10th November 2024
Joe de Bruyn is a well-known Catholic trade-unionist who was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. On October 21st, he gave a speech [click here to read the full speech] in thanksgiving for the award, which coincided with the student graduation ceremony.
The speech included references to abortion, IVF and traditional marriage, which prompted a disconcerting walk-out by graduates and faculty members. Now that the dust has settled, we asked Joe de Bruyn for his thoughts on the incident.
Most of us weren’t surprised that there might be a bit of pushback, even at a Catholic University to someone who is defending life and traditional marriage, but the involvement of the faculty and the level of disdain was quite shocking. Did you expect such a strong showing of disapproval?
Not at all. I knew that I was going to be speaking to a mixed audience, because the Australian Catholic University does attract students from across the spectrum, not just Catholic students. So I realised that there were going to be some students there who probably wouldn’t agree with what I said. Also, I had supplied the University with my speech about three weeks in advance, as they requested, and they had come to me to say that they thought that the speech was not appropriate. They didn’t specify what was wrong with it but suggested I rewrite it. However, if I chose not to make any changes, they were perfectly happy to accept that.
So I thought about what they had said and decided that I didn’t want to go there and give a ‘vanilla’ speech which sort of says ‘everybody is nice’ and then everybody claps and the whole thing is eminently forgettable.
I took the view that here was Australian Catholic University saying to a Catholic layman ‘we want to give you our highest honour for your services to the Catholic Church,” so in that environment, it seemed appropriate to talk about what I might have done which distinguishes me from other people. My work in the Trade Union movement is simply no different from what hundreds and hundreds of other union people are doing every day. Whether they are Catholics or not, whether they are Communists or whatever. So that doesn’t distinguish me from the point of view of the Catholic Church.
So I picked three issues from quite a number that I could have picked where I had tried to make a difference by putting forward the view of the Catholic Church. So for each of those, I simply presented what the Church teaches and briefly explained what I had done to try and get an outcome that was consistent with Catholic Church teaching.
Then having raised those three things, I went on to say to the students, “You, yourselves, are going to face issues in your personal lives and professional lives in the future, just like I did. Rather than be scared that taking a stand is going to affect your career, you should just openly and honestly confront the issues and put forward the point of view that you believe to be right.”
So there was a message there for the students and I thought that was an eminently sensible and appropriate thing to be saying to the students. So I knew that not everyone would agree with me on the issues but I didn’t expect the sort of reaction that occurred.
It was an excellent speech, and it was framed in such a way that it wasn’t imposing your views on anyone.The message was universal – “stand up for your own principles, even if you don’t believe the same things as I do”. It’s difficult to see how anyone could be offended by that – unless they are in the business of being offended.
I personally don’t think anybody was offended. I think the university administration and the academics who obviously knew in advance what I was going to say decided they would resist. They undoubtedly told the students, so you had a contrived situation where people walked out.
Now it wasn’t a mass exit all in one go; people just slowly but surely drifted out over a period of time, starting with students and then followed by parents and friends, and then most of the academic staff sitting on the stage behind me as well. It was a sort of organised disruption of the whole thing.
I was pleased that the small cohort of students who remained, who I would estimate was perhaps 15% of the total graduating there, gave me a standing ovation at the end. As we processed out, they were trying to shake my hand and calling out encouraging comments and so on. So there was a small cohort there that was supportive and I though that was good.
When discussing the decline of our institutions, we often talk about a Marxist infiltration and the ‘long march through the institutions’ and so on. But what do you think is the responsibility borne by Catholics? Surely we can’t blame all this on Marxist infiltration because Catholics have not pulled their weight in some areas?
The Church in Australia has a very fundamental problem which really starts with the fact that for decades now, we have not taught the Catholic faith in its fulness in our primary and secondary Catholic schools. As a result of that, when the students reach Year 12 and they go into work or further studies at university, probably 95% of them are not practising Catholics. They don’t believe the Faith and that shows that the Catholic education system in this country is a total failure.
Because that has been going on for decades, the students in our Catholic schools today have parents who also weren’t taught the Faith properly, so the Church is in continuing decline. Most parishes in Australia and many of the bishops are simply managing the decline which continues year by year. So it’s no surprise that when you then get to the university level, you have an institution like ACU which has a cohort of academics – not all of them because you have some good people in ACU – but a cohort who are totally opposed to what the Catholic Church teaches. They are actively promoting their incorrect views and their heresies in their teaching to the students who come along.
That is how fundamental the problem is: it is all-pervasive and all across the board and the university Senate who governs the university is clearly divided. So it is not capable of solving the problem and the Catholic bishops themselves are divided and so they are not capable of solving this either. So that’s the problem.
I wasn’t seeking to create a great disturbance on this. I gave my speech and because the media wasn’t present, I thought that would be end end of it. I had been humiliated on the occasion, but I’ve got broad shoulders and it didn’t particularly worry me. It did have a bigger impact on my family, I must say. But they haven’t gone through the sort of battles I’ve faced over the years in my professional life.
So I thought that would be the end of it. The following day I was driving out to the country and turned to listen to the ABC radio news at 8 am and they reported on it. I realised that they [the university protesters] hadn’t been satisfied with what had happened the afternoon before and wanted to take it further into the media. That was their big mistake.
