The Catholic Right Is Neither

The Editor of the New Statesman, Jason Cowley, uses his column this week to accuse "the Catholic Right" of having been pre-eminent in decrying Dr Rowan Williams's leading article last week.

In so doing, he exposes the extent to which the voice of what purports to be Magisterially obedient Catholicism in this country is in fact the voice of hijackers who have either mistaken, or pretend to mistake, neoliberal economics, neoconservative foreign policy and, if the truth be told, not a little social liberalism, for the Faith.

They hope that no one will notice what they have done so long as they bang on about the Latin Mass, the Ordinariate (about which it is not clear that they really know anything at all) and two Popes great swathes of whose Teaching they entirely disregard.

Mr Cowley could usefully provide a platform for someone who submits to the Magisterium as much on economic and geopolitical matters as on bioethical and sexual matters, and vice versa, recognising the truth of Church's presentation of all of these themes as inseparable from each other.

There are plenty of such Catholics about. Most practising Catholics are Labour voters, and a very high proportion belongs to the public sector middle class that is the New Statesman's own natural constituency.

So I do not mean this question rhetorically: does Mr Cowley simply not know where to look for them? If so, then the blame for that lies very much with Dr Williams's shrill critics on the Catholic Right.