Lá Fíneáil agus Shona Naomh Pádraig libh go léir
                  A fine and Happy St Patrick's day to you all.

We'll be celebrating this great day with a few green beers and a dance at our local parish hall. And we'll be clad in green, of course.

St Patrick was famed in Ireland even before he arrived. His coming was predicted
by two druids named Lochia and Luchat Mael who told King Laeghairé:

"A Tailcenn will come over the raging sea,
With his perforated garment, his crook-headed staff,
With his table at the cast end of his house,
And all his people will answer 'Amen, Amen.'"

The day he arrived was a bad day for the snakes and toads to be sure!

Australia has a right to turn back people smuggling boats.

Another day, another boat.

Australia has every right to turn back Indonesian boats engaged in people smuggling despite the protests of Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

Mr Natelegawa yesterday claimed towing back people smuggling vessels would be an exercise in burden shifting.

Really? I would be interested to hear what he calls Indonesia's failure to keep its boats out of Australia's territorial waters?

Would he hold the same objection if we were to tow home illegal fishing vessels? It's not the towing of the boats that concerns Natalegawa but the return of the passengers.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott pulled no punches in replying to Mr Natelegawa on Channel Nine this morning.

“Let's not forget these are Indonesian flagged, Indonesian crewed, Indonesian home-ported vessels that are coming from Indonesia. Of course they can go back to Indonesia. They've done it before, they can do it again.”

As expected our pitiable and apologetic Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, couldn't wait to surrender our sovereignty to criminals.

“We've heard from the navy that it's dangerous,” he said on Sky News. “We've seen the documents from Border Protection Command that it's dangerous.”

Is it really? I would have thought that defending the nation was a potentially dangerous profession. It's not as if fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is not dangerous but we do that. And that is not even in direct defence of our borders.

I really don't know how Bowen can force himself to make such stupid remarks. It can't be that he believes them.

The Shadow Minister for Immigration Scott Morrison made perfect sense saying that the "Australian government's policies will be determined by the Australian government".

"If the Coalition is elected having clearly stated this policy, then it will be implemented," Mr Morrison told The Australian newspaper.

"At the end of the day, any nation's border-protection policies are a matter for that nation."

That's the way world works and only the lefty nuff nuff's in the ALP and The Greens would argue about it

Obama may regret assault on Catholics

Barack Obama may live to regret his assault on the religious rights of American Catholics through his Health and Human Services Mandate which forces health insurance plans cover female sterilization and contraceptives (including abortifacients) free of charge.

Attorneys general from a dozen states say they intend to sue over the mandate that requires religious employers to violate the teachings of their faith.

In a Feb. 10 letter, the attorneys general voiced their “strong opposition” to the mandate, which they called “an impermissible violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment virtually unparalleled in American history.”

They said that if the mandate is implemented, they are prepared to “vigorously oppose it in court.”

Already 180 American Catholic bishops have spoken out against the mandate and and two organisations have already issued law suits.

The organisation Catholic Vote today filed a law suit on behalf of manufacturer, Frank O'Brien, who employs 87 people.

The director of Catholic Vote, Brian Burch, says the Health and Human Services mandate seeks to define which groups are religious and which are not and is proof that Barack Obama does not believe religious freedom is a foundational freedom for every American.

Mr Burch says the mandate invents arbitrary rules claiming that businesses like Mr. O'Brien's deserve no protection whatsoever because they are not religious organisations. However it could force Mr O'Brien out of business and his employees out of work.

Catholic vote is the second Catholic organisation to sue the HHS over the mandate. The media network EWTN has already filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama, seeking to block government agencies from implementing the rule. The case asks the court to find the rule unconstitutional.

The attack on the rights of Catholics is an assault by Obama on a significant segment of his power base. More than 50 per cent of Catholic voters supported him at the last Presidential election.

Bolt, the gay apologist!

Andrew Bolt, the conservatives conservative is fast becoming Australia's leading homosexual apologist.

Today he has again attacked Catholic independent MP Bob Katter for an election advertisement opposing the redefinition of marriage to include homosexual relationships.

The hypocrisy Bolt shows in this respect is astounding. Katter's ad is tame compared to the reference materials on homosexuality given to year 10 students.

