Cardinal George Pell, head of the Australian Church, came under fire the other day for calling the Greens Party “anti-Christian”.

“It’s not my role,” he said, “to tell people how to vote, but I would make a couple of points.”

His points included advice to examine the Greens policies on their website and judge for ourselves “how thoroughly anti-Christian they are”.

He mentioned in particular that:

 * the Greens are opposed to religious schools.

 * they led attacks on Canberra’s Calvary Hospital because it wouldn’t provide abortions.

 * they belittle the traditional family as being just one alternative lifestyle among many.

 * they favour “marriage” regardless of sexuality or gender identity.

“For those who value our present way of life” he concluded, “the Greens are sweet camouflaged poison.”

* * * 

Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown, yelped, saying, “Greens’ policies for a more compassionate society, a more sharing society, a more dignified society, are the most in line with Christian beliefs.”

One Greens Senate candidate, Lin Hatfield Dodds, once director of a Uniting Church agency, said her party’s policies are “very much aligned with Christian values.”

“I’ve seen the Greens stand up for the environment,” she added, “I’ve seen the Greens stand for a voice for everybody — and they are all core things to the Christian faith.”

They are not. She ought to check the Bible. Although respecting the environment and letting people vote now and then are in line with Christ’s teaching — they are NOT its core.

Obeying the Ten Commandments is closer to the core.

* * *

It might have been more impressive if the Greens had said straight out, “Yes we hate Christians — hypocrites and no-goods as they all are etc.”

We all know that’s what the Greens think.

They themselves become hypocrites by making pretty noises in the hope of scratching up a percentage of the so-called “religious vote”.

* * *

Meanwhile Cardinal Pell was doing his job.

He leads the Church. He has come out and said what the Church stands for in the context of the election.

He deserves no criticism — except in so far as he probably doesn’t do it often enough.

Many Australian Greens Party policies sound warm and fuzzy, but the Greens advocate a cruel and bleak social agenda.

The Greens have supported legalising assisted suicide in each of the Federal, Victorian, South Australian and Tasmanian parliaments.

We know that overseas, assisted suicide has led to the killing of more and more elderly, handicapped and sick people.

In places where assisted suicide is legal, Palliative Care services tend to be non-existent or inadequate.

Is such a lack of resources what you want for your grandmother?

* * *

Legalising assisted suicide also sends a seriously wrong message to young people — reinforcing their thought that they are worthless and that suicide is OK.

Meanwhile organisations like Beyond Blue try to help those suffering depression instead of sanitising suicide.

Remember, if you vote Greens, you vote for assisted suicide.

* * *

The Greens also want to make abortion legal – all abortion, right up to the day of birth.

In Victorian parliament, the three Greens members all voted in favour of legalised late-term abortion.

A vote for the Greens is a vote for unrestricted abortion.

* * *

And don’t forget, if you vote Labor you vote for the other half of a Greens-dependent coalition likely to control the Senate.

Do you sponsor a child in a third world country?

Have you ever wondered if the child really exists?

Do you wonder what percentage of your giving reaches the poor and how much disappears in administration, executive pay packets etc?

Do you NOT sponsor a child because you’re suspicious about the charities organising such sponsorships?

* * *

Do you want to support a charity helping the genuinely poor whose administration costs are effectively zero . . . .

and whose CEO pay packet and other pay packets do not exist . . . .

because everything is done by unpaid religious and unpaid volunteers who help them?

* * *

If so, you might sponsor a student of Veritas Academy, Palayamkottai, India.

$20 per month will cover one student’s school fees.

Or sponsor an orphan in the Servi Domini Orphanage at $36 per month.

These charitable facilities are run by missionaries of the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth.

If you can’t trust them then you can’t trust anybody.

For more information, contact: The Indian Mission, c/o 20 Robin St, Woy Woy 2256, Australia

and visit: www.sspxasia.com/Countries/India/apostle22_pg2-3.pdf

This week’s World Conference on HIV/AIDS, meeting in Vienna, has heard what some consider may be good news.

Research in South Africa seems to suggest that a gel containing an anti-AIDS drug may halve infection rates when used before and after “unprotected” sex.

United Nations AIDS program chief scientific adviser, Dr Catherine Hankins, describes this report as “exciting”.

* * *

Certainly a bit of good news on the HIV/AIDS scene would be welcome.

Here in Australia new AIDS cases per year doubled in the ten years 1997 to 2007 – and University of NSW researchers have predicted a further rise of 70 percent in the next few years. 

It seems that the more we focus on trying to develop technological fixes — gadgets, vaccines, and now this gel — the worse things get.

* * *

Everyone says that education must be the key to curbing AIDS.

