Malcolm Turnbull: the very imperfect Catholic

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).