Religious freedoms were the focus of the second Tim Fischer Oration, with Helen Alvaré warning that society faces a threat “way worse than ignorance or mean-spiritedness – a seeming rejection of reason itself”. Source: Catholic Voice.
A sell-out audience of more than 550 filled Parliament House’s Great Hall in Canberra on August 7 for the address, which was the second in a biennial series of orations held to honour Australia’s former deputy prime minister.
A leading Catholic commentator in the United States, Professor Alvaré drew on her background as a lawyer, academic, wife, and mother to speak on the threats to religious freedoms and what might be done to “promote the common good” through “noble actions” in public life.
Professor Alvaré urged the faithful to be active in defending these freedoms because if they don’t, and alluding to her experience in the United States, the media, the political elite, and “Hollywood” would “have the last word”.
She highlighted a pressing need for engagement in “sexual expression issues” such as contraception, non-marital births, abortion, same-sex relations, or transgenderism.
In the US, and she believed to some extent in Australia, there was a “new sexual orthodoxy” that was hurting the most vulnerable in society and that so-called contemporary “progress” on these social issues had led to more non-marital pregnancies, more abortions, more single-parenting, and other concerns.
“Christianity is one of the last voices refusing to bow to this new orthodoxy due to its commitment to the vulnerable, to truth and to love,” she said.
To meet this challenge, Professor Alvaré argued the faithful needed to underline that their norms and beliefs were not “moralising” but were loving in nature and “architectural to our faith”.
The fundamental lesson was that being active in public debates was to perform a service to others and was “not an exercise in pride or triumphalism.”
“Humility, not normally considered a virtue in public life, leads to better work, more enjoyment, less handwringing, and, over the long run, more courage and energy for the task.”
FULL STORY
Professor Helen Alvaré delivers the second Tim Fischer Oration (By Don Smith, Catholic Voice)
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