Bob Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister is further evidence for those who need it. Years ago the late John Wheeldon, once a minister in the Whitlam government, was guest speaker at a Labor party branch meeting in Perth. Members complained to him that branch numbers were falling because they no longer knew what the Labor party stood for. ‘You’re lucky,’ said Wheeldon. ‘If you knew what the Labor party stands for, you’d have no members at all.’

Virulent anti-Catholicism seemed to disappear from Australian life about the 1950s. But it has recently enjoyed a resurgence — in the debates on child abuse, gay marriage, abortion, contraception, church schools, euthanasia. Last week Dyson Heydon QC , the Royal Commissioner inquiring into union corruption, found time to give a compelling address on the lessons for Australians of German anti-Catholicism under Bismarck and Hitler. It was the annual Acton Lecture on Religion and Freedom sponsored by the Centre for Independent Studies. The new anti-Catholicism, he said, is intolerant and hypocritical, and fails to recognse the enormous contribution of Australian Catholicism to schools, charities, hospitals, politics. But it may backfire; it may help unify the often divided Catholics and it may bring others in behind them.

It may also be that Australians do not face the problems of German Catholics in the time of Bismarck or Hitler. There have been no attempts in Australia to seize church property, control church appointments, close church schools or prevent Christian teaching. For the moment ‘life seems to drift along peacefully enough’. The question for Australian churches is: can they withstand the test of prosperity? Many characteristics of Christ’s earthly life are now out of line with the spirit of our age. ‘He showed a concern for the poor, a concern for the ill, a concern for those who were on the margins of society or had been cast out by it, a care for other people, not only friends but also enemies, an opposition to self-righteous hypocrisy, an encouragement of the idea that if one criticises others, one should pay attention to one’s own deficiencies, and a lack of concern with wealth and material power. We avoid the poor, shun the ill and the outcast, hate our enemies, practise hypocrisy, pay little attention to our deficiencies while criticising those of others, and above all we grovel before wealth and power.’ Heydon ended his paper by drawing a parallel between Nazi support for the compulsory euthanasia of the ‘congenitally defective’ (with early experiments in gas chambers) and the ‘voluntary’ euthanasia that is so popular now. But how ‘voluntary’ is it, he asked, when people who are dying in great pain or who seem to have no worthwhile future and are using up their estates on the heavy costs which modern high quality health care entails, are ‘constantly in the company of seemingly sympathetic but greedy descendants concerned that their inheritances are being gobbled up?’ Heydon added: ‘I offer no answer to these questions’.

But he made an encouraging observation. One lesson from the German experience is that minority interests will survive and be tolerated if their views are ‘effectively ventilated by capable and courageous people before a public opinion in which there are some decent elements’. He mentioned Bishop von Galen under Hitler. A remarkable address. Watch out for it on the CIS website. It may be noted in passing that Heydon is a product of Shore, the Sydney Church of England Grammar School.

Paul Comrie-Thomson, whose funeral service was last week at Dalton Chapel, St Ignatius’ College, may be most widely remembered as a lonely voice of conservatism on the ABC before it foolishly dropped him. But he was much more — philosopher, theologian, moralist, manager of a rock group. A couple of ‘grabs’ may give the flavour of his work. On the ABC: ‘Early in 2007 a Radio National presenter whispered to me in the stairwell: “You know, my partner listens to Counterpoint and he quite likes it!” I responded with a warm smile and whispered back: “Never fear, Comrade, your secret is safe with me.”’ On misogyny: ‘Real, hard-core hatred of women, as shown by the brutal acts of the Taleban, is driven by their sense of worthlessness. That is the core of their misogyny. To describe a grumpy male boss with the same word is obscene. Let us be done with this sloppy language.’ On show-business compassion (feeling good, not doing good): ‘The most famous story about real compassion tells us that a stranger came upon a traveller who was stripped, beaten and left half-dead on the road. The Good Samaritan did what had to be done. Then he went on his way.’ On loneliness: ‘We can’t all write like Shakespeare. But we can be honest about our isolation. Loneliness is a truly hateful place to be. And no politics can do anything about it.’ At the funeral service the first reading included a fragment from Wittgenstein: ‘How can one learn the truth by thinking? As one learns to see a face better if one draws it.’ The mourners remembered Comrie-Thomson with affection and respect. Some wept.

I wonder whether Dyson Heydon’s remarks on civility, in his address noted above, were an oblique reference to the 18C debates. He distinguished permitting offensive speech from encouraging it as a universally desirable or virtuous part of public discourse, even to the point of condoning cruelty. He spoke up for civility: ‘Was it Balfour who said that the definition of a gentleman is that he is never intentionally offensive?’