Relativism is the new communism, says Murdoch academic.
By Anthony Barich
RELATIVISM is the new Communism that restricts freedom and threatens Australian society, Murdoch University Dean of Law Gabriël Moens told the launch of a new library at the WA National Civic Council office.
Prof. Moens, also Membre Titulaire of the International Academy of Comparative Law in Paris, spoke at the launch of the NCC’s new BA Santamaria Library in Cloverdale on June 10 on the new challenges the Church – and the Movement founded in 1957 by Santamaria – faces today.
While the threat of Communism – which the Movement was initially formed to fight – is over in Australia, Prof. Moens said that a new “orthodoxy” similarly threatens freedoms and traditional values: relativism and humanism, the belief that it is inappropriate to judge the morality of a person’s behaviour, provided it does not harm other people”.
This is the concept on which much social engineering legislation is based, he said. These concepts he said, are “nothing else but sophisticated manifestations, like Communism until its spectacular collapse, of an obsession to create the ideal world which is totally divorced from God”.
Having re-read Santamaria’s autobiography, Against the Tide, which describes much of Australia’s post-World War II history, Prof. Moens noted that Santamaria’s Movement, formed in 1941, established industrial groups within trade unions to subvert the Communist Party of Australia’s attempt to assume political power within the Australian Labor Party.
Santamaria did this with the support of Church hierarchy, especially Melbourne Archbishop Dr Daniel Mannix, among others.
The bookshop, located at 213a Belmont Avenue, Cloverdale, is the instrument of the Movement’s new battle, Prof. Moens said, with the NCC “ideally placed to equip those who combat relativism and humanists and their ‘brave new world’ ideas with the philosophic knowledge and confidence necessary to erode their specious arguments”, he said.
Santamaria, who reminded the Australian public of the dangers of Communism and the incompatibility of that ideology with the social principles of the Catholic Church, founded the NCC in 1957.
The concepts that the NCC espouses are gaining new ground in attracting youth, especially in the eastern states, and Prof. Munz said that the Movement encourages Australians, especially young people, to appreciate the role of traditional social, religious and moral values in the maintenance of the social fabric.
Traditional behaviour, he said, is vilified as an offensive expression of sexism or racism, while encouragement for the vocation of homemaker is described as a “particularly odious form of sexism”.
“Instead, feminism, preferential treatment, alternative lifestyles, infidelity and politically correct speech, just to name a few, are variously dscribed as desirable or even liberating orthodoxies”, he said, which are often aggressively promoted by well-funded lobby groups.
This, the Professor said, creates a climate of intolerance and “instills a sense of genuine fear into a great number of decent
people”.