Of all the things that you think might’ve finally split the British Cabinet – Iraq, Bush poodlism, Trident, cronyism, cash for honours, general corruption, gross incompetence – in the end it may come down to religion, if Inspector Knacker doesn’t swoop on No. 10 first, that is.
Why? Because paedophile-enabler and Roman Catholic Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor‘s outrageous and blatant political pressure on individual ministers to exempt the church from anti-gay discrimination legislation means that those promiinent Opus Dei members, marital Catholics and sporadic mass-attenders that overpopulate Blair’s cabinet and his hangers-on ( the recently-arrested Blair aide Ruth Turner, for example, is the daughter of a prominent Catholic theologian) are going to have to choose between their beliefs and what few political principles they have left.
Rome and O’Connor are determined to oppose UK gay rights legislation and the church has already bullied themselves an exemption from ensuring gay equality in employment and now they’re trying it on on the issue of gay adoption rights, saying that they should be special, exempt from the law on the spurious grounds of ‘conscience’. (Spelled B_I_G_O_T_R_Y.)
Shit, I’d like to be excused from any number of laws on the grounds of conscience. For instance, what about the Rastafari? Cannabis is a sacrament in their religion: can they ignore the drug laws?
Cherie Blair ‘split Cabinet in Catholic adoption row’
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 24 January 2007Senior cabinet ministers have told MPs privately that Cherie Blair is the cause of the cabinet split over demands to exempt Roman Catholic adoption agencies from equality laws on gay adoption.
The row intensified yesterday when the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, was accused by gay rights campaigners and some Labour MPs of trying to blackmail the Government.
The accusations flew after Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote to cabinet ministers warning them that Catholic adoption agencies would have to close if they were not exempted from the new laws.
The leaders of the Church of England backed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, warning the Government that religious people may feel that their conscience forbids them from undertaking public work under the new laws. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, wrote to Tony Blair saying: “In legislating to protect and promote the rights of particular groups, the Government is faced with the delicate but important challenge of not thereby creating the conditions within which others feel their rights to have been ignored or sacrificed.”
The Equality Act, due to come into effect in England, Wales and Scotland in April, outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation.
Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, a committed Catholic, was accused of seeking to gain an opt-out for the Church. But Ms Kelly and the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, have privately told MPs the pressure for an exemption has come from the Prime Minister.
“They said Tony is the one who has been asking for this exemption, not Ruth, who is pretty annoyed at the way she has been presented in the media,” said a senior Labour MP. “Another cabinet minister told me it’s all coming from Cherie.”
Mrs Blair is also a committed Catholic and there has been speculation that Mr Blair will convert to Catholicism when he leaves office. He and his wife had a private audience with Pope John Paul II and Mr Blair met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican last June. The Prime Minister went to Catholic Mass in Miami over the New Year break.
[..]
One of the central planks of New Labour’s 1997 platform and one of the big things that got them elected was equality. They promised that the European Human Rights Convention would be written into UK law, and that new legislation would be brought forward to ensure the equal rights of all racial, religious and sexual minorities.
To Labour’s credit (though I say this with reservations), they did it. Any organisation that receives taxpayers money for providing public services has to abide by these laws: in fact the laws lay a positive duty on such bodies, not just not to discriminate, but to promote diversity and community cohesiveness. The churches, who must apply for government grant funding like any other charity, must comply as other charitable body must.
However, New Labour’ve passed these welcome laws only to roll over and give in the moment the religious arm-twisting from the fundies has begun, and every single bloody time it’s been led by the Catholic Church. Now the Church of England, in thrall to the evangelical happy-clappies and African churches, and sensing Cabinet weakness, has rushed in to get the cardinal’s back.
Let’s not forget that the Church of England is the established church, ie the state religion, in Britain: its Bishops, astonishingly in this day and age, sit in the House of Lords and vote on legislation. Religion is right at the heart of British government.
This means that the Anglican bishops already had their chance to fight this legislation as it went through Parliament – and they LOST.
Now they’re looking for a second bite at the cherry – typical naked evangelical opportrunism – and it’s being driven by the the Archbishop of York, John Sentemu, and his supporters in the massively growing African fundie wing of the C of E. It’s all about appeasing parishioners who don’t even live in the UK.
But I digress. We know about the Church of England and its long machinations in government and it should’ve been disestablished centuries since. This is and has always been the socialist position.
