…so did the Catholic Church speak up for him?
The BBC reports:
[T]he Catholic head of England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said the government was rushing through the [Equality Act (Sexual Orientation)] regulations – after MPs were asked to approve them without debate.
He accused the government of “an abuse of parliamentary democracy”, adding: “Profound public concern about aspects of these regulations has not been heard.”
Where has His Eminence been for the last decade? The Blair administration has been applying the “programme motion” (pdf explanation) to curtail parliamentary debate and adopting wholesale the device of “framework legislation” to legislate by the nominally endorsed decree dressed up as statutory instrument.
Wave after wave of revolutionary legislation, stamping out liberty in every quarter and establishing imperial inspectorates in place, has gone through on the back of tendentious PLP briefings calling votes from MPs who have not participated in a debate and have no real idea what they are voting on. How come it is only abuse of parliament when it infringes the Catholic Church’s right to tell people what to think about gay sex, by telling them to think something different about it?
Maybe the Catholic Church only just noticed it when it impacted upon them personally. Just the same as with many other people.
Dare I say most people only notice a lot of stuff when they find their normal route blocked and it’s too late.
Foolishly they think the Government will honestly and quietly get on with it’s job whilst they get on with theirs, after all that’s what they are being paid for.
You wouldn’t expect a plumber to do anything else that the job you had employed them to do.
Sadly with Goverment that is not the case. They are always doing stuff they have no remit for.
(from http://www.mtio.com/articles/bissar55.htm)…
‘In 1934, during his second year as chancellor of the German Reich, Adolf Hitler invited the leaders of the evangelical churches of Germany to a meeting in Berlin. He goal was to quell mounting criticism from the Christian community of the Nazi regime and its attempts to subvert the churches. Among those present at that meeting was a fiery young Lutheran pastor from the Berlin suburb of Dahlem named Martin Niemoller. Niemoller would later recall this encounter as the moment from which he knew that Germany was doomed. Hitler was amiable and deliberately reassuring as he sought the support of these prominent churchmen. He promised the pastors that the position of the church in Germany was safe and secure – that its legal protections, its tax exemptions, and state support would remain unchanged under the Nazi government. Niemoller pushed to the front of the group to confront the chancellor directly and reject his casual consignment of Christians to social irrelevance. Standing face to face with Germany’s ruler, the brash young pastor asserted: “Our concern, Herr Hitler, is not for the church. Our concern is for the soul of our country.” An embarrassed silence followed his remark and it was immediately evident that Niemoller spoke only for himself. His chagrined colleagues quickly shuffled him away from the front of the room. Noting their timid reaction, the dictator smiled as he replied, “The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me.” ‘
How many times has Blair done the same thing: invite leaders of various sorts to 10 Downing St and tell them their organisations/associations etc are safe with him and stroke their egos? And how many times have these ‘leaders’ fallen for his spiel?
I am not a Roman Catholic, but this is just silly Guy.
Plenty of Catholics opposed the National Socialists (indeed the much attacked Pope Pius hid thousands of Jews on Church property in Italy). And the Roman Catholic Church did not indulge in anti American rantings after the war (as Niemoller did).
As for not wanting to hand over children to people who engage in homosexual acts – right or wrong this is the standard Christian position (not just a Roman Catholic position – I rather doubt that Niemoller would have been in favour of “gay adoption” but you may have some information on that).
Of course the Roman Catholic church should not have accepted government money for its adoption agencies in the first place – but a lot of charities (both religous and secular – and in various fields) made that mistake and became dependent on it.
On Statutory Instruments:
You are 100% correct that the Roman Catholic church has not opposed them in the economic field. And that many people have had their lives destroyed by them (each time Mr Booker, or someone else, gives an example it is dismissed as an isolated incident – there have been many thousands of these “isolated indicdents” over the last couple of decades).
However, we should stand with the victims of government power – even if they have not defended other victims. And even if some of us think that the Christian position on sex is wrong (and hold that a higher morality is that of the Theban “Sacred Band” or whatever).
And I am sure that, at heart, you do agree that the Roman Catholics should not be ordered around by the State.
It’s notable that neither the Catholic Church nor any other denomination had anything to say about the far more pernicious Religious Discrimination Bill of 2004. This made discrimination on the basis of religious belief illegal.
