Letters to the Editor

---

Cultural Totalitarians

---

SIR: I was very impressed with Professor Tony Hassall’s analysis of the plight of Australian Literature within academia (October 2011). It ties in closely with my own experiences teaching Australian Art History.

The Cultural Theorists make a big noise about the need for inclusiveness, but they habitually insist on excluding anything that smacks of high culture. They are also most adept at bullying. This is visible at some academic conferences where group-think rules. Sessions will be tainted by open intimidation as they gang up on anyone who delivers a paper dealing positively with the canon. I have seen talented young scholars reduced to tears after question time.

But the skulduggery mostly occurs out of sight, within university departments where Cultural Theorists, who claim they stand for intellectual freedom and tolerance, systematically white-ant those staff who do not share their views. You can even return from summer vacation and find your units have been abruptly terminated—no prior consultation with you takes place, nor do strong enrolment figures count.

Whenever queried on such conduct, the Cultural Theorists paint themselves as the pious missionaries for a brave new enlightenment, and their harried victims as narrow-minded and dangerous reactionaries that students need to be protected from.

Christopher Heathcote, Melbourne, Vic.

---

Idriess on the Bedouins 

---

SIR: I enjoyed Roger Underwood’s article on Ion Idriess and The Desert Column (September 2011) immensely. It brought back many fond memories of my first reading many years ago.

Underwood identified Idriess’s ability to construct memorable sentences, and in one place noted his opinions of the En Zeds, Turks and Bedouins. I have never forgotten Idriess’s assessment of the Bedouins. He said: 

I could not help thinking that if they had a religion less dogmatic, less cruel, less intolerant, less murderous, and put their intensity of mind and life more to other things, they might become quite a force in the world instead of being a living clog from the days before Moses. 

I think none have encapsulated the essence of the Islamic “problem” more perfectly than that.

Ian Osborne,Shadforth, WA. 

---

Laws Devoid of Common Sense 

---

SIR: I pursued with interest ruminations in the daily press about the Bolt verdict and now the discussion on Aboriginality by Vice-Chancellor Alan Robson and the editor (October 2011).

However, I come to the subject matter from a different direction: How was it possible for clear-sighted people to enact legislation which is so obviously flawed? I cannot see why Henry Lawson’s grandchildren should be prevented from calling themselves Norwegian and spending Norway’s National Day folk dancing if they so wanted. But any law that stipulates that they are legally Norwegian because of their great grandfather is clearly not just counter-intuitive. It is harebrained.

If we applied the principles embodied in our present legislation to the case of an Australian who looks like an indigenous person but calls himself a European because he had an Irish great grandfather among his Aboriginal ancestors, the Aborigines around him would fall about in mirth and that would be the end of it.

But Australians who are not Aborigines and who are for the most part inheritors of Western civilisation, seem to accept without further ado what the lawyers tell them—that, subject to a couple of provisos that appear to be easily produced, a person is an Aborigine because somewhere among his or her many Caucasian forebears there was an Aborigine. With some of our laws based on race, our lawmakers produced the convoluted legislation we have. They came a cropper when they were forced to define people in terms of race. The law as it stands today was not handed down to us carved in stone. It was fashioned by politicians and lawyers not all that long ago.

So my question is this: How was it possible to enact laws which are so obviously idiotic? Why were they not laughed out of court by those charged with the task—public servants though they might have been? I would have thought that in those days it was still possible to give frank advice. It seems to me that as soon as we introduced legislation which did not apply equally to all the people in the land, we were lumped with laws that are devoid of common sense.

Bern Brent, Farrer, ACT. 

---

Choose the Right Victim 

---

SIR: Re the Bolt case: Justice Mordy Bromberg might care to reflect on his good fortune in having had a conservative in the dock to pass judgment on. As the late Sir John Kerr could have told him, public officials who carry out their legal duty against heroes of the Left can expect a very rough ride. Threats of violence and constant denigration in the media and elsewhere—for years afterwards—are the least of it. They might even find themselves forced to live abroad.

