The lady who spoke to the Donald school students – see yesterday’s blog post — on a recent ANZAC Day, read them a quotation from a hero of last century.

Pastor Martin Niemoller was a leader of Christians who opposed Hitler.

He himself was interned in Nazi concentration camps from 1939 to 1945.

He wrote these words:

“In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me — and by then there no one left to speak up.”

There is a moral there for every person.

When we see injustice, we must resist the temptation to leave it to somebody else to speak up for what is good.

If you were thinking of popping along to this weekend’s Melbourne Global Atheist Conference , be warned . . . .

It will cost you $440 for a “3-day Gold Pass”.

Cheapest is $155 for a “Sunday Balcony Pass”.

Even that seems a lot to spend to be told that your existence is meaningless.

A celebrity visitor is anti-religion book-writer, Richard Dawkins.

His outlook  is typified by a 1995 comment in Scientific American:

“What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding.”

* * *

A greater worry would be if somebody spent his adult life kidding people that the only way to “understand” is what he calls science.

Science investigates how things happen.

But not why things happen.

* * *

Yet all persons who are sober and basically honest ask themselves the following questions:

Why isn’t there nothing?

Why is there beauty and goodness?

What is the point of my being alive?

By Thy blood that flowed from Thee in Thy bitter agony;

By the scourge so meekly borne; by the purple robe of scorn,

Jesus Saviour hear our cry, Thou hast suffered just as we;

Hear the loving litany we Thy children sing to Thee.

By the thorns that crowned thy head; by Thy sceptre of a reed;

By Thy foot-step faint and slow, weighed beneath Thy cross of woe;

By the nails and pointed spear; by Thy people’s cruel jeer;

By Thy dying prayer which rose, begging mercy for Thy foes;

By the darkness black as night, blotting out the sun from sight;

By the cry with which in death, Thou didst yield Thy parting breath,

By Thy weeping Mother’s woe; by the sword that pierced her through,

When, in anguish, standing by, on the cross she saw Thee die.

. . . adapted from the writings of Irish novelist, Cecilia Mary Caddell.

The Catholic Bishops of Victoria have distributed 80,000 copies of a letter to the state’s Catholics.

It says, among other things:

“Deeply aware of Christ’s mission of compassion and justice — the Church cannot ignore the responsibility to speak the truth in love.

“Sometimes reminding people about the truth of the human person is one such task for all of us.

“Some now seek to alter the very nature of the human person through legislation.

“Our Australian society is now at a critical turning point where truth is at stake.”

* * *

The Church has always taught that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, are contrary to Natural Law and can under no circumstances be approved.

If it were to condone homosexual “marriage” — giving its blessing to persons publicly committing to a lifetime of such disordered activity—it would cease to be Catholic.

The media can find so-called Catholics who dispute the Church’s teaching.

But they are not Catholics.

Ex-NSW premier, Kristina Keneally is one. She needs somebody to respectfully explain this to her.

Would she listen?

She might.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the bishops’ message is successful in defending marriage, families and the children of our families.

Suicide, sadly, is in the news again this week.

Almost everybody has probably thought, sometime, “This is too much — I would be better off dead.”

Our world is full of suffering.

Many overseas suffer hardship more than we can imagine: those with no food to offer their half-dead children.

Yet we Australians, affluent by world standards, are miserable because we want more money, conveniences, comfort etc.

* * *

Hardship can bring out the best in people.

The Bible bids us believe that:

“Sufferings bring patience,

patience brings perseverance,

perseverance brings hope

– and this hope does not disappoint us

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . . .”

* * *

The thing Australian young people need most urgently, desperately, is to learn how to suffer– to understand suffering — to find in suffering a way to God.

That means getting true religion into school curriculums — not as a filleted, watered-down concession to little old ladies whose votes might swing a tight election . . . .

No, true religion as the only way to deal with real life.

Religion as common sense.

Religion as deciding not to continue living in permanent denial.

An expert panel wants Australian governments to spend an extra $5 billion a year on schools to help students “achieve their best”.

The important issue, it says, “is not who provides the resources for schooling, but that they are actually provided.”

* * *

“Achieve their best”.

Best what?

Is the best educated person he who earns the most money?

Or who is the most skilled in state-of-the-art technologies?

Or the one who loves other people unselfishly?

If we don’t know what we’re trying to produce, we’ll never agree how best to produce it.

* * *

“Resources for schooling”

What resources actually educate?

A computer on every desk? Is that what we mean by resourcing education?

At least as important, perhaps, might be to have teachers whose good lives inspire children to be self-disciplined and God-fearing(?)

If the greatest needs of children are spiritual, the most important changes needed are ones costing ZERO dollars . . . .

. . . but which cost a lot of self-sacrificing by teachers, parents — and by the students themselves.

Church schools should be uniquely examples of getting these priorities right.