The Other Side

Presenting the Other Side of various issues of contemporary relevance

Contents

Abortion

The EU - is it a good thing?

Suicide

Does Exorcism work?

Does Fortune-telling work?

What about Re-incarnation?.

Political Correctness - What is it?

Science vs. Religion

Evolution

Racism and Immigration

Multicultural Society

A New EU Constitution?

Handel’s Messiah

Contraception and Over-Population

From the Editors

We believe we live in a Liberal Democracy. We may believe we are enlightened and modern. Yet a cloud hangs over all Western nations in the present decades, our Irish Nation no less than any other: the cloud of the Official View Of Things. Discussion on a serious level, or even dissent, is too often howled down. Do we have freedom of speech? Just think. How many National newspapers are there? How many people own them? Don’t they have an editorial policy? This tiny group of the super-rich who own or control the Media are constantly dinning their own agenda into our ears. What is to stop them? Opinions become widely accepted not because they have been proven true but simply because “everybody believes that nowadays” - in other words, because it is endlessly repeated by the Media.

It was not so in the Middle Ages. In the absence of centrally-controlled television, a very popular diversion was the “Disputation” - a serious debate between people of genuinely opposite opinions in a large auditorium, in front of a large audience. In contrast, we do not always realise how subject we are today to central control. There is any amount of true things that simply are never reported in the Modern Mass Media.

Far too many school books - although thankfully not all - are guilty of promoting one single ideology or Official Story, which sometimes involves a straightforward fallacy. Once a particular viewpoint is incorporated in the curriculum, School textbooks are caught in the trap; they have to teach for the exam, right or wrong.

The Media are very enthusiastic that our nation has escaped from the rigid rule of the Catholic Church. But instead they replace it with the rigid rule of “The Liberal Agenda”, with that modern version of Victorian hypocrisy called “Political Correctness”. Ideas are not debated; instead, one particular Line is simply assumed to be correct beyond any doubt.

This situation requires some action to counter-balance this unfortunate development. That is why we hope you will read the following pages. We do not want to push our views down any unwilling throats; we want you to think. And to see The Other Side.

Abortion.

Thirty years ago in the London Underground there were numerous ads for “Pregnancy counselling”. The local Pro-Life Group told women: “Don’t take our word for this: Phone one of these numbers, tell them you are pregnant and don’t know what to do, and see how much counselling they give you”. The counselling usually began and ended with the appointment for the abortion.

The personal experience of pro-life counsellors is that, in the vast majority of cases, the woman is the very last to want the abortion. We are all human. She “makes a mistake” and becomes pregnant. At this juncture she is in an emotional crisis. And everybody turns on her. Partner wants the baby got rid of. Parents don’t want the family name dragged down, or else don’t want the College fees wasted. Girlfriends are often only too ready to advise her to ‘get rid of it’. If she goes to an unscrupulous abortion clinic, they take her money, fill her with valium, take away her baby, and then dump her on the street. Only after that does she begin to reflect on what she has really done. Many women work out the date their baby would have been born and keep that ‘birthday’ for the rest of their life.

Abortion today, with international drug-dealing, is one of the very largest money-making industries in the world. Emotions run high on both sides, so let us keep our thoughts clear.

Beware of the Hard Cases. “Hard Cases Make Bad Laws” was a maxim known to the Ancient Romans. People in emergency situations need all our help, but if we betray fundamental principles for the hard case, we have absolutely no way to stop the exception from becoming the norm. In every single country, pro-abortion laws have been introduced with the promise that they would be used in only the most extreme cases. Yet within two or three years these promises are forgotten and abortions are carried out on a routine basis.

If you are inclined to support the idea of abortion, find out what an abortion procedure actually entails. We will not give details in this booklet. If you cannot bring yourself to face these details, ask yourself why not. Hear the tales of women who have panicked themselves into an abortion, and learn what effect it has had on their lives.

And if you know anyone who has had an abortion, or who has helped carry one out, the Catholic Sacrament of Confession will allow that person to forgive him/herself through being forgiven by God. And theologians have taught that it is likely that God will give the aborted child a chance, at the Last Judgment, to forgive its mother also.