Christopher Akehurst, St Kilda, Vic. 

---

On Reading the Book 

---

SIR: If Steven Kates (“Three Writers of Political Autobiographies”, September 2011) had a quick look at Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, he would be as hard pressed as I was to find it “riddled with words a sailor would use: fogs, mist, ships, sinking ships, sails, boats, oceans, calms …” and so on. Granted that on page xiv in the introduction he will find “rockier shores”, “ ebbed”, “flood” and “surface” but search any part of the book at random and he will not find these sailor’s words that he tells us were found by Jack Cashill and which supposedly prove that Barack Obama never wrote this book.

Instead he will be drawn into a disturbingly honest account of Barack Obama’s feelings as he grew up in a white man’s world that was not always sympathetic to black people and a black man’s world that was not always sympathetic to white people. A sensible and educated man like Steven Kates will respond to writing that is full of reason and charm and will understand why the Herald Sun, Good Reading, the Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post Book World, the New York Times and Scott Turow gave this book such high praise.

I was reminded of the slogan on the Quadrant T-shirt: “I Have Never Read Quadrant Because I Don’t Like It”.

In the light of recent events in Australia and the subsequent debate on freedom of speech I now realise how grateful I am to Steven Kates that he stimulated me to read a book I was never likely to read. In doing so I learnt a great deal and dealt with a considerable degree of my own bigotry.

In the Spectator Australia, October 8, Dean Bertram quotes Karl Popper: “I might be wrong and you might be right, but together we might come closer to the truth.” Isn’t that what Quadrant stands for?

Peter Bannister, Alice Springs, NT. 

---

The Catholic Church

---

SIR: I hasten to respond to Mick Koster’s partial excoriation (Letters, October 2011) of my essay “God versus Allah II” (September 2011). He chastises me for my article having “the continual underlying motif that Roman Catholicism is the one true church and that Protestants are somehow merely pseudo-Christian sects”. I wholeheartedly concur—it is, and they are. I clearly established both my personal history and my firm religious allegiances at the very beginning, and will and may not apologise for either of them.

To remain Catholic, I must believe that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (Eastern and Western) is the sole institution founded by Christ with the divine mandate to evangelise the world in the name of the Triune God. It is a sovereign hierarchical society with the right to protect itself. It is not a democracy, but its members freely consent to belong to it. Islam makes far more aggressive claims about itself and its mission, but for some unknown reason, nobody appears willing to object.

If, like any Protestant, I claimed the right to private judgment, I too would be as they have chosen to be, outside that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded by Christ. Protestantism is an unstable collective of querulous and fissiparous sects, hell-bent on denial of Christian doctrine as it suits them. The only thing which unites them (and certain others) is a common hatred of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately Mr Koster throws in some red herrings that have nothing to do with the subject of my essay. However, these proceed from my description of Michael Servetus as “Calvin’s disciple”. He has taken my phrase to mean that Servetus was a student or pupil of Calvin. A “disciple” is someone who, for any period of time, takes instructions from another (Chambers’ Dictionary). In this case, Calvin, already a dictatorial theocrat, presumed the role of instructor upon receiving from Servetus a copy of his treatise De Trinitatis Erroribus, and subsequently continued to instruct him, inter alia, regarding a proposed new volume by Servetus (Christianismi Restitutio). The correspondence ceased acrimoniously in 1546 at Calvin’s behest. So outraged was Calvin that on February 13, 1546, he wrote to Guglielmo Farel (the co-dictator of Geneva), “Servetus has just sent me a volume of his ravings. If I should consent he will come here, but I shall not give my word, for if he comes and if my authority is worth anything, I shall never permit him to depart alive” (my emphasis). In 1553 Calvin, still burning with fury, sent seventeen letters of Servetus to the Dominican inquisitor, Dom Ory, at Lyons, together with Servetus’s own handwritten glosses of Calvin’s “Institutes” of 1552, thereby incurring for Servetus an in absentia sentence of death for heresy.

