KEY POINTS:
I have a real soft spot for Catholics. In the mid-1970s, I was the only brown-skinned boy at Ryde East Infants School in Sydney. Having lots of female friends (it was more pity than attraction) wasn't the main reason I was bullied.
Rather, it was that I looked
different and that my mum (in her gorgeous saris which made many a hippy mum extremely jealous) dressed differently.
Then one day, walking home from school, I noticed a blond-haired, blue-eyed kid who wore a different school uniform to me.
His blue shirt had a small yellow cross embroidered onto it, and his school bag had the words Spiritus Sanctus.
He looked just like the other bullies. But for some reason, he was also teased and bullied just like I was. This really confused me, and one day I approached one of the bullies to ask about this strange anomaly in playground discrimination.
"Why are you teasing him? He looks just like you. I'll bet his mum doesn't wear a sari."
The bully said these magic words with a straight face: "He's not like us at all. He's a f***ing Catholic!"
I was overjoyed by this news. That evening, I excitedly told mum.
"Mum, there are these white Australian kids who get teased and bullied just like I do. It's because they are Catholic."
Mum's response was to befriend every Catholic in the street. Suddenly I didn't just have South Asian aunties. I also had Maltese and Italian and Irish and even Aussie aunties as well. I became a culturally liberated 6-year-old. For mum, it was a case of showing solidarity with the fellow oppressed.
Muslim Aussies love to whinge and complain about discrimination. But what we've gone through at the hands of pseudo-conservative governments (often in response to the pseudo-sensible remarks of imbecilic thick Sheiks) is only a fraction of what Aussie Catholics have had to put up with for more than a century.
So it's with great joy that members of mum's coalition-of-the-bullied look forward to World Youth Day, which kicks off July 15 and ends July 20 and should probably be called World Youth Week. I'm really glad that Catholics have come this far, from the days when kids from Catholic schools in my street used to get bashed up, to Catholics now openly celebrating their faith in the presence of the Pope.
But others aren't so glad, and arguably with good reason. Three decades after seeing Catholics getting bullied, I'm disturbed to read about a Catholic festival becoming an excuse to bully people (including Catholics) who feel some urge to protest.
The New South Wales Police have been given increased powers to deal with allegedly anti-WYD protesters. The World Youth Day Amendment Regulation signed off by NSW Deputy Premier John Watkins (who once taught at a Catholic boarding school) even states that doing something which "causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day" could lead to arrest and criminal conviction.
The powers haven't impressed even many prominent Catholics. Writing in Eureka Street, a prominent Jesuit online magazine, Law Professor Frank Brennan SJ writes that the special laws represent "a dreadful interference with civil liberties, and contrary to the spirit of Catholic Social Teaching on human rights".
Similar powers were in place at last year's Apec summit, and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. And all we got out of that expensive exercise was seeing a bunch of comedians ushered by police through two restricted zones, then stopping their limousine draped with Canadian flags outside the front of George W. Bush's hotel while one of them, badly disguised as Osama bin Laden, opened the door to take a stretch.
The world-famous Chaser Gang (now sadly overshadowed by Flight Of The Conchords) have threatened to disrupt proceedings at WYD. One of their number, Julian Morrow, has even called for a crack annoyance squad to be formed.
Other more serious protests include those by victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of clergy. For their sake at least, it's hoped rumours of a Papal apology are true.
Of greater controversy is exactly who will foot the bill for this huge event. Already the Federal Government has spent $55 million while the NSW Government has lavished $108.5 million.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the terms of a June 2007 agreement between the NSW Government and the Catholic Church on who will foot the bill in case of a shortfall haven't been released.
I guess one could ask what Jesus would make of all this spending. At least one Catholic priest has described the lavish spending as scandalous. Father Peter Confeggi, a parish priest in the working class Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt, suggested the money would be better spent on Australia's 120,000 homeless people.
Then again, some of these homeless will get a box seat when the WYD celebrations kick off. And even God might dampen the financial excess by sending torrents of rain upon the pilgrims - they have been warned to dress appropriately as weather forecasts suggest rain on July 17, 18 and 19.
Sydney lawyer Irfan Yusuf attributes his reticence towards World Youth Day to 10 years of low-church Anglican education.
