Father Rod Bower has finally taken his leftist roadside message too far
Father Rod Bower, a leading spiritual guide to Australia’s never-practical, ever-pious social justice scolds, finally takes his holy leftist roadside message too far, writes Tim Blair.
It certainly helps, when aiming to become Australia’s prime virtue signaller, if you have at your disposal an actual virtue signal.
That’s what Father Rod Bower has established outside his little Anglican Church in Gosford, north of Sydney. The left’s favourite God-botherer uses the building’s standard church noticeboard as a broadcasting beacon for every dopey leftist piety you can imagine.
You name the issue and Godly Rod has thrown up something reflexively smug and superior about it on his personal signal of virtue.
“Bless the burqa”, “Jesus had 2 dads and he turned out OK”, “We seem to have forgotten all about climate change”, “Supporting Safe Schools program”, and so on.
It’s basically a drive-by guide to predictable social justice commentary for people without enough time to read the Guardian.
Naturally, Bower’s short-form sanctimony has won him a considerable measure of fame. He frequently turns up on television and in print, and presently is pushing an autobiography titled Outspoken.
The cover displays Bower’s celebrated sign (“All justice is social”) and Bower himself.
Rod’s big thing is refugees.
In 2017 he chained himself to the gates of Kirribilli House as part of a “Love Makes A Way” protest against the treatment of asylum seekers in Nauru and on Manus Island.
“We chain ourselves not only to the gate, but to the Manus men,” Bower announced on Facebook. “All humanity is connected, and when one suffers, we all suffer.”
Being chained to Rod would be a level of suffering unknown to those Manus men. You’d almost pity them.
For that matter, you’d pity those poor Kirribilli House gates, which have done nothing at all to deserve such indignity.
Father Bower is plainly a virtue signalling champion, but social justice warfare is a competitive caper. Recently the Gosford sign socialist found himself beaten to the punch by Melbourne Catholic priest Father Bob Maguire, whose former television popularity was due to people thinking they were looking at a magical talking Cabbage Patch doll.
“The tweets with haunting photos of Auschwitz camp remind me of tweeted photos of refugees detained Manus,” Father Bob announced.
This absurd comparison forced Bower to go one step further. Last week Bower put these words up on his holy sign:
“Manus is how the Holocaust started.”
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Bower later admitted that this ludicrously fact-free sign only stood “for the time it took to take the photo”, which he subsequently posted on Twitter.
There he added a weasel clause: “What we have done on Manus does not necessarily lead to the Holocaust but it is a necessary step on the path to that particular hell.”
Nice try, pal.
Rod’s the sort of bloke who’d yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre and then, during the resultant chaos, whisper to himself: “Of course, it could have been a flashlight. Or maybe a mobile phone. Resume your seats, people. No need to panic.”
Rational people didn’t buy Bower’s assertion or attached rationalisation.
Understandably, criticism from Jewish groups was especially acute. Following a few days of dodging and weaving, Bower offered a semi-apology on Facebook.
It was a masterwork of blathering leftist evasion.
“Several days ago, I attempted to explore something of the sociological phenomenon of ‘otherising’ and dehumanisation that I have observed in the way Australia has dealt with asylum seekers,” Bower wrote.
“In so doing I mentioned the Holocaust and some sections of the Jewish Community found this deeply offensive.
“I acknowledge that my attempt to explore this issue was clumsy and I am sorry for the offence caused.”
Explorer Rod, the Burke and Wills of otherising and dehumanisation, wasn’t done yet. He felt obliged to chuck in a mini-homily to the god of diversity:
“The last few days have highlighted and affirmed for me the importance of respectful dialogue in ensuring that diverse groups of people can live together in harmony.”
Alert readers may notice, however, that Bower did not extend his polysyllabic partial apology to those he’d smeared as supporters or enablers of a Nazi-like regime.
As The Australian’s Chris Kenny pointed out, Bower “needs to apologise to Papua New Guinea and Australia and their peoples, and just admit the clear distinction between killing people and caring for them.”
Australians are broadly supportive of strong border protection and know that offshore detention is a vital component of that protection.
They also know that any weakening of border protection will invite the revival of the people-smuggling industry — an industry that during Labor’s reign condemned at least 1200 asylum seekers to death at sea.
If Australians truly wanted to engineer a Holocaust-style program aimed at asylum-seeker eradication, they would not have elected a government sworn to stopping the boats.
If death is the aim, then people smuggling is the perfect strategy.
Our nation’s border protection policies, once decried overseas but now envied and emulated, save lives by deterring deadly risk-taking.
Our policies are a humanitarian response to a problem that had it continued would have killed further thousands.
Father Rod Bower is welcome to put that on his church sign, but for two issues.
One, it’s too long.
And two, it’s true. In the kooky realm of virtue signalling, that’s an automatic disqualification.
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