29 October, 2024
Dear Reader,
Recently the upper house of the parliament of South Australia narrowly rejected (10 to 9) an amendment to abortion law that would have required people wanting to terminate their pregnancy after 28 weeks to undergo an induced birth so that their babies could be adopted. The defeat means that the current law stands: late-term abortions remain legal at any time after 28 weeks. Read the ABC’s account of these events here. If successful it would have been a small step in our progress (if there can ever be any) towards a world in which the unborn are recognised as human and therefore precious. A major campaigner towards that goal is lawyer Dr Joanna Howe: ‘make abortion unthinkable’ is her catchcry.
More recently the distinguished guest-speaker at a graduation ceremony in Melbourne, Joe de Bruyn, occasioned a mass walkout of staff and students when he spoke out against abortion in his address. Those few who remained gave him a standing ovation but most had closed their ears long before. It must have been a set-up: de Bruyn had provided the university with the full text of his speech several weeks in advance, and as a well-known and long-term vocal opponent of abortion his views can hardly have been surprising. One observer reported that people started to get up and leave immediately the word ‘abortion’ passed his lips for the first time. I guess it served as its own trigger warning.
The institution at which this occurred was The Australian Catholic University. There was a time when we all used to laugh at absurd ideas, the raw material of good comedy, believing them to be the legitimate targets of satire. With alarming speed over the past decade or so crazy ideas about religion, race, science and gender have found wide acceptance. As if that were not bad enough, the pressure is on to silence contrary opinions, to protect the ears and tender consciences of the young: students whose primary task should be to seek truth are now told that there is no truth, and that they should fear and shun controversy. Trigger warnings are to protect them, and anti-discrimination legislation is designed to punish those who offend them. So the ACU has offered counselling to students who were distressed by what they were forced to hear, and offered a refund to those who felt their ceremony was spoiled by having to listen to unwelcome opinions. This in a university. What a world we have become!
COLONIALISM: A MORAL RECKONING
The Revd Dr NIGEL BIGGAR, Chairman of the Free Speech Union (UK), Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, was our guest in Hobart on Saturday 19 October. We are grateful to Quadrant magazine for allowing us to ‘borrow’ him for 24 hours!
Prof Biggar divided the available time between the issue of British colonialism, the theme of his latest book, and current threats to free speech. This is not the place to review Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning, for it is too powerful a book to be treated casually, but I will say that I am reading it myself at present and find it an enormously refreshing re-balancing of the record not only of British colonialism but of all others. One of the things you will take away from reading this book, if I can persuade you to tackle it, is the realisation that the instinct to colonise is a human universal: on every continent and throughout the ages human nations have colonised each other. Ashanti and Zulu, Han Chinese and Mongolian, Arab, Mughal and Persian, Japanese, Aztec and Inca – we’ve all been there. Were the British the worst? If you can believe that you can probably believe anything. But, as I said above, that’s the world we have become!
Prof Biggar’s talk was videoed and will shortly appear on YouTube. We will advise as soon as it’s up.
Recently our Deputy Director, Naomi O’Donovan, attended the Sydney conference of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Her report (below) is the lead article of this edition of our Newsletter.
With best wishes to all, as ever,
David Daintree
LEAD ARTICLE:
ARC CONFERENCE 2024
PREPARING FOR MOTHERHOOD
BY NAOMI O’DONOVAN
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) met in Sydney on 22 October and delivered a day of hope-filled and solutions-based presentations. As a representative of The Christopher Dawson Centre, I was honoured to attend the day and I’m pleased to be able to share some of the ideas that remained with me. Around 700 delegates met at Sydney’s International Convention Centre. The key issues raised were around the consequences of institutionalised childcare, the falling birth rate, the energy crisis and what policies we need in Australia to combat these challenges we’re facing as a civilisation. The talks will son be available online.
Hosted by former Deputy PM John Anderson and Baroness Philippa Stroud, speakers both from Australia or overseas focused on how we can combat the social, economic and energy related challenges we are facing as an established, civilised society here in Australia. A key idea speakers kept returning to was that we should be developing a better story for the future.
As Philippa Stroud said to open the day, ‘it’s not just time to renew our civilisation but it’s also possible.’ Stroud insisted that we need to harness the power of technology to serve and not subvert the human person.
The list of speakers included familiar names, including Tony Abbott, Greg Sheridan, Jacinta Price, Niall Ferguson, Erica Komisar, Peter Costello, Ticky Fullerton, Judith Sloan, Peta Credlin, Chris Uhlmann, and Jordan Peterson (on Zoom). Among less familiar names but certainly up and coming were Australians Virginia Tapscott of the Parents Work Collective and Gerard Holland of The Page Research Centre. Tapscott addressed the urgent need to recognise the domestic unpaid workload of mothers. That is, rather than trying to unleash the economic potential of women, she argued that it would be better to support mothers who want to care for their own children in the home rather than place them in care and return to work. In a panel session, Tapscott, cleverly remarked that a woman is more of a ‘baby machine’ if she has to ‘pop it out and go back to work.’ Equally impressive and persuasive was Holland who addressed the energy issue, using cost-benefit style arguments, making the case against renewables.
In Australia, we need to discuss policies affecting child rearing (not institutional child care) and energy (not renewables) because it was clear from the expert, evidence-based presentations we need policies in these areas that future proof our country for future generations. ARC promotes the idea, for example, that no power source should be turned off until a suitable alternative is made available.