The EU - is it a good thing?

The EU is the latest goalpost-shift of a political and economic development within Europe that is being promoted to the very hilt, not only by the sincere, but by All The Usual People - Big Business, Trade Monopolies, the biggest European countries, the biggest political parties, the obedient Media.

A bit of history will show us that the European Common Market began as a plan for a freely-chosen association of independent nations. Every shift in its structure, however, has been in the direction of establishing a single Superstate within which the individual nations will lose their sovereignty - the very opposite of the original idea.

A very common - even routine - political trick is to spread one’s plan over several years. It is a ploy carried out for anything from tax increases to the destruction of national sovereignty. The public would rebel if they were told straight off what was planned. So a little bit is changed this year. We complain. Then two years later a further change is made. We complain again. But by now we have already forgotten about the first change. Then it is done a third time. And so on. Is this what they are doing over the EU?

Suicide

In the Middle Ages, and later in Catholic Ireland, suicide was essentially unknown. Near Cork city is Barnavara Hill: “Cnoc Bearna Mháire”. The local tradition is that a young woman hanged herself on that hill. Her identity is not remembered, but the tradition is that she was not of Catholic stock, because Catholics never committed suicide. Whether the story as we have it today is completely accurate, the folk-tradition is testimony to the prevailing perception. [Notice this fact, to be considered in historical studies: a document may be forged by just one person, but a tradition must have been accepted by a whole community].

No Age is perfect, but the Mediaeval period provided support and meaning to life such that the tragedy of suicide was of the most extreme rarity.

Individuals who resort to suicide are very frequently mentally disturbed. They and their families need our pity and prayers.

If you feel suicidal at times, remember that times of discouragement and futility come into most lives, often, strangely enough, just when things were about to take a turn for the better.

St Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises gives this advice: In times of spiritual desolation, * do not abandon prayer, even if it seems worthless - the contrary is the truth; *do not make big decisions at this time; *act against the impulse: if it is to neglect necessary work, force yourself to plod on; if it is to agitation and panicky activity, try to keep to a routine of legitimate recreation, or at least rest; *TALK to somebody.

We all crave a life of unclouded settled happiness, because this is what we were made for, but it is not to be found this side of Heaven. The great Sultan of a very large and fabulously wealthy Eastern country, who was the personal owner of all the wealth and all the men, women and children in his dominion, towards the end of his life declared that, for all his unimaginable wealth, power and pleasure, that he had thought back on his life and counted the number of days when he had been perfectly content; and the number came to seventeen.

There is an old proverb: “An té a ghlacann comhairle ní gá dó é a ghlacadh”: “The one who takes advice doesn’t need it”. Therefore please don’t be insulted at the following advice, if you find you don’t need it: Stay away from Horror Movies. They can play on your mind for a very long time, even a lifetime, and where is the entertainment? There is nothing to praise in being “tough” enough to watch them. They are destructive and useless. And stay away from violent and depressing books. There is so much printed literature in the world that it would take a dozen lifetimes to read it all: why waste the time on depressing or destructive reading when there is so much that will have the opposite effect: stories of heroes and heroines, of the Saints: the world’s best literature. — because there is a strange consensus down the centuries and across very different cultures – from Irish to Chinese – that good literature makes one a happier and a better person. It expands the mind in wholesome ways, makes one’s head a better thing to have between one’s ears.

It must be said that a very large proportion of school set books at present are of the opposite kind: ugly, coarse, depressing. Counteract it. Read one of the Gospels (especially John: The Eagle); watch the DVD of Mel Gibson's The Passion. Have recourse to prayer, especially the Rosary. You will be able to see the difference.

Does Exorcism work?

The Church has had 2000 years’ experience since Christ overcame the power of Satan.

Do people become possessed? Most unfortunately, yes, it does happen. Padre Pio – S. Pio of Pietrelcina – (and he was only repeating the words of much more ancient saints) said, “The devil is like a mad dog on a chain. If you keep away from him, he cannot reach you. But if you approach him...”