In fact as one of the respondents to Bolt's blog has observed the image he claims is "hinting at gays being paedophiles is the actual image the gay lobby used on billboards around Brisbane to promote and lobby for gay adoption/marriage."

Howzat! Mr Bolt is cleanbowled by a reader who is probably another of those homophobic bigots he loves to hate!

But is Katter's ad actually hateful? It seems not. Channel 10 ran an interview this morning with the photographer who took the picture featured in the ad. Firstly he does not consider the ad homophobic and what is more he took the photo as part of a pro gay marriage campaign in France.

There you have it. According to Bolt what is not a homophobic photograph when it is used to support gay marriage is unforgivably homophobic when it's used to oppose it.  Sheer nonsense. Eyewash even.

Bolt is alienating his audience fast. Earlier this week his attack on Christian belief and his intimation that Christians have a literal belief in the Genesis creation stories cost him supporters. At that time I took the charitable view allowing that he may have been searching for faith. Now I suspect his confessed agnosticism is firming into atheism.

I wrote on Tuesday: "Thus he is on a quest to find God or to dispense with Him entirely. Upon the results of this search depends the future of his conservative views."

Bolt is not a social conservative and probably never has been. But the wow factor which had conservatives flocking to his banner is now becoming a yuk factor. Today he called one of the men in the picture under discussion "beautiful." Extremely inappropriate. Generally beautiful has a feminine usage when used as a noun to describe human beings, unless perhaps it is being used by a homosexual.

Odd is an excellent noun to describe Andew Bolt.

He has demanded Bob Katter apologise for the ad. "Until he apologises, I’ll assume he’s proud to be a bigot."

That's fine. I and a lot of other people will assume Bolt is bigoted against anyone who stands in defence of marriage despite his protestations.

He's not above censoring his blog and on this occasion he has blocked a number of posts that no one could call offensive.

He's a bit out there, is Andrew Bolt.

Bunter Downunder

YAROOH...................
"I say you fellows" my 16 year old son and I have been enjoying a non-stop feast of laughter for the past couple of weeks reading in Kindle format on my iPad 2 every Billy Bunter book ever written.

They're available for free these days now that more than 50 years has passed since the death of Bunter author, Charles Hamilton, better known as Frank Richards.

The adventures of the irrepressible, highly cunning yet obtuse fat owl of The Greyfriars Remove, and his long suffering classmates including Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Frank Nugent, Johnny Bull and Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, Smithy, Toddy, Mauly and the rest are amazing for their ability to raise your mood.

I read many of them in my early teens and loved them then. I love then even more now. They have a timeless appeal that transports you to a much better place with every turn of a page.

In the words of Greyfriars School's old gatekeeper, Gosling, wot I says is this ere....... if you want to join in the fun go to Friardale's Billy Bunter.

The only books I loved as much as a kid were Steele Rudd's Selection yarns, Henry Lawson's short stories and the ballads of Banjo Paterson, many of which I could recite by the age of 10.

The great thing about the Bunter stories is that they appeal to all age groups. So to quote the remarkable Hurree Jamset Ram Singh.......... "my esteemed and ridiculous readers if you chancefully visit the Friardale site and download a book you shall be gladfully happy and your gladfullness will be absolutefully preposterous."

IVF Outrage

Where is the outage against this nauseating
IVF Australia advertisement?

IVF clinics are now touting for homosexual sperm donors to father children for lesbian women.

IVF clinics seeking gay business

It is as I have long feared. As far back as the mid-1980's it was clear to me that IVF was not about assisting childless couples but more about experimentation with early human life and social engineering.

This news is incredibly disturbing. It is no less than the creation of children as fashion accessories. Children are en vogue with the gay set.

The advertising campaign which includes print, digital and radio, will run in media outlets allied to the Pink Media Group sales house.

The sub headline gives a fair indication of IVF Australia's lack of respect for human life.

"You can put all your eggs in one basket." It's not cute. It's foul, indecent and extremely disturbing.

As you would expect of them homosexual men are flattered by the attention. The managing director of Pink Media Group Ben Mulcahy said they were delighted to be "assisting in creating lives. It is great to have IVF Australia welcoming the gay and lesbian community.”

