Nigel Freitas, Roseville NSW, letter in Melbourne Age, 24 Apr. 2005:

When those on the extreme left push policies such as abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, they are lauded as progressives … I and many others of religious persuasion are sick and tired of being labelled frothing, foaming fundamentalists simply for having faith.
[Nigel, the right to safe, legal abortion and to voluntary euthanasia is supported by a clear majority of Australians. A 2003 survey of social attitudes even found that 53 per cent of evangelical Christians agreed that a woman should have the right to choose an abortion. 70 per cent of Catholics were also pro-choice (Age, 16 Dec. 2004). As for gay marriage, an SBS Newspoll last year found 38 per cent in favour and 44 per cent against such unions, with a majority of the 18-34 age group supporting them. That's a pretty hefty 'extreme left', isn't it? And if I were you I'd see a doctor about all that frothing and foaming.]

Tony Abbott, Federal Health Minister, Melbourne Age, 28 Apr. 2005:

IVF treatment is not – it’s very important, obviously – but it’s not life-saving treatment.
[As many people instantly pointed out, IVF is certainly life-creating treatment and Tony is supposed to be 'pro-life'! John Howard is known for his pragmatism but surely this ministerial appointment is one of the least pragmatic decisions he has made. You put pure ideologues like Abbott in charge of bus shelters, not senior cabinet portfolios.]

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Filed in: Their Own Mouths

Don’t think for a second that evangelical pastors and their flocks are immune from the temptations of internet pornography. Items about such ’sexual addiction’ regularly appear in conservative Christian publications, so that I genuinely wonder whether evangelical porn fans are over-represented in the general population. The Australian Christian weekly New Life (20 Jan. 2005) reports that:

A ‘Christianity Today’ survey said 37% of pastors say cyberporn is a current struggle for them and 63% of men at a [presumably Christian] marriage seminar admitted to struggling with porn in the past year.

These sorts of figures are backed up by leading American evangelist Charles Swindoll who writes of:

… a severe disease that is eating away at our congregations … Men and women, from adolescents to senior citizens, from all walks of life, have succumbed or are at risk, and more are becoming infected every single day.

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Filed in: Evangelicals, Sexuality

Although the new Pope Benedict XVI will undoubtedly cause many good people much pain, his papacy should advance the cause of secularism in the longer term.

As I suggested in an earlier blog (5 April), another authoritarian pope is required to advance the process of ecclesiastical division set in train by Paul VI and accelerated by John Paul II. It seems unlikely that Benedict will revise his negative positions on contraception, women’s ordination, gay rights etc. Dissent from his various stances will not culminate in a formal schism, but rather bring about a continual erosion in Catholic numbers, first in Europe, North America and Australasia and later throughout the rest of the world.

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Filed in: Catholicism

Reading through all the Pope stuff last week I came across this slightly jarring observation:

Leading Italian sociologist Professor Franco Ferrarotti doesn’t think the Pope’s influence on the young is deep or will last. ‘My field workers tell me young people don’t really follow his advice,’ he says. ‘They use contraceptives. They cheer him, they love it when he talks to them about chastity, then the next thing they go to bed together. It’s a kind of schizophrenia.’ (James Button ‘How a childless man was Papa to millions’, Melbourne Age, 9 Apr. 2005)

Large numbers of conservative religious youth throughout the world seem to hold similar attitudes. They feel some sort of intellectual loyalty to the teachings of their religion, but many of them don’t let this get in the way of an active pre-marital sex life.

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Filed in: Fundamentalism, Sexuality

Rev. Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party recently told us why there are now ’so many homosexual TV shows’:

The powerful homosexual lobby has demanded one in ten characters must be a homosexual … [But] homosexuals are only 1-2% of the population so it should only be one homosexual in 100 characters, NOT one in 10! (Family World News, Apr. 2005, 2)

Australian Religious Right groups generally push the idea that only about one per cent of our population is gay, and argue on this basis that such a small minority is unworthy of civil rights such as the right to marry, adopt children etc. The argument makes no sense and clearly involves discrimination against one particular minority on religious grounds; for example, you will not find Fred Nile calling for tiny Christian sects to be stripped of the right to run their own schools on the basis of their size.

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Filed in: Sexuality

Working on the principle that the Roman Catholic Church is one of the worst ideas that humanity ever had, what sort of Pope would most rapidly advance the progress of secularisation?

What we are looking for here is a splitter, someone who is going to drive half of the church crazy in the shortest possible space of time.

Our own George Pell certainly looks the goods here, with a marvellous track record over many years. Church attendances plummeting, half the clergy doing the bolt and sundry others sewing mailbags in prisons across the nation – wonderful stuff. Unfortunately George looks a bit dicey at 40/1 so let’s cast an eye over the competition.

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Filed in: Catholicism