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.

Channel 4's history of christianity

Channel 4's history of Christianity is thankfully over, having given vent to every possible criticism of Christianity that the fashionable secularist could hope for. In week 1, we had Harold Jacobson discussing Christian anti-semitism; week 2, the lapsed (actually rather anti-) catholic conservative Michael Portillo on how Constantine spoiled Christianity by mixing politics and religion; week 3 was theologian Robert Beckford evangelising on how Christianity brought social cohesion to the diverse tribes of Anglo-saxon Europe: at least, he thought Christianity a good thing. We then moved to Rageh Omar and the religious fanaticism of the crusades and the West's failure to see this through Muslim eyes; week 5 - the best program - by Kwame Kwei-Armah (I can't remember his name), but this too associated Christianity with imperialism; week 6 Anne Widdecombe and the horrors of the Reformation; week 7 and Colin Blakemore to show why Darwin had disproved the claims of Christianity and why we should all be Jacobins, uh sorry, Humanists now; week 8 to finish it, why can't Catholicism and Christianity be more like modern liberalism? by Cherie Blair.

Did anything positive arise from Christianity over 2000 years? Well, the only sympathetic commentators were Beckford and Kwei-Armah, but even they saw it through a left-leaning perspective. I might say to Portillo that without Christianity, Europe would have probably been islamised; to Rageh Omar that the crusades were a defensive war against a relentless encroachment on Europe by Islamic armies and navies that lasted from the 7th to the 17th century. Anne Widdecombe could have spoken of some of the achievements of Anglicanism and English protestantism after the reformation instead of merely concentrating on the violence: I am a Catholic and it doesn't matter to me if the burghers of Lewes burn Pope Paul III in effigy; it bothers me much more that the Reformation gets used to paint Christians as intolerant bigots, Anne.

Beckford was sympathetic but Christianity has more to offer than an adjunct to Labour's social cohesion policies; Kwame is so preoccupied with post-colonial perspectives that he forgets how Christianity is seen by many Africans as the enlightenment. Christianity should modernise, says Cherie .. well, the idea that modern liberalism and Socialism are really "Christianity in practice" is the great heresy of the age.

As for anti-semitism, well Nazism had a neo-pagan ideology and had much more in common with progressive ideas than the left will admit; Blakemore underplayed the extent to which the Catholic Church and the monasteries sponsored science and technology - and overplayed the philosophical significance of the theory of Evolution.

The political slurs are part of the ongoing propaganda campaign of the cultural revolution; the irony was that there was very little about doctrine, very little spirituality; and of course very little about the civilising effect of Christianity. The series merely reflected the pre-occupation of Christianity's enemies and detractors.

Rowan Williams on Icons, Byzantium exhibition

I recommend an excellent lecture on icons by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The nuanced orthodoxy, as Rupert Short described it, of this outstanding theologian makes him always worth listening to.

Catholic schools without Catholicism

A look through the school profiles of Catholic schools in my city and I noticed that very few mentioned Catholicism in the text, or for that matter Christianity. Church of England schools were much better for this. However, these Catholic schools talked about implementing the Government's technology programme, ethnic diversity, themed classes.

The profiles are on the ofsted website, so are these schools trying to appease their persecutors in the state education system, who would so dearly like them all to become State Community schools? Or are they sincere about their duty to propagate the Gospel of Equality and Diversity?

I hope they still teach the Catholic faith in secret when Government inspectors aren't listening.

The Catholic Church must stand up for itself

Paul Gottfried asks: must One Believe in the Holocaust To Be a Good Catholic?. While pro-abortion catholics and other dissenters are free to remain in the Church, usually receiving support from the media whenever they air their liberal views, the unforgiveable crime is denial of the Holocaust, at least for the supporters of politically correct brow-beating and censorship. What if he had defended Stalin or Chairman Mao? No problem, I'm sure. While belief that the Holocaust happened is reasonable, it is not catholic doctrine; and in a free society, he can express his views.

