Australian bishop stirs controversy
By NCR STAFF
In recent days Archbishop George Pell of Melbourne has drawn fire
from educators, gay and lesbian activists and feminists, each upset over
separate words or deeds from the conservative Australian prelate.
In late May, some Catholic educators and theologians criticized
new guidelines for religious education issued by Pell as overly traditionalist
in outlook and too heavily doctrinal, according to the May 23 issue of the
Australian newspaper The Sunday Age.
The guidelines, intended to shape how religion will be taught to
more than 140,000 students in 300 Catholic schools in the archdiocese, were
denounced by critics as clericalist, rule-oriented and biased against women,
according to the newspaper report. They were prepared by a committee that
included Mary Helen Woods, a spokesperson for the National Civic Council, a
well-known conservative advocacy group in Australia.
An official of the Catholic teachers union in the
archdiocese told the newspaper the guidelines contained some pretty
bizarre material, but a spokesperson for Pell said they marked a return
to the solid religious education that Catholicism offered before the impact of
secularization in the 1960s and 1970s.
Brigidine Sr. Brigid Arthur, an educator in the Melbourne
archdiocese, criticized the guidelines for their silence on religious
diversity. Where Christians are killing non-Christians in the
thousands in Kosovo, she said, this is appalling.
An official said that Pell was proceeding with plans to have new
textbooks based on the guidelines ready by 2001.
Meanwhile, Pell angered homosexuals on May 23 by refusing to give
Communion to people in Melbournes St. Patricks Cathedral wearing
rainbow sashes the seventh time Pell has turned away activists wearing
the sashes. According to reports, he offered them a blessing, which many
rejected, rather than Communion.
The activists told reporters they came to St. Patricks to
protest the anti-homosexual stance of the Catholic church and homophobia
in the Catholic school system, which they claimed plays a part in
suicides by gay and lesbian youth. The group laid a wreath outside the
cathedral in honor of gay and lesbian youths who have killed themselves.
Pell was unfazed. We will be doing nothing to encourage the
spread of the gay agenda in Catholic schools and we will be consistently
working to oppose it, he said.
Pell added to the controversy by calling homosexuality a
greater health hazard than smoking, referring to the diseases
associated with AIDS.
An Australian newspaper later reported that AIDS has killed 5,732
in Australia and New Zealand since the onset of the epidemic in 1982, while
smoking-related illnesses claim almost 18,000 lives a year in the two
countries.
On the same day, Pells Pentecost Message
lamented that men are often stereotyped in society and the media as either a
wimp or macho, a development he blamed in part on
feminism. He called on men to reject media images that show them with little
real role in the family.
Changing sexual mores have contributed to this, as has the
anti-male ideology of some feminism, Pell wrote.
His comments brought an immediate rebuke from well-known
Australian feminist Eva Cox, who urged Pell to put a sock in it and get
in touch with reality.
Stereotypes dont come from feminism, they come from
life, she said.
Since taking over in Melbourne in 1996, Pell, 58, has made
headlines for protesting art exhibits he considered blasphemous and for
challenging Catholic authors he sees as unorthodox.
Wire services contributed to this report.
National Catholic Reporter, June 4,
1999
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