On August 13 that year, Servetus visited Geneva and attended a sermon by Calvin, was soon recognised, arrested and sentenced to execution by the government of which Calvin was the final arbiter. Calvin’s associate, Bullinger, urged him on in his plan to kill Servetus, with the words, “Let the world see that Geneva wills the glory of Christ.” On October 26, 1553, Servetus was sentenced by the Geneva theocracy to death at the stake. The day before, Calvin wrote matter-of-factly to Farel, “Tomorrow he dies.” Right to the end Calvin stood disputing with Servetus, and actually watched him die. He privately alleged later that he would have wished to mitigate the sentence. But there is no documentary record of this. For his part, while imprisoned in Geneva, Servetus (a highly reputed physician who made important discoveries about the circulation of blood) complained bitterly about the harsh mental and physical treatment he had received at the hands of The Reformer.

Mr Koster then throws in for good measure the name of “Bishop Joseph Strossmayer”’ at the First Vatican Council (1869-70) as evidence of a Catholic prelate actually objecting to the claims of the Catholic Church. Josip Juraj Strossmayer, Bishop of Diakovár in Croatia, was, together with Döllinger and Reinkens, an outspoken opponent of the proposed dogma of Papal Infallibility, which was to mark that Council. However, unlike Döllinger and Reinkens, he did not excommunicate himself, submitting repeatedly to the pope, first in December 1872 (Pius IX) and then at various dates in 1881 (Leo XIII). In 1898 Leo XIII conferred the pallium upon him. So profoundly Catholic was he that for many years he strove with might and main to heal the schism with the Serbs by attempting to bring them back into unity with Rome by dint of their continued and unbroken use of the (sacramentally valid) Old Slavonic Liturgy.

Next, Mr Koster accuses me of spreading “Catholic propaganda” in my account of the deals being struck between French Huguenots/William of Orange and Turkish Muslims, for the destruction of Catholic Europe. I suggest he study the diplomatic documents catalogued and published by Dom Luciano Serrano y Piñeda OSB entitled Correspondencia entre España y la Santa Sede durante el pontificado de s. Pio V, tomo II, p. 367. Here are revealed private dispatches (in Italian) between Cardinal Castagna (later Pope Urban VII) and Cardinal Alexandrino in Rome on May 15, 1568. As everyone knows, the Vatican, as a sovereign entity, has for centuries been extremely adroit at the gathering of accurate intelligence to protect itself against the enemies of Christ and its own sovereign integrity. The events of 1602 at Albe-Royal bear out the veracity of that intelligence.

Mr Koster then gratuitously cites the violence of St Bartholomew’s Day. These were certainly not the deeds of “the Catholic Church” and have no bearing on the subject of my essay. But I will answer that they were the deeds of Christian men, using whatever means at their disposal to prevent the destruction of Catholic France (Church and State) from the forces of Protestantism, which had already done for England, Scotland and most of Germany, Holland and Scandinavia. Blood certainly did flow freely in all these conflicts, but it was due entirely to the violent arrival of the heretical novelties of Protestantism, that Universal Christianity (only in the West, mind you!) became so tragically riven. Protestantism, like Islam, was everywhere forced upon once-Catholic peoples at the point of a sword. Consequently, the Natural Law alone justifies its victims fighting back by whatever means God has placed at their disposal.

Very simply, and frighteningly, it is Islam alone that stands to profit from the spiritual vacuum left in the West by its abandonment of Christian doctrine long since diluted by Protestantism, but currently adhered to only by a few traditional Catholics in the West and the Patriarchates of the East. Speaking from a Jewish point of view, Professor Clive Kessler (Quadrant, September 2011) wrote, “For centuries Christendom had stood against Islam in a confrontation of which the Crusades were just a part. Judaism and Jews as people had not stood separately but—in most Muslims’ experience—remained ‘encapsulated’ within Islamic societies inside Islamic civilisation.” For “centuries” read 610–1915 AD. For “Christendom” read the Catholic Church (Eastern and Western).

