Religion

Judaism teaches that antisemitism is ultimately rooted in hatred of God, and that hatred of the Rabbis by ignorant Jews exceeds that of heathens, hence the worst antisemites (e.g. Karl Marx) are often renegade Jews.

Alfred Zion reveals his misunderstandings of Judaism even before his novel, The Merchants of Melbourne, begins. His Hebrew/Yiddish-English glossary translates Torah as “Pentateuch, the five books of Moses”, and Yiddishkeit as “Yiddish culture”. In fact, Torah means the whole body of Jewish teaching of which the Pentateuch consists of “mere notes”. Yiddishkeit means Jewish religious teaching and observance. Such misleading translations are matched by malicious caricatures of Rabbis. Saul, a learned Jew of rabbinic status, believed “everything was pre-ordained, even the good and evil that befell you. Struggling against one’s fate was therefore a wasted effort, if not a contradiction of God’s will” (p.97). This is the opposite of the Jewish doctrine of free will and personal responsibility.

Dr Pawsey’s The Popish Plot is a history of what never was – a popish plot to take over Victoria around 1860 to 1863. It makes fascinating reading. It is also quite partisan.

Considered from one angle this is the tale of four exceptional years, 1860-1863, when Victoria’s catholics suffered the full assault of protestant bigotry on a lavish and unprecedented scale. Protestants reminded catholics that they were welcome to settle in Victoria so long as they did not covet the place occupied by their ruling Anglo-protestant hosts.

Gerard Henderson takes as the subject of this important book the relations between the bishops of the Catholic Church and its lay organisation, the Catholic Social Studies Movement during the period from 1940 to the 1960s. The study is particularly welcome as neither Church nor Movement were given to public self-exposure. Henderson, by using the files of the National Civic Council and the minutes of relevant episcopal committees, has given us an insight into the conflicts within the church over its role in political activity in this period

The decisive influence on Australian politics and culture has been the fact that our society has always included a large minority who, even if they considered themselves British, were definitely Irish and not English. The fact that this minority has been Catholic and, as a result, has felt itself discriminated against, has shaped the church into an Irish rather than a European mode, so that, as Campion points out, not only was to be Irish to be Catholic, but to be Catholic was to be Irish.

The Monash University team at the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne has achieved great success in its endeavours to relieve infertility by the production of ‘test-tube babies’. This collection explains what goes on, discusses moral and legal problems relating to the programme, and gives a preview of what might lie ahead. The contributors include members of the medical team, their clients, and moral philosophers and theologians.

In Papua New Guinea, no one dies from natural causes except, perhaps, some foreigners. At least, that is what every islander believes. Even a lifelong active Christian such as Mr Justice Narakobi’s mother, on her deathbed, attributed her fatal asthma to sorcery.

On page eleven of this book, Australians are called an engagingly innocent people ‘splendidly unthinking of anything but the simplicities of affluent living.’ On page twelve, they are called ‘lazy and uncreative’. On page 311, the author writes: ‘Yet in spite of a widespread belief (mainly self-generated) that we are a nation of yahoos, we have as much capacity for some unique kind of greatness as the people of any other race and nation.’

‘Women as clergy ... would be comparable to offering a meat pie on the altar of God.’ The Rev. Ian Herring, Victoria, 1971.

That is not the isolated view of a raving misogynist. The 1968 Lambeth Conference heard the now Anglican Primate of Australia, Marcus Loane, say that the admission of women into the priesthood would sound the ‘death knell’ of men’s interest in the Church. Just like a public bar.

And at Lambeth this year, 200 Anglican bishops were billeted 2 km away from their wives, so that they could more easily ‘wait upon God’.

The established Churches, like all our political institutions, have tenaciously guarded their rituals and hierarchies from female intrusion.