UTTERING  absolute nonsense about secularism seems to have become a full-time occupation for representatives of the Catholic hierarchy.

The latest to launch a tirade  against something he clearly knows nothing about was the former leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, who blamed “secular values” for the violence carried out in totalitarian states, and for some 20th century conflicts that killed millions.

In an address at Leicester’s Anglican Cathedral, O’Connor said:

The propaganda of secularism and its high priests want us to believe that religion is dangerous for our health. It suits them to have no opposition to their vision of a brave new world, the world which they see as somehow governed only by people like themselves. They conveniently forget that secularism itself does not guarantee freedom, rationality … or violence. Indeed, in the last century, most violence was perpetrated by secular states on their own people.

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, contemptuously dismissed this latest outburst:

Cardinal Murphy O’Connor is simply echoing the Vatican’s familiar and untrue line that ‘secularism’ is the enemy of religion. It is certainly the enemy of power-seeking religion, as with the Vatican’s present version of Catholicism, but it upholds the rights of religious believers to practise their faith freely and without hindrance.

His presentation of Christianity as being under attack is a familiar one and still completely unconvincing. It is part of a wider campaign to reassert Catholic influence.

Sanderson added:

Murphy O’Connor says that the ‘high priests’ of secularism can’t guarantee freedom from violence or immorality. But we should never forget that Mr Murphy O’Connor himself was guilty of disgracefully covering up some of the most horrific crimes of a paedophile priest when he was Archbishop of Arundel and Brighton – allowing the perpetrator to continue abusing children in other parishes. Why Murphy O’Connor was never brought to justice over this remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, howls of “persecution” are still reverberating around Washington, where a full-page ad, urging “liberal” and “nominal” Catholics to abandon the Church, was recently placed in the Washington Post by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

The ad asked:

Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs?

The ad is similar to the full-page ad that the organisation placed  in The New York Times in March, which is still creating shockwaves among conservative religionists.

The ad stated:

It’s a disgrace that US health care reform is being held hostage to your church’s irrational opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No political candidate should have to genuflect before the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And it asked:

As a member of the ‘flock’ of an avowedly anti-democratic Old Boys Club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet?

To view the full version of the Washington Post ad, click here.

When the FFRF placed a similar ad in the New York Times in March, it was accused of “hate speech”, according to this report which quoted Catholic League President Bill Donohue as saying:

Not a single Catholic who reads this ad will be impelled to leave the Church. That is not the issue. The issue is the increase in hate speech directed at Catholics.

Donohue also said the ad represented a “palpable” demonisation of the Catholic Church.

Andrea Williams: the concerned face of Christianity

NEVER quite rational at the best of times, Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern and a Director of the Christian Legal Centre, went completely off the deep end after reading in the Sunday Telegraph that that 40 councils in England and Wales have recently decided to abandon, or “water down” the practice of saying prayers, with more considering doing so.

The frothing fundie – according to this National Secular Society report – bleated:

These changes highlight the rise of a totalitarian and bitter kind of secularism that seeks to remove all traces of Christianity from public discourse. The claim that secularism is the more neutral option is a myth. Secularists are determined to uproot our Christian foundations whilst simultaneously advocating the false notion that atheism provides the correct principles upon which society – and its values – should be based.

And she stated:

Atheism however is by no means neutral. It is deeply rooted in the rejection of God and the objective standards of morality that He lays for the benefit of all mankind. As a nation we need to be determined not to forego the values based on the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which have shaped our country for centuries and made it the thriving and flourishing nation that it is today.

I urge all other councils not to give in to the pressure to conform, but to be vocal and visible for the Lord Jesus by continuing to keep prayers on their agenda.

I imagine the NSS’s Keith Porteous Wood muttering “oh no, here we go again” before taking a deep breathe and pointing out:

She is blatantly and deliberately misrepresenting secularism for her own evangelical ends. The Bideford court order remains in force and she and others are shamelessly inciting councils to break the law. The courts have similarly seen through these unprincipled religious tactics – that is why we won the court case and why they have ultimately lost every employment case they have brought.

And NSS Campaigns Manager Stephen Evans added:

If individual councillors wish to seek spiritual guidance before meetings their freedom to do so remains intact. Removing prayers from the formal business simply means prayers are no longer imposed on unwilling participants.

However much the Government wants to believe it, this is not a Christian country. There is therefore simply no justification for Christians, or any other religious group, to assert their supremacy over other religious groups or over non-religious people by making prayers an integral part of the formal civic business.

The absence of prayers doesn’t impose atheism on anyone; it simply creates a neutral space and removes an unnecessary barrier to local democracy being equally welcoming to all sections of society.

Meanwhile, David Robert Grimes, writing in the Irish Times in a brillian opinion piece – Evil, militant anti-Christian secularism is simply a myth – points out:

… for all their bluster and hand-wringing, for all the tabloid outrage, ‘militant secularism’ makes as much logical sense as ‘aggressive pacifism’ or ‘hardline tolerance’; it is an oxymoron, a cynical attempt to paint equality and fairness as infringing upon the religious, who seem aghast that after decades of entitlement they might actually be expected to play fair.

Michael Coren: Photo Peter J. Thompson/National Post

MICHAEL Coren is on a mission to prove that there is a monumental conspiracy to destroy Christianity:

I believe the evidence is overwhelming … that Christianity is the main, central, most common, and most thoroughly and purposefully marginalized, obscured, and publicly and privately misrepresented belief system in the final decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first century.

This quote appeared in the National Post last week in an interview with the Toronto-based writer and broadcaster, who has just published Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity.

