And in the face of such a desolate statistic and reality , a tentative sense of hope is created at the very fact that this report was asked for.  We only ask for information when we know there is a problem and are generally ready to hear the answer.

That there is a problem is clear.  Are we ready to engage, however, with the difficult tensions that must be held to find a way through to stop this suffering?  That is a whole other question.

That makes me most anxious is seeing the report measure suffering against economic viability.  How much money is well being worth?  How much is the alleviation of suffering worth?  Are we really so lost or morally deficient that economic viability is the only factor we consider?

Where is our dignity?

How much must our young ones suffer before we say enough is enough.

Improving the Transitions for Adolescents, an extensive report compiled by an eminent group of researchers after reviewing the relevant literature, advises lawmakers that their job is to ‘strike a balance between protecting young people from harm and allowing them enough freedom to learn from their mistakes’.  A balancing act most parents will already be familiar with.

Whilst there is no new earth shattering news to report, the group may be hoping that, at the very least, the government heeds the recommendation that interventions must be evidence based rather than as the result of advocacy from pressure groups.

Evidence though, can come in a variety of forms.  Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, argue that what they call our broken societies and economies result not from the problems of any particular individual or group, but from the growth of inequality.

Take mental health for instance, a significant focus for the Improving the Transition group.  The Spirit Level shows that a much higher percentage of the population suffer from mental illness in countries where there is income inequality and New Zealand is high on this list.

Income inequality, where there are huge gaps between rich and poor, is a difficult issue to face when we have swallowed whole the notion of the individual being largely responsible for determining their own destiny.  It is tantamount to saying that the way we have been structuring society is fundamentally flawed.

Entertaining this idea leads to an examination of what constitutes a reasonable life for everyone, not just those that can fend for themselves through difficult times.  It raises questions about the authenticity of scapegoating groups that we consider particularly troublesome instead of considering that we might all be part of the problem.  A politically risky undertaking for any government.

Instead, what normally happens is that the problems of a particular group are highlighted, in this case youth.  Taskforces are formed, research undertaken and reports produced in the hope that their problems can be solved outside of the driving issue of inequality.

Wilkinson and Pickett say, ‘The unstated hope is that people – particularly the poor – can carry on in the same circumstances, but will somehow no longer succumb to mental illness, teenage pregnancy, educational failure, obesity or drugs’. (p239)

Being not right in the head is often solved for teenagers as they age and their brains develop.  Being not right in the head as a society takes longer to fix.

My response was “ Thank goodness commonsense prevailed.”  There is no moral obligation to continue supernormal ways of prolonging life.  It would be a totally different situation if he was denied natural food and medicine in the normal mode of intake.  But this was a case of halting  surgery to insert a piece of medical technology enabling him to get nourishment which caused him further pain.  As the Judge noted, “ it would prolong the dying period when death is closing in.”

My prayer is for his mother who has been torn apart in her love and care and concern.    She commented how you always want the best for your children. And during this terrible illness  her every breath has been dedicated to them

“Out of love,  you want them with you.  Out of love you want their pain gone.”  I pray she will receive the love and support  she so greatly needs.

• we cannot control everything in our lives
• modern medicine does not always have a cure
• death is the ultimate passage for each one of us

The overarching principle must be respect for life.

But we need laws to support the decision to withhold treatment. The bar must be set high: to avoid inflicting suffering which will not result in recovery. If the suffering of the family becomes one of the criteria, this may lead to a form of euthanasia. Hard, hard facts.

Even for us believers, it is almost impossibly difficult when faced with the death of a child, to accept that the purpose of our life is to know and love God, and be happy with God in all eternity.

We are in God’s hands; we believe we are not separated for ever. Can we find the strength to be happy for the dying person, who has gone to his or her true fulfilment?

Prayer

Dear Lord, have pity on these little ones who suffer mortal illness. Give their parents the courage to accept your Will and let their children go.

To answer this question we have only to think about what happened in another area of technology…the loss of the XT network in late 2009. Businesses at that time reckoned they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. For many the loss of phone access (remember mobile phones  also access the internet) meant the cessation of business for an extended time.

So, the simple answer is yes, we do need ultra fast broadband to progress in the 21^st century.

The good thing from my point of view in this piece of news is the assistance being offered to schools so that learning can take another step into the future. Learning is changing so quickly and if we want to succeed as a nation in today’s global village we need to be hooked into e-learning which is burgeoning in our world today. Smaller schools are struggling to keep up with technology costs so this government contribution will help them leap into the future more quickly.

Of concern is the trimming of the overall Research and Development  portfolio funding. New Zealanders are known to have a tremendous creativity and an ability to do a lot with a piece of Number 8 wire. Try googling NZ inventions.  But again, to stay abreast of 21^st century movement we need devoted researchers and developers to systematically apply this creativity. Cutting their funding inevitably means cutting their numbers.

All this sits within the framework of recovery in Christchurch and the cost of that, not just to government but to private entities. Who of us would envy the decision makers in this area?

Let’s pray that our decision makers have wisdom and compassion while looking to the future.

In an age where the gap between rich and poor in New Zealand is steadily widening, the government has a duty to not just implement new technology that will benefit the rich, but even to target it primarily at those who are so often left out of our thinking. We hear a lot about India’s rapid economic progress, but much less about the fact that there are millions of youth in India who just can’t find a job

Brazil has the goal of giving every school-age child a personal wi-fi lap-top, and to this end has entered into a contract with a major computer firm to manufacture a computer that is a distinctive colour and size and will not be sold commercially. This whole commitment is solely aimed at poor children.

