People voting for Labor or Coalition mostly had some idea what they were voting for.

Those voting for an Independent normally try to find out what kind of a bloke he is.

What about Greens voters? How many of them could name two Greens Party members apart from Bob Brown?

Such voters were voting for somebody – somebody they knew nothing about . . . . somebody, perhaps, with whom they wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in real life – somebody whose basic moral ideas they would actually detest.

Bob Brown himself isn’t too sure about some of the characters endorsed by his party — some so politically and personally immature that they almost make him look good.

He is probably quite frightened of them.

And rightly so.

* * *

The Greens want to increase taxes on our major export industries, on all electricity users – and on everybody who dies.

Also to financially damage the Private Health Insurance industry and Catholic schools.

Eventually, also, to close all non-government schools and all Zoos and the one Australian laboratory that can supply radio-active isotopes for use in cancer therapy.

* * *

Already we’ve let the Greens get a stranglehold on Tasmania . . . .

Now they’ll be able to blackmail their way into getting whatever they want in Senate votes.

Yes, the Greens — who represent hardly anybody’s beliefs – got their Senate blackmailing licence thanks to Labor preferences. And their first lower house seat (Melbourne) by means of Liberal preferences.

Thanks chaps.

* * *

While almost no sane person in Australia supports Greens policies, 12 percent voted for them.

Cardinal Pell warned voters against this. So did Perth’s Archbishop Hickey.

Did you hear of any others of Australia’s 41 Catholic bishops doing  likewise?

Neither did I.

* * *

Let this disastrous election be a lesson to us.

Victorians will, in less than three months, have a chance to make the same mistake again.

It is hard to be optimistic.

In so-called modern so-called democracies, we celebrate or bewail the so-called decline and death of religion.

Meanwhile, what are others saying?

Here are a couple of quotes made recently in a speech by Cardinal George Pell.

* * *

(1) From Zhao Xiao, currently Professor of Economics, Beijing University of Science and Technology:

“These days, Chinese people do not believe in anything. They don’t believe in God. They don’t believe in the devil. They don’t believe in Providence. They don’t believe in the Last Judgement — to say nothing about heaven. A person who believes in nothing can only believe in himself. And self-belief implies that anything is possible — what do lies, cheating, harm and swindling matter?”

Many well-educated Australians would say that’s OK — one can devise and live by a real code of ethics without bringing God into it.

Sometimes it takes somebody from outside — who has experienced the cruel reality of godless society — to remind us how lucky we are still having remnants of Catholic culture in our society.

And how stupidly self-destroying we would be to neglect that Faith

* * *

(2) From Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz:

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Christianity bothers modern trend-setters by its insistence that some things are good and others are evil . . . .

That we can’t turn our backs on God, the source of all good, without making our souls unfit to be with God in Eternity . . . .

Something we’ll have the whole of Eternity to grieve over in painful, never-ending remorse.

* * *

The Catholic Faith teaches that we can, in this life, attain real friendship with God:

* step one:  Use your will power. Force yourself to quit all bad and self-indulgent actions.

* step two:  Stop using your will power. Say, “Lord, I’ve gone as far as I can go in my own power.  Over-power and replace my every sinful thought — so that I may persevere in making my every action pleasing to you.”

Remember and aspire to what Saint Paul wrote, “No longer do I live, but Christ lives in me.”  (Galatians, chapter 2)

Florence Nightingale died 100 years ago yesterday.

Florence had an experience at the age of 17 when, “God spoke to me, and called me to his service.”

Back then, nursing wasn’t a very respectable profession. Hospitals were famous mainly for bad smells and frightening death rates.

Despite family protests, Florence became a nurse anyway. By 1853, she was superintendent of London’s “Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen”.

She and 38 of her trainees went to Turkey to nurse soldiers injured in the Crimean War.

At first, recovery rates didn’t improve much – but after the hospital’s sewers and ventilation were fixed they did.

* * *

Back in England, Florence published a book, “Notes on Nursing”, covering what professional nurses needed to learn, plus “everyday sanitary knowledge . . . which every one ought to have.”

She wrote, altogether, 17 books on medical topics.

Plus another, 829 pages long, entitled “Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.”

Due to health problems, Florence spent much of the second half of her life bed-ridden.

But she remained a great organiser, intellectual and author.

She died at the age of 90.

* * *

Florence made her nurses recite a pledge:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully.

I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.

I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.

With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

When young, Florence worked in a Paris hospital staffed by nuns. She wore the postulant habit, but never became a nun herself.

She never became a Catholic. She told Cardinal Manning that she wished to, but he said no, as she didn’t accept some Catholic beliefs.

Florence Nightingale is venerated as a Saint in the Episcopal Church, but not in the Catholic Church.

* * *

A phonograph recording of Florence’s voice, made in 1890, has been preserved. She sounds a bit like Queen Elizabeth II:  www.archive.org/details/FlorenceNightingaleVoice

Nauru is a nation with no means of support. No industries, nothing for tourists to look at, precious little arable land . . . .

