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The Forum > Article Comments > Anzac day: a faith event? > Comments

Anzac day: a faith event? : Comments

By Alan Matheson, published 24/4/2008

For historians, Anzac Day, is 'a martial affair with military music and ritual', while for churches and their army chaplains, it’s a 'faith event'.

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As a veteran I say, keep the 'b...dy' churches out of the ADF !

When I was on active service, the only chaplains I ever saw were those (resplendent in their starched uniforms) relaxing in an Air-Conditioned hut that served as the Officers mess ! While we were 'outside the wire' in the stinking, humid jungle trying to protect our arse.

Ministers, Priests, Pardres et al. are absolutely redundant. They're a total waste of space. On the occasion we lost a bloke, they were never there.

I must say something for the Yanks, they had their Chaplains right up there with their blokes; where they were REALLY needed. Often actually ensconced at the various 'Fire Support Bases'.

To my knowledge, I never saw any of OUR Chaplains anywhere near the FSB's that I'd been tasked to man.

KEEP THESE 'GOD BOTHERERS' AWAY FROM OUR DEFENCE PERSONNEL ABROAD !
Posted by o sung wu, Thursday, 24 April 2008 5:11:58 PM
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Alan says:

"Again the military could depend on the silence of the churches."

O Sung Wu says:

KEEP THESE 'GOD BOTHERERS' AWAY FROM OUR DEFENCE PERSONNEL ABROAD !

I wonder, if 'The Church' criticized the Military or Government as the prophets of old did, whether they would have the same welcome they currently enjoy? Not if O Sung Wu has his way, nor Alan it seems.

"The Church" when unencumbered from the tanglements of politics and State, is indeed free to criticize in the name of God. It's calling is to be 'Salt' (preserve) and 'light' to show the way.

It seems we are regarding "the Church" (in these criticisms above) as an instrument of State?

If we want to take the gloves off, and really say what needs to be said, I doubt there would be any of us standing after it all.

Alan mentioned sexual harrassment in the military? Yet the military now has gender mixed bath rooms, and this includes urinals where blokes can be watering the horse while females walk in and go for a shower. Each shower is designed to have a 'change' cubicle and a shower cubicle, so a degree of privacy is possible, but the closeness of the sexes in places of nakedness and showering seems to me not exactly conducive to 'healthy intergender relations' or to avoiding the likelihood of sexual thoughts, words or actions being a part of the process.
Given the constant diet of pornography and degradation that most enlisted personell (and officers) feed themselves on at times, one is more struck by the relatively low levels of such behavior.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Monday, 28 April 2008 8:14:52 AM
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Remember our mates, look after yourself

ANZAC Day and all holidays are hard times for dads who have had their children stolen from them, and for kids who naturally miss their natural fathers. Suicide rates soar each holiday. Estimates show that for every woman who suicides in Australia, ten men kill themselves. Even under FOI, the C$A refuses to release the stats on how many of them are non-custodial dads).

Your kids may be out-of-contact, but you are still their dad. They will need you, eventually. as they grow up, children usually seek out their natural father, even against the lies and alienation fo the custodial parent.

Remember our kids
It is widely researched fact that children who lose their natural father suffer. Fatherlessness leads to worse outcomes in life than being born into poverty, or being born black in the USA.
(Quote from Dr S Baskerville from his book, "taken into Custody" http://stephenbaskerville.net/Book_Taken_Into_Custody.htm)

There is now a huge number of children and young adults who have this hole in their lives where their natural fathers should be. An aching longing that can never be filled.

Why is ANZAC Day growing? Why are the people attending ANZAC Day services mostly young men and women who have never experienced a large war? Because they have experienced the loss of their fathers, loss of their male teachers, loss of their male role models. THey have grown up seeing girls-interests and motivations being pandered to at school so two-thirds of uni students now are girls. These kids have heard rthe message 'boy's are not welcome here' in our schools and TV advertisements and across our societies other institutions.

