When Archbishop Mannix ruled in Melbourne, politicians trembled at his pre-election comments. Now the Catholic bishops issue statements at each election, but they receive little publicity.
The statements are not designed to outlaw one party or another, but to point out issues that are ethically significant.
This year most comment on the statement focused on the call for support for marriage and family. Its most distinctive feature, however, is that it frames its reflections around the economy.
In this the bishops echo Pope Francis' radical vision, locating the root of Australian ills in the deification of the economy and of economic growth. The remedy they offer is to focus on the people whom the economy ought to serve, and particularly on those who are excluded from its benefits.
The list includes asylum seekers, Indigenous Australians, victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence and abortion, those addicted to drugs and the poor of other nations. It also includes the human and natural ecology on which all human beings depend if they are to flourish. Much human exclusion can be traced to the lack of appreciation of and support for families in societies where the economy is made a god. In a throw-away culture of over-consumption, they too are thrown away.
In the bishops' analysis, the challenge facing us in the election is how to ensure that the economy serves the common good, and particularly those excluded from it. For this to happen the human ecology in which marriage and family are so central need to be protected, as does the physical environment. But it will happen only if the voices of the excluded are heard and their faces seen.
The statement does not break new ground — its themes are consistent with long-standing Catholic Social Teaching. But in Australia it is distinctive because it sets sexuality, marriage and life within a broader framework of social ethics. It links respect for life and family with respect for the environment and with respect for people who are excluded.
The lack of respect for these things has its source in a culture that subordinates the welfare of people to economic growth and the making of wealth.
"Implicit in the bishops' statement is the conviction that the ills of Australian society derive from and are intensified by a culture that privileges the pursuit of individual wealth."
This framework means that the central issue of the election is not seen as how to encourage economic growth but as how to see the economy itself. The bishops speak less trenchantly than Pope Francis, who criticises sharply the assumptions and practices of neoliberal economics. They speak more generally of a culture of over-consumption.
In the context of this election, however, they add their voice to that of those who are concerned about economic assumptions that enrich the few and exempt corporations and business from social responsibility. Their statement will encourage those who see the now notorious antisocial behaviour of banks, finance business and corporations as symptomatic of a vicious economic ideology.
Implicit in the bishops' statement, too, is the conviction that the ills of Australian society derive from and are intensified by a culture that privileges the pursuit of individual wealth at the expense of social responsibility. This attitude ensures that there are inadequate public funds to help people who are disadvantaged to connect with society and to flourish within it. Such people are regularly deprived in the interests of unequal economic growth.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the statement is the link it forges between a right attitude to the economy and respect for natural and human ecology. The connection is fairly clear in the case of the natural environment where the unregulated pursuit of profit through activities that contribute to global warming harms the world we hand on to our children.
The link made between respect for human ecology — the network of relationships between human beings on which human flourishing depends — and a right attitude to the economy is more controversial. The Catholic definition of human flourishing on matters to do with life, marital relationships and gender is not widely accepted. But the privilege that economic theory gives to the competitive individual motivated by economic gain certainly does not respect stable marital and family relationships in the demands it makes on employees.
But the subordination of the relationships involved in the economy to those involved in the human and natural ecology does provide a consistent ethical framework for considering the major challenges facing humanity today. It also points to the incoherence involved in resisting limitation on individual freedom in personal relationships, while at the same time wanting to impose limitation on individual freedom in economic relations and in treatment of the natural environment.
The implicit argument of the bishops' statement is that a progressive view of the economy and the environment, which for the common good imposes limits on the freedom of individuals to amass wealth, also demands similar boundaries to individual choice in other aspects of human life. The bishop's statement is non-political, but it develops an old-fashioned ethical wedge.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
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