Tony Abbott: Bad Catholic?

on September 30, 2013

The media does not like Tony Abbott. The new Australian Prime Minister has earned scorn for being a man-outside of his time. Considering the times we live in, I can’t imagine being paid a greater compliment. He believes in Monarchy, is pro-life and pro-marriage, and is a devout Catholic. The latest tirade against the Conservative Prime Minister comes from The Guardian, and the author says that many of Mr. Abbott’s stances make him more conservative than the Pope. The article claims that “Catholicism is not inherently conservative,” and further draws on the recent remarks of Pope Francis as proof of the “idea that Catholicism departs from conservatism.”

As a contrast to Mr. Abbott, the article offers up the example of Dorothy Day in support of the claim that Catholicism has a “rich and, at times, progressive history.” It is pointed out that Ms. Day had an abortion, founded the Catholic Worker’s Movement, and was a pacifist. All of which seem to stand in contrast to Abbott’s conservatism and the “capitalist, individualist Australia” he is said to envision.

I confessedly don’t know much about Dorothy Day, who admittedly would disagree with the Prime Minister on a wide range of matters. However, the article does conveniently leave out that the abortion occurred early in her life before her conversion. Later in life she spoke in support of the Church’s teaching on the matter. Furthermore, Ms. Day was a distributist, which is essentially someone who believes in private property so strongly that they find the capitalist tendency to treat it as a commodity to be much too liberal.

Mr. Abbott’s belief in capitalism, the author claims, is in direct opposition to the Church’s teaching on selfishness and greed. But what exactly does Mr. Abbott believe? In his book, A Strong Australia, he states that “the ultimate purpose of good government is better people.” And what makes better people? Not economic growth, material gain, or education, but community. In his book Abbott describes how “volunteer associations, the ‘little platoons’ of life as Burke described them, between the individual and the state, give people a sense of wider purpose and belonging.”

The same Christian values that inform the distributist emphasis on place and home also inform Abbot’s emphasis on family and community. In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII quotes the passage in Ecclesiastes that says “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.” This, the Pope says, is the “natural impulse which binds men together in civil society.”

Tony Abbott knows that “A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city.” He said as much when he reasoned that government should be local because it is at the community level where men will work for “love rather money.”

Christianity is bigger than any political party, but media attempts to paint conservatives as bad Christians usually are nothing more than complaints that Christians are not good liberals. As long as we continue to be misunderstood, that fact is not likely to change.

  1. Comment by JonMarc on October 16, 2013 at 10:23 am

    I love the description of Distributism, heh. Thanks for the article.

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