Obviously the media wanted to know what my view was. So I launched into the media and put my point of view and so as a result now everybody who is interested in this issue knows what happened. Everybody understands that my position was eminently reasonable. I have dealt with hard-bitten journalists a number of times in my professional life and what came across to me on this particular occasion was there was less media hostility and journalist hostility compared with what I’m normally used to. They could all understand that this was contrived and I was a victim of that.
So now the whole thing is in the public arena. The bishops are on the spot. They’re supposed to do something about this but what are they going to do? The ACU people who put together this protest have made a big mistake and now the issue is public and the pressure is on both the uni Senate and the bishops to do something about what is clearly a problem.
So you think there’s going to be some follow up? It won’t just fade away?
At the end of the day, it is up to the University Senate itself to do something. I don’t think it will but there will be some voices on the Senate who raise this so there will be an internal discussion, no doubt. I think at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference there will be a discussion about this but whether there are the numbers there among the bishops who want to do something, I don’t know. I doubt that will carry the day.
Seeing that it was the Senate which awarded the honour, some must have supported the idea while others did not. Surely they weren’t unanimous in deciding to give you the award?
I don’t know what went on behind the scenes. The University came to me and said they had decided to award me this honour and that was a total surprise to me. I wasn’t aware that there had been a number of people working behind the scenes to put together the reason as to why I should be awarded this honour.
Some may now regret this decision because they probably didn’t think that I would use the occasion in the way that I did. If I had given a vanilla speech that would have been the end of it. I didn’t want to give a vanilla speech because that would simply mean that the occasion wasn’t used as an opportunity to put forward the views of the Catholic Church on some contentious issues.
Regarding the support you’ve received from journalists and the media: do you think this was merely a unique situation with an obvious injustice or do you think that even the media is getting sick of the victimhood mentality which is pervading society?
I think the media response was not so much that they agreed with me, but they understood that it was perfectly reasonable for me to give the speech I gave in the circumstances I was in. They knew that people arguing that it was inappropriate, was contrived and that it was not a sound position.
A lot of people have told me that the students walking out on such an important occasion was an act of grave impertinence. A university is a place where people are supposed to discuss and debate ideas, so you are going to hear from time to time, people putting arguments and putting views with which you don’t agree. But walking out is really the cowards way of handling a different point of view. The more sensible point of view and what’s expected at a university is that you listen politely to people and that if you have the opportunity, you put your point of view. The university is there for purposes of discussion and debate and ultimately you are trying to reach the truth.
We have seen in recent time the broader issue of universities being used for political purposes. There is the war that’s going on in parts of the Middle East and there have been demonstrations at university and a certain amount of anti-semitism. There was a physics professor at Melbourne University who came into his office and found that a heap of his students had suddenly occupied it and found that they wouldn’t leave and so on. Of course, he has absolutely no control over what’s happening in the Middle East, so why does he get punished and singled out? It was a clear act of anti-semitism against him and there are many other examples of this. I think people are sick of that as well.
What kind of Catholics are our institutions turning out?
Australian Catholic University was put together out of the old Catholic teachers colleges and I think also institutions training nurses. It is still churning out quite a lot of people going into our Catholic school system as teachers, so there’s a problem, as well as nurses who go into the health system so a problem is also created there. There are more and more problems with the health area because of legislation on abortion and euthanasia, IVF and so on. Thus the Australian Catholic University is simply compounding the problems that the Church faces.
It is quite common these days for pro-life commentators and professionals to promote the idea that God should be left out of the argument. As an example, last year at Campion College, there was a prominent pro-life activist who told the students not to include religion or God in pro life work. What do you think about that? Do you think that has something to do with the backlash against Catholicism such as you experienced?
That is a fairly complicated question because to some degree, it depends upon the audience. If you are talking to people who don’t really have any strong belief in God, then you can talk to them about the fact that any biology textbook says quite explicitly that at the moment of conception, a new individual exists. That’s biology. That’s science. That can become a very persuasive argument for a person who is not particularly wanting to hear about God or who doesn’t believe in God.
They can see that there is now a new human life. and so it’s not difficult to craft an argument that says, “If you destroy this life through abortion, then you are destroying a human life and that is fundamentally wrong. It is against the natural law.” So there will be times when you can profitably and persuasively explain to people, without using God, that abortion is morally wrong. Similarly with euthanasia.
On the other hand, there will be many occasions when you need to bring God into it because many people do have a basic belief about God. They understand that they have to live according to a moral code which ultimately comes from God and of course, one of the Ten Commandments is ‘Thou shalt not kill’. So it depends on the audience – depends on what you are trying to achieve.
Do you think that there’s a danger with saying that we should never talk about God? That He doesn’t belong in this conversation at all?
I would never ever agree with that. You need to look at the person or people to whom you are addressing the arguments and ask yourself what is going to be the most persuasive thing for these people at this particular point in time. I certainly believe that we do need to bring God into the argument and if you shy away from talking about God at any time, all you do is create even greater problems.
We should not be ashamed of believing in a God and the fact is that most people in society do have some basic understanding that there must be a greater Being – whatever they might call that greater Being. The proportion of the population that is pure atheist is quite small, so yes, God needs to be part of the argument at least some of the time.