I read that as delight in being able to exploit children because that is what it is.

The creation of children to lesbians via AID, deliberately depriving those children of father's is not only wrong, it is evil. It is exploitation.

It will also become a legal nightmare. It won't be long there will be long queues of homosexual men lining up at the Family Court seeking legal recognition of their fatherhood and access to their children.

Those who don't know where their sperm went will be taking legal action against IVF clinics to find out or agitating for changes to the law to allow them to find their children. Later on children will be seeking their fathers.

One wonders whether those who decriminalised homosexual activity would have done so if they'd had a crystal ball?

In related news a casual ABC presenter has been taken off-air for providing the voice-over for The Australian Party's anti gay marriage ad.

Suzanne McGill who worked for regional local radio in Western Australia was supposedly dismissed for failing to obtain permission for external voice-over as allegedly required by ABC policy.

I do not believe that policy applies to casual employees. Ms McGill is being punished for the content of the ad's voiceover.

The nightmare has begun.

The dubiety of Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt is a conservative with reservations. Firstly, because he has problems with the morality underpinning true conservative political and social views.

His main problem is with homosexuality. He wants to protect the exclusivity of marriage and preserve it as a union between a man and a woman. But he also wants to equate homosexual couplings with heterosexual relationships.

In the midst of this confusion Bolt also loves western civilisation. He desperately wants to save it. But his personal conflict arises yet again. Homosexual activism is one of the big threats to our western cultural heritage.

The essence of Andrew Bolt's dilemma is the very foundation of conservative morality. He is intelligent enough to realise that morality is built on nothing and is therefore meaningless if there is no ultimate moral authority. Thus he is on a quest to find God or to dispense with Him entirely. Upon the results of this search depends the future of his conservative views.

Bolt's search for God took a blow recently with his reading of Robin Lane Fox's The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible.

He is concerned today with apparent contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus and also between the creation stories in the Book of Genesis.

Which Genesis story should a Christian believe?

The answer is, of course, both or neither. I doubt your salvation depends upon one or the other. Genesis is not intended to be believed in a literal sense. It is a myth written to illustrate a truth. Myth is vital to our understanding and appreciation of truth.

Bolt, in his quest to save western civilisation must learn to identify the difference between form and substance.

In the early 1900's Robert Hugh Benson, a Catholic convert, wrote a book called The Lord of the World. This book hypothesises an apparently benign Masonic-Communist takeover of the western world. To maintain control, the Mason-Communists introduce a secularized version of the Catholic mass so that the people can worship the community. “England had found its worship once more—the necessary culmination of unimpeded subjectivity,” Benson wrote, taking the viewpoint of a Mason.

"It moved around no disputable points; there was no possibility of divergent political tendencies to mar its success, no over-insistence on citizenship, labor, and the rest, for those who were secretly individualistic and idle. Life was the one fount and center of it all, clad in the gorgeous robes of ancient worship. Of course the thought had been Felsenburgh’s, though a German name had been mentioned. It was Positivism of a kind, Catholicism without Christianity, Humanity worship without its inadequacy. It was not man that worshipped but the Idea of man, deprived of his supernatural principle. Sacrifice, too, was recognized—the instinct of oblation without the demand made by transcendent Holiness upon the blood-guiltiness of man."

That mock Mass might even do Andrew Bolt for a time making it appear that the West has retained the foundations of its civilisation. He would soon find out how wrong a conclusion that is. Benson's service is form without substance.

The foundation of the west is faith in God, who is our moral authority and the author of life. Without Him there is no western civilisation and if Bolt decides in favour of atheism he had better start mourning the loss of all he purports to love.

J.R.R.Tolkien said this:

It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labour he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted. It seems vain to add to the litter. Who can design a new leaf? The patterns from bud to unfolding, and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago.

This is entirely true of Fox's book which has so disturbed Andrew Bolt today. Fox has not designed a new leaf. Everything he has written was discovered by other men long ago and was furthermore answered by them.

Tolkien perceives Christianity as the one literal myth.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospel contains a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels–peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy.

The fate of Western civilisation is bound up with the fate of Christianity. The story continues beyond us.