I interviewed him the next morning about himself and his thinking on this subject. I’ll use some of this on my upcoming radio show (30th May, 6-8pm, streaming at phoenixfm.org)

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I would say to my daughters, if they were to ask me this question, I would say … it is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don’t give it to someone lightly, that is what I would say.

The slapdown from the media and in the political arena was fairly rapid. Julia Gillard: “These comments will confirm the worst fears of Australian women about Tony Abbott”. Gabriella Coslovich in The Age: “If I were one of Abbott’s daughters I would be furious to have my value reduced to the state of my hymen”. Most of the responses centred on the desirability of bonking whoever you like without criticism.

Tony Abbott was trapped by the fact that politicians, like every public figure these days, must engage on a personal level as well as a political level. To challenge Labor, he must be liked by the Australian people, as well as having attractive policies. Hence the Women’s Weekly interview. However, Abbott’s insistence that the piece was a ‘personal’ and ‘not political’ doesn’t stand up either because the only reason we care is because he is a politician. Most of the hysteria whipped up on his comments is simply fluff that we can safely ignore. Many commentators simply don’t like Tony. Abbott is an abrasive politician, and those opposed to him will take any opportunity to denigrate him. This is to be expected, and Abbott shouldn’t be surprised. But there are a couple of interesting issues touched on in this episode.

The first is Is it valid for politicians to comment on so-called ‘private’ matters? I argue that not only is it valid, it should be positively encouraged. I want to know what my political representatives actually think, not just rely on carefully controlled media releases. One of the attractive things about Tony Abbott (bar budgie smugglers) is the unscripted nature of his public appearances. That could be spin too, but I prefer it to the airbrushed image that Rudd conveys. Added to this is the artificial separation between private and public issues. Rudd referred to this in his response to Abbott, opining that governments should focus on health, climate change and war-mongering, and leave the ‘private’ issues to individuals. I assume he means that sex is a private issue. That didn’t stop him writing a long essay on his religious faith before the election.

These issues are ‘personal’ but they are not ‘private’ in the sense of having no public interest. All relationships, including sexual ones, have to deal with the public dimension, even if it extends only to excluding the public. In fact, our definition of what is ‘private’ and therefore off-limits to politicians, god-botherers and in-laws, is quite fluid. For some, our voting choices are strictly private (though regulated by government), for others it’s our bank balance (though regulated by government), for others it’s our eating habits (though regulated by government). For others it’s our choice of school (though regulated by government). All our supposedly private choices are regulated to some degree by government. Even, yes, sex is regulated by government.

So, to get down the root of it all, the real issue is not whether politicians should comment on ‘private’ issues, but Should government regulate relationships? And how should they be regulated? And, for the god-botherers like me, is there any validity in trying to persuade such regulation on the basis of my religiously-grounded beliefs?…stay tuned

Back to the book. I love reading personal diaries of public figures because, like the journals of Thomas Merton, you get a sense of the tensions between their inner and outer lives. Dorothy Day’s public persona is forthright, confident and maybe a little tyrannical, but her diaries are full of frustration, of sadness, of doubt and constant wondering about how anything in the Catholic Worker movement will ever progress. But they are also full of reminders to herself that all hardships are a joy, an occasion for grace and personal growth towards God.

Day is intriguing in her combination of radical justice and intense devotion to God, even piety one might say. I noticed this when I lived at the Catholic Worker in Los Angeles; we kept public vigil against the Iraq War by morning and prayed the rosary by night. But her piety is not pious, if her descriptions of the folly and pettiness of her struggling movement are accurate. She pulls few punches in ventilating her spleen on any number of topics and people. At times it reminded me a workshop title that some friends of mine ran with on the topic of their missionary experience: “Telling the Poor Where To Get Off”….beautiful, awful and honest at the same time, which is my feeling about Duty of Delight. We are definitely not on this journey with Jesus to publicise our perfection.

At a couple of kilograms, Duty of Delight is a heavy read, but an easy one.

Most people do not want to build community, or even love others (with the consequence of community). Many, even most, people who are involved in Christian community ventures are attempting to compensate for their dysfunctional family experience, or attempting to replicate their positive family experience. Another way of putting it is that many Christians enter community hoping it will either replicate or heal their experience of family. This is particularly so when we are doing it for the first time. I had no initial fears of community as my family was strong, stable and secure…but the community certainly wasn’t. Others entered it hoping it would heal their wounds, yet carrying an underlying dread of the connections and trust that are necessary for community. Our way of being part of community is inevitably shaped by our experience of biological family life (good and bad). When someone is unhappy with an experience of community life, it is often because they are expected it to be the family they desire. For example, a young adult I lived with expected our community to be completely accepting and inclusive, as his family had failed to be. We failed also unleashing scathing criticism and judgement.

This dynamic is made tense by the fact that some aspects of community life are family-like, but not identical to families. Such communities as mine (covenanted, relational, intentional, missional) are not families in the biological or nuclear sense that most have experienced. It is not even like an extended family of the stereotypical Mediterranean variety. The sooner we realise this the better; then we can stop expecting our communities to be the family we wish we had, or the family we want to replicate.

So why did God create family? Not simply for the extension of the human race, but to guarantee that we would always possess an indissoluble link with others that can never be absolutely disowned. I can separate myself from community, reject my faith, cease contact with others; but I cannot ever rid myself of my blood which writes itself indelibly into my self. God made us so that we need connection with others, and gives us at birth a link not only with 2 parents, but with their parents and so back through the ages we have connections that we can’t break and more importantly, that we do not have to build ourselves. This is God’s grace at work – we cannot create these bonds; they are given to us. This is where the dynamic of family and Christian community really overlap. If, in community, we realise that God has gracefully created bonds of blood between us, then trust flows more easily – it has been given to us. The regular eucharistic command to partake of Jesus’ body and blood makes sense here: we are taking Jesus blood and body into our blood and body and so becoming one body, one blood, one family. It is only to the extent that Christian community is united to Jesus that we can truly call each other sisters and brothers in Christ.