Many will agree that in many ways the underlying message of Christmas is a ritual to celebrate motherhood...

www.fathers4Equality-Australia.org
PartTimeParent@pobox.com
Posted by partTimeParent, Monday, 28 April 2008 10:51:00 AM
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Dawn
Many times I have gone to the "Dawn" ANZAC Day Service in Sydney. It starts well before dawn, at the time when the troops started landing at Gallopilli. It's worth it. Sad, beautiful, powerfull and respectfull.

ANZAC DAY is the day Australia remembers the sacrifice of our men.

Soldiers killed in war are almost entirely men and boys, doomed by sexist values that views men as disposable.

Many men "volunteered" for WWI, but this was demanded of them, often by women, who handed out white feathers of cowardice to those men who didn't enlist. They had little choice. In WWII and Vietnam, many men were conscripted. They had no choice.

Men and women BOTH got the vote at the same time in Australia (Yes, despite what we're told), there were no female soldiers in these wars.

Not surprisingly there were no nasty-feminists calling it sexist or discriminatory that girls should be protected, while men are put in harms way. Next time you read an article in the newspaper that talks about people being killed somewhere, saying "killed civilians including women and children" remember, that men are often civilians also, and even soldiers are fequently not there by choice.

One of my friends went to the first Iraq war in the navy. He told me that most of the female sailors and officers got pregnant before departure and that got them off. Most of these women then had abortions, but they were not re-sent.
Posted by partTimeParent, Monday, 28 April 2008 10:51:21 AM
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ANZAC Day is turning into a new type of event... a much needed "Men's Day". Recognising the good things about men and the emptyness that so many suffer due to fatherlessness. It is a celebration to honour 'masculine virtues'.

While the baby-boomer matriarchy, the nasty feminist 'elite' constantly tell us that everything masculine is bad. There are many 'masculine virtues'.

Male virtues

ANZAC Day: Sad, beautiful, powerfull and respectfull.
Men bring many virtues to the world....
- Respect, honour, duty and sacrifice : the virtues of war
- Personal sacrifice and taking risks: the virtues of being a provider
- Protection, assertiveness and setting boundaries: the virtues of fatherhood
- Children: a result of the high male libido
- Rationality, objectivity, focus on the big issues: the virtues of achievement.

While women can master these things, these are things that only men are instinctively good at. One of my friends, from Poland, says that "Men are responsible for life". That says it all for me.

Change is coming, slowly

It gives me great encouragement to see how ANZAC Day is growing so strongly. That as a society, we are beginning to yearn for masculine virtues and recognition of the good things that men embody.

Perhaps Christmas is a ritual of motherhood, but certainly ANZAC Day is a ritual of fatherhood and a craving for masculine virtues.
Posted by Johnoh, Monday, 28 April 2008 10:56:54 AM
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The TV show "SuperNanny" is also. FOr every family Supernanny implemented a set of standard rules and boundaries. Each had a father who instinctively wanted to impose rules and boundaries, but was unable to. This due to the mother controlling parenting, the parents disagreeing and undermining the father's authority, or because the father was working huge hours to support his family and simply had no time.

I recently saw "the Spiderwick Chronicles" at the cinema, and I highly recommend it. A sub-plot has the son craving his natural father and bravely pointing the finger of blame at the mother who blamed and demanded and criticised, driving his father away. Gutsy effort kid! Gutzy effort hollywood for telling the truth that too many children and young adults know. And "The Pursuit of Happyness" a great film!

Across the child-industry, there are new currents beginning. The recognition that children need parents who set boundaries and that children need to experience failure. That bubble-wrapping kids is bad. That ADHD is caused by a school system that systematically forces boys to behave as girls. That women are as often the perpetrators of domestic violence as men are. That children need both natural parents
Posted by Johnoh, Monday, 28 April 2008 10:57:08 AM
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ANZAC Day.... what a shocker it is.

I wonder why people are so eager to pretend they never want to go to war again, and ANZAC Day is the expression of that?

Here in Toowoomba, our state schools, full of totally unqualified chaplains, care of Howard's immoral waste of tax dollars, are beginning to find their feet.

ANZAC Day at my son's school now has a chaplain praying on students at the all school assembly, just as they do on the troops, from all sides, as they get marched off to war.

