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Catholic Church

Here's How France Clearly Separates Church And State, Australia Take Note

There's a really easy way to stop attacking politicians over their faith: remove faith from politics.

Australia, you might reasonably think, is a secular nation.

We’re a notoriously unreligious people with the fastest growing faith group “no religion”. According to the 2016 census it’s now the not-faith of choice for 30 per cent of Australians – and church attendances would suggest that the 47 percent of Australian that call themselves Catholic, Anglican or Other Christian are not exactly assiduous about their observance.

Nonetheless, this lack of faith challenged by, for example, the current Prime Minister who insisted in his debut parliamentary speech that…

“Australia is not a secular country – it is a free country. This is a nation where you have the freedom to follow any belief system you choose. Secularism is just one. It has no greater claim than any other on our society. As US Senator Joe Lieberman said, the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not from religion. I believe the same is true in this country.”

So, atheists, you might want to worry if Morrison gets over the line this weekend. Freedom of religion doesn’t extend to no religion, as far as he’s concerned.

And the founding document of the nation doesn’t exactly contradict him either. Here’s what your Constitution has to say about religion, in its entirety:

“Section 118: The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”

…and exactly zero cases have come into conflict with this provision, thanks to the High Court’s peculiarly narrow definition of these words.

And that’s why tax money goes to religious schools and churches are tax exempt. As is that whole Lord’s Prayer thing at the beginning of parliament.

You know, in retrospect, that iconography might not have been the best choice there Mads…

By contrast, France has a pretty explicit separation of church and state, going so far as to ban religious instruction from the education system, making marriage and divorce entirely civil ceremonies, making ministers of religion conscriptable in the event of war, and removing all mentions of God from judicial process. And they did that in 1903, via the loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l’État.

But as the current argument about faith and politics rages, it fair to bring someone’s faith into question in politics? And the answer is yes, as long as politicians are OK with letting their faith determine their policy.

And it has real consequences.

For example: would an outspokenly Catholic PM like Tony Abbott have OKed the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which uncovered such horrific treatment of children by the Catholic Church?

This was the guy who attempted to ban the safe abortion drug RU-486 when he was health minister? The guy who has been outspoken in support of convicted child sex offender George Pell after his conviction?

Reckon he’d have been keen to shine a light into the actions of his own church? No: that was Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the sole admitted atheist to ever be PM.

Similarly, while Morrison has declared that “I support the law of the country and I always don’t mix my religion with politics and my faith with politics,” with regard to the question of whether gay people go to hell (which his own Pentacostalist faith is unambiguous about: the mainstream church opinion is that is homosexuality is at best immoral and also due to demonic spirits), the fact is, he obviously mixes his faith and politics all the time. That’s his thing.

For example: Morrison’s faith informed his response to the postal survey for marriage equality (he was outspokenly against same sex marriage) and his response to the passage of the legislation through parliament (he scurried out of the chamber so as to not have his vote counted).

And heck, he literally invited the press to come see him worship during the election campaign.

And let’s be clear: the current zeal for “religious freedom” seems to be weirdly focussed on only one religion.

For example, a lot of the people complaining about how persecuted they are for their faith seem awfully quick to talk about how Muslims are trying to impose Sharia Law in Australia – which, even if it was true and it’s not, they should be supporting in the name of religious freedom.

Anyway, there’s a solution to this thorny issue: follow France’s lead. Let’s get secular, people!