A court in Poland has ordered a priest, Father Marek Gancarczyk, to pay a fine of $11,000 because the Catholic paper, of which he is editor, described a woman seeking an abortion as “wanting to kill her child”.

He has refused to pay.

The judge, in passing the sentence, treated Fr Gancarczyk to a lecture on theology. “Christianity is a religion of love and this is what the language used by Catholic press should be like,” she said.

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Polish law permits abortion only in cases of rape, serious handicap in the baby, or serious health risk to the mother. In this case, the mother had an eye condition. She was denied an abortion because her doctors decided the pregnancy would not seriously damage her health.

The local archbishop, Father Damian Zimon, said, “No state law can undermine God’s commandment and the order of Jesus Christ . . . . Recall the words of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta: ‘The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion . . . if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?’ ”

The Catholic Association of Journalists in Poland commented, “We consider this verdict an attempt to gag Catholic media, also directed against freedom of speech in the wider sense . . . .We call on all journalists who hold Christian values not to be afraid to write the truth about abortion, about abortionists and about the supporters of this Holocaust of the 21st century.”

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Two points that Australians might ask themselves:

(1) is our law permitting any woman, any time, to have an abortion, simply by telling her doctor she wants one, good enough?

(2) at least one priest, somewhere, is willing to suffer imprisonment, or whatever the court comes up next time, rather than compromise the Church’s teaching of love and respect for all human life, including the unborn babies.

Father Marek Gancarczyk

In 2001, Islamic terrorists declared war on Western nations by destroying New York’s World Trade Centre.

In 2002, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights (a Catholic) said Islam is “entirely consonant with the principal of fundamental human rights and . . . bestowed rights upon women and children long before other civilisations.”

In 2008, the President of France called Islam “one of the most beautiful civilisations the world has known.”

In 2009, the President of the USA spoke of his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including my own country.”

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It is intrinsic to the aims of Islam that ultimately all nations bend to Sharia law.

Non-Muslims are to be given the traditional three choices: (1) convert to Islam, or (2) die, or (3) become second-class citizens in one’s own nation, subservient and tribute-paying (they call it “dhimmitude”).

The Commissioner and the two Presidents quoted above seem to have volunteered themselves into dhimmitude without a struggle.

Everyone seems to be doing it — the rate of Westerners converting to Islam having supposedly doubled since 11/9/2001.

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The only other alternative — that Muslims start converting to Catholicism — seems a long way off.

But we had better start making it happen soon, or it is going to be a very sad world indeed.

Where can the much-needed historical U-turn begin?

A good place would be in Catholic schools.

Let’s teach Catholic students that non-Christian religions are NOT good.

Let’s teach them why.

Let’s teach them how to understand their Faith — how to argue the case for Catholic belief – how to be living role models of the good that God can achieve in lives devoted to his obedience.

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Let’s be willing to die, by all means.

But let us NOT be ready to sell ourselves to those who despise our weakness.

In Poland, Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek is in a bit of trouble.

He apparently said recently that, in Europe, the Jews “have a good press, because they have powerful financial resources – extremely powerful, with the unconditional support of the United States. And this promotes a kind of arrogance, which I consider to be unbearable.”

He also mentioned that the Jews created the term “Shoah”, or “Holocaust”, to define the extensive killings of Jews by German Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s – and to suggest that those sufferings were unique, with no precedent in history.

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One journalist chose to misquote these latter remarks under a headline, “The Shoah, an invention of the Jews.”

Bishop Pieronek  restated his original words — that it was not the account of the historical killings, but the use of the term “Shoah”, that he calls an “invention”.

Anyway, the bishop is now threatened with “legal action for defamation”.

Various versions of this story are circulating, and it isn’t easy to get the facts.

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Anyway the notion that Jewish killings by the Nazis were unique in history is not true.

Unfortunately such things have occurred since the human race began – and still do — massacres of entire populations and ethnic groups.

Christians should point this out.

It’s basic to Christian Faith that the one case of suffering that was unique was the suffering of Jesus Christ on the Cross – unique because Christ was, himself, unique.

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Saint Catherine of Siena records, in her Dialogue, how Christ appeared to her, telling her that:

“Though my act of suffering was finite, the fruit of that suffering which you have received through me is infinite. This is because of the infinite divine nature joined with finite human nature. It was this human nature in which I was clothed that suffered in me . . . but because the two natures are fused with each other, the eternal Divinity took to itself the suffering I bore . . . for this reason what I did can be called infinite . . . had it not been infinite, the whole of mankind, past, present, and to come, would not have been restored.”

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The central message of the Catholic Faith is that Jesus Christ — a Jewish man — was God Incarnate. Most Jews find themselves unwilling to believe this. Many others doubt it, too.