In a Q & A session with religion reporter Charles Lewis, Coren said:

Christians are marginalized, they’re mocked, they’re told their views don’t belong, they’re told to keep their views out of the public square and keep their religion at home. And where it can be quite sinister is at universities where Christian students they’re told that their ideas are stupid. I’ve even seen it with my children who are in university. Somehow Christianity is not a valid area of thought any longer. You can bring your socialism, your feminism, your homosexuality, your anti-Zionism into the class but if you bring your Christianity that’s not to be taken seriously.

And:

Christians are mocked for believing in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection but really what they are mocked for is the moral consequences of their beliefs: that life begins at conception and ends at natural death, that abortion is wrong, that promiscuity is wrong. We live in a culture where no one wants to hear the word ‘no’.

In an attempt to draw a distinction between Christianity and Islam, he said:

Muslims read the Koran just before they attack and declare what they’re doing is in the name of Allah. The Koran supports violent acts. And I’m afraid many ordinary Muslims rejoice in these attacks. But nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus justify violence. Jesus never led armies and was not a warlord. The few Christians who do these terrible things do it despite their Christian faith.

Coren is particularly irked over the fact that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, is portrayed in the media as a  Christian fanatic.

Breivik hadn’t been in a church in 17 years. There is just no evidence for Christian terrorism today.

Breivik himself is quoted here as saying:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

Where Coren really gets himself up a gumtree is over the subject of homosexuality.

Charles Lewis:

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts represents ‘grave depravity’ and ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered … and under no circumstances can they be approved’.  It also says gay people should be loved and respected. You say you have gay friends. Wouldn’t most gay people be insulted by being told their behaviour is ‘intrinsically disordered?’

Coren:

If someone calls me a homophobe because I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, then I would rejoice in that. But frankly, with gay friends, I try to avoid the subject. They know I am opposed to gay marriage and they also know I’m fond of them as people and would defend them against personal attack. But let me be clear, anyone who hates gay people is a moral criminal.

Lewis:

But a gay person might still ask, how can you be my friend when you think what I do is ‘intrinsically disordered’.

Coren:

First, I would never use the same language as the Catholic Church. It sounds too clinical. A young gay woman once asked me if God loved her. I told her, ‘We all face challenges. You are loved as a person but you are more than your sexuality. We’re all sinners and we’re all struggling. I just can’t affirm homosexual behaviour’.

In Heresy, according to Amazon, Coren:

Takes on, and debunks, ten great myths about Christianity: that it supports slavery, is racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic, provokes war, resists progress, and is repressive and irrelevant.

One wonders what colour the sky is in the world Coren inhabits.

Hat tip: Pepper Chomsky

Cardinal Seán Brady

THE beleaguered Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady, has reacted swiftly to a BBC  investigation into his failure to protect children from abuse in the 1970s.

The BBC’s This World show revealed that Cardinal Sean Brady, who has been under pressure to resign some some time, had the names and addresses of those being abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, but did not ensure their safety.

Today, a spokesman for Brady said, among others things, that:

It would be unreasonable and grossly unfair to judge the actions of those at that time by the standards of the clear guidance from the State and the church that only came into existence some 20 years later.

Also that:

It would be totally disingenuous to suggest that Fr Brady, in 1975, had the power to stop Brendan Smyth …

And:

Cardinal Brady has apologised . . . to all victims of abuse. Cardinal Brady has . . . led and developed robust child safeguarding policies and practices since 1996, which include the policy of reporting such allegations to the civil authorities.

The BBC said that  in 1975, Brady – then a priest and teacher in County Cavan – was sent by his bishop to investigate a claim of child sexual abuse by a fellow priest. That priest was later exposed as Ireland’s most prolific paedophile, Father Brendan Smyth.

The first child to tell his parents about the abuse was 14-year-old Brendan Boland.

Brady’s role in the affair became clear in 2010, when it became known that he had been present when the abused boy was questioned.

He claimed, however, that the boy’s father had accompanied him, and described his own role as that of a note-taker.

But the BBC uncovered the notes Brady took while the boy was questioned. The child’s father was not allowed in the room, and the child was immediately sworn to secrecy.

What Cardinal Brady failed to tell anyone in 2010 was that Brendan Boland had also given him and his colleagues the precise details of a group of children, some of whom were being abused by Smyth.

Cardinal Brady did interview one of them and swore him to secrecy.

This World spoke to all of the children who Brendan Boland had identified. They all told the programme that to the best of their knowledge none of their parents or families were warned in anyway about the paedophile Smyth.

Four of them had been abused by Smyth. Two of them continued to be abused after the 1975 inquiry.

One of them – originally from Belfast – told the programme that Smyth continued to abuse him for another year. He also said Smyth abused his sister for a further seven years and then in turn, his four younger cousins, up to 1988.

Cardinal Brady did consider his position as Primate of all-Ireland when his role in the secret inquiry was first exposed. At the time the Church stressed that in 1975:

No state or church guidelines for responding to allegations of child abuse existed in Ireland.

Gary O’Sullivan, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, said Cardinal Brady had questions to answer.

If a child can see the need to save other children, how come priests, ministers of Christianity, cannot have the same awareness.  If he wants to stay in this leadership position, he should show leadership and come out and answer these questions because this culture of silence failed children.

The BBC’s Ireland correspondent, Mark Simpson commented:

Cardinal Sean Brady has been under pressure for some time. But he has always made it clear he will not resign, unless there is specific proof that his failure to act allowed clerical child abuse to take place.

Clearly, he does not believe the evidence in the BBC documentary meets that criteria.

However, with the media spotlight on his past, the Catholic primate is struggling to shift the focus to the present and the future. That is a very uncomfortable position, for any church leader.

Hat tip: BarrieJohn