Today’s gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is about money and attitudes to money.

Words of Jesus: “No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will be devoted to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  

“Worry not about your life, what you will eat, or for your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food: and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds, they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns: yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of more value than they? Can any of you, by taking thought, add a single moment to his life-span?

“And why worry about clothing? Consider the lilies in the field, how they grow: they do not labour, nor spin. Yet not even Solomon, in all his glorious robes, was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field, which is here today and thrown in the furnace tomorrow: will he not much more care for you – you who have so little faith?

“Worry not then, saying, ‘What are we to eat: what are we to drink: what will we have to wear?’  These are the things the heathens seek. Your Father knows that you need them all.  

“Seek first, therefore, the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well.”  (Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6)

* * *

Arriving at a crossroads (unless you plan to sit there the rest of your life) you must go one way or the other. You cannot go both ways.

That applies also in the spiritual life — a fact that we spend much of our time pretending isn’t true.

We might convince ourselves that we’re basically good, despite doing a bit of money-worship on the side. We may convince others around us.

But God, we will not convince — and it is he who judges us. He judges justly.

If we don’t put ourselves utterly at God’s disposal, we are, in fact, putting ourselves into the hands of the devil — who hates us and will destroy us painfully and eternally.

* * *

So God tells us, “Make up your mind.”

Dear Kiddies, Mr Abbott said yesterday that if he becomes Australia’s Prime Minister, families will receive $300 a year per child as part of reintroducing indexation for the child-care rebate.

Mrs Abbott was with him. She works in what they call an occasional child-care centre.

Dear Kiddies, the adults are getting this child-care issue all wrong.

*  Occasional child-care is a GOOD thing. It provides somewhere for us to be looked after if Mummy gets sick or for some reason suddenly needs a break.

*  Ordinary child-care (child-care-in-cold-blood, as you might say) is very different and is a BAD thing. It means Mummy not caring for us — not because something cropped up to make it impossible — but because she herself decided that instead of looking after us she would go out to work, leaving us with a paid carer.

* * *

Mr Swan, who belongs to the other party, criticised Mr Abbott’s family policies.

So he should, you say.

Not really, dear Lambkins, Mr Swan has no more idea of what we kiddies want than the other bloke.

His comments were about an alleged connection between Coalition policies and what Coles will charge for groceries.

Did Mr Swan mention that Mr Abbott’s child-care scheme is wrong because kids hate it?

Or because kids want their Mum at home?

Or because kids want all child-care centres bulldozed tomorrow (except perhaps the “occasional” type mentioned above)?

He did not.

* * *

Dear Kiddies, every time a clear-cut, black-and-white moral issue affecting us kids comes up, the adult experts start shouting at each other about money.

Is money all they are interested in?

What about more basic questions?

Like, what is a baby?

Is it — he or she – you or me –merely a lifestyle-accessory for the Mum?

These big people (big bodies, not necessarily big intelligences) think it’s normal to have a child and then start looking around for somebody else to care for it (preferably at taxpayers’ expense) while they toddle off and do something else.

Don’t they know that parenthood is the greatest privilege that God offers them?

A poll published this week reveals that 46 percent of Australian women — compared with 41 percent of men — report feeling “very stressed” in their everyday lives.

The poll, commissioned by Lifeline Australia, interviewed 1200 men and women.

Similar findings in American women were published in 2009 by authors Stevenson and Wolfers. They noted how recent declines in female happiness “have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men . . . a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”  (American Economic Journal: 2009 )

* * *

Did something happen just before the 1970s to affect women so as to reduce their happiness?

The Contraceptive Pill was introduced in the early 1960s. Women’s well-being has deteriorated ever since. Could that be cause and effect?

Why would the Pill make women less happy?

There are about 100 reasons. Here are a few:

* when busy in the home, looking after 3, 4, 5, or more children, pre-Pill women had plenty to do — too busy to ask themselves, how stressed am I today?

* they had the joy and happiness of knowing they were doing something they were cut out for. Their husband couldn’t give birth to a child, breast feed, or do the many things that come naturally to mothers.

* they didn’t feel the insecurity of a 50 percent chance of ending up divorced

* they felt less pressure to go out into the so-called “workforce” – being already busy with work to which they were ideally suited. No need to go out anywhere.

* not being in an office, factory or whatever, they escaped the stress of bosses and workmates eyeing them off and discussing whether they were “hot” or not.

* * *

So what about women going out to jobs?

Pope Pius XI discussed the so-called “emancipation” of working women, as long ago as 1930:

“This, however, is not the true emancipation of women, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family . . . .”  (Encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii)

Some things don’t change.