At the moment anyone can access the internet in public libraries. This at least gives the possibility of being part of the IT age to those willing to make the effort to go to the library. However we now hear even this is threatened by new legislation which could take a public library to court if someone (unknown) was downloading material for which they did not have the appropriate licence. Another example of how so many things, unwittingly, are slanted to benefit the well-off, who do not need to go to public libraries for internet access. How ironic if the effect of UFB was to remove what little internet access they presently have, from our New Zealand poor.

Any death by shooting is a tragedy but this seems doubly so. Whatever happened there are two broken families and two children without a mother. There is a reaching out from the accused man’s family to the family of the dead woman. In the midst of tragedy there is an attempt at human healing.

What the background to all this has yet to be revealed. However we can see that in the midst of a tragic death there is grace and goodness. The family of the accused is assisting the dead woman’s family with the funeral arrangements. The accused man is described as sobbing in the cells. Whatever his exterior bravado might have been is not the whole story.

While recognizing that a wrong has been done, and family lives changed for ever, there is also the human development of the accused man. What will become of him? Are they sobs of repentance? Sobs of shock? Sobs of shame? Sobs of lostness in the face of the wheels of the police and judicial systems? Sobs of fear at what will become of him?

Throw him in prison for as long as possible many might say. Is that any real answer to the tragedy here? Purely punitive approaches do not bring the wider healing needed

On the one hand we have the shooting which is said to have taken place during a domestic incident on Sunday afternoon – perhaps in the heat of an argument – and on the other, there is the inevitable poverty that comes with young parents and children compounded by relentless cuts in benefits.

There will be many other factors – the 26-year-old man charged with the crime allegedly had no firearms licence, the 23-year-old victim had an ‘older’ son which suggests her parenting started when she was probably still in need of parenting herself.

In the week in which this story appeared in the media, Child Poverty Action Group economist Susan St John is reported to have said that the government has removed gift duty but introduced what is effectively a gift duty for the poor. The changes aim to protect the Working for Families (WFF) tax credit scheme from ‘well-off cheats hiding assets in trusts’. But if a grandmother regularly pays for daycare, this payment will affect the family’s ability to claim WFF.

At the same time the government has announced it will stop funding a self-defence course for girls in schools throughout the country. In the past 16 years, 77,000 12-year-olds have learned how to keep themselves safe from violence and sexual abuse. One teacher says a quarter of girls are abused before they reach 16; the percentage rises to 30 in Maori communities. Other cuts target adult education.

What are we doing to our families when we remove the aids that have helped level out the playing field. In 2005 police recorded a total of 56,000 incidents of family violence. Three years later this statistic had risen to 72,000.

Is it any wonder that New Zealand does so badly in terms of family violence alongside other OECD countries?

I feel for the young man who sobbed in his cell. He is probably just as much a victim as his dead partner.

The contrast between what we say we want and what we do irritates at an individual level most days. A white lie here, a cover up of behaviour we’re not proud of there are the inconsistencies of human existence. To see these enacted on the international stage makes us uncomfortable, as the Archbishop of Canterbury said this week.

Freddy edged up to his mum looking for the comfort her lap would provide. She held him close, breathing in his boy scent. This was her testosterone-fuelled rocket in the making who needed more than political side stepping right now.

‘You know that time when you were hitting Ben in the backyard because he’d tried to hurt you?’

‘Yeah’, he mumbled as she stroked his hair.

‘And you went on hitting and hitting even when I told you to stop?’

‘Mmm.’

‘What did you tell me about how it made you feel?’

‘It was awesome, cos I felt like I’d made him hurt for what he’d done to me.

‘And we talked about how there were other ways to fix problems didn’t we?’

‘Yep and then I got grounded and felt like it was kind of unfair seeing as he started it.’

Mary laughed. ‘Honey, you’ve no idea how much you sounded like the President of the United States just then.’

‘But mum that’s different. He’s the President. Can’t he do anything he wants?’

‘No he can’t. There are laws in the world that we’re all meant to go along with and if we break them we can be called to a court to explain our actions. A bit like we try and do at home when things go wrong. Everyone gets to tell their story and then we decide on what happens.’

‘Did the Osama man break those rules?’

‘Yes Freddy, he did and the right thing was to get him to court to explain why he hurt other people.’

‘Then why didn’t the President take him to court mum?’

‘I don’t know Freddy’, Mary replied. He slipped off her lap, content for now until the next confusing adult assault on his worldview.

Explaining to kids the irrationality of adult behaviour is challenging but in Obama’s case it’s almost an impossibility as the killing looks, according to Geoffrey Robertson, QC, ‘increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination order by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”’.

The innovative Huffington Post looked at the question by asking a small sampling of American primary grade teachers how they decided to handle the rights or wrongs of his killing with their young charges.  It was interesting to read how they attempted to provide information and process class discussions without undue indoctrination or emotion.

President Obama in a somber and non vengeful manner announced that Bin Laden’s death was the end result of a firefight.  This indicated that death rather than capture was the only option. He concluded with the words “… one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”  His demeanour was in contrast to the jubilation and delight of crowds across the United States.

Yet the fact remains that an unarmed man was killed in cold blood rather than captured and tried under the rule of law.  Was that the lesser of two evils?   Would his capture have resulted in greater retribution and terror than his killing would undoubtedly cause?  Mainstream Christian leaders, Catholic and Protestant, have been cautious in their comment.  While they have condemned terror and Bin Laden’s atrocities, I haven’t seen one public statement from them that the killing was morally wrong. Was it?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in dealing with the question of crime and punishment under the heading ‘Legitimate Defence’, tends to be somewhat nuanced and open to different interpretations.  But it states: “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.” (2267)

St Paul writes “Never try to get revenge; leave that my friends to God’s anger. As scripture says: Vengeance is mine – I will pay them back, the Lord promises.” (Romans 12:19)

A moral dilemma indeed.