Its unemployment rate is 90 percent.

When Australia closed its asylum-seeker detention centre in Nauru in 2007, one of the main sources of paid work disappeared — 10 percent of the nation’s people being directly or indirectly affected.

Nauru is keen to help out again if Australia wants to re-establish such a centre.

* * *

It was promising, the other day, to hear Prime Minister Gillard refer to “my plans for a regional processing centre” and “the dialogue with Nauru.”

But it was a slip of the tongue.

The rest of the time, she rejects any suggestion of using Nauru.

She says this is because Nauru hasn’t signed the United Nations refugees convention.

But that may not be her reason.

About the asylum-seekers, opposition leader Tony Abbott says, “If the Prime Minister is serious about taking tough action, she would pick up the phone to the president of Nauru.”

* * *

Meanwhile more asylum-seekers keep turning up thick and fast — another 80-odd picked up off Christmas Island two days ago.

Australia is obliged to keep helping Nauru to survive one way or another.

We stripped off most of their topsoil getting the phosphate out — leaving it like a moonscape of naked limestone pinnacles.

Waste-products from our mining killed most of the edible fish in the waters around the island.

Nauru already functions as an Australian colony. They use the Australian dollar. Australian Rules Football is their main sport. They depend on Australia for treasury advice and imported Australian health and education expertise.

* * *

It’s hard to realise how helpless and un-viable Nauru is.

And how tiny.

3000 Naurus could fit on the island of Tasmania.

So why did J. Gillard’s tongue slip into saying we’ll negotiate a new detention centre with Nauru?

Because she knows it’s the right thing to do.

For our own benefit.

For the benefit of the nation of Nauru.

And — if it is done properly – for the benefit of the immigrants.

Colombia, South America’s only nation with both a Pacific and an Atlantic coastline — home of the best coffee grown in the world – was for centuries a Catholic nation.

In the 1990s that changed. God was dethroned by an anti-Catholic government.

Things went from bad to worse – drug lords taking over, terrorist attacks, kidnappings, murder and mayhem.

* * *

But President Alvaro Uribe, who became president in 2002, came on national television announcing that “as a nation we are going to say the Rosary together”.

He and his family were consecrated on screen by the Pope’s representative, praying to the Virgin Mary to “help us to have a Colombia that is free of terrorism, prosperous and upright, with social justice”.

“We totally consecrate to you our lives, our work, our joys and sufferings, triumphs and failures . . . protect us from all danger to our souls and bodies. Obtain for us from your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, the graces and favours we ask . . . .”

* * *

During Uribe’s presidency, things started improving. The government applied military pressure on the FARC and other outlawed groups.

Kidnappings decreased from 3,700 in 2000 to 172 in 2009.

Homicides from 28,837 to 15,817

Guerrilla numbers from about 17,000 to about 9000.

* * *

Perhaps Australia, a nation enduring yet another totally materialistic election campaign, a society in decay mode, with increasing suicide, family breakdowns, gambling, drugs, and irreligion . . . .

Perhaps Australia needs to consecrate itself to God.

Neither J, Gillard, claiming to have no religion, nor T. Abbott, religious mainly when it seems politically expedient, seem likely at this stage to sponsor a consecration . . . .

* * *

Yet, if they were convinced there were votes in it, wouldn’t they do it tomorrow?

It’s up to us — general public, priests, bishops — to pressurise the politicos until they feel they have no other option.

Pray to God that he will do the necessary miracle and soften their hard-boiled political hearts.

Today’s Gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is about sin and judgement and — by implication — hell.

Hell isn’t a frequent theme in the Gospels, but it’s one that we can’t ignore.

Our Lord talked most about how God wants to save us into his Kingdom.

Once in a while he reminds us what the alternative is.

* * *

Saint Luke’s Gospel, chapter 19:

As Jesus drew near, seeing the city of Jerusalem, he shed tears over it, saying: “If you had only understood in this day the things that make for peace; but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you when your enemies shall encircle you, and hem you in on every side, and beat you flat to the ground, together with the children within your walls, and they shall not leave one stone upon another: because you did not recognise the time of your visitation.”

Then, entering into the temple, he began to drive out those who were buying and selling there, saying to them: “It is written: My house is the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves.” And he taught every day in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the rulers of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death.

* * *

In world history, that prediction came true when, in the year 70AD, Jerusalem was reduced to rubble by the armies of Rome.

Having once definitively rejected and killed God’s visitation in Jesus Christ, the city’s fate was sealed.

It was just a matter of time . . . .

Beyond history, sin has even more serious consequences — enough to make the loving God weep.

* * *

The Christian doctrine of God’s judgment and hell worries many people.

Rightly so, in the sense that we should be concerned about ensuring that we do not end up there.

It would, however, be more of a worry if there was no hell.

If everybody wound up in heaven, no matter how little love they had shown to God or other people, then their existence would have been a sham.

If your way of living made no difference to your eternal fate, you would be a robot.