How do we approach the devil? If we drift into a life of habitual sin, we weaken the power of God’s Grace over us. That is why frequent confession is necessary for nearly all of us weak mortals. Then some are so foolish as to dabble in the Occult. Certain types of fortune-telling and related practices are known to invoke the power of the devil. Some Rock music and Rock concerts definitely call on Satan. Whether the people involved think they really mean it or not, it is like opening a cage where there is believed to be a lion. If we indulge in these things, God will not necessarily step in by a miracle to save us, any more than he does if we walk blindfolded along a railway line. (Why would He not do so? Perhaps because “it wouldn’t be right ”). Each year, people do find themselves possessed. Some of them are successfully exorcised.

Yes, exorcisms do work – but only if carried out by a properly qualified and authorised Catholic priest. There is a prescribed procedure. In principle, every priest is given the power of exorcism along with the power of the priesthood. In practice, only certain priests are delegated the task. Their qualifications include: *Physical stamina. The procedure is very taxing physically, and may be protracted. *Unshakeable faith in God. The devil will exploit any weakness. *A scandal-free life; because the devil has a habit of shouting out the unconfessed sins of the priest to the bystanders, as a way of attacking him. *He must also have been present at an exorcism as an onlooker, so that he will not be put off by the sheer shock of it.

What happens if an unauthorised person attempts an exorcism? Our Lord warned of that [and notice that Jesus, on numerous occasions, speaks almost casually about supernatural things as though He had first-hand knowledge: He was certainly nothing like any other of the Good Men and Women who have been our human teachers through the ages: He really did speak like the Son of God]: (Matt. 12: 43-45): “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walks through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he finds it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goes, and brings with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

There have been reports in national secular newspapers of non-priests attempting to cast out devils: the person so “liberated” has then gone home and committed a horrifying murder.

This is written for you only to warn you never to attempt to dabble in these things.

The Church does prescribe the following prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII in 1884 for general use; in the Old Latin Mass it was said, in the vernacular, after every Mass, and it is recommended as a daily prayer:

Prayer to St Michael

Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God restrain him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Power of God thrust Satan down to Hell, and with him all the other wicked spirits who wander through the World for the ruin of souls. Amen.

There has been a steep rise in cases of possession in recent decades, such that there are now two exorcists, appointed by the Vatican, working full time in each of several major Italian cities, and in other places worldwide.

Does Fortune-telling work?

Well, this is not the most fundamental question. The first question is: if it did work, how would it do so? God has withheld from us the detailed knowledge of the future. We are welcome to use our knowledge, intelligence and science to make reasonable predictions of the future, but fortune-telling is a means of trying to get the answers by means of spirits or occult powers. In doing this we are stepping outside the power and authority given us by God. We are like small children peeking in the door before the surprise party. And if we do see, it spoils the surprise and the party. Because it is an attempt to usurp the Providence of God, the church has always taught that this is a very serious sin against God.

So does it work? Well, if we are lucky, the fortune-telling is either fraud or total nonsense. But it is definite teaching from Christ Himself that the devil and the evil spirits are real. Dabbling in the occult is placing ourselves within the orbit of power of evil forces of which we have only the haziest detailed knowledge. Imagine leaving the safety of our own home to meet a stranger in the middle of an unlighted field at midnight, because he has promised us a secret message. Following his conditions, we are going there alone. What foolishness, what imprudence! Yet this is exactly comparable with what we do when we abandon the Sacraments and Holy Scripture and seek for forbidden knowledge away from the power of God and the Protection of the Church.

Those with first-hand knowledge of the devil, from within the Church (and there are such people) have said that even Satan cannot see more than two days into the future – and that is only by the application of natural science and knowledge. He also has access to genuine prophecies from Heaven that we might be neglecting. This knowledge may at times appear magical to us in our ignorance. But never forget: the devil is a liar, and the father of lies. and he is our enemy. How likely is it that he will be telling us anything for our good? How much more likely that it will be lies and half-truths designed for our ruin.

But the most important point, for any of us who wish to please God, is that recourse to fortune-telling is a very grave offence to God. We are meant to live by Faith, use our natural wits, and try to serve Him who made us.

