Review of “Acting on Conscience”
Hi guys,
I wrote this review for the Postgraduate Review journal at University of Melbourne. I thought you might like to have a look and let me know what you think.
Cheers, Michaela
Brennan, Frank, 2007, Acting on Conscience: How can we responsibly mix law, religion and politics? University of Queensland Press, Australia.
Frank Brennan is a Catholic Jesuit Priest and a Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University. His latest book, although a tome of less weight than the likes of Tolstoy, is still fairly heavy reading. Those without a background in the law, like myself, may struggle to stay awake through the drier chapters. Furthermore, Brennan details more than the reader with no working knowledge of the mainstream Christian churches in Australia would be able to fully absorb. Perhaps the author would have been better advised by his editors to skip straight to the meatier discussions such as maintaining citizens’ freedom of conscience.
Although Brennan maintains a predictably overall conservative perspective, his line is considerably different on issues such as Aboriginal land rights, the war on terror, the death penalty, and the detention of asylum seekers. Brennan tends to pick and choose his reliance on Vatican encyclicals and doctrine. For example, in the AIDS debate where the Vatican has denounced the use of condoms between Catholic married couples where one partner is infected, Brennan asserts; ‘there are not likely to be many couples who are put off using condoms or sexual relations because of incoherent Vatican pronouncements’.
However, for this liberalism, Brennan does toe the party line on stem cell research, RU-486, IVF, and late-term abortion. He proposes that gay and lesbian couples should be afforded equal rights, and then states that heterosexual couples should always be given preference to adopt children over homosexual couples. He also gives the overall impression that morality is the dominion of the religious, and that atheists and secular humanists would not come to the same conclusion as those whose consciences are informed by a Church.
These mixed messages all surmount to the author’s belief, drawing on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II, Pope Paul VI, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), that the individual should form their own conscience, sometimes informed by organised religion, which goes against many conservative contemporary Australian Catholic bishops. Flowing from this, Brennan’s position is that politicians should always vote with their conscience, even when that conscience is informed by their religion. This is an interesting proposition considering that the people elect politicians and their role in parliament is to represent those voters. He does not address this issue to my satisfaction, although others may view his arguments very differently.