Abortion and the medieval Catholic church

The Catholic church has been accused of inconsistency in its attitude to abortion over the centuries. In the middle ages, 40 days was the time when "quickening" or life was considered to begin, the current position is that it begins at conception.

The Church is merely basing its ethical judgements on the current state of scientific knowledge, which has advanced considerably from the Middle Ages. Access to an understanding of the embryo was not technologically possible until the modern era.

The Catholic church bases many of its moral positions on Natural Law as discovered through the light of Reason, not just on scripture.

Vote for Liberal democrats is unchristian

The Liberal Democrats support the right to abortion as part of party policy after a conference vote in 1992. In doing so, the party stopped being officially neutral on the issue and leaving it to the individual conscience of MPs. This is why David Lord Alton left in the 1980's, he is now a cross-bench MP. To stand as a Liberal Democrat MP or councillor, to even be a member of their party, is to implicitly support a right to abortion.

The logic is clear, the party's policy is in conflict with Catholic teaching; but the bishops are quiet on this. One suspects this is partly due to the influence of liberal ideas in the hierarchy, but a more respectable reason is that the Catholic Church wants to avoid being too involved in party politics.

All very well, but Catholic commentators at least should take on the implications of the irreconcilable difference between Lib Dem policy and the duty of Catholics not to support abortion. It is the same as the Amnesty International case.

Reconciling support for a given party and Christian principles is a difficult issue, given that Christ did not mandate a set of rules to govern our lives. Christian leaders from many denominations argue that the BNP is anti-Christian, probably a counter-productive move. True conservatives, like Peter Hitchens, argue that supporting the BNP is incompatible with Christianity. No-one can accuse him of trying to be "relevant in changing times" or of greasing up to our politically correct masters, something that you can't say for the Catholic or Anglican hierarchies.

The Catholic press spouts the usual pieties. In the May 31, 2009 edition of the Catholic Times Christopher Graffius went through the voting options for good Catholics, starting with the obligatory "I would hope that no Catholic would vote for the racist British National party". Yes, but this isn't an argument: just crying "racist" is looking increasingly inadequate, given the damage that immigration is doing.

He goes further than this though: UKIP is a "dud choice" because "The church has always opposed petty nationalism". So, according to Graffius, supporting unaccountable bureaucracies and showing contempt for referendum results is OK? The Greens "advocate a population policy. A prominent advisor of theirs, Jonathan Porritt, recently backed a two-child limit for families", which is anti-life; I agree with him, but this is not quite the same as advocating abortion, although I'm sure the Greens, with their extreme liberal social policies, support abortion rights.

He continues. The Christian parties are overwhelmingly protestant and exclusive because non-Christians can not stand; I remember a Muslim stood for a Christian party in Scotland, but Graffius may well be right about the Christian party and the Christian Peple's Alliance, whom he uses as an example. But not about the Scottish Christian party".

Of the main parties, the Conservatives, as Graffius says, are no longer allied with Christian Democrats in the European parliament: "You could hold your nose when voting Tory on the basis that it would support Christian Democracy overall". The Christian Democratic parties support Christianity's place in Europe, but in the end they go with the tide. An overview of the debate is here.

Graffius bases his prescriptions on arbitrary reasons, inspired by the pious social-action, right-on version of Christianity that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the Catholic press. This philosophy has taken over "The Universe" entirely.

He doesn't mention Labour or the Liberal Democrats. So presumably these parties don't meet with his disapproval. But since Labour MPs voted overwhelmingly to keep the current abortion laws last year and the Liberal Democrats support abortion as a matter of party policy, forestalling individual choice, I find this rather shocking from a supposedly Catholic-minded commentator in a Catholic paper.

He suggests at the end making a pro-life on the ballot paper, so I don't accuse him of not caring about abortion; however, his silence on the pro-life record of the left-of-centre main parties is symptomatic of the way that the new piety of these social action Christians , while full of pursed-lipped disdain for "petty nationalism" of respectable right-wing parties like UKIP, makes them pass over the anti-Christian nature of the leftist political movements to which they want to subordinate ally the Catholic Church.

Cross-posted on Christianity Social Conservative.

Catholics and the left

An interesting discussion on the history of the relationship between Catholics and the Left from Taki Radio, entitled "John Zmirak on Catholics and the Left" - (download podcast, 4th down, available 8 May). It includes the observation that Prohibition was primarily about assimilating catholics to protestant virtue!

