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An eccentric and courageous Church by Rory Fitzgerald
Irishman Rory Fitzgerald explains why he loves English Catholicism, and why its stand against 'secular orthodoxy' makes it so despised. The Catholic Church in England is a special thing. As a visitor from Ireland, the first time I attended Mass in England was with an Australian friend. Coming from two countries where Catholics are the largest religious group it was novel to hear the priest speak about the predicament of being a minority religion in a culture that can be dismissive and hostile. That was about 10 years ago, and the hostility toward Catholicism has increased exponentially since. Before he had even set foot in England. the Pope was threatened with arrest by atheists. and met with astonishing vitriol from the media. Having married a good English convent girl. and abducted her to Ireland, our regular visits to England have given me a deep affection for the intimate, homely warmth of the English Catholic communities that we have encountered from London to Lancashire. Amid a sense of closeness, solidarity and real community, a politely exuberant faith bubbles just beneath the surface of English restraint. English Catholicism is a strange and beautiful thing: it is multicultural, ethnically comprising Filipinos, Italians, Polish. Irish. English, Africans and South Americans. It is pleasantly eccentric, its adherents ranging from Ann Widdecombe to Tony Blair to Frank Skinner. People attend Mass not merely because it is the done thing, but because they choose to be there. And they make this choice in the face of a culture that on a daily basis tells them that their Church is backward, ignorant. hate-filled and misogynistic. Few branches of the Church globally exist in circumstances that mirror so closely that of the
early Christian church in Rome: a minority in a suspicious overweening state, set amid a variety of other religions
and sects. And yet it is also the only Christian church taken seriously by the British media. When the Telegraph or the Times refers
to "the Church" it invariably means the Catholic Church, and not, as you All eyes were on the phenomenon of English Catholicism as the Pope's visit approached. In the face of incidents like the Times's Caitlin Moran's tweet "The Catholic Church — they hate women and f--- kids", Milo Yiannopoulos of The Catholic Herald recently asked an extremely pertinent question: "Why are the media so utterly hostile to the Pope?... why the extraordinary campaign — one might even say conspiracy — to discredit the Church? Surely it cannot be fully explained by the child abuse crisis. What is going on?" The Catholic Church, and especially its hierarchy, have given plenty of good reasons to criticise it, but many of its critics' motivations go far beyond a fair-minded exploration of its faults, and far beyond the anger most Catholics share at the abuse cover-up. The real issue at stake goes to the great existential and philosophical split of our times: between those who believe in the spiritual and those who don't; and those who believe in an objective morality and those who think right and wrong are relative, negotiable and arbitrary. This latter view. let's call it the "secular orthodoxy," (the eminently sensible Henry Porter of the Observer, an atheist, refers to it using this term). This morally relativistic secular orthodoxy is now the dominant ideology in Britain and in Europe, and it bestrides much of the British media. The Church, brazenly, refuses to submit to its notions of a world where morality is an a la carte affair. The media dislikes this impertinent Church because it says to them, politely but very firmly: you are wrong. And it does so with the authority of millennia, and upon the basis of moral thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine. Its buildings are adorned by the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; while the secular orthodoxy's cathedrals are brutalist cubist tower blocks and its art consists of unmade beds, turds and sheep cut in half. Societies which follow, if inevitably imperfectly, Christian tenets are generally happy, robust and thriving. Societies which follow the tenets of secular orthodoxy and its attendant materialism, it is now clear, break down into a morass of despair, immorality and cease to reproduce themselves. This is amply demonstrated by death-spiral birth rates across secular Europe. Their art, architecture and human discourse also develop a patent ugliness, shallowness and disharmony which are inescapable and increasingly undeniable. This is why the secular orthodoxy feels threatened: and this is why its exponents fear the Catholic Church above all else. There are real moral debates to be had, especially around issues of homosexuality and married priests, but at some level of their being, the people who lead the cheers for the secular orthodoxy know that their dream of a secular utopia is doomed, because it has already failed. And one of the very few institutions on earth willing to state this to them in clear terms is the Catholic Church — and nobody likes their dreams shattered. Adherents of the secular orthodoxy frame much of their criticism of the Church along these lines: "I love children, justice and human rights so much that I feel I simply must speak out against this nasty Church." However. the English secular orthodoxy's real treatment of children hit me viscerally when I first started to visit Britain regularly.
The Church has been deeply flawed and it has done wrong. And yet this flawed vessel carries profound, precious and lasting truths. At the end of the day the Pope does little more than restate the basic moral tenets held in common by all civilised nations for the past thousand years. And this is precisely why he is hated. He disrupts the mirage of a secular utopia. There is also perhaps it sneaking sense of shame behind much of the anti-Catholic sniping. For one of the sad truths about modem Britain is that if any of its great emblematic historic figures returned today, they would despair at what they see. They would be repulsed to find half of all marriages broken, about 200,000 abortions every year, children having sex, violent drunkenness, rampant criminality and the abandonment of shared heritage, values and community — the ineffable loss summed up in David Cameron's phrase, "the broken society". These are the fruits of the secular orthodoxy, and they have done infinitely more to destroy childhood and children (seven million so far), in Britain than any church. If Churchill, Wellington or Gladstone returned now, they would quickly see that in modem Britain, the only western institution that robustly stands in the way of the total collapse of the basic moral principles which they held so dear is the Catholic Church. Since the Reformation Britain often defined itself by its anti-papal position. And yet 500 years after England's six-times-married King split from Rome, the Pope returns to a country which has among the highest European rates of divorce, single parenthood. teenage pregnancies, abortion, alcohol and drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and violent crime. Only 50 years ago Britain was widely admired as one of the most gentle, civilised, safe and harmonious societies in the world. This civilisation was underpinned by the very Christian-derived values that the anti-Catholic commentators attack and mock. Given Britain's history of opposition to Roman Catholicism. it is perhaps ironic that the Roman Church now, more than almost any British institution, vociferously defends the values for which the people stood so valiantly against Napoleon, the Communists and the Nazis. Yet, from free speech, to religious freedom, to the right to life, these once-cherished basic principles are now being lost. The British Catholic Church is perhaps the last, best hope for traditional British values. That is why it is so despised. Copyright © The Catholic Herald This article first appeared in the 1st October 2010 issue of The Catholic Herald and is reproduced with permission.
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