Quit picking on that nice Mr Pope fella
Melanie McDonagh doesn’t want to hear that old dreary stuff about the Catholic church, thanks all the same.
The old gibe, that anti-Catholicism is the antisemitism of the left, looked like being given a new lease of life.
Is that an old jibe? (I don’t get out much.) Well if so it’s a very stupid one. Leftish anti-Catholicism is about real actions and commands by the Catholic church and its clergy. It’s substantive – it’s about something. What is anti-semitism ‘about’? Catholicism has a lot of substance to get to grips with. It has a hierarchy, and a state, and a long history of official actions and institutions (the inquisition, the index, wars, corruption – little things like that). It gives us its official thoughts at frequent intervals. It applies pressure to governments and politicians. It is an institution. It has power. It runs schools and orphanages and charities, and it doesn’t always run them well, or kindly. Is any of that true of ‘semitism’? No. Some of it (though not much) applies to Judaism, but ‘semitism,’ no. So McDonagh’s ‘old gibe’ is not worth much.
What’s to say about Africa and Aids? Except that if the pope were as omnipotent as people make out, he’d be able to make individuals subscribe to the whole package of Catholic teaching on sexuality, on fidelity within marriage and chastity, not just condoms. I’ve never quite been able to believe in Catholics – Africans or otherwise – who are so scrupulous that they couldn’t possibly use condoms, but will resort to prostitutes.
But that doesn’t explain why the pope is trying to get people to obey his instructions not to use condoms. And it ignores the obvious fact that men don’t want to use condoms anyway and the ‘church teaching’ provides a handy excuse. Has McDonagh never heard the term bareback? If not she should pay more attention, if she’s going to write about the church and condoms. And she doesn’t explain why a slow nasty death is the appropriate punishment for people who don’t ‘subscribe to the whole package of Catholic teaching on sexuality.’ And she doesn’t explain why people – mostly women – who don’t have sex with anyone but their husbands should be punished for their husbands’ sex lives combined with refusal to use condoms; nor does she explain why children should be included in the punishment. She explains pretty much nothing – she just makes a smug crack and lets it go at that.
Woof.
Absolutely woof! What a load of bull! Read it this morning with my coffee. It’s typically English Roman Catholic by the way, still stinging that it isn’t the national church, and could only be practiced surreptitiously for so long. That may not have been just, but there were good reasons for distrusting Catholics. The gunpowder plot has a lot to do with it, plus the excommunication of Elizabeth I, and the freedom given to any English subject to assasinate the queen and purchase redemption. And then, of course, there’s the Act of Succession. (Of course, if the British plan to retain the monarchy, there is probably good reason not to revise the Act of Succession, for a Catholic sovereign would have an unhealthy degree of influence in the highest places.) All of this means that the English Catholic Church is, I believe, a bit sensitive about ‘gibes’! It also means that there are doubtless plenty of swipes taken at it, as it deserves.
Of course, the latest popes have given everyone reason for suspicion about their intentions. It’s not just a gibe, as you point out. It’s being done. The Vatican directly prescribes laws in too many countries already, and Catholic bishops have not been reluctant to speak about excommunication for politicians refusing to stand up for Vatican policies, stands which would be directly contrary in many cases to their responsibilities as democratically elected representatives of the people. And ordinary people are being excommunicated for refusal to toe the Vatican line, even in cases, like the Brazilian kid, where morality dictated ignoring the church and its benighted ways.
Bishops may not have much power in England over the laity – we recently heard how education is making people less willing to accept belief on authority – but I’m willing to bet they have more power in Africa. Melanie is probably smart enough to ignore the pope when he gets especially foolish, but in Africa, where religion of a fairly conservative stripe is spreading like a disease, he is much more likely to be heeded.
The pope’s visit to Britain should be panned as much as possible. The man’s a menace to the world, and his latest outpourings have made this abundantly plain.
I read somewhere Melanie is Irish. Her game seems to be to ignore or dismiss everything that inconveniences her beliefs. She wants to be a Roman Catholic so she dismisses all criticism of the pope and the church. She dismisses the evidence for condoms reducing HIV infection and for the overpopulation of the planet. She doesn’t want to inconvenienced by breastfeeding her child so she dismisses the evidence that her child will be heathier. She is going around with blinders on.