What about Re-incarnation?

This topic bobs up from time to time. Certain people have, under hypnosis, given very detailed descriptions of alleged past lives. The respected author, Ian Wilson, researched the Holy shroud of Turin - the alleged burial-cloth of Jesus Christ. As a result of his studies he concluded that it is genuine. Soon after this, he made a similar study of re-incarnation. His conclusion was that The alleged hypnotic memories of past lives, when investigated intelligently (and not on a radio talk-in programme) have always shown fatal errors of fact. It is all an illusion.

But whether re-incarnation is a fact or not, is a very serious issue regarding our eternal destiny. The Catholic Church tells us that God the Father sent His Son to teach us how to please God and get to Heaven, and that His Son died on the Cross to give us the Mass.

The teaching from the Son of God was: “ it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27). We are given just one life here on Earth - and is that such a bad idea? - for the purpose of obtaining Eternal Life with the Source of all Goodness and Love.

This topic does have practical consequences. In countries where this belief is widespread, there is little motive for taking care of the poor and destitute. Christ told us, “As often as you do these things to the least of these your brethren, you do it to Me”. But if the destitute person has been sent back as a punishment for a bad past life, why should we help him?

Political Correctness - What is it?

For most of the Twentieth Century, the Soviet Union was aggressively spreading its brand of Marxism. For decades, at least two countries per year were falling to the Communist Bloc. It would take too long to give even the briefest outline of Marxism, which promised an earthly paradise in the distant future, if the methods of Marxist Revolution were carried out now. Unfortunately, the policies of the Soviet governments amounted to waging war against their own citizens. A central principle was: tight central control of public life. From time to time, the Soviet leadership had to change or reverse some decision (such as whether to support Hitler’s war). Yet they could never admit to any mistake. Therefore the leaders adopted the principle of “The Party Line”. Whenever a course of action or statement of policy had been decided upon, every Communist Party Member without exception was expected to “follow the Party Line”. Public debate was completely outlawed. Any dissenters were ruthlessly “purged” – thrown out of the Party – sometimes with serious personal consequences. This policy provided a means whereby the Party had very considerable strength and power. Yet it required the loyal Party members to accept a situation where they might at any time be required to change their stance from one day to the next – in other words, to sacrifice their integrity – and it caused many members to drop out in disillusionment.

The democratic tradition has been to allow open and public debate upon issues of public importance, followed eventually by a vote. Human nature being what it is, it is virtually impossible to get every single citizen to agree, but most are willing to accept a majority decision in the interests of the Public Good. (An exception has been where a person believes that the majority decision has contradicted a Divine Law, which is considered non-negotiable. In these circumstances the individual must either change their religious belief, or defy the human law and take the consequences).

The Soviet Union collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s, but in recent years the so-called democratic countries of the Free West have seen an increasing adoption of the Soviet trick of The Party Line. Certain topics cannot be debated in public without incurring the full force of Official Wrath. One side of a thorny issue is simply forbidden a forum, and another side is assumed to be true and obvious, but without any attempt at honest debate. This is a very dangerous trend for the survival of free thought. A whole range of attitudes at present may be brought under the heading of “Political Correctness”. Have you ever read a newspaper article or listened to a radio chat show and heard the announcer stick totally to one side of an issue that so obviously has more to it than is being admitted? And proponents of the other side being subjected to personal attacks upon their integrity instead of being shown where they might be wrong? Did you ever wonder, “Just who’s paying him/her to say that?” This is not to suggest that cash payments are being made to individuals, but to encourage you to think about this pervasive pressure that is being unfairly applied to public debate at the present time.

Science vs. Religion

The Ancient Greeks had a proverb: “The unexamined life is no life for a man” and, remembering the proverbially wise and humble Socrates, “It is better to be Socrates discontented than a pig contented”. In the Seventies there was a popular light-hearted book in which the characters were seeking the Answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything".