Bernard d’Abrera, Mount Dandenong, Vic. 

---

Elizabeth I and Che Guevara 

---

SIR: A correction for Clive Kessler’s piece on “The Postcolonialist Denial of Jewish Legitimacy” (September 2011) which strengthens his argument: Islam is more than merely “supercessionist”. The mainstream Islamic claim is that there has only been one true Revelation, which the Jewish and Christian scriptures deliberately misrepresented. This is a much stronger claim than the Christian one of successive covenants because it denies that Judaism or Christianity were ever fully legitimate. This, for example, puts the “MyPeace” campaign of Islamic clerics in clearer context.

Turning to Bernard d’Abrera’s “God versus Allah II” in the same issue, while he makes the same error, there are much graver problems with his analysis. It is always sad to see someone trying to turn the Reformation into a tale of “goodies” and “baddies” when there is more than enough bad behaviour to go around. For example, he misrepresents the Catholic position on slavery and bondage. Papal pronouncements such as Sublimus Dei (1537) did not ban slavery, but “unjust” enslaving; hence much enthusiastic Catholic participation in both the slave trade and slave owning, the actual enslaving having been (conveniently) done by someone else. The (Catholic) prosecutor at Archbishop Cranmer’s trial gloating to the accused that, if found guilty, his wife and children would be delivered into bondage in accordance with canon law punishment for a priest marrying and having children (as per the 655 Council of Toledo and 1089 Synod of Melfi) expresses Catholic attitudes of the time more clearly. Indeed, serfdom tended to persist longer in church than lay estates, due to canon law strictures against alienating church property.

Turning to Elizabeth I’s relations with the Turk, the Most Christian (and Catholic) Kings of France Francis I and Louis XIV both allied themselves with the Turks against their common Habsburg enemies rather more seriously than did Elizabeth of England. As for wider matters of honour, Serbian historian Srdja Trifkovic has pointed out that, while decrees of religious toleration in Protestant Europe tended to stick, those in Catholic Europe did not. Presumably in part because Protestant rulers were naked before God while Catholic rulers had priestly intermediaries to convince them that God wanted them to dishonour such promises and to absolve them of any sin involved therein.

The role of the Reformation in greatly increasing the intellectual freedom of Europe, and changing notions of authority, perhaps does not appeal if one accepts the totalitarian notion that the Catholic Church embraced so strongly: that error has no rights. That this gives great power to whoever gets to define error made it very appealing, as it continues to be to modern clerisies.

Finally, loath as I am to disagree with Kenneth Minogue as he again displays his ability to shine light into dark places in “The Intellectual Left’s Treason of the Heart”, equating Garibaldi with Che Guevara, while capturing the similarity in their contemporary hero status, is unfair to the former and too kind to the latter. Garibaldi was a man of genuine achievement and, not coincidentally, instrument of British foreign policy (there is even a nice joke about that in The Wind in the Willows): whatever the faults of the Kingdom of Italy, it was a distinct improvement over Papal and Bourbon rule. Che Guevara was a delusional, photogenic killer who could write a bit: his legacy was tyranny and failure.

Michael Warby, Seddon, Vic. 

---

Mohammad and the Visionary Tradition 

---

SIR: It is always refreshing to read an article like Bernard d’Abrera’s “God versus Allah II”, which has something in it to offend everyone.

However, in the case of Mohammad, D’Abrera overlooks the possibility that Mohammad had a religious life of his own. That he did is indicated by his habit of retiring to a cave to pray. There, by all accounts, he had a vision of an angel who commanded him to recite.

