The proposal by the ACT government to compulsorily acquire Calvary Public Hospital in Canberra, which the government insists has nothing to do with religious beliefs, is an evolving story with a long history. It has already blown up into a full-scale national church-state crisis.
The Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn, behaving as if this is a new issue, has embarked upon a furious attack on the government. He has launched an old-style no holds barred Catholic campaign using every political tool at his disposal including prayer vigils, parish Masses, a petition, and media attacks. He has offered to talk to the government, but this may be a little late given his previous extreme denunciations of it using exaggerated language about dictatorships.
There are three main strands to this campaign. Taking exception to the abrupt and non-transparent decision; attacking the performance of the ACT government in hospital management and health services delivery generally; and alleging that the action is an anti-religion intervention which threatens the wider community, including all faith-based services. The first strand is understandable; the second may resonate within the ACT community and hits back hard against the government; the third, though, while a common tactic in parliamentary politics, is misleading and baseless. Elements of the national Church have emphasised this third strand, including the Archbishop of Sydney. Most egregiously the National Catholic Education Commission has taken the archbishop’s bait by claiming that Catholic education assets are threatened nation-wide.
Before rushing to the barricades, as the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn has done, the Catholic community in Australia should reflect on the situation, regardless of the temptations of wider national and local political debate. The federal Opposition has tried to link it to the politics of freedom of religion and to embroil it in the rhetoric of culture wars. National conservative figures, like former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, are keen to pour fuel on the fire, while the conservative lobby, the Australian Christian Lobby, staged a protest rally outside the Legislative Assembly.
The Church meanwhile has its own interests and integrity to protect and should consider both the broader international and national context and the local circumstances before further deliberate escalation.
The broader question is the increasingly regular confrontations between the church and the state around both the world and the nation. These cannot all be put down to narrow-minded, bigoted, secular governments threatening the freedom of religion of churches and faith communities. There are deeper issues at stake.
As society moves in one direction and the church in another on matters like abortion, euthanasia, and same sex marriage, for instance, church-state confrontations over the delivery of hugely expensive publicly funded services by Catholic agencies are inevitable and likely to become more frequent. Democratically elected governments naturally respond to wider public concerns in making their decisions.
'We have every right to celebrate and stand firm on our principles, but one consequence is that increasingly the community will question our previously ‘unquestioned’ right to be funded to run public facilities like hospitals.'
The official Catholic position on abortion and euthanasia is being put strongly within the ACT by the archbishop precisely as the hospital crisis emerges. Bluntly, the church stands defiant and will not cooperate in any way with the state. This is understandable but may have unavoidable consequences.
One of the more unusual features of this crisis is that the church side is being led loudly by the archbishop and the diocesan church despite him having no formal role in owning or governing Calvary ‘Catholic’ Hospital. This is no mere detail. The historical division between the diocesan church and religious orders and congregations remains and should be respected. Calvary, the contractual ‘owner’ of the hospital is the modern embodiment of the Little Company of Mary and has nothing formally to do with the local diocesan church leaders. Yet the archbishop has assumed leadership, running a public campaign, while Calvary and the government resume their own negotiations.
It is as if this is an old-fashioned existential crisis for the church that the episcopal leadership is confident of handling in a traditional way. This is about church assets, identity, and its place in the world, which must be defended at all costs.
The intensity of this campaign is in stark contrast to the hierarchy’s approach to other pressing matters, such as parish decline, the disappearance of many religious orders, and the demands for reform by lay Catholics. Other matters like implementing the decrees of the Plenary Council or standing up for refugees and asylum seekers or campaigning for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament deserve the same urgency. Instead, the archbishop’s campaign has charged ahead, apparently leaving the national Calvary board and Catholic Heath Australia in its wake.
There is also a particular Canberra context that non-Canberrans should understand before they jump on board and see this case as confirmation that a rabidly secular government, driven by religious bigotry, is out to get ‘us’. One aspect of this, which the current campaign refuses to even acknowledge, is the long and convoluted history of ACT government efforts to buy Calvary hospital, which culminated 13 years ago with an agreed sale being vetoed by the Vatican behind closed doors.
Despite once being a very Catholic city-state, based on a disproportionate number of Catholics in the Commonwealth public service, Canberra is now a more secular jurisdiction than any other in Australia. The recent Census confirmed a higher proportion of non-religious citizens than anywhere else. Many in the local community are sensitive to overt ‘religious’ influence and calling for the ACT government to be put in its place by national governments is counterproductive.
Much of what the church stands for has clearly suffered political rejection in the ACT recently, from the high vote for same sex marriage in 2017 to the unseating of its ‘favourite son’, Liberal Senator Zed Seselja, by David Pocock in 2022. Notably Pocock stands for ACT rights and vigorous representation of the views of the ACT community, including these contested ‘Catholic’ issues.
Canberra is growing fast, earning a third federal seat recently. Calvary is one of only two major public hospitals. Canberra Public Hospital is on the South side and Calvary Public Hospital on the North side.
This means the balance between public and private hospitals in Canberra is not the same as in Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane. It also means greater public attention to the services not offered on principle, like abortion and euthanasia, by Catholic hospitals like Calvary.
The ACT government has handled the acquisition badly. It has seemingly been abrupt and lacking in transparency. It should have consulted more widely, including with staff, and its mistakes and its misjudgments should not be excused.
Unfortunately, however, these failings are familiar within the church too. The church itself has no credibility on matters of accountability and transparency. There was none when the Vatican, at the instigation of Australian bishops, over-ruled the previous agreement between the government and the Calvary board on the sale of the hospital. This complex history which needs to open up for wide community discussion.
Just where all this ends up no one yet knows. It is possible that the forces arrayed by the archbishop against the government will prevail, though the 21-year-old ACT Labor-Green government is comfortably ensconced against a weak opposition. Maybe the church campaign will cause the government to retreat or even bring it down at the next election.
The church might win this battle, but ‘we’ will not win the war. The old days are gone, the church is much weaker, and Australia, led by its young people, is becoming much more secular. The gap between the two is growing. We have every right to celebrate and stand firm on our principles, but one consequence is that increasingly the community will question our previously ‘unquestioned’ right to be funded to run public facilities like hospitals.
John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Main image: Calvary Public Hospital, Bruce. (Calvary Hospital)