By David Marr
Hard to know what to do with old clothes and toasters in this season of shedding now that Vinnies has gone hardline Catholic. Those of us who thought the shop up the road was all about helping the poor stand corrected. "The primary function of the society," said St Vincent de Paul's lawyers, "is to inculcate the Catholic faith in its members."
This was rotten news for Linda Walsh. A rather fragile woman with a history of depressive illness, Walsh threw herself so enthusiastically into the work of the society that after six years she was running three committees around Brisbane and Vinnies was asking her to focus her volunteer efforts on just one. She choose to remain president of the Migrants and Refugees Logan Centre. She said: "It was my reason to get up in the morning."
That she wasn't a Catholic was neither a secret nor a problem as she organised her team to find furniture for new arrivals, show them how to operate a toaster, ferry them to doctors and dentists, etc. Some qualms of a local priest were settled in November 2003 when she assured him she had Christian belief in Mary, the Holy Trinity and the Holy Catholic Church.
But that was not good enough. In January 2004 an ultimatum was delivered by the society's diocesan president for Gold Coast, Peter Richards. She had until June to become a Catholic, resign her position or leave the society. She was stunned. Richards said words to the effect that this "did not come from him but from above and he was just the messenger".
At emergency meetings over the next few days, he was asked to point to the rule that senior office holders in Vinnies had to be Catholic. He couldn't.
Over the next couple of weeks Walsh was forbidden to speak at a regional council meeting; furniture stored at her house for refugees was taken away; and she was promised an investigation into her treatment but nothing happened.
So she complained to the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission that she was being discriminated against in her work because of her religious belief.
Those of us who feel we're doing something useful by lugging old copies of The New Yorker and embarrassing shirts up to Vinnies and leaving them there under the harsh but forgiving gaze of those women on the counter, should note that St V. de P. devoted not only lots of time to fighting Linda Walsh over the next three years but lots and lots of money.
The complainant had a tough time of it. Her psychiatrist told the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal that after the ultimatum his patient reported "decreased sleep, altered appetite and decreased energy" and the dosage of her anti-depressant medication had to be increased. "More disturbingly, she has had two episodes of attempted suicide." A relationship fell apart under the pressure.
Here are some of the Christian arguments the Vinnies lawyers used in their failed efforts to persuade the tribunal's Robert Wensley, QC, to let them off the hook:
¡ Richards was expressing "a view held by him" and had no authority to deliver the ultimatum.
¡ There was "no threat to remove" Walsh, she simply withdrew her labour.
¡ Her work was essentially "religious observance" that called for "belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the seven Sacraments and devotion to Mary" and "a deep affiliation with the Catholic Church".
The lawyers slogged it out in the tribunal for three days in August 2007 with cash registers tinkling furiously. Representing the society that "seeks in the spirit of justice and charity to help those who are suffering" was a former president of the tribunal, Walter Sofronoff, QC, plus a junior barrister and a team of solicitors. Walsh had legal aid.
Wensley didn't rush. After pondering for 16 months, he delivered a 140-paragraph judgment just before Christmas that entirely backed Linda Walsh.
Discarding swathes of canon law and cutting through conflicting rule books, he concluded that it was not a "genuine occupational requirement" of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Queensland that the president of a committee like the Migrants and Refugees Logan Centre had to be a Catholic.
Vinnies isn't happy and may appeal. Meanwhile, it has put in its rule books in black and white that leadership positions are henceforth reserved for the fully paid-up faithful.
Mere Christians like Walsh with an imperfect understanding of the seven sacraments will never be appointed again.
Peter Maher, the CEO of Vinnies in Queensland, concedes the whole business doesn't reflect well on the society and might have been handled more diplomatically. He said: "Personally, I think the society should have let the lady finish her term."
Maher explains claims made to the tribunal that faith comes first and welfare second in this way: members deepen their faith by doing good work but "the society helps anyone in need regardless of race, creed or religion".
What about helping fragile Linda Walsh? "She was in need but she was holding an important position with an ability to impact on the people working with her." He's a bit narky: "I think Ms Walsh has used this incident to obtain a lot of publicity. I think that's a shame."
So is the money Vinnies now has to raise. Wensley ordered the society to pay Walsh $25,000 in general damages plus her legal costs, $2000 for future psychiatric treatment and $500 in out-of-pocket expenses. Throwing the society's own legal costs on top of that and the last bastion of the poor will be looking for $150,000 plus to pay its bills.
Maybe the faithful will strip their cupboards of unused wedding presents, books and LPs, suits, cufflinks, dresses, hideous cut glass, complete sets of National Geographic and all the Tupperware they can spare for the cause. Others may prefer to see their old treasures used as landfill rather than fund an operation like this.