The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
21 September 2003
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Heaven
scent floral feast
Welcome
strangers’ call
Bishops:
Fight racism
Bishop
Mayne dies at 75
Senate
‘yes’ to gay bid
Benedictine
nuns gather in Sydney
Tears
of joy at Marriage Sunday Mass
Donor
club
His
Holiness, the poet
Concert
to mark Pope’s jubilee
It’s
‘weakness of faith’
Still
a need for Catholic voice: Dr Pell
Editorial:
Spectre of fear
Letters:
Christian values
Conversation:
Amanda McKenna, Catholic singer and songwriter - ‘God’s messenger’ on a journey
of faith
Opintion:
‘Good mother of all ...’
Voice
of Youth: ‘Most wonderful day’
Insights:
Biblical ancestors?
Religious:
Spirit-ualities are everywhere
North
American, Irish, Australian sisters in historic Loreto reunion
Education:
Decade a day at school
Social
Work degree course at Strathfield
Balmain
kids hit right note
Catechism:
Daytime course
New
bishops ‘help God’s light shine in darkness’
Capacity
to forgive ...
‘Heroic
witness’ to the Gospel of hope
‘Kids
worth dying for’
Inspirations:
‘Schoolies’ faith patrol
Editorial: Spectre of fear
Bishop Christopher Saunders, Bishop of Broome and head of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, says that for more than two centuries Australia’s story has been one of welcome and exclusion, illustrated by the impact of the early white settlers on our first inhabitants.
“Today,” he says, “we witness the recurrence of widespread racial hostility and rejection, expressed most clearly in our attitude to prospective refugees and asylum seekers, often from the Middle East.”
The bishop was speaking in support of Challenging Racism, a kit prepared by the National Council of Churches to enable schools, parishes and neighbourhood groups to participate fully in Social Justice Sunday (September 28).
He is right, of course. But the story is not endemic to Australia. The same scenario could so readily apply to countries the world over from time immemorial.
There are some notable exceptions, but historically there has been an almost symptomatic inability among nations, tribes, families, rich or poor, to accept newcomers unless they can sense or see a profit.
This has not stopped newcomers who arrive as conquerors - even those who have been refugees - from supplanting the culture of the conquered with their own and then closing the door to people whose plight has been no different from theirs.
Is fear the factor that impels them to resist those who are different, to see newcomers as intruders, as bêtes noires? Or is it selfishness?
Tom Lehrer was very tongue-in-cheek when he wrote and sang in his National Brotherhood Week more than 40 years ago: “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Moslems, and everybody hates the Jews.”
What we call civilisation has seen many changes for the better since then. Religion does not divide our community in the same way - although, in a sense, it does.
Catholic-Protestant co-operation and Christian-Jewish dialogue have never been so harmonious. But the spectre of terrorism has spawned a new fear - fear of Islam.
Bishop Saunders says rightly that all people are equal in God’s eyes. And so they should be in ours, too.