Controversial Jesuit at odds with Cardinal George Pell over whether Catholics can vote for Greens.
By Anthony Barich
A CONSCIENTIOUS Christian can vote for the Greens in the 21 August election, leading Australian Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan said in the Jesuit online journal Eureka Street on 10 August.
His remarks will have astonished many observers of Australian politics, not least of all Christians and others concerned by the policies espoused by the Greens on a raft of issues from marriage to the sanctity of human life at all stages.
Fr Brennan, Professor of Law at the Public Policy Institute at Australian Catholic University, also publicly chided Cardinal George Pell for recently advising in a Sunday Telegraph column against voting for the Greens due to their “anti-Christian” stance.
While saying he “parts company with the Greens” on issues like abortion, stem cell research, same-sex marriage and funding for Church schools, Fr Brennan said that on “none of these issues will help the Greens carry the day given that policy changes in these areas will occur only if they are supported by a majority from both major political parties”.
Fr Brennan argued that “it is never a good thing for the government of the day to control the Senate”, claiming that the Greens are not in contest for government and unlikely to have much, if any, say in the House of Representatives although they will probably have the balance of power in the Senate.
Therefore, “a thoughtful Christian could give their first or second party preference to a minor party like the Greens confident that this minor party would hold to account whichever party is in power on contested legislative proposals”.
“Some Christians, myself included, think that the Greens are not classifiable as straight-out anti-Christian,” Fr Brennan said.
“While some of their members may be (much like Mark Latham was in the Labor Party), others like Lin Hatfield Dodds (who is standing for election this week) have given distinguished public service in their churches for decades. “On some policy issues, I daresay the Greens have a more Christian message than the major parties.”
Cardinal Pell’s 8 August Sunday Telegraph column called the Greens “sweet camouflaged poison”, saying he had recently urged parishioners to “examine the policies of the Greens on their website and judge for themselves how thoroughly anti-Christian they are”.
“Naturally the Greens are hostile to the notion of the family, man, woman and children, which they see as only one among a set of alternatives. They would allow marriage regardless of sexuality or gender identity,” the Cardinal said.
The Archbishop of Sydney also noted that in 1996 Green leader Bob Brown co-authored a short book The Greens with “the notorious philosopher” Peter Singer who rejects the unique status of humans and supports infanticide, as well as abortion and euthanasia.
“They claimed humans are simply another smarter animal, so that humans and animals are on the same or similar levels depending on their level of consciousness. This Green ethic is designed to replace Judaeo-Christianity,” Cardinal Pell said.
“Some Greens have taken this anti-Christian line further by claiming that no religious argumentation should be permitted in public debate.”
Fr Brennan called Cardinal Pell’s language in the column “unbecoming and unhelpful in the cause of the Church credibility in the public square”.
“Given that some of their policies, and on issues which will be legislated in the next three years, are arguably more Christian than those of the major parties, I think it best that Church leaders maintain a discreet reticence about urging a vote for or against any particular political party,” Fr Brennan said.
“This is especially the case given that Green preferences are more likely to favour the major party headed by an atheist (Julia Gillard for Labor) rather than the one headed by a professed Christian (Tony Abbott for the Coalition). It would be very regrettable if an attack by Pell and the Christian Lobby on the Greens could be construed as an indirect shot across the bows of the atheist Prime Minister.”
Fr Brennan added that the Greens are “far more in synch with the periodic utterances of most Church leaders than either of the major political parties” on the issues of overseas aid, refugees, stewardship of creation and the environment, public housing, human rights protection, and income management.
This echoes Senator Brown’s claim last week that the Greens are much closer to mainstream Christian thinking than Cardinal Pell.
“That’s why he’s not standing for election and I am”, Senator Brown said.
In February last year, the Greens passed a motion in the Senate calling on the government to overturn a ban on foreign aid being spent on abortion advice in developing nations, with Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young calling such laws “draconian”. By March last year, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, a West Australian Catholic, overturned the law enacted by the Howard-led Coalition government 12 years prior, following the lead of US President Barack Obama, who had overturned a similar rule called the “Mexico City Policy” in January 2009.
The Greens have also been the only party to hold back the tide against “the race to the bottom” in the asylum seeker debate since Kevin Rudd was replaced as Prime Minister, Fr Brennan said.
He also disputed Cardinal Pell’s claim that the Greens – who the prelate said are opposed to religious schools and would destroy the rights of those schools to hire staff and control enrolments – would bring funding for non-government schools back to 2003-04 levels.
“It is a complete furphy to suggest that the election of the Greens would threaten the funding of Church schools,” Fr Brennan said, as the funding formula for schools will be altered only if the government of the day wins support from the Opposition.
He called the Greens’ position on funding of Church schools “irrelevant”, saying they are unlikely to succeed using it as a bargaining chip for some other policy concession, provided the Church school lobby maintains its good standing with both major political parties.
If Federal funding was reduced to 2003/04 levels as Cardinal Pell suggested they would if the Greens gained control of the Senate, this alone would mean the Archdiocese of Sydney would need to raise school fees by about 20 per cent, a statement from the Archdiocese said, adding: “Perhaps some just can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Last week, both the Catholic Education Office in Sydney and the Director of Catholic Education with the Archdiocese of Melbourne and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference all commented on either the Greens’ education platform or urged careful thought on voting and how politicians, political parties and political campaigns should be judged.