Most thinking people realise that there must be more to life than “What shall we eat? Where shall we live? What shall we wear? For even the Pagans seek these things (cf Mt 6:31 – the Sermon on the Mount). At the same time, there has been a steady, though uneven, increase in our knowledge of the world through the centuries. Until about the 18th Century it was taken for granted that Religion – knowledge of the Things of God and of Right and Wrong – was unified with Science – the study of God’s Creation. In more recent years there are many people who have an uneasy feeling that the two are in conflict, and that Science is the winner, that there must still be a God, but who don’t know how to fit both together in one’s head.

In fact there is no conflict between true science and true religion.

It might help to look at it this way. We can learn a lot about a person by looking at the house he has built. Also by the kind of garden he keeps. Now Creation is God's own House and Garden. Physics and chemistry are like the study of His palace; biology is like the study of His Garden. Many scientists believe in a Creator simply because of the elegance of the Natural Laws that are seen to govern the universe. And we can learn about someone by talking to him directly. That is like Religious Studies. This is not to say there are no problems: we do not understand everything either about the Universe or about God Himself (obviously). But there is no need to think we need to keep two ideas in our head – science and belief in God – that do not agree and cannot be reconciled. Unfortunately there are those who say that we ought to do just that.

It is worthwhile to glance at the current tussle between Evolution and Special Creation .

Evolution and Creation

A University professor was asked in the 1970s, “Do you believe in God? He answered, “I believe in evolution”. Here is the nub of the problem. A valid branch of knowledge about the world is made to take the place of religion. Evolution has been hijacked from its place as a scientific theory, into “the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.”

The debate is also confused by the red herring about whether God made the world in six days or billions of years. Let us discuss that first. In the Middle Ages, most people probably took it for granted that this was literally true. But the greatest theologians (e.g. St Thomas Aquinas) taught that this was an open question. The six days could represent six Ideas in the eternal plans of the Almighty. When all six had been brought forth, the creation of the world was complete. We are given a strong hint in Genesis that something like this is to be understood: The sun was not created until the fourth day. In that case, how were the first three days measured? The real point of the story is that all was created according to the Plan of an all-powerful, and all good, Creator. We take this too much for granted these days: a little study of the “creation myths” of other ancient peoples shows them to be surprisingly childish and often revolting. One must ask, where did such an unphilosophical people as the Ancient Hebrews get this wonderful picture of Creation?

The real disagreement between Creation and Atheistic Evolution – that attempted replacement for religion – is that Atheistic Evolution takes a natural process (natural selection) which is clearly seen to operate as a tidying-up process that weeds out the less fit members of a species [the deformed and unfit members have few or no offspring and hence do not contribute to the next generation] and elevates it, in the absence of evidence, to the main creative mechanism driving the processes of life and the creation of new species. For example, wild mammals that cannot produce milk will be eliminated from the herd, as their offspring will starve. Seagulls born with faulty wing feathers will be eliminated because they cannot fly. But this mechanism cannot convincingly be invoked to explain milk or feathers in the first place. Natural selection weeds out, it does not create.

In addition, atheistic evolution begs the question by stating that selection works on random variation. But how do we know that something is random unless we already know that there is no God? How do we know He has not planned the variation? This is a very large topic, but it merits more thought than is normally given it in textbooks. There are huge holes in the logic of the “theory of everything” that tries to make random chance the driving force behind the whole universe. Natural Selection by Random Variation is hijacked to explain the most intricate and integrated biological systems. An example is the eye. The retina at the back would be useless without the lens in front. The lens would be useless without the retina to record the image. The whole apparatus would seize up without eyelids and tear-ducts. These parts grow in the embryo in different parts of the body - some from the small of the back - and are moved to their proper places. during pregnancy. How could these different components be invented, all at the same time, and “blindly” put together correctly, by sheer blind chance?

