Pope Benedict, visiting his home country, Germany, has paid tribute to those who kept the faith during Nazi and Communist persecutions.

After meeting a group of victims of past sexual abuse by church workers, he humbly commented that he could “understand that, in the face of such reports, people, especially those close to victims, would say, ‘This isn’t my church anymore’.”

He vowed that the Church will “deal with all crimes of abuse” and is “committed to promotion of measures for the protection of children and young people”.

* * *

In a world where hatred seems to reign, to learn the message of God’s love is urgent and critical.

The people you meet every day need to discover that they are infinitely lovable, no matter how badly they feel about themselves.

And to experience the life-altering potency of God’s love.

It is the task of the Church to be God’s agent in passing on that message and that transforming experience of love.

Now is not the time for Christians to abandon the Church, but to redouble our efforts, at the personal level, to spread God’s life-changing love.

* * *

Today, try to let everyone you meet be aware of his/her lovability.

All are infinitely loveable, because God loves all infinitely.

We must first let God’s love change us — then endeavour to become change-agents in creating and spreading love.

It is not easy to act consistently with this kind of love.

None of us is as good at it as we ought to be.

If we humbly ask God for his grace, he will change us – and use the change in us as a step towards changing the world.

Two weeks ago, 200 school students, mainly from Western New South Wales, accompanied by 40 teachers, visited Lake Mungo to “celebrate their Koori heritage”.

The project has grown out of the 2006 Mungo Festival held to “celebrate the listing of the Willandra Lakes (including Lake Mungo) as a World Heritage Area” 25 years earlier.

All at taxpayers’ expense. Was it money well spent?

This celebrating is to be followed up by sending to schools in the region Aboriginal elders to encourage students to do “Lake Mungo projects”.

In charge is Stephen Albert, an Aboriginal elder who acted in the film “Bran Nue Dae”.

Bran Nue Dae?  A film so full of simplistic, blatant and virulent hatred for everything Catholic that it self-destructed as any kind of contribution to thought.

* * *

Many Aborigines are respectful of Christianity.

It’s a pity if our money is being spent pushing them back into paganistic mentalities – subjecting them to a double-pronged anti-God brainwash.

Prong One: anti-Catholic media which mention the Church only when they unearth a priest who molested children.

Prong Two: pressuring them to return to the least valuable aspects of the old culture, many aspects of which will make them less, not more, fitted to cope with today’s world.

* * *

Not just Aborigines are suffering from the eradication of the last vestiges of respect for the Christian culture that has made Australia a relatively compassionate place.

Last week, Edgewater Primary School, WA, banned students from reciting the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father”) because it “contravenes the WA Education Act” which prohibits favouring one religion over another.

Run through the words of the Lord’s Prayer in your mind.

Is there anything in it except positive thoughts and respect for our Creator?

Nothing whatever to offend anybody who wants a better world.

I have pinched most of the following.

Hope it is some help to somebody out there:

I asked God to spare me pain. God said, “No. Hardship is your chance to detach yourself from worldly things and draw closer to me.”

I asked God to give me patience. God said, “No. Patience is a by-product of suffering. It isn’t something given. It is something to be learned.”        

I asked God to take away my bad habits. God said, “No. It is not for me to take them away, but for you to give them up.”

I asked God to give me happiness. God said, “No. I give you what is my will for you. You must decide to be happy about it.”

* * *

Catholics who pray the Divine Office prayers daily, begin every morning with this act of self-giving to our Creator:

Lord God, all-powerful, you have brought us to the beginning of this day.

By your power, keep us on the road to salvation.

Do not let us fall into any sin today . . . .

But grant that all our words, all our thoughts and actions may tend toward the fulfilment of your law of holiness.

Amen

Australia’s government faces a sort of a crisis.

Australian consumers – both domestic and industrial – don’t buy Australian-made.

Should we impose tariffs, making imported products no longer cheaper than local stuff?

The alternative is to do nothing much — just let our unemployment rate rise and continue selling off Australia’s assets until there are none left.

All of this doesn’t matter much really.

At stake is merely whether we can maintain our material standard of living and our freedom.

