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.

Jesus Christ was a person of compassion.

Today’s gospel reading in Catholic churches, describes this:

Entering a certain town, Jesus met ten men who were lepers, who, raising their voices, said: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He saw them and said: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”

It came to pass that, as they went, they were made clean. One of them, on seeing that he was made clean, went back, glorifying God with a loud voice. He fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, giving thanks. This man was a Samaritan.

Jesus said, “Were not ten made clean?  Where are the other nine?  Has nobody but this foreigner returned to praise God?” And he said to him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you.”

* * *

Everything about God is beyond our understanding — including his compassion.

Why did Jesus heal these ten?

Weren’t there lepers in every town he visited? He could have — if, in fact, he was God.

Why doesn’t God, at this moment, evaporate the water killing people in Pakistan?

We don’t know.

Compassion doesn’t mean giving everybody what they want, that’s for sure.

There is a greater good to which an event must contribute, in order for God to make it, or permit it, to happen.

That’s why Greens Party representative, Adam Bandt, now MP-elect for the seat of Melbourne, should stop using the word “compassion”

* * *

Last night, Mr Bandt claimed that the Greens stand for “a compassionate and helping hand to people who are in trouble . . . more love in this world, not less.”

All rather sickening. His party has no love or compassion whatever for the unborn babies whom the Greens would have aborted for any reason or none.

* * *

Politics brings out the worst in a community. Election time is the season for telling lies and displaying the reverse of compassion — lust for power and perks.

As always, it is up to the Church to witness to God’s love and compassion – also to his commandments and his judgement – if Australia is to be a decent place to live.

Nobody else will be doing it

While making outwardly calm and confident noises, the power-mongers behind the notion of a casino in Mildura are in panic mode.

Local entrepreneur, Don Carrazza, seems to be top man orchestrating a push to get the local big money behind the venture.

He, or someone associated with him, has rounded up numerous local businessmen and is grooming them for a campaign of pressurisation/intimidation against local MP, Peter Crisp.

Not blackmail, you understand.

Two evenings ago they had a meeting.

It was educational to observe a Who’s Who of local big shots — from the Council, the Real Estate Industry and assorted well-heeled friends — all toddling along obediently, looking a bit rueful as they slid through the door to present themselves as directed.

* * *

Meanwhile, Mr Crisp seems uncertain whether a casino — with its inevitable train of increased drug crimes, suicides, embezzlements, money-laundering and prostitution — is such a good thing to for him to back.

Mr Crisp isn’t necessarily the kind of person to confront them and say that casinos are hotbeds of exploitation of the weak which he will, on principle, always oppose.

Pity.

* * *

Business interests in the pro-casino movement are using the local media to regurgitate how the proposed casino will contain a “$400 million entertainment complex and conference centre” etc.

Will it?

What if the casino bit gets built and the rest of the alleged extravaganza never happens — and all Mildura winds up with is another row of poker machines and a few hundred more mentally and financially destroyed problem gamblers?

Will our neighbourhood tycoons be very sorry?

Or will they be more realistic about it?

After all, they might say,  you can’t make omelettes without breaking a few eggs.

* * *

The cosh with which they threaten to thump Mr Crisp is the threat of running a pro-casino “independent” candidate against him at the forthcoming November State election.

The local media would be asked to help with a bit of biased reporting, and Bingo! Mr Crisp would bite the dust.

But all of that might yet fall a bit flat.

There is also an anti-casino group in Mildura.

They have a website: www.sacinc.com.au

In recent years, atheism has become quite trendy.

Likewise agnosticism, and also the pseudo-religion of Catholic Church-hating.

Many books, television debates and space-filler magazine articles have proclaimed these notions.

One atheist group modestly calls itself “the brights”.

Some would suggest it be altered to “the not-verys”.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, seems to think her public atheism will do her electoral prospects no harm. She may be wrong.

* * *

Last week, another celebrity publicly dumped her Catholic Faith.

Anne Rice, one of the world’s most widely-read writers, whose books have sold nearly 100 million copies, said on Facebook:

Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group . . . .

