Last week, the Australian Capital Territory’s overlords announced their plan to strip Calvary Hospital – an establishment of the Sisters of the Little Company of Mary – of its Catholic ownership in favour of the non-faith-based agency Canberra Health Services. The rationale, though unstated, is, nonetheless, sufficiently clear: the hospital’s refusal to procure abortions and its opposition to euthanasia legislation symbolises a public rejection of the sacramental liberalism.
It is a decision which has sparked major uproar within Catholic and conservative circles. Former prime minister Tony Abbott criticised the move in no uncertain terms: “Quite apart from being evidence of overbearing and arrogant government this looks like yet another assault on the Church.” Federal leader of the Liberal Party Peter Dutton also weighed in, calling it an ideological attack on religion. Meanwhile, Catholic leaders have pledged to fight the proposal, vowing that the Church “will not be lying down”.
Secularism’s latest political assault begs the question: how should the Church respond to persecution at the hands of liberalism’s ideological agents, who, on the one hand insist on the possibility of a peaceful, neutral political sphere, while, on the other hand, aggressively and compulsively undermine these ideals through radical political conformism?
One such response, fatalistic in essence, accepts ideological defeat and calls on Christians to retreat into virtuous communes in the hopes of establishing a new political order upon the inevitable fall of the liberal imperium. An alternative approach, often employed by our bishops, reaffirms and appeals to the prevailing secularised virtues of our age: diversity and tolerance. While typically acknowledging progressivism’s ever-increasing tilt towards radical social engineering, many well-meaning Catholics insist antithetical points of view can peacefully coexist in our ostensibly neutral political order. Under this framework, one might hear Church leaders and lay-persons alike obsessively rehashing hackneyed tropes such as “freedom of religion” and “freedom of conscience” all in the name of securing the Church’s rights and freedoms.
The Church’s appeal to diversity and tolerance has on the surface served the interests of the Church in helping it withstand persecution; it has allowed Catholics to secure concessions to protect the Church’s interests even as late-stage liberals continue to enjoy widespread success in their militant push to reshape the political order in the name of radical, unfettered freedom. Nevertheless, as I will attempt to explain, this approach ought to be abandoned entirely not merely because it has outlived its utility, but, more importantly, because the through-going desire for peaceful coexistence with the liberal imperium has begotten something even more diabolical. Not only have Catholics laid the foundation for current and future persecution – as the latest assault on the Church in Canberra demonstrates – this tolerant approach marks a repudiation of the Church’s evangelical mission: to bear witness to Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.
Consider how Church leaders have engaged in recent debates of significant cultural importance. Rather than articulate the Church’s perennial moral teaching, bishops, priests and those with public standing resorted to arguments of autonomy. During the 2018 plebiscite on the definition of marriage, opposition to same-sex marriage was founded upon restrictions on freedoms of speech and expression. Gay marriage should not be legalised, it was argued, lest priests are forced to conduct same-sex weddings and Church organisations are prohibited from expressing their “traditional” view of marriage. Likewise, opposition to abortion and euthanasia rested on constraints on freedoms of religion and conscience; medical professionals should be able to follow their consciences in such matters, and church organisations ought not be coerced into conducting procedures contrary to their teachings, it was posited.
In so doing, bishops – fearful of apostatising against liberalism’s soteriology of progress – have steered away from the fundamental moral precepts of good and evil, natural and unnatural, and thus, gave birth to a bastardised Catholic moral framework which, ultimately, has been feckless in face of progressivism.
Sure, it might have been effective in the short-term, but as liberal regimes – who view religious belief as rationally indefensible – continue their fight against prejudice, the deracination of moral truth and divine revelation will inevitably lead to the Church’s demise. Further, such intellectual compromises will ultimately lead to a form of spiritual paralysis under which the Church finally repudiates her mission to evangelise the nations and to save souls. I
Indeed, our bishops, unable to defend the Church’s teaching by articulating perennial truths in accordance with her internal traditions will, likewise, inevitably prove to be powerless in defending the rights and interests of the poor and the outcast, the oppressed, the migrants, the working-class, the preborn and the elderly. Eventually, if the bishops continue to imbibe the Kool-Aid of liberalism, the Church – the ark of tradition – will soon find herself indifferentiable from secular culture.
Accordingly, I wish to briefly outline a vision for the Church in our contemporary world if she is to stay true to her mission in the face of present persecutions.
As a first step, carrying out her mission requires an accurate reading of the signs of our times. And so, might I suggest that the cultural crusade the Church is currently engaged in is not simply an ideological battle against so-called “wokeism”, but rather spiritual warfare, a clash against a religion which, as minds greater than mine have articulated elsewhere, has its own accompanying sacrament, liturgy and theology.
Redefining the conflict on substantial theological grounding consequently necessitates a rejection of a diabolical lie, one which many in the Church have fallen victim to, the lie that many in the world have no appetite for religious belief. The question is not whether one believes, but rather what one believes in.
Consequently, since all are religious, the Church must go out into the deep – duc in altum – and tirelessly proclaim the Gospel. Our world, now more than ever, yearns for truth, beauty and goodness. The world needs the Church, the sole beacon of hope, the only institution which can combat the secularised religion of our time. Indeed, it is only in working towards reordering our society to the Highest Good – Christ himself – that our Church lives out her earthly mission.
Cronan Yu is a seminarian for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. Follow him on Twitter: @Cronan_Yu
(Photo: ABC News: Mark Moore)
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