Freedom of access to information and freedom of expression in a pluralistic world

摘要

A PLURALISTIC WORLD Thank you for the invitation to give the New Norcia Library Lecture for 1998. It is indeed an honor, and a wonderful opportunity to speak on matters which are very dear to me and fundamental to the profession of librarianship. When I visited New Norcia some years ago, I was struck, as all visitors must be, by its beauty and singularity. There is a very pleasing incongruity in the placement of these venerable and holy walls among the eucalypti of Western Australia. The dark portraits in the gallery contrast with the searing brightness outside. The walls make a statement of the permanence and stability of faith set against the extended, ancient landscape. Dom Salvado and Dom Serra, who ventured far from their native Spain on their mission to the Aborigines of this region in 1846, must have wished to make such a statement. But they would have expressed it in different terms. They, and their fellow Benedictines, came to proselytize, to convert, carrying their religion with them and encountering the ancient beliefs of the Aboriginal peoples of the region. Incidentally, both Dom Serra and Dom Salvado had a tenuous connection with the Top End of Australia, where I live: both were appointed, successively, Bishop of the Victoria Settlement at Port Essington on Cobourg Peninsula, north of Darwin. Neither, however, ever visited the Settlement before its dissolution. The monks brought with them a wealth of knowledge: religious, technological and linguistic. Some showed a curiosity about Aboriginal languages and practices. The Aboriginal community which grew next to the monastery provided succour as the white settlers intruded into Western Australia but the foreigners also intruded into Aboriginal beliefs and ways. In its singular way, New Norcia highlights for us the plurality of the world in which we find ourselves. It is a world of many voices, many peoples, many beliefs, intermingled.