The Stem Cell Debate Down Under

In Australia, Cardinal George Pell has made headlines and aroused a storm of controversy again.

Thursday, the New South Wales Parliament overwhelmingly voted for therapeutic cloning under regulated conditions. A national law on the subject comes into effect June 12.

According to a Cath News piece,

A NSW minister has compared Sydney Cardinal George Pell to controversial Muslim cleric Sheik Al-Din Hilali over his cloning vote intervention while the WA Speaker has described a similar message by Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey as a "contemptuous incursion" into parliamentary deliberations.

Addressing the NSW Parliament, Cabinet Minister Nathan Rees said that Cardinal Pell could be compared to "that serial boofhead Sheik al Hilali", the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Mr Rees, a Catholic, accused him of "emotional blackmail" for warning that Catholic MPs faced "consequences" in their religious lives if they supported a bill that would expand stem cell research.

"The hypocrisy is world-class. No government would seek to influence church teachings when providing taxpayer funds for refurbishment of St Mary's Cathedral, or taxpayer funds for the education of Catholic school children, or taxpayer funds to subsidise rates exemptions for churches," Mr Rees, the minister for water utilities and emergency services, said yesterday.

Catholic Labor frontbencher Kristina Keneally said she would not support the bill but criticised Cardinal Pell, accusing him of not taking a "pastoral approach to this issue".

"If the cardinal's approach is to start excommunicating Catholic MPs, I think he might want to know of my support for the ordination of women."

Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, a Catholic who supports the bill, described Cardinal Pell's comments as reminiscent of the church in the Dark Ages.

"I'm very sceptical about people who claim to speak in the name of God but are human beings, because if you look at history people have been burnt in oil in the name of God," he said.

"Now I don't think God ever wanted them burnt in oil - I would have thought that we have moved on.

"These are matters for individual conscience. Churches are there to guide us; they are not meant to be there to tell us."

Sherry's note:

"serial boofhead"? I'm gonna remember that phrase. You gotta admit that Australian political discourse is more colorful than our own.

It is hard to grasp how different the debate about life issues is downunder. Fr. Mike and I spent the 2004 US election night in at the Dominican priory in Melbourne. I learned alot about the Australian pro-life scene because I was sitting next to Bishop Anthony Fisher, who has been passionate about pro-life issues since college, has a PhD in bioethics, and had just returned from an invitation-only theological symposium on the subject at the Vatican.

Abortion has just begun to become a national issue in Australian politics for the first time over the past few years as fledging Christian political parties speak up. It has not been a political hot button for 30 years as it has been here.

And Christianity is a much weaker force, as a whole, in Australia than in the States. A 2004 national Catholic survey showed that only 15% of Australian Catholics attend Mass once a month (which is considered to be "practicing".) That's approximately 750,000 practicing Catholics who attend Mass at least once a month vs. at least 18 million Catholics at Mass in the US on any given Sunday.

Since Australians are mandated by law to vote in national elections, abstention is not an option. One result: The sort of debates going on among US Catholics over "non-negotiable" issues, voting, and receiving communion in 2004 seemed extreme and unworkable to the most theologically knowledgeable and ardent pro-life Australian Catholics.

So Pell's high profile statements, which could be shrugged off here as politics as normal, seem stunning in Australia.

Anyone know what a "serial boofhead" is anyway?