Letters

Culture of life

Fr Bernard McGrath

Contents - Jul 2008 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Significance of World Youth Day 2008 - Michael Gilchrist Liturgy: Archbishop Coleridge calls for an end to liturgical experimentation - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Abortion: A false concept of moral equivalence - Babette Francis Selective tolerance: Queensland University Student Union censures Catholic student group - Allison Atkins WORLD YOUTH DAY 2008: Juventutem Australia: young people devoted to the traditional liturgy - Alice Woolven WORLD YOUTH DAY 2008: Authentic Catholicism: a fertile ground for vocations to flourish - Fr Anthony Denton FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH: Jesus: how do we know he was God? - Br Barry Coldrey CFC Religious faith and the power of music and song - Andrw Kania Liturgy: Why Paul VI saw liturgical abuses as the 'smoke of Satan' - Cardinal Virgilio Noe WORLD YOUTH DAY: Turin Shroud display in Melbourne to coincide with World Youth Day - Max Crockett Letters: Anne Lastman's Remarkable book 'Redeeming Grief' - Fr Raymond Wells Letters: Culture of life - Fr Bernard McGrath Letters: Vatican II - John Schmid Letters: Buddha in church in South Brisbane - Richard Stokes Letters: Climate concerns - Dr Brian E. Lloyd Books: Cardinal Pell's new Mass Book - This Is The Mass Books: TURMOIL AND TRUTH, by Philip Trower - Tim Cannon (reviewer) Books: SERMONS PREACHED ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS, by John Henry Newman - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Books: Books available from AD2000 Books Reflection: The Real Presence: 'an essential element of the deposit of faith' - Bishop Arthur Serratelli

Modern society cannot provide stability and a flourishing culture unless it is based on a solid morality. Our rational traditional heritage provides this basis in the time- honoured natural law on which the true rights of man, as outlined by the UN, are derived.

Many believe they have 'rights' to do as they will (without obvious harm) and will not accept the limits of natural law. In this relativism many so-called 'rights' soon predominate over duties to the common good and the protection of the weak and vulnerable. A dominant group or majority cannot decide morality - other-wise might becomes right.

Natural law is not an imposition of belief but the law of freedom in the nature of things. Those who reject it destroy the basis of their own rights. Would they defy the law of gravity?

Some would like to be social engineers and design a society under total human control as on an animal farm (eugenics). They regard human life as just another commodity subject to human decision about starting and finishing; about experimenting, manipulation or manufacturing.

These same people view personal sex as a 'recreation', and would separate baby-making from love-making by means of contraception, abortion and sterilisation. They regard unnatural sex, gay 'rights', perverted styles of marriage, parenthood and families as valid 'choices'.

The quality of human life, they claim, is to be judged by its usefulness, on cost-benefit checks and the emotional strain it causes; and a use- by date should decide the end for all life, as with farm animals.

Who is going to decide our use-by date?

May God save us from a headlong rush to selfish greed and lust - the culture of death. Better the life of respect and care for others, of the natural and decent ways of sex and true love for our health and happiness - the culture of life.

FR BERNARD McGRATH
Inglewood, Vic

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 21 No 6 (July 2008), p. 15