Leave your brain at the door

Faith is a wonderful thing. Today's SMH reports a speech by Cardinal Pell in which he revealed that the lives of people without religious faith have ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss". Life without God was ''life without purpose, without constraints'' ... a pronouncement somewhat at odds, in my case, of observance of constraints against strangling kittens, marrying a cow or otherwise running amok.

The same issue of the Herald reports the federal Opposition Leader as announcing that although there were good arguments for the monarchy (which he didn't condescend to share), they were ''often beside the point''.

The wellsprings of its appeal are instinctual as much as rational; more akin to loyalty to a team, solidarity within a family or faith in a church than they are to support for a policy. Deep down, they are the heart's reasons that reason doesn't know

The 'heart has its reasons' defence is perhaps unfortunate, given its use by former monarch Edward VIII in chucking the job.

Mr Abbott was admittedly opining in the Neville Bonner Memorial lecture to the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, not the most critical of audiences, when he reportedly explained that -

Reaction to the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton showed the monarchy was ''evolving and renewing - not as other institutions might through legislation, vote, or upheaval but through something as natural and as fitting as the marriage of an appealing man to an attractive woman''.

Let's not think, of course, about the marriage of an appealing man to another appealing man, or even ditch the requirement for 'appealing'.

In what the Herald delightfully describes as "opening up a new line of attack in the debate over an Australian republic" (ie that "support for the monarchy need not be rational"), Mr Abbott reportedly continued that -

''This latest royal wedding is likely again to demonstrate people's response to ritual and tradition and their tendency to delight in princes and princesses,'' he said. ''If republicans could bring themselves to suspend hostilities, they might come to appreciate that what they currently find inexplicable or even offensive is not so for others and perhaps need not always be for them either.''

Professing delight that ''a wedding can trump argument'' he applauded the ''perennial gap between the mainstream and a commentariat that can't quite get an institution with its roots in an earlier time and a different way of thinking''.

I do like the "delight in princesses and princes" (and presumably Priscilla Queen of the Desert ... can't have too much bling and fustian). Let's not talk about the delight that people (with occasional cheers from "the commentariat" and the judicary) have taken in pogroms, witch-burning and other time-honoured colourful treats.

Mr Abbott's speech - titled 'Almost an Indigenous Monarchy' - demonstrates that the Opposition Leader needs to brush up on his constitutional law. "The governor-general, these days always an Australian, is our head of state". Um, actually no, Mr Abbott ... read the Constitution or analysis by leading constitutional lawyer Bede Harris.