Moreover, the threat of Anti-Semitism in Europe comes not from Catholic tradionalists but anti-israeli Muslims who don't take the trouble to distinguish between Israeli Government policy and Jewish people. Many Muslims believe that 9/11 was a plot by the Israelis; if they believe that, then it won't be difficult to believe the Holocaust was a Jewish plot either; the way to combat that viewpoint is by allowing a free debate rather than demonising every holocaust denier and accusing everyone who fails to do the same of being facists and anti-semites.

What matters here for the Catholic church is that the pressure on it to conform to modern-day liberal morality and beliefs is intense; any deviation from politically correct dogma will result in media-browbeating and demonisation. Like other Christian groups, the church is being policed here, whereas extremist and wacko views from members of other religions do not get the same constant attention unless, or even if, there is a terrorist incident associated with it. The Catholic Church probably needs a more media-savvy public relations arm, at least in the English- and German-speaking world; but it also needs PR to be backed up by Catholic Christian principles and its strong intellectual heritage.

Interpretations of the Bible and Darwin

Referring to my earlier post on Darwin and Christianity, it is often assumed that Christian thinkers tended to take the bible literally until refuted by some hero of science such as Galileo or Darwin. In fact, going back to St. Augustine, Christian thinkers were keen to seek truth both in revelation and the world around them. The tradition of interpreting the bible allegorically or metaphorically is much older than that of treating the Bible as literally true, which is a relatively recent development linked to fundamentalist evangelicalism.

St Pius X Society and holocaust denial

Damien Thompson writes a (probably) sympathetic article about Benedict, which criticises the handling of the lifting on the ban on the Saint Pius X bishops. He says that the Pope should install some English-speaking PR people at the Vatican, which I would have to agree with. The Catholic church's views are misrepresented constantly by the media, and the Vatican cannot rely on them suddenly becoming fairer.

In terms of the rightness of lifting the ban, the Catholic church can't exclude people on the basis of its political opinions. This leads to groupthink and the erosion of free speech. Holocaust denial has recently been joined by Climate change denial in the list of politically correct crimes. The accusation of “Holocaust denial” is linked to the suppression of debate on race and mass immigration in the West, which has done so much to subvert principles of free speech today. The suffering of the Jews was terrible but enforcing a culture of groupthink does more damaged to civilsed values in the end.

Nick Squires documents the fury of the progressive lobby. But I suspect these are the usual suspects, who rejected Humanae Vitae, were equivocal on abortion, and are generally speaking more loyal to the views of progressive liberalism than 2000 years of Christian tradition. In this case, they are part of the movement that wishes to banish from the public sphere anyone who does not have the right opinions. Yes, the wider issue about the role of the Jews in the crucifixion has political ramifications; the charge of Deicide can be used to support anti-semitism. I don't have an easy answer to this, but the ostracising of people with opinions you see as uncongenial isn't an answer either.

Darwin and secularism

Charles Moore has written tentatively on the subject of Darwin, noting the propaganda value of Darwin for agressive secularists and promoting a book called "Darwin and God" by Nick Spencer, which aims to rescue Darwin from the culture war between secularists and Christians. This sentiment was expressed by Steve Jones on the recent BBC Radio 4 5-part series on Darwin, who wanted to retrieve Darwin the scientist from the ideology. Yet the culture war continues, and in mono-media Britain, where the BBC has 87% of the broadcasting market, the liberal secularists will fill the space with their own interpretation of Darwin's legacy.

The current celebration of Darwin by the BBC is part of this trend. Darwin is part of liberal hagiography. Darwinism is a kind of state cult, connected closely to the quasi-Bacchic cult of revolutionary overthrow, where worshippers revel at the destruction of an old way of ordering the world at the hands of a new revolutionary idea or political force.

The question still remains for Christianity, even Catholic Christianity, of how to accommodate Darwinism to Christian revelation, which is channelled partly through scripture. Newman's thesis about the development of Christian doctrine must be part of it. I suspect also that some of Darwin's thought can be decoupled from the prevailing materialist assumptions of the age; it is just that we are too trapped inside this perspective to be able to do it.