A very telling example is given by the evolution of languages. Most European languages seem to have developed, or evolved, from a common ancestor spoken about 6000 years ago near the Black Sea. Migrating tribes carried the language which split into the dialects that are the ancestors of our modern languages. Much of this development can be reconstructed with a fair degree of accuracy (although it will never be perfect). A language is a loose thing, with an internal logic, but there is plenty of scope for new words to develop and old ones to be forgotten. One word can be lost without affecting the others. Yet in the case of biological systems, each individual generation must be comprised of properly-functioning integrated organisms. Not only are “missing links” not found (unlike the intermediate ancient European dialects) but we cannot even imagine what they could be like. A half-developed eye is not half as good as a perfect eye, it is a useless ball of tissue. A creature with such a useless ball would be eliminated by the very Natural Selection that is supposed to be inventing it!

So what did happen? Perhaps with a little more humility it will be admitted that we still have not all the scientific answers to “Life, the Universe, and Everything”. It would be fun to know more.

Racism and Immigration

This is a very delicate and important topic, but it is very easy for even well-meaning people to get the issues muddled, while the “Politically Correct” Agenda will not tolerate any discussion at all; any hint of dissent from the PC line is instantly branded as “Racist”. Let us have the courage to look at this coolly and clearly.

Racism.

The Second World War was fought because Hitler convinced his followers that they were a Master Race who had the right to exterminate the lesser races. The Nazis were taught they could ignore the moral law. The horrifying consequences showed the whole world where this type of thinking leads. Yet it was fashionable for decades before that.

Modern genetic fingerprinting methods have provided direct proof that all human beings are closely related. We might look very different in our own eyes, but compared with most other species, the human species shows very little variation. The huge human population has nothing to do with it. 95% of the human beings living in Europe in 1950 (before immigration became as widespread as it is now) can be traced to just eleven individuals – or perhaps eleven tribes, of which all the members of each tribe were very closely related. A colony of twenty chimpanzees at San Diego Zoo in 1998 showed more genetic variation that the entire human race, from Eskimos to Chinese. Even more interesting, DNA studies have shown that all human females are directly descended from apparently just one individual. The report described it as a “genetic bottleneck”. Some might call he ‘Eve’! We are all literally brothers and sisters. Let us treat each other accordingly!

The Multicultural Society.

A separate issue is of multi-culturalism. Let us look at it calmly. In the Middle Ages and before, an individual was quite free to enter another country, but he was expected to swear an oath of allegiance to the new ruler, the country and its laws. This would be enforced under pain of death. It was taken for granted that there cannot be competing sets of laws in one country. Consider this: There is not, never has been, and never will be, a “Multicultural Society”. It is nothing but a mindless journalistic slogan. A society is not a random collection of isolated individuals. If different peoples live together in society, they must have an underlying unity of values and a sense of membership. In other words, a common culture. Traditions of food, music and dress are mere externals, unless they offend some code of manners and values of some in the society. Of course people can have preferences of food, dress, sport, and other pastimes. But if some custom offends against the values of the culture, the culture must shift to accommodate, or else the custom will be abandoned. And groups of peoples with genuinely different values co-exist in one geographical area, they do not constitute a society but a failure of society, or a transition towards a society – or to social disintegration. During the time of transition, there will be constant friction as gestures are mis-interpreted by individuals of a different background. In Western Europe, a pat on the head is a sign of affection; in parts of Asia it is a grievous insult. If peoples from these groups came to live in close proximity, one or other attitude would have to disappear.

People need something above themselves to inspire them. They need to feel they belong to a greater society. They have no right to impose their ways on a distant nation, but they do have a right to pass on their own manners, morals and traditions to the next generations. There is a moral imperative to help our neighbour in need, but there is also a responsibility on rulers to ensure that the Common Good is not compromised by an excessive influx of people who are unable or unwilling to live according to the mores of the host country. Any wealthy country has an obligation to help one less fortunate, but not at the price of obliterating its own identity. Yet this is what is being demanded of Western democracies with increasing boldness. Why?

A New EU Constitution?

Recently the Heads of State in the EU approved a draft "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe". If this Draft is adopted, it will repeal all the European treaties up to the Treaty of Nice. Until now, the EU has been a free association of independent nation-states. But this Treaty will abolish the sovereignty of the individual member states and establish, with all the force of law, a new nation-state — the EU — in which the existing Member States are reduced to the constitutional status of regions or provinces of a superior single “ European State”.

