High-profile Catholic lawyers have warned the Australian Catholic University it faces losing its religious designation if it fails to defend the faith as Church leaders split with university bosses in the fallout from an anti-abortion speech on campus. Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
The warning follows a six-page letter to ACU from Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP who raised concerns about the ambivalence of the university’s commitment to its Catholic identity.
The nine lawyers, including former NSW Coalition attorney general Greg Smith and former state Coalition finance minister Damien Tudehope, wrote to the ACU’s Senate yesterday saying their review of Church law had made recommendations for the preservation of “the future Catholic identity of ACU”.
One was for an independent investigation – potentially from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education – into university leadership. The other was for Australian bishops to reconsider allowing the ACU to use the title Catholic in its name.
“The Catholic community in Australia cannot ignore the ongoing crisis that decisions taken by the senior executive of ACU have caused for its Catholic identity,” the letter, written by members of the Catholic lawyers’ group, the St Thomas More Society, said.
Simmering tensions over how an institution funded by taxpayers but overseen by the Church should handle conflicts between Church ideology and secular beliefs boiled over in October after a speech by former trade union heavyweight Joe de Bruyn at an ACU graduation in Melbourne.
While accepting an honorary doctorate – for which he was nominated by Archbishop Fisher – Mr de Bruyn said abortion was the single biggest killer of human beings in the world, and a “tragedy that must be ended”. Catholic doctrine teaches life is sacred from the point of conception.
The speech prompted a mass walkout by staff and students. The university expressed regret for distress caused to the community, refunded the students’ graduation fees and offered counselling.
An ACU spokeswoman said the ACU was answerable to a “complex environment” of stakeholders, including church, government and community, who often had competing interests.
FULL STORY
The abortion speech, the student walkout – and the Catholic civil war (By Jordan Baker, Sydney Morning Herald)