Since the conference had a core aim of instilling hope, James McCauley’s famous editorial for the inaugural issue of Quadrant was duly referenced: ‘In spite of all that can be said against our age, what a moment it is to be alive in!’
As it was such a big theme of the day, I’d like to share some of my own reflections on motherhood. It’s best to write this now before it’s too late and the humbling journey of parenting makes me feel totally disqualified to speak on the topic in a few years’ time! At present our new baby is just over five months so I still feel like we have things under control.
It’s all ‘on the job’ training; but the best kind life has to offer – tapping into the, often forgotten, intuitive rather than lab-results style of learning. This has contributed to my confidence in handling of my baby. My love abounds for him as his mother: his crying is like the call-to-prayer, like the bell in monastic life! I’m romanticising it but I have found the transcendent in the smallness of the everyday.
In preparation for motherhood I read Cardinal Josef Mindszenty’s, The Mother (1951) to give this chapter of my life spiritual and philosophical grounding. For example, he writes that: ‘the mother is God’s collaborator, the first and best apostle of Holy Church. She is a radiant reflection of the Mother of Mercy … Mother will always be beautiful … life on earth is beautiful as long as a mother’s heart beats.’
As a woman of faith this idea is easy to grasp but almost every mother and father I speak to echoes the same message in one way or another. The marvel and wonder of life illuminates us. Children bring joy and blessings wherever they go. They remind us of our own dependant and vulnerable beginnings.
The next book I read was Home Grown Kids (1981)by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. It offers a practical and common sense roadmap of what children’s essential needs are up to age nine. By practical advice, I mean specific examples of age-appropriate activities, suggested ways of introducing, discussing and engaging with the natural world, and how many hours a day the children should be doing close-range study for best ophthalmological outcomes. This book will serve as a reference book over the years. Whilst the Internet and social media platforms abound in parenting hacks and advice, being on the phone with an absorbent little mind around is less than ideal.
Then, after watching a lecture by Louise Perry recorded and uploaded by the ARC conference last year in London, I was compelled to read her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022). She discusses what I’ll call the losers of the sexual revolution – women and men, essentially all of us! We all lose because a rampant sexualised society breaks down the family, traffics vulnerable women and children, and creates a morally bankrupt society. I urge all parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to read this, to be forearmed about our current culture and to support parents in safeguarding children from the toxins of the modern sexual mores.
Now, I’m reading Erica Komisar’s book, Being There – Why Prioritising Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters (2017). I heard about Erica’s compelling research which argues against institutionalised childcare before the age of three from her address given at ARC last year. Her evidence-based research suggests that prematurely separating mother and child for long stretches in the early years can cause lifelong attachment issues, behavioural problems in children and more. I won’t spoil the book by saying more!
Motherhood clearly deserves to be promoted once again and esteemed as a most noble occupation. I close with this poem by William Ross Wallace:
Blessings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace,
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Infancy’s the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mother’s first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow—
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Woman, how divine your mission
Here upon our natal sod!
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Blessings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
And the sacred song is mingled
With the worship in the sky—
Mingles where no tempest darkens,
Rainbows evermore are hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
FOR FURTHER READING
THE DARK SIDE OF GREEN
A clean and green planet is a noble aspiration. But is it also a First World luxury? What is the impact on poorer nations, as well as the poor within our own western societies? This article points to a Huge Problem.
WESTERN DEMOCRACY AT THE CROSSROADS
A version of this piece by Steven Schwartz appeared in Quadrant. It is based upon the keynote speech Prof Schwartz gave at our July Colloquium.
COMING EVENTS
CHESTERTON SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE
At Campion College, Sydney, on Saturday 2 November. Details Here.
THREATS TO DEMOCRACY
In 2024, the greatest number ever will have voted in ‘democratic’ elections, in Argentina, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the UK, the USA, and others. But there are deep questions about the success of democracies: ‘This year’s democracy index shows that only 43 of the more than 70 elections are expected to be fully free and fair…. The latest report shows that less than 8% of the world’s population live in full democracies.’ (The Economist 14 February)
The Royal Society of NSW is hosting a one-day forum at Government House, Sydney, on Thursday 14 November. Free admission, all welcome, but registration essential: Details here.
LATE AND ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN SUMMER SCHOOL
Monday 6 to Friday 10 January 2025
Notre Dame Priory, Colebrook, Tasmania
The Latin school assumes some prior knowledge of the language and leads participants through a selection of important readings in poetry and prose, sacred and secular, from authors such as Augustine, Jerome, Bede, Peter Abelard, Aquinas, the Carmina Burana, and even Dante. In date our selections range from the poet Virgil to the abdication speech of Pope Benedict! There will also be a segment on palaeography when participants can handle real medieval manuscripts. Note that this course does not take any position on the liturgical use of Latin, but it recognises that Latin remains the official language of the western Church and acknowledges the insistence of the last four popes that Latin must be preserved! Accommodation may be available on request at the Priory. Enquiries to guestmaster@notredamemonastery.org.
BIBLICAL GREEK FOR BEGINNERS
Cancelled
2023 COLLOQUIUM BOOK
WOKERY – A WAKE-UP CALL FOR THE WEST, the complete proceedings of last year’s Colloquium, is now on sale. The cost is $35 (postage included). ORDER ONLINE HERE or write to us at director@dawsoncentre.org.