Wrongs don't make a right.

Almost a year ago I blogged on Cardinal O' Brien and his stance on LGBT issues (see "A Right Rammy" 5th March 2012).  I noted the offensive nature of his language and wondered why someone I knew to have previously been fairly sympathetic to the LGBT community had suddenly turned so nasty.  I even preached against his position  a few months ago from an Edinburgh pulpit (go to http://www.stmichaelandallsaints.org/Sermons/archive.php - see the sermon for Trinity 13 if you are interested). Events of the last few days have suggested obvious reasons of closeted self hatred to plenty of people.  As Kenny Dalgleish so famously commented "Maybes aye, maybes no".  However, I have been quite uncomfortable reading some reactions from a variety of Facebook friends and others.  "Intemperate" is being polite. "Splenetic triumphalism" is a more accurate description.  At one level I fully understand this.  As I said at the time, the Cardinal was singularly intemperate in his language and "as ye sow so shall you reap" and all that.But even allowing for that I am not too keen on  the responses I have seen.  If nothing else, you sink to his level of vitriol and lower yourself to his stunted stature. Imitating an oppressor is not liberation, it is a continuation of oppression in a mirror form.  By insulting as you have been insulted, you proclaim not the reality of your freedom from oppression but your continuing enthralment to a cycle of spleen and anger that diminishes your God given and God loved humanity.   Not taking resentments about others attitudes to you and using them to fuel your internalised self-loathing in a destructive way is a key part of any 12 step Recovery programme and really has to be applied to every part of your life, including your online conversations and reactions.

 

I also have a level of human sympathy for the man.  Having struggled with celibacy, loneliness and drink myself for over a decade before getting sober, 12 stepping and meeting Rachel, I can in all honesty and with deep feeling say "There but for the grace of God go I".  I dislike his attitudes deeply, I do not excuse any wrong that may be proved to have been done (although at the moment they are allegations under investigation, not proven facts - which some are prone to forget whilst crowing) and would hope that if the allegations are substantiated appropriate disciplinary sanctions would be applied by the RC Church's authorities without regard either to the rank involved or to the howls of the mob.  At the moment, as far as I am aware, only 5 people in the World know the full truth about what really happened - the 4 complainants and the Cardinal.  All 5 need our prayers and I will be praying for all involved in this grim situation - and also for the many ordinary Scottish Catholics who will be hurt and distressed by the events of the past few days.  May they all know the presence of the God who is greater than any Church and whose love breached the gates of death to bring freedom and life to all who knew fear and pain in any form.

A Right Rammy.

 Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

I am not inclined to jump into an ongoing public stooshie too often, but it strikes me that my local RC Heirach has gone off rather loudly in public on the subject of Same Sex Marriage. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9122961/Gay-marriage-is-like-slavery-Catholic-leader-says.html for further details  My objections are not to his saying what he said - after all, it's a free country and he is an RC Archbishop, so was scarcely likely to give it anything like a ringing endorsement, as that isn't the line RC theology or ethics take.  No, it's more that I find his allegory with the re-introduction of slavery singularly inappropriate - the proposal is to give freedom to LGBT people to wed their best beloveds, not to deprive those who want to marry a person of the other gender of their freedom to marry.  I also find his intemperate language frankly offensive.  But it seems odd to me that this is the same Archbishop who back in 2000 appointed an RC chaplain to the Scotland 2000 Conference on Christianity and LGBT issues and sent a fairly supportive message to encourage it's dialogue.  I seem to recall that I was on the the steering committee at the time!  Either he's radically changed his mind through some spiritual or intellectual epiphany or reflection (which could perhaps say in public - closer contact with Pope Benedict and his thinking might have had this effect) or that Red Hat he got has  radically changed his sense of what it is to be a Bishop of the RC Church and made him more Ultramontane in his pronouncements than in days of yore.  Archbishop Nichols in Westminster seems to be rather more efficient at communicating the Party Line without gratuitously offending a heck of a lot of people.  As this shows http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/02/28/archbishop-nichols-reaffirms-soho-masses-after-criticism/  Mind you, the comments column suggest there are a fair pochle of bigoted and viciously homophobic RC laity and clergy who read the Catholic herald.  Is it the Daily Mail for the Pope's 1st XI?