Dean Phillip Jensen speaks out on Mother’s Day: Sydney stop your hostility towards mums
The Anglican Dean of Sydney calls on Australians to turn back to God and truly honour mothers by rejecting ‘child-free’ ideology
In a special address on Mother’s Day, the Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, will call on all Australians to stop rejecting God’s authority and truly honour the nation’s mothers.
The address will be delivered as part of the 10.30 am morning church service at St Andrew’s Cathedral, on George St, Sydney. (entrance Sydney Square next to Sydney Town Hall and above Town Hall Railway Station)
“For all of us in the year 2003, we must stand up for mothers by eliminating the ‘just a mother’ put down and reclaiming the wonder, dignity and value of motherhood,” he said. “There are parts of society today which think that children are awful and mothers who care for them are boring morons who need to get a life.”
The Dean said many people make rude and insensitive comments to mums like, “So what do you do all day?”
“God, in the Ten Commandments, tells us to ‘honour our mothers’. This means not only obeying them when we were children but respecting them now we are
adults.”
In the address, Dean Jensen will explain that the roots of such disrespect towards mothers lies in our nation’s rejection of God in preference for materialism.
“The Australian Institute of Family Studies reported in two separate studies, that ‘ambivalence about children and concern that parenthood would impinge on free lifestyles’ dominated people’s responses. More men and women are deciding against starting families. As one woman explained to the Australian Institute: “I have a cat. I don’t feel like it. I’m too selfish.”
“Such superficial reasons given for being child-free are often not simply the result of psychological scarring caused by a traumatic childhood home but caused by a profound rejection of God.
“Because people reject God they become self-centered selfish materialists: living ultimately for their own happiness, using people not serving them, loving when they are loved, but not paying the price of genuine sacrificial love.”
“It is because people reject God that our society is moving into the rejection of children, child raising, and motherhood,” he said.
Dean Jensen will argue that such a rejection of child rearing for materialism has the potential to cause disastrous social turmoil for Australia.
Television crews and photographers are welcome to shoot in the Cathedral on request
Media Note: The full text of the sermon will be posted online early on Sunday morning.
CONTACT:
Geoff Robson
(w) 9265 1508 (m) 0403 195 841
Jeremy Halcrow
(w) 9265 1518 (m) 0412 793 441
Margaret Rodgers
(w) 9265 1507 (h) 9560 9801
