Pope Benedict XIV: doesn't like gay people. I'm saying nothing about the hat.
The Pope doesn’t like teh gayz. Really, REALLY doesn’t like them – they are, he says, a violation of ‘natural law’, and he calls upon his English bishops to oppose the Equality Bill with ‘missionary zeal’. In the Pope’s eyes, the fact that gay people stubbornly continue to exist does not mean that ‘natural law’, as interpreted by religious leaders, is illogical: that the Creator continues to create gay people in apparent violation of His own laws. It simply means that we are sick or sinful and have decided to be so. The same view, sadly, is shared by many (if not most) other religious leaders.
I have identified as Christian for my whole life; in times of trial, my faith has been comforting. But as bishops and other religious leaders queue up to demonise me, I find myself asking why I continue to believe in an apparently loving God whose self-declared representatives tell me that I am inherently wicked because of my sexuality. Does God think that my relationship with my partner – loving and committed – is of lesser value than my parents’ marriage, which dissolved in acrimony? Why would an apparently infallible God violate His own ‘natural law’ by creating a gay person in the first place?
As my faith is shaken, so is my Conservative instinct to cherish the UK’s constitutional settlement. Does establishment, which traditionally acted as a moral check on the Government’s power, make sense? Why should a small group of English bishops enjoy the right to sit in the House of Lords, when Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and Catholic Christians are not represented at all? There are more smokers in the whole of the UK (about 13m) than there are regular churchgoers in England (7.6m); should FOREST’s leaders, then, have the right to sit in the House of Lords and attack public health laws? Why does the Prime Minister, who may or may not happen to be an Anglican (the current PM isn’t, nor was Thatcher), retain the constitutional responsibility of recommending the appointment of Anglican bishops to the Queen?
I don’t like the Equality Bill. The State shouldn’t meddle with religious beliefs, and through the Bill the Government could limit freedom of religious conscience. I think that we have to accept that freedom of conscience means freedom to dislike – as long as that doesn’t turn to violence, it should not be outlawed. If churches don’t want to ordain gay priests, they shouldn’t feel compelled to; if they fear that they will have to appoint gay people instead of priests to church jobs, they should be allowed to make ordination a prerequisite for some those jobs. But surely those changes should be brought about through lobbying Parliamentarians, rather than from a special position of power in the House of Lords?
I’m happy to say that I keep an open mind. My faith is fading but not lost; I really do think that we need to consider disestablishment, which ties the Government to the Church even when they are pursing completely contrary views.
What, dear readers, do you think?
Filed under: Blogging, Equality, Liberty, Parliament, Politics | Tagged: Benedict XIV, Christianity, Church of England, Equality Bill, Establishment, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Parliament, Pope, Religion
Is it more important to have a personal relationship with ones deity or be part of a system that places intermediaries between that deity and the individual? I had dealings, a long time ago, with someone who described it as the difference between Christianity and Churchianity.
Personally I ceased to describe myself as Christian about 15 years ago, so can’t really comment much more than that. But to me it’s more important to have that relationship with deity, than to bother much about the system that established itself to control it.
Belief can only be transmitted to others by those who hold and understand that belief, its history, its framework, etc. That requires the organisation of those who hold the beliefs, which is a achieved in a practical sense by a Church which writes the ‘rulebook’. Without a central source from which to draw the knowledge and to keep that knowledge from being diluted or brought into error Christianity would. like many other movements in history, dilute itself, fragment, fall apart. Christianity needs the Church lest, over time, the beliefs of those people who call themselves Christians turn into something unrecognisable from those who started…
This weekend in my (Catholic) church I was privileged to be able to read one of those really wonderful passages from the New Testament: St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians about Love. It’s worth a re-read and there’s a part that applies as much to him then as it does to you now in your feeling distanced from God: “Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then [when we stand before God] we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect, but then I shall know as fully as I am known.”
We all – laity, priests, bishops, popes – can only guess at the perfection of God. The greatest gift of God is love. God asks only that we approach him with that open mind, that willingness to accept that we may have done wrong things in our lives even if we don’t recognise them or understand them, and that we love as we would wish to be loved and by doing so cause no harm. Try as best you can to live as authentically as you can. Don’t lose your faith and your hope and, above all, don’t lose your love. Do the best that you can and God won’t ask for any more.
There are a number of difficult issues here.
The underlying problem is that the church is based on revealed truth, not a change in social attitudes. Therefore the only arguments that will cut ice will be theological ones.
The issue here is can religious ( or other organisations ) be forced to employ people who are opposed to their purpose based on a narrow definition of their job and capability to fill it ?
I think those pushing Labour’s Equality bill know they can’t run long under those conditions – but also know how much trouble opposing it will create. Their real aim is to replace the Church ( and the Lords Spiritual ) with their own Humanist and Socialist religion backed by the terror of the state to oppress heresy against their religion.
Re Man in a Shed…
That was the experience in Russia under Communism, wasn’t it…?
Very interesting post, and heartfelt. Unless I have missed something, however, it is the Equality Bill, and not gay people themselves, that the Pope believes to be contrary to natural law. That is, the Pope appears to believe that natural law requires freedom of religious conscience, and that the Bill violates this.
Couldn’t agree more on disestablishment. But I’m curious as to why you profess opposition to the Equality Bill. First, nobody is talking about forcing the Church (or any other religious grouping) to hire gay clergy. The Bill explicitly rules this out. But do you think, for instance, that if it were discovered that the maths teacher or janitor at a Catholic school were gay that it would be acceptable for him to be summarily sacked, on those grounds? A law that says that a person cannot lose his or her job for that reason does not meddle with religious beliefs, as you put it, since these are not positions that include liturgical or theological responsibilities. But such a law would prevent religious intolerance from destroying gay people’s lives and livelihoods. And that seems unquestionably a good thing.