Greetings from Sydney, City of the Future!

G’day! I’m writing you from Tuesday, February 2, to let you know that the future is fine! We in Australia scout out tomorrow so that you guys in the US will have an idea of what to anticipate. Turns out the world will not be ending on February 1 (cuz it’s already tomorrow here). So that’s a relief and you can all breathe easier.

Yesterday began my running around Sydney (fun fact: “Sydney” is actually a contraction of “Sainte Denis”: so I’m in a city named for a saint. Who knew?). I bopped down to Notre Dame downtown and visited with the theology faculty there (including an American Sister of Mercy named Moira who was from the Bronx. Very nice to hear an American accent, especially one as pungent as that. We all had a good long chat about things ranging from Mary, to Joel Osteen, to Tim Powers novels and I had a lovely time. Then my handler for that day, a lovely young woman named Katrina, took me off to lunch and we chatted. Turns out she came to the US last October to visit an Aussie friend name Patrick Langrell who started the Theology on Tap here in Sydney and then got tapped (nyuk nyuk) by the Archdiocese of New York to do the same thing in the States.

So off she goes to see him. And when it’s time to enter the US and go through customs and all that they look at her passport and eye here warily, because her name is “Katrina” and her birthdate is September 11. Awkward! She was a lovely young woman with a great sense of humor.

After that, I came home and crashed for a bit, then it was off to Theology on Tap at PJ Gallaghers, a pub somewhere out west of Sydney. Sydney, like LA, more or less goes on and on, like a huge urban “blob” as Elise, the driver who took me to the pub, explained. People keep moving further away in order to afford housing and the city is gobbling up smaller towns around it. We drove a fur piece before we got to the pub, but that didn’t dissuade a huge crowd from turning up. Like nothing I’ve ever seen at a ToT. They were great and I came away thinking “The future looks very bright for the Church in Sydney” with a crowd (several hundred strong) of engaged and intelligent young adults who are very serious about their faith. So: Cheers, Sydney!

Today, I’ve got a couple of media interviews (one on the phone, one for a local Italian TV thing called “Telepace” (Tell A Pa Chay). Then, this evening, I’m giving a talk at the Mustard Seed bookshop about Mary, Mother of the Son.

I’ve still got stuff to work on so I have to keep this short, but I wanted to mention a couple of things.

First, a reader writes:

My wife and I went to our first ultrasound today and are pretty sure we just experienced our third miscarriage in the past year and a half. Please pray for a miracle or barring that, healing for our wounded hearts.

Father, hear our prayer for this family and grant them the gift of a child or, if that not be your will, that they would have the strength and consolation of your Spirit in this time of loss. We ask this through your Son Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for them! Amen.

Second, another reader who has asked for prayer in adopting a Haitian child ponders:

Thank you for posting the prayer request…we are still pushing through bureacracy. It is a challenge.

One other thought…and maybe you could help and respond if I am off base…but I have just reflected on the common sermon theme in which we are reminded we never know when Christ will come. Often, the direct allusion is to the fact we will never know when we will die and hopefully meet Christ in mercy, however, occasionally, when offered at the end of the liturgical year, one is given references to the coming of Christ in glory, with soft allusions to the “I told you so” nature of the apocalyptic descriptions of the “Left Behind” series.

Maybe there is another option.

We should think of Haiti as Christ come to us again. The question is, and the feeling is universally trepidatious on this matter: we are not ready. Indulging in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and coming off a spend and borrowing spree with an economic hangover likely to persist years, we are not ready to meet Christ. We are beyond our ability to assist in this as we fully should. We cannot fully be committed, with our military or our economic assistance.

When we reflect on the “we will never know when Christ will come,” maybe we (I) need to be ready for the Christ who will come to me in the poor. Which is a common reference to how he will come to us in the Gospels anyway.

What do you think of these thoughts?

I think you are pretty much on the money. God have mercy on us.

Another reader notes: “You know your cause is sinking when the headline reads: “Bin Laden Blasts U.S. for Climate Change”.” What’s next? “Bin Laden: “Grammy should have gone to Backstreet Boys!” Vows vengeance.”

Speaking of our Civilizational Struggle: here’s a prescient piece on how we have, quite needlessly, tossed our own civilization in the crapper in our Generation Narcissus cowardice. In six short years we have passed from embracing torture “only in desperate situations like ticking time bombs” to torture even when the guy is already spilling the beans. Why? Because torture was *never* about getting information. It’s about taking vengeance. Proof? When you point out that the most efficient way of getting information is to torture, not the suspect, but his family, the torture advocate say, “But they are innocent!” In short, torture is for punishment of people we are pretty sure are bad.

The thing is, we’ve already tortured plenty of innocents because torture is typically done, not to people we know are guilty, but to people we suspect might be guilty. And the thing also is, once Americans (filled with the desire for vengeance for 9/11) establish torture as policy in order to slake that anger, the time will come when some soulless bureaucrat will take that policy and start to use it “efficiently” and not merely as a sop for our temporary culture of rage at jihadis. Then indeed we shall see women and children hauled into the Interrogation Facilities in order to “motivate” suspected miscreants of all shapes and sizes—not merely jihadis and not merely criminals, but anti-socials like, oh, “conservative Christians” and “prolifers” and all manner of dangers to the comfort of Caesar.

Which reminds me, Tom Kreitzberg has a special post For Adults Only (wink wink) over on his site.

In other news, farewell to Ralph McInerny. He was a good man and a fine Catholic and scholar (and a dab hand at the mystery genre). He will be sorely missed.

Finally, I’m blogging a bit about my trip Down Under over at the Register. Also, I’m starting a little series about the Hail Mary (the prayer, not the football strategy) over at Inside Catholic. Sorry I can’t do more but they are keeping me hopping down here.

Gotta jet!