There are opportunities to enjoy stirring victories in the unlikeliest of places. Take, for example, the continued refusal of the Vatican to relent on the ordination of women priests.
As a Jew (and a secular Jew at that) this is a matter which should be none of my concern but somehow I can’t help getting my shorts in a knot over it. Every time the Vatican issues another refusal, I let out a cheer of the kind I emit when my football team scores at home. It stirs my blood and reinforces my hope that the forces of darkness can be kept at bay.
The reasons for my taking a stand on the issue become abundantly clear once you understand that the campaign to make the Church buckle is motivated not by matters of Catholic doctrine or faith but by a quite different agenda:
“It seems a topic that just will not go away – particularly in North America, where the feminist movement has successfully promoted an end to almost all gender discrimination in commerce, government, industry, and education. Increasingly, adults in North America are viewing gender-based discrimination in the same class as racial discrimination, and are rejecting it as bigotry, profoundly immoral, and irrational. Many criticize the Roman Catholic church for its stance on male-only ordination.”
Sounds familiar? Of course it does. The handprints of the post-modern leftists are all over this campaign and the issue isn’t women at all really, the issue is revolution by stealth. The Catholic Church is in their cross-hairs as being an institution which is ripe for ‘deconstruction’.
I can say this because I have witnessed this kind of ‘deconstruction’ campaign played out to its endgame against the Church of England. Each time it was attacked, it was foolish enough to relent to avoid bad headlines and every time it appeased, its antagonists just smelled the blood in the water and it sent them wild. So it died the Death of a Thousand Cuts and now the exsanguinated giant grovels embarrassingly meak apologies for its own existance to empty pews beneath the baleful glare of an irrationally hostile press.
It didn’t help the Church of England that it was the official religion of the British State and, as that State lost its sense of destiny and moral purpose, so did the Church. But the Church of Rome has not been co-opted by any government anywhere. Membership is voluntary and, consequently, so is abiding by its rules. If you don’t like what the Church is doing then you can always leave. You can go and establish your own Church of PC Drivel and preach it to whomsoever will listen. No-one is stopping you.
It is for that reason that I hope the Vatican continues to stick to its guns on this issue. I hope the Cardinals plant their feet, set their jaws, put up their dukes and fight resolutely. No compromises, no deals, no climbdowns, no retreats, no concessions and no surrender. If they don’t they will regret it. If they do then the dawn will soon come, the sun will rise shimmering over the horizon and send the moral-relativist vampires and their hideous acolytes screeching back to their coffins with nothing to show for their infernal efforts.
Just Say No, Your Holiness.You owe it not just to Roman Catholics but to all the rest of us who live by the doctrine of reason.
