With the role of faith in the public square regularly under attack, it is vital for leaders to defend the role of religion and faith in informing values, providing leadership, and inspiring service, writes Evan Mulholland. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
For the last few years, members of the governing Labor Party and their crossbench friends in the Greens here in Victoria, have been seeking to remove or substantially amend the Lord’s Prayer as it is read in the Victorian Parliament.
Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes said in May 2021 that Labor would “commit to workshopping a replacement model that is purpose fit for Victoria,” and this commitment was in the election platform Labor took to the most recent election in 2022.
Sensing this shift, grassroots Victorians of faith mobilised, and through organic growth and word of mouth, almost 11,000 signatories made their voices heard in a petition to the Parliament.
I am pleased that as a result of this enormous show of support for the retention of the Lord’s Prayer, the Government were forced into a backflip and did not seek to oppose the petition or to continue to fight for the removal of the prayer.
During this debate, other members of the council cited the census and other data on the percentage of Victorians who identify as Christian as arguments in favour of throwing this part of our cultural and civic heritage away.
The inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer is not exclusionary, as its opponents say. This was demonstrated by the extraordinary issuing of a unifying joint statement by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, The Hindu Council of Victoria, The Board of Imams Victoria, and the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council.
These faith leaders recognise something that my parliamentary colleagues did not. That the Our Father, at its heart, is a simple prayer of humility, and a call to forgive, and love and serve others before ourselves. To love and serve others before ourselves, which is exactly what elected members of Parliament are here to do.
Evan Mulholland is the Liberal Member for Northern Metropolitan Region and Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Victorian Legislative Council.
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Evan Mulholland MP: Why the Lord’s Prayer had to remain in Victorian Parliament (The Catholic Weekly)
