ALLAN WILKINS
Springvale
Church culpable
F R Halpin's back with this strangely worded question for me: "Can a community grow with self-murder [he means suicide but prefers his own type of offensive arch-Catholic rhetoric] being a rule of thumb?"
I'd like to help him out with some facts and figures about at least one cause of NZ's tragically high rate of suicide, which brings lifelong grief to so many families and friends of those who cannot bear to face another day.
I hope the NZ Catholic church succeeds in its plea to undergo the scrutiny of the pending NZ Government inquiry into historical abuse of children in state care. Meanwhile,
Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse ran for five years before reporting last year. It noted that of the 1880 alleged perpetrators from within the Catholic Church, 572 were priests. Of sexual abuse survivors who gave evidence in the private sessions 19.8 per cent said they had suicidal thoughts and 16.4 per cent said they had attempted suicide.
Australian child protection charity Bravehearts reported in 2015 that the suicide rate among young people who had experienced sexual abuse was 10.7 to 13 times higher than national suicide rates.
It also said the risk of adults dying by suicide increased up to 12-fold if they had been abused in their childhood.
One typical survivor of priestly abuse as a child gave evidence of friends and classmates who had committed suicide, from the age of 13 to adulthood. He said: "It feels like wave after wave of the kids dying from the 1970s until now."
Like all those whose suffering drives them to contemplate suicide, these abuse victims need love, kindness, understanding and professional therapy. They don't deserve to read vicious word games.
CAROL WEBB
Whanganui
Make it Kiwi
Call me what you like, but make it Kiwi!
Rob Rattenbury (Chronicle, Letters March 7) has evoked a similar view to my own, as have others to whom I have spoken.
Identified as Maori because of the colour of my skin, I would jokingly blame it on "pirates"? To the Census question, I write New Zealander under "Other" not NZ European/Pakeha. Recent ancestral research has found no "Pakeha", a term I see as demeaning and erroneous.
To my amazement, it shows not only do my bloodlines stretch to English, Irish and French but also Prince Philip's father, the King of Greece, Princess Olga Romanov, and Alexandra, wife of Nicholas I of Russia.
That does not make me "royal". I kneel only to the New Zealand flag. There should be no ethnic nor skin colour assignation to describe who I am. And if we are really all born equal here, it is time to delete this racism — or does it really mean entitlement to special privilege?
KEN CRAFAR
Durie Hill
Logic queried
Russ Hay's letter in reply to K A Benfell is well researched and articulate and may seem plausible to some. Some counterpoints readers might consider:
First, no need to smear the Catholic church; they are better at it than Russ is.
Second, the Christian anti-abortion position does not depend on that Church's proclamations anyhow.
Third, the Christian anti-abortion position does not depend on what happens at conception, or the physical survival of that conceived.
Fourth, the way in which the soul is generated has little bearing on whether it exists or not.
The unashamedly religious position of the Christian is that life is sacrosanct. It is so because God made man in His own image. The value of life therefore, is set beyond the reach of mankind so that he might not tinker with it to suit himself.
The faith position of the atheist, though, rules out moral absolutes, so he cannot consistently hold anything sacred, not even his own life. Without fixed moral parameters he becomes an advocate of death (abortion/euthanasia/assisted suicide).
Ironically, Russ cannot avoid the very thing he accuses Mr Benfell of; that is, using science as a "semantic springboard" to justify his own position.
Whereas the empirical method observes, tests, and concludes with respect to material things that can be seen and tested, Russ concludes purely on the basis of what has not been seen. He states, "No one has ever seen one [a soul], measured one, touched or felt one. Logical, Mr Benfell?"
Well, if there were more evidence than Russ was willing to consider, it may very well be logical and Russ' intransigence illogical. The empirical method, self-limiting as it is to observable matter, is the wrong tool to use in determining the answer to the question posed.
But, as I said before, I seriously doubt that the use of empiricism was ever intended to prove anything conclusively but simply to lend an air of authority to Russ' faith position.
JOHN HAAKMA
Wanganui
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