Saturday, February 25, 2012

Catholic Church leader rejects claim UK Christians are persecuted

Christians are not persecuted in this country and should not claim that they are, the leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales has said. 

"I personally don't feel in the least bit persecuted. I don't think Christians should use that word," he said.

Lady Warsi denounced "militant secularism" in a speech last week in the Vatican but, speaking to the Guardian, the Rt Rev Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, skirted deftly round the term. 

He said instead that "what might have started out as an acknowledgement of a variety of religious and philosophical positions has produced a seeming determination to tear the legal 
and therefore cultural life of the country away from its Christian roots."

After a fortnight which has seen the emergence of a "Christianist" backlash – most recently in evidence with an internet petition against gay marriage spearheaded by Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury – Nichols seems to be supporting the movement from a careful distance.

Catholics will be encouraged to sign the petition against gay marriage as individuals, but the church as a whole will not be part of Carey's campaign even though it opposes a change in the law.

But the Catholic church is, he said, considering an appeal against some aspects of the judgment which prohibits Catholic adoption agencies from discriminating against gay potential parents.

"It was, I think, an act of intolerance to eliminate a very small number of these adoption agencies on a matter of principle, or on a single issue. In a plural society, people and groups like the Catholic church should be able to make a contribution."

The reasoned tone seems a deliberate attempt to take the high ground in the national debate. 

The statements of the English Catholic bishops in favour of civil partnership (as an alternative to gay marriage) contrasts very noticeably with the grumbling anathemata issuing from the Scottish and Irish churches on the subject.

When asked how to interpret the notorious Vatican description of homosexuality as "a tendency towards an objective moral evil", Nichols gave me a carefully prepared talk on the roots of Catholic philosophy. "This is a philosophical construct," he said

It is all part of a careful balancing act between the demands of Catholic theology, and of conservative factions in the Vatican, and the reality of the English Roman Catholic Church, where several of the most prominent lay figures are either gay themselves, divorced, or married to divorced people.

The emergence of the Catholic church into the mainstream of national life has been accompanied by a change in character: the old working class Irish-based Catholicism has almost vanished, to be replaced by a much less traditional English middle class which largely rejects the Church's teachings on birth control and homosexuality, while still treasuring it for its spiritual value.

In most countries, the Conservative wing of the Catholic church is more or less homophobic, but in England the Catholic Herald, which would be their paper, has been edited by an openly gay and partnered man (who died this month) and does not attack the bishops on that front.

He talked about the curious paradox that Catholic social teaching is gaining in influence and authority at the same time as Catholic sexual ethics seem discredited even among the faithful. 

Yet they are both, he said, derived from the same kind of reasoning and are an attempt to read out objective general truths about what is good for human beings, and then point our conduct towards them.

So, for example, the Catholic teaching about sex is based on the idea that it leads to babies, and this must be its highest good. 

The trouble is that when Catholic priests explain the purposes of sexuality they sound too often like a Martian at a football match.

Phrases like "abstract moral evil", he said, are not aimed at any individual. 

"One talks about objective moral evil, you might say today, that's racism. No matter what's intended or understood, that, objectively, is wrong. In a similar way, you can say, in every sphere of life there is objective moral evil. But that does not imply subjective moral guilt. That does not imply guilt on an individual."