An excuse to bash the Catholic Church
- Greg Craven
- July 12, 2008
JUDGING by the fulminations in Sydney against World Youth Day, Benedict XVI may soon become the first pontiff in living memory to paraphrase Mae West. "Is that bigotry in your pocket, or are you just not glad to see me?"
First, there were niggles about government money being invested to win Sydney the next biggest thing to a concert by the resurrected Beatles. Then there were piteous complaints that the neddies at Randwick would develop equine personality disorder by being moved for the papal Mass.
Now Sydney's flitterati are hysterical at provisions in state laws aimed at preventing annoyance and offence to pilgrims during the World Youth Day celebrations. Save us, the Catholics are coming!
The starting point here must be to concede that parts of the laws in question are problematic. Legal and human rights critics are right in arguing that terms such as "annoy" hardly convey the precision of meaning required when dealing with issues of freedom of movement and speech.
But some Catholophobe panic merchants have gone so far over the top that they are now in orbit around Jupiter.
What is worrying about these intemperates is not their criticism of the laws in question, which is overblown but within the bounds of public debate. It is their determination to paste the deficiencies of these laws on to Catholics and Catholicism itself that is deeply obnoxious.
In reality — which apparently does not matter much in this debate — there is nothing "Catholic" about these laws, for at least two reasons.
First, neither the Catholic Church nor the WYD organisers asked for the rigorous provisions in question. They were an unsolicited gift from the State Government.
This signals the second reason. The State Government drafted the legislation in this way because, overall, it is the sort of legislation deployed to deal with massive, challenging events in Sydney, albeit in a highly unusual context. To government, the combination of big crowds and potential protest typically requires controlling laws.
Again, this does not make the legislation right or reasonable. Crowd control legislation typically is heavy-handed and overly broad. But this is as much a Catholic conspiracy as an Ian Paisley bucks night.
Like the iniquity of country music, most people would accept this. So why are there battalions of activists and civil libertarians so eager to cast the Catholic faith as a rights-abusing consortium?
The sad answer is that religious prejudice is alive and well in Australia. In the good old days, it was possible to attack Catholics as the fifth column of a pyre-lighting Pope. But along with overt anti-Semitism, this type of cheerful bigotry is no longer fashionable or legal.
So those with a problem with Catholics — or with religion in general — need to find more acceptable outlets for their hobby. Along with writing dull tomes on the joys of atheism and engaging in comic mockery of most religious and moral positions, putting the Catholic Church in the human rights dock is dead handy.
Indeed, Catholics — along with Evangelicals — always will be particular targets for the non-religious fundamentalist. Some other churches have made a separate peace with rampant secularism. Let us believe in God they say, and quietly worship, and we'll try not to bother you too much with that stuff about morality and resurrection.
But the Catholic Church stands adamantly in the way of proselytising materialism. Little wonder its denigrators are not too concerned with the truth around the World Youth Day legislation. If Paris was worth a Mass, Sydney is certainly worth a dissimulation.
Perhaps these self-appointed centurions of human rights also should reflect on just which rights are at risk here. Undoubtedly, people's rights to freedom of movement and expression are affected by the legislation, and to the extent it goes too far, this is a real and pressing issue.
But what about freedom of religion, one of the most basic of all rights? The legitimate right of protest and expression always will need to co-exist with the legitimate freedom of religion, and this means that protesters must respect the rights of World Youth Day pilgrims as much as the state must acknowledge the rights of protesters.
We need to be consistent here. How exactly would we feel about focused and hostile protests against Muslim or Jewish gatherings? Or against a prayer meeting led by the Dalai Lama? Or for that matter against the Mardi Gras and the men and women marching in it?
What was that about human rights?
Greg Craven is a leading constitutional lawyer and vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/an-excuse-to-bash-the-catholic-church-20080711-3do6.html?page=-1