Now, There's A Thought

I sometimes wonder what went wrong, that quite so many of my friends are now regularly on Thought for the Day, The Moral Maze, or both. There have been occasions when they have taken up three of the four panel places on The Moral Maze, and they quite frequently provide the Thought for the Day contributors two days in a row. When I knew Lionel Blue best, and I once scandalised an earnest youngish Neil Fleming by attending Lionel's birthday party instead of sitting in the house to watch Tony Blair on the telly, then Lionel was the only person like that whom I did know. What a difference a dozen or so years have made.

Anyway, with the Government dependent on the DUP, by far the most powerful religious organisation in the United Kingdom today is the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. Yet it is conspicuously absent from Thought for the Day, The Daily Service, Songs of Praise, The Moral Maze, and the Saturday broadsheet God slots.

Considering the claims that the See of Rome makes, then, while individual Popes might be or have been charlatans or lunatics, the institution itself is either telling the truth in making those claims, or else it is indeed the Antichrist, and any professing Christian who does not submit to Rome on Rome's own terms must believe it to be so. Who will call good evil by pointing to the Papacy's defence and promotion of metaphysical realism, of Biblical historicity, of credal and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, of the sanctity of human life, of Biblical standards of sexual morality, of social justice, and of peace, and by then saying, "Behold, the Antichrist"? That is the question.

To which the most prominent answer at the present time is, "The Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster." Well, let it be heard. There are people on Thought for the Day who believe in the caste system, or that Jesus was the son of a prostitute, and they do not control the balance of power in the House of Commons. (Or do they?) That said, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster has condemned the Government's decision to fund abortions in England and Wales for women from Northern Ireland, whereas Catholics, at least, over here see that as the most obvious, and the wholly unsurprising, fruit of the deal with the DUP. If your sole criterion is "abortion in Northern Ireland", then you are in the same position as if your sole criterion is "abortion in Great Britain": you just wouldn't vote at all, and some people don't.

Still, bizarre though it is that the Government of the United Kingdom is now affected by relations between the DUP and the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, that is where we are. Therefore, both of those bodies need to be read and heard on a regular basis by the electorate throughout the United Kingdom.