But the Church must continue to proclaim it, because it is God’s message of salvation to his human children, both Jewish and Gentile, whom he loves so much.

This week an American judge will decide the case of the Romeikes, a German family seeking political asylum following persecution from the German government for homeschooling their children – which is a crime in Germany.

For years, Mr and Mrs Romeike have had to pay thousands of euros in fines, been threatened with imprisonment and had their children seized and forced to attend a local state-run school.

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The Catholic Church has always taught that parents are the primary teachers of their children. Children should attend school only if the parents are certain that what is taught there is in line with the family’s religion.

Here in Australia, government-run schools are, by law, “secular” — meaning that God’s existence must be ignored in them.

In Victoria, Australia, one role that secular schools give themselves is to take teenage girls to “family planning  centres” to collect morning-after-pills if they  indulged in sex the previous night. The parents are not informed. Schools also supply contraceptive pills to young girls.

Health bureaucrat, Dr Rob Moodie, said this “radical approach” is needed as an antidote to “prudish” approaches to teen sex that “risk lives”.

He also supports installing condom machines in schoolyards.

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Anybody sending their child to an Australian government-run school will have to explain to God on Judgement Day why they didn’t take the child out of the system and teach them themselves.

Are “church schools” a satisfactory substitute?

If you think so, you should probably look more closely at what goes on in them.

Almost all Australian church schools accept subsidies of government money. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

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Mary MacKillop, soon to become Australia’s first Saint, never accepted government money at any of her schools.

She said that once the government money moves into a school, respect for God is moved out.

Australians pretend to honour Mary MacKillop.

They do so with their lips only.

Their hearts are far from her.

Arsonists in Malaysia struck at a Catholic convent school and a fifth church yesterday.

A petrol bomb was thrown at a building at the convent school.

This is part of a stand-off following a court ruling on 31 December, permitting a Catholic newspaper (The Herald) to use the name “Allah” for the Christian God in its Malay-language editions.

Malaysia’s top police officer now says he hasn’t the manpower to  protect Christian properties, and that churches must arrange security themselves.

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So is all this a misunderstanding that can be sorted out?

Or is Islam so fundamentally violent that all sortings-out are a mere pipe-dream.

The Qu’ran says:  “Slay the idolators wherever you find them . . .  lie in ambush everywhere for them.  If they repent and take to prayer and pay the alms-tax, let them go.  Allah is forgiving and merciful.”  (Sura 9:5)

History, including recognised Islamic sources, reveals that the Prophet did a lot of such slaying.

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Most nations with Christian-based culture, e.g. Australia, permit mosques and Muslim schools.  Yet what happens to people in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia who engage in public Christian activities?

Catholics love and respect Muslim individuals — as Christ commands love and respect for all men. 

But the religion of Islam, they can neither love nor respect.

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Should not the Australian Catholic Church’s policy be for Australia to close its mosques and Islamic schools?

Perhaps to phase them out gradually, to avoid disrupting the students’ education too suddenly – but aim to have them gone in a finite time – let’s say 2 years.

Did you check under your Christmas tree? Was there even one gift there not “Made in China”?

Yes, China is important economically — and ideologically.  China’s contempt for human life and for Christian morality is unequalled worldwide.

15,000 Chinese are executed every year — mainly from religious minorities — many such corpses being harvested for transplantable organs. 

China’s “justice” system is an outrage.  From 1998 to 2002 the rate of not-guilty verdicts was under one percent.

Some prominent Australians (Julian Burnside QC, Peter Westmore, John Xiao etc.) try to publicise such facts, but our corporate/media dictators want them hidden.

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The international community, instead of threatening China with sanctions, rewarded them with the 2008 Olympics.

Chinese Christians were warned not to organise public worship during the Games. However the Feast of the Assumption (for Catholics, a holy day of obligation) fell on August 15^th.

So about 1000 Catholics attended a Mass celebrated by Bishop Jia Zhiguo — and the bishop was locked up. Bishop Jia (now 73) has, so far, spent 15 years of his life in prison.

The Australian media took a big interest in who won gold medals for running, throwing things, jumping etc. – but none in who was risking life and health for the Faith.

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It’s something new for the overseeing authority of Australia’s biggest trading partner to be a Communist Party. Opposition finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, has expressed misgivings. But Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, condemned him for “erratic and irresponsible comments”.

China’s government is contemptuous of Australia — arresting Australian mining executive, Stern Hu, campaigning to stop Australia giving a visa to Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer, and — most frighteningly — mobilising Chinese students in Australia for political purposes during the Olympic torch relay.

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Experts warn that the price of upsetting China would be a lowering of Australia’s “living standards”, making it unlikely that either Liberals or Labor will seriously oppose Chinese takeovers.

The Nationals might.

The Church should perhaps be doing something.