Two months ago a female politician stabbed her party leader in the back.

Now she is Prime Minister.

Not elected to the post — and perhaps never will be.

JG’s one spot in history may be holding a record for the shortest prime minister-ship since who knows when.

Many Australians would say it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

* * *

Traditional Catholic teaching is that politics is a good place for Catholics to wield influence.

That means married, male Catholics.

J. Gillard fails that test — zero out of three.

Married males have a perspective on life that others cannot have.

* * *

That’s not saying anything bad about women.

Women are best at bearing children, breast-feeding children, raising children, being there when school comes out for children.

They are at least equally important with the father in passing on the Faith to children.

That adds up to a more than full time job for a woman.

* * *

There’s nothing wrong with a woman remaining single, if that’s what God calls her to.

A society that works (unlike this one) will contain thousands of unpaid women voluntarily remaining celibate – nuns — doing teaching, nursing and other jobs too demanding to coexist with raising a family as well.

If it’s true that JG’s present gent is her third de facto, then normal Catholics — and normal anybody — will doubt that she’s much of a role model.

* * *

The greatest role model ever, is the Blessed Virgin Mary, chosen by God to be Mother of his incarnate Self.

Uniquely gifted as she was, she was conscious of her complete dependence on her Creator.

When the angel told Mary that she was to be the Mother of God, she humbly acknowledged it.

St Luke’s gospel chapter 1:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;

Because he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid;

For, behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;

Because the Almighty has done great things for me . . . .”

* * *

There are two secrets to pleasing God in the role for which he created you:

(1) humility,

(2) obedience.

Florence Nightingale died 100 years ago yesterday.

Florence had an experience at the age of 17 when, “God spoke to me, and called me to his service.”

Back then, nursing wasn’t a very respectable profession. Hospitals were famous mainly for bad smells and frightening death rates.

Despite family protests, Florence became a nurse anyway. By 1853, she was superintendent of London’s “Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen”.

She and 38 of her trainees went to Turkey to nurse soldiers injured in the Crimean War.

At first, recovery rates didn’t improve much – but after the hospital’s sewers and ventilation were fixed they did.

* * *

Back in England, Florence published a book, “Notes on Nursing”, covering what professional nurses needed to learn, plus “everyday sanitary knowledge . . . which every one ought to have.”

She wrote, altogether, 17 books on medical topics.

Plus another, 829 pages long, entitled “Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.”

Due to health problems, Florence spent much of the second half of her life bed-ridden.

But she remained a great organiser, intellectual and author.

She died at the age of 90.

* * *

Florence made her nurses recite a pledge:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully.

I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.

I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.

With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

When young, Florence worked in a Paris hospital staffed by nuns. She wore the postulant habit, but never became a nun herself.

She never became a Catholic. She told Cardinal Manning that she wished to, but he said no, as she didn’t accept some Catholic beliefs.

Florence Nightingale is venerated as a Saint in the Episcopal Church, but not in the Catholic Church.

* * *

A phonograph recording of Florence’s voice, made in 1890, has been preserved. She sounds a bit like Queen Elizabeth II:  www.archive.org/details/FlorenceNightingaleVoice

Famous tenor Andrea Bocelli has made a video in which he says:

A young pregnant wife had been hospitalised for a simple attack of appendicitis . . . when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child . . . because the baby would be born with some disability. But the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born.

That woman was my mother, and I was the child. Maybe I’m partisan, but I can say that it was the right choice.

I hope this could encourage many mothers who sometimes find themselves in difficult situations in those moments when life is complicated but want to save the life of their baby.

* * *

Andrea Bocelli was born in 1958. At his birth, doctors diagnosed him as having congenital glaucoma, and by age 12 he was completely blind.

Despite this, Bocelli’s passion for music led to international musical fame, including eight operas and 70 million album sales.  

For years Bocelli was an agnostic, but returned to the Catholic Faith in 1994, partly due to reading the works of Leo Tolstoy which convinced him that life is not random chance, but has a purpose.

* * *

Here are a couple of quotes from Tolstoy:

God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God’s manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.  (from: Tolstoy’s Diary)

 Martin’s soul grew glad. He crossed himself, put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened, and at the top of the page he read: “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” And at the bottom of the page he read: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me”.  (Matthew’s gospel, chapter 28). And Martin understood that his dream had come true, and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.  (from: “Where Love Is, God Is“)

Dear Kiddies, Mr Abbott said yesterday that if he becomes Australia’s Prime Minister, families will receive $300 a year per child as part of reintroducing indexation for the child-care rebate.

Mrs Abbott was with him. She works in what they call an occasional child-care centre.

Dear Kiddies, the adults are getting this child-care issue all wrong.

