More Ironic Catholic Hilarity

So secularism is more dangerous than child abuse eh, Archbishop Nichols?

At the installation of the Most Rev Vincent Nichols at Westminster Cathedral, his predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, described a lack of faith as “the greatest of evils” and blamed atheism for war and destruction, implying that it was a greater evil even than sin itself.

furious reaction to comments that Archbishop Nichols had made about child abuse in Ireland threatened to cast a shadow over the installation. Referring to the report published on Wednesday that exposed decades of child abuse by Catholic priests and nuns in Ireland, the Archbishop had said that it took courage for religious orders and clergy to “face the facts from their past”. He also warned that the report threatened to overshadow the good done by the religious orders, chiefly the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy.

So the faith which has acted as a cover for child abuse, faith which is continuing to fuel regional wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Iraq, which is fueling discrimination and brutality in Iran, the faith which is…hang on, see the paradoxes here? Is atheism really the cause of war and destruction? I guess the Catholic Church doesn’t have a good recent track record at statements which are founded on reason, with the former Hitler Youth Pope decrying gay people for being the cause of the destruction of the environment, and saying that condoms were part of the problem in tackling HIV/AIDS, but this really is quite appalling. For Nichols there’s nothing more damaging to social cohesion than secularism, yet it’s social cohesion on his terms – he’s not exactly ‘tolerant’ of gay people. Reason’s not really that bad a thing after all, is it?

Benedict XVI Goes For Maximum Irony

Pope Benedict XVI has preached against hatred and prejudice, not remotely appreciating the irony of him doing so:

“I urge people of goodwill in both communities to repair the damage that has been done, and in fidelity to our common belief in one God, the father of the human family, to work to build bridges and find the way to a peaceful coexistence,” he said.

“Let everyone reject the destructive power of hatred and prejudice, which kills men’s souls before it kills their bodies.”

Says the arch homophobe who says that condoms are part of the problem in dealing with HIV, and that gay people are responsible for environmental destruction. Quite, quite mad.

Blair vs Pope on Homosexuality

Newly recruited Catholic Tony Blair has attacked the Pope’s stance on homosexuality and offered constructive suggestions on how the Roman Catholic Church can move forward:

The Pope and the Vatican have an “entrenched attitude” towards homosexuality which is less tolerant than the views of ordinary Catholics, Tony Blair says in comments published today.

The former prime minister, who converted to Catholicism shortly after leaving office two years ago, said he disagreed with the Pope’s stance on gay rights and controversially suggested that the Church should reform itself along similar lines to how he re-organised the Labour Party.

“Organised religions face the same dilemma as political parties when faced with changed circumstances,” he said.

“You can either A: Hold on to your core vote, basically, you know, say ‘Look let’s not break out because if we break out we might lose what we’ve got, and at least we’ve got what we’ve got so let’s keep it’. Or B: You say ‘let’s accept that the world is changing, and let us work out how we can lead that change and actually reach out’.”

The comments from Mr Blair will cause controversy in the Vatican which still officially insists that gays are “intrinsically disordered” and that homosexual sex is a sin.

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI caused widespread outrage in the gay community when he compared toleration of gays to the destruction of the rainforests and said that homosexuality is “a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil”.

Mr Blair, who now runs his own religious think-tank, made the comments during an interview with The Independent columnist Johann Hari, who was writing for Attitude, Britain’s biggest-selling gay magazine. Its 15th anniversary edition with Mr Blair’s full interview is published today.

Asked whether he agreed with the Pope’s latest remarks on homosexuality Mr Blair said he believed that ordinary Catholics did not feel the same way about homosexuality but the Church’s leadership was afraid of making any major doctrinal concessions.

“There is a huge generational difference here,” he said. “There’s probably that same fear amongst religious leaders that if you concede ground on [homosexuality], because attitudes and thinking evolve over time, where does that end? You’d start having to rethink many, many things.” He added: “If you went and asked the [ordinary Catholic] congregation, I think you’d find that their faith is not to be found in those types of entrenched attitudes.”

An interesting argument, and presumably one which will fall on deaf ears. Even Rowan Williams is unwilling to actually go the whole hog and subject the Anglican Communion to the reality of social change. If the Church of England is unwilling to move on from entrenched homophobia, what chance will Blair have in prevailing over this Pope’s attitudes and unwavering attachment to religious dogma?

Tony Blair: ‘Do’ God!