What’s more pernicious and worrying at the moment is the sway that Rome holds over the British government. (Did I really just write that? I sound like a mad Orangeman, but this is the pass we’ve come to under that zealot Ratzinger.)
Lets start right at the top, with Tony Blair:
Just as Cherie Booth brought her husband to Labour politics, so also she brought him to the Catholic church.
Tony Blair today is effectively a Roman Catholic, though he has not yet, to our knowledge, been formally received into the church.
The odd thing is not that he has embraced the Catholic church, but that he chooses to hide it. When asked directly, he replies evasively: “Surely being a Christian is what is important?”
But the evidence is conclusive. It is not just that the entire Blair family has always attended mass together every Sunday.
Nor is it just that Blair was regularly receiving communion during the mass service until told to stop by Cardinal Basil Hume, for this by itself is not incompatible with Blair still being an Anglican. Now the prime minister is forced to sit at the back of the church every Sunday while his family go up for communion. Shortly after the cardinal’s decision, Blair met a Roman Catholic priest and joked: “If you give me Holy Communion, I’ll make you Bishop of Liverpool.”
These things in themselves do not prove he is a Catholic. But Blair was doing much more than simply going to mass to be with his family. Before he became prime minister, he regularly attended mass at Westminster Cathedral, more often than not by himself, and always took communion. The priests there knew him well. He would normally either attend the 9am mass with his family, or the 5.30pm mass by himself.
Have I got something against Catholics in government? No – if you want a to be a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Satanist or an Albigensian heretic, whatever, why should it be anyone’s business but your own? If you are religious and stand for office, well, good luck to you – but only as long as you remember you’re there to represent your consituents and not your own private beliefs.
O’ Connor would not even be attempting this open blackmail of a sitting government unless he were assured of a sympathetic hearing and if past history is any guide he’s getting it. Ruth Kelly, Blair, John Reid and other Catholics in cabinet, in pandering to the antedeluvian clerics of Rome, York and Canterbury, are heading for an outright collison with their own colleagues, party members and voters, not to mention the country at large.
Because the ironic thing about all this is that the British are becoming less, not more religious: this cabinet row reflects the religious foibles of New Labour much more than it does the voters. The voters couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss for the church.
New opinion poll shows British attitudes are increasingly non-religious -24/11/06
The claims of established church representatives that Britain remains a predominantly ‘Christian country’ received another blow today, with the publication of an Ipsos MORI poll showing that 36% of people – equivalent to around 17 million adults – share a basically non-religious outlook on life.
In the 2001 census 7 out of 10 people ticked the ‘Christian’ box, but with church attendance now below 7% and only 1 in 3 marriages taking place in church in 2004, many have argued that this figure is more about cultural identity than active belief.
According to the survey, released by the British Humanist Association (BHA), 62% of respondents said ‘scientific and other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe’ as distinct from 22% who felt ‘religious beliefs are needed for a complete understanding of the universe’.
Similarly, 62% chose ‘Human nature by itself gives us an understanding of what is right and wrong’, as distinct from 27% who said ‘People need religious teachings in order to understand what is right and wrong’.
Another question found that 41% endorsed the statement: ‘This life is the only life we have and death is the end of our personal existence’. Fractionally more – 45% – preferred the broad view that ‘when we die we go on and still exist in another way.’
People also base their judgments of right and wrong on ‘the effects on people and the consequences for society and the world’ – a view consonant with some religious as well as non-religious approaches.
42% of respondents said that in their opinion government pays too much attention to ‘religious groups and leaders’.
How the hell did we get to the point where a supoosedly secular, socialist government can be brought to its knees by the unelected leaders of a minority within a minority? How can a nation that considers itself broadly agnostic be so easily blackmailed by a bunch of crazed fundies?
Although I’m an atheist and find religion supremely irrational I’ve alwys had respect for those who put their religious beliefs into practice in terms of charity and helping the poor – but when they think that gives them the right to suck off the public teat whilst exempting themselves from the laws that apply to the rest of us, then I and many like me get really angry. The right to practice your religion freely does not trump all others, and if the churches want public money then they should abide by public opinion and the democratic will. Let them do and believe what they like in private.
The Catholic and Anglican churches want to put themselves above the law: in essence they are saying that their sky-fairy’s arbitrarily-made two thousand year old ‘rules’ trump the clearly-expressed, democratic will of the people. Their loyalty is not to their fellow countrypeople, but to their religion. Is that what we really want in a Prime Minister or Cabinet member?
This is what happens when you mix faith and government: one unholy mess that profits no-one.