If we do nothing, we’ll probably survive somehow.

What does matter is whether we destroy ourselves spiritually.

If we do, we’ll have to exist with the consequences eternally – we’ll have forever to hate ourselves.

That will be hell.

                                                                                                * * *                            

OK.

The General Superior of the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth (SSPX) has been called to the Vatican for a “special meeting” on September 14.

He’ll meet Cardinal Levada, the Pope’s spokesman, to discuss the “canonical situation” of the SSPX.

Will the Cardinal:

(1) threaten to re-impose “excommunication” on the Priests of the Society?

(2) then offer that the Pope will restore the SSPX to “full communion” – provided Vatican appointees select who become the bishops of the Society in future?

* * *

What won’t be discussed is the real crisis, i.e. that the mainstream Catholic hierarchy no longer believe God has chosen the Catholic Church as the one Church through which he desires to communicate with mankind.

Only the SSPX  proclaims the traditional Catholic position.

Vatican policy, since the 1960’s Second Vatican Council, is that one religion is about as good as another . . . that you can find God through protestant “Christianity”, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Buddhism, Freemasonry – you name it.

If that was true, then God (any god who makes any difference to anything) does not exist.

That is the CRISIS facing today’s world.

On September 14, please pray for the future of the world, including the Pope, Cardinal Levada, Bishop Fellay . . . and your own soul.

The 2011 World Youth Day has come and gone.

Two million young Catholics found their way to Madrid to hear Pope Benedict XVI.

Hundreds of thousands greeted his arrival with deafening sounds.

Yet at the appropriate moments – during Mass, during the pauses on the Way of the Cross – the silence was absolute.

It tempts one to hope that the lives of many attending were being changed . . . .

And that on going home their pride in being Catholic – and their humility in being sinners redeemed by the Passion of Christ – will not be lost.

* * *

That was the Pope’s take-home message:

* that they must “make Christ, the Son of God, the centre of (their) life.”

* that they must spread that message to a world “filled with young people who are looking for something greater. . . .”

 * and to help others to resist being “seduced by the empty promises of a lifestyle which has no room for God.”

* * *

Certainly the youth of many nations are today looking for something – risking their lives, trying to topple dictators and crying out “freedom!” and “democracy!”.

Oh dear. Are not freedom and democracy rather watery rations on which to confront the forces of evil?

He who dies for democracy, dies for the triumph of mediocrity and compromise.

Freedom? A myth. We all slaves to sin. Toppling Mr Gaddafi won’t help in that direction.

* * *

Will the WYD returnees find their home churches filled with a great thirst for the Sacraments and a great zeal for the spread of God’s Kingdom in the world?

The Church has made terrible mistakes, but it is God’s Church.

As the Pope says, you cannot be a Christian on your own.

The Church is a must.

If the Church is imperfect, then let us work to make it better — not abandon it.

On Thursday night, three ABC broadcast staff died in a helicopter crash near William Creek south of Lake Eyre.

They were Paul Lockyer (journalist), John Bean (photographer) and Gary Ticehurst (pilot).

They had been filming a documentary about the lake and intended covering yesterday’s official opening of William Creek airstrip.

The airstrip opening went ahead, but was more like a memorial service.

* * *

The priest, Father Paul, read from Saint Luke’s gospel, chapter 10, the story told by Jesus about the Good Samaritan – a story of undiscriminating love, an attribute which Australians admire and aspire to have:

A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away leaving him half dead. A priest who happened to be going down the same road, seeing him, passed him by on the other side. So too, a Levite, coming to the place, passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came near and took pity on him, bandaging his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then, putting him on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and cared for him. Next day he gave two coins to the innkeeper, saying,  ‘Look after him and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense.’

“Which of these three”, asked Jesus, “do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The teacher of the Law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “You go, then, and do the same.”

When bad times come, God calls us to show neighbourly compassion, even when there is sacrifice involved — or even danger.

* * *

God does not only want us to be kind.

He wants us to put worshipping him first, above all else.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not the end of chapter 10.

The following section shows how, although practical kindness is important, there is something else at least as important — if not more so.

Look it up.