FEDERAL Health Minister Tony Abbott has spoken out in defence of Christians’ place in politics.
Mr Abbott was speaking at the re-issue of a biography of Catholic intellectual, poet and founder of Quadrant magazine, James McAuley, on August 28.
He said critics should think of the consequences before seeking to exclude religious believers from the public arena.
Mr Abbott said Catholics in politics had been encouraged to promote Catholic social teaching “not because it was religious but because it was right”.
“It is the argument that counts, not the fact that the Church is putting it,” he told the gathering at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne.
Mr Abbott said critics failed to notice “the centrality of religious inspiration to our most cherished secular values”.
Mr Abbott was relaunching The Heart of James McAuley by Peter Coleman, who examines McAuley’s development from an anarchistic youth till his Catholic conversion of later years.