The government’s argument was that religious belief should be treated like race, sex and disability, without any reference to the fact that those other factors are innate and cannot be changed (without expensive surgery in the case of sex), whereas religious beliefs are chosen.
This has led us to the ridiculous position that holding any religious belief, no matter in what capacity it impacts on one’s ability to do a job, cannot be a reason for not hiring someone. All religious beliefs are equally valid under this law, despite the fact that they cannot all be right.
I realise that this site is not really the place where any laws are seen as worthwhile*, but to suggest that beliefs that are, by their nature, irrational should be given as much weight under law as an immutable (without expensive surgery) and innate characteristic seems to me to be the point at which all rational people, including the religious, should have made a stand.
Paul – It is not a ‘standard’ Christian position to conflate homosexuality with paedophilia. It is not the position of the URC (which consists of the Congregational Church, The Presbyterian Church of England and the UCC, and has 1750 congregations), nor of Methodism, nor of many Anglican congregations, nor of the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor of the New Testament.
* – I would be interested to hear how the market provided any non-governmental solution to the civil rights situation in the USA – either owners of businesses which prevented blacks from using them were happy to forgo that potential extra income, and the economic position of the black community meant that there was no serious economic consequence to this, had not been for 100 years; or more money could be made by appealing to their customers’ racism, behaviour, again, with no economic consequence.
I have a question- what is the established Christian Church, the Anglican Church, saying and doing about all this? Are they making any protests at all, or are they just going along with the Government, and selling out to the state? If the Catholic Church is the only church making any kind of stand, then more power to it!
Paul,
My point was closer to Phil A’s. I’m not much concerned with what the church thinks on this particular point than the hypocrisy of pretended aloofness from the political process. In fact the Catholic Church, like all the others has been very keen on government legislation going through without fuss when it suits it, and Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster is a political prelacy, legate in all but name. But these mechanisms are only “abuse of parliament” when they touch on the internal politics of the church.
nick g,
The Anglican Church has taken a softer line. Though it has also opposed the regulations publicly, it has not criticised the procedure. I do like the Anglican line in this case. “Rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning,” sounds like a good principle to me, though if one were to make it clearer, I doubt the Anglicans would really support it.
That too is beside the point, which is that if you don’t object to the arbitrary exercise of state power until it affects your own convenience, then you are guaranteed to lose more then convenience.
Uhh yeah it did and it still does, along with captalism, individual liberty, Israel and basically anything remotely decent in the world. Just because occasionally this Pope stops preaching paternalist-socialism long enough to make a few mild remarks about Islam (John Paul preferred to kiss Korans) doesn’t mean that the constant stream of evil eminating from the Vatican should be excused or ignored. Papistry is inimicable to english liberty, when this was free country we remembered that.
More to the point, they shouldn’t have been offered it in contravention of the 37th article of our established church.
Irony alert:
We were a free country… but we have an established state religion. Do you not detect a certain incompatibility here?
Also, were you under the impression that those wicked ‘Papists’ were the ones behind the massive erosion of our civil liberties in the last decade? I think you need to update your ‘enemies of liberty threat priority list’ by say, oh, four hundred years perhaps?
Personally I am up the atheist end of agnostic (i.e. I am not a catholic or anything else these days) but I find it very hard to take anyone who uses the word ‘Papist’ in the Twenty First Century seriously.
Gabriel:
I was not talking about the post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church in relation to anti American ranting (although even in the post Vatican II Church it is not common, at least not from the Vatican itself – and it actually may be getting less common lower down as well), I was talking about just after World War II.
Guy Herbert:
Quite so Guy – as I said I understand that the Roman church did not exactly leap to the defence of other people hit by government regulations (but sadly most people are like this – they only understand that the state can be a nasty thing when it hits them personally).
You are also right in saying that the Anglican Church has used softer sounding language – but has the same basic position (in theology it can not avoid it).
N.T.
Well I know an active member of the U.R.C. and he will be interested to learn that his Church supports “gay adoption” (i.e. has abandoned Chistian doctrine in this area), if this is so.
On the general “antidiscrimination” point.
