Religion
Abbott is a socially conservative Catholic. As a former Catholic seminarian, Abbott's religiosity has come to national attention and journalists have often sought his views on the role of religion in politics. Abbott says that a politician should not rely on religion to justify a political point of view:
| “ | We are all influenced by a value system that we hold, but in the end, every decision that a politician makes is, or at least should, in our society be based on the normal sorts of considerations. It's got to be publicly justifiable; not only justifiable in accordance with a private view; a private belief. | ” |
Various of the political positions supported by Abbott have been criticised by church representatives, including aspects of Coalition industrial relations policy, asylum seeker and Aboriginal affairs policy. After criticisms of Liberal Party policy by clergy, Abbott has said: "The priesthood gives someone the power to consecrate bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It doesn't give someone the power to convert poor logic into good logic."
According to John Warhurst from the Australian National University, academics have at times placed an "exaggerated concentration on the religious affiliation and personal religious background of just one of senior ministers, Tony Abbott." Journalist Michelle Grattan wrote in 2010 that while Abbott has always "worn his Catholicism on his sleeve", he is "clearly frustrated by the obsession with and what might hang off that".
Read more about this topic: Tony Abbott
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“I read ... an article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children to be skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“The stallion and his mare,
unbridled, with arrow-pattern,
are worked on.
the blue cloth
before the door
of religion and inspiration....”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.”
—William James (1842–1910)