In the chorus of Yes, why aren't the bishops joining in?

'Subsidiarity' is an aspect of social justice that accords the authority and responsibility for effective consultation and decision-making to be divested from remote and centralist/collectivist functionaries to appropriately local and accountable entities at the interface of where that self-same Keynesian economic interference was deemed necessary.

Unfortunately - and uniquely in Australia under ideological pressure from that arch-centrist/corporatist Catholic ideologue, BA Santamaria, subsidiarity was co-opted into the vocabulary of Australia's proto-fascists (which is what ardent supporters of General Franco unquestionably were) and weaponised to ensure that public works on behalf of the poor by various Labor Parties, both federal and state, were vilified as nefarious exercises in socialist intervention in the free-market which, left to its own devices, was argued to be the best means of improving the conditions of the poor.

As a specialist in Catholic Social Teaching, I contest John RD's assertion that, in washing their hands off an actual commitment to collectively recommending a 'YES' vote, our bishops are invoking an important aspect of Catholic Social Teaching in support of their position.

It used to be said by CST scholars at home and abroad that the Australian bishops who supported Santa were following Pilate. Not much has changed!

Would that the SJ priests Vic Turner, Bill Smith, Harold Lalor and co. - long and close associates and supporters of BA Santamaria - were around today to learn that they were "proto-fascists". I'd like to see that!

Nothing morally commendable in that, Margaret, unless you regard an imagined prudence on the bishops' part as the moral equivalent of speaking out.

For your information, Martha Nussbaum, the world's leading Aristotelian scholar - Aquinas gets his moral philosophy from Aristotle - argues that prudence isn't just an overrated virtue, it is not a virtue at all but a process through which decision-makers must wend their way before making a stand.

The seven capital virtues, also known as contrary or remedial virtues, are those individually opposed to the seven deadly sins. They are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.

Prudence is merely a cardinal virtue, along with justice, temperance and courage. The Bishops are called to speak out with prudence, justice, temperance and courage about all capital issues to do with chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.

Each one of these capital virtues are available in my estimation to prompting a more forthright statement by the Bishops in supporting a YES vote.

Were anybody to put me to the test of constructing a statement that meets all the above seven capital virtue points in support of a YES vote, I would be happy to do that.

I dare say that, eminent scholar though she is, Martha Nussbaum, once a doctoral student of Oxford classicist and analyst of ancient philosophy, Gwylim Owen, would be surprised to find herself touted as "the world's leading Aristotelian scholar."
Dr Nussbaum's disqualification of prudence as a virtue is a radical departure from Aristotle's explicit categorizing of its moral status: "Prudence is a virtue" (Nichomachean Ethics, VI, 5). In this classification, contrary to Michael Furtado's minimalizing modifier "merely", Aquinas follows Aristotle, and, employing a house-construction analogy, awards prudence foundational status among its cardinal companions (Summa Theologica II-II, 48.1).
I note with interest, too, MF's enlistment here of his previously extolled gender theorist, Judith Butler's, severest critic.

Nice to know that, Bob, but it classifies itself as an opinion and not a judgment, which requires evidence or other form of justification.

Assuming then that you appeal to the proportionality clause in Aquinas, your assertion stands on shaky ground, considering the seriousness of the Indigenous situation in regard to life expectancy, education outcomes, incarceration, generational trauma from forcible removal from parental supervision and our prior policy of genocide.

On the other hand, the principle of reparative justice, central to Catholic Social Teaching, requires an apology followed by just compensation, without which any priest in the confessional would tell you that an apology is meaningless.

This is the test that all confessors must apply to what is meant by 'a firm purpose of amendment'. Amendatory justice is precisely the same as reparative justice.

In the Catholic Church our Bishops are unequivocally responsible for all matters of faith and morals. Indeed. their Episcopal Oath of Office obliges them to do so! While they may be responsible for pronouncing on this question in a pastoral and sensitive way, it has never been the teaching of the Catholic Church that a pastoral theology should be an end in itself but a method.

Indigenous people "do" want to "do it for themselves". That's why, via this referendum they are asking for a guaranteed seat at the table when matters affecting them are discussed. Top-down interventions have poor outcomes and waste resources. Voting YES is voting for those better outcomes. Voting No is a vote for more of the same, despite all the work Indigenous people right across Australia have done for many years to get to this point. In spite of the very loud voices of certain Indigenous people, over 80% support this request to listen them. Voting No says, "No, we are not going to listen to you, we don't want to listen to you." If you see any value in Catholic social justice, the only vote is Yes.

