Did any of you get to read this?
The fear that silences our churches
January 2, 2004
Clerics who will not toe the line have a necessary role in an effective democracy, writes Geoff Kitney.
John Howard went on holiday yesterday, with a cardinal’s blessing. George Pell, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, wished him well, saying that the Prime Minister was in a tough business and needed his rest more than most of us.
No such luck for the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. His return from his Christmas holiday break was greeted by withering attacks from two of Britain’s leading Anglican clerics.
He was accused by one of “acting like a white vigilante” over his commitment of British troops to the removal of Saddam Hussein and another said he would have to answer to “a higher authority” for these actions.
One cleric, the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, said the conservative Christians who influenced President George Bush and Blair to go to war in Iraq espoused “a very strange distortion of Christianity”.
From their Christmas season pulpits, Australia’s church leaders were much more polite. No one actually mentioned the war. No one directly criticised the Prime Minister. As far as Iraq is concerned, the church in Australia seems to have taken the Prime Minister’s advice and moved on.
Alexander Downer will be very pleased with himself if this is so.
Downer, who has developed a schizophrenic political personality which sees him switch in an instant from moderate and reasonable to arrogant and overbearing, has accused Australian church leaders of meddling in politics at the expense of their pastoral obligations.
Downer branded some church leaders as headline seekers pursuing popular political causes and acting as “amateurish political commentators” on issues on which the church itself had not resolved its view, nor even engaged. This, he said, cut across the central role of the church “in providing spiritual comfort and moral guidance for the community”.
In a speech to the National Press Club in which he savaged a broad collection of critics of the Government as having a “little Australia” mentality and a weird kind of “self-disgust” Downer referred to “unstoppable and invincibly ignorant” people in the Australian clerical elite who had accused the Government, on the slenderest evidence, of damaging Australia’s international reputation and making Australians less compassionate people.
Downer named the liberal Anglican Primate Peter Carnley as one of his targets. But there have been other meddlesome priests, most notably the Catholic Bishop of Canberra, Pat Power, who clashed directly with the Prime Minister at a church service in Canberra at the time of the Iraq war.
Other church leaders have been more sympathetic to the Government’s position on various issues. Pell, who received an early and confident endorsement from Howard when he was subjected to subsequently dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct, stopped short of endorsing the Iraq war but spelt out the case for a just war. Peter Hollingworth went further, saying he believed war to remove Saddam Hussein could be justified on religious grounds.
When Fred Nile suggested that the wearing of traditional clothing by Muslim women could be a security risk because they could be disguised terrorists carrying hidden weapons, Howard said he believed Nile was speaking for a lot of concerned people.
The Christian community reflects the divisions of the wider community that have opened in the Howard years over the tough issues of how to deal with asylum seekers arriving by boat, the case for going to war in Iraq, the degree to which Australia should surrender its own sovereignty in deepening its alliance and economic relationships with the US and the conservative position the Government has taken on issues ranging from the republic to gay marriage.
But those church leaders who have come down on the wrong side of these arguments have found that, when it comes to politics, there is no such thing as Christian charity from those with whom you disagree.
This has always been the case, to some degree at least. Howard’s predecessor, Paul Keating, was savagely intolerant of his critics and intimidated them full frontally, but sporadically.
The difference in the Howard Government’s years has been that the intimidation of its critics has been ruthless and systematic. There is a well co-ordinated network, including key figures in the media, which mobilises in support of Howard on almost every issue of political conflict. The tactics used are uncompromising.
Criticism is almost always branded as being motivated by something other than disagreement with the policy: the critics are “Howard haters”, or “bleeding hearts” or “latte sippers” or just plain dumb.
The most systematic and politically ruthless campaign has undoubtedly been the seven years’ war on the ABC. And it’s worked. The fearless independence of ABC news and current affairs, which ranked it among the world’s outstanding boadcasters, is in decline, its budgets squeezed and its will to criticise and be damned apparently waning.
Howard’s political success has emboldened his supporters and caused many leaders of the public debate to doubt themselves and the role they should play. Fearless criticism is now rarer because of fear itself - the fear that you will be branded with one of the tags of contempt and ridicule dished out by the pro-Howard commentariat and that this will be damaging to your own interests.
In the face of this, the old commitments to fierce scrutiny and criticism are giving way to constant demands for and a quest to achieve “balance and objectivity” which, in politics, are almost always weasel words for pulling your punches.
In this climate a senior federal minister seriously suggests religious leaders should refrain from criticising the Government because they are “amateur political commentators” who inevitably “lack expertise” on secular issues.
How brazen can you get? Since when did you need “expertise” to be “qualified” to engage in political debate. The essence of any democracy is that everyone is qualified to say whatever they think and the essence of a healthy democracy is that they are encouraged to do so with vigour.
Downer’s attack on church leaders is anti-democratic and should have caused outrage.
But it didn’t. And there are signs that it has been successful as church leaders shrink back into their pastoral pulpits.
It’s to be hoped this is only temporary. Now that we are in the election year, Australia needs people to go out and voice their opinions freely and without intimidation. Democracy works best when it is inclusive and expressive. And the more uncomfortable that process is for the politicians, the more pressure they are put under to account for their statements and their actions the healthier it is for the nation.
A passionless democracy is a sure course to less accountability and poorer government and any action aimed at enfeebling dissent should be resisted passionately.
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