Politics
Tuesday February 18, 2003
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC POLITICIAN ASKS CHURCH TO "SPEAK UP FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVE IN"
Politicians taking moral stands are often left hanging by benign church leaders
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BRISBANE, Australia, February 18, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an interview with Zenit News, John Hogg, a federal senator for Queensland and member of the Australian Labor Party, asked Catholic Church and lay Catholic leaders to help Catholic politicians by refusing to soft pedal Catholic beliefs. They need to "just speak up for what they believe in. In some cases, it is difficult for the politician to be so forthright when the Church is acting benignly on the issue at hand," said Hogg.
Hogg, deputy president of the Senate, pointed out the difficulty of faithful Catholic politicians attempting to defend the truth when Catholic leaders don't speak up and, at times, some groups which are Catholic in name oppose the Church's teaching. "There needs to be a more aggressive stance by the Church as sometimes the politician is left like a shag on a rock as some/many so-called Catholic organizations are diametrically opposed to the stated Catholic view and make the politician's stance difficult to defend," he said.
Hogg also noted that the most strident supporters of immoral legislation are often those "lapsed Catholics or who had succumbed to the popular secular argument of the day."
See the full Zenit interview at:
http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=31502
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