Papal bull
John Paul II passed on just too late for an April rave. My attitude to certain enemies of humanity like Ronald Wilson Reagan is quite clear and unequivocal. I will not mourn their passing. In the case of those whose evil (opposition to contraception, forcing her views on patients at her Indian hospitals, and support of the dead hand of dictatorship, among many other sins) clearly outweighs the good, as in the case of the mad nun Teresa, I will not openly support any post mortem deification that neglects to mention the downside of their supposedly holy lives. But the case of John Paul II is neither of these. His reign was marred by a number of appallingly short-sighted rulings that have held back any chance for the modernisation of the Church (or any chance of it becoming relevant to modern society), especially in his rulings on the place of women in the Church, as well as his rulings on contraception and abortion. He was also responsible for a huge number of beatifications and canonisations and for recognition of a very narrow range of martyrdoms.
(I agree to an extent with Emily Maguire in The Sydney Morning Herald: About 5 million people flocked to Rome last weekend to farewell Pope John Paul II. That's the same number of people newly infected with HIV in 2003. ... Speaking ill of the dead is not the done thing, ... but for many his legacy is one of great suffering. There are 40 million adults and children living with HIV/AIDS, and another 15 million children are AIDS orphans. And yet the Catholic Church, under Pope John Paul II, instructed its priests to condemn condom use. Worse, it used its considerable influence in some of the poorest and most AIDS-affected nations to prevent health workers from distributing, or even talking about, condoms. ...
Nafis Sadik, a former executive director of the UN Population Fund, suggested the church play a role in reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in Third World countries by teaching men not to "impose themselves" on unwilling wives. "Don't you think that the irresponsible behaviour of men is caused by women?" was the Pope's response.
In the Pope's last published book, Memory and Identity, abortion is equated with the Holocaust. ... Even in the most extreme case imaginable, John Paul II's church was immoveable. Two years ago, a nine-year-old Nicaraguan rape victim was almost prevented from having a termination, thanks to the intervention of the Catholic Church. ... Tragically, the church showed less concern for the children under its care ... In addition to failing to protect hundreds of innocent children from predatory priests, and failing to compensate or adequately apologise to those victims ... John Paul II has been remembered as "compassionate" and "loving", yet he was anything but compassionate and loving to homosexuals, describing the push for gay marriage as "a new ideology of evil".
He preached that homosexual acts went against the "natural moral law" ... The proclamations and instructions of this venerated Pope could have made the world a better, safer, kinder place but, instead, they condemned countless of his flock to lives of suffering and caused millions of excruciating, needless deaths.)
At the same time you knew that (at least until his most recent illnesses and his lessening grip on reality or on the reigns of leadership) his heart was roughly in the right place and that he was working for the betterment of humanity in his pronouncements on a range of issues, not the least being on the increasing martial ardor of the USofA under the Shrub. His earlier efforts in helping to ameliorate the worst excesses of the dead hand of communist dictatorship from Eastern Europe, abetted the efforts on the internal reformers (led by Gorbachev, Walesa and others), were instrumental in the liberation (without excessive overt violence) of the former Soviet satellites, and of the USSR itself. It has always seemed to me that, in essence, he left too much power in the hands of the Vatican bureaucracy, led by the eminence gris of the Vatican right, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. As his health waned and his mind deteriorated, the Rat assumed more and more of the power of the papacy, making JPII's last years the ones with less to recommend them and more to be concerned with. Still at his death I mourned the man he had been: the simple Polish priest who was prepared to assist expatriate Polish Jews returning from the death camps to reunite with the remnants of their families, at a time when anti-Semitism remained rife among Polish Catholics; a Pope who was prepared to meet and talk with the leaders of all religions, the religions of the Book (like Judaism, Islam and the non-Catholic Christian sects) and many, many others, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Shinto; the modern prince of peace; the Pope with empathy and sympathy for the poor and the oppressed. John Paul II, RIP.
Of his successor, the less said the better, lest I really offend. My only thoughts at the time of the Conclave were to see the Rat as the Francis Urquhart of the Catholic Church. Plotting for his life to ensure his election to the papacy, all the time responding to questions of his candidacy with words like, "What me? Me, Pope? No, no, no. I'm just a back-room boy: put a bit of stick around ...". And blackguarding his possible opponents, using all the dirt his time in the Vatican Whips' office had afforded him.
