On Sunday, Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, was asked by Andrew Marr of the BBC:"Do you share that sort of vision that Britain is a particularly Godless and indeed sort of death culture society, extremely secular by modern standards?"Archbishop Nichols replied:
"Well it's not how I would describe our society at all actually. I think our society is characterised as much by generosity and by genuine concern one for another, and I think religious faith is taken quite seriously by probably a majority of people in this country."I can't think of anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, religious or non-believer, who believes that
"religious faith is taken quite seriously by probably a majority of people in this country".And with 570 babies killed daily in Britain and with well over two million embryos discarded, or frozen, or selectively aborted, or miscarried or used in destructive experiments since the birth of the first IVF child was born over thirty years ago, how can the archbishop blithely dismiss the culture of death without having his head kept, deliberately, buried in the sand?
The archbishop's view was mirrored perfectly by Dr Austen Ivereigh on the BBC's Today programme on Saturday morning. Dr Ivereigh is a former deputy editor of The Tablet, the anti-life/anti-family house journal of British liberal Catholic dissent, and former public affairs director to Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, archbishop emeritus of Westminster. Dr Ivereigh is currently the co-founder, with Jack Valero, of Catholic Voices. Dr Ivereigh told Today that:
- Britain is not "a very, very secular society"
- "we can find the balance" between gay people's right in law to adopt children and "freedom of religion"
"[T]here is no Catholic school in Britain, joint or otherwise, in which Catholic children are being taught less than the Catholic faith in its integrity."How can this possibly be the case with so many Catholic schools, at the behest of the Catholic bishops' conference of England and Wales, welcoming Connexions, a government agency which is committed to giving schoolchildren, under the age of 16, access to abortion and abortifacients without parental knowledge or permission?
Move over to The Guardian, the house journal of Britain's pro-abortion movement, and one finds Kieran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton, saying:
"I think [Pope Benedict] may well be relieved to be coming to a place where, unlike some of his other recent trips, there are no big problems for him to sort out."Even the interviewer, Peter Stanford, another Tablet stalwart, balked at that, writing:
"Well, that might be going a bit far."All this bears out the truth of recent The Catholic Herald report that Catholic officials
"are hoping that the Pope will not further inflame anti-Catholic sentiment by speaking out against gay marriage or adoption, or abortion and divorce."And all this makes it all the more important that the Holy Father ignores these head-in-the-sand Catholic officials and reminds the people of Britain that this country is
"the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death".The UK, not the US, China, North Korea or any other country you care to mention, has always been the main operating base and favourite milieu of the movement for abortion, contraception and eugenics – “the culture of death” identified by John Paul II. That movement is more dangerous, and is responsible for deaths of more people, than any government in history. That movement dates back far beyond the 1967 Abortion Act and part of its origins can be found with Malthus and Galton in the 19th century. IPPF’s central office has always been London, as has Marie Stopes International's. There are many other good reasons why Britain is indeed “the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death” - and the tragic fact is that the Catholic bishops' conference of England and Wales, led by Archbishop Nichols, is co-operating with that culture rather than confronting it with the truth about the sanctity of human life. Is that why the archbishop is in denial about the death culture in Britain?
As Fr Tim Finigan aptly puts it:
“[T]he London-centred secularist elite in Britain ... relentlessly work to draw us into collaboration and compromise until we are unable any longer to speak out for the truth - or more pertinently, for the sanctity of the life of those who are the smallest and weakest of all.”Let's pray that Pope Benedict, when he comes to Britain later this month, dares to speak out for the truth ... for the sanctity of the life of those who are smallest and weakest of all.
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