In the very earliest days of white settlement in Arizona, so the story goes, the Archbishop of Los Angeles sent a missionary to Phoenix to establish a church. After two years the priest returned to tell the archbishop that he couldn’t do it. ‘Why not?’ asked the Bishop. ‘Are there no people there?’ ‘Yes, there are people there,’ said the priest. ‘But those who live there during winter have no need of heaven because it is so perfect and those who survive the summer no longer have any fear of hell.’
Well, if that’s the way it was in Phoenix I’m not sure what to say about Sydneysiders who do live in one of the world’s pleasantest environments; except, perhaps, what the Bible says: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.’