To make this quite clear: the proposed EU Constitution will hand over our national sovereignty from Ireland to Brussels. Ireland, long a Nation, will be "A Province Once Again". The Constitution of this new EU proclaims itself to be superior to the Constitutions and law of its Member States, effectively in all areas of public policy.

This would be a profound change from the present European Union, where EC law operates mainly in the relatively narrow area of economics; the individual states still have independence in other areas of national life such as foreign and security policy, crime, justice and home affairs, health, education, social security etc – although subject to innumerable "EU Directives". Already the nations of the EU have less independence from Brussels than the States of the USA have from Washington.

Our legal sovereign will be this new EU — NOT the Republic of Ireland. Under the Constitution we would become real citizens of the EU for the first time, not just as an honorary title, but with rights and obligations direct to the EU Institutions rather than, as present, through our own national institutions.

But do the peoples of Europe really want their countries to be demoted to this subordinate status?

Not one of the 25 EU State parliaments was given the opportunity to discuss beforehand whether the EU needed be founded on its own Constitution like this, or to discuss the implications of such a step.

Where did the idea for this Constitution come from? Opponents of the growing centralisation of the EU have been warning for many years that the free trading association of European nations was in danger from forces that would try to take more and more power from the individual states.

In 2001, the Laeken Declaration of EU Presidents and Premiers was given the mandate of making proposals to tackle the EU's lack of democracy, to consider restoring powers from Brussels to Member States and to consider "the possibility…in the long run" of the text of a possible cons-titution. A 'Convention on the Future of Europe' was called. But instead of following the mandate, the Convention rushed headlong into drafting this Constitution that •centralises the EU into a State, •removes important remaining powers from national parliaments and citizens, and •does not propose to return one single power from Brussels to the Member States — the very opposite of the purpose for which it was called.

The new EU constitution cannot take effect unless it is ratified by all member states. Many countries will require only the assent of their politicians. Thanks to our existing Irish Constitution, this kind of change cannot be imposed upon us without a National Referendum. But if we vote "Yes", it will be our last referendum on Constitutional Change – we will have voted away our own right, at present protected by our National Constitution, to be consulted.

Is this what the peoples of Europe asked for?

[For further info, see <http://www.teameurope.info> and The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9. We thank Anthony Coughlan of the National Platform for permission to use information provided by him].

Handel’s Messiah

. . . is often linked to Christmas, although in fact it follows equally closely the whole Story of the Redemption. Although the work is not absolutely original - he was quite happy to adapt and build upon an earlier compilation of Biblical passages, in true Mediæval style, before copyright law grew to the stranglehold it has now - Handel did feel a state of inspiration envelop him that did not leave him during the whole time of his composing.

Handel completed the score in less than four weeks of continuous work, hardly moving from his room, barely eating or sleeping during the whole episode until it was done. In the 19th & early 20th centuries the piece was staged ever more elaborately and portentously (might one even say ‘pretentiously’?) but in the later 20th century there was thankfully a reaction towards performances much nearer to how Handel and his contemporaries would have heard it. I share the belief that it is one of the very best achievements of the human spirit, that will stand in the Hall of Fame with the Few and the Best for eternity.

Notice that each of the pieces is set to a different key. The Mocking of the Multitude around the Cross “He trusted in God, Let Him deliver Him” is set in ‘the remote and barbarous key of E minor’. Only twice does he come to the homely key of D major, one of these being the final “Amen”.

During one of the first performances, when the contralto had finished “He was despisèd”, a gentleman exclaimed, “Woman, for that may all thy sins be forgiven!” At one of the earliest performances, the Hallelujah Chorus swept the audience spontaneously to their feet. This has become a tradition kept up to this day. When Handel had completed the writing of the Hallelujah Chorus, his servant found him a long time later gazing silently out of the window. He whispered, “Methought that I saw the Heavens opened and the great God Himself”.

Contraception and Over-Population

This is a topic where worldly wisdom gets everything dead wrong. It all seems so obvious, doesn’t it: the world is a place of limited resources, the population cannot continue to expand indefinitely, people cannot afford too many children, women have a right not to be enslaved to the nursery, etc etc. But there is “Another Side” that we would bring to your attention.

