Obama’s dreadful
error about the
‘Polish death camps’
John Cameron
As a general rule, those who seek high office in the Catholic or Anglican Church spend as little time as possible working in the parishes and so it was with Keith O’Brien. Shortly after he became a cardinal in 2005, he nailed his colours to the mast by telling Scottish parliamentarians that gay people were ‘captives of sexual aberrations’. While such views are typical of a certain kind of cleric, going on to compare gays to prisoners in Edinburgh’s notorious Saughton jail was taking it to another level.
In 2006 he launched a prolonged assault on the Westminster government for introducing civil partnerships claiming it would ‘shame Britain in the eyes of the world’. He caused great offence when he later compared sex partnerships to paedophilia at an inter-faith conference and flounced out before other delegates could respond. The other day he created uproar by gratuitously comparing gay marriage to the slave trade on BBC radio, declaring it to be utterly ‘grotesque’.
Whether by accident or design he was followed by that delightful old tease Rabbi Lionel Blue who finished his ‘Thought for the Day’ with the following tale: A gay couple walked arm-in-arm behind a boy and his girl who suddenly had a flaming row. One of the gays said sadly to his partner: ‘That’s what comes of mixed marriage’.
Like many Christians, I am wearied of the claims leading churchmen make to possess precise information about God’s sexual preferences. Clergy who spend their entire careers in the parishes tend to believe the legal equality of same-sex and heterosexual marriage would be a sane and sensible reform. Far from leading to ‘further aberrations’, it would enrich the institution of marriage and improve the quality of life for a minority who should be cherished rather than ostracised.
The principal function of the church should be to provide consolation, hope and support rather than launching witch-hunts to preserve the purity of medieval doctrine. The defining characteristics of Jesus to my mind are his pity and humanity – his readiness to champion to the poor, the lost, the lonely and the doubtful. He was the ultimate ‘outsider’ and to have him represented by climbers of the greasy pole of ecclesiastic preferment is just a little absurd.
Cardinal O’Brien
is out of touch with
Scotland’s Catholics
Brian Fitzpatrick
Our cardinal, not known for his uber-orthodox positions prior to his installation, has found that many of his laity often still espouse some of
the more liberal Catholic values he once shared.
In itself, his attack on the prime minister was an oddly judged step ignoring as it did that Mr Salmond not Mr Cameron might better be addressed by the Scottish cardinal (perhaps the cardinal’s long-standing adherence to nationalism played a role there). But the attack seemed to owe much more to that Abramic fundamentalism – a demand for loyalty regardless of sense or other lived experiences still less the demands of charity. The stridency of the attacks speaks to a deeper ‘culture war’ being waged, internally and externally, by elements of the salaried wing of my church and running counter to many of the Scottish laity’s propensity for tolerance on social issues.
One reason the cardinal has taken to the media might be that, despite his encouragement, Scotland’s Catholics have responded with studied indifference to his previous call for 100,000 postcards of protest to our MSPs on the issue of the recognition of civil marriage for same-sex couples. Our cardinal, not known for his uber-orthodox positions prior to his installation, has found that many of his laity often still espouse some of the more liberal Catholic values he once shared. Yet what is it that motivates this gospel of the genitals rather than the evangelising of the gentiles?
The psychoanalyst might point us to the overly strident heterosexuality of an all-male clerical cadre. But might it instead reflect a sense of corporate weakness and a lack of courage in a faltering church leadership increasingly out-of-touch with its members and which has never properly responded to the calls of the second Vatican Council for recognition of the vocation of Catholic laypeople?
Often it seems our most senior bishop finds too ready succour in attention from a media only too ready to publicise, rarely sympathetically, one-line press release headings emanating from his press office rather than taking up the more difficult challenges of being a prophetic voice. Is it seriously to be suggested in a world where millions of children die yearly for want of the basic necessities of life, where the gift of God’s planet is existentially threatened by the depredations of rampant capitalism and where, in our own land in our own time, thousands of children still go to bed hungry, that were the risen Lord to return to his people tomorrow his rage would be directed at gay couples affirming their lifetime love and commitment?
