The Pope has been very clever in choosing capital punishment as the ground on which his enemies have had to make their stand. There is only one country where anyone did not already think that the Church was totally opposed to the death penalty as a matter of principle.
And the Church in that one country turns out to have been something of cesspit for at least the 70 years that anyone has so far bothered to check, a context in which to consider the widespread disregard there for the Church's Teaching on wealth and poverty, war and peace. All of which is being gleefully reported by the likes of the Today programme. But what would have been the BBC's attitude to sex with a boy of 12, 13, 14 or 15 during most of the period under discussion?
Even today, the only person who could be so much as charged with sex with a 15-year-old girl, never mind convicted of it, would be a professional footballer, and even then only one from the "wrong" club. And even today, the only person who could be so much as charged with sex with a 15-year-old boy, never mind convicted of it, would be a Catholic priest. Meanwhile, in all other circumstances, the media depict such activity as normal, natural and healthy. One really does have to wonder why.
As for the Church, the former Cardinal McCarrick, for example, has been a priest since 1958. How you howled on here when I stated matter-of-factly that while of course 50 per cent or slightly more of Catholic priests in the West were homosexual today, that was also the case in the 1950s, or the 1850s, or the 1750s, and on back, so that the whole thing had always been the stuff of popular humour in Catholic countries.
None of that has anything to do with the morality or otherwise of acts, just as the fact that the Latin Church made a calculated choice in favour of this by superseding its previous practice of normatively married priests has nothing to do with the merits of that calculation or of that choice.
This is not a doctrinal question (unlike, say, the absolute impossibility of the ordination of women), and the pastoral arguments in favour of a normatively celibate Priesthood remain very strong indeed. Such a Priesthood will, however, be at least 50 per cent homosexual, just as it always has been. But you have always known all of this. It is just that you can no longer pretend that you did not.
You can no longer pretend that you ever did not know that in any Western country the rule of thumb about priests of the Latin Rite has always been 50 per cent straight, 30 per cent gay while accepting the Teaching of the Church in principle, and 20 per cent gay while not accepting the Teaching of the Church in principle. Everyone has always known, both that clear majorities in all three categories were in practice celibate most or all of the time, and that permanent minorities were not.
I say again that that has nothing to do with the morality or otherwise of acts. But you can no longer pretend that you ever did not know it.
And the Church in that one country turns out to have been something of cesspit for at least the 70 years that anyone has so far bothered to check, a context in which to consider the widespread disregard there for the Church's Teaching on wealth and poverty, war and peace. All of which is being gleefully reported by the likes of the Today programme. But what would have been the BBC's attitude to sex with a boy of 12, 13, 14 or 15 during most of the period under discussion?
Even today, the only person who could be so much as charged with sex with a 15-year-old girl, never mind convicted of it, would be a professional footballer, and even then only one from the "wrong" club. And even today, the only person who could be so much as charged with sex with a 15-year-old boy, never mind convicted of it, would be a Catholic priest. Meanwhile, in all other circumstances, the media depict such activity as normal, natural and healthy. One really does have to wonder why.
As for the Church, the former Cardinal McCarrick, for example, has been a priest since 1958. How you howled on here when I stated matter-of-factly that while of course 50 per cent or slightly more of Catholic priests in the West were homosexual today, that was also the case in the 1950s, or the 1850s, or the 1750s, and on back, so that the whole thing had always been the stuff of popular humour in Catholic countries.
None of that has anything to do with the morality or otherwise of acts, just as the fact that the Latin Church made a calculated choice in favour of this by superseding its previous practice of normatively married priests has nothing to do with the merits of that calculation or of that choice.
This is not a doctrinal question (unlike, say, the absolute impossibility of the ordination of women), and the pastoral arguments in favour of a normatively celibate Priesthood remain very strong indeed. Such a Priesthood will, however, be at least 50 per cent homosexual, just as it always has been. But you have always known all of this. It is just that you can no longer pretend that you did not.
You can no longer pretend that you ever did not know that in any Western country the rule of thumb about priests of the Latin Rite has always been 50 per cent straight, 30 per cent gay while accepting the Teaching of the Church in principle, and 20 per cent gay while not accepting the Teaching of the Church in principle. Everyone has always known, both that clear majorities in all three categories were in practice celibate most or all of the time, and that permanent minorities were not.
I say again that that has nothing to do with the morality or otherwise of acts. But you can no longer pretend that you ever did not know it.
No comments:
Post a Comment