Pope Benedict and 24 Irish bishops are meeting this week in Rome to discuss the priestly paedophilia scandal in Ireland, one of the world’s most Catholic countries.

The Murphy Commission Report revealed in November 2009 that the Church in Ireland had “obsessively” hidden child abuse by priests in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004 — and that all Dublin bishops had been aware of some complaints, but were more preoccupied with protecting the Church’s reputation than safeguarding children.

Four bishops have offered their resignations. The pope has already accepted one.

The Vatican says the pope will be writing to the Irish people about the crisis — the first time a pope will have devoted a document solely to the clergy’s abuse of children.

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The head of the Pope’s Congregation for Priests, Cardinal Hummes, announced last Thursday that the Church condemns sex abuse by clergy and “will drive out offenders”.

The emphasis, he says, will be on “a rigorous selection process” for priesthood candidates and on “a spiritual renewal of the clergy”.

Let us hope so.

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The Church has certainly let itself down badly — a priest sexually molesting a child is the worst possible example of betraying a trust.

And it has let God down badly – giving his enemies excuses to claim that Catholic religion somehow condones sexual sin — the exact reverse of the truth.

The belief that women and children must be protected from sexual exploitation is historically a belief invented by, and proclaimed and defended by, the Christian religion.

Look at non-Christian cultures, past and present — see how they treat their women and children.

Look, for example, at Labor state governments in Australia — which legalise same-sex acts involving boys as young as 16 years.

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The whole clergy-abuse issue is complicated by some who expose the wrongdoings of priests seeming to have agendas of their own.

Some of the media and some victim groups give the impression that they will never be happy with anything the Catholic Church does — never until the Church goes out of existence will they let up on criticising and passing judgement on it.

2010 is the 50^th anniversary of the “contraceptive” Pill coming onto the market.

The advent of the Pill changed human history.

It ended the era, dating from the beginning of time, during which matters relating to sex were spoken of mainly in private — even bashfully. The new epoch of discussing it boldly at every opportunity had arrived.

Likewise it ended the age of considering the principle of contraception (interfering with the act of sex so as to deliberately make it sterile) to be unnatural. From the 1960s, it became increasingly a matter of little moral consequence one way or the other.

The main motivation for one’s actions, sexual and otherwise, switched from being something to be accounted for to God and to others, especially one’s family, to being a matter of doing what turns one on, and the others could get used to it.

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Yet the new age of self-indulgence turned out less of a triumph for carefree liberty and licence than some had hoped.

It was noticed that women and girls taking the Pill were more at risk, not only of behaviour-related sexually transmitted disease, but also of breast cancer, cervix cancer, blood clots and — now they are telling us — of weak bones (osteoporosis) as well.

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And after the Pill became available, Pope Paul VI reiterated the Church’s opposition to artificial contraception, warning that the Pill would lead to “marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.”  

This was in his famous encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, published on 25 July 1968.

Humanae Vitae  is a good read. It can be found at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

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Pope Paul’s comments were initially pooh-poohed as scare-mongering. But, if anything, he under-stated the dangers. Hasn’t the whole concept of marriage as the institution keeping our families and our society stable, now been largely lost?

Even mentioning that marriage is better than de facto relationships or casual sex or same-sex coupling today risks accusations of “discrimination”, “hate-crime” etc.

Mrs Kathleen Evans of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia had been a cigarette smoker from the age of 16 to 46.

Then she gave it up. But it was too late. Three years later she was diagnosed with lung cancer and told it had spread to her brain and that she would be dead for sure in a matter of months.

Now, 17 years later, she is still alive and disease-free.

She had no medical treatment, but attributes her cure to praying daily to Mary MacKillop (Blessed Mary of the Cross) and wearing her picture plus a piece of cloth which had been part of Mary M’s clothing.

After much investigation and scrutiny, the Catholic Church has endorsed that this cure was a miracle.

Last month, Pope Benedict announced the fact, and yesterday Mrs Evans went public, identifying herself publicly for the first time, telling the media, “I do believe in miracles.”

So what are the skeptics going to make of this?

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We live in a society where believing in that kind of thing is considered superstition.

But Christians believe in miracles anyway.

They say that the big miracle, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after being crucified, also has the evidence of eyewitnesses and compels belief.