Devout Catholic, former Prime Minister Tony Blair continues his conversion on the role of religion in politics and civil society:

Blair said: “As the years of my premiership passed, one fact struck me with increasing force: that failure to understand the power of religion meant failure to understand the modern world.

He goes on to say:

Religious faith and how it develops could be of the same significance to the 21st century as political ideology was to the 20th. It could help guide and sustain the era of globalisation, lending it values, and, in bringing faiths and cultures to a greater understanding of each other, could foster peaceful coexistence. Or it could be a reactionary force, pulling people apart just as globalisation pushes people together. Whichever route develops, it does mean that all leaders, whether of religious faith themselves or not, have to “do God”.

How quickly he forgets it was his ever increasing reliance on religiously-founded belief rather than on evidence, science, judgment, analysis or even reason which caused the end of said premiership. He is a man who has no appreciation of history, and who labours still under the cynical and ignorant misapprehension that the world changed under his watch, when all it did was cycle through some tediously familiar historical trends. The Enlightenment occurred precisely to move society on from religion and faith-based values to ones more equitable and in line with modern values and realities like science and diversity. Political leaders ‘doing God’ would be a further step in turning the clock back from the most peaceful and fair co-existence we’ve ever had, which we live under precisely because we live in a society ruled by secular law and not religious dogma. What a fucking idiot – I’m glad he’s gone; if there’s anyone who doesn’t understand the modern world it’s him.

(hat tip to Scoobs)

Homophobic Pope Shocker

If only we lived in a world where the ignorant words of an old man with too much time on his hands didn’t matter; they do. We live in a world where people like Mikey Causer are beaten to death for being gay. Yet again with Pope Benedict XVI we have the Vatican badmouthing homosexuality, transsexualism and every variance from baseline heterosexual behaviour and institutions:

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.

It’s a whole load of unscientific, mostly meaningless garbage of course, but what’s important isn’t so much the content as who’s saying it. For some drunk in a pub to come out with such archaic nonsense is one thing – for the leader of one of the world’s organised religions it’s another. People do and will listen to him, and although I don’t believe for a moment that he speaks for all the world’s Catholics, when he legitimises bigotry through religious intellectualism, or even via the modern language of environmentalism, he is dangerous. Homophobia isn’t an inherent quality in human beings, it’s a value which is transmitted and legitimised, and people like Josef Ratzinger should know better:

It is an instructive exercise to take Pope Benedict’s latest homophobic outburst and substitute the word “Jew” for “homosexual.”

The Pope’s detractors are always quick to point to his service in the Hitler Youth as a teenager.

I fully accept that his Hitler Youth membership was probably compulsory, even that his views on homosexuality may not have arisen from his membership of the party – he has shown a propensity to over-intellectualise anything. But his unique position as Pope should make him particularly mindful of the origins of hate and the role his office can play in either fostering it or inhibiting it:

Gay people are a serious threat to the existence of humanity, as serious as global warming. Does any of that rhetoric sound familiar?

Even the most casual observer of history cannot help but be struck by the chilling parallel.

Yet instead he capriciously couches his homophobia in the terms of environmentalism to legitimise it to his wider audience. The last point is equally salient though, and more concerning. The leader of the Catholic Church actually uses the language of social Darwinism, of Nazism, that we’re ‘against God and nature’, to justify his attack on everyone who doesn’t conform to baseline heterosexuality. A man who has lived through the Holocaust should know better – such words will only help to justify the ignorance of those who hate us. Peter Tatchell remarks:

Free market capitalism, and its culture of greed and consumerism, is a far greater threat to the ecological survival of our planet than homosexuality or transsexuality.

Is the Pope ignorant or malevolent?

The suggestion that gay people are a threat to human survival is absurd and dangerous. It is poisonous propaganda that will give comfort and succour to queer-bashers everywhere.

Homosexuality is a part of human ecology. It has existed in all cultures in all eras. At a time of global over-population, by not having children gay couples contribute to population stabilisation and thereby reduce pressure on over-strained natural resources. We are an ecological asset to humanity.

He may rhetorically overstate the counter-argument, but he’s obviously right in slamming Benedict for linking environmental protection with ‘gender protection’. With capitalism uniquely responsible for the destruction of the environment, as well increasing poverty during this ‘credit crunch’, it’s a disgrace that the leader of the Catholic Church should find time once again to prioritise blaming us for the world’s ills. He has indeed learned nothing from his time as a Nazi.