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Perth: Archbishop Barry Hickey laments lost fathers

Filed under: General — Vman @ 8:04 pm Wed 10th December 2008

THE absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem in our society, according to Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey.

Delivering his pre-Christmas message on Friday, Archbishop Hickey said the absence of dads was a bigger problem than drugs.

“If Father Christmas was offering me gifts, I would ask for peace in every family and a father at the heart of every family,” he said.

“The absence of fathers is the biggest family and social problem we face today. It is the biggest cause of lifelong difficulties for fathers, mothers and, most of all, for children.

“The absence of fathers is bigger than anger, aggression, alcohol, drugs, crime and under-achievement by children because it is the biggest single contributor to all of them.

9 Comments »

  1. Thanks for this Dave, good work.

    Comment by Hans Laven — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 1:06 pm

  2. This is excellent Dave, thank you. I won’t say it comes too late as better late than never. The main thing is that people face up to feminist bigotry and state the obvious: that single mother families are a disaster for the whole of society and are the cause of social problems, not the solution.

    Comment by Andrew — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 1:52 pm

  3. Thanks guys.
    Sometimes seems it is only the religious leaders who are willing to speak up about this. Although that has a lot to do with who the media choose to report.

    Comment by Dave — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 3:02 pm

  4. The article notes that homosexual groups criticized the Archbishop’s message because it promoted “nuclear” families rather than “celebrating a diverse range of families”. They claimed the gender of a child’s parents wasn’t important, and essentially they appear to dispute that biological fathers are important in rearing children. Unfortunately, the research does not support their claim.

    I am by no means homophobic but this outburst from the Perth lot does suggest they have some agenda to destroy the biological family unit. Their position seems primarlity concerned with their own rights and interests rather than the interests of children or the wider society that our children will constitute.

    Comment by Hans Laven — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 4:02 pm

  5. (victim of Christchurch family court speaking)

    It is about time.

    I believe the church in general is all about sin this sin that. It is way far removed from the daily problems of people.

    Absence of fathers could be interpreted as fathers not wanting to be with their families when most absent fathers have been the result of treachery and brute force from the justice system (family court) .They are removed from their houses by force and their kids kidnapped from them with the assistance of social and justice agencies.

    The forced absent fathers are then asked to beggar themselves to maintain the cool solo ‘present’ mums.

    Comment by tren — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 5:31 pm

  6. You are absolutely right Hans. Feminism is not only an inherently dishonest political movement, it is in essence a homosexual movement. While New Zealanders are probably the most tolerant people in the world, the feminists try to pretend that just because the gay lifestyle is not being readily accepted as the family norm with multiple partners and short term relationships that this is an attack on them personally. The fact of the matter is that men, like women, are not all that interested in putting their energy into bringing up other men’s children. There are also serious emotional issues around children from single mother families that plague them and their future partners

    Comment by Andrew — Thu 11th December 2008 @ 5:38 pm

  7. There’s going to be another kind of absence of fathers that will hugely empower men.
    The silence from feminists who know that women have 11 birth control method and men only three (two of which deplete a man’s enjoyment – condom or withdrawal, the third vasectomy rendering him infertile) is ABSOLUTELY HUGE.
    Talk about hearing a pin drop!

    Fear not brethren.
    The tables are about to turn 180%.
    Worried about getting a woman pregnant and having your child UNILATERALLY aborted by her?
    Worried she’ll kick you to the curb and ride your back for 18 years of child support?
    Worried she screw around and claim you’re the father?

    Check out the link here.
    Punch it into your search engine and ……….SMILE…….

    VIVA LA REVOLUTIONE as they say in Brasil…….

    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=yHt0K7OMjNc&feature=related

    Comment by Skeptik — Wed 17th December 2008 @ 9:45 pm

  8. That You Tube video sounds really promising. Unfortunately it didn’t address the already known concerns about this drug. It’s possible Brazil has over come some of these issues but the video doesn’t mention it.

    Here is some historical information (I don’t know how reliable this information is):
    Source: http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/lookup/encyclopedia/go/Gossypol.html

    Gossypol is a polyphenol C30H30O8 derived from the cottonseed plant (genus Gossypium, family Malvaceae) used as a male oral contraceptive in China. Its efficacy is comparable to the female birth control pill.

    A 1929 investigation in Jiangxi showed correlation between low fertility in males and use of crude cottonseed oil for cooking. The compound causing the contraceptive effect was determined to be gossypol.

    In the 1970s, the Chinese government began researching the use of gossypol as a contraceptive. Their studies involved over 10,000 subjects, and continued for over a decade. They concluded that gossypol provided reliable contraception, could be taken orally as a tablet, and did not upset men’s balance of hormones.

    However, gossypol also had serious flaws. Between 5 and 25 percent of the men remained azoospermic up to a year after stopping treatment. The longer the men had taken the drug and the higher their overall dosage, the more likely the men were to have lowered fertility or to become completely infertile.

    The studies also discovered an abnormally high rate of hypokalemia[?] among subjects. Hypokalemia — low blood potassium levels — is usually the result of kidney malfunction and causes symptoms of fatigue, muscle weakness, and at its most extreme, paralysis. In addition, about 7% of subjects reported effects on their digestive system, and about 12% increased fatigue. Most subjects recovered after stopping treatment and taking potassium supplements. A later study showed that taking potassium supplements during gossypol treatment did not prevent hypokalemia in primates.

    In 1986, the Chinese stopped research because of these side effects. In the mid-1990s, the Brazilian pharmaceutical company Hebron announced plans to market a low-dose gossypol pill called Nofertil, but the pill never came to market. Its release has been indefinitely postponed due to unacceptably high rates of permanent infertility. Trials involving multiple years of use have consistently reported sterility rates of 10 to 20%.

    In 1998, the World Health Organization’s Research Group on Methods for the Regulation of Male Fertility recommended that research should be abandoned. In addition to the other side effects, the WHO researchers were concerned about gossypol’s toxicity: the toxic dose in primates is less than 10 times the contraceptive dose. This report effectively ended further studies of gossypol as a temporary contraceptive, but research into using it as an alternative to vasectomy continues in Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, the Dominican Republic, and Nigeria.

    Comment by Dave — Wed 17th December 2008 @ 10:14 pm

  9. Thanks Dave,
    The additional information is useful.
    It’s great to know research is continuing into an oral contraceptive for men.
    That means it’s only a matter of time……..and given that the research is going on in so many different countries it stands an extremely high chance of being successful in it’s quest. it will be driven too by the knowledge that millions of men would like a safe reliable contraceptive alternative to out very small and nowadays pretty low tech methods of contraception for men.
    This is hugely hopeful as it will no doubt end women’s reproductive rights monopoloy.
    I urge all men to think this through and if like me you arrive at the same conclusion to push for it’s being brought to market and used despite the blocks I imagine many of the remaining feminists will try to place in it’s path.

    Comment by Skeptik — Thu 18th December 2008 @ 12:59 am

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