The unlawful, unjust takeover by the ACT Labor-Greens Government of Calvary Public Hospital in 2023 is symbolic of what is happening in Australia in an array of public square issues. We should be clear: the aim of anti-religious secularists is to force Christians to retreat from the public square.
How should faithful Christians respond?
Here are five suggestions.
First, we must clarify why we engage in the public square. If we don’t do this, people will not join us. It was G. K Chesterton who said: “The true soldier fights not because he hates who is in front of him, but because he loves who is behind him.” If we lose our why, we lose our way.
We are fighting for our children, who are the supreme gift of marriage, and we are fighting for the freedom and fairness of our land. We are fighting for justice. We are fighting because we love our children, and we love our country.
Second, we need controlled aggression. Think about the two peaceful revolutions in the Philippines and Poland in the 20th Century. They showed the necessity for faith, prayer and justice if we want action.
Written articles serve a purpose, as do radio and TV interviews. But if we are to be effective in the public square we must mobilise. If not, we will continue to experience diminishment. By 2050 we will have succumbed to the secular city. Christianity won’t be outlawed, but it will be cowed and silent.
We will be forced out of the two most important professions, medicine and education, one looking after the needs of the body, the other the soul. Christians will be pressured into silence, their public objection not placing their lives at risk, but threatening their livelihoods. We will be second class citizens and that should worry everyone, since once you allow one group to suffer discrimination, then by what criteria are others not subject to discrimination and persecution?
We must keep governments accountable. Of course, it takes time and money. Everything has a price tag.
It is not the role of governments to favour one interest group over another. One of the reasons we have had a free and fair country is because we have taken self-interest and turned it into public-interest. Call it the Australian genius if you like. We have found solutions that give everyone a go, not just a few noisy minorities.
Third, we must communicate better. Our 4,000-year experience of faith is a gift, and we have been good at choosing how to present the truth to different generations. Pope Leo XIV made this point in 2012. “The great preachers,” he noted, “have always been great rhetoricians. It’s not the other way round. They were expert rhetoricians, and thus, and then, superb preachers. They communicated the truth in the language of the time, thereby accessing people’s hearts.”
There is no reason why we cannot get smart and use our messaging in clever ways to communicate truths that impact people deeply.
One of the most dramatic moral-social issues we now face is the scourge of pornography. A few weeks ago, it was reported in The Catholic Weekly that: “Pornography has contributed to rising rates of violence against women, harmful sexual behaviours and peer-on-peer sexual abuse at levels never before seen.”
What might our message be? Why not try the simple statement: “Pornography: You are being manipulated.”
The men and women who are photographed and filmed are being manipulated. The men and women viewing it are being manipulated. If we were to accompany the message with an image projecting despair, with bowed head in hands, then we would make inroads into the addiction.
Messaging like this shifts the blame to the producers, while at the same time having the unstated premise that viewing porn is not good.
Fourth, follow the money.
The Australian Genius is to have natural mechanisms to help wealth distribution – a just wage, universal health cover, superannuation, a public and private health system and education mix which is the envy of most countries.
Unfortunately, we are also good at developing industries around immoral behaviour. This is exactly what pornography has become – an industry. It has grown prolifically with the advent of the internet and is worth more than $100 billion worldwide, wreaking havoc among the young and not so young.
Why don’t we get smart and try and work out a way to hamstring the porn barons’ finances? No easy task, for sure, but we should put our minds to it. Cut their money. Save our children.
Fifth, we should take the advice of the Australian constitution and “humbly rely on Almighty God.” In the heart of Pope Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum we find this profound insight, rarely quoted: “Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is – and at the same time to seek elsewhere for the solace to its troubles.”
By taking Leo’s advice, we are putting into practice two wonderful and complementary gifts of God: reason and faith.
Reason identifies the plethora of personal, familial and social problems that every generation must face. Some of them have human solutions, many do not. God is our “elsewhere.”
Leo XIII encouraged us to turn spontaneously to God to ask for insight into, and help for, the great social questions of our time. Getting on our knees, in unison with others, will be an immense help.
So, will it be lawful to be Christian in 2050? If we sit on our hands, we have no assurance of this. If we commit to succession planning, then we have hope.
I think of my own father. When the Snowy Mountains Scheme was completed and opened in 1972, the question was asked, “Will the town of Cooma survive?” Construction had begun in 1949, injecting enormous amounts of wealth into the region.
My father got involved with the local council, along with several other smart, community minded people. They forged a collective ego, with a clear mission: make Cooma survive and thrive. They succeeded.
Succession planning is the most important task of any organisation, including the Church.
If we can engage the generations below us, encouraging them to work and go two-by-two (Luke 10), then we should be confident. We have a 4,000-year history. Our spiritual and social tradition is profound. Let’s articulate it in simple language and people will respond.
This is an excerpt from a lecture given by Bishop Anthony Percy in Canberra to the Thomas More Society on 27 June.
