards” in the real world.

* * *

Another medical journal, “Transplantation”, in 2008 published a letter reporting a case of legal euthanasia where the patient had agreed to be killed — and also to have her organs “harvested” for transplantation.

All this apparently being done with the blessing of the local “ethics committee”.

Sick and disabled people risk being increasingly considered, not only as burdens to themselves, families, and society — but also as handy sources of organs for the transplantation industry.

* * *

FOOTNOTE: A simple alternative to the euthanasia mentality has been around for some time, but little reported.

Canadian specialist, Dr Harvey Chochinov, has pioneered “Dignity Therapy”, which involves encouraging terminal patients to re-live and record important memories and to say anything they want their friends and families to know.

The process is recorded and transcribed to be given to a family member or friend.

Of 100 terminal patients undergoing the therapy, 91 said that the technique had helped them – with statistically significant reported benefits in:

* reduced depressive symptoms

* increased sense of purpose

* lessened sense of suffering

* and increased will to live.

(Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol 23, No 24: August 2005)