In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

* * *

She wants to invent her own Christ: keeping those of his teachings which she likes, ditching the rest.

The Bible forbids such a mentality:

Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One Body and one Spirit; as you are called into one hope when you were called. There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism and one God who is Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. (Ephesians, chapter 4)

“Unity” . . . . “One Body” . . . . that sounds like belonging to the one fellowship of fellow-believers, imperfect though they may be.

Despite its faults, this is the one Church that is good enough for Our Lord to honour with the spreading of his Gospel, and with the custody of his holy Sacraments.

Yet it isn’t good enough for Anne Rice (and her many clones) who feel qualified to condemn it from their perceived higher moral ground.

They are on the wrong track.

Researchers worry that constant looking at screens – television, computer, mobiles – can create, or at least aggravate, attention disorder problems in children.

The old joke about ADD standing for “Absent Dad Disease” may be truer than we like to think.

Given an upbringing with no functional father plus wall-to-wall electronic brain stimulation – little wonder if a youngster never learns to apply himself to reality, to set priorities or to resist impulses.

* * *

Politicians and vested interests insist that the internet needs to be high-speed.  Anyone saying different would be considered a fruit loop.

But are not human beings, by and large, low-speed? And are not humans more important than the internet?

Really getting to know someone cannot be rushed. And it takes time learning to understand why a certain problem is dominating somebody’s life.

Yet don’t we all need — fairly often — to be understood and listened to?

Such help may be very scarce in a future with everybody’s minds high-speeded away from the wave-length of the human soul.

* * *

Some Catholics join the Third Order of the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth.

Members of this order NEVER watch television.

They must say certain prayers every day and make their Confession and receive Holy Communion frequently.

Also they are encouraged to spend one hour before the Blessed Sacrament at least once weekly — kneeling in silence before the Tabernacle on the altar in their church, motivated by their belief that in that tabernacle Christ is truly present, welcoming us to himself.

But is an hour too long? 

Well, doesn’t it take about 15 minutes merely to shake off the unspiritual distractions of the outside world? 

Perhaps another 15 minutes to tune our ears into listening for God’s unobtrusive presence. 

Finally, by God’s grace, one may enter into conversation with Our Lord . . . worldly things fade . . . at the end of the hour we’re reluctant to leave.

Having first found God in the Blessed Sacrament, then we can seek to find him in other people.

Years ago, when our family lived in Fiji, there was a tremendous mango tree at the back of our compound.

I estimated it to be roughly 60 feet tall. Later I discovered that it was exactly 80 feet.

How did I come to be so sure?

It fell over. Then it could be measured as it lay on the ground.

Impressive as it had outwardly appeared, the tree was white-anted inside.

That’s why during one hurricane season it bit the dust . . . .

* * *

With books it can be the other way round.

Inside the book may be great, but its outer cover can white-ant the message before the reader even gets inside.

A set of three books containing more or less everything surviving that Mary MacKillop wrote in her lifetime has just been published.

The cover of Volume One promises us an insight into “Mary MacKillop’s mission to set up a group of women . . . who could make a positive contribution to the world through education and support for human dignity”.

Sounds plausible . . . .

But in fact that was NOT Mary MacKillop’s mission.

* * *

The mission for which Mother Mary’s Order’s existed was stated in its original “Rule”, drafted by Father Julian Tenison Woods.

The first section, entitled “The Objects of the Institute” said (in part): “Since those persons who enter religion do so first of all for the salvation of their own souls, the Sisters of St Joseph must never forget that they come to give themselves wholly to God. They must belong completely to him. Their whole desire must be to love God and to love nothing else . . . .”

This hierarchy of priorities came to assume practical importance.

Sometimes priests and others made so many demands on the Sisters that it interfered with them finding time for their regular prayers.

Mother Mary challenged one such priest: “Are we not Religious first — Teachers second?”

* * *

Are today’s Josephite Sisters preoccupied, first and foremost, with worldly matters of schooling, human rights etc.?

If so, perhaps they should emulate their founder by putting those worthy issues second – and putting the defence of Catholic Tradition first.