March 2010
ELEPHANT? … WHAT ELEPHANT?
THE EDITOR
Last month, Pope Benedict XVI received the Bishops of England and Wales at the end of their ad limina visit to Rome. During his brief address, reprinted herein, the Pope aimed criticisms at the Marxist “equality” laws pursued with such demonic zeal by New Labour; an agenda epitomised by their so-called Equality Bill. Until its defeat in the Lords the week before Benedict threw his papal grenade, this pernicious attempt to coerce religious employers into hiring homosexuals had threatened Catholic institutions with having to choose between the civil law and the natural law of the Commandments and Catechism.
The papal rebuke generated a foot-stamping frenzy among the British Establishment. Portrayed as the first direct intervention in British politics by a Pontiff in 300 years, academics tossed their Enlightenment nostrums out of the pram. "This is not the right thing for a religious leader to say," pouted one snivelling Prof.
In fact, not only was the public corrective fitting and just, it also stiffened the spine and loosened the tongue of Mr Rowan Williams. No mean feat! Spurred on by the Vicar of Christ, the Vicar of Dibley subsequently delivered a speech which one paper called "his clearest and most direct contribution to national debate on key moral issues since he was installed in 2003"! He belatedly declared the Equality Bill ideological and dangerous, and was even moved to issue his first public statement in the five months since the Director of Public Prosecutions drew up new rules to facilitate assisted suicide, condemning them out of hand.
This was all to the good. And yet the welcome controversy was not the lifeline we so desperately need. Yes, the man in white called out the Labour leviathan, exposing its pseudo-equity and pseudo-tolerance as vicious Christophobia. But he ignored the elephant in the room: the bishops themselves, as personified by their own 2005 Diversity and Equality Guidelines.
A major symptom of the spiritually-diseased English member of Christ's Mystical Body, these guidelines support and enshrine in Church practise the pro-homosexual British government and EU laws on the equal employment rights of sodomites, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. Noting that the pro-abortion EU quotes them “in a generally approving way,” SPUC Director John Smeaton states:
The bishops’ guidelines and the EU experts’ document clearly agree that, subject to limited and narrow exceptions, Catholic organisations must ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of sexual orientation.
With the bishops welcoming and guaranteeing the presence of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers in Catholic schools, is it not completely unrealistic to expect that Catholic sexual morality, including the sacredness of human life before birth, will be taught in these schools?
A visiting cardinal went further, confiding that this episcopal sell out represents ‘the greatest betrayal since the Reformation’!
Clearly, bishops responsible for such a Deviants’ Charter, who have disowned their soul-saving admonitory role to pimp for perverts - sanctioning radical "gay Masses" and peddling the "gay Tablet" - are not part of the solution to problems addressed by the Supreme Pontiff. As we never cease to point out, they are the problem: “dumb dogs not able to bark” [Is. 56:10]; obstructors of Catholic reform and restoration; mockers of the Natural Law who tout "equality" and "diversity" like Marxist sloganeers.
This elephantine impasse was captured on video as Benedict read his ad limina call to arms, embodied in a brick wall of episcopal expressions: bored, belligerent, glazed over ....
As a clerical friend recently insisted: "Rome does not seem to have a clue about England. First we need holy bishops who know some doctrine." This is the simple, essential priority. Not stirring papal appeals to a dysfunctional hierarchy.
To underline the point, we reproduce another recent and equally vain plea: a letter forwarded to all the bishops of England on a most grave and pressing matter by one of our esteemed readers. Bookended with explanatory notes, it speaks tragically for itself.
Both these futile appeals to the better angels of the episcopal nature should inspire us to even greater Lenten prayer and penance - for the Holy Father, the hierarchy and the local Church.