I once worked with a woman my own age, who remarked that her mother would never allow her to have Catholic friends. To say this surprised me is an understatement. Coming from a staunch Labor family I knew that there had once been a strong sectarian prejudice against Catholics in Australia, which ultimately split the Labor party in the 1950s.
But that was all in the past, I thought. No one at my state school had ever chanted about “Catholic dogs”. There was rivalry with the local Catholic school, of course, but it was the same friendly, inter-school rivalry as we had with the local boys-only tech school.
My work colleague’s tale of obdurate anti-Catholic bigotry seemed like something from a past age.
But, it seems that anti-Catholic prejudice in Australia has never been as far gone as I imagined.
I want you to carry out a thought experiment. Imagine if it were discovered that some men of the Muslim faith had engaged in awful acts of abuse. Imagine if these men drugged, assaulted and raped girls across a period of years. Imagine if they had treated the girls as their personal property.
Do you think the left-leaning media would demonise the men as evil and even satanic? Do you think commentators would appear on television to opine about Islam and its allegedly warped abusive culture?
[…]Would someone take it upon themselves to daub a mosque with anti-Islamic slogans[…]Would the supposedly progressive sections of society turn a blind eye to such foul mosque desecration[…]?
We don’t need to imagine anything: we know. Because we’ve seen it happen. Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs” (a pathetic euphemism in itself) raped mostly white, working-class girls on an industrial scale for decades. Belated inquiries have established that authorities – police, politicians, welfare workers – knew exactly what was going on, but did nothing.
We also know that systemic abuse and cover-ups were perpetrated in institutions in Australia and around the world. Not just, or even mostly, in Catholic institutions, not that you’d know that from media coverage.
But when it comes to Catholicism, the story could not be more different[…]
There have been numerous historic revelations of abuse by priests. And in this case, the right-on sections of society have been far from silent. In fact, they have been openly, loudly talking about Catholic abuse for years. Even that term “Catholic abuse” is striking. In relation to grooming gangs, anyone who says “Muslim grooming gangs” is shouted down and demonised as a racist. Yet the people who rage against public discussion of problems within the Muslim community will happily talk about Catholic abuse and Catholic crimes.
For the same reason that right-on artists and comedians will happily mock and vilify Catholicism, and Christianity more broadly, but rigidly forbid the same mockery or derision directed at Islam. Does anyone imagine that celebrities would screech “Gross! Racist!” at talk-show guests who criticised the Church?
The stark contrast between the discussion of abuse by Muslim men and the discussion of abuse by Catholic clergy is incredibly revealing. Do some far-right people use instances of Muslim abuse to demonise all Muslims and Islam itself? Unquestionably. And they should be strongly criticised for doing so.
But here’s the thing: that is what the supposedly virtuous left does in relation to Catholicism.
They take historic instances of abuse and use them to demonise Catholicism, and even innocent men such as Pell, as demonic and disgusting. This is every bit as bigoted as when a hard-right idiot uses the problem of grooming gangs to say that Islam’s followers are all inherently suspect.
For all their preening, onanising posturing about “tolerance” and “kindness”, the simple fact is that much of the left is as viciously bigoted as a thuggish alt-righter. The only difference is that they direct their irrational bigotry at permissable targets.
Christians, most especially Catholics, are the easiest, safest targets. Increasingly, Jews are fair game. If this sectarian hatred isn’t pulled up in its tracks, there’s no telling where it will end.
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