Friday, 4 January 2013
SPUC's Anthony McCarthy writes on the pro-life significance of Christmas 2012
"Karl Marx once said to his daughter, one Christmas long ago:Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
'We can forgive Christianity much, because it taught us to worship the child.'And who hasn’t had at least some part of that feeling, contemplating the extraordinary symbolism of the crib, of how the first Christmas turned the world upside down.
Yet the Church that was to flow from that event continues to be, like its founder, a sign of contradiction. Even the most rigorous Marxist historians – to say nothing of lesser 'cultural marxists' - can't quite account for that Church’s puzzling existence. Thus Perry Anderson comments:
'one single institution ... spanned the whole transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in essential continuity: the Christian Church. It was, indeed, the main, frail aqueduct across which the cultural reservoirs of the Classical World now passed to the new universe of feudal Europe, where literacy had become clerical. Strange historical object par excellence, whose peculiar temporality has never coincided with that of a simple sequence from one economy or polity to another, but has overlapped and outlived several in a rhythm of its own, the Church has never received theorisation within historical materialism.'With that rhythm of its own, the Church shows up the disorder of the State - and of our own souls – and in doing so perturbs us. With the birth of Christ comes also the Slaughter of the Innocents: the State invading the family and eliminating those whom Christmas teaches us to revere. Yet in the modern era, with abortion and now the Orwellian 'gay marriage' promoted by the most powerful elites, we are returning (and then some!) to a darker age. DH Lawrence, certainly no Christian, saw this clearly when he reminded readers that if you destroy marriage:
'you will go back to the overwhelming dominance of the State, which existed before the Christian era...Christianity made marriage in some respects inviolate, not to be violated by the State. It is marriage, perhaps, which has given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big Kingdom of the State, given him his foothold of independence on which to stand and resist an unjust State....It is true freedom because it is a true fulfilment, for man, woman, and children.'Such a kingdom is an outrage to the modern State: a State underwritten by the usurious bankers who do their own oppressing of the family. King Herod was, in a sense, right to take alarm: the Holy Family was a threat to his 'values', and those who would defend the family today, while their taxes are liberally used to support the slaughter of innocents, are in a similar position.
And so, this New Year, we face a battle royal on abortion in Ireland, following epic levels of media and political distortion, in a country whose opposition to abortion has been an outrage to Barack Obama's backers at Planned Parenthood. In England there is already a battle royal on 'gay marriage'. David Cameron's former speech-writer (yes reader, he's actually proud of it!) revealingly tells us that:
'With luck, a rapid appeal to the European court of human rights will remove any opt-outs given to hostile religions.'Despite Cameron’s own worthless assurances that religious groups won't be forced to conduct 'gay marriages', this Cameronian is quite clear that such marriages must and will be imposed on all religions, and conscience be damned.
The New Year will also see the next stage in the campaign of two Scottish midwives to challenge a judgment against them which would oblige them to oversee abortions. They had become midwives to care for pregnant women and their babies. Now, if they wish to remain midwives, they must co-operate in destroying those same babies: no way out for those who wish to retain their integrity as health promoters, not destroyers.
Caring for babies, honouring marriage. Quite Christmassy, one would have thought. Yet those who persecute defenders of the Holy Family, and families and children everywhere, for all their talk of a season of goodwill, would more honestly celebrate a different King who tried, with all the power of the State, to eliminate one who dared to be born in what he took to be his own domain.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year."
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