In case you haven't guessed, they don't like us...

From letters to The Age in the last few days:

"Is part of the Centacare employment contract that only hypocrites be engaged?" - Patricia Watkinson, Hawthorn East

"A Catholic friend of mine desirous of joining the Citizens Advice Bureau...was subsequently told that his services would not be required. This was, to my mind, as it should be." - Jim Banks, Yarrawonga.

"Like Eva Cox and many others, I am disgusted that a man with strong Catholic beliefs is in a postion in our Government where his religion could influence the lives of thousands of people. ...The rising number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions will never be curbed while people with these beliefs are in power." - Tess Abbott, Hamilton

"Why would anyone who was pregnant choose to seek advice from an organisation run by celibate men who believe in virgin birth?" - S.A. Malcolm, Cowes

"Catholics...forbid the use of condoms, [thus] killing mothers, fathers, children, whole families." - Julette Alexander, South Yarra

"A church that prohibits the use of condoms and contraceptive pills has forfeited its right to a say in the handling of unwanted pregnancies." - Lewis Winder, Sheffield, Tasmania

"Centacare, a Catholic organisation accepting Government funding and claiming to provide "non-judgemental" pregnancy counselling? Given the church's position on abortion, I wonder whether they are lying or just hypocritical." - Julie Bloom, North Fitzroy.

Well, there you are. So we can all feel quite safe in the knowledge that the secularist ideologues who desire to control Australia's social agenda will maintain a "non-judgemental" stance with regard to all their fellow men and women--except those lying hypocrites like you and me who belong to the Catholic Church.

Strange, isn't it, that the heinous crime Centacare, Tony Abbott, the Catholic Church, and the Australian Government are all being accused of is wanting to offer help and assistance to pregnant women who request it--help that might empower them to be able to make the decision to keep their child, rather than be pressured into an abortion.

Indeed, the pro-abortion ("pro-choice") lobby have a very strange idea of what it means to be free. Not even they could suggest that a woman might, as a celebration of her liberty, chose to become pregnant just to experience the joy of an abortion. Women do not have abortions because they are "free" or "unpressured". The "abortion-option" is only ever chosen precisely because the unborn child is experienced either as an intolerable limitation of the mother's freedom or as an unbearable increase to a situation which already characterised by an intolerable lack of liberty.

I am reminded of the scene in Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal", where the Patrician offers the hapless con-artist von Lipwig the job of Postmaster General in preference to the sentence of death by hanging. (The last eight Postmasters all died horrible and mysterious deaths). Von Lipwig objects "You leave me no choice!", to which the Patrician says "There is always a choice. You can take the job, or hang."

There is one thing that Centacare will do that no pro-abortion counselling service will do. Centacare will offer real physical and emotional ongoing support to the women who come to them, whether they decide to keep their child or decide for an abortion, because the Church has an obligation to love all people in all circumstances.