Of course (as a libertarian) I reject all “antidiscrimination laws” but I accept that there is a difference in discriminating on the basis of opinion (such as religious opinion) and discriminating on the basis of physical matters.
‘Papist’ is the most accurate term. ‘Catholic’ is incorrect as nearly all western christians (and a lot of non-western ones) adhere to the Nicene creed and hence believe in ‘one holy Catholic and apostolic church’. Some people refer to them as Romans, but that seems to me rather confusing. ‘Papist’ is a neutral description and an accurate one because the primary distinguishing feature of that church is belief in the spiritual and temporal authority of the Bishop of Rome.
More importantly, I dispute the claim that the Roman church no longer constitutes an imminent threat to freedom. Indeed, the Pope probably holds more moral sway than any other figure on earth and the fact is that he consistently uses it to propagate opinions that are contrary to liberty.
[btw I saw you in the Times, but I couldn’t find the quote (about Mugabe) on this site, what gives?]
There is nothing remotely contrary to freedom in having an established church, indeed it ranks among the best achievements of 1689 that we have one.
Paul, the pre-Vatican II Church was, if anything, even more anti-capitalist than the contemporary one and anti-American as a logical (one can’t fault papist theologians for logic) collary. Technically it is correct that in the immediate years after 1945 the church made a minimal amount of anti-American remarks thanks the imminent threat of Soviet conquest. However, it did devote itself to doing its utmost to ensure Jewish refugees from Europe would have no place to go and to this end supported Arab military and terrorist action against the nascent Israeli state (a position which, again, was changed slightly for the better following Vatican II although not much – as shown by doing thengoogle image search “pope Arafat”).
In Romans Paul states that homosexual intercourse was the lowest depth that fallen man ever sunk to. Needless to say that this goes far, far beyond any treatment of the matter in the Old Testament.
Then again, I don’t suppose most people in the U.R.C. have read the Pauline epistles much, or, indeed, have any great idea as to what they are.
Paul – neither a church, nor a denomination, nor a Christian need either oppose ‘handing children over to those who indulge in homosexual practices’ or support gay adoption. It is a perfectly valid position not to care about it.
It is also the position the churches I mentioned take. If your friend is that worried, you can suggest they read the URC’s Report on Human Sexuality (http://www.urc.org.uk/documents/sexuality_report/report_a.htm) which refuses to take any stand beyond that of affirming the right of a local congregation to decide whether they are willing to ordain a homosexual minister (incidentally, Gabriel, you’ll find three long exegeses on the passages you assume people in the URC know nothing about). It quite clearly fudges many of the issues, but is quite clear that the church does not oppose the ordination of homosexuals (and one of its sister denominations, the UCC in America, actually does ordain them).
Now, perhaps we can imagine a situation in which someone who can become an ordained minister is deemed unfit to be involved with the welfare of children. However, they mainly tend to be Catholics…
If we’re going to take Scriptural injunctions on who should and shouldn’t be allowed to look after children (according to which practices are ‘abomination’) then we should probably stop menstruating women (Lev 15:19), football players (Lev 11:7) and shellfish (Lev 11:10) from adopting children.
I will support any move to keep our precious children out of the hands of the shellfish.
Apologies – I meant to add that I have yet to see any Scriptural reference to gay adoption, but to extrapolate from other verses about who is and isn’t an abomination…
[see above]
N.T.
As Gabriel could have pointed out (but tactfully did not) one of the basic doctrines that Christianity took from the Jewish faith was the belief that homosexual acts (acts – not types of people or whatever) are sins.
Now this may be totally wrong (the position of the Theban Sacred Band, and so on, may be correct), but it is one of the basic doctrines of Christianity.
One might as well say that killing babies and dumping them in rubbish heaps (another practice of the non Jewish, pre Christian Classical world) is Christian as to say homosexual acts are. Again there may be nothing wrong with baby killing (many of the most civilized people in history were involved in it), but according to orthodox Jewish tradition and (therefore) Christian tradition there is something wrong with it – indeed that it is a far worse thing that homosexual acts.
Of course there have been Roman Catholic priests who engage in homosexual acts, but the Roman Church does not declare that its priests are without what it considers sins. Although, yes, there was a lot of effort (by some, not all, Roman Catholic officials) to cover up such acts.
