Dear friends,

One of the things that has long attracted me to Catholicism as an adult has been the social teaching of the Church. For the first third of my adult life I would have put as much energy into party politics as what I've put into initiatives like Catholica and the other voluntary endeavours I've put energy into in the last fifteen years or so. In the end I grew tired of party politics and looking back on that I honestly think a significant contributing factor was that I began to better understand the core thrust of Catholic social teaching which seems to operate "beyond politics". It is seeking to analyse and understand the challenges we face as a community and as individuals on a bigger canvas than the one that is used to analyse and understand life at the party political level.

Here in Australia one of the places where we tend to see Catholic social teaching explained and discussed is through the work of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council. The annual Social Justice Statements produced by the Australian Catholic Bishops seem to be always informative and genuinely "worth the read".

2007 Social Justice Statement (Click on the images to access the statements)

The document they have produced this year under the chairmanship of Bishop Christopher Saunders, "Who is my neighbour? — Australia's role as a global citizen", is comprehensive, well-argued and right-up-to-the-minute in relevance in the way it discusses current challenges that are at the centre of the political debates going on in this nation today as we move to what looks to be one of the most significant turning point elections in our nation for the past half century.

2003 Social Justice Statement
2004 Social Justice Statement
2005 Social Justice Statement
2006 Social Justice Statement

For a long period during my years of political activism I was a died-in-the-wool conservative. I really did believe that the election of a Labor Government would be some form of political poison to the health and well-being of the social and economic fabric in our nation. It has been a long and slow conversion, or I'd prefer to think of it as a maturation, as I've slowly come to appreciate politics in an entirely different light today. A large part of my own political conversion I do attribute to my growing appreciation of Catholic social teaching. My conversion though has not been from The Liberal Party to the Labor Party, from free enterprise to socialism, or from an individualist to a collectivist mindset.

At heart I still do recognise that I am still a big "L" Liberal and one who believes that the encouragement of individual initiative and enterprise achieves more for society than the collectivist outlook which seeks to govern society by committees.

The importance of the creative "tension" between the two outlooks…

Through my political conversion — which, as I said, was largely influenced by Catholic social teaching — I came to see that the strength in democracy came from having a number of strong political parties. For most of recent history — and I suspect this goes back to the dawning of the industrial revolution — the "tension" in society has been between the collectivist and the individualist interest. In societies like our own, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Britain we have been well-served by a small number of political parties that broadly represent the individualist and collectivist interests in society. What makes democracy — or even Western civilisation — work so well is not the particular political philosophies of either the conservatives or the socialists but it comes from the "tension" that is created in society between two outlooks that broadly represent the collectivist and the individualist perspectives and is able to marshall the "tension" through the parliamentary process to a consensus that both develops intelligent and creative policy outcomes that do move society forward but which also "maintains the tension" between the two broad outlooks. The stength of the democratic system comes not from ideology. It comes from the "tension" between competing ideologies. Our strength as an Australian nation, or the strength of the British or American nations comes not from having strong Labor or Republican Parties, or strong Liberal, Conservative or Republican Parties. It comes from all those parties being strong and effective voices for the competing interests in society.

A new "underlying tension"…

The challenge I think we face in society today is that I suspect the core underlying tension in society is no longer the individualist/collectivist divide — or, should I say, it is not as dominant or the principal divide in society today. Society at large has "grown up". I'm not sure what the emerging new "underlying divide" in society is. What I do suspect we need is a new alignment in the political structure. The old Liberal/Labor; Conservative/Labor; or Democrat/Republican dualism no longer accurately reflects the underlying "tension" which is what needs to be managed if society is to grow, to prosper and to manage the human and material resources at our disposal in ways that are sustainable and to the benefit of not only present-day society but to the generations that will follow.

