A show of hypocrisy
I have just finished reading The Altar Boys by Suzanne Smith in which she documents the appalling sexual abuse of children, mostly young boys in the Diocese of Maitland and the extensive cover-up by the church at all levels extending at least as far as Archbishops of the church.
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She also documents the high number of suicides among men who attended three schools in the Diocese; Marist Brothers Hamilton, Marist Brothers Maitland and St Pius X.
Sixty men born between 1959 and 1980 have taken their own lives.
On Thursday I opened The Border Mail to see on page 16 Father Brendan Lee's Thursday Thoughts "More than ever we need to ask RUOK?" Irony, hypocrisy, I nearly choked on my breakfast.
Father Lee is the priest who wrote an article in July this year titled 'Children are our future: we must look after them', and the same person who said he would rather go to prison than break the seal of the confessional.
Let's put that in blunt terms. If a person told him in the confessional they had sexually abused a child, Father Lee would not report that to the police.
Father Lee, I find that an utterly disgusting position and your words about suicide and mental health to be meaningless platitudes given your attitude and that of your church.
David Thurley (OAM), Lavington
IN OTHER NEWS:
City leaders don't get it
Let's be a bit sympathetic to our two Premiers, Daniel Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian.
It must be an enormously huge test for them to cope with this pandemic. And then too; Melbourne and Sydney are so very far away from us. They can't possibly know how well-oiled the fantastic cooperation on the border is between the vital services in health and education as well as in the farming communities.
They really don't seem to realise how damaging this border closure is for our region. Just look at the huge army of police that has been at the checkpoints to keep us apart. I can't help but think that this enormous workforce would have been much better used to cordon off the hotspots.
I for one would have felt much safer if no one from Melbourne could have come up here. Common sense that we normal citizens are using constantly was thrown into the "too hard basket". Unfortunately, politics and power has been used instead.
And I wonder whether it is known in Melbourne and Sydney that just recently Albury-Wodonga had no new cases for more than 60 days. Let's hope that soon a much better way is put in place to keep the spread of this fickle virus under lock and key.
Bri Pfeiffer, Wodonga
Heavy-handed approach
The recent arrest and handcuffing of a pregnant Ballarat woman at her own home, in front of her young children, is an absolute disgrace. She was not protesting in the public arena (as the BLM protesters were, who, without public approval, were not apprehended by police).
To me, it smells of a politically-motivated arrest. The police publicly defended the action, as one would expect, but the hand-cuffing seems totally unnecessary in a democratic society. Surely there are better ways of handling these incidents.