REPORTS that New South Wales Treasurer Matt Kean will support ‘voluntary assisted dying’ cast light on a shameful reality: euthanasia in Australia – and all of the crimes against humanity it will inevitably normalise – have been enacted into law largely thanks to alumni of Catholic schools. For several decades of the twentieth century, it was the dream of the bishops and old teaching orders to lift working class Catholics out of poverty. The destination: the professions and upper echelons of Australian society. They did so brilliantly. When Robert Menzies decided non-government schools would receive state funding in 1964, the dream became an institutional mainstay. Daniel Andrews: Marist Brothers, Wangaratta. Annastacia Palaszczuk: Sisters of Mercy, Ipswich. Mr Kean: Jesuits, Riverview. These are just a few of the stars who rose.
The Archbishop’s unseemly conversion
At times like this, Christians whose shepherds are not karaoke evangelists rocking out to the gospel of prosperity look to the consecrated for hope; sadly, Catholics have been gifted little of it from the hierarchy. When Archbishop Mark Coleridge announced last week that every employee of Brisbane archdiocese, clerical and lay, must prove vaccination or be sacked, he acknowledged the decree was drawn up “to conform with Queensland Health regulations.” The regulations, in turn, were drawn up to exploit the triumph of Leviticus in the Courier Mail survey, below. Christians may be obliged to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but they don’t have to hand over their lollipop ladies.
This oddly ruthless figure was different to a former rhapsodist of subsidiarity: “I think we do need a less hierarchical, dare I say, less monarchical kind of governance,” Dr Coleridge told The Tablet’s Christopher Lamb earlier this year. The customary hankering for devolution was for the benefit of the Plenary Council – the Archbishop’s own brainchild – which is a wish-list jamboree mostly for women of a certain age who can always be relied upon to telegraph their unsuitability for power in the Church by stridently demanding it. In September, the Australian Catholic Medical Association appealed to the nation’s leaders to protect, and not discriminate against, health-care workers with a conscientious objection to vaccination.
I toast the Pope, but I toast conscience first. I shall drink to the Pope, if you please; still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”
– St John Henry Cardinal Newman
Here, then, was a less monarchical kind of authority – offered by laymen and women. Two months on, Archbishop Coleridge – who is also Metropolitan of Queensland and President of the Catholic Bishops Conference – scorned their good advice to placate the state. While his detestation of VAD is not in doubt, the Archbishop’s theological consistency on mandates certainly is. During the late phase of Queensland’s euthanasia ‘consultation,’ he requested a “blanket conscientious objection” clause in the draft bill. Now he apes Premier Palaszczuk by refusing the faithful so much as a tatty old throw from St Vinnies: “I will not consider conscientious objection to receiving the vaccination as a valid exception…” While expediency is forgivable in modern bishops – more Janus than Judas, they – contempt for conscience and cruelty to breadwinners sail closer to the reef of profanity than any Christian helmsman ever should.
thanks C.L
euthanasia in Australia – and all of the crimes against humanity it will inevitably normalise – have been enacted into law largely thanks to alumni of Catholic schools.
Look at the so-called Christians leading the world in to perdition. Andrews, Palacechook, Kean, Turdball, KRudd, et al here, Biden, so many others elsewhere.
WE need an acronym to describe them collectively. I suggest COCs, Christians of Convenience.
a wish-list jamboree mostly for women of a certain age
So much truth in so few words.
And then there’s PF. A few weeks ago Damien Thompson described PF as a sort of Latin American clerical politician. The more I have thought about it the more I think he is correct. I think PF is first and foremost a politician and a priest second. A distant second, I would argue. Damien Thompson questions whether he even likes the Catholic Church. I think PF is far more dedicated to promoting leftist causes and leftist leaders and punishing conservatives than he is in defending the faith. His signalling on whether Biden and Pelosi can receive communion is one of numerous examples.
As it turns out, accepting government funding for schools is one of the worst decisions the Australian churches have made in living memory. The same goes for government funding of their hospitals and nursing homes. Over time it has led them to conform to ever tighter government requirements and has diluted their Christian witness to society.
Yep.
Mary MacKillop was once offered financing for a school but refused on the grounds that the strings attached to official largesse would do more harm than good over time. Needless to say, St Mary was excommunicated.
On the subject of excommunication, the bishops will not tell a Matt Kaen or a Daniel Andrews not to approach the Sacrament – despite their facilitation of murder – but they will banish an unvaccinated teacher from one of their schools. They are a disgrace.
Slightly OT, but the day after possibly the biggest protest gathering ever in the history of Melbourne, the online Age is running a story about…’How pagans worship during a pandemic…How do you join hands in a circle to worship the full moon and maintain social distancing?‘ And this is under their ‘Religion’ byline.
When you put it like that it’s hard to disagree, CL.
Incidentally, while I like to keep a weather eye on the Catholic Church I’m not much connected with local Catholics anymore, but I would imagine that prog-left Catholics have co-opted Mary MacKillop for their cause(s), yes?
Of course.
Time for some plucky individual to nail a petition to the church door.
and be hounded with false law???
check this Tel
https://freedomaustralia.freeforums.net/thread/1641/free-humanity-totalitarian-regime
Personally, it is gob-smacking to watch ‘The Jesuits’ of Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and many others evolve into a New World Order of Catholic Christianity.
Unbelievable.
How many contracts does the Catholic Church in Australia have to deliver Services to Government?
Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, and it ain’t the bishops.
In with the New World Order … same as the Old World Order.
Big Religion has always done deals working alongside Big Government. Sure, some details have been renegotiated here and there, but they were never independent.
Tel
Charlemagne’s mother has a lot to answer for the way she raised her son.