Certainly part of the new emerging divide seems to be a base difference in psychological outlook reflecting the different ways in which different sectors of society manage insecurity and fear. In the Australian context I certainly believe the old Liberal/National Party alliance, which has been the natural party of government, is now dead. It is not "dead" though because of any lessened desire on the part of those who still subscribe to those parties for power — if anything, they are more hungry for power today than they have ever been. Their dominance is now dead basically because the Labor Party has now basically stolen their agenda and articulates it far more coherently and intelligently than the old masters ever could. I'd argue though we can't allow this nation to become a "one party state". Even though the old "natural party of government" is now dead, or almost dead, we do need a new "natural (and strong) party of opposition". Rather than "party of opposition" though I'd prefer the term "party of ideas". The truth is that the former dominant conservative parties in this nation were never much good at generating ideas. They were just good thieves at stealing all the ideas generated within the opposition. Today we need a new party that "generates ideas" and serves in opposition to the Labor Party as it once did in opposition to the Liberal and National Parties.

I could be wrong but what I've just written I suspect could only come from within a Catholic framework of thinking.

But social teaching seems not to be enough…

Sadly Catholic social teaching — even presented as well and as consistently as it has been over a long period of time by the Australian Catholic Bishops has not been enough to stem the descent of the Catholic Church ltself to a position of increasingly irrelevance in the minds of most people. I often ask myself why is this? In recent days I've felt indebted to PeterR on our discussion board for introducing me to a short passage from Yves Congar which he reproduced on our forum. I have long argued that our bishops have increasingly become afraid to speak on the real issues that have been causing tension in the hearts of their flock. The same goes for priests. Homilies these days are, in large part, masterful exercises in trying to use as many words as possible to in fact say as little as possible for fear of upsetting the 5% in the sheepfold. Effectively the Church is inreasingly saying nothing to nobody and that's why so many have drifted out the door. Every now and again though the priests and bishops put on a pretence of "being brave" by speaking on some subject where it is very safe for a Catholic to be controversial. In a sense Catholic social teaching fits this category of "safe controversy". Everybody (ie everybody in the wider world) basically knows Catholics are "controversial" on these issues so a bishop who makes some statement rearranging the words slightly is not likely to get into trouble from Rome — or from the 5% who are constantly trying to report everyone to Rome.

Yves Congar

I never realised until PeterR put the Yves Congar quotation on our forum that someone else had said this a long, long time ago. "There is one pope who thinks everything, who says everything, and the whole quality of being Catholic consists in obeying him. They want to be absolutely the only ones to think or say anything, except on a small area of inconsequential topics. It is absolutely required to repeat and orchestrate their oracles, declaiming, 'Ah, isn’t this wonderful!' [Rome] has attributed to me an audience and an influence that I know very well I have never had. But they will listen to nothing about that." [emphasis added] Congar wrote that back in the 1950s but it has only become available publicly a few years ago. [See the references PeterR provided in his post]

We live in a blessed time. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has dared to put his mouth outside the realms of "safe controversy" and is speaking from the heart about a much broader canvas of issues that are far closer to the questions that the millions have been asking for decades in the privacy of their own dining rooms. This present petition will hopefully contribute to giving the vast majority of our bishops a renewed confidence to simply follow the lead given by Bishop Robinson and speak from the heart — to speak boldly and confidently about the real issues that they do also know are the topics of conversation in the hearts of those millions of Catholics in this country who have become disenchanted with the game of "safe controversy" our bishops have been playing for so long.

Our Church is not some "alternative political party". That is how some bishops seem to present it in their public utterances. The collective of our bishops though in these Social Justice statements present a much truer picture of where our Church ought to sit politically. The Church is "above" politics but it does not attempt to be condescending towards the importance of politics in the commonwealth of our affairs. It places high value on the importance of politics in our social affairs but it seeks to leave the working out of the policy options and the resolving of the "creative tension" in society to the society at large. It does not attempt to set up political parties that represent the "religious interest" in society as though "the religious interest" is "just another political point of view". I do think our Bishops have really understood this well when they apply themselves collectively to these Social Justice statements.

They need though to reclaim the confidence to speak confidently, courageously and "from the heart", regarding the terrible internal political tensions that have largely wrecked our Church and sent the vast majority of the baptised population running out the door for spiritual fresh air and meaning.

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

We welcome your thoughts in response to this commentary in our forum.

Brian Coyne can be contacted at: Brian Coyne <editor@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Brian Coyne

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