Hi George,

I empathise with you. You're dealing with fools again who will just never get it. It's like damned if they do and damned if they don't in the case of the Catholic Church. They'll always be continually whingeing about the tykes. They are so lost in their entrenchment of unbalanced thoughts and anti-Catholic diatribe.

You are are far too civil for these crackers.

That's too bad you no longer live in Oz, as we are in need of more saner people like yourself here.

Hi Constance,
Thank you for the kind words, although I am not that special, only probably older than most contributors here. And also the Catholic Church, the Catholic point of view, has a tradition and history of evolving - and stumbling - over many more years than the variety of world-views our atheist (or just anti-Church) friends here profess. (Well, at second thought, the Jewish tradition is older). And age does, or should, make you more merciful towards others, today we say more tolerant. And more willing to admit shortcomings and failures on one’s own side, in this case our Catholic Church.

So when encountering “anti-Catholic diatribes“ I try not only to take them on their face value - and decide how much objective truth is behind them - but I also look at the proponents of these “diatribes” as seekers of ... well, whatever, perhaps just their peace of mind. I try to understand their motivations, life experiences or what urges them to engage in these verbal attacks, and only in extreme cases do I decide they are “fools” or “crackers“ who are best left ignored.

Besides, even a “fool” could be just somebody who looks at the “finger” (the Church) and decides he/she does not like it, without realising that it points to the “moon” - something we Christians see as the purpose of our existence - and even an ugly or dirty finger can point to the moon that is beyond direct reach.

Hi George,

I love your references to the moon. Yes, you are older and wiser. But I feel as I get older that I am becoming more intolerant and just want to scream. I'm just becoming so sick of listening to the crap that I encounter and the empty declarations of self righteousness (always lefties). You see, I live in Sydney - hedonistic city and that is what I told some Berliners last year when asked about my town. It was my first visit to Berlin and I loved everything about it - felt more at home there. Last night I had a few beers in a pub with a newly found friend from work. We both have similar backgrounds and agreed that Sydney is so unspiritual and lacking in interesting people, and that no-one cares about anything anymore (including workplace - all quantity, no quality). When you mentioned in a post about mainstream thought (ie ingratiating popularity)- it is so true. People just go along blindly with the current fashion. I feel that there is so much of a herd mentality going around and people just keeping up with appearances. Ie. dishonesty,superficiality, ignorance and naivety. I've had a gutful.

Hi Constance,

I think what you describe - though perhaps in too pessimistic colours - is true about most of the Western world, not just Sydney. Also, a city that you visit as a tourist looks always more interesting than the place you come from (c.f. the neighbour’s grass being always greener). I do not know about Berlin in particular, but I can assure you that a similar atmosphere you describe can be found in most of Europe’s major cities. Here the Muslim factor, probably even more than in Australia, interferes - for better or worse - with these “unspiritual, self-righteous, hedonostic” inclinations and complicates the situation.

This all simply means that humanity, especially the West, passes through a critical period, perhaps not unlike Europe in the times of St Augustine. Although himself part of the declining Roman civilisation, he did not lament over its demise with the civilised pagans, nor did he rejoyce over its downfall with the new barbarians. His faith turned lament and nostalgia into respect for tradition, and fear of the new, unknown, into hope for a better world, as painful as the transitional period turned out to be for the civilised Romans.

The difference, of course, is that in Augustine‘s times the barbarians came from the outside, in our times they are home-made, Westerners. In spite of this difference, I think we can learn from Augustine to be more patient with those we have difficulties to understand or even sympathise with, and more trustful of Providence.

Christianity is now in the eye of a cleansing storm. When it is over, the world, including the West, will see a return to religion (hopefully not only a westernised Islam), albeit on intellectually as well as spiritually higher levels than what it was, when it was seemingly defeated by our “barbarians”.

So I believe that our “civilised” West, including its Christian roots, is going to survive, though no more as the dominant culture, but as the seed of a new community of world cultures, even if we are not going to live that long to see this happen.