Today’s Gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is an incident early in Our Lord’s public life.

Jesus said to Simon Peter: “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered: “Master, we laboured all night and caught nothing: yet at your command I will let down the nets.”

When they did, they enclosed such a great number of fish that their nets began to tear. They signalled their partners in the other boat to come and help. They came, and both boats were filled with fish, almost to sinking point.

When Simon saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees, saying: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For he was wholly astonished, and so were they all, at the catch of the fish which they had taken.

But Jesus said to Simon: “Do not be afraid: from now on you will be catching men.”

(Saint Luke’s Gospel, chapter 5)

* * *

This story explains how it came about that Jesus’s first disciples were fishermen.

It also has a symbolic side, as Jesus himself explained.

The Church’s job is to trawl for — and to haul in — human beings into God’s Church, pictured as a boat full of fish sailing towards God’s Kingdom.

* * *

Yes, you might say, but hasn’t this vision blown up in our faces now – what with priestly child abuse etc?

Observe how the media speak about the Church today.

A generation ago, stories embarrassing to the Church would have been written with a tone of respect and/or sorrow — not with glee and mocking as now.

Those who might show loyalty to the Church today, don’t.
Check Mr Abbott entering Opposition leadership with a reputation for being a Catholic.

Not now. Regarding Catholic family values, he has become arguably the Church’s worst enemy — down there in the anti-Catholic gutter with the Greens and Julia Gillard.

* * *

Mr Abbott says a Coalition government would introduce six months paid parental leave — then back to work. Full-time motherhood he will destroy. Any insisting on giving children real mothering will face crippling financial punishment.

He is making even Mr Rudd look good.

There is no way back from all this except Catholic obedience and humility, both inside and outside the Church.