What a sham!

Why is there is little concern for 'workers' killed at work, by chaplains and by the Australian public generally?

It can only be that deep down there is a reverence for war lurking still in our society.

Surely a dead truckie is as big a waste as a dead soldier?

Or a building worker pushed to increase profits who falls off the scaffold?

And anyway, what was WW1 all about?

Any 'evil' being chased away is not too evident from here, all these years later.

Was it a trade war maybe?

Whatever it was, the fools who made the peace afterwards set the scene for WW2.

So much for 'lest we forget', eh?

Aha, the pursuit of profit at all cost.

Now there is a real evil that no one wants to handle at all, least of all anyone from the all too numerous churches.

And I doubt we'll ever hear a school chaplain speak about the evils of profits, since they all belong to the Hillsong variety who sing the praises of consumption and obscene wealth.

Good on the author.

As for not having another day to celebrate... how about raising the status of the Eureka event?

At least that managed to bring some elements of democracy to Victoria and later the rest of the nation. Far more worth celbrating than the senseless death of men in a trade war diversion that barely mattered too much in the overall war.
Posted by The Blue Cross, Monday, 28 April 2008 11:32:13 AM
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**BOAZ**.

Usually BOAZ I find your remarks reasonably balanced. Though I often don't support your views, nevertheless you generally present a 'reasonable' arguement.

However, on this matter, you don't know what your talking about (with respect). There is absolutely no place for either God or ANY sort of religion on the battlefield, believe me !

Unless you've worn a set of greens, and been 'outside the wire', you and others really have absolutely no conception whatsoever what it's like !

Engaging an ambush; searching the dead for useful 'product' et al. Or trying to change a red hot barrel on the section's M60 GPMG after a 'cook off'. Trying to peer into the steamy, stifling and humid night whilst 'standing to' as a picquet at a FSB, where every tiny little sound is amplified (in your mind), and makes you jump !

Believe me brother, there's NO God out there. Unequivocally ! And I certainly don't want some 'god bothering' Chaplain crashing 'round us either. That'll get us all killed.
Posted by o sung wu, Monday, 28 April 2008 4:54:21 PM
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O sung wu. I was having trouble with the article head line myself. " A faith event" I thought it was a dodge the bullet event and survive.
I was born when 2000 strong Vietcong came full force at a hundred + Australians, and I just watched this tonight and I too would love to know where a priest would be, or what point it would serve.

So I don't think too many people would dis\agree on that one, but in the hospitals to comfort the dieing, I don't see a problem with that.

IMO If there not prepared to fire a weapon, well, I think you have already answered that one.

All the best

EVO
Posted by evolution, Monday, 28 April 2008 7:19:07 PM
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Thanks Alan. I missed the question mark in the title initially so hadn't read it until now.

I wonder about the basic premise of the intertwining of church (a broad term that does not take account a myriad of different Christian groupings) and military.

And I am not sure the silence is deafening argument is convincing, or true. Are there no Christian churches who have raised their voices about the plight of returned soldiers, soldiers who deserve much better treatment than to be thrown on the rubbish dump once they have done the bidding of the politicians? I don't know, but would have thought so.

The intertwining argument may be true of some particular individuals or churches. Indeed it may be true more generally. So when Christian countries fight the churches who support war find themselves invoking God, just as these on the other side do. But I would have thought that like all things in life, just as there are those churches or chaplains who support war in general or in particular there will be some churches or church members who oppose it.

I particularly liked your last two paragraphs. let me quote them:

"A faith event is not about parades and prayers. A faith event is about confession and the creation of four million Iraqi refugees and an untold number of soldiers disturbed and disabled. It’s about the condemnation of evil whether that of the suicide bomb or the cluster bomb; it’s about a rededication to peace, and not to out of control budgets for maiming and killing.

"Anzac Day services might be a lot of things, but they are not faith events."

Maybe you could clarify the second sentence in the penultimate paragraph since I don't quite understand the argument. Otherwise it is a sentiment I can broadly agree with.
Posted by Passy, Monday, 28 April 2008 9:18:57 PM
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