Address at Iftar Dinner Marking the End of Ramadan 2015

Address at Iftar Dinner Marking the End of Ramadan 2015
St Mary's Cathedral House, Sydney, 16 July 2015

Your Eminences the Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mahamed and Sheikh Tahar Moselmane, and other Muslim leaders; Your Excellencies Bishops Tarabay, Brady, Daniel and Saliba, Reverend fathers, other Christian leaders; Rabbis Elton, Kamins and Kastel and other Jewish community leaders; representatives of other faith traditions: it is a very great joy to have you in my house tonight for this celebration together. Ours is a great city and country in which such celebrations of all faiths together can happen and it is a tribute to our religious leaders and communities that that is so, as well as an example to our world.  This is the first such dinner that I get to host as the new Catholic Archbishop and I want to say to you all that you are always most welcome in my home.

“Asceticism” has been defined as “extreme self-denial and austerity”. It sounds scary, like some ultra-skinny guy in a desert cave, dressed in animal skin or nothing at all, hitting himself with a rock and with only a pet lion or crow for company. On this view the holy ascetic is someone who renounces all the fun things and approaches life through gritted teeth. But asceticism, in the traditions of the great Abrahamic religions at least, is not about denying the goodness of created reality and the blessings given us by God in creation, but affirming them by giving them up at least for a time or restricting them to their proper place, so that some other good may come of it. As the Mufti has explained to me in Islam and I am sure in all our faiths, the external sign of fasting is supposed to occasion an inner purification of mind and heart and senses. Pope Francis, in his recent encyclical which has made headlines around the world Laudato Si: On caring for our common home, quoted the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople: asceticism is not just about giving things up but about learning to give, a way of loving enabling the world's needs to come first (9).

So we value asceticism. The word comes from the Greek word ασκησις (askēsis), which means sports 'practice' or 'exercise'. Like us Aussies, the ancient Greeks took their sport very seriously: they invented or perfected gyms, stadiums, the Olympics and many sports we still play today. The Jews were wary of these pagan sports because they were associated with idol worship, nudity and sadistic violence. Yet the mediaeval rabbis endorsed ball games. Arabs also loved their sports: horse and camel racing, falconry, and in modern times football. Whatever your sport, you know that practice, askēsis, makes perfect and practice in the spiritual life also requires a certain amount of self-denial. So pretty well all religions give up some things, for life, or for a period, to honour God and strengthen our souls for the 'combat' of daily life. As a Christian leader I admire the seriousness with which many Muslims take this, especially during Ramadan.

Tonight, I am pleased to host the celebration of an Iftar meal with our Muslim brothers and sisters at the end of the Month of Ramadan, the annual period of extra prayer, fasting and charity observed by Muslims all over the world. In particular I welcome His Eminence the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed; the Chairman of the Supreme Shiite Islamic Council of Australia, Sheikh Kamal Moselmane; and the several sheikhs and other Islamic community leaders. To my delight, gathered in solidarity here in my home this evening, are also 70 Leaders from Catholic, Orthodox and other Communities, together with guests from other faiths including the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Mandaean traditions. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome warmly Chief Minister Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, who has just arrived in Australia to replace Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, who was Senior Rabbi at the Great Synagogue of Sydney. Rabbi Lawrence was our dear friend and his shoes are big ones to fill, but I have great confidence that Rabbi Elton will prove to be another great faith leader for our community. Tonight's celebration is a sign of the very real mutual respect and cooperation of our various faith leaders in working together for peace and harmony in our local communities, our country and our world.

It is also an opportunity for us all to reflect on what we have in common as faith-leaders in multicultural Sydney and Australia, what we have in common as people of faith, what challenges we face together, what ways we can better collaborate, and what we can offer to our common home, Sydney and Australia. All people of faith are called to overcome unnecessary divisions and tensions, and through their prayer and religious observance be instruments of peace in our community. We all denounce oppression, violence and terrorism, but more important than words we live under God examples of peaceable lives alongside not only our co-religionists but people of other faiths too.

By their observance of the Month of Ramadan the Muslim community challenges all of us to live a commitment to holiness and asceticism in which bodily needs are subordinated to discerning and living God's will and in which our desire to satisfy personal cravings is subordinated to our duty to be signs of God's love and generosity to the world. All of us here tonight recognise this primacy of prayer, fasting and charity, which can strengthen the body, nourish the human spirit and direct our focus and energies towards our neighbour in need and above all the Creator of the Universe, the all-powerful, merciful, compassionate and righteous God who is the source of all that is and all truth and beauty and goodness.
 
In increasingly secularized cultures like our own, people of faith are increasingly marginalised and the value of faith itself questioned: witness the same-sex 'marriage' push where arguments proffered by religious groups are rejected precisely for being religious, and where religious believers are subject to persecution for upholding their millennia-old traditions. In this push, the witness offered by the world's great religions to the preciousness of genuine marriage and the marriage-based family can be muted or sacrificed at the altar of the sexual revolution. This revolution which goes back at least to the 1960s questions not only whether marriage should be between man and wife, but also for life, and also for family; it has spawned not only the same-sex 'marriage' push, but the push for easy divorce, complete sexual licence, mass abortion and now euthanasia of the elderly and handicapped as well. A virulent campaign is under way to silence the experience and example of the world's great religions and civilisations up until now on matters of life and love.

Religion – and religious practices such as prayer and fasting – provide an alternate voice in this context. The religious values we profess and share provide a solid basis for recognising the dignity of each individual and of foundational institutions such as marriage and family. The values we have in common, applied with integrity and common witness, maintain and reinforce the moral fibre of our society. Life and love are the most precious gifts of God to each person, always to be honoured and rightly to be protected through institutions such as marriage and family and by laws properly supportive of those institutions. People of faith, including minorities, are entitled to have their deeply held convictions and practices in these areas respected; should same-sex 'marriage' be legalised, like so many of the other social changes I have mentioned, we can expect our religious liberty to be imperilled by secularist ideologues yet gain. To adopt an old aphorism: these are times when people of faith must hang together or we'll hang separately!

Thank you for joining me tonight for fellowship with our Muslim friends at the end of their season of daylight fasting. Gathering in solidarity in this way strengthens the trust amongst us and reinforces our common commitment to principles of justice for all and pursuit of the common good. May God bless you, our company and our food this evening!