3AW's Neil Mitchell on freedom and the Catholic Church

Neil Mitchell is at his most shallow and ignorant when it comes to discussing the Catholic Church. On occasions he descends into outright bigotry. On the philosophic issue of freedom he regurgitates an unreflective materialist liberal point of view. It seems not to enter his head that (to the extent his thoughts on freedom could be termed philosophic) there are other ways of analysing the notion of freedom - I mean other than the way he thinks about it.

The Catholic Church takes is starting from St John's Gospel where Christ says that 'the truth will set you free'. Through the centuries there has been a solid intellectual defence of this idea of freedom. Basically it amounts to this: sin, the committing of evil acts, impedes true human freedom; to the extent that one commits sin and is fixed in habits of sin, to that extent the individual is not free. Edmund Burke, defender of the Anglican Church, said it in this way: men of intemperate minds can never be free; 'their passions forge their fetters'.

Carrying out an abortion can never be a free moral act; it is a degrading, dehumanising, imprisoning act. It is the opposite of being free in the true sense.

Of course, a person like Neil Mitchell would as an unreflective materialist liberal scoff at this. He could at least in raising the question on his top-rating radio program acknowledge, as a moral subjectivist, that the Church does have a consistent defensible philosophic view of human freedom, however much he and others may disagree with it.

There is no inconsistency in vigorously asserting human freedom while condemning sinful acts and habits like abortion, homosexuality, contraception, euthanasia, etc

Finally, it is a joke that Mitchell and 3AW continually rope in Fr Bob Maguire as an expert on Church theology and morality. Fr Maguire is not competent to speak on behalf of orthodox Catholics. But I suppose he is good enough for the purposes of the Mitchell program.