In an adversarial and, for the time being, underwhelming political culture like Australia’s, it might be tempting to throw one’s lot in with the side which seems least offensive.
In a roundabout way, Tony Abbott reminded his fellow faith-travellers this week that Catholics who cleave to conservative parties and believe that culture war warriors will be our salvation ought to unburden themselves of their credulity.
Salvation, as the Church has always taught, comes only through Jesus Christ, and life-affirming policies will only come from those who embrace the outlook of life’s author.
Mr Abbott’s position on the deliberate destruction of human life in the womb, under the hushed, euphemistic auspices of “termination”, was once again put on show this week in comments attributed to his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, in News Ltd publications.
In (the pro-choice) Ms Credlin’s verbal remonstrations with her boss, Mr Abbott definitively rejected outlawing the practice of abortion if the chance arose.
He forcefully restated the line he gave media prior to the last election, that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”.
In this election year the move marks, perhaps, the beginning of a great Liberal Party re-branding exercise, to solve Mr Abbott’s apparent ‘problem’ with women (a problem of which we are constantly reminded by women and men in professions and income groups atypical of the wider Australian population).
Given its repetition, we could now conclude that Mr Abbott’s “safe, legal and rare” line wasn’t and isn’t an ‘anything-to-get-elected’ moment but a reflection of his genuine conviction.
Whether the totality of that remark will come to fruition remains, of course, to be seen.
Those who have wielded that jingoistic creed the world over have a patchy record when it comes to making abortion’s “rarity”, a reality, much as advocates of “choice” are sadly silent when wives, partners and daughters are railed into decisions that, in the quietude of their hearts or even the pleading of their mouths, they never really wanted.
Soaring rates of Chlamydia infection among young, unmarried, sexually active Australians is testimony to the failure of the same, much-vaunted harm-minimisation strategies which were supposed to protect against ‘unwanted’ pregnancies.
It is no answer to the bi-partisan embrace of nihilism in Australian politics and culture for us to bleat about society’s ills.
The Son of God offers our atomistic society a true vision of the joy that is possible in this world and the next – the connectedness for which all people yearn, which social media can only ever hope to ape.
Pope Benedict XVI says the antecedents for a happy community and a happy life are built into the world and the human subjects God has created. Addressing Curial officials just after Christmas, the Pope gave a searing analysis of the current state of the world in a discussion of gender difference and complementarity as the bedrock of the family, which is itself the primary society of human flourishing (his full address is featured on Pages 7-9).
In today’s valueless world, the Holy Father noted, “Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will.
“The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be.
“Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation.
“Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him … From being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain.
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being.
“The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears,” Pope Benedict said.
What Tony Abbott’s office may wish to be a positive branding exercise – that he is pro-woman because he accepts abortion, contraception and in-vitro fertilisation is a sad excuse for what a great political leader, of any political persuasion, ought to be doing: providing a positive vision of what Australia could be, and not reinforcing the bleak realities which weigh it down.
We are not machines to be manipulated or cajoled at will. We are, even now, a people for whom true joy is possible.
But on both sides of the aisle, we are in want of leaders with vision.