I felt for George Brandis this weekend. Only days after delivering a theological tour de force to a high-end Catholic crowd about Christianity and liberty, he woke to discover the Catholic Weekly had banned ads for a speech by the former president of Ireland Mary McAleese.

Such ingratitude. It’s not every day a 21st century attorney general is willing to credit the church with inventing the notion of universal freedom: “Of freedom enjoyed by all, irrespective of status, caste or indeed gender.” Brandis sees this revelation by St Paul as “an obvious precursor to modern liberalism’s injunction to tolerance of divergent views”.

Then the Catholic Weekly slams the door on the former president of Ireland. Why? Because she thinks women should be ordained and Rome should ditch its teachings on homosexuality. As the editor of the Weekly Peter Rosengren explained: “I … endorse all the teachings of the Catholic church, including those on the nature of marriage and the priesthood.”

To outsiders, the Weekly’s decision looks like a not particularly remarkable example of the way churches so often operate. They stand for many fine things, but rarely divergent views.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Brandis. The first law officer of the land was at the University of Notre Dame to lend his weight to an argument being pushed energetically by the conservative thinktanks of the nation: that the churches are owed a great debt for the liberty of the modern world. And the quid pro quo being demanded is fresh respect for what churches call religious liberty.

“So deaf have we become to attacks upon religious liberty,” Brandis told his audience, “so accepting have we been of the open scorn with which their tenets, their liturgy, their customs, their clergy and their congregations have been derided, that the great Dyson Heydon, delivering the Acton Lecture in April this year, was moved to describe anti-Catholicism in modern Australia as ‘the racism of the intellectuals’.”

Brandis doesn’t have the courage to say what he is talking about. He hides in a storm of philosophy. He sticks to general principles. But when the churches talk about religious liberty in peril these days they have only a couple of things on their minds: the freedom of the faiths to define marriage for everyone and their freedom not to have homosexuals on the payroll. What they are defending in the name of liberty are the last ways they have of punishing homosexuals.

Public support is roughly nil. Christians are appalled. Labor has abandoned the churches on marriage. Even the Liberals are restive. The political dam is cracking. Brandis blames the press: “Not only has religious freedom been neglected; it has actually been the subject of open attack from those who dominate much of our political discourse, particularly in the national broadcaster and the Fairfax media.”

Brandis didn’t mention sex. He never spelled it out. But he did call on the apostles, saints and church fathers to approve some remarkable propositions. Here is the attorney general on the hazards of reform in the modern state:

“For St Augustine, an individual’s relationship with God is paramount, and the focus is on the eternal city of God, rather than the city of man. And, since only in the city of god is mankind perfectible, the attempt of the secular authority – the governors of the city of man – to impose a specious perfection upon citizens is a profound wrong.”

Here is his message to McAleese and anyone else who has the courage to face the church in the name of human rights: “The governing ethical principle which underlies our modern understanding of human rights – the moral equality of every human person – is a notion which had its origins in the gospel of Jesus, as developed and explained by the early Christian fathers, theologians and canon lawyers. If that be so, those who actually attack Christianity in the name of some personal view of human rights commit an egregious travesty.”

Such a Brandis word: egregious. Not even bishops talk like that these days. If Tony Abbott had lately delivered such views there would be ridicule across politics. But this is just the attorney general blushing a little, you’d hope, as he vouches for a notion of liberty that offers poofters grief and involves the routine censorship of the Catholic Weekly.

“As we proceed, in Australia, to develop a fuller, richer, more balanced understanding of human rights – an understanding which restores the freedom of the individual to the centre of the debate, where it should be – let us ensure that we do not neglect the importance of religious liberty. And let us acknowledge the debt which our modern conception of human rights owes to the teachings and traditions of the Christian church.”

Professor Mary McAleese will deliver the Rosemary Goldie Lecture at Sydney Town Hall at 2pm on 7 September.

