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Thursday May 1, 2008
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Cardinal Pell Argues Australian Charter of Rights Could Cause "Culture Wars"
Warns against judicial invention of rights - Canada a strong example of dramatic moral decline facilitated by a Charter
By Michael Baggot
BRISBANE, Australia, May 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Rights are best protected by the common law and by parliament when the people are equally aware of their responsibilities. Democratic law-making is imperfect, but preferable to rule by the courts," Sydney's Cardinal George Pell said Tuesday in an address arguing against the adoption of an Australian Charter of Rights.
Pell's statement to the conservative think-tank Brisbane Institute came in light of proposals at the recent Australia 2020 summit to adopt a national bill of rights.
Cardinal Pell said that "the easy assumption, that lawyers are more trustworthy when it comes to protecting rights than politicians" is "one of the central problems of a charter of rights."
He noted that politicians are accountable to the electorate in a way that unelected judges are not.
The prelate added that Zimbabwe has an extensive constitutional bill of rights that has not prevented a host of human rights violations in the country.
While acknowledging the dangers involved in majority rule, Pell warned against "the disproportionate influence that organised minorities can have over the political process."
Pell cited the example of the United States, where a majority of citizens oppose same-sex "marriage," while "a minority of the homosexual minority are actively seeking to impose their redefinition of marriage on the rest of the population through spurious rights-claims and judicial fiat.
The cardinal also criticized the assumption "that rights are ultimately about moral beliefs or consensus rather than moral truth."
Pell emphasized the danger of abandoning objective moral law for ethical relativism.
"If moral consensus is the basis for human rights, then the manipulation and coercion of moral belief can produce new rights such as those to abortion, euthanasia, and the cloning and destruction of human life for research purposes."
"The irony is that the uses to which courts put a bill of rights often generate exactly the hostile majority reaction to rights that this sort of legislation is meant to avert. We don't have a culture war here in Australia in the way the United States does, but a bill or charter of rights could help provoke one," added the cardinal.
Conservatives in Canada have argued that the nation's 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms has provided the tool for courts to impose liberal social policy on its citizens.
For instance, in March 2006, lawyer Janet Epp Buckingham of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada noted that the Canadian Charter has been used to legalize abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.
Canadian liberals agree that the Charter has been key in advancing their policies.
In a March 2005 conference defending same-sex "marriage," Canada's Justice Minister Irwin Cotler called Canada's Charter the "constitutional revolution of 1982" that made the courts "guarantors of human rights," rather than mere "arbiters of legal federalism."
"Without an appreciation of the revolutionary change brought by the charter, we can't understand how we have gotten where we are now…," Cotler explained.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Lawyer Says Canada's Charter to Blame for Today's Social Liberalism
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06033101.html
Cotler Revealingly Praises "Constitutional Revolution" Caused by the Canadian Charter of Rights
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/feb/05020113.html
Read Cardinal Pell's address:
http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/20084...
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