(Sydney Morning Herald, 12th Nov; registration required after 2nd mouse click)

Sydney Archbishop George Pell tells it from an interesting perspective

Excerpt:

slam could be the communism of the 21st century if the West does not reform its secular democracy, Australia's leading Catholic has said in a speech in the United States.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, said secular liberal democracy was empty and selfish, and Islam was emerging as an alternative world view that attracted the alienated.

In a speech in which he also attacked his critics for suggesting that conservative Christians were a danger to democracy, Cardinal Pell said communism had shown how the emptiness of the secular approach could be filled with something darker.

"The small but growing conversion of native Westerners within Western societies to Islam carries the suggestion that Islam may provide in the 21st century the attraction which communism provided in the 20th, both for those who are alienated or embittered on the one hand, and for those who seek order or justice on the other."

The full text of the speech:

"Towards a transformative democracy founded on dignity"

Excerpt:

emocracy is never unqualified. We are used to speaking of "liberal democracy", which as currently understood is a synonym for "secular democracy". In Europe there are parties advocating "Christian democracy". Lately there has been interest in the possibility of "Islamic democracy". These descriptors do not simply refer to how democracy might be constituted, but to the moral vision democracy is intended to serve.

This is especially true in the case of secular democracy, which some insist is intended to serve no moral vision at all. But as Pope John Paul argues: "The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes." Democracy is not a good in itself. Its value is instrumental and depends on the vision it serves.

An attempt is sometimes made to evade this point by drawing a distinction between procedural and normative democracy. Procedural democracy's claims are minimalist: democracy should be regarded as nothing more than a mechanism for regulating different interests on a purely empirical basis.

To speak of normative democracy, however, especially if one is a Catholic bishop, is to provoke panic in some quarters and derision in others. Many things underlie this response, not least certain ideological convictions about secularism. But most important of all is a failure of imagination. Democracy can only be what it is now: a constant series of "breakthroughs" against social taboo in pursuit of the individual's absolute autonomy.

This guy frequently gets caned for his strict conservative values, but I admire him for fighting the good fight on social values and think this is worth reading. (PS Abortion doesn't come into this speech and I would rather not discuss it, being 'undecided')