Did You Know Abbott Is A Catholic?

Throughout his life he has been drawn to a series of masculine and Catholic heroes and mentors. As a result, he is a relic of another time.

Wheeler Centre handbill for Susan Mitchell’s recent lunchtime lecture

Voting for Tony Abbott will deliver a man whose Catholic orthodoxy extends to a belief that this orthodoxy is reasonable and objectively correct and can fairly be imposed on the rest.

-- Leslie Cannold in the Fairfax press

I have always had him cut as an ideologue - you know, big-C social conservative, nuclear family-ist, anti-abortion, papist, et cetera.

-- Martin Daly in the Fairfax press

It's funny too that Abbott, who professes to be a Catholic, is so selective in his application of Christianity, although I should not really be surprised - that's been the way of religious fanatics throughout history.

-- The Age’s Gabriella Coslovich

The role of young Catholics like Tony Abbott was to devote their lives to the grand battle to save civilisation and turn back the cultural tide.

-- Bundoora Bob in The Monthly

Can we believe in his political separation between church and state?

-- Susan Mitchell in the Fairfax press (again)

Of course, there are bad Catholics and there are good Catholics 
 

UPDATE: But there are no bad Muslims, as all but one of the same commentators are at pains to note:

…far-right columnists still tried to blame the massacre on Muslims because they were the ones that had caused all the problems in Norway by immigrating there. When that didn’t really wash, they refused to call Breivik a terrorist because that was reserved for Muslims, so they just settled for calling him “insane”.

-- Susan Mitchell

Dr Cannold urged her audience to organise and fight back against religious fundamentalists who take advantage of Australia's acceptance of religious freedom to push their ''violently intolerant ideologies''. In Australia the risks from this ''emanate primarily from evangelical Christian fundamentalists, not jihadist Muslims''.

-- Leslie Cannold,  accepting her Humanist Of The Year award

I had not seen a woman in a djellaba look quite as much like a man's chattel as the petted girl in the white jeans did to me on my first day back in the "West" … . my attitude towards the hijab has changed. I no longer see it as an automatic sign of gender inequality.

-- Gabriella Coslovich

The bitterness of so many Indigenous people and the daily experience of marginalisation faced by Australian Muslims are the consequences [of John Howard]

-- Bundoora Bob .

The only writer in the first list who appears to have had nothing to say about Muslims is Martin Daly. How does Fairfax tolerate such a racist!