If you have an unused mobile phone lying about, take it to your nearest Saint Vincent de Paul Centre and hand it in.

For every phone, they are able to get $3.

So you benefit by getting rid of a bit of clutter – meanwhile benefiting one of our most reliable charities.

And this recycling is obviously good for the environment.

* * *

The historical Saint Vincent de Paul, living in the 1600s, was into practical Christianity.

He said:

“To practise the love of Christ, acquire the habit of keeping him at all times present in our minds — in three ways:

(1)  when performing any action, consider the manner in Our Lord acted here upon earth, and imitate him.

(2)  remember that he continually looks down on us from heaven, offering us his grace.

(3)  and recognise him in the person of our neighbour.”

* * *

The modern-day St Vincent de Paul Society does all these things.

Vinnies Op Shops and Relief Centres are great examples of number (3).

Everyone is treated as a neighbour with generosity and respect.

Christmas is over.

The whole twelve days of Christmas ended yesterday on the feast day called Epiphany.

New Years Day has happened.

What comes next?

Woolworths are already trying to sell hot cross buns.

Father Tony Kennedy, Parish Priest of Burnie, Tasmania, has complained, saying hot cross buns are a reminder of the death of Jesus Christ on the first Good Friday . . . .

So they shouldn’t be eaten before that day each year.

* * *

Woolworths say they start selling hot cross buns in January “because of consumer demand”.

In other words, because there’s money in it.

Woolworths sell cigarettes because there’s money in it.

Woolworths sell alcohol because there’s money in it.

Woolworths-associated companies are Australia’s biggest poker machine operators because there’s money in it.

If marijuana was ever legalised they’d sell it because there’s money in it.

Father Kennedy is right.

Woolworths are wrong.

Some things are more important than money . . . .

* * *

But nothing will change unless somehow one of their perverse marketings becomes a money-loser.

I haven’t been in a Woolworths store for years.

Have you?

Labor MPs will have a “conscience vote” re same-sex marriage.

Malcolm Turnbull wants a conscience vote for Liberal MPs as well.

But if MPs really used their conscience on this issue, wouldn’t the vote be 100 percent against and zero for?

A vote should be unnecessary.

* * *

Any party containing members willing to vote for such an extreme nonsense as same-sex marriage is a good party not to have running your country.

Perhaps better not to have any party running the country.

Ideally it doesn’t matter what party is the nominal government — so long as we don’t let them govern us.

In a decent country, the Church would be the de facto government.

* * *

If the government passes bad laws, the Church should explain why they are wrong — and the people should simply disobey.

Such a situation needs to happen.

But first the Church must pull up its socks.

If you are a Catholic who has quit over the child-abuse issue, or some other reason — please get back into gear.

The Church has a job to do.

You can help make it happen.

President Obama has called on the new transitional government of Libya to “build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya”.

He knows already that that is not going to happen.

Libya, like Egypt and Tunisia, is emerging from the “Arab Spring” more than ever dominated by “Islamism”.

The current leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, has announced that Sharia Law will be “the basic source” of Libya’s  laws.

That he meant this in the literal and most stark sense, he made clear by asserting that polygamy will be re-legalised.

* * *

Islam and Christian religion are incompatible in many ways.

The understanding of marriage is one of them.

Mohammed, himself, had multiple wives.

If the western nations want to help those who live in Islamic countries, trying to talk them into holding elections etc. is not very relevant.

What they need is to be convinced to quit Islam.

That can’t happen while the west rejects its own Christian cultural origins.

Worst of all if the Church itself had no zeal for converting non-Christians.

* * *

The late Pope John Paul II made himself notorious when he kissed the Koran as a gesture of “goodwill”.

Obviously it was an act of bad will – but the Church has never refuted it.

On October 27, a gathering of leaders of world religions — including, bizarrely, prominent atheists — will take place in Assisi.

A thoroughly un-Catholic move.

As Pope Pius XI said in the 1920’s, “The Catholic Church has never permitted its subjects to take part in congresses of non-Catholics.”

October 17 is United Nations’ Anti-Poverty Day.

October 16 to 22 is designated by some as Anti-Poverty Week.

A Brisbane group calling itself Micah Projects – government-funded, but with churchly connections — has unearthed some relevant statistics:

e.g. in the Brisbane area:
* 14.8% of households have a weekly income under $500;
* over 10,000 jobless households with children aged under 15 years;
* 3,741 Domestic Violence Protection Order applications made in 2010.

* * *

Poverty Week participating groups will include ACOSS, ACTU, Anglicare, Australian Red Cross, Australian Services Union, Catholic Social Services of Australia, Jobs Australia, Mission Australia, Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul, The Benevolent Society and UnitingCare.

Most of these groups are have Christian backgrounds.

Secretary of Micah Projects is Brisbane priest, Father Terry Fitzpatrick — not only a Catholic priest, but a Catholic priest defiant against his bishop, and attached to a group no longer using the approved liturgies and Sacramental rites of the Catholic religion.

* * *

Is poverty always bad?

Saint Mary of the Cross (Mother Mary MacKillop) said that when young, “I longed for a religious life, one in which I could serve God and his poor neglected ones in poverty and disregard of the world and its fleeting opinions . . . I looked for poverty more like that practised in the early religious orders of the Church . . . .”

Jesus told his disciples that, “Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Yes, we must try to alleviate materialistic poverty where it is extreme.

We must, with at least as much enthusiasm, seek to eradicate spiritual poverty.

If we do that whole-heartedly, we’ll probably get no government funding.

Journalist, Dylan Welch, (The Age, October 12, 2011) quoted an ASIO report suggesting that Australia harbours “a persistent but small sub-culture of racist and nationalist extremists”.

He went on to talk about Norwegian terrorist, Anders Breivik, being “a Christian who described himself as a ‘modern-day crusader’”.

In his manifesto, “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence”, Brievik did write:

“Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian . . . Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man.”

But Christianity (as taught by Christ himself) says that the first Commandment is to love God with all one’s heart and soul.

To be a Christian, one’s every political idea and act must be motivated by that relationship.

This key point was missed by Anders Breivik (and, perhaps, by Dylan Welch).