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Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Professor Greg Craven has called for a renewed age of Catholic public intellectualism to promote and defend Church values and teaching.
Catholic intellectuals should weigh into public debate, along with the bishops, he said.
“If you send an aircraft carrier out without a destroyer flotilla, you deserve everything you get,” he told guests at a dinner at the Sheraton Hotel on Saturday to mark the assembly of the Order of Malta.
“We’ve always been a nursing and military order; is it perhaps that we began to reflect on the notion of military fervour,” Prof Craven said, “acknowledging that the battle today is intellectual not physical … we, as an order, have a fund of intellect and resource that as a base can be used intellectually as well as physically.”
In the past, he said, there have been great English speaking intellectuals, such as Chesterton and Waugh in England and BA Santamaria in Australia.
“We tend to rely on the bishops to carry the whole weight of the argument in public,” he said.
“But If you look around the lay Church for Catholic public intellectuals, where are they? How many are there?
“Is it not remarkable that we are the only organisation in Australia that when media seek a comment on Catholicism up pops an opponent of Catholicism.
“It’s a bit like Julia Gillard being asked to explain the Coalition policy on climate change as favourably as she can.”
Prof Craven said he does not see the Church as losing in the public debate.
“And I don’t think our opponents see themselves as winning; otherwise they would not be so frightened or so aggressive. Or they wouldn’t be seeing the Catholic Church as their chief stumbling block, which is precisely what it should be.
“We should revel in their opposition and take it for what it is.”
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