Yesterday in California, a federal judge overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

In November 2008 a referendum in California known as Proposition 8 voted, by a 52 percent majority, to ban such marriages.

Judge Walker now rules that Proposition 8 “does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples . . . Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians . . . the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

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Judge Walker seems aware that his wishes have no hope, ultimately, of succeeding.

He has granted a temporary stay of his order until Friday, allowing opponents of same-sex marriage time to file appeals which will obstruct — more or less indefinitely — resumption of same-sex marriages in California.

Appeals could drag on for years.

This whole episode may well be a storm in a teacup.

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California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger welcomed the ruling as “a milestone in America’s road to equality”.

Others say that, far from moving towards equality, it’s just another reminder of how some people are more equal than others.

If you believe in traditional marriage, your opinion isn’t equal enough to count for anything whatever – even if more than half the electorate agrees with you.

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 . . . but none of the above analysis addresses the most basic questions.

Do most of those opposing same sex-marriages have any idea of what marriage is?

If God exists, can a marriage be valid that is carried out in a way disobedient to him?

Must not marriages outside a church be suspect?

Marriages in non-Catholic churches – can they be pleasing to God?

Marriages in Catholic churches between couples currently living together in sin — what about them?

Likewise, what about marriages in which contraceptive practices are employed?

What tiny, minimalist, percentage of heterosexual so-called marriages are marriages in an objective sense?

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Of course, only God knows the intentions in the hearts of those involved.

It is not for us to try to do his job.

The Day of Judgment soon comes.

Each of us must look to the saving of his own individual soul.

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Australia’s Prime Minister is refusing to declare a policy on “climate change”

She is proposing instead a plan to create a 150-member “Citizens’ Assembly” of rank-and-file Australians to decide . . . .

Well not exactly to decide . . . .

Didn’t she also say, “The role of this Citizens’ Assembly will not be to become the final arbiter or judge of consensus, but to provide an indication to the nation of the progress of community consensus etc. etc. ”?

So apart from “assembling” what is this “assembly” supposed to do?

In fact, their role in the government’s plans won’t even include a necessity for them to assemble.

Their function is to be something democratic-sounding to “respectable-ise” the governing party’s determination to perch on the fence about this issue until the election is over.

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The Assembly is to consist of volunteers selected through census data and electoral rolls by “an independent authority”.

Sounds democratic?

Only if you say it fast and don’t think about it.

Especially don’t think back to Mr Rudd’s “2020 Summit”. How democratic was that?

Out of 1000 Summit delegates, just one voted against Australia becoming a Republic.

Nobody could even pretend that only 0.1 percent of ordinary Australians were at that time anti-republic.

That Summit was a scam and a sham – far from democratic.

* * *

Is democracy so important to strive after, anyway?

Doesn’t democracy mean putting the nation’s leader-selection into the hands of a population of TV-watchers – whose decisions merelyreflect what the owners of the media tell them is best.

The media don’t address issues on a rational basis. Their every decision is a commercial decision.

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The Church, on the other hand, could and should think things out on a rational, God-related basis.

Every Sunday, priests address millions of Australians in churches. 

Do they speak on moral issues with a unified voice, based on the Faith, un-influenced by popularity with the media or anybody else?

If they did, the nation would change in a big way and in a hurry.

But at present there is too much division, desire to be “relevant” etc.

So the media is able to pick out a “liberal” priest here and a “conservative” priest there — and to represent the Church’s position as being whatever they choose.

The Australian Federal Government in 2008 set up a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies.

The Centre has run workshops — and now published a booklet—on the theme of “Bringing Muslim Perspectives into Australian Schools”.

All paid for by you and me out of our taxes.

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Their booklet complains that Australian school textbooks mostly have “a western or European perspective”.

Why not? Our system of government is based on ideas brought here from Christian countries in Europe — and Islamic refugees arrive here by the boatful seeking to escape the “benefits” of Muslim culture, hoping instead  to reside somewhere with a western, Christian-oriented, worldview or perspective.

The booklet does NOT mention that in many Muslim-majority nations women are stoned to death for adultery and young girls undergo female circumcision.

* * *

The booklet claims that Muslims worship “the same God that was worshipped by Abraham, Moses and Jesus.”

This is false. The God of Catholics is a Trinity. God, who is one and unique in his infinite nature is three really distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This understanding is unacceptable to Muslims who dismiss it as blasphemy.

* * *

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the  Australian government to fund a Centre for Excellence in Catholic Studies.

When Mr Abbott yesterday merely said his coalition might enable parents of Catholic school children to claim school fees as a tax deduction, there was a “furious” response from the Australian Education Union, which called the plan ”regressive”.

Australians need to understand that any education not explaining our world in terms of being created by a Creator, who created us and all things out of love, and who has come to this world in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who is both God and man . . . .

Any education leaving out this foundation for all other knowledge is a form of child-neglect, cruelly unjust to the young.

Some church groups were in the media last week criticising Prime Minister Julia Gillard over her proposed East Timor processing facility for asylum seekers.

For example Saint Vincent de Paul Society chief executive, Dr John Falzon, was “disappointed” and called it “a missed opportunity to genuinely move forward”.

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Saint Vincent de Paul, a 17th century Roman Catholic priest, founded groups within the Church to cater for the physical and spiritual needs of the poor in France.

This year happens to be the 350^th anniversary of his death in 1660.

Today, July 19, happens to be his official feast day.

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These days, the only messages from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society reaching the public seem to be political opinions, like the above.

Yet St Vincent’s personal emphasis was never primarily political, but always spiritual.

Here are some of his sayings addressed to his workers:

* You are servants of the poor, to be always smiling and good-humoured.  The poor are your masters, sensitive and exacting masters, you will discover.  The uglier and the dirtier they are — the more unjust and insulting — the more love you must give them. 

* We must love our neighbor as a being made in the image of God and as an object of His love.

* However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction — but rather be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.

* * *

St Vincent was a true saint.

His greatest wish for all people was they should find salvation through Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church.

The Society bearing his name today does a lot of good. It will do even more good by remaining behind the scenes ministering to the poor and needy — leaving political theorising and telling the government its job to somebody else.

The world is full of would-be political experts.

It is short, however, of those able to offer both physical compassion and the saving message of the Gospel.