The Catholic Weekly 26 July 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 12 26, July, 2020 FEATURE 1 You were schooled at Villanova College, an Augustinian Catholic Boys College in Brisbane. Did that experience influence you in any meaningful way? MY CATHOLIC schooling at Villanova focused heavily on human rights issues. Vil- lanova has a really strong so- cial justice tradition - we were always encouraged to raise funds for Caritas and school expeditions to the Philippines to aid communities there. This strong social justice tradition influenced me greatly. I think throughout my life – it’s not something I have been able to talk to the media much about because obvious- ly in Australia there is an over- whelming emphasis on secu- lar issues – but I truly think my policies have been influenced by the Christian worldview. I was raised in theOrthodox Christian Tradition – baptised Greek Orthodox – and attend- ed Catholic Schools all my life. The Catholic focus on social justice has always been there. Studying religion in senior year, we focused on theology in Latin America, especially with regard to Oscar Romero. Honestly, I see Oscar Romero as a great political hero of mine. He was a war- rior for justice and I do look to his example and others in the Church. Catholic Social teaching has influenced my politics. Certainly, there are issues where I diverge from the Church but I think the fundamental emphasis on human dignity - that’s some- thing that’s always stayed with me and shaped my entire po- litical outlook. 2 The Christian tradition is central to the notion of human dignity and social justice in modern society. Can you explain this inmore detail? I THINK one thing people re- ally miss - especially militant secular-atheists, often on the left – is how much great so- cial justice work there is in the Church and that the message of Christianity is to focus on the fragile and vulnerable. These are great progressive goals and it’s definitely influ- enced my social justice prin- ciples. Humanism comes from Christianity. That’s what many on the left forget: our humanist values derive from the Christian tradition. There have been times I have lapsed into agnosticismbut in the last couple of months I have been getting much more in touch with my Orthodox Christian background. I’ve sort-of been outside Christianity for a while, but I definitely feel that’s changed in recent months. For me the way it came is the notion of universal hu- man rights which I believe in strongly. The question is “how do you justify that belief?” and I think you cannot just justify that belief from a piece of pa- per but rather what confers the notion of the dignity of the human person. I was reflecting on this in a philosophical sense and my Catholic friends would say ‘Where do human rights come from if not from God?” and I thought to myself ‘We come to human rights through a rational position.’ But they would respond along the lines of “So why can’t we also come to a rational position on the social Darwinist Nietzschean notion that the strong domi- nate the weak?” At the time, I didn’t have a response. But if we discard the Chris- tian tradition then what stops us from becoming a society where the strong dominate the weak?That’s my great fear. And this is partly what we have at the moment. As we lose Christian traditions as a society we have moved to- wards a neoliberal dog-eat dog hyper-materialism. The strong dominate the weak and the weak suffer - what a nightmare. If you lose the Christian humanist tra- dition what’s to stop us from going down that path? I think, honestly, if God took on human form and he died for the afflicted of the I think people really miss - especially militant secular-atheists often on the left – howmuch great social justice work there is in the Church ...” Drew Pavlou Spanish Missionary of Charity Sister Paul supports a patient at the House for the Dying in Port-au- Prince, Haiti. The Church’s commitment to the poor and vulnerable is central to modern values of human dignity and social justice, says Drew Pavlou. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/PAUL JEFFREY Rebel with a cause University of Queensland student Drew Pavlou has been suspended until next year for protesting against Chinese Communist Party violations of human rights and what he describes as its undue influence within Australian tertiary institutions. He opens up to The Catholic Weekly’s David Ryan about what inspires his passion for human dignity