Malcolm Turnbull: the very imperfect Catholic

On March 6-7, 2004, Malcolm Turnbull was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald as saying that although he had recently converted to Catholicism he was a "very imperfect Catholic - I don't want to go any further than that". He had just won preselection for the seat of Wentworth on February 28.

The sociological explanation of the conversion experience is that it is a "crossing the Rubicon" experience. One realises one's innermost beliefs are wrong and they should be replaced by another, correct set of beliefs. The essential, core beliefs of Catholicism a convert would, in principle, have to agree to are:

• a belief in the one Catholic God, composed of the Trinity of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit;
• Adam and Eve were created by God but that Satan in the Garden of Eden led them into original sin;
• Jesus Christ arrived 2000 years ago to save us from sin and eternal damnation and he was born of the Virgin Mary;
• the rituals of the church are essential to salvation: Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist (the bread and wine of Communion really is the body and blood of Christ);
• Holy Matrimony;
• Holy Orders; and
• forgiveness for sin (Confession) and the anointment of the sick in preparation for their eternal life with Jesus.

So it seems that sometime during 2002, prior to his October 2003 decision to stand for the February 2004 preselection for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull: BA, LLB, BCL (Oxford), successful barrister with his own substantial practice, successful multi-millionaire businessman and merchant banker, former leader of the Australian Republican Movement, former treasurer of the Liberal Party, at age 47 - decided he needed to believe what Catholics believe - as cited above.

Turnbull's conceded imperfection has been noticed by another, recent, self-confessed Catholic convert: a Melbourne University law school student, Marcel White. White wrote in the March 2007 issue of the Catholic journal AD2000 that Turnbull should be taken to task for his statements and votes in the Parliament on cloning and the RU-486 abortion pill.

Unwittingly echoing the late B.A. Santamaria in his Catholic Action youth, decades before, Marcel White characterised the reasoned positions taken by Turnbull and some other Catholic politicians as a "public scandal". It was a betrayal of the church's pro-life position. They should be reproached by their bishops.

White pointed out that Turnbull had said in December 2006:

... our society has already reached a conclusion to the effect that an embryo at this very early stage is more in the nature of a potential than an actual human being and that the rights of this microscopic bundle of cells are not equal to those of a foetus, let alone a newborn baby.

It is clear the Catholic Church counts abortion as sin. But as the main speaker at the recent Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) conference in Canberra, Turnbull surprised his pro-life audience by stating quite clearly that he believed women had the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Given his position on a woman's right to choose, shouldn't he, according to Catholic orthodoxy, be refused Communion? If he has not been refused, why hasn't he been refused? Strictly speaking, Marcel White has a point.

But what White may not understand is that the church's position on abortion operates on two levels. Implacable opposition in public - indifference in private. How could it be otherwise? The Australian National University's (ANU) Australian Survey of Social Attitudes in 2003 found that 54.2 per cent of Australians believed that women should be able to obtain an abortion readily; 34.5 per cent believed that it should only be allowed in special circumstances. Only 4 per cent opposed abortion, and 7.3 per cent did not know. The church cannot grandstand too hard on abortion as there are too many Catholic politicians it might alienate; it has other perceived interests it would never want to jeopardise.

So if Turnbull concedes he's a "very imperfect Catholic" in March 2004, just after his preselection for Wentworth, and votes twice against the central pro-life Catholic policy in Parliament in 2006, and openly supports abortion in 2008, why did he convert to Catholicism?

In 1980 Turnbull had married Lucy Hughes, daughter of committed Catholic, the late Tom Hughes QC, former Liberal Attorney-General 1969-71. According to Wikipedia they were married at the small town of Cunmore near Oxford. If that were so, it is thus unlikely they had a big, Catholic wedding. Later, Lucy became a partner in her husband's law firm and was Lord Mayor of Sydney from 2000 to 2003.

On April 12, 2003, in The Sydney Morning Herald she was cited as saying that while a schoolgirl at the private, non-denominational Frensham near Mittagong NSW, and attending a Catholic Church, she was so distressed at something the local Irish priest had said that she walked out of the church and did not return "until the mid 1990s". She was reported as saying that she was less devout than her husband. As noted, he has said he's a "very imperfect" Catholic.

The first report of Turnbull's conversion was in The Sydney Morning Herald of August 16-17, 2002. It was reported he received "instruction" towards his conversion from Father Michael Kelly. His candidature for preselection was announced October 2003.

It would seem Malcolm Turnbull's conversion to Catholicism occurred not long before his October 2003 decision to stand for preselection for Wentworth.

The February 2004 preselection battle between himself and the incumbent Peter King was very confrontational and there were allegations of much branch stacking. Branch stacking is the process whereby whole groups of people, often ethnically based, who previously have demonstrated little interest in party politics, are encouraged to join a branch or branches of a political party to ensure the preselection success of a candidate by voting for him or her. Both sides of politics engage in this behaviour.

In the Federal Parliament on September 14, 2006, the Member for Chifley, Mr Roger Price, alleged that "at least 130 members" of the Lebanese Maronite community had been branch stacked into a Liberal Party branch to ensure the preselection of a candidate for a NSW state seat that year. The candidate was a committed Catholic. Lebanese Maronites are Catholics.

The 1960 film Elmer Gantry, starring Burt Lancaster, was the story of a fast-talking, handsome, traveling salesman with a sharp suit who happens across an evangelical meeting in a tent in America's south. He is smitten by the attractive woman evangelist and joins the group. He turns his sales ability to helping her sell the Gospel. In a comic scene he seduces her on a beach under a wharf above where the tent is pitched.

Things later go awry and in a final scene there is a fire in the tent which destroys it, and she is killed. The media flock to Elmer Gantry for his response. He says: "When I was a child, I understood as a child and spake as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things." (I Corinthians 13:11).