AUSTRALIA
The Age
Jack Waterford
Editor-at-large, The Canberra Times
It’s been an uncomfortable week – indeed it’s been an uncomfortable few years — for the declining numbers of Australian Catholics adhering firmly to the values of the church, and believing as firmly in the edicts of its leadership as in its teaching and traditions.
A high proportion of Australian Catholics have origins in Irish Catholicism where, a week ago, a country overwhelmingly, if increasingly nominally Catholic, voted in a referendum for gay marriage.
An institution that could bring down governments can now scarcely govern itself.
The church campaigned hard for a no vote. A generation ago, as when the Irish had a referendum about divorce, that would have settled the matter. This time church opposition settled it the other way.
The conscious rejection of the church’s argument was the more explicit because of its appalling record with the physical and sexual abuse of children. And of equally contemptible policies, going all the way back to the Vatican, of cover-up, and putting the commercial interests of the church and the reputation of its officers ahead of the interests of children.
The collapse of the Irish church’s moral authority is witnessed by a catastrophic decline, in only 30 years, of church attendance, and political influence.
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