Ask any disadvantaged cohort if they want a guaranteed seat at the table and they will say yes. Are they all to have their own voices to parliament too?

The real issue for the Yes case, not answered by them, is what makes the disadvantaged among the Aboriginal peoples so different from the disadvantaged among all other cohorts in the population that they must be treated differently.

Given that asylum seekers are exposed to threats to life should their applications fail, should they too have an eternal constitutional advocate?

If the Yes case refuses to address the most obvious question, it'll only become an elephant in the booth on voting day.

Hmm....an insightful and disarming observation, S Martin. We certainly shouldn't treat the Australian electorate as the fools the 'No' casers evidently take us for by assuming that Australia's First People should inherently gain prior moral advantage for their cause in the context of the tragically lengthy queue for recognition of their human rights claims over our equally much-beleaguered asylum-seekers.

Since you raise this excellent question, no doubt you will find that St Thomas Aquinas deals with issues of moral proportionality in exquisitely lengthy detail in his Summa Theologica.

As my four-year old daughter, Camille, now living in Scotland, once said, "Two wrongs cannae make a right!'

Thanks.

Yes, Brian! For Catholics, at the very least, Synodality provides the key to casting a YES vote.

Ross, many, especially Professor Brennan, have carefully and cogently argued that the Constitution is already fractured and that even an inadequate addition, such as conveyed in the proposal to add to it 'A Voice to Parliament', would constitute an improvement, albeit flawed, to the way it currently stands. Thanks!

I've read a lot of what Fr Brennan has written. There are very many eminent legal opinions on the Voice, and that is what they are, opinions. How the High Court would interpret is unknown. The latest opinion I've seen is by Professor Nicholas Aroney, professor of constitutional law at UQ, who thinks the Voice is a new head of power which could see a shift in Commonwealth/State powers, so very far reaching..

I'd swallow that line, Noel, had you not offered Senator Price, as the living embodiment of a prominent Australian politician who believes in the adequate and equal representation of her people in the way that the Syrophoenician woman lifted the foggy veil of misapprehension that Jesus hitherto had by assisting Him to proclaim a fuller and more authentic version of what it takes to be fully human and equal.

When Senator Price cites the introduction of running water as evidence of improvement in the living standards of our Aboriginal & Islander sisters and brothers, one can hardly avoid regarding that statement as akin to Marie-Antoinette's about advancing the nutritional advantages of cake over bread, thereby sealing her tragic fate before being trundled towards her unfortunate decapitation at the Place de la Bastille!

As a monarchist and opponent of capital punishment, I so wish it hadn't eventuated that way but cannot escape the corollary that minimalist solutions after years of abuse & deprivation call for a proportionate degree of understanding and adequate reparative justice.

Unfortunately, Senator Price's commendable base-line championing of minimalism misses this point, rivetingly made by CB Macpherson in his 'Real World of Democracy'.

Nevertheless, full marks for trying!

That's an interesting but unsurprising interpretation of Frank's position. Frank had some legalistic concerns with the wording of the referendum proposal, concerns that have been strongly dismissed by former Chief Justice of the High Court Robert French, leading academics in constitutional law, Frank's brother (a Senior Counsel), the Solicitor General, and experienced senior public administrators. Frank has now categorically supported Yes.

Before the parliamentary committee, my argument was that if there be disagreement between French and Hayne on the one hand and Callinan and Jackson on the other, we were best advised to change the wording from ‘executive government’ to ‘ministers of state’, thereby reducing the effects of the disagreement.

There is now little contest about ‘the legal effect of representations made by the Voice’. Parliament will have power to control that. But what about the preconditions for the making of a representation? Can Parliament control or curtail those? That’s a question the government declined to put to the Solicitor General. The government has never provided an answer. Nor, as far as I am aware, have the legal authorities listed by Peter. Would the Voice be entitled to know that a public servant was contemplating making a decision relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples? And would the Voice be entitled to sufficient information from the decision maker so as to make an informed representation? I would think so. It is at the very least arguable. Otherwise the entitlement to make representations would be meaningless or completely ineffectual. I don’t think subclause 3 which is ‘subject to this Constitution’ (ie subject to subclause 2) could preclude the Voice’s twin entitlements to notice and sufficient information under subclause 2. It’s these entitlements which may be contested in future were the referendum to get up.