Even on the baby killing point the Roman Catholic church in Germany was involved (quite recently) with government organizations that were involved in abortions (just as people were in Classical Greece and Rome), so again any pretence that everyone in the Roman Church always follows Christian doctrine is false – but, again, they have never claimed that everyone in their Church follows Christian doctrine (only that they should).
Gabriel.
On economics there has been a tradition in the Roman Catholic church that is favourable to state intervention.
For example there was the debate that went on for many centuries over what a “just price” is. With one tradition holding that a just price is a price that is the result of civil interaction (interaction that is without force or fraud) between buyer and seller – and another tradition holding that a just price is something else (either the customary price or a price declared by government order). This debate goes back as far as the time of Charles the Great – with the theologians of the first Holy Roman Emperor (although that exact title was not used) holding that state orders determined the just price (as opposed to, for example, the laws of Bavaria, at that time, holding that the just price was the free price).
Murry Rothbard covers this debate (along with many other matters) in the first volume of his history of ecomomics. And (oddly enough, considering what most people think the “just price” tradition is) the majority opinion among theologians (at least outside France) was that a just price was a free price. Indeed many of the “scholastic” thinkers in the middle ages had many important insights into economics.
The modern period is overshadowed by the social teaching from 1891 onwards. This is where Pope Leo XIII (under the influence of Cardinal Manning) seemed to agree that there was big role for the state in looking after the poor (not just by protecting them from force and fraud – but in lots of other ways).
This can be seen as an effort to “keep up” with such people as the Protestant Bismark in Germany. Who had only just been removed from office in 1890 and had a record of active state involvement in health, education and welfare intended, in part, to counter such institutions as the Roman Catholic Church – which he argued (as part of the Culture War) wanted to keep the state passive in order to make the poor dependent on the Church.
Both some Conservative party people such as Disraeli and radical liberals (such as Joseph Chamberlain – from 1865) also supported an active state in Britain – and the Roman Catholics (at least some of them, such as Cardinal Manning) feared being seen as behind the times (out of date, not “relevant” – pick your own line).
In the United States also such things as state schools were seen as an alternative to church schools (especially Roman Catholic schools) and were often justified on the basis of “countering Papists”.
Indeed Australia had the largest non government supported church school system in the World (as a percentage of children) after World War II – because government subsidy for Roman Catholic schools did not start till sometime in the late 1950’s – early 1960’s (I forget which).
“But does basic Roman Catholic doctrine demand a Welfare State?”.
I am not a theologian, so I will leave you with Neil Woods (a Catholic writer) who declares (in his recent work) that it does not (he argues that no Pope has ever declared his policy statements in this area to be infallible doctrine). Of course “Progressive” Catholics would declare that it does.
Gabriel will be able to point to many inncidents of “Progressive” Catholics going a lot further than this – support for terrorism, “liberation theology” (the whole doing the Devil’s work).
The present Pope (for all his pro Welfare State opinions) has always been strongly opposed to this and might (of course I can not know this – it is just a guess) like people to forget that all this horror ever happened (or, in a few cases, is still happening) – but I doubt Gabriel will ever allow this.
Nathaniel, I didn’t allege that U.R.C. theologians are unfamilar with scripture, but rather that U.R.C. congregants are (either that or they are unfamiliar with U.R.C. doctrine).
Paul, I agree that a great deal of wickedness can be ascribed to the Catholic Left, which, hopefully, is going to get good and stomped on during ratzinger’s tenure. However, the ‘Right’ of the church is not as blameless as you make it out. Most obviously, the late 19th century R.C. doctrine you refer to (I find it hard to understand Neil Wood’s point, papal Bulls from an infallible Pope are infallible) did not come from a progressive papacy, far from it. In embracing National-Syndicalism, Rome thought itself to be acting conservatively.
I agree that many scholastics can be broadly categorised as being on our side (especially, ironically enough, the Spanish ones), but I don’t want to get into a debate that is far too big for a comments box.
What I am saying is this, both the Left and the Right of the Catholic church are preaching anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Individualist (and anti-Israel, which matters to me at least) messages and have done so for at least 100 years. Previously the Right had to restrain itself somewhat because of the imminent threat of Communism, now it doesn’t. Thus the Roman church is a force for ill in our world.