There is every reason to rejoice at the appointment by the Vatican of George Pell as the new Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. It is sure to add a great deal of life and interest to debate about religious matters, and to give a central place to the debate about the place of religion, faith and morals in modern society. But to some it is a cause for fear and loathing.
The opposition to Pell needs to be divided into two camps. There are those who are still members in good standing of the Catholic Church, and those who have no ties, current or past, with the church but who are hostile to it and especially to the kind of Catholicism represented by Pell, and by the current Pope, Karol Wojtyla.
The internal battles of the church should in principle be of no concern to anyone outside it unless what the church does impinges on them. Yet many non-Catholics - whose attitudes range from sectarian hatred (the "whore of Babylon" and all that 19th-century rant) through simple sectarian dislike to fierce intolerance of traditional religious teaching - feel that they have a right to intervene in these internal debates and divisions.
Pell's appointment can be seen as the latest shot in the continuing war waged by Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, against the transformation of the church that began with the calling of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Vatican II and subsequent developments represented a gigantic updating of the Catholic Church and, in effect, the final triumph of Martin Luther and the Reformation.
Unhappily for the church, this updating coincided with the upheaval in social attitudes that took place in the '60s and '70s, and many of the clergy along with the laity were intoxicated by the spirit of the times and abandoned much of their former orthodoxy.
But rather than simply leaving the church and getting on with their lives, they conceived a mission to justify themselves by forcing the church to agree with them. In this they made allies of outsiders who had never had any goodwill towards the church.
John Paul II, in effect, launched a new counter-reformation and has been successful in stopping the rot, or the reform of the church into a kind of social club for woolly religiosity. And Pell, clearly his man in Australia, has now been appointed to the most important of Catholic archdioceses in the leading city of the nation. It is clear that the counterattack on Pell has well begun.
Leading the charge so far has been the homosexual lobby, but the movement for women priests will not be far behind. The latter has the stronger case; the gays have none but will not be deterred from insisting that not only should they be permitted to do what they like but that everybody else should endorse their activities as supremely moral, virtuous and to be praised. This no serious traditional religion can do.
Pell has made it perfectly clear that he does not think homosexuality is a desirable lifestyle compatible with membership of the church. But the same is true of heterosexual extramarital sex. The church's attitude has always been clear - someone who presents himself or herself as a participant in the sacraments of the church is obliged not to be in a state of serious sin.
A homosexual who is not leading an active sex life is not debarred from full participation in the church. But when a group of people present themselves for Communion wearing badges or sashes declaring that they are in a state of sin, what priest could, without defying the teachings of his church, allow them to proceed with one of the holiest rites of his church?
In this case it is the church being persecuted by the gay lobby, not vice versa. So long as nobody interferes with the right of gays to behave as they choose, why should they have the right to insist that their choice not be adversely criticised by those who do not agree with them?
Ordination of women presents different problems. Here it is a matter of the tradition and the authority of the church, without any question of sin as such. Here again it is the women proposing ordination who are the most intolerant, since they want to change the church rather than change churches. There is nothing stopping any group of Catholics from forming a breakaway church in which female ordination is encouraged. Schisms are hardly unknown in Catholic history. If the majority of Catholics agree with them, then they will eventually prevail.
Why has the Wojtyla counter-reformation not led to schisms so far? There have been individual decisions, such as that of Paul Collins in Melbourne, to abandon the priesthood. Many more have simply dropped out of Catholicism altogether. A very large proportion of those who remain nominally within the church have abandoned any genuine participation in its activities or any acceptance of its authority in faith and morals. So long as they do not assert a right to force the church to endorse what they do, that is between them and their consciences.
But there are many Catholics who are deeply concerned about the erosion of their religion, and who wish to see its teachings transmitted by those committed to them, not by unbelievers or those flouting the moral teachings.
Catholic schools have largely abandoned their role as religious teachers, and the Catholic University is just another jumped-up irreligious teachers' college. Some Catholics in Sydney have had recourse to something like the old hedge schools, where the faith is taught secretly outside the official system.
It is now up to Pell and his supporters to decide what to do with the teaching of their religion, and the conduct of those of their members who refuse to accept traditional authority. The simple solution is to withdraw their authority to teach and to cut off from the sacraments those who will not accept the teachings of the church. Again, it is difficult to see why someone who opposes the authority of the Catholic Church does not simply leave it rather than persecute it.