The maverick Catholic figure Father Bob Maguire has criticised New South Wales’ premier and the state’s parliament for passing voluntary assisted dying laws, after a scathing editorial on the legislation was published in the Catholic Weekly.
On Friday Jewish groups put pressure on the newspaper, funded by the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, to apologise and amend the piece, which compared the new laws with the Holocaust and criticised Dominic Perrottet’s leadership.
Maguire said comparing concentration camps and the right for someone to take their own life was “nasty”.
“If you want to confuse and not convince, well then you will use that language,” Maguire told the Guardian.
But he said Perrottet – who is Catholic – should have shown stronger leadership against a bill he personally opposed.
“Everybody should have stronger leadership on this,” he said.
“I had hoped [it wouldn’t pass] but if that’s the way it’s going to be then people like me will have to just keep putting forward the case more clearly and convincingly.”
The 87-year-old said older Australians “should be the ones who are being encouraged to lead us into the promised land”.
“I am not a legislation man but I would have hoped that our culture would not have gone there, that it would have had a wider view of humanity and a wider view of age,” he said.
The laws had faced opposition from senior Catholics both during debate of the bill and after they passed. However, they were also supported by some Catholics.
Last year the treasurer, Matt Kean, committed to supporting the legislation despite his strong Catholic faith due to what he said was “an enduring attachment to personal liberty”.
“It infuses me as an individual, and as a legislator. I believe that this parliament has the capacity to gift that freedom to every individual in the state,” Kean said at the time.
The Catholic Weekly editorial pointed to comments made by Perrottet after the bill passed the upper house last week about being “proud” of the way parliament handled the legislation.
“Those left wondering whether the Catholic premier had taken leave of his senses watched in amazement as he said he was ‘proud’ that the NSW parliament had presided over a respectful, tolerant and sensitive debate,” the editorial read.
“No one could call a debate over the consignment of ethnic groups to the concentration camps and which ended in that outcome a ‘unifying’ experience.”
The piece, titled “Drop dead disgrace”, claimed Perrottet lacked “sufficient calibre” to oppose the laws, while also taking aim at fellow Catholic, opposition leader Chris Minns.
Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation Commission, called on the religious publication to apologise and remove the inflammatory sentence.
“The comparison in the editorial to Nazi Germany and the death camps is insensitive, outrageous, and has no place in this debate,” said commission chair, Dr Dvir Abramovich.
“There is no place for such tasteless and painful words in our civil discourse, and we urge the magazine to remove this remark from the editorial, apologise, and refrain from employing such analogies in the future.”
The Guardian has confirmed the editorial has not been amended, nor did the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney plan to apologise for the comments.
“To quote two words out of a 1,400-word editorial is an egregious misrepresentation of the context of the piece,” a spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said.
The piece also took aim at Minns over a “brief” five-minute speech he made in opposition to the legislation.
The Weekly said the Liberal and Labor leaders held “the most political capital and authority to bring to bear in opposing such a victory” but had “lost their nerve”.
“The performance was bizarre and surreal, constituting one of the most humiliating examples of meek acceptance of evil ever seen,” the editorial said.
“Those who stood for life are fully entitled to ask where Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns were in the lobbying, the campaign to communicate the reality of euthanasia, the parliamentary cut and thrust necessary to opposing it?”
Minns declined to comment. Perrottet has been contacted for comment.