The eyewitnesses to that event certainly didn’t make the story up. Most of them persisted in proclaiming what they had seen in the face of persecution and death, and several were themselves crucified. Others were thrown to the lions etc.

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To those who doubt, we say, “Do not close your mind. Do not rule God out. Remember, the one true joy in life is to know that God lives and that God is love.”

Originally the word “avatar” meant the earthly appearance or embodiment or incarnation of a Hindu god.

Then it came to be used for an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer-game player.

Now there’s a film called “Avatar” — which some claim to be a quantum leap forward in Cinema.

Is it?

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While one reviewer calls it “a cultural milestone”, another labels it “uniquely awful . . .  the worst movie I have ever seen”.

All of which tells you it is probably about average.

Its “M” rating assures us that there will be unnecessary nudity, stomach-turning violence and, of course, the irreverent use of the names of God and Jesus Christ.

People who seem to be white Anglo-Saxon protestants – and if this film has a message at all, it is that we should loathe white Anglo-Saxons —  are the enemies whom we are to despise, because they plan to loot and exploit planet Pandora in the same way whites have done and do on earth. Ho hum.

The violence and the semi-human spooks are nightmare material for children. Believe me, no little kid seeing this film will ever forget it. Somewhere in his brain he will not be the same. But does anybody care?

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Many people are going to see this film, and more will.

Why? Because they are bored out of their minds, and it numbs the pain for a while to witness, and be entertained by, irreverence against something . . . anything.

They also like inventive animation.

If this society of ours had any respect, nobody would attend — simply because of the blasphemy alone.

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Why are our politicians and media so keen that we should believe in “greenhouse gases”, “carbon footprints”, “climate change” etc?

Is somebody making lots of money out of our state of panic?

Emissions trading? Carbon credits? Are they not just ways of steering money away from the battlers into the hands of the rich?

How is it that climate-change fundamentalists want the high moral ground, mocking the un-convinced majority, and labelling us “skeptics” as if it was a form of leprosy?

Yes, we are now permitted to stop panicking about the “millennium bug”.   But we’re still expected to believe that “swine flu” is different from all previous flu’s. Must we still worry about the “financial downturn“, or is it over now?

It’s all a bit hard to keep up with.

Sometime soon, there will be another worldwide panic about something or other, and we’ll all feel the pressure again to stay worried.

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Mary MacKillop’s mother was a great worrier.

 In her day there were no pensions. She had seven children. Her husband seemed unable to keep a regular job. Her only income was daughter Mary’s work – at times as a shop assistant, other times as a governess. 

But Mary had ideas of going off and becoming a nun – which made Mrs MacKillop worry more.

Mary encouraged her mother to have faith. In one letter she wrote, “We must and will pray, we will resign ourselves to do God’s will . . . Don’t dread the future. I feel you won’t have cause. If my God calls me, unworthy as I am, to serve him in a special manner, he will look over and save from too much care, the mother I have so much cause to love.”

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Jesus Christ taught his disciples, “Take no anxious thought for tomorrow, what you shall eat and what you shall drink . . .”

The thing we SHOULD worry about is whether the way we live is pleasing to God.

DARWIN City Council has rejected a push to remove the Lord’s Prayer from the start of its meetings after receiving letters from religious objectors.

They now plan to open their meetings with a “welcome to country” message acknowledging the “Larrakia people” as Darwin’s  “traditional owners”:

“We the members of Darwin City Council acknowledge that we are meeting on Larrakia country. We pay our respects to all Larrakia people both past and present. We are committed to working together with the Larrakia to care for this land and sea for our shared future.”

Then will come the Lord’s Prayer. Then the meeting will start.

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Darwin mayor, Graeme Sawyer, has announced that the Lord’s Prayer will remain, “not as a religious artefact — it’s there as an artefact of the Western democratic principles that Local Government comes out of.”

Perhaps he hasn’t thought about the words of that prayer:

“OUR FATHER, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy Kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.  Amen.”

This prayer, devised by Jesus Christ himself, firstly acknowledges God as King of the Universe and that his will must prevail — not the will of the Larrakia people or of Western democratic processes.

It then asks God to make us fit to be participants in setting up his Kingdom. Saying this prayer is to pledge oneself to strive for absolute perfection in obeying the Christian God.

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It’s great that Darwin’s councillors will be committing themselves to this prayer at their meetings. May God help them — and all of us — to be genuine in our commitment to God in everything we do.