A Sydney University social work lecturer, Lesley Laing, recently released a study called “No Way to Live”.

It is being used to pressure the federal government into amending the Family Law Act to make it harder for men to see their own children than under present shared-parenting arrangements.

The study is wide open to questions about its methods and conclusions, both of which are probably pretty suspect.

The fact remains, however, that there is a real problem — those involved suffering terrible emotional pain and sometimes physical injury.

Police in the state of Victoria attend 20,000 domestic violence incidents per year.

Domestic violence accounts for about 10 percent of the deaths of Victorian women aged 15 to 44.

* * *

What is to be done?

First, let’s eradicate some false assumptions.

Domestic violence is commonly regarded as something nearly always done by men to women.

* A New Zealand survey, the biggest ever on family violence in young couples, found that 37 percent of women, compared with 22 percent of men, had inflicted violence on their partner.

* An American survey found that domestic violence where both parties are violent is the commonest kind (69%). Second comes violence by a woman against a man (21%). Coming last was male violence against females (10%).

Researchers commented that a key to reducing abuse is to make it as unacceptable for a woman to hit a man as it is for a man to hit a woman: “If we want men to stop it, women have to stop it, too.”

* Regarding children’s safety, a menacing factor, seldom mentioned, is the mum’s new boyfriend. Ask your family doctor whether this isn’t, in his experience, where the worst dangers lie.

* * *

Expecting changes to the Family Law Act to fix things is like trying to reconstruct an already-broken egg — something which, in this entropic universe, only happens in miracles.

Prevention is the only way to go.

* Children must grow up learning that normally Mums and Dads are married and stay together for life.

* The Churches must proclaim that Marriage is a Sacrament — part of the Natural Law, written into human nature and into our universe.

A society not respecting Marriage in this way will, unfortunately, get the domestic violence it deserves.

Professor John Mendoza, chairman of the Australian Federal Government’s National Advisory Council on Health, resigned the other day.

He says the Government has no vision or commitment to mental health.

Like most rows, this row was about money. The government intended putting in $30 million a year where Professor wanted a billion.

Professor’s pet project seems to be “Headspace” — a youth mental health service. He talks about mentally-ill young people losing touch with their families, getting into crime etc.

Losing touch? Surely the biggest reason family members lose touch isn’t so much having an illness in the house, as having a television in the house.

* * *

Think of depression, less as an illness, more as an industry.

Drug companies get rich selling Zoloft, Prozac etc., chemicals said to rectify “chemical imbalances in the brain”, which perhaps cause depression .

What makes our brain chemicals imbalanced anyway? Doesn’t what happens to any body organ largely depend on how we use the organ? What goes wrong with our brain chemicals might result from the moral and spiritual decisions that we use our brains to make.

And if “depression” results largely from such spiritual malfunctions, the solution may be a turn to true religion.

Tablets and counselling could also be a part of the answer — but only a small part.

* * *

“Depression” is a fashionable word for what would have, in the past, been called sadness or suffering.

Shouldn’t we be giving priority to teaching children how to suffer — and to teaching them that suffering has meaning and purpose? Might one reason we have guilty feelings be that we are guilty? Guilt is best resolved by forgiveness. Once forgiven, a weight rolls off our shoulders.

Ask a priest to hear your confession. If you haven’t been for ages, don’t worry, he’ll remind you how it’s done.

Another good aspect of confession is that it is free.

* * *

Blessed Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) wrote to the members of her Order when circumstances were making them depressed, “We have had much sorrow and are still suffering its effects, but sorrow or trial lovingly submitted to does not prevent our being happy — it rather purifies the happiness.”

There are said to be about 100,000 problem gamblers in the Australian state of Victoria.

These are roughly defined as people losing $100-plus per gambling session.

Many of these people have families, whose food, clothing and educational needs are compromised by their losses.

Some lose their whole pension on pension day.

Then they feel the need to put pressure on relatives and acquaintances to give them money to live on.

Are these folk the saddest victims of the gambling industry?

In a way, yes.

* * *

Yet there is another way of looking at it.

What about those who win?

Somebody every now and then has a big win, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Are they not in a sense losers too?

If you ever leave a casino, pub or club with a pocket-full of newly-won money, ask yourself where did the money come from.

Yes, it came from the pockets of those miserable souls whose gambling addiction props the whole electronic gambling industry up.

It comes out of the lunchboxes of their children.

* * *

Does that make you a thief, and a depriver of children?

Yes, of course it does.

You have just lost your soul.

You are the biggest possible loser.

Jesus Christ taught his disciples, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his soul? What could one give in exchange for his soul?”