It is easy to get carried through life without examining our basic assumptions: “As long as I do no harm to others, and do a small bit of good along the way, what could possibly be wrong with that?”

Contraception is exactly the kind of issue where this kind of thinking hits the barrier. Issues of our eternal destiny come to be of very major practical importance, and make a difference to our everyday life.

What are we? Are we nothing but highly-evolved apes? At death, do we scatter into dust and nothing else? Well, if you truly believe that, we cannot pick up God and place Him on your lap; but remember that, if it were true, you would always be an animal — and you would die alone.

God the Father sent His Son to teach us otherwise, and He left the Church to teach all nations and all centuries. At present, the Church is going through a most painful phase. But remember — our not-so-distant forebears risked sudden death at the Mass Rocks out of love, not fear.

There is a Mystery about the world: in theology, it is called the Mystery of Predestination, Grace and Freewill. †Predestin-ation means that God already knows what is going to happen in the future. He has already worked out the whole course of history. As part of this divine Plan He knows exactly who He is going to call into existence. Before we were conceived and born, God had us in His mind. There were other possible people, whom God thought of as possibilities, who will not, in fact, ever be created. But His Plan also includes †Freewill: our own gift from God. We are not simply machines or robots. At the Last Judgment, He will say to the good souls, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”. †Grace is the special help from God that enables us to do His Will. These three things are all true, but we cannot see exactly how they all fit together.

Now in the conception of children, we act out or live through these mysteries. On the day two people are married, God knows exactly how many children He is going to send the couple, and He has all the necessary Graces reserved for the family, so that they will be enabled to do His will in the world and attain eternal life with Him hereafter. He has provided the means by which new people are conceived and reared. Now if we refuse to co-operate with His plan and His laws, through artificial contraception, we are throwing the potential gift of eternal souls back in His Face while selfishly retaining the pleasure that was really meant as the reward of faithful love, not an isolated thing. Even murder is not as bad as this, because at least the murder victim has the chance of going to Heaven if they have lived in His Grace. But how shall we repay it if a soul destined by God for eternal life is, through our fault, never born forever?

What about the limited resources of the planet? The problem is that God knows how long the World will last, but we do not. He did tell us that the Last Day will come upon a day when it is not expected. We must use the gifts of the world wisely and without useless waste, but contraception is telling God, “I know how You have ordained for new people to come into the world, but....we have thought up a better way!”

We are incessantly being warned that the world is over-populated. Yet vast areas of the world are empty. Our technology could make them habitable. The real over-population is in the slums of cities. If the political will was there, population could be spread more sanely, with cities of manageable size surrounded by areas of farming to feed the cities.

It is not so often noticed that a large population leads to a higher standard of living for all, other things being equal. If the population is too thinly scattered, infrastructure such as roads and water pipes have too few people to pay for their maintenance. One of the real reasons for the famines in Ethiopia (the other reasons being war and government mismanagement) is that the population in the North is too small to support a sufficient infrastructure.

A large population also throws up a large number of gifted individuals who can develop the national culture and work for the general good. A small isolated tribe has very little chance of developing, because there must be a ‘critical number’ of gifted individuals to make progress possible.

When birth control (which really means no birth and no control) first became common several decades ago, the pro-lifers tried to warn of the consequences of reducing the birthrate too steeply: It would lead to a generation in which there were too many old people needing care and too few young people to produce the wealth to look after them. Even then, it was warned that contraception and abortion “now” would lead straight to euthanasia “then”. All the countries of Europe are now involved in massive immigration for the workforce, leading to millions of displaced persons and threatening the very identity of ancient nations, because the parents have refused to bring their own children into the world.

What will we answer at the Last Judgment if we have practised birth control and God asks us, “Where are your children?”

And finally, we are not going to explain the following sentence, but listen to old-timers who have earned their grey hairs: Contraception takes the romance out of love and marriage.

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†AMDG S. Martin de Porres Apostolate smdeporres@gmail.com