[UPDATE: Ann Winterton’s bill was defeated yesterday, but there’s two more coming right along behind. This is not over by a long chalk.]
The Catholic church in Britain, buoyed up by the rise of the religio-fascist Pope Ratzo, the presence of some prominent Catholics in the UK giovernment and the huge influx of Catholic migrants, is getting way too big for its boots: it’s threatening, the 70 Catholic MP’s who don’t toe the church’s anti-abortion line with excommunication (though they insist not, that’s effectively what it is) and worse, should they even so much as abstain from voting on new legislation tightening abortion rules. Catholic MPs include Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, and John Reid, the Home Secretary. The head of LifeLeague, James Dyson, said the pressure group would “out” Catholic MPs who took communion and abstained on abortion measures.Aiding them in this profoundly undemocratic exercise are some of the most rabid rightwing nutjobs British politics can produce.
The leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholics yesterday questioned whether politicians who backed abortion should remain full members of the church, and also compared Scotland’s abortion rate to “two Dunblane massacres a day”. In a sermon marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act, Cardinal Keith O’Brien attacked both the practice of abortion and pro-choice members of the Scottish parliament.
[…]
“I think it’s far beyond time that the present Abortion Act of 40 years ago was re-examined,” he said. “We are killing, in our country, the equivalent of a classroom of kids every single day. Can you imagine that? Two Dunblane massacres a day in our country going on and on. And when’s it going to stop?”
The Dunblane reference was just gratuitously unpleasant and ill behoved a cleric – but it proves that this is about poitics and power, not conscience. That a priest would commit such an offence to common decency as to use a tragedy and parents’ grief to make a political point says he is a political, not a spiritual man. But then the anti-abortion movement has never been spiritual or about the sanctity of life but about the subjugation of women – and that goes double for the Catholic church.
British Catholics are in an invidious position. Allegiance to the Pope is required for Catholics as a matter of doctrine and this allegiance extends to the Vatican, it’s cardinals and all of their doctrinal instructions. Those instructions are infallible as they come from God directly, Catholics are told: the church’s position is that temporal powers are are strictly limited by God and God’s instructions trump the state’s. The Pope speaks directly to God, ergo the Pope’s instructions trump the state’s because abortion is considered a spiritual, not a temporal matter.
However, I suspect that should anyone else from any other religion give their primary allegiance to another city-state and its leader ahead of their own nation and compatriots they’d be called traitors, with prominent Catholics like Ruth Kelly in the forefront of the name-calling, especially so if they were Moslem.
The church can obsfuscate about liege lords and loyalty as much as they want, but their own statements of doctrine say it’s so.
This puts many British Catholics in a very delicate and ambiguous position: their loyalty has been constantly historically suspect and this has more than once resulted in bigotry and violence, so much so that the church has had to become an underground, secret, and dare we say it, even a terrorist organisation at times. This state of affairs has formed the basis of much of the long history of anti-Catholic bigotry in England but we had begun to get over it, at least until the ascendance of Ratso to the papal throne and the subsequent empowerment of the worst of the right wing of the church.
Now they’re pressuring government to get their own way. the church even has a parliamentary office to muster forces to pressure politiciians, for example during the Scots elections.
Believe me, I know the history of the Catholic and Protestant churches in Britain. and so I’m absolutely for disestablishment of the Church of England and the freedom of all religions to practice their faith. Church and state should never mix, and yet we have Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords making policy. WTF? No wonder the Catholics want an equal crack at the whip. But better there should be no political whip to crack at all, by any religious figure.
It’s very easy when discuusing the influence of Catholicism to fall into the bigotry trap, so I want to emphasise again that I don’t have it in for Catholics any more than I do for Baptists or Hindus. I think you’re all nuts for believing in things unseen – but that’s your business.
For those who think I am a bigot ( though I suspect your mind is made up that any criticism of the Church’s acaions is bigotry), I reiterate: even though I’m an atheist I’ll have no truck with anti-Catholic bigotry, not when religion can be refuted on the facts.
