The return of the cardinal
So then to round out the festival of silliness there’s darling Cardinal Buttercup I mean Murphy-O’Connor again. (Nice of the major UK newspapers to give him so much oxygen of publicity, isn’t it? Wouldn’t do for them just to ignore his absurd woolgathering, would it.)
It’s just the same old stuff – word for word, some of it. Once again ‘atheism has become more vocal and aggressive.’ There’s something intriguing about the way clerics and apologists like to get up and say harsh things about secularists and atheists all the time and then squeal like pigs when secularists and atheists have the gall to say anything in return. It’s kind of like a playground bully complaining about a kid who resists the bullying. Anyway – Cardinal Buttercup is looking around for more soldiers.
This unfriendly climate for people of all religious faiths has led to the recognition that what we have in common as Christian believers is infinitely more important than what divides us…
Right. Credulity is infinitely more important than the actual content that one is credulous about. It doesn’t matter what you believe for no good reason, just believe something that way.
Over the past 40 years, social prejudice against Catholics has largely disappeared, and Catholics have been fully assimilated into the mainstream of British life. Intellectual and cultural acceptance is another matter; and there is a widely perceived conflict between religious belief (and the Catholic Church in particular) on the one hand and the prevailing notion of what it means to be a “liberal” and tolerant society on the other.
Yes, that’s true (though not as true as it ought to be, and even less so in the US). That would be because there is such a conflict. That would be because you want to persecute homosexuals and force women to remain pregnant when they don’t want to and convince people not to use condoms during an AIDS pandemic. There are other reasons too, but I haven’t got all day.
[T]here is a current dislike of absolutes in any area of human activity, including morality (though this does not apparently preclude an absolute ban on anything that can be interpreted as racial, sexual or gender discrimination).
Notice what a lot he gives away there – notice that he apparently objects to bans on anything that can be interpreted as racial, sexual or gender discrimination – notice that he apparently wants to go in for such discrimination – as of course he does.
One area of specific concern for the Catholic Church is marriage and family life. The British enthusiasm for debate and tolerance of alternative views has led to an acceptance of diversity and pluralism. This is welcome, but if an acceptance of diversity and pluralism becomes an end in itself there is a grave risk that long-accepted cultural norms, such as marriage and family, are undermined to the detriment of society as a whole.
In other words not all women will spend their entire adult lives in the kitchen, not all couples will have children, not all couples will be straight, and other such horrors. In other words Cardinal Daffodil is upset that it’s not still 1955. Well suck it up, Cardie.
“T]here is a current dislike of absolutes in any area of human activity, including morality (though this does not apparently preclude an absolute ban on anything that can be interpreted as racial, sexual or gender discrimination).”
It also does not preclude an absolute ban on murder, robbery, and rape. So why the singling out of discrimination? Because it would conflict with the notion that liberals and freethinkers are moral nihilists?
May I suggest a different title for this N&C piece?
“Buttercup II: The Cardinaling”
Could we petition the church to change his official job title to “Cardenial”?
I’m guessing they wouldn’t be too keen on “The Paedophile’s Friend” as a tag-line, though..?
:-)
In the world where risks are grave it’s good to accept diversity and pluralism, just not up to a point of risking that diversity and pluralism come about.
“Nice of the major UK newspapers to give him so much oxygen of publicity, isn’t it?”
Can they not switch to the nitrous oxide of derision just once? It is christmas after all…
It’s interesting, I think, that the absolute value that the cardinal accords to human life is trumped by marriage and the family in the Vatican’s rejection of the UN resolution against the execution of gay men. Better to kill them than let them marry, I guess. So much for the absolute value of human life, or, one might reasonably add, for marriage and the family too.
The Independent may have given the cardinal the oxygen of publicity, but clearly one thing that comes out of publicity like this is to make him look more than slightly ridiculous. Those who agree with him may not see this, of course. But those who don’t should be prepared to make the climate in Britain a little more unfriendly for people of religious faith, especially since (if this article by the cardinal is anything to go by) they so obviously want to impose their beliefs on those who do not share them. This was Mill’s idea, reexpressed by Austin Dacey. The oxygen of publicity is good. Even some of the cardinal’s co-religionists should be worried by the blatant authoritarianism and intransigence expressed in this article, which proves what a strange eccentricity religious belief really is.
The Cardinal: “This unfriendly climate for people of all religious faiths has led to the recognition that what we have in common as Christian believers is infinitely more important than what divides us…”
To which OB replies: “Right. Credulity is infinitely more important than the actual content that one is credulous about. It doesn’t matter what you believe for no good reason, just believe something that way.”
Quite.
Back in the distant days when both the medical profession and the clergy did house calls, the parson of the local Anglican church to whose youth fellowship I was affiliated paid us a visit. My mother was an infrequent churchgoer. She had been baptised into some church or other but had spent her childhood being moved around country New South Wales and consequently had no particular denominational loyalty. She was at that time moving towards theosophy via Anglo-Catholicism, and in the course of discussion let drop a remark like: “The most important thing in life is to believe in something; just what you believe in is less important.”
At that the parson went apoplectic, and managed to splutter forth an argument for adherence to what HE believed in.
So, in the light of the little I know about Church history, I suspect that the cardinal’s ecumenism is purely tactical. Such people never advocate resolution of ‘the issues that divide’ them from others of similar faiths by (say) a series of coin tosses.
There is no guarantee that given the (ever less likely) decline and fall of godless atheism, the wars of religion would not be back on again.
“So, in the light of the little I know about Church history, I suspect that the cardinal’s ecumenism is purely tactical.”
Exactly.
Has institutional religion ever had the power to persecute, and renounced it?
This may not amount to the wars of religion, but Murphy-O’Connor is putting us all on notice that, if he and his like have their way, they would soon put an end to the voices that make being religious seem like a private eccentricity. This kind of talk, which increasingly dominates the language coming out of the Vatican and its satellites (as Murphy-O’Connoer is), is really dangerous talk, and should be seen for what it is.
It feeds into the same kind of mind-set that brought us the American neo-cons and the disasters that that phenomenon has led us through, as well as the mind-set that makes King Abdullah the point man for a movement of friendship amongst the big monotheistic religions (a growing amity to which Murphy-O’Connor alludes).
The astonishing thing is that these people complain about secular aggressiveness and militancy while pouring over maps of military campaigns.
The really odd thing is that Murphy-O’Connor acknowledges the relationship between absolute value and intolerance, and then goes on to suggest that people should take catholic commitment to absolute values seriously. It’s not only the contradictoriness that strikes me; it’s the easy aplomb with which he says it, and expects to get away with it. Does he really not see the Index and the Oath Against Modernism beneath his confident words?
Well exactly. That line about the ‘widely perceived conflict’ between religious belief and ‘a “liberal” and tolerant society’ is such a give-away – it’s remarkable that he allowed himself to make it.
From what I can tell he does see the Index and the Oath Against Modernism beneath his confident words, and he likes them.
That’s what I was afraid of.
Bring back John XII and hsi theology of joy.