Now is not a good time to be a Christian – especially, if you are a Catholic. Read The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, listen to the ABC or read Irfan Yusuf's recent piece and it's obvious that the critics are on a roll.
Wendy Squire's op-ed in The Age provides a good illustration of the often vitriolic and very public campaign to tarnish religion and to undermine the beliefs of the 61 per cent of Australians who describe themselves as Christian.
In addition to refusing to be a godmother to a close friend's baby as the ceremony was in a Catholic Church, Squire attacks the Church for opposing her views on marriage and abortion and for, supposedly, indoctrinating children and condoning child abuse.
Ignored is that Christianity is one of the foundation stones on which Western civilisation is based and that the various Christian denominations and their related organisations and community bodies constitute an overwhelmingly positive and beneficial force in Australian culture and society.
There is no doubt, as Cardinal Pell and Pope Francis admit, that child abuse is an offensive, horrific and evil act that destroys the innocence and faith of those who are most vulnerable.
But, to use the fact that priests have been guilty of such an unforgivable betrayal of the Church's teachings does not mean that Christianity has no value or that we should turn our backs on Christ.
Growing up in working class Broadmeadows in a Housing Commission estate with a communist father and a Catholic mother – mass on Sunday and the Eureka Youth Movement on Tuesday – taught me first hand about what BA Santamaria described as two of the most influential and powerful forces of the 20th century.
My father taught me the socialist mantra of 'from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs' and my mother taught me how to recite the Rosary and to follow the Stations of the Cross.
The Eureka Youth Movement taught me about Stalin's glorious revolution and how Mao heroically struggled to free his people from years of oppression, disease and starvation.
It was only years later that I read about the gulag and how Mao's cultural revolution, like Pol Pot's Year Zero, killed millions and condemned others to poverty and oppression. The reality is that communism, as pointed out by George Orwell, is an evil ideology that promises a working class paradise on earth while delivering subjugation, suffering and thought control.
Being a Catholic, on the other hand, taught me that we have a conscience and free will, that there is good and evil, that life on earth is far from perfect and that the spiritual and transcendent are equally as, if not more important, than our physical and worldly needs and aspirations.
Many of the parables and sayings I heard as a child still resonate as they portray something essential and significant about human nature. 'Turn the other cheek', 'let he without sin cast the first stone', 'as you sow, so shall you reap' and 'be a good Samaritan' offer a strong moral compass to help navigate life's dilemmas and pitfalls.
The aphorism that 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God' and Jesus' act in expelling the money changers from the Temple also resonate in an age where material pursuits and gratuitous consumption are rampant.
Studying literature at university made me realise how important Christianity is to Western literature. John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress, William Blake's poetry (even though he criticised organised religion), much of TS Eliot's poetry and novels, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment – all require an understanding of Christianity.
Listening to Bach's Mass in B Minor recently performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre underscored the fact that Christianity has also profoundly affected the music that is such a fundamental part of Western culture.
The great European galleries and museums also contain thousands of religious icons, paintings and sculptures that are testimonies to how religion can inspire a sense of artistic beauty associated with the transcendent and the sublime.
From a more practical perspective Christian morals and beliefs are also a prime motivating force for charitable organisations like the Salvation Army, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Caritas Australia.
There is also no doubt that Australia's hospital and education systems would collapse if not for the presence of Christian, mainly Catholic, schools and hospitals. Catholic schools, for example, enrol approximately 20 per cent of Australian students and save taxpayers billions every year as governments do not have to enrol such students in more expensive to fund state schools.
Having lost a son to a hit-and-run accident I can also attest that in times of great suffering, anguish and loss, religion, while never offering complete peace and understanding, offers succour and hope.
In times of darkness and despair, as suggested by the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, there is comfort and reassurance. She writes: 'And although the battle is not won nor the pilgrimage completed, we know that we have sufficient light. This is our source of life. But we cannot escape the suffering and the sorrow: there are dark sides to life. Realism forces us to face the fact. And the same realism enables us to trust the light and life and love in which we are enfolded'.
Dr Kevin Donnelly is director of the Educational Standards Institute and a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University.