St Paul is a No. There is neither Jew nor Greek – Galatians 3:28

Posted on 25 September, 2023 by C.L.
Catholics have had enough of sacralised Laborism: Fr Brennan: Vote Yes despite ‘hell of a mess.’
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19 Responses to St Paul is a No. There is neither Jew nor Greek – Galatians 3:28

  1. Bruce of Newcastle says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:23 am

    Went to the shops this morning, was interested to see a guy on the side of the road with a full spread of NO corflutes. He was sitting under a canopy, in a camp chair and looking quite determined. It was a nice sight.

    “Read Galatians 3:28” is a fine comment to make if you are approached by Yes activists, since it would doubly explode their heads.

  2. NFA says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:26 am

    Brennan is a communist Jesuit!

  5. Christine says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:35 am

    Why on earth would he be terrified?
    Their referendum is failing and it’s terrifying the elite.

    Aboriginal ceremonies/customs are now routinely described as ‘sacred’, raised above all others – we are drenched in acknowledgments – and still the Aboriginal spruikers are ungrateful.

    Yes, had enough.

  6. Entropy says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:36 am

    As if. Albo will design this to lockup a future non-ALP government and render it dysfunctional. And hamstring an ALP one as well.

  7. dover_beach says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:47 am

    Pretty despicable that Brennan and Craven are still promoting Yes even though they both think the Voice is a hell of a mess. The politics here seems to be nothing beyond felt need. There is no principled reason for a separate deliberative body for a ‘section’ of the community and not any other, or any principled reason why the body should be enacted constitutionally rather than legislatively. Further, prudentially, why do these people never seek a quid pro quo for their support of the Voice? I can’t think of a single centre-Left intellectual vocally supporting No during the redefinition of marriage plebiscite and yet these people never repay the favour. I exclude Brennan from this because he developed the most specious argument during the plebiscite so he could cowardly pretended that he could affirm true marriage by nevertheless voting Yes for marriage redefinition. BTW, does anyone remember if Craven even took a position on marriage redefinition? I’d be interested to learn if he did or not.

  8. C.L. says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:02 pm

    Craven, November 2015…

    Weak, hand-wringing stuff:

    Same-sex marriage: debate is about wider religious freedoms.

    Reading the more buoyant commentaries, the looming plebiscite on same-sex marriage will be a romp in the park. Point the ballot paper, pop the question, and she’ll be apples.

    Nothing could be less true. This will be a novel and complex exercise in participative democracy, and whether you love or loathe same-sex marriage it will need careful management.

    It is clear those who proposed a plebiscite — like Tony Abbott — did so because they thought it would be harder to win than a parliamentary vote. With approval ratings hovering around 70 per cent, this seems a bold position.

    Or not. Opponents of same-sex unions look hopefully to our history of constitutional referendums, where proposals typically start high, and end very low. They are betting the same thing will happen with a plebiscite. The ­danger is that resolution of contentious questions by mass-polling tends to produce uncivil debate. Yes, parliament can be rancorous, but both sides at least have to be able to sustain an argument. In ­referenda and plebiscites, it is the loudest and most sensational — and often the ugliest arguments — that gain traction on both sides. ­Insults speak louder than reason.

    This means opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage may find themselves with some very nasty friends. Sincere Christians risk sharing platforms with committed homophobes, and civilised supporters may struggle to control atheist bigots. These are not random examples.

    The biggest challenge with same-sex marriage will be how to accommodate it with freedom of religion.

    Only the most naive will see the plebiscite as a contest between good people supporting an objective right — to marriage equality — and evildoers denying it. In real­ity, the guts of this contest will be how we mutually respect two potentially conflicting rights: one to personal self-realisation, the other to freedom of conscience.

    Like most suggested rights, these can conflict all too readily. I, a gay man, want to marry my partner. You, a devout Muslim, would find your conscience violated if forced to co-operate in my wedding. How do we sort this out? This is where a plebiscite becomes problematic. A law for same-sex marriage backed by a virtually unique national vote has potential to become a super-law creating a super-right. In the future delicate balance of rights there would be every danger this would trump all other considerations.

    Respectful proponents of same-sex marriage try to avoid this by guaranteeing any law would not require religions to marry people against their conscience. But this is not where the action will be. No one is going to insist on being married by someone who does not want to marry them. The battleground after a plebiscite will be in the expression of religion.

    Once single-sex unions become legal by a national vote, will churches still be able to express and teach their views on marriage? Whether you agree or not, will they be able to preach and teach what they sincerely believe; that, as much as they love their gay brothers and sisters, marriage for them must be between and a man and a woman?

