The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, has accused a leading Australian human rights figure of attempting to “intimidate” Christians on moral issues.
In a speech last Friday to the Australian Christian Lobby, he responded to comments made by the Human Rights Commissioner of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) about a statement by the Archbishop of Canberra.
Cardinal Pell said that Archbishop Mark Coleridge “issued a carefully worded statement opposing same-sex civil unions, acknowledging the rights of homosexual people to justice, but pointing out the differences between desires and rights and the unique advantages the marriage of a man and woman brings to the spouses and their children”.
In response, the ACT Human Rights Commissioner accused the Archbishop of “getting very close to “homophobia,” starting to skate on thin ice”.
Cardinal Pell said that the Commissioner had “gone too far in this attempt to intimidate, to silence debate from Christians or indeed any person who, as in this case, merely point out the natural advantages and preminence of heterosexual marriage for society”.
Referring to an ongoing inquiry by the Australian Human Rights Commission into freedom of religion, he said that “the only question about its outcome is how bad it will be”.
He said that the terms of reference of the inquiry suggested that “religious freedom is not a human right and may not be compatible with human rights”.
This was, he continued “an astonishing claim from a senior officer of the body responsible for the protection and advancement of human rights in Australia”.
Cardinal Pell went on to warn that the Commission’s agenda was to increase Government control of religion.
This agenda, he added, underscored “the need for a different sort of inquiry; not into whether religious freedom is compatible with human rights, but into whether this enquiry of the Human Rights Commission is compatible with human rights”.
Cardinal Pell continued: “The problem for the Commission and those who share its world view is that human rights often get in the way of their particular secular agenda.
“The rights to life, to marriage, to family; the recognition of the family based on marriage as the fundamental unit of society; the rights of parents to determine the moral and religious education of their children; and the rights to freedom of religion, belief, and conscience, are all recognised by the major international human rights agreements.”
True human rights, he said “also stand squarely in the road of the radical autonomy project which the extreme left, the anti-religious left is pushing”.
This was why “these inconvenient rights have been read-down”, he added, reinterpreted and displaced by newer “rights” such as “abortion, euthanasia, anti-discrimination and same-sex marriage”.