I think religion is a bunch of bullshit but I don’t try and legislate that that’s so or pick on those who believe, simply because they do. Religion has no place in government and government no place in religion. I can’t say it enough Let us all live by our own consciences but let’s not impose on others.
Unfortunately, imposing it on others seems to be the Catholic church’s whole raison d’etre, which makes very difficult to stand for freedom of religion and conscience and against anti-catholic bigotry, especially when the fuckers do shit like this.
It’s not a religion’s place, whatever the religion, to interfere between a member of parliament and her constituents’ wishes. They were elected to represent their constituency, not the bloody Vatican and I’d be saying the same thing should any other religion’s members be doing it.
One of the things that’s really annoying me, aside from the religious interference, the war on women and the bullying, to name just a few things, is that the cardinals are not exactly fastidious in the company they keep (but were they ever?) in their quest to get their way over eventually banning abortion.
Aiding Cardinals O’ Brien (who’s interfered in politics before) and Murphy O’Connor (he of enabling paedophile priests fame) in their attempt to skew democracy in favour of religion, is an unholy alliance of mysognists, Protestant evangelical zealots and right wing loonies.just like in the US, with its posse of vicious, bullying hypocrites in the media and politics.
Take, for example Ann Winterton, Tory MP, rabid prolifer, chair of the all party parliamentary pro-life group, sponsor of the latest abortion bill – and racist:
Winterton became opposition Shadow Rural Affairs Minister in May 2002, and was sacked the next year for telling the following joke at a rugby club dinner:
An Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese man and a Pakistani were all on a train.
The Cuban threw a fine Havana cigar out the window. When he was asked why, he replied: “They are ten a penny in my country.”
The Japanese man threw an expensive Nikon camera out of the carriage, adding: “These are ten a penny in my country.”
The Englishman then picked up the Pakistani and threw him out of the train window.When the other travelers asked him to account for his actions, he said: “They are ten a penny in my country.”‘
In February 2004 she had the Conservative whip removed (suspension from the party) for telling the following joke at a Whitehall private dinner party to improve Anglo-Danish relations which alluded to the recent death of several dozen illegal immigrant Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay, and refusing to apologise:
One shark turned to the other to say he was fed up chasing tuna and the other said, ‘Why don’t we go to Morecambe Bay and get some Chinese?’
A month later, Winterton apologised for that joke, and had the whip restored [3]. Lord Taylor, the only black Conservative peer in the House of Lords, condemned her being restored and said she was not fit to be an MP.
What a woman of conscience, eh? I bet O’ Connor adores her.
O’ Connor is also encouraging Opus Dei, that shadowy, zealous secret Catholic society, to build its own base within the Catholic church in Britain.
I’m not that old but I remember a time when Opus Dei was anathema within the church, a scary secret society whispered to be mixed up in the Banco Ambrosiano and P2 masonic lodge affairs in which a prominent Italian banker, Roberto Calvi (also known as “God’s banker’) was found hanging under a London Bridge in very suspicious circumstances.
But let’s not get carried away with the conspiracy theories. What the Catholic church is doing in the open – and the people they’re doing it with – are quite bad enough to be going on with.
Will this bullying have any effect on Catholic MPs? Some say not:
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt held a meeting with Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor at which she refused his request to consider cutting the 24-week limit.
Senior Catholic MPs supported Cardinal O’Brien’s call yesterday.
Jim Dobbin, Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton and leader of the all-party Commons pro-life group, said: “I would take a tough line on this as well. If you are a member of the Church, you behave according to its rules and regulations. I don’t think you can pick and choose how to practise that faith.”
He added: “Cardinal O’Brien is exercising his spiritual authority.”
But the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, Geraldine Smith, disagreed, saying: “I do not support abortion. But I am not a Catholic MP, I am an MP who is Catholic and I represent people who have different views.
“At present I do not want to see abortion made illegal because I believe that it would just drive abortion underground.”
The growing pressure over abortion will throw a new spotlight on Tony Blair, who is expected to convert to Catholicism after he steps down.
So basically it’s anybody’s guess what the 70 Catholic Mp’s in Parliament will actually do when it comes down to it, cave to religio-political pressure or do what their constituents want.
I’m not holding my breath for the latter.
