Joe Hildebrand: The left hates Christianity but there have been many religious leaders

Christianity is one of the very few genuinely progressive causes that too many Australians on the left regard with unwarranted suspicion and distrust, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Why are atheists so afraid of God?

That was the first thought that crossed my mind when the usual social media mob — let’s call them the socialist media mob — went into their usual Bolshie breathlessness at the thought the new Premier of NSW could be, heaven forbid, a Catholic.

I know it all seems like an eternity and a hundred ICAC hearings ago but it struck me at the time and has stuck with me ever since. Why does the hard left hate or fear religion so much?

Karl Marx himself called it “the opiate of the masses” but it’s hard to square the trendy left’s disdain for this particular opiate when it is so accommodating of all the others. Just check out the Greens’ drug policies if you want proof of that.

Socialist Karl Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses.”

Moreover, it seems to be peculiarly directed at just one religion: Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.

And this – supposing we are talking about the original church – was perhaps the most revolutionary and progressive movement ever to touch the face of the earth.

Jesus exhorted his followers to give everything they had to the poor and warned that rich men wouldn’t get to heaven — a pretty heavy metaphysical redistribution of wealth.

He also warned against tribal prejudice in the story of the good Samaritan, encouraged pacifism in his instruction to turn the other cheek against aggressors, and laid out the framework for universal human rights more succinctly than the UN ever could by simply suggesting we should treat others as we would want them to treat us.

Indeed, most of what Jesus said sounds like a radical left-wing manifesto.

So why would Marx, and latter-day followers of that fatal messiah, want to kill him off?

The answer seems to be that two horses cannot live in a one-horse town.

Former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Picture: Getty Images

Ex-PM Bob hawke’s father was a minister.

There is only room for one ideology in the modern left’s self-proclaimed kingdom – or non-gender-specific autonomous collective – and that is whatever the latest outrage or cause de jour deems it to be: Sign up or die.

But this is not the true story of the left, or at least certainly not the true story of the Australian Labor Party, which has deep cultural roots in Christian tradition.

One only has to look at the seismic split of the 1950s and 1960s in which communists and Catholics went to war over the future of the ALP. The result was the party being kept out of power federally for more than two decades.

You could argue it was more than three.

The ultimate upshot was that both sides lost. It was only a more pragmatic, moderate and democratic party under Gough Whitlam that was able to win in 1972.

And even then it lost power again just three years later after falling prey to some idiotic excesses.

Hawke was the true great unifier and the only Labor leader to rival Menzies for stability and strength. His dad was also a Protestant minister. Heaven forbid! Gough, for the record, was another dirty Proddy. He went to Knox Grammar, Canberra Grammar and St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney. All Anglican schools.

The great Paul Keating, at least, was a proper Catho in the Labor tradition. The boy from Bankstown and a boilermaker’s son.

Still, being Catholic has its awkward moments. As a young MP in the late 1960s and early 1970s he famously opposed both women in the workforce and the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Strangely I am yet to hear of any calls for Keating to be cancelled or his statues to be torn down.

And of course who could forget all the lunatic hypocrisy when JFK became the first Catholic president of the United States? Apparently ­everybody.

Premier Dominic Perrottet has been demonised for his faith and the number of kids he has. Picture: David Swift

Former PM Paul Keating is a Catholic in the true Labor tradition. Picture:Justin Lloyd

This brings us back to Premier Dominic Perrottet and his uncanny baby-making abilities.

The hard left see this as an electoral scourge but as usual with hardliners the reverse is true.

Labor leader Chris Minns and his deputy Prue Car are also Catholics. And they have presided over a remarkable turnaround in Labor’s fortunes since the self-immolation of Jodi McKay and Gladys Berejiklian.

In other words, Perrottet and Minns both seem ascendant. Whether one’s concerns are political or celestial, it is an uncannily auspicious alignment of heavenly bodies.

The reason is that voters like leaders of conviction, even if they don’t share all of those convictions themselves. While the feral few might find religion frightening, most people simply find it reassuring.

Because that is the very purpose of faith itself: To provide comfort. You have to wonder what kind of person would want to take that away.