Perth's Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey has issued a defamation writ against the West Australian newspaper for being labelled a hypocrite over his stance on women. An article and cartoon on October 2 referred to University of WA philosophy professor Michael Levine's view that a television message currently being aired by the church was misleading and manipulative.
In the ad Archbishop Hickey asks for women's rights to be acknowledged.
Professor Levine told the paper the Catholic Church had failed to show leadership because it did not allow women to become bishops or acknowledge same-sex marriages.
"There is hypocrisy in that because there is a consistent denial of rights on one and a pretension of extending rights on the other," the newspaper reported Prof Levine as saying.
"The Catholic Church upholds and revere women but in reality it demeans women by denying (them) the same opportunity as men."
The writ, lodged in Western Australia's Supreme Court by prominent defamation lawyer Martin Bennett, states that the dispute was further aggravated by an article in edition of the West Australian.
In the article, the newspaper repeated Prof Levine's comments and quoted from Mr Bennett's letter to the newspaper, threatening legal action.
The defamation writ comes months after the church was embroiled in a sexual conduct scandal reported in the West Australian, about the controversial Bethel Convenant Community in Perth.
The community was closed the day after Archbishop Hickey apologised for failing to act on allegations of sexual misconduct when they came to his attention eight years ago.
A spokesman for the Archbishop said the advertisements had nothing to do with the Bethel controversy, and that they had been planned for some time.
The archbishop had been personally offended by the hypocrite label, he said.
"We don't have any policies that would warrant calling him a hypocrite," Hugh Ryan said.
When asked about the ordination of women, Mr Ryan replied: "Women haven't been ordained in the church for 2,000 years.
"To understand that issue you have to understand all the reasons behind it. But in particular there's the current assumption that people can say, `well that's an offence against somebody's rights', but in the church's history, nobody has a right to be a priest.
"It's not about rights, it's not just employment and a job."
Mr Ryan said the archbishop was well known for his work with Aboriginal women and programmes offering women help with their pregnancies.
Archbishop Hickey had also done great work with the House of Hope to help women get out of prostitution, Mr Ryan said.
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