Philosophy Conference
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
29 Jun 2008
Sheik Kahlil Chami's suggestion that Australian civil law should recognize the right of men to have more than one wife simultaneously won't be going far. The Attorney General has already said so and Australian public opinion would not tolerate this element of Sharia law enshrining such inequality between men and women.
But what about the future? Would such legislation make sense if equal opportunity was also given to women to have more than one husband? Is public hostility to the suggestion simply based on tradition or perhaps another example of an inherited Christian way of living? How do people of different backgrounds, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, no religion, resolve such differences?
In a pluralist democracy like Australia the different parties discuss the options and appeal to reason. While Parliaments make the laws, reason is what we should have in common across every grouping.
Last week Notre Dame University hosted an international conference at its beautiful Broadway campus on “Truth and Faith in Ethics”. More than 250 students, academics and members of the public assembled for three days to hear specialists in moral philosophy from around the English-speaking world discuss right and wrong, what makes a person good or happy (are they alternatives?) and how to keep our societies decent and civilized.
Some of the speakers were leaders in their field, known internationally as public intellectuals and all were respected professional thinkers from a variety of religious and irreligious backgrounds. No one appealed to Christian tradition, although it was recognized that different religions and different concepts of God bring various understandings of where goodness lies, with different ideas on e.g. justice, slavery, women and abortion.
The institutions of marriage and family are good examples. In Australia marriage is between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. The fact that Christ and Catholic tradition recommend this arrangement is important to me personally, but I recognize that this does not cut much ice with non-Christians.
Therefore in civil society supporters of legal privileges for heterosexual marriage have to explain why it is the best system to protect the rights of spouses and in particular is the best delivery system for society to encourage good children in becoming productive and cooperative adults. Unions of two men or two women should not receive equal legal privileges because they are not equally productive, not representative of the best in human nature.
The highlight of the conference was a discussion between Professor Ray Gaita, a non-believer from Australian Catholic University and Professor John Haldane, a Catholic from the secular university of St. Andrew in Scotland on whether God is necessary for morality.
Masterfully chaired by Phillip Adams, who described himself as a mangy old lion in a den of Christians (actually many non-believers were present and 50 people couldn’t get in), the evening was a model of civilized discourse. Everyone was led to think about goodness, meaning and awe.