*  Occasional child-care is a GOOD thing. It provides somewhere for us to be looked after if Mummy gets sick or for some reason suddenly needs a break.

*  Ordinary child-care (child-care-in-cold-blood, as you might say) is very different and is a BAD thing. It means Mummy not caring for us — not because something cropped up to make it impossible — but because she herself decided that instead of looking after us she would go out to work, leaving us with a paid carer.

* * *

Mr Swan, who belongs to the other party, criticised Mr Abbott’s family policies.

So he should, you say.

Not really, dear Lambkins, Mr Swan has no more idea of what we kiddies want than the other bloke.

His comments were about an alleged connection between Coalition policies and what Coles will charge for groceries.

Did Mr Swan mention that Mr Abbott’s child-care scheme is wrong because kids hate it?

Or because kids want their Mum at home?

Or because kids want all child-care centres bulldozed tomorrow (except perhaps the “occasional” type mentioned above)?

He did not.

* * *

Dear Kiddies, every time a clear-cut, black-and-white moral issue affecting us kids comes up, the adult experts start shouting at each other about money.

Is money all they are interested in?

What about more basic questions?

Like, what is a baby?

Is it — he or she – you or me –merely a lifestyle-accessory for the Mum?

These big people (big bodies, not necessarily big intelligences) think it’s normal to have a child and then start looking around for somebody else to care for it (preferably at taxpayers’ expense) while they toddle off and do something else.

Don’t they know that parenthood is the greatest privilege that God offers them?

A poll published this week reveals that 46 percent of Australian women — compared with 41 percent of men — report feeling “very stressed” in their everyday lives.

The poll, commissioned by Lifeline Australia, interviewed 1200 men and women.

Similar findings in American women were published in 2009 by authors Stevenson and Wolfers. They noted how recent declines in female happiness “have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men . . . a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”  (American Economic Journal: 2009 )

* * *

Did something happen just before the 1970s to affect women so as to reduce their happiness?

The Contraceptive Pill was introduced in the early 1960s. Women’s well-being has deteriorated ever since. Could that be cause and effect?

Why would the Pill make women less happy?

There are about 100 reasons. Here are a few:

* when busy in the home, looking after 3, 4, 5, or more children, pre-Pill women had plenty to do — too busy to ask themselves, how stressed am I today?

* they had the joy and happiness of knowing they were doing something they were cut out for. Their husband couldn’t give birth to a child, breast feed, or do the many things that come naturally to mothers.

* they didn’t feel the insecurity of a 50 percent chance of ending up divorced

* they felt less pressure to go out into the so-called “workforce” – being already busy with work to which they were ideally suited. No need to go out anywhere.

* not being in an office, factory or whatever, they escaped the stress of bosses and workmates eyeing them off and discussing whether they were “hot” or not.

* * *

So what about women going out to jobs?

Pope Pius XI discussed the so-called “emancipation” of working women, as long ago as 1930:

“This, however, is not the true emancipation of women, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family . . . .”  (Encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii)

Some things don’t change.

A Sydney University social work lecturer, Lesley Laing, recently released a study called “No Way to Live”.

It is being used to pressure the federal government into amending the Family Law Act to make it harder for men to see their own children than under present shared-parenting arrangements.

The study is wide open to questions about its methods and conclusions, both of which are probably pretty suspect.

The fact remains, however, that there is a real problem — those involved suffering terrible emotional pain and sometimes physical injury.

Police in the state of Victoria attend 20,000 domestic violence incidents per year.

Domestic violence accounts for about 10 percent of the deaths of Victorian women aged 15 to 44.

* * *

What is to be done?

First, let’s eradicate some false assumptions.

Domestic violence is commonly regarded as something nearly always done by men to women.

* A New Zealand survey, the biggest ever on family violence in young couples, found that 37 percent of women, compared with 22 percent of men, had inflicted violence on their partner.

* An American survey found that domestic violence where both parties are violent is the commonest kind (69%). Second comes violence by a woman against a man (21%). Coming last was male violence against females (10%).

Researchers commented that a key to reducing abuse is to make it as unacceptable for a woman to hit a man as it is for a man to hit a woman: “If we want men to stop it, women have to stop it, too.”

* Regarding children’s safety, a menacing factor, seldom mentioned, is the mum’s new boyfriend. Ask your family doctor whether this isn’t, in his experience, where the worst dangers lie.

* * *

Expecting changes to the Family Law Act to fix things is like trying to reconstruct an already-broken egg — something which, in this entropic universe, only happens in miracles.

Prevention is the only way to go.

* Children must grow up learning that normally Mums and Dads are married and stay together for life.

* The Churches must proclaim that Marriage is a Sacrament — part of the Natural Law, written into human nature and into our universe.

A society not respecting Marriage in this way will, unfortunately, get the domestic violence it deserves.