Anti-annoyance law will return to bite Church
Last Thursday, Frank Brennan wrote in Eureka Street that the NSW Government's controversial World Youth Day Amendment Regulation is 'a dreadful interference with civil liberties, and contrary to the spirit of Catholic Social Teaching on human rights'.
The freedom of expression which the Amendment Regulation curtails is a right on which the Catholic Church itself relies in order to exist as a fuctioning faith community. In a secular society, some groups will be annoyed by public religious symbols like crosses, and others by protests defending the right to life.
This initiative of the NSW Government appears well-intentioned but ill-considered. It aims to do the right thing by the Church and the general community, and eliminate so-called annoying behaviour. But instead it's likely to foster serious belligerence, and perhaps open hostility and even isolated violence.
Protesters would have done little more than humour the pilgrims with their own playful exuberance, wearing pointedly-worded T-shirts, and handing out condoms as if they were how-to-vote cards. Existing laws empower police to deal with genuinely intolerable behaviour, such as targeting the Pope with a laser pointer.
In May, the Dean of Sydney's St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, Phillip Jensen wrote an opinion article for the Sydney Morning Herald titled 'Church of Rome hath erred, but Anglicans won't rain on Pope's parade'. The article itself is contentious, implying that what divides Christians is more significant than what unites them. But he did assert the right of the Church and WYD pilgrims to be treated like any other group in the community.
'World Youth Day does not compromise the separation of church and state. Nor does it undermine secular government. The Government provides facilities and security for any group, either religious or non-religious. We can only complain when there is favouritism for any particular group.'
The favouritism he was referring to gives preference to 'the secularists [who] wish to impose atheistic belief on society through government'. But despite government denials, it appears the favouritism is ironically designed to help the Catholic Church.
The Church needs to go beyond the benign 'we didn't ask for it' excuse for tolerating the laws that it can only regard as convenient. Its answer to the Premier must be 'Thanks, but no thanks!' The Church's own right to strident expression of its views is at stake.
LINKS:
World Youth Day Amendment Regulation 2008 (NSW Government Gazette)
World Youth Day
Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street.