But despite all this, I am, as Peter says, unequivocally for ‘Yes’ as very little is perfect in this life!

"It feels as if . . . it seems . . ."
More is required than 'vibe' response and specious analogies to win support for the referendum proposal, Brendan.

That's a very cynical attribution of motive, Patricia Hamilton. Mere assertion and stereotyping are no substantiation of the charge you make against both the bishops and those you claim they seek to appease.

Fosco, while I can't claim such visionary experience as Martin Luther King's, I was privileged to see Balgo Mission on the edge of the Tanami Desert when it flourished as a stock horse and cattle industry in the days before the Pallottines withdrew. This missionary enterprise commenced in the 20th century - 1939 - and, by that time, the missionaries were already "doing things a bit differently".
That the people, and the local Kukatja (Gugadja) language - the predominant one in the area - were respected is evidenced in the groundbreaking work done by the Pallottines that contributed significantly to more recent dictionary publication. What's more, the missionaries encouraged Balgo artists who were innovators in the now-established Papunya Tula movement; and elements of Kukatja language, ritual and music were incorporated into the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy.
The attitude of the Balgo elders towards the missionaries which came to include John of God nuns, was one of both respect and gratitude - not least, I might add, for the buffer of protection they provided against predatory white "rogues" on the run from the law in the big towns and cities.

The Bishops have not been "mute" on the referendum, Ginger - neither collectively nor individually (see, for instance, the recently released ACBC document and last week's explicit statements of support for the Yes vote by Bishops Gauci and Long).

What the bishops have declined to do (quite explicitly on p. 18 of their ACBC Social Justice Statement: "Listen, Learn, Love" 2023-2024) is to impose a binding of Catholic consciences on the referendum proposal.

Regarding 18th Century white arrival and early settlement, and accusations of sins of omission - viz, alleged episcopal silence urged from a contemporary perspective of retrospection - the earliest Australian bishops did not possess the advantage of knowledge coming from direct experience that hindsight affords:
the first Catholic bishop appointed to "The Great South Land of the Holy Spirit"- John Bede Polding - did not arrive until 1835, whereupon his energies were immediately absorbed in the task of meeting the spiritual an temporal needs of his growing Catholic flock (which included convicts) - and not, it might be noted, without formidable establishment Anglican hierarchical opposition. Within a decade of his arrival, however, in 1843, assisted by priests of the Passionist Order, the new bishop initiated the first Catholic mission to the indigenous peoples of Stradbroke Island - an experience that was to produce prophetically empathic, confronting, and remarkably un-Eurocentric advocacy statements like: "What right did you have to come here? We have not asked you to come, and you take away our lands, you drive away our means of subsistence . . . occupation by force, accompanied by murders, ill-treatment, ravishment of their women; in a word. to the conviction on their minds that the white man has come for his own advantage, without any concern to their rights." (Cited ACBC Social Justice Statement 2023-24, pp.13 -14).

Polding's demonstrated solidarity and sincere concern to serve the spiritual and temporal needs of indigenous peoples echoes and instances the traditional missionary direction of Pope Gregory I's "The Book of Pastoral Rule": "A religious leader should be careful when deciding to remain silent and be sure to say something useful when deciding to speak . . . hiding behind a wall of silence is like taking flight at the approach of a wolf" - advice formulated in the context of the Church's late-6th century mission to Britain during his pontificate. Polding was no "wolf". Nor were the Church's missionary Benedictines, Fathers Rosendo Salvado and Guiseppe Serra in their missionary labours among the Murrara-Murrara peoples of WA's Victoria Plains when they began their ministry under Bishop John Brady there in 1846. Before the establishment of the monastic centre of New Norcia, the two missionaries lived and moved directly among the natives, learning their languages and customs - respectful practices to be vitally influential as far as 20th century Balgo missiology before the closure of that brave, productive and significant Pallottine venture.
The dedication and courage of these missionary ancestors of the Catholic faith in Australia is deserving , I believe, more of recognition than of revisionist censure. Their pioneering actions are in the main an eloquent and humane counter-sign to the inhumane extremes of imperialist colonizing.