Death does and does not become them
The would-be savior of Australia, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, has finally kicked off. And not a moment too soon. The only crime of which he was not guilty, but which some history has convicted him, is costing JWHoward the 1987 election. Howard was the author of his own disaster, largely through his promulagation of an incredible tax policy, which was brilliantly exposed by Paul Keating. The Joh-for-Canberra push did not cost the Tories the election; Howard did. Otherwise, JBP was prepared to use any means to achieve his aims, no matter how they damaged the traditions and conventions of our society. He won't be missed.
Less coverage was given to the death of Al Grassby, the Whitlam government Minister responsible for awakening Australia to the contribution made to it by non-Anglophone migration and to promoting the benefits of multiculturalism. His judgment might have been awry in the Donald Mackay case, but otherwise he made a major contribution to the advancement of this country as a civilised nation. RIP, Al.
Even less coverage was given to the passing of one of the strangest figures in Australian politics: Gordon Barton, the transport mogul who founded a political movement. I was a member of the Australian Reform Movement and the Australia Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s and knew Barton a little (he seconded my motion at an AP NSW Conference in the early seventies that the party's defence policy should be for unilateral disarmament - I was a Gandhi-ite pacificst at the time). Barton also funded the Nation Review, perhaps the best of the truly leftist newspapers published in Australia. He was the prime example of the capitalist-with-a-conscience, motivated by the need for greater social justice and the brutality of our involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. While he had diappeared from the scene soon after the AP largely melted into the Australian Democrats (like most of us who believed in a true third way, he had no faith in the Chippites), his contribution to the growing maturity of Australia as a nation was great. He would have despaired at the retreat from maturity exhibited by the current government. His passing was a chance to place him in his position in the history of Australia, a chance missed by most of the media; and by politicians. RIP, GB.
Corby
The Schapelle Corby case has now been settled in the lower Balinese courts but has many more legs to run yet: the appeals, the correspondence between governments on where she should spend her porridge, the 'Boycott Bali' campaigns that have now been launched. But aspects of the case leave me puzzled.
- The sentiment in Australia that is so sure of her innocence is alarmingly high and is perhaps a demonstration that the xenophobic attitudes towards the 'yellow peril' to our north have not completely dissipated. There is no doubt that the court heard sufficient evidence under the system operating in Indonesia (a civil law rather than common law country, where the 'golden thread that runs through British justice', ie that one is innocent until proved guilty, does not apply) to convict her. The judges needed to be convinced of her innocence: the prosecution had established a prima facie case for her guilt and the exonerating evidence was either weak or non-probative. Speculation on the 'true culprits', based on the 'tainted' evidence of a Melbourne crim, was not sufficient to overcome the four eye-witness accounts linking her to the drugs. I'm unconvinced either way on her guilt; she may be the innocent dupe of a drug-running syndicate that stuffed-up the off-loading in Sydney; or she may be yet another stupid mule, like the members of the Bali Nine. I don't know which, so just cannot see why so many citizens are so sure of her innocence.
- The outcry over the possibility of her being sentenced to death was right over the top. Many of those wringing their hands about the possibility (including some elements of the tabloid press) were the same people who'd been lining up to endorse the death sentence for those convicted of the Kuta Beach bombing. The Howard government, which had given a tick to the execution of Amrozi and his mates, now thought the use of the death penalty barbaric and cruel. Either you oppose capital punishment in all applicable cases, or you shut up.
- The incarceration of a pretty occidental in Bali is cause for all sorts of emotional out-pourings and a catalyst for tabloid television hours. Corby has been in jail for 8 months and has now been found guilty of a crime with a maximum penalty of death. Where is the outcry and televisual support for Peter Qasim, who has been in detention for over 6 years, has not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted, and who is an innocent in every sense of the word? Where is the outcry for David Hicks, kidnapped in Afghanistan and illegally shipped to American territory on Cuba, incarcerated for nearly four years and due to be tried by a military kangaroo court the rules of which make the Bali court look like the British Law Lords by comparison? Why has Chris Ellison (and other Howard government Ministers) been exerting himself over pretty Schapelle when he has been responsible for the banging up of countless innocents (over 200 cases referred to the Palmer Commission for investigation of possible wrongful detention under the immigration regimes of Ruddock and Vanstone) and won't raise a finger for Hicks?
First written: June 2005
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