Visions are an important part of religious history. Mary, the mother of Jesus, had a vision of an angel which is mentioned in the oft-repeated prayer, the Angelus: “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary …” St Paul had a vision on the road to Damascus which was crucial in the history of Christianity.

In more recent history, Joan of Arc experienced visions, as, famously, did the Florentine preacher Savonarola. Mohammad’s vision seems as authentic as theirs.

However, seeing visions does not thereby bring a disclosure of the whole range of religious experience. In particular, visions may contain nothing of the kind which is conveyed by mystical experience. This point is worth making, because Islamic mystics constantly defer to Mohammad’s authority as though their experience were subordinate to his, whereas it is more likely that it was complementary.

The Islamic mystical tradition is similar to the Christian one.

Reg Naulty, Hawker, ACT. 

---

Two More Guns and National Self-Respect 

---

SIR: I am a long-time reader of Quadrant and love the conservative/rightist/anti-Labor line generally, but I wonder how many other readers are sick and tired of David Smith’s incessant rants about Australia’s constitutional position vis-à-vis the British monarchy.

For crying out loud: if he is right and the Queen is not the head of state, then let’s get rid of the encumbrance. If he is wrong, and she is our head of state, then let’s get rid of the encumbrance. What is the matter with other right- wingers/conservatives in Australia that they cannot see having another country’s monarch is fundamentally “crummy” as the late Donald Horne once said. Wouldn’t it be nice for our real head of state to get a twenty-one-gun salute somewhere for a change, instead of the nineteen-gun salute they get as a viceroy?

And while we’re at it, can we at least reduce the size of the Union Jack on our flag if we can’t have our own and not a “defaced” British blue ensign. Didn’t you notice even the great John Howard always had the flag carefully folded to avoid the Union Jack and give prominence to the Commonwealth star? This is now normal practice.

This has nothing to do with whether you are a left-winger or a right-winger. It’s just about having some self-respect as a country.

Anthony J.P. Robinson, (via e-mail). 

---

Prepositions in Peril 

---

SIR: Thanks to Robert Solomon for an excellent (and amusing) essay (“The Lost World of the Preposition”, September 2011) on the confusion over prepositions. I am sure it hit a responsive chord with most Quadrant readers. His impressive documenting of examples over the years has inspired me to start taking notes too.

One of my pet peeves is “ranging from … to”. A misused or misunderstood phrase, not a preposition. In any case, it annoys me when someone says “ranging from X to Y” when it is not apparent what the range or continuum is, when you have no idea what falls between X and Y.

If one says, “The colour of the roses ranges from pale pink to deep red” one has an idea of the colours that fall between pale pink and deep red. But if one says: “The conference topics ranged from the Wars of the Roses to the Arab Spring” one has no idea what other topics were included besides the two named. There is no range there. Very often, when several topics are mentioned, the word that should be used is “includes” not “ranges from … to”. 

The misuse is just another example of language mistreatment through thoughtlessness.

Christine Furedy, Darling Point, NSW.

---

SIR: Robert Solomon criticises the recent and growing misuse of certain prepositions. He suggests “good expression and accurate meaning” are under threat. As an example, he describes the widespread use of towards instead of to over the last twenty years. He explains that “towards means in the direction of”, so “to speak of violence towards women” means “the violence would not reach them, it [is] only moving in their direction”.

The problem with Solomon’s thesis is, as the Oxford shows, the use of towards to “introduce the object of action or feeling” has been common for at least 600 years: “good will towardes hir housband” (1483), “cruelty towards a ladie” (1596).

It is, in fact, absurd to claim a preposition (or any word) has one true literal meaning, reflected in its metaphorical uses. You could suggest for means “to benefit someone”; so why do we say “wait for the bus”?

Solomon has an engaging and punchy style. I respect his opinion as a writer that to often sounds better than towards. But this is a matter of personal taste, not a broader question about falling standards in English usage.

James Jenkin, Footscray, Vic.