    To anyone believing not only in freedom of conscience but freedom of speech, the answer would have to be “yes”. But the positions of many advocates of same-sex unions cast doubt on this comfortable supposition. All too often, ­religious opponents of same-sex marriage are cast as homophobes, vilifiers and anti-social-rights ­deniers. Increasingly, I hear they should have no more right to spread their poison than racists and other social outcasts.

    Other, more reasonable proponents, deny this. They argue the issues of religious people can be accommodated by appropriate “exemptions”, as we have managed conflicts between religion and other rights in the context of equal opportunity. But in the face of a mega-right like this, an exemption is hopeless.

    Who wants an “exemption” from what is seen as objectively correct, so forever being stigmatised as a sad concession to one’s own moral inferiority?

    What is needed is genuine recog­nition that we face the intersection of two rights. If we are to have a right to same-sex marriage then the very same law must recognise it will operate alongside a corresponding freedom of religion.

    This in turn dictates the terms of the plebiscite. Any vote should be for free marriage, and alongside it free religion for all who must deal with it. Two rights will make sure we don’t go wrong.

    Classic ratchet man: yield the objective truth but beg for some scraps.

  9. cuckoo says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:06 pm

    I remain puzzled how all these people talk as if Albanese couldn’t just come back after a failed referendum and create the exact same ‘Voice’ by legislation. But it’s jolly decent of Albanese to offer a hypothetical olive branch of bipatisanship to the Opposition NOW that he knows he will never have to follow through.

  10. Lee says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:08 pm

    Aboriginal ceremonies/customs are now routinely described as ‘sacred’ …

    Pagan ceremonies and customs.

    Which many otherwise utterly non-religious, Christianity-haters go along with.

  11. C.L. says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:18 pm

    Aboriginal ceremonies/customs are now routinely described as ‘sacred’…

    On that, see Mark Powell at Quadrant: The Rainbow Serpent and the Cross.

    These practices have become so prevalent in wider Australian society as to be commonplace. For instance, the Federal Parliament is now opened each year with an Indigenous Smoking Ceremony, the traditional form of protection from evil spirits. But as many Christian indigenous leaders have rightly warned, this ceremony is not only animistic in nature, but has an “accursed effect” upon those who participate.

  12. and says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:20 pm

    … but has an “accursed effect” upon those who participate.

    Explains a lot. 🙂

  13. calli says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:26 pm

    Craven and Brennan are treating Catholics like a captured vote herd. It’s insulting.

  14. dover_beach says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:50 pm

    Classic ratchet man: yield the objective truth but beg for some scraps.

    “Take my arms and legs but please don’t kill me.” It’s pathetic. They re-enact Pilate before the crowd and in private whenever they open their mouths.

  15. dover_beach says:
    25 September, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    What is needed is genuine recog­nition that we face the intersection of two rights.

    BTW, he yielded not only on marriage, rightly understood, but on rights, rightly understood. If marriage can only be a relationship between the sexes, you cannot enjoy a right of marriage between the same sex. That is the broader problem with the likes of Brennan and Craven, they have an erroneous view of rights themselves. Rights are ordered to goods, not to what is simply willed.

  16. Buccaneer says:
    25 September, 2023 at 6:08 pm

    Brennan’s reword of the voice showed that he simply doesn’t get it. Not one person seems to recognise that apartheid also started as a project to ‘protect’ a supposedly endangered minority.

  17. Old Lefty says:
    25 September, 2023 at 11:29 pm

    And the ‘Catholic’ fifth column such as Francis Sullivan, who scream blue murder if a bishop tries to teach traditional sexual ethics (or traditional doctrine of any sort), and foam at the mouth at the mention of the DLP, are now demanding that the bishops direct their flock to vote Yes.

  18. SydGal says:
    26 September, 2023 at 6:41 am

    Two Sisters of St Joseph were handing out Yes brochures at a Sydney shopping plaza 2 weeks ago. Year 11 student at Sydney Catholic High School in SW Sydney told me his principal made a speech about voting Yes. Students are writing Society and Culture essays about why there should be a Yes vote. I went to the talk by Fr Frank Brennan and Louise Clegg in Syd 15 Sept – he commenced by stating he was going to explain how we got into “the mess we’re in”. I thought he said there had been no formal legal advice on implications of Making Representations to Exec Govt. Thanks CL and NFA for your kind comments recently. Now visiting some stations/retail precincts – some people so pleased to have info on no case.

  19. Christine says:
    26 September, 2023 at 8:37 am

    The SMH asks: why the switch? Pearson, Langton and Shorten once wanted the Voice details revealed.
    Seems late in the day to be puzzling over the deception.
    I guess there’d be thousands in the inner circle who knew all The Details.

    Keep the voters in the dark – Linda Burney’s pitch will be a winner.
    Their disappointment must be crushing.

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