Victorian premier Dan Andrews was educated by Catholics, from primary school all the way through university. But then, Stalin was a former seminarian, and Marx came from a long line of rabbis. Like both, Dictator Dan seems determined to eradicate religion from the public square.
Well, one religion, anyway.
When Andrews railed against (briefly) Essendon CEO Andrew Thorburn’s church for its (bog-standard Christian) views on abortion and homosexuality, it was a vicious contrast to his studied silence on Muslim AFLW player Haneen Zreika’s boycot of a “Pride Round”.
It is an open secret that the Victorian Catholic establishment cares little for the Andrews government, and the hostility is reciprocated.
The best that can be said is that the government has barely tolerated the church, and on defining church issues Labor has turned sharply to the left under Dan Andrews.
If the Church “cares little” for the Andrews government, that’s because it’s been so often attacked by it. In the most shameful miscarriage of justice since Lindy Chamberlain, the Victorian government egged on its police force to pursue Cardinal George Pell with any dirt it could dig up. Absent any complaints against the outspoken conservative clergyman, the Victoria Police, one of the most heavily-politicised in Australia, set up a “Get Pell” unit.
That sinister campaign culminated in the Cardinal being jailed on trumped-up charges — such an obvious miscarriage of justice that the highest court in the land unanimously quashed the conviction.
But, just as decades later many people refuse to concede Lindy Chamberlain’s innocence, the mud against Pell has stuck, no matter what. Which was the whole point of the sordid exercise.
The political calculation is that the church has been so harmed by its record on child abuse that its capital is spent.
The Australian
As I’ve written before, the education department’s record on child abuse is even more shameful than the Catholic Church’s, especially because paedophiles are still rampant and being protected in schools across the nation. It’s hardly conspiracy thinking to suspect that the government and the media have let schools skate, though, because teachers’ unions are militantly left-wing.
Andrews’ hostility to Christianity is unapologetic and unrelenting.
He championed the issue of euthanasia in Victoria – spreading it across the country – in what was arguably the biggest hit to the church’s heartland beliefs in its modern history.
Labor passed legislation decriminalising abortion in 2008 and recent reform on sex-abuse payments has tilted the church further into the land of financial unpredictability.
Ministers have been openly hostile to the faith, at times all but baiting the church leadership. All in the mission of selling a fundamentally modern political proposition to a younger demographic.
But Andrews’ attacks on the Christian God are just part of a wider war.
This sordid, ugly episode points to a profound social transformation.
It has long been the case that society no longer wishes to be governed by Christian morality, or to express its sociologically, behavioural norms. That’s fair enough. We live in a democracy. The majority will, within certain limits, should prevail.
The new situation, however, is one in which it is becoming virtually illegal, certainly dangerous to your career, to espouse, or be associated with someone who espouses, traditional Christian views.
The Australian
It’s all part of the Long March through the Institutions. Although this strategy of infiltrating and white-anting the pillars of liberal, capitalist democracy was formally outlined by communist agitators Rudi Dutschke and Herbert Marcuse in the late 60s, the term was first coined by the father of Cultural Marxism, Antonio Gramsci.
Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.
Antonio Gramsci.
You can’t say they didn’t do exactly what they said they would — and been wildly successful.
As Andrew Thorburn warns, we are on the threshold of becoming a grossly intolerant society, where a profession of Christian faith will “render a person immediately unsuited to holding a particular role”, from their employment to publicly participating in society at all.
