I quite like this piece. While I disagree with Brennan about issues like gay marriage and stem cell research, I can see that he is willing to discuss these issues openly without becoming judgmental. The fact that this piece analyzes the probability of legislation being passed as opposed to kneejerk responses (something you might benefit from considering, runner - the author also opposed abortion and stripping religious schools of their rights, he just does it without sanctimony).

This is the tone of discourse that politics should be about, instead of hatred and posturing.

Nice work Fr Brennan. You're a credit to thinking Christians everywhere.

TRTL

'Nice work Fr Brennan. You're a credit to thinking Christians everywhere.'

And of course Jim Wallace is an unthinking Christian because he has a different point of view to your TRTL.

A nicely argued article that exposes political involvement and agitation from the head of the Catholic Church in Australian politics, as well as from the so-called Christian Lobby--as if Christians need an advocate in Australian politics! Prime Minister Gillard's weak-as-water cow-towing to the Christian vote (an atheist extending funding for school chaplains) is ample evidence of a powerful social faction (albeit eclectic) she can't afford to put off-side. I imagine after the election she'll be announcing her wedding plans, with all the High-church ceremonial--though if she's shrewd she'll put it off till the lead-up to the next election, imagine the spread she'd get in the "Women's Weekly", not to mention "Bride".
But back to Cardinal Pell. One wonders how the Pope views his antipodean Cardinal's forays into national politics, and his outspoken press releases (always nonsensical), though the current Pope seems himself far more decisive, politically, than his predecessor was, who certainly would have blushed.
While Frank Brennan makes a powerful argument in favour of secular government, there's a certain smugness in his confidence in the status quo's being maintained in any event. The article nicely illustrates the state of conservative populist hegemony in this country. Which is why he and his recalcitrant brethren can afford to disdain vulgar politics and look to their dignity and public profile.
As for the Greens; voting for them will only bring the major parties even closer together, if that's possible.

Jim Wallace launched the initial salvo in The Australian describing the Greens as “a party whose philosophical father, Peter Singer, clearly places the rights of animals above the rights of children, but at the same time endorses sex with animals, which presumably are robbed of any right of consent”.
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If making such pronounments, there ought to be some accuracy; endorsing sex with animals indeed. Can Wallace realistically name any group where having sex with animals occurs. If that is the general thinking of Christians, then thank God for atheists.

The Greens began in the early 1970s when Lake Pedder was to be flooded in Tasmania. The group formed was the UTG or United Tasmania Group which later became the Green Party; was Peter Singer about at that time?

@ Runner,
I’m a conservative reformed evangelical Protestant Christian. I believe in the Sufficiency of the Bible, attend an enthusiastic and evangelical Sydney Anglican church, and hold *most* of the conservative biblical doctrines. (However, some American Christians would not like my accepting that God made the world through evolution, and that Genesis is actually talking about WHY, not HOW, God made the world. But that is a whole new argument!).

YET I’M VOTING GREEN!

Why? Because of Augustine’s “2 cities”. There is the heavenly kingdom (the universal church of all those who have trusted in Christ, whatever denomination) and the secular government.

The government is not really there to enforce Christian values but to maintain some semblance of law and order! That’s it! So the Greens want to ban prayers in parliament? Can you please tell me what the point of the Lord’s prayer actually is, in the bible? Isn’t it a diatribe against meaningless recitals and heartless hypocritical homilies? Why should we force non-Christians to open government with the Lord’s prayer, which was MEANT to be a sermon against exactly that kind of ritualised recital?

Try to get your head around the book of Romans, and how Paul views the law verses relationship with God by grace. Or try Corinthians which talks about discipline within the church, but then explains we’re not to excommunicate or judge those outside the church because they are not even pretending to live by our standards!

Try to define what it is you think the CHURCH does and what the government does, and try to do so from THE BIBLE! Then you’ll see that it’s more about voting or the least harm to the most people, and that, I have concluded, means having the Greens with the balance of power to make deals with the other climate-numb parties.

An interesting article that I thought was well thought out and well written by a modern thinking Christian.

Frank Brennan<" Though the Christian Lobby thought its influence significant when the major parties were both headed by professed Christians, there is a need for special sensitivity, judging politicians and parties by their fruits in this pluralistic democratic Australia where quite a number of its thinking voters as well as some of its leading politicians happen to be atheist."

How true Mr Brennan. We need to separate Church and state for the good of all Australian people, and not just for the Christian Australians.

I myself will be voting for the Greens because I too believe that they will provide balance in any decision the ruling party may want to consider.

Just because I am a lapsed Catholic now (skeptic), it should not automatically mean I should vote for labor just because Julia Gillard is an atheist.

In fact I do not agree with Labor's assertions that Gay marriage should not be allowed, which is decided by that party even though it's leader is an atheist.

We should consider their policies as a whole and then decide on which party, if any, we will vote for.
We need to leave religion well out of it.