Melanie McDonagh wrote: “There are cardinals – including Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – who feel that women who use condoms to protect themselves against infection by husbands with HIV are simply exercising their legitimate right to self-defence. But any case against the church ought also to acknowledge that it is the single biggest provider of HIV-Aids care in Africa. It is also, incidentally, one of the biggest providers of girls’ education in Africa, the most effective empowerment of all.”
I am not sure how effective this would be, since the church’s instruction to a properly educated girl would have to rate the risk of dying of AIDS below the risk of burning in Hell for using condoms. In a circumstance where such a girl’s philandering truck driver of a husband came after her wearing a condom she would have to say “get it off, Freddy” before she could say “not tonight, Freddy.”
Freddy might be inclined to only obey her once.
I doubt Catholic schools in Africa are instructing girls on how to get their philandering HIV-infected husbands and boyfriends to use a condom.
M.McD. is far too busy “singing the praises of religious relics and their uncanny healing powers” – to bother her little catholic head with all the despicable dreary religious abuse stuff which is going on in her Roman Catholic midst.
I do wonder if she will also find the forthcoming Irish clerical sexual abuse scandal a trifle boring when it is released soon? Mind you – when the Ryan Report was released in Ireland in her country the powers that be were more interested in getting their own political monetary scandals in order.
All that old dreary stuff about the catholic church will just go over their heads – as it will hers and many more like her.
She really thinks it’s just as easy to persuade African men to be chaste or faithful to their wives as it is to tell them not to bother to use condoms? Slap this woman with a wet fish, someone.
The line of argument that says the Catholic Church’s stance on condoms – or anything – doesn’t matter because people don’t heed it is one of the most irritating ones to come across; it’s just so patently false, on two counts: firstly that plenty of people do take these rules seriously, and secondly that even if they didn’t the principle would still stand that it is wrong of the Church to teach them. I responded to a similar line of reasoning in a letter to the Independent two years ago – this sort of thinking is unfortunately probably not going to go away any time soon.
It’s amazing how many in the comments following the article seem to ‘defend’ the Church by pointing out how much worse Islam is at subjugating women and killing apostates, which the much more ‘modern’ Catholic Church has grown out of, as though this somehow makes them blameless in all respects; the same reasoning that lead the Church to recently claim their paedophilia scandals aren’t as bad because other people’s are worse. Flabbergasting.
Ask Ms. McDonagh to conduct a poll of her male friends and acquaintances about which of the following they would rather do:
(1) have lots of sex, but with a condom;
(2) have less sex.
Along with others, I think this is one of the more appalling stupid defences of the catholic church that I have ever read.
Why exactly would we want to “subscribe to the whole package of Catholic teaching on sexuality” anyway? It is so patently wrong.
I have often heard that line, that it is unfair to blame the Pope for people not using condoms (when he has frequently and furiously told them not to) because he also tells ’em not to fornicate, which they do anyway.
Really missing the point. Quite apart from the STD aspect, it’s possible that some women might feel that annual pregnancies from their mid-teens until early death is not the ideal life, however much it might fit into ‘the whole package of catholic sexuality’.
@Dave J L
Good point, but I always think it worth pointing out that the church didn’t ‘grow out of’ brutal tyrannising over societies where it held sway. That power had to be prised out of their bony grip. Still some work to do there.
That power had to be prised out of their bony grip. Still some work to do there.”
There is indeed some more work to be done also with lots of conservative intellectuals and political figures, etc, who continually cling onto the religious like glue. For example, the list of names of directors of a trust that the Christian Brothers set up in the aftermath of the Irish industrial school child abuse debacle to protect their own interests, comprises of names of an ex-president of the European Union, philosophers of universities, eminent consultants doctors, the list goes on and on with powerfully educated people. Thus keeping the latter propped up. Lots of educated people have yet to realise that the paths in life they have chosen, like working side by side with the religious, makes them indirectly responsible, because of the fact that, they, as educated people, who know the difference, just turn a blind eye to the atrocities that the religious have perpetrated on people in the past.
They should stop drinking out of the same bowl as the religious, and instead, start acknowledging in print, the wrongdoings of the religious.
What good is it in teaching children and young people about morals and ethics – when the teachers themselves are unethical and not morally honest in their standpoints.
Those from the higher echelons have a duty to stand up for the rights of those from the lower echelons of society, instead of colluding with those whom, they know, have ill-treated children.
They are no different than the people who knew that systematic abuse was occurring in institutions.
Er Anti-semitism is the anti-semitism of the left