UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
By Tim Stanley Religion Last updated: September 30th, 2014
Compare and contrast two stories of men with personal failings. A Catholic bishop admits to breaking his vows, resigns and everyone says it’s indicative of the madness of Catholic theology. A Tory MP finds himself in a sexting scandal, resigns and no one (no one) says that it’s indicative of the madness of Conservatism. Why the difference? Because a lot of the people writing about the bishop’s errors don’t like Catholic teaching and will use any excuse they get to prove its “flaws”.
The bishop I’m writing about is, of course, Bishop Kieran Conry, who has admitted to an affair and has quit his post. It’s an old story that goes back centuries – priest makes vows, is tempted, breaks those vows, resigns. No more to it than that. Although Andrew Brown in The Guardian seems to imagine that it’s going to spark a second Reformation. Traditionalists, he claims, were “jubilant at his resignation” (evidence for this is scant: even the waspish Damian Thompson has been admirably charitable) while liberals will be deeply upset. Brown seems to imply (and his logic is bizarre) that a) this will kick off a debate about celibacy and birth control (?!) and b) conservatives have been preparing for said debate by silencing liberals:
These are particularly neuralgic matters for the Catholic church in Britain at the moment, as one of the country’s leading liberal theologians, Prof Tina Beattie, has just been banned from lecturing in church premises in Scotland after an intervention from Rome. The denunciation of supposed heretics has been a feature of the Catholic civil wars in North America for decades now, and it appears to be spreading to this country.
If only that was true, Andrew! After all, isn’t part of the job of the priesthood to correct heretical errors and halt false teaching? Beattie and the liberals want a reckless debate about sex and Catholicism that goes way beyond the celibacy issue – and it’s a conversation that the Church neither needs nor wants. We Catholics believe in an inerrant God whose agenda for humanity is laid out in our Catechism. The Catechism cannot be rewritten and any Catholic interested in doing so is gravely wrong. They should reconcile themselves to the Truth, tout de suite.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.