UNITED KINGDOM
The Telegraph
Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation is an opportunity to reform Scotland’s complacent and philistine Catholic hierarchy
By Damian Thompson
Last updated: February 27th, 2013
Tom Gallagher, professor emeritus of politics at Bradford University, has sent me an article about Catholicism in Scotland that is so thoughtful and provocative that I’m reproducing it here in full. Prof Gallagher’s conclusion is upbeat – but the picture he paints is of a sclerotic, philistine and arrogant Church whose weakness has been exploited with deadly effectiveness by the country’s secular Labour/SNP/BBC/public-sector elite.
Cardinal O’Brien’s via dolorosa could well be a low road towards eventual oblivion for the bedraggled forces of Scottish Christianity. In Scotland, a defensive set of institutions seeking to uphold a Christian ethical code in the face of an apparently thriving secular culture has been on the retreat for some time.
A secular design for Scotland has flourished due to long-term intra-Christian strife in Scotland, robbing the Churches of broad authority. Operating most of the levers of state power, emphatically secular elites are determined to make their values the only ones that count through law-making and bold interventions at various levels of society.
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