ONCE again the threat of terrorism has raised its ugly head causing increases in external discipline and supervision.
The innocent are thus held captive to the whims of a few extremists. Has society really come to this?
Our horror at the thought of a few terrorists blowing apart whole plane-loads of people is more than justified.
And yet, day by day, the lives of little ones, with as yet unformed bodies and souls created by God, are lost in abortion clinics around the globe.
How many, or how few, ever stop to feel the horror or concern for their fate?
Can we wonder, in this culture of death, why terrorists, who perhaps have never heard the gentle words of their Divine Saviour, Jesus Christ, have such disregard for human life?
How much does society value all human life when mothers whom God calls first to love and nurture His little ones are the very ones who ask others to cut short the lives of the unborn?
Where are the governments that raise voices or propose means to protect these unborn? They do not exist. On the contrary, governments around the world sanction and legalise their deaths.
Why, when the world is crying out for peace and justice, is there so much mayhem and unrest?
Can we find an answer on page 3 of The Catholic Leader of 13/8/06 (“Gen Y believe in God, not Church”)?
Christ came to call all to Himself and to eternal salvation through Christianity.
However, among the Y Generation (born 1976-90) we find more humanists and eclectics than Christians. It is this generation who will lead society when “we old fogies”, who now hobble into the church pews, pass on.
In 1923 Fr Owen Francis Dudley published a book, Will Men be as Gods, pointing out the folly of humanism which, he said, could never bring lasting happiness to the human race since the humanist sets out to establish the Kingdom of Man and a utopia on earth.
The Christian, on the other hand seeks the Kingdom of God with Christ’s promise that if we do so all these (peace, justice and eternal happiness) will be added.
It’s true, as some say, we cannot turn back the hands of time.
However, a traveller who takes the wrong road can turn back to reach the right one; and turn back on the road to salvation is precisely the advice given to the Church at Ephesus in the second chapter of St John’s Apocalypse: “Repent and go back to your old ways – or else I will remove your candlestick”.
If we do not turn back to the true and sometimes difficult message of Christianity we may, in a few short years, find eclectics outnumbering both humanists and Christians. (Eclectics were recently defined on ABC Radio as New Age thinkers who, contrary to the First Commandment, put their trust in such things as fortune telling, astrology, reincarnation and ghosts.)
Fr Dudley pointed to the acceptance of the doctrines of the Fall and the Redemption as the entrance gate to human happiness.
The Christian religion, based on these two doctrines, tells us that in God alone can we find the true principals of moral obligation.
The ultimate goal of the Christian is not his/her own selfish happiness, it is God.
N. MACKENZIE
Taigum, Qld
