We should all be happy about Christmas, the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fact is that only Jesus can solve the real problems of mankind.

All real problems of men derive from sin (disobedience to God).

Health disorders, material, economic and political troubles – even bad decisions by umpires – all these are only really problems insofar as they affect our spiritual relationship with God.

* * *

That’s why Christmas is a good thing.

Christmas carries the message that there is a remedy for our troubles — the remedy being God’s forgiveness for our sins.

If we continue in unforgiven sin, we are a waste of both time and space – and can expect God to treat us as such.

So the problem of sin is serious.

Fatally serious.

The answer to that problem is NOT for us to make up our minds to do better.

That way we’ll merely discover that we’re incapable of persevering in ”doing better” for any length of time — because we’re spiritually broken, and can only be repaired by supernatural means.

The supernatural means being found exclusively in the confessional at a Catholic Church.

We might think it would be nice if there were some other alternative remedy — but there is none.

* * *

Anyway we don’t need an alternative.

God loves us enough to have given us the way back to him that we need.

Do we hate ourselves so much as to not accept his loving gift?

God will forgive because the sacrificial death of the God-made-man, Jesus Christ, was so infinitely meritorious  . . . .

So meritorious that it more than counterbalances all our attempts to make an enemy of God by disobeying him.

* * *

Let us thank God for his plan for our salvation, and for that first Christmas Day when it began to make itself apparent here on earth.

Let us also thank the Blessed Virgin Mary for her part in the birth — and in the Passion and death — of our Saviour.

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Recently a memo was circulated suggesting that Centrelink and Medicare offices should not display nativity scenes at Christmas.

Human Services Minister, Tanya Plibersek, commented that this memo, written by a junior officer, was “inappropriate”.

She said, “It is perfectly reasonable for departmental staff to display Christmas decorations, including nativity scenes.”

“I also support staff who wish to celebrate Eid, Hanukkah, Diwali, the Lunar New Year or any other occasion of religious or cultural significance.”

Tanya P, although trying to sit on the fence, was making, in fact, an ideologically-loaded statement.

Her ideology being the belief that all religions are equally true/untrue.

A very unpleasant sort of fundamentalism.

* * *

From a Christian viewpoint, religion exists to lead souls to God — as individuals, and ALSO as a society.

It is every Catholic’s duty to do everything possible to make the society in which he lives a Catholic society.

The enemies of Catholic religion – the smarter ones, anyway – know that religion cannot be destroyed. It is too deeply seated in the human heart.

Smart Communists, atheists, humanists etc. don’t waste time trying to eradicate religion, but strive to house-train it.

They know they have succeeded when people become convinced that “religion is a private matter”.

* * *

Religion is NOT a private matter.

When his disciples asked Jesus Christ how they should pray, he taught them a prayer that says, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come . . . .”

We should look twice at that last sentence.

What would life be like if we lived as though it literally applied to us?

Our society would become overtly Christian.

Children would grow up knowing that to believe Catholic teaching is normal behaviour.

Christmas would be observed on an official basis.

Not only would nativity scenes be “tolerated” in government departmental workplaces — they would be given pride of place in each and every one of them.

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.