But what is to be the content? What are we to teach at-risk people?

The answers must include the following:

* teach them that sex with multiple partners is out, because it is flirting with death.

* and that anal sex is out, because it spreads HIV/AIDS so efficiently.

* and that relying primarily on condoms is out. It doesn’t work. Its illusion of being “protected” encourages people into increased disease-spreading behaviours.

* * *

Those few African nations that have had some success in reducing HIV-infection rates — Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe — have made their central message “partner reduction”, i.e. faithfulness to husband or wife.

Nearby condom-promoting nations — South Africa itself being a tragic example — have high and un-improving infection rates.

Many people don’t like being told to improve their behaviour, even if it might save lives.

Presumably there are rich condom-manufacturing corporations able to influence policies in the world of HIV/AIDS politics.

* * *

Yet isn’t behavior-modification basic to a common-sense approach to every serious problem that exists in the world?

Just think . . . .

If a government focused its anti-obesity campaign on weight-loss pills — never mentioning eating-reduction — what would we call them?

Crazy, perhaps?

Australian newspapers last week published a poll showing the federal opposition Coalition Parties’ popularity running ahead of the governing Labor Party by 53 percent to 47 percent.

Most Government ministers promptly issued statements — all tending all to use the same phrases, almost as if somebody’s flock of talking parrots had turned out to make the responses.

All the government seems to want to talk about is what a terrible fellow Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, is — the last thing they wish to discuss is their own recent record.

So next week,  Australia’s National Union of Students will launch a campaign entitled “Abbott’s Heaven, Your Hell”, featuring feminists cauterising Mr Abbott’s alleged anti-women and anti-youth attitudes.

Clever name-callings like “Autocratic Abbott” and “Abbott the Mad Monk” will also be used.

Plus blasts from the past, featuring some of Mr Abbott’s more famous alleged boo-boos . . . .

* * *

Like his 2003 support for raising the age at which parents may access information about their child’s healthcare from 12 to 14. Mr Abbott said that perhaps it should be 16.

Modern research suggests that, in fact, he was right — 16 might even be too young.

A study at Dartmouth University, USA, followed a sample of freshman students through their first college year, comparing their brain function and imaging with that of a control group of students aged 25 to 35. *

Significant differences were found, specifically in brain regions linked to integrating emotion and cognition.

The researchers commented as follows: “The brain of an 18-year old freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties . . . . When do we reach adulthood? It might be much later than we traditionally think.”

* * *

Mr Abbott knows all this from common sense observation. So do most parents.

If some experts do not, then they are wrong.

The Labor Party seems to have it wrong.

The Greens definitely, as always, have it wrong.

 *  Source: “Anatomical Changes in the Emerging Adult Brain”, online edition of the journal, Human Brain Mapping, at www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2006/02/06.html

On Anzac Day 2010, the dawn service at the Arncliffe Cenotaph had to be moved indoors after teenage vandals had damaged the monument the previous evening.

“The whole club was horrified,” said Arncliffe RSL president, Peter McIntosh. “We were all pretty angry; and amazed, more than anything. They must know what Anzac Day means to Australians. They just have no respect.”

Police believe the vandals swung on the flagpoles until they snapped at the base, then emptied a wheelie-bin of rubbish over the site.

* * *

Vandals are parasites. You can’t vandalise a building unless there are builders building them.

You can’t be an iconoclast unless somebody is making icons.

Perhaps you can’t be an atheist unless there are believers providing you with a safe society in which to make your brave noises.

How about Richard Dawkins, now reportedly saying, “I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers . . . . I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity insofar as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”

Colour change, mate — from red-rag radical to yellow-livered rat with white flag — all in the space of one panic-attack.

* * *.

A lesson from history:

If your lifestyle ignores, flouts and disregards marriage, you vandalise the foundation underlying the society whose benefits you enjoy.

Domestic violence contributes 10 percent of deaths among Australian women aged 15 to 44 — mostly in families where there is no marriage, but some kind of casual, defacto-style coupling.

Children need to grow up learning that Mums and Dads are normally married — committed to staying together for life . . . .

Otherwise the cycle of shacking-ups and beating-ups will continue forever.

A society not cherishing marriage as unique and special will get the domestic violence it deserves.

* * *

The Church must proclaim marriage as a Sacrament — part of the Natural Law, written into human nature and our universe. Some “churches” don’t.

The (Catholic) Second Vatican Council (1960’s) weakened the supernatural aspects of religion. That was, arguably, spiritual vandalism.

Soon after, in Australia, the 1970’s Whitlam government legalised “no-fault” divorce.

And now we’re menaced by the prospect of legalised “same-sex marriages”, threatening — if they eventuate — to make things worse.