But politics have moved on and we are living in the post-sixties world. There is the connection between the Kennedy's and legalised abortion; Zmirak discusses how Catholic institutions are sidling up with the powers-that-be and Obama, the homogeneity of diversity, liberal bishops and the way the pro-life legislative movement is all but finished.

Christ shouldn't irritate so many people

On the BBC Big questions show some weeks ago, the presenter, Nicky Campbell said of Pope Benedict (something like) how can he be Christ-like when he irritates so many people?

Wait a minute, what did Jesus do? He threw the money lenders out of the temple, he trampled over jewish religious traditions, he was considered to have blasphemed. He irritated so many people that they crucified him.

Today there is a media crucifixion of Pope Benedict XVI, part of an ongoing ideological (and sometimes legistlative) persecution of the Catholic church. Obviously, the church won't give up its ethical principles, in spite of the pressure; but there is this assumption that being a Christian is all about being nice. Nice and inoffensive. The dominant, progressive morality is so far removed from Christian morality that Christians cannot help but offend.

They must offend.

What is the west?

Is the West a product of the enlightenment, a new phase of civilisation that has outgrown Christendom? Or is the West still living on the social and intellectual capital of the Christian middle ages?

Until the reformation, allegiance to the pope was what made someone a Westerner. The Byzantines were heretics. The division between Catholic and Orthodox still exists in the uneasy relationship between Europe and Russia.

Obama and his honorary degree from Notre Dame

Let me add to the criticism by Pat Buchanan of Notre Dame university's decision to give Obama an honorary degree. This hollowing out of Christian faith is not new, and is highlighted in the English context by "Secularisation", Edward Norman's critique of humanist ideas within Anglicanism.

But we need to ask what is the crack that has allowed this evil in. The answer is the way in which the evils of progressive ideology masquerade as good. The Catholic Church's commitment to social justice is interpreted by many as commitment to progressive ideas and politicians, who in the process of (supposedly) helping the poor, promote their own gospel of Rosseau, Voltaire, Marx and Marcuse. And no-one reads the St. John's gospel anymore, they prefer the Jesus-as-very-good-man picture, as selectively gleaned by liberal theologians from the synoptics.

Catholics in the US and UK have traditionally voted for the left due to their economic profile; but the left have betrayed the poor. There is nothing about Obama that makes him particularly just: he supports open immigration, eroding the wages of poorer Americans; he gives tax-payer billions to the bankers, just like the Bush administration, and has filled his economic team with Clinton administration stalwarts; he foists abortion on Africans; he intends to override the constitutional rights of the states to enforce liberal abortion laws on conservative communities, much like the government here wants to do in Northern Ireland. In fact George W. Bush would be more deserving of an honorary degree because of additional expenditure he approved for humanitarian causes in Africa. But that wouldn't fit the script that some Social action Catholics seem to like better than the Bible. They hear the anti-Capitalism and ignore the anti-Catholicism.

Anyone who reads the Catholic papers will know there is a rather naive, anti-capitalist bias. There are many examples, but I shall cite Paul Donovan, who writes weekly for the Universe. In an article straplined "Church's roles is more than administering sacraments" he says that the "Church has withdrawn into itself", partly due to "society's hostility to Catholics", which is fair enough taken at face value, but one senses that the underlying picture he sees is one where "catholics are an excluded minority", rather than seeing anti-catholicism as an ideological hostility, part of the battle of ideas. Authentic Catholicism for him is adherence to the social programmes of the left.

His solution, therefore, is entirely in the realm of social action, which seems to be indistinguishable from what the state or a secular leftist organisation would do. He calls for housing justice, regularisation of undocumented workers, credit unions, churches as bases for the post office. In short, "Churches need to be looking to the needs of their parishioners byond simply delivering the sacraments every week." Donovan doesn't say the sacraments are a waste of time, but by implication he downgrades them.

Even a great theologian like Rowan Williams robustly criticises the failures of the economic system, while being more cautious about the evils of abortion.

Cross-posted on Social Conservative view.

Standing through Mass

Arriving late for 6PM Mass, I decided to stay at the back and stand. The church for once was packed, due probably to the clocks going forward. Not sitting makes a difference. Being hungry may have contributed, but I have been hungry at morning mass previously. Sitting is a comfortable physical position; the body takes it easy, so does the mind. With no pew to rest on, the back of legs took the strain when kneeling through the Eucharistic celebration.

The russian dissident, Solzeynitseyn, criticised the Catholics for